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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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I TURNED 48 last Friday, and I’m a happy man. But I think it was only when I was around 40 that I began to see the world as a wonderful adventure to explore. When I was younger, I saw the world as a battlefield; and Life, a war to be won. And I was a pretty fierce competitor with a most powerful will not only to survive, but to win.
Because I grew up poor, I felt I had to fight for everything as early as Grade One. If that doesn’t explain my need to win everything later in life, I don’t know what will. But it is as I said, I have learned to mellow down, and take life easy. I have learned to accept that in this life, you win some, you lose some.
Obviously, it was a different world for me in high school. As a teenager, I felt everybody was out to get me. There was this one particular boy I really liked during my sophomore year, for example. He would always stand behind me; and every chance he got, he would press his crotch against my butt. And that was the closest thing I got to having sex in high school.
Picture this: a loving Biology teacher who adores being surrounded by her students. She would hold court in her teacher’s table in one corner of the room, and everyone would gather around that table to listen to her homeroom stories and extended lectures. I, the teacher’s pet, would have the front and center position; and that boy I really liked would be right behind me. I would lean on my teacher’s table, as if in rapt attention, and he would… you know…
On our third year, right around the Cadet Officers’ Leadership Training course for our Civilian Army Training (CAT) class, that same boy offered me his patola. Of course, I refused the insult. (Or was it a gift? But just because “to refuse a gift is an insult,” I call it an insult?) Anyway, it was so smart of me to reject the offer because I knew we were vying for the same position as corps commander of the CAT. Early on in life, I have vowed, I will not be blackmailed!
Long story short, I became the first “gay” corps commander of our school. Quotation marks around the term gay because I was still in denial at that time; and my commandant would have keeled over if I showed any glaring indication of homosexuality. I guess, everybody else knew I was gay, but because I always conducted myself decently, and I was a fierce warrior that nobody can beat except in basketball, I’ve always commanded some amount of respect.
Many years later, when we were out of college, that boy I liked since sophomore year in high school finally showed me his ampalaya. Sad, but true: it wasn’t as big as I “remembered” it. In fact, by that time, I had a bigger cucumber, and his has become wrinkled (and shriveled?). Needless to say, I was instantly cured of my high school infatuation.
My closest friend in high school (or, at least, until our junior year) turned out to be my bitterest rival in senior year. I don’t know what came over him. As early as the first grading period of freshman year, we all knew — students, teachers, the PTA, the entire school community (hey, the whole town, okay?) — that I was going to graduate valedictorian in high school. That much was written in the stars, and was clearly etched as writings on the wall. If he failed to read those, he is totally illiterate!
I mean, no other student before, or after, me has ever passed the portals of my alma mater with the same consistency in academic excellence and creative superiority as I did, if the teachers are to be believed. And I always believed the teachers because, well, they are severely underpaid. Why would people enslaved in the noblest profession lie to promote my legend?
I was a total rock star in high school, and it really fed my self-confidence, which in turn fed my artistic spirit. I could do no wrong; and whatever I did different, I just called “awesome” until everybody agreed with me.
Anyway, my best friend-turned-archrival has self-exiled himself from our town since high school graduation some 30 years ago. (Batch ’86, we are!) Apparently, he has publicly made a vow not to return to our hometown until he has become more successful than I am. Well, it looks like his return is not going to happen…ever.
And seriously, I really don’t care about failures and successes of my batchmates (or of other people, for that matter). I really don’t compete nowadays, especially now that I understand how arbitrary the standards for success are. I mean, for me, I just want everybody, but especially people my age, to be happy now, at this moment; and if they cannot be happy with what they have in their lives at our age, sorry, it’s too late for them to be anymore successful. We are all nearing the half-century mark after all!
But, no; my relationship with my best friend-turned-archrival isn’t the one I wish to save from my high school days. If there’s one that I could, or I would have wanted to save, it would be the one with my father. But you win some, you lose some.
On Wednesday, read about “How I Killed My Father.” (To be continued)/PN
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