MY LIFE AS ART

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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Thank you, my lovies

MY DEAR Iloilo, my dear Philippines, thank you for the love that you give me every time I visit you. Thank you for making me feel that I live a very meaningful life.

I give a lecture (actually, four of them this year), and you are there eager and excited in crowds.
I make an appearance in Iloilo, Bacolod, General Santos, Koronadal, and your local TV and radio stations cover me, interview me, ready to broadcast whatever I want to say.

I visit your orphans, your widows, your spinsters, and your dead, and you treat me like god’s blessing coming down to you.
I write stories and columns, and you honor it, not only with literary awards, but with a diligent reading, a serious following.
I organize a literary and art contest, and you are there, participating, supporting, even buying art from the competition when I say you should.

I perform a stand up comedy show as only I could conceive, and you show up, supporting me, laughing at my jokes like I’m really killing it, like my jokes and rants are landing great.
You come to my show before I start, and you stay until I finish. And how you paid me attention! How I commanded that hall!
I wear a dress, green lipstick and all, and still you love me.
It is hard not love with you. Because I love attention, and you give it to me.

But I have to leave you. Often. I have to stay away for a while. Often, and like this.
Because I don’t know if you really love me.
Or if you love me only because I am doing brilliant things that make your life feel wonderful.
I know I love you because you adore me. But why do you adore me?

I have seen you kill the people you love, my dear Iloilo, my dear Philippines.
And I’m not sure if it is worth it to stay with you for good. Especially because I have a chance to be a real citizen of the bigger world.
If I can do a Jose Rizal, and bring to my country great ideas from the rest of the world, shouldn’t I?

Perhaps it is better this way. That you appreciate my novelty, my occasional walking through, and among, you.
That every time I come visit you, you see my freshness, my newness.
You appreciate my ideas because they are wild, and new, and daring, and uncommon. Avant garde.
And you can take it because I’m only passing through. I’m an occasional shower, an occasional blessing, like the rain kissing your cactus plant, moistening your desert.

Oh, but I have to leave you. I really do. Because I’m falling in love with your boys. And your boys are bad for me.
I’m sorry to say this, but I’ll say this anyway: your men, aged 30 to 50, are really old.
Ancient like dinosaurs. Wrinkled, poor, and often, financially unstable, still.
I don’t think I’d like my next boyfriend like that.

In America, or at least where I’ve been, men aged 30 to 50 are still gorgeous, still athletic, still young looking. Or, if not, they’re filthy rich, or simply smart and still gorgeous.
In America, or at least where I’ve been, boys aged 18-25 know what they want. Or at least, they know they want me when they do.
They are not hang up that I am 48.

Your boys, however, are clueless, even at 27. They don’t know how to make love to me. I always had to teach them. And it gets old.
Your young boys, like boys in America, and everywhere else, I guess, are arrogant, cocky. Like they think they know what they’re doing.
Like they’re so full of potentials. Like they could be future presidents of the country, or future millionaires.

Oh, but they are so wrong. They are stupid dreamers who don’t know the first thing about diplomacy. About dealing with real smart people. About people past the age of 33.
And so I come back year after year, seeing your boys grow old fast, becoming cold, and bitter. And desperate.
Now, they are ready to pick up a relationship with me.
But I don’t like them anymore. I have moved on.

I don’t like them any younger than legal. But your boys grow old very fast.
Last year’s “It” boy is this year’s “that so ‘80s.”
And they are still poor, and now bitter, and desperate. I don’t like that.
I like my boys young and cocky. But also smart, ready, and open for me.

Perhaps, I am just lucky. I am bigger than myself. I have a public and a following, and they love me.
I adore them. For them, I live and continue to inspire others. For them, I continue to live like a celebrity. Like a star.
My public feeds my ego. And that’s a great thing. It doesn’t happen to everyone. So I take it.

I’m a lucky bastard. I am Iloilo, I am Philippines. But I am also bigger than Iloilo. Much bigger. And bigger than the Philippines.
I live the best of both worlds. I love my freedom and comfort and convenience of the West; and I love my stardom, my celebrity and cult status in the Philippines.

But still I dream, or at least I am still a little too young to give up on the dream that I may still find another prince.
Or maybe, someone poor, but princely.
Someone who will love me, or at least romance me, because I am me, green lipstick or not. (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
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