I am a consummate loner and I relish dating myself. And if my schedule allows it, I travel.
Once, I roamed around faraway lands for more than one year on a super-extended date. I went broke but it was six of the happiest seasons of my life.
Traveling alone and dating myself have always been the two meaningful rituals that repair and re-create my sanity.
Having spent most of my professional life overseas where time was measured in seconds and minutes and not in hours, collecting and composing myself at the end of a day became imperative in thriving gracefully.
For more than a decade, the end of a day for me ranged from as early as 8 p.m. to the unholy 2 a.m. When there were academic papers and book chapters to be submitted on top of the usual workload, I would go on for 72 hours without sleep. Admittedly, I was young then.
In such a toxic condition, dating myself was one of the personal cardinal rules I did not dare transgress. Dating took the forms of drinking sake (rice wine) at an izakaya-san (bar) near my flat or racing my mountain bike like crazy at 4 a.m. along cherry tree-lined avenues. Drinking and driving had been great stress-relievers. I was fortunate to have been able to leave the office as early as 8 p.m. from time to time. Such leave-taking was early! In that city, government bureaucrats work until 4 a.m. and stockbrokers buy or sell in New York and London bourses at 3 a.m.
Tokyo is an amazing city for its cosmopolitan lifestyle. No one ogles at you if you order a full-course dinner at La Tour d’Argent or Aux Bacchanales and savor it all by yourself. No one misinterprets that you’re out prowling if you enjoy a glass of 1980 Bourdeaux at the lobby of Hotel Okura or in New York Grill at Park Hyatt alone. On the rare occasions that STAR’s Executive Editor Amy Pamintuan visited Tokyo, I treated her to dinner in the said places. Exceptional moments when I went out to dinner with a female companion, anywhere.
Thousands of Tokyoites date themselves alone. It’s not out of loneliness, but because the city jumps with energy every second necessitating one’s getting off from time to time, away from work, from officemates, from the pressures of deadlines, from the flashing of currency exchange rates in the electronic billboards.
Dating yourself alone is simply acceptable and very normal in Tokyo.
One half-moon in Malate, I was pleasantly surprised to notice three young female college students staring at me as the gentle waiters of the famous coffee shop, which symbolizes the long bygone decadent era of Coco Banana, were serving me a full-course meal. As I sipped my onion soup, I glanced at them repeatedly to signal their intrusion while I was having a date with myself. I wondered to myself whether they were absent when good manners were taught or how I wish I could send them to a Swiss finishing school.
By the time the Caesar’s Salad was served, I had looked at them individually eye-to-eye to tell them to mind their own business and put a stop to their unwanted and unwarranted invasion.
When my spaghetti arrabiatta arrived, a truce was in place. As long as they leave me alone, I would allow them to nurse their brewed coffee. Uncomfortable with the ensuing situation, they stood up and left.
"Maybe you were the only one who had enough cash to order a full-course meal at the time," joked good friend and Entertainment Editor Ricky Lo when he overheard my story.
"Haven’t they ever seen a queen eating alone?" I asked STAR Associate Editor Joanne Rae Ramirez. Joanne then answered: "Maybe they want to join the queen."
The Malate incident was not isolated. Despite my not-so-nice experiences in dating myself in Manila, I will not be cowed. I have not committed a crime, nor do I have malicious intentions. I will continue watching movies, concerts, plays, enjoying a fine meal, and traveling alone.
Lest it be misconstrued that I fear intimacy, allow me to declare this is not so. What I dread is familiarity with persons who pay more attention to Armani than Adorno, to Hugo Boss than Habermas, to Calvin Klein than Cooley, and to Hamnett than Harvey. I have to agree with several acquaintances that attending parties in the Philippines is regrettable because a significant number of participants fail to carry a reasonably intelligent conversation lasting 30 minutes without talking about fashion, a subject I totally and completely avoid. I’d rather wear these names than just talk about them. Also, I’d rather talk in Japanese than eat Japanese. Ah, I must be getting old and cranky.
If you listen carefully to party chatters, you will get tired catching precariously dangling modifiers.
Besides, I’ve had my fill of power lunches and formal dinners and cocktails with diplomats, senior government officials, international bureaucrats, and businessmen while working in Tokyo. The onset of old age is wearing thin my patience on anything that smacks of social climbing and power tripping. STARWEEK’s resident socialite who refused to be named for this piece had once remarked, "Being a socialite is tiring. It entails a lot of work."
Dating myself alone enables me to luxuriate in living at the present moment to genuinely celebrate simple joys that make living in this languid city pleasurable, such as scooping rival newspapers. It also enables me to have a reality check or to simply let go of bad vibes.
Dating myself emphasizes my fortune in the form of the gift of time, the here and now. I do not mean to be a hedonist. I just want to be extra-kind to myself and bask in the treasures of life, or take an emotional escape via reminiscences of sinful trips to Dean & Deluca to pick up pastries or the cross-town escapades to Zabar’s to feast on its fabulous sandwiches.
Seriously, dating myself gives birth to the so-called "moments of being" which truly show what my everyday little deaths and triumphs are all about. Plus, being perpetually single by sheer choice is blissful, too. These are the divine gifts of dating one’s self.