The one thing Ai-Ai can do without

There are two groups in showbiz. The first – the chosen few – can break rules and get away with it. Kris Aquino, Lolit Solis et. al. belong to this league. They can walk out of a gathering without people raising their eyebrows, even sympathizing with them.

The second – where the majority belongs – say something irreverent, and lo and behold – down rain fire and brimstone. DJ Mo Twister is in this league.

Ai -Ai delas Alas calls the first group Lisensyado as in licensed to do as they please. The second, the unlicensed ones, are pilloried to high heavens for doing what they do.

Ai-Ai feels privileged to say she belongs to the elite Lisensyado group. She has loved and lost many times, but showbiz still takes her with open arms. She had a fight with Rosanna Roces years back. Rosanna faded away from the public view while Ai-Ai is poised to hold the second of her two-part birthday concert called Alas at Klownz Araneta on Nov. 17.

The secret? That mysterious "it" factor that separates the stars from the starlets, the ones who last long and the flash-in-the-pans.

"Many are called but few are chosen," Ai-Ai puts it. "Look at the long lines of wannabes lining up at the ABS studios. Only a handful of them will be chosen in the day of reckoning."

Ai-Ai has passed so many days of reckoning in the biz, she believes she calls showbiz "my destiny."

True, she had low points, when assignments were few and far between. But she never thought of quitting.

"This is the work God gave me. Pana-panahon lang yan," she explains.

Speaking of timing, Ai-Ai’s contract with ABS-CBN expired last Nov. 10. And Backroom, Inc., her management company, has yet to decide if she will renew her contract or not.

Will she jump over to rival station GMA 7 then?

"If there’s an offer, I will try and see," she replies.

At 42, Ai-Ai’s schedule is so packed she had to stop studying at the Center for Culinary Arts in Katipunan, where she was a third level student (with seven more levels to go).

She plays Anne Curtis’ Australian mother in the comedy Cute Ang Ina Mo, directed by Wenn Deramas. Ai-Ai is poised to do a movie with Bong Revilla and Sharon Cuneta. On TV, the birthday girl ("one is my lucky number because my first and last names start with A and I was born on Nov. 11") stars in Super Inggo and the Love Spell Christmas special. The special casts Ai-Ai as Kim Chiu’s mom.

In March next year, Ai-Ai will join Ogie Alcasid in a concert in Canada for the Filipino communities there.

It’s a charmed life all right. But something is missing: a man who can be a permanent father to her three children, the eldest of whom is already a teenager with a nonshowbiz girlfriend.

"I’ve resigned myself to being alone in that aspect for the rest of my life. After all, I can be happy without a man," says Ai -Ai.

She has built her dream house without a man, clothed, fed and sent her children to the best schools without a man.

All she needs are God, family, friends and fans, whom Ai-Ai lovingly calls the aces or alas in her life.

Education – her Mass Communication degree from Far Eastern University – is also a big boost. Few people know that behind the face of a clown and the bizarre costumes is a woman armed with something not all showbiz people have: a college degree. She earned it long before showbiz came along.

Ai-Ai makes sure her children know this so they get the message loud and clear. Not a single one of them will follow in Mom’s footsteps.

She knows showbiz means sleepless nights and never will she allow her children’s growth to be stunted because of this.

Ai-Ai adds, "Many people look down on actors because they didn’t finish college. Well, I did. And I tell my children this so my sons, especially, won’t feel inferior in front of the girls they are courting."

A battle-scarred veteran of life need not say more.