double dutch

Byernes.

After a few texts, I met up with this Dutch exchange student from UP. She was doing a  paper on the cultural anthropology of Filipino love teams, like how they came to be and the things that came with it. I’ve been writing for TV for more than a decade now and I think, I have some stuff to spill out in terms of what she wants to know.

And I remember I did put on something that was so me— floral skirt on black tank top topped with a fitting denim jacket. It was my go to outfit, my most comfortable pieces of clothing. I waited and felt that my puson was protruding. I noticed too that my plum lipstick was wearing off leaving a thin line on my upper and lower lips, as if I had just put on a liner and not a full lipstick.  I slouched again as usual. I wanted to improve my appearance but here comes the girl breezing in like a hipster Barbie doll. She was of blond hair, like a Lannister.   She was a white woman and her skin was like preserved from ice. She had a tattoo on her upper thigh a few inches from her knee cap; a fairly new place to ink something common like a flower.  She wore a tight striped body con that didn’t add pounds to her body like it did on me. Yes, stripes don’t favor the thirty somethings like me.  She looked effortlessly glorious even without make up and all these I took notice as we went on with the interview. Because these things  you notice when you have been held by a conversation.  She had this pause-play way of talking in English most common from Europeans who seem to navigate their mother tongue thoughts in English.  American accent was out of the window and I was glad.

By the time we ended that 2 hour talk with a side of chit chat, I found my cuticles on my lap.  I went to the nearest nail salon and from there I felt layers of insecurity and hopelessness slowly loading on to me as my callouses were scrubbed away. Why? I don’t know. It just came to me in small batches until I swam in it and all this while my ingrown is being plucked out of its roots. I envy the ingrown. It was itching itself out of the toe. After its bloody eviction, the toe felt relieved but it still a toe. The ingrown was nowhere to be found.

It must be the girl and her interview. Or it could be I had wanted to switch places with her.  No, I don’t want to be a white woman with a tattoo but somehow I saw a sliver of myself in her. And that sliver was out there on a better body, on someone interesting. Could this be a cusp of life crisis happening at a nail salon? Since when did my nails become a thing now? Since when did I care about my cuticle? Perhaps the thought of looking for things to care about rather than doing something bigger than my care for my nails hit me. I’m a complicated Tita right now. My lips are still dry and somehow these things matter to someone who is not out there. Or maybe I just need to get out of here. Re-align my senses, wash my eyes and make it better. I guess I need to make it before I do better.