No more blue birthdays

The first and only grand birthday party of my life happened 22 years ago. It was completely unplanned and involuntary from my end. I had goose-bumps before, during and long after the event at La Coupole, Manila’s hippest party place of the 1990s and long since vanished into ersatz history.

I know I might sound a bit catty and ungrateful, but I felt stampeded into something I would never have done on my own: to serve as point man for a frankly social extravaganza, see it covered in passing on the late TV news, noted in society columns, and talked about for more than 60 seconds of alleged fame. It was an ego trip I swore would never happen again. And I have kept that vow. 

I had innocently revealed my birth date, a state secret I told this lady friend, over a getting-to-know-you luncheon with society columnists and assorted publicists of the leading newspapers of the land.

“We must have a party for you,” decreed an imperious member of the pack who affected a screechy British accent. “It will be the political party of the season. Everybody who is anybody will come. Only President Cory will not be there, but she seldom goes to parties anyway and she’s not missed at all.”

As if to preempt the obvious point that I couldn’t possibly afford the maharajah expense, her close friend, a flamboyant public relations guru, told me flat-out: “Dahling, you won’t spend a centavo. We always hold outrageous parties, everybody comes, and funding is never a problem.”

How so? The amused writer next to him was not at a loss for words: “This town is crawling with alpinists, as in climbing the Swiss Alps. They’ll kill to be in the papers, especially left-to-right ladies and hangers-on. They all want to send food, volunteer services, push their artists, couturiers and entertainers. For your shebang, just look gorgeous and play star of the evening.”

I thought they were joking and I let out a big laugh.

But before I could say anything more, the gang of six was already rattling off the restaurants or cafés to choose from, the incredibly sumptuous menu, the VIPs to be rounded up, the couturier to do my barong, etc. I felt railroaded and powerless to stop the rapid mobilization to make my birthday (people would certainly ask, who’s he?) the convenient excuse for yet another bacchanalia in Manila.

All I could think of was the resulting fall-out and possible harm to my reputation as a no-nonsense, if penniless, journalist barely two years removed from extended exile and professional oblivion. 

What would my old friends in the movement say? Wasn’t this party tantamount to sleeping with the enemy? How could I turn my back on the First Quarter Storm of revolutionary ideals and sacrifice with such brazen in-your-face abandon? 

Not wanting to offend my latest set of friends, I held my horses. I must confess I also felt secretly flattered. All my life, my birthdays were either mundane family affairs or I just let the day pass unnoticed. I knew it was false modesty.

I always wanted to celebrate, modestly to be sure. I was always playing hard to get and people gave up on me. I labeled myself a killjoy and the image stuck.

On Dec. 10, 1990, the eve of my birthday, I felt like Cinderfella at the ball.

Minus Tita Cory, some of the biggest names of the era turned up: the vice president, his gracious lady and entourage, a leading senator and future president, two upcoming names who would later run and lose their presidential battles, the mayor of Makati some two decades before becoming No. 2 (his would-be arch-rival also came with his latest conquest), a sprinkling of senators, congressmen and cabinet members, a notorious general, the most fearsome columnists of the land, three top-ranked and unfading  beauty queens, three Cojuangcos (the other side), two Romualdezes (in fairness, working professionals), Asia’s czar of fashion, FM’s energy expert, Marcos’ legal adviser, Cory’s first Rasputin, a high-profile mistress or two, and assorted denizens of what passed for the haute monde of immediate post-Marcos Manila society.

I made sure my political guardian angels, Salvador P. Lopez, his wife Adelaida, and Haydee Yorac, were also invited. They came on short notice, shocked and amused by the bizarre spectacle.

As if by design, this gathering of strange bedfellows turned out to be the exact opposite of old-style vanity fair and one-upmanship. Partisan feelings were checked in or deposited at the door. It felt most liberating not to take anything too seriously for a change, even for just a few fleeting hours. The next day we could well have returned to the trenches, but that’s another story. 

One important lesson learned: I made friends with some shady characters I thought I would never touch with a 10-foot pole. Meeting face-to-face somehow erodes hasty but binding judgments made on the basis of political alignments, prejudice and hearsay. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt to be civil and give others the benefit of the doubt.   

What I got from that mind-boggling experience was an unintended exploration of birthdays as sociology or what makes birthdays the greatest equalizer of all. Or so I wanted to believe.

Everybody on earth goes through birth and death. No exemptions. The only difference is that we can be around for our birthdays but we’re never there after we sign off from life.

Because we each have as many birthdays as the years we are alive, what we do or do not do speaks volumes about who we are. It’s all cultural, what’s expected of us; or personal, what we choose. We can be as banal and conformist, as eccentric and outlandish as we wish to be.

I come from one school of thought that says birthdays, like Christmases, are primarily for children. Somebody has got to be in charge, not the celebrant. When you’re young, it goes without saying that it’s your parents’ call.

Adults face a quandary. It sounds odd and vain to fete yourself, although I’m not surprised many people do that all the time. For the prim and proper, however, somebody has to take the place of parents — spouse, lover, best friend, colleagues. These folks do not necessarily operate with unconditional love or eternal patience.

Probably, that’s why birthdays taper off or disappear after high school or whenever you leave home. You’re always on the go, especially in college and as you start out on a career. And when you do marry and have children, it’s the latter who enjoy unquestioned priority. You build your life around children, not yours, unless they’re just props for your jealous profession or calling.

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till, there are landmark years, like the decade markers — 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and so on until you hit kingdom come —that call for exceptions to the rule of “marking my day quietly with family and a few friends.”

What to do? No problem if you have gazillions to throw around. You could go on a fancy cruise en famille to exotic destinations, give a costume ball at Manila Golf or five-star hotel, or just donate the cost of the blowout to a worthy cause like Bantay Bata. Better, though, if your portion of the hacienda or PLDT shares get deeded to Gawad Kalinga to build homes for the homeless.

Otherwise, well, you either denounce birthdays as irrelevant and a waste of time or you simply keep your peace as usual.

My track record of birthdays marked or unmarked isn’t quite as grand, resentful or exemplary.

In my obscure and innocent Bukidnon youth, Mom and Dad had a separate but equal template for birthdays. Of us five kids, three boys celebrated one after the other in early March. Our sister had hers on April 1. I was the lone wolf in December.

I suffered a permanent downside: I was the only one who got gifts marked “Happy Birthday and a Merry Christmas.” I was repeatedly told that my big day, unlike my siblings’, came too close to Christmas to merit a second gift for the year.

Whoever was the celebrant of the moment, the pièce de résistance we all got over and above a groaning table of spaghetti Bolognese, cheese pimiento sandwich, fried chicken and native desserts was Mom’s incomparable chiffon cake — smothered in thick chocolate icing and peppered with multi-colored M&Ms.

We loved to blow out the candles on Mom’s proud and unfailing labor of love. We lived in the boonies, but she was armed with all the Betty Crocker kitchen contraptions — kerosene oven, rolling pin, mixing bowls, flour sifter, spatulas, baking pans, even a hand-cranked ice cream maker — prescribed by the likes of Alice Canciller, Ana del Rosario and Enriqueta David-Perez.

When I worked in New York many years later, the standard practice at the Methodist headquarters was for your work section to break off at mid-morning for a coffee party in your honor, with a birthday cake complete with candles, Lindy’s cheesecake, pies and pastries from Entenmann’s. You were gifted with books and unusual souvenirs from colleagues’ trips abroad. The finale was a sit-down lunch (not the daily brown-bag or fast-food fare) at the restaurant of your choice in our Columbia University area — Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Greek, Thai.

On your birthday, you never pay. Not a dime. Your hosts chip in and equally divide the expenses. Everybody, of course, gets the chance to be honoree or among the party-givers. It was socialism at its most egalitarian and without any compulsion involved. Nobody but nobody got suckered.

Some may be offended but I’m afraid it’s the exact opposite in the Philippines. We tend to penalize the celebrant by egging or shaming him or her to give a blowout you can’t afford, the more lavish the better. Those who allow egos to be stroked by designing relatives and sunshine friends face considerable damage, at least in the short term.

The incentive then is to avoid disaster by taking a convenient day or week off. Or just tough it out — cynically badger others to become suckers but refuse to play the consenting fool when your turn comes up. This constitutes odd social dynamics that compel me to be uncompromisingly American on this one point of sensitivity, fairness and common sense.

Anything unusual I have done on subsequent birthdays?

In 1996, perhaps as counterpoint to the over-the-top feast six years before, I opted to be Garboesquely alone in a grand hotel for a whole week. I felt I badly needed pampering and only I could baby myself without raising any hackles. Off I flew to pre-handover Hong Kong, prodded by a generous discount from the Island Shangri-la Hotel, truly an oasis of the good life in our little corner of Asia.

I did nothing and everything. I raided Swindon’s for books to read at leisure, worked out in the gym, swam in the pool, sweated it out in the sauna, watched sunrise and sunset and the eternal sea and air traffic of Victoria Harbor from my room, took long walks in the splendid park nearby, explored the vanishing old Chinese nooks and crannies of Wanchai and Hollywood Road.

One fine morning, I took the double-decker bus on the long and winding coastal road to Repulse Bay, all the way to Stanley, just to pretend I was gallivanting in the South of France, somewhere near Cannes and Cap d’Antibes.

In short, I communed with my lonesome but happy self, something I always do to mark my special day, although not always in the lap of luxury nor out of the country. 

If what you wish for is life on your own terms and without regrets, I always tell friends who ask, you must try this solo splurge to the max on your birthday, at least once and long before you kick the bucket. It makes no sense if you’re too old and have to be attended to. But while you’re still up and about, nobody will ever dare begrudge you the sublime pleasure of your own company.

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E-mail the author noslen7491@gmail.com.