Longganisa: why women should come with manuals

Thursday, August 25, 2005

I look around and survey the crowd as I sit and wait for
Nisha to get back from ordering breakfast from the counter.I’m a poor judge of age but I find it
interesting that the people you come across with on Sundays are oddly old.
McDonald’s Katipunan is no exception. I caught myself trying to stereotype most
of the people in the fast food joint as a bunch of rich, old Chinese folk;
taking their time, nonchalantly reading the morning paper over a cup of black
coffee. There’s also a group of guys I take as college varsity basketball
players and a bunch of very chic teenage girls who look like they’re here to
sober up from all the partying and hard drugs they had on last night’s gimik.

“Nix!” I yell from over my table. She turns around scanning
the restaurant trying to figure out where I was. She spots me ducking under a
table near the door trying to hide. She puts her hands on her waist and pouts
in an oh-so-cute way.

“Hash browns.” I mouth to her. The best thing about Nisha is
that she never takes dating decorum seriously. Of course, she finds it charming
that I open doors and pull up chairs for her occasionally; but most of the time
she insists on doing things herself. Things like falling in line and ordering
in fast food joints like this one, carrying her bag, driving and basically
doing all the stuff that requires more than 20 kilojoules of effort. Chivalry
is dead my friends.

She can be quite the graceless klutz sometimes though as she’s
exhibiting now by doing her best impression of a baby learning to walk while
carrying a tray full or breakfast treats. She spills half of my coffee on the
tray before finally arriving on the table.

Nisha’s having soda with her longganisa meal.

“That’s sick.” I say as I take the sloppily wrapped Egg
Mcmuffin from the tray.

“What?”

“Soda at 7:00am. You
know, I almost died the last time I had soda this early.”

“Fuck off!”

“Shhh! Not everybody’s as awake as us.” I remind her blowing
into my cup and taking a sip of what’s left of my coffee. I warily glance
around and sure enough, at least four old bats were darting strange looks over
at our table. ‘Look at the cute young
couple over at that table darling, remember when we used to be as sweet as
them?’

I kind of stare them down, giving them a dirty look that is,
without a doubt, augmented by my current state of sleep deficiency. ‘Why yes, we’re Mickey and Mallory Knox. We’re
cute young lovers with foul mouths and a penchant for random violence. If you
watched enough Tarantino movies, you know it’ll serve you best to go back
eating your sausage and omelets before you irk THIS young couple and make us
decide to draw our semi automatics on you and pump lead into your collective
asses.’

(more…)