Eyecandies

"Eyecandy, no?" J asked.

"Uh, huh." I stammered in hesitant agreement. I didn't know I was that obvious as I ogled at this guy who just entered the pastry house J and I love frequenting.

I braced myself for an onslaught of violent denunciation or a deafening, your balls-will-shrink silence. You know, typical partner reaction to the other half mooning over someone else. But praise be to the Lord of heavens, I got neither. Instead, J gave me a hearty laugh.

I tried to explain myself to purge my guilt but I couldn't speak loud enough for J to hear me as the subject of our discussion was just a table away. He handed me a pen and the receipt.

I wrote "I was looking at his butt more than his face". An incriminating evidence, I agree, but hell, I was caught in the act so I found it unnecessary (and dumb) to deny it.

Yep, I like butts. Male butts that is. And the guy in question has a pretty nice one. But I need a face to justify it with hence my curiosity.

I was sure J would get pissed at me. Any sane boyfriend would. Most prefer to look at other people as discreet as possible (that is how you use 'discreet', people!) to avoid confrontation either from the object of attraction or the partner, or worse, both. Almost all would rather ignore that their partner is sniffing around and a lot would like to pretend it's not happening.

Well, it happens. A lot more than we care to think.

People are people. We get attracted many times a day. Sometimes the object of our attraction gets attracted to us but it matters not. Our testosterone levels (estrogen for our sisters gifted with ovaries, let's not be sexists here) don't get depleted when we enter into a mutually-exclusive relationship. It's plain stupidity to assume otherwise. The clincher is whether one would act on it or not.

We get attracted, yes, but thatt doesn't mean we are any less attracted to the person we are with. If anything, it is a testimony about one's sincerity in his/her relationship - we see a lot of people out there worthy of our side glances but there's only one we could look at, directly, without shame or indecision. Just don't ogle too much. It's tacky.

I gotta work on my sneakiness.

[Image credit: http://twenty-firstcenturyboy.blogspot.com/]

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Hello Again

I would say I cleaned up this space out of impulse but I'd be lying. No, I didn't delete my old posts because I like basking in nostalgia once in a while, I just reverted them to drafts. Not all because I inadvertently deleted some which is unfortunate since Blogger doesn't keep things in a trash folder, it just trashes things straightaway.

Why the cleanup you ask? Well, I'm a just being a little anal retentive and I felt like the blog has gone a tad too disorganized for my taste.

I hope to write more like I used to but heck, it's kinda hard when life's too good outside this virtual space. But I do wanna write more and read more of people who write more than I do.

So hello, we meet again.

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In and Out

I'd like to think that the partner and I are a lot similar than we are different. We were born a year and three days apart, he the 23rd of the 7th month and I, the 26th. I'm not much of a fan of astrology but for the sake of this entry, the partner and I are Leos; and believers would argue that Leos are warm, proud to the point of being arrogant, wildly passionate and hardheaded pricks which our personalities would have a hard time refuting. We're both introverts and a little too rational most of the time (the partner is an ISTJ while yours truly is an INTP) that people usually assume we're snobs (which we are). We have low tolerance for people who are intentionally stupid and proud of it. And we both love putting them in their rightful place.We do not like a lot of things but we share a passion for reading and visiting places most couples nowadays typically don't frequent (for example, graveyards and obscure galleries). We both think that the Philippines is worth staying in and it's people, worth staying with, despite the terrible state our country is in. I can write about the things we mutually like and the traits we mutually share as a proof that the cosmic powers brought us together (lol) but I could go for days on end and I'm absolute you'd retch.

See, the beauty about human relationships is no matter how compatible you and other people think you guys are and no matter how similar the two of you are that you're starting to mirror each other, the dissimilarities can be glaring they tend to occupy the larger part of the comparison pie chart not because of numerability but because of the threats they pose and all the ugly possibilities they offer. They could all be in my head but won't you humor me?

The partner is out, I'm not. This means no pda, at least not really obvious ones (I for one love under-the-table contacts like hands holding and footsies), no dating in places where people I know may be hanging out, no meet the friends and family, no uber-cheesy social media affirmation of undying love for each other (this I don't mind) and so many things that our moderately homophobic society will squirm at the sight of. Sure, we're not in Uganda where gay folks are thrown in jail just because but our country's collective consciousness certainly has thousands of leagues to go in terms of acceptance of the LGBT group. My parents would literally damn my soul in hell and disown me if I come out. I'm pretty sure I'd get of the house physically unharmed but this dim prospect is something I'd rather not go through for the sake of my sanity and my parents'.

We never really talked about how we're supposed to handle our relationship in this regard. Unspoken ground rules just magically appeared out of nowhere for both of us to follow. I'm kidding. There's no magic, he's just sensible and sensitive enough to accommodate my being in the closet. Nevertheless, we still encounter times where I feel bad because I can't give him the world like another guy could. I mean, I can't even go with him to Trinoma for chrissakes. I can't even go public that I'm with someone. People would hound me and the world as I know it would collapse to an unrecognizable mess. He constantly reaffirms me that he doesn't mind but I'm paranoid about all these little things piling up that one day they'd be enough of a reason for him (or anyone, for that matter) to leave me. People are not known to tolerate something that makes them uncomfortable and I'm sure this does not make him comfortable at all. He would have the world by now had I been another guy.

Then I'm sobered up by the realization that we are too similar to succumb to this. We're both young and smart and hopeful that we would get as far as our understanding of differences could get us. And that could span long enough to conquer this lifetime.

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How Not to Start Your Year

As an act of civility and an effort to bridge the distance I have placed between myself and the past, I sent an ex a new year greeting earlier today. Being the extra-stupid guy that I am, I missent the message to the partner. No, their contact entries in my phone are very much far apart - the ex is 'd' while the partner is a 'j'. It's just that my fingers reflexively type the partner's name whenever I would send an sms. My fingers are not known to have functioning cerebral powers, you see, and so am I.

And boy, did it get ugly. The partner was infuriated, extremely disappointed, seething like Mt. Vesuvius about to submerge Pompeii in its molten anger. I stood my ground. I didn't do anything wrong, I told myself and him. Just because I want to open communication with an ex or another guy doesn't mean I'm cheating. Sound reasoning, yes? Wrong. So we fought. Like mad cats. But then, I realized I wasn't right to not have given him fair warning about it. I'm pretty sure I would be mighty pissed too had I found out he is keeping tabs on another guy, especially an ex-flame. And that I could be blind to other people's feelings, even the ones I care about, when I think I'm right. Which isn't really the best way to handle relationships.

Am I being under the saya? I dunno. I couldn't care less, really. I just know that there are things not worth having an argument over. Like this one.

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