Call Me Marie

When he turned 17, as soon as he was old enough to drive, he was assigned to be the personal driver at the disposal of myself and my siblings, so that his father could be on call with my parents 24/7. We would talk, sometimes, in the car, but it was all small talk. Shallow, meaningless. At least to me. Looking back now, I remember genuine, naked happiness painted on his homely face, the way his eyes sparkle and the way his lips part when he smiles betraying the unadulterated admiration he had for me. But I was too caught up in my glamorous little world to car about the petty attraction of the household help. I was 14, just entering adolescence, just discovering the world around me, all it could offer. And the boys. My God, I was discovering all new feelings. Love…and lust.

I lost my virginity at age 15, to my then-boyfriend, an upperclassman I had met at a shoot for one of the local girls’ magazines. We did it in his car. It was good, for a first time. Not too much blood, not too much tears, and just enough pleasure to keep me coming back for more. Now, I was never a promiscuous girl. The only men I had ever slept with had been my boyfriends. Sex, I still maintain, is and should always be reserved for someone you love. But, I should also maintain, I love sex. I love the sweat, the tingle of skin on skin, the gasping, the moaning, and all that. I love sex. I enjoy sex. But only if there’s that special spark. Only with that special someone.

However, like every young and naïve girl, I was, of course, played. I was 16. He was a model five years my senior. I thought he loved me. He said he did. We had sex, and we had sex often. And by God, but it was good sex. But what I didn’t know was that he had sex a lot. And of those times, relatively few were with me. I confronted him. I cried. I screamed. I hit him. I left him. You know who was my confidante? Sweet Jun. Always there for me. As he drove me home that night from a club in the Taguig area, I was quite drunk. He parked the car by the side of the road and I threw up, and I cried and I cried and I cried, hating myself, hating the pathetic wretch I was. He took me in his arms, held me while I cried, not saying a word. We must have been there, like that, for ten minutes. Then we got back into the car, and drove home. Not a word was said.
The next morning I had a pounding hangover, and 40 (yes 40) messages from the asshole, asking for me back. I couldn’t reply. I didn’t know what to do. What to say. Jun brought me medications for my headache. We talked. I asked him what I should do. He told me that if I loved him, I would fight for him. We spoke for a long time. From the morning, past afternoon, past lunch. We talked about love. It is probably because of Jun that I did not give up on love right then and there. I decided to give the asshole another chance.
It was good, for a while. Everything went back to normal. He treated me like a princess. Showered me with gifts. Made me believe I was the only woman in his world. I was happy.

It was good. For a while.

Prom night. Every girl’s most magical night. I was dressed to kill. Beautiful. Decked out in haute couture that would make Paris Hilton jealous, I was, quite effortlessly, prom queen. I danced in my boyfriend’s arms for the first dance of the night, and I thought to myself that things couldn’t possibly get any better.

I was right, they couldn’t. So things got much, much, much worse.

He said he’d go out for a smoke. I found him making out with a girl from my class. I fled. I was humiliated. I jumped into the car, and cried, cried for so long and so hard that my heart was threatening to climb out of my chest, squeeze my throat, and kill me on the spot. I couldn’t breathe. I was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. Sobbing.
And Jun? Jun was there for me. No, he didn’t do anything dramatic like jump out of the car and plant his fist in the asshole’s face. He comforted me. Weathered my storm. Bitch that I am, I let out all my pain and frustration on him. I was pounding on his chest. Screaming at him. And he watched me, patiently, through it all.