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.’

“I shit you not.” I continue “I was rushed to the emergency
room. I know it wasn’t anything serious but at that time, the general serenity
of the hospital staff along with the flickering fluorescent lights and Louis
Armstrong singing ‘What a wonderful world’ in the background made me feel like
I was about to die.” I said taking a huge bite off my egg mcmuffin.

“What happened?” she asks wrinkling her forehead.

“Jesus, I spewed more shit out my ass than Mount
Vesuvius spewed lava.”

“Eww! Mike! Overshare!” She says threatening to spear me
with her fork. “And all of this was because you drank soda early in the
morning?”

“That’s my theory.
It was a miracle really, I mean my being pulled from the jaws of death like
that. Shit, even the doctor didn’t have any clue as to what strange sickness I had.”

“Did you ever find out?”

“The doctor said it ‘must be a virus’, which must hold some
sort of record for the lamest medical diagnosis in the history of mankind. He looked
terrified though; he looked like he wanted to run to the nearest bomb shelter
and call in a nuclear strike to purge the world of my mysterious Martian death
virus.”

Nisha was laughing hysterically and after a while I found
myself laughing too which is weird since I’m not very big on laughing at my own
jokes. We’re starting to gain the attention of our old geezer fans again but
who can blame them? I mean it’s practically normal for people to laugh over
bottles of beer, But over longganisa and egg mcmuffin?

Nisha was still laughing, in fact she was laughing so hard that tears started
to streak down her cheeks. “Boy is it that
funny Nixie? I should rethink my career and get myself into comedy.” I said
handing her my handkerchief but she sort of pushes my hand away, grabs her
handbag and runs out the door.

I sit there nonplussed, playing with the plastic stirrer of
my coffee for a good twenty seconds or so; I was waiting for my brain to
process what just happened. She cried! What the fuck did I do? Was it something
I said? Holy fuck. It’s instances like these that I wish women came with a
fucking manual. Chapter 22 page 451: “When
a woman starts crying for no obvious reason at McDonalds” This is a phenomenon
that has no solution as of date. It’s only one of the myriad of weird random
things that seem to happen to women. Giving her 3,000 pesos and taking her to
the mall might diffuse the situation. If it’s too early for the mall, wait at
your table and hope that she returns.

I decide to wait for a couple of more minutes but I started
to worry when she didn’t come back. I took one last bite of egg mcmuffin and
took a lot of napkins. If you decide to
run after her take a lot of napkins, you’ll never know when you’ll need them.
Also just in case, see Chapter 41: How to say sorry and ensure continued sexual
bliss. Good luck lover boy!

I peer into Nisha’s car when I got out into the parking lot.
She wasn’t there. I started to walk back in and wait for her when I see her walking
briskly to the direction of Aurora Boulevard.
“Nixie! Come on! What’s going on?” I yell after her.

Hey! What’s wrong?” I said grabbing her by the arm, finally
catching up with her.

”Nothing. I’m okay now. I just needed to breathe.”

“Nixie, What’s wrong? Was it something I said?” I said with
a sterner tone.

“It’s nothing Mike, it’s part of the emotional rollercoaster
shit girls undergo that you won’t be able to understand.” She said wiping her
tears subtly with her hand.

“And what about that ‘friends among anything else’ bit we’ve
been talking about?” I said putting an arm around her forcing her to a stop.

“It’s a lot of things Mike. I’m turning twenty-two in
November and both my younger sisters have better relationships than me. I just
realized how I’m sacrificing a lot of things trying to balance everything;
there’s school, there’s business and there’s you.”

“…” I sat her down on the steps of the footbridge not really
knowing what to say. I suck at giving advice that’s for sure.

Women are weird creatures.