How lucky am I?

My boyfriend is a carnivore. I know this because our favorite place is Melo’s. I also know this because for the past six years we have been partners in crime. I’ve seen him attack women like a ravenous lion pouncing on hapless gazelles.

I found him amusing because I thought he was adorably revolting. He laughs way too loud, eats with his elbows on the table using one utensil, ignores anyone who isn’t hot or gay (very alpha male indeed), macks on any girl who wears a three-inch skirt with five-inch heels, can be quite the tactless sheep, wears the word "cock" (Le Coq Sportif, to be specific) on his chest, and adores Eurotrash models.

Before finding him amusing, I hated him. He always forgot who I was. Despite many dinners and movies with our group, he would always draw a blank when I came to say hello to him. For my ego and delusions of grandeur, it was simply appalling and unacceptable. It meant that I was not cute because I was certainly not gay (unfortunately). I made it my mission to endear myself to him.

We had a rather run-of-the-mill beginning. We bonded over champagne and I even helped out in doing a gay night in his club. One gay night when everyone seemed to tire of it, we found ourselves dancing the night away in his club – just him and me. We ate cheap Chinese afterwards and I knew I found myself a new best friend.

Over the years, we’ve traveled together, eaten a lot of Spam together, macked together, fought, laughed, cried and spent almost every Sunday together. I became his apologist since his tongue had a mind of its own. He became my shrink with whom I shared all my deviant misadventures. I told him everything – things I would never share with anyone else. I trusted him with all my heart. People would always ask two things: Why I was so close to him, and why didn’t I go out with him? I would always think that it was his thorny charm that got them all riled up. But I guess, if you’re on the outside looking in, you’d also be scratching your head, wondering why we weren’t together in the first place. Soon enough, we started wondering that, too.

I’d get jealous of anyone he would date. Then, as inebriated as we were when our friendship began, he came up to me dressed like a pimp in a hooker party and swore he’d come and get me. I did not think much of it because I knew what bouquets of bullshit would slip from his lips while lubed on bubbly. But then, there was a reason why I never forgot this incident: because it opened a window of thought. Suddenly, I started to see him as someone else aside from a rabid hyena. I hated what I was thinking.

The months progressed with drunken propositions and overtures, trans-Atlantic phone calls he made saying how much he loved me that were jettisoned to oblivion once sobriety settled in. The trouble came when I first started feeling weird when we had our weekly lunches at Melo’s. He was forward enough to come clean with what he felt. I was still in the closet. I came up with every excuse in the world not to see him, and when I ran out, I knew what I had to do. My epiphany came after a long conversation we had early last year. He was not drunk and neither was I. He told me everything and I told him nothing. I never felt so scared yet so sure in my whole life.

This kind of certainty is scary. You know that it has a mind and a will of its own. You know all you have to do is surrender and live your life the way you should.

I took matters into my own hands. If he was gutsy enough to tell me how he felt, I was ballsy enough to kiss him. I’ve seen him give kisses before (like how you would imagine a kapre doing it) and I was surprised to see him kiss me like a 16-year-old. Hands on the side with tentative and quivering lips. I felt like I was him at that moment. But the moment it was over, I knew something wonderful had begun.

After a series of me resisting and he insisting, I let go and nested myself in his arms. I realized that freedom meant being with him.

I love him like no one else because I know him like no one else. Beneath that pompadour and impish grin lies a warm and sincere person who has lived life fast-forward. Someone who is trying to rectify a world that has gone all wrong. Someone who has demonstrated unconditional love that calls way beyond his duty. Someone who is brave enough to stand up to those who judge him. Someone who is beyond intelligent but finds pleasure in acting like an idiot. Someone who can solve your problems and worries with just one word – yes (he never says no to anyone). Someone so misunderstood yet so straightforward.

I’m proud of him. I admire the person that he is. I look at the person that he isn’t (the way others see him) and just laugh at the incongruous paradox. He is, for me, the most beautiful person I know. He loves me even if I douse my thousand-peso steak in Knorr seasoning. And he answers all my drunk-dialed calls.

He is a paragon of generosity, earnestness, fortitude and dirty humor. How lucky am I that he loves me?