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GRACE
was, as usual, suspicious of the plan. Her sister
Cynthia was setting her up for the first time on a blind
date. According to Cynthia, the guy was 36, single and
owned his own construction business. And they—meaning
she at 35, who was at the peak of her own advertising
career, and the guy with his rather impeccable
background (as Cynthia claimed)—would probably hit it
off. Grace knew better than to ask whether the guy was
cute, or at least presentable to her friends, the final
arbiters in most of her relationships. Besides, she knew
well enough that most handsome men are gay, or in love
with themselves more than they could ever be with their
women. Okay, that’s what her gay friends told her
anyway.
The guy,
Martin, was apparently a close friend of the husband of
Cynthia and Grace’s cousin. Of course, Grace was
supposed to accept this connection as some honorable
endorsement of the guy’s supposed respectability, and
genuine and sincere personality. He could not be some
psycho mass murderer recently escaped from the basement
of Makati Med.
Then
again, as Grace anxiously waited for Martin’s call to
set the date, she did recall watching a recent episode
of one of those real-life investigative shows on Fox TV
where a family just accepted a stranger, supposedly a
victim of an airline crash who had lost his entire
family, to move in with them. As she pored over the
storyboards before her at work, the scenes from the TV
program continued replaying in her head. The stranger
helped around the house and the farm, and actually
appeared to be a decent, well-meaning person. He had
gotten along with the family, especially with the
kids—until the family patriarch suddenly realized that
his wife had fallen in love with the stranger. The
husband began to feel uneasy about going home,
threatened he was by the stranger’s presence.
Eventually, the stranger was discovered to be on the
FBI’s watch list because he had killed his own wife in
another state just a few years before.
So maybe
this guy Martin killed off his own wife as well and was
wanted somewhere in the hinterlands of Polomolok. Okay,
Grace’s imagination was running wild again. Something
like that could only happen in the US.
When
Martin finally called, her heart actually skipped a
beat. “He sounds okay,” Grace told herself, while
listening to him make small chitchat before sealing the
date. They finally agree to meet on Friday at her
favorite Spanish restaurant. In her mind, she had
already picked out a nice flowy dress to wear for the
big day.
Later at
the bar, Grace met up with her buddies for drinks and
eagerly told them about the forthcoming date. While
Trixie was positively ecstatic and asked her what she
would wear for the event, the rest of the gang—including
her majesty’s gayness, Dean—wondered why Martin would
still be single at 36? Such supportive friends, Grace
thought, although the idea of Martin being gay did cross
her mind.
Nevertheless she tried to shake off the negativity of
her friends and Dean’s continuing jest of letting him
date Martin instead, and asserted that she was actually
looking forward to Friday. It would be fun, she said, to
try seeing someone alone, at dinner, with some wine,
perhaps some good polite conversation for a change,
instead of being together with her forever drunk,
ridiculous and raving mad friends. Talk about candidates
for the psycho ward!
On
D-Day, Grace couldn’t believe how nervous she was. Even
as she sat through her three meetings with clients,
account executives and her copywriters, she found her
mind trailing off. Did she look okay today? Maybe she
shouldn’t have eaten that last piece of chicharon at
last night’s dinner? She felt so fat and hoped the dress
she had chosen to wear for the occasion would fit. Ooof!
She hoped she remembered to pack some condoms in her
purse...just in case. Slut! She should take it slow this
time. Just have a good time and enjoy the guy’s company,
no expectations. What was his name again?
Sitting
in her office, Grace could no longer contain her
agitated state. She couldn’t concentrate on the
documents she was supposed to read. She texted Trixie
for moral support. Trixie texted back that she would be
fine. Besides, if the date didn’t go through smoothly,
at least Grace would get to enjoy her favorite paella,
so it would still be a win-win right? “K, tnx,” Grace
texted back, as she hurriedly changed into her dress.
She looked in the mirror, slapped on some makeup, and
headed out the door, trying to sing “Walkin’ in Rhythm”
by the Blackbyrds in her head to calm her.
She
instinctively knew who Martin was as she glanced through
the restaurant window while parking her car. There were
already other diners there, some of them alone as well,
also waiting for their dates perhaps, and another table
with some family. A birthday dinner maybe. Martin was
dressed in a light-blue long-sleeved shirt and a
necktie. His shoulders were slightly hunched over. He
looked defeated. Grace wondered why.
As she
met Martin at the table and handed her hand over for him
to shake, she suddenly knew why he looked crushed. He
was a gentleman the entire night, and flashed her his
whitest Close-up smile...but the gay vibe couldn’t be
mistaken. It was positively reeking through every pore
in Martin’s body, even as he talked about his activities
at his church. He just didn’t want to fess up to his
real feelings. Grace was intrigued by the thought of a
grown gay man who still didn’t want to come out of the
closet. And he belonged to some fundamentalist Christian
sect. How could it get any better than that?!
Admittedly, the date wasn’t half-bad. The conversation
was all right, except for the religious turn it took at
one point. But the rest of the discussion was actually
intelligent, not even half-boring as some of her past
dates turned out to be. They had even actually dissected
a recent ad campaign her company had launched for a new
client. But then Grace had always had a great connection
with gay men. And the red wine was even better. She
would need the buzz to get her through the rest of the
night. But as Martin prattled on about the kind of girl
he wanted to marry, she did want to scream at him a few
times: “Hoy, magpakatotoo ka, sister!”
In the
rest room, she checked on her cell-phone messages and
found texts from her buddies with words of
encouragement, and concern about how the date was going.
Even bitchy Dean texted her to “just be your gorgeous
self”...the queen could be sweet when he wanted to. She
didn’t have time to text back all of them, lest Martin
think she had been flushed down the toilet.
But as
she stepped out of the rest room and made her way back
to the table where a fluffy yummy canonigo and Martin’s
pale smile-a-crooked face were waiting, she felt excited
again. Grace couldn’t wait to get home to YM the girls
and tell them about the date. Ah, yes, another anecdote
to get the group rolling down the aisle with laughter.
Mental note to self: Save Martin’s number for Dean.
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