Ballantine’s love letters

Just as I was about to swear off all spirits, including anitos, what should hove into tempting view but a challenge issued by the NBDB or National Book Development Board, urging one and all to join a writing contest in time for Valentine’s Day? And no ordinary writing contest is it too, but one that involves love letters! In your own handwrite!

Now, since I’ve prided myself in having put, okay, placed, convent girls to shame when it comes to the sheer aesthetics of graphology, this here gauntlet hurl should not go the way of ignorance of the law — or so methinks.

Actually, I’d be happy to be asked to judge this honorable competition, especially since I’ve long been aware that NBDB Exec. Director Andrea Pasion-Flores — whom I still regard as a friend especially since she’s a mother to twins — never allows me to win at anything she instigates.

Not that she has anything against me — which of course she’d deny if she had. And I’ll still wish her boy-girl twins well, even if she thought me too lowly to ask to be their godparent. Oops, Ninong, I mean.

In any case, where was I? Oh yes, given a couple of nights, I can finish off a Ballantine’s 17-Year-Old since it’s that special, full-bodied, with creamy vanilla notes and all that. And write love letters on the side. Like water. For choclit. Or for the heck of it. 

Now this is how to churn out that stuff. Listen now, you young pups, this is how not to lose your guy or gal. Here are six takes in search of characters stereotypical (written under the influence of Ballantine’s).

* * *

Dear Minestrone Baby, You had me at the first sip, there at the Abaca Group’s Tavolata in Cebu City. Your heartiness made me gurgle in Life-is-beautiful delight. And I will remember that night at the trattoria for more than just the camaraderie, even if we never held hands long enough under the elegant table. Nobody needed to know that you’re mine, mine, mine. And sure, you had strong spoonfuls of the thick red soup. True love means sharing — the truth, warts and all, ad nauseam. Oh, but the mixed veggies and pasta spelled verity in their own right, veritably. I’m glad we dined there. We can try out Krua Thai some other night we’re back there, then work our way up the food chain to their orig resto in that boutique hotel on Mactan Island. Oh, but for that moment, bambina, our bond restarted anew, very fresh, tabula rasa there in Tavolata. Ciao for now.

Dear Mabel, Here I am ensconced on a chaise lounge, canvas, waterproof, on a verandah in one of the Island Tip Bungalows at Two Seasons Resort Island and Spa. It’s on the Malaroyroy tip of Bulalacao Island among the Calamianes Group, 40 minutes by speedboat from Coron in Northern Palawan. Wish you were her. Er, I mean here. No, no one’s with me, not even that buxom spa attendant who said she once served as a waitress at Badjao resto in Puerto Princesa.

Anyway, so I waited for you at NAIA Domestic, and kept fidgeting at the smoking lounge until it became obvious you weren’t joining me. And so I had to bite the bullet and all the heads of the airport personnel just so I could rush in at the last minute and make it to the Zest Air 60-seater before it rumbled off the tarmac.

And so, as fate that you always dictate would have it, here I am so solo in this exclusive paradise, to which Posh Spice herself would bloody surely drag David and bend him over in the private outdoor jacuzzi overlooking the terrific white-sand stretch of beach. As I have done, with my imagination. No, not David, nor Posh, nor the spa girl who loved and kneaded me. But you.

So now there’s Orion’s Belt in my sightline directed west, hovering over Malcapuya Island across the dark sea, the symbol of our white-capped relationship. But you know, even as I curse and miss you, especially when Michael Jackson sings She’s Out of My Life in your Playlist that you imposed on my iTunes, you know, darn it, I can’t forget you. Well, not so easily, but I can, too, you know. Oh well, guess you don’t believe it, so there. So there you went again being Bratinella.

But hey, even as I PM you on FB, I just noticed the Apple icon, white, reflected on the glass pane at this verandah’s edge, and it looks to be joining the dark leaves of some bush catching the sea breeze. I wonder what that all means. Hmm, now I think I know. 

Yours, still iSmitten.  

* * *

Dear Cassandra, My astro chart says that Venus sextile Mercury forebodes, not forbids, dalliances between us short of meeting up at Mercury Drug across Tiendesitas this Saturday, make that afternoon, so we won’t have to line up at Max’s or Savory for fried chicken lunch with our respective broods before we haul ’em all into Fun Ranch.

Sure, it’s been tough being single parents, for us both. But it appears that Uranus had a lot to do with it since our respective times of birth. Good for you that you got your annulment after only a year of paperwork and a pay-off at Pasay. But here in Pasig the family court judges seem to know what goes on in all the nearby motels, apart from the fact that the Flower Group serves really good pancit canton and pata tim.

So I can’t hope for my own legal partnership to be declared null and void ab initio anytime soon. We’ll just have to be patient, darling. This was all written in the stars, inclusive of our secret dalliances in the name of pancit canton. You will recall that when you went through your first Saturn cycle at age 28 to 30, it became an uphill battle for you, as it also was with me over a decade earlier. Now that my own Saturn cycle has come around a second time, I’m beginning to think there’s brightening hope that we can save up on Dahlia Inn charges when rooming up and homing in together turns legit.

Meanwhile, let’s save on lunch bills, too, at least until all our respective kids finish schooling. Then we can have Savory Saturdays, with all that gravy and Yangchow Fried Rice.

See you this weekend, honeypot. You know where to park. It’s only P25 at Tiendesitas.

* * *

Dear Anne C. Honestly, I’ve desired you so much that my pantaloons drop at every pic I see of you, but that Erwan of yours (after Sam and Richard and who knows who else) is a journalist too, I hear, so I suppose we’ll just have to wait till your next reincarnation as a billboard queen up & down our important highways. But you know, just to let you know, I’ve snatched about 116 pix of you up on that billboard off the C-5 flyover bridge over the River Pasig, and of late I’ve been dumfounded to see a fresh strip of info plastered across your slim, kilometric legs. And it says ON SALE NOW! Jeez, which? And where does one make a bid? Do I have to, at all? Isn’t it enough to pull rank, at my age, over all the juvenile pretenders panting over your billing as National Darling? Anyway, bill me if necessary. Poetry can be good for the showbiz soul, you know. Even more than food writing, I dare say.

* * *

My dearest E. — The reluctance to commit to anything is understandable, given our fast-spinning world of Tweets and spam scams, etc. But I will have to tell you that the reason I have taken to the blues among all other music genres is that I keep finding the words thereat to express my own Sisyphean frustration — not over rock ‘n roll but your apparent flip-flops not branded Havaiana. Such as:

“I wear rubberbands round my soul / They keep me from crawling / And these rubberbands round my soul / They keep me from falling…” — Ane Brun, Rubber and Soul

“Oh sad sad day / Since my baby she went away…” — Muddy Waters, Sad Sad Day

“I never win at love / At love I always lose…” — Shemika Copeland, Married to the Blues

Maybe blues lyrics are even better for the soul than poetry or food writing. That’s why most nights I’m stuck to my embrace with Laphroaig Quarter Cask single malt, feeling so singleton anyway, and just hooked up to Azur Blues radio station in Gay Paree, of 33 streams in the Blues genre on iMac iTunes radio.

A good thing AdMU’s drive for five was a success under Black. Take that, you Greenie!

Trying to forget you! 

* * *

Carissima mia / mi dulce extranjera — Espero that you’re up to it. Full moon nearing my burpday. On which island do we bathe under la luna llena? You bring the Gouda y Brie as usual, and I bring the Islay malt. And we pour it all on our bond. The way we did in that pool villa where hibiscus and giant clams lent the place its name. Midnight should be lovely, in and out of first water. If you recall, as I’ve lauded in the past: “Just us, balmy winds… far edge of shore… entering (an) island… like the newest of strangers... moon aloft, the gushing water… Each drop was augury of weather. Cycle and season loop along, pour down as passion….” And later, perhaps as postscript: “And hug we did, suddenly genuine in view of wind… she was pure tanning lotion to my rarest of moon burns… The moon it was, too, seduced us in illusion of luminescence… just like my adoration….”

Hmm, looking back at all that now, even in deconstruction, these poem parts seem better, or truer, than the blues. Or food porn writing.

See ya when I see ya, sweetie.