The girl who played with fire

Patricia Prieto is burning a book in front of me, and she seems to be really enjoying it. Maybe too much, for her own good — especially since this little bonfire of hers is going to come out in a national broadsheet. But she really doesn’t seem to mind. She gamely holds a life hazard with us flanking her, an army of three people with our makeshift fire prevention schemes.

Call it life making a caricature out of art — that is, if you can call a gossip blog art. Perhaps in Patricia’s head, instead of raising a middle finger, she can just raise this book, a symbol and symptom of her unexpected infamy. Or maybe it’s just a departure from weeks of finger pointing and a Suits-style collection of evidence to clear her name. Who knows? All I know is that, as the flames started to consume more and more pages, I told her this: “Patricia, just pretend that you don’t care.”

Be careful what you wish for. Because as I said those words, suddenly everything that I knew and didn’t know about Patricia Prieto descended in chaotic order. As one of the people who helped her ignite that fire and witness paper turn to charcoal black, I had to wonder: Was Patricia the one who burned… me?

Patricia Prieto initially began her career as a model before she became a fashion blogger with considerable clout—enough for her to bag campaigns for department store chains, blog sponsorships, and styling gigs. It’s come full circle since then. The face that was once plastered on store decals is now, because of blogging, also a fixture at events, and a face to several brands as their ambassador.

“It’s been four years since I started blogging and after four years a scandal comes out?” she asks out loud, walls echoing the question she’s probably been asking for weeks now. He goes by the name “Patrick Seesitall,” author of the now-notorious, and constantly resurrected D List Burn Book, a hex cast on select bloggers by excavating their pasts and meddling with their present. Not too long ago, he asked me on Twitter if I cared to comment on one of its subjects — all of whom orbit around a mutual power source, an industry that I’ve always just been peripheral to: fashion blogging. For all of its intents and purposes, the mention of my name is negligible — a mere accessory to D List. But it wasn’t as negligible to those bloggers.

Not to Joanna Ladrido and Dominique Tiu, who have both been publicly committed to finding out whoever created the blog. Not to Patricia, who has also been a moving target since screenshots of an alleged conversation with her and a makeup artist popped up online, implicating a scheme to author the blog. “He did my makeup for my Circuit magazine cover, and the funny thing is, that was the first and last time I saw him,” she says. “I was apologizing to him — I told him that ‘I don’t know why you’re being dragged into this. It’s not fair.’”

2012 was a year of high notes for Patricia. Her first cover, trips abroad, a slew of endorsements — until D List happened. She didn’t blame people who didn’t believe her at first. “I mean, screenshots. I put myself in their position and I was like, okay fine,” she says. “But I don’t know how all that evidence can point to me… You have inklings, you have hunches, the same way I do… I mean, that’s nothing. Why am I the one they pinpoint as the culprit? I also have inklings and hunches but that’s not evidence.”

It’s strange, sitting across Patricia, eye of the D List Storm —being so, so still. She only moves her hands to make a point. Which is a lot of times. It’s almost as if she’s punctuating everything with a sigh — commas, periods, even the question marks. Not surprisingly, there’s a strain in the way she talks, tired of telling and listening to her own story. Surprisingly, she’s conceded to her circumstances. But not defeated by it.

“I hate that they’re fighting with my sisters. And that they’re bashing my parents. That’s the funny part. I thought I left high school behind. I find it so immature.”

“(And) it’s the same insults over and over again,” she says exasperatingly. “Okay, I get it — I didn’t graduate high school. But I’m okay. I know I could have done better but that’s over and done with. I did something about my life. I went to school after and did what I can do to achieve things. You don’t like my hair? Then fine — I like my hair, my readers like my hair. Deal with it. My teeth? I was born with this. There’s only so much I can do.”

Hearing her say this was the permission I hoped but not expected to get, the fuel to a question I had a personal stake in: Why do they think it’s you? Why are they pinning this on you? “I’ve asked people, and they all say the same thing,” she says. “’Cause I won’t do anything about it. I’ll be quiet. I don’t tweet about this. You can screencap my entire Twitter feed, you can even call Twitter — has Patricia Prieto said anything? And they’ll say no. People were pointing fingers at me. I keep to myself, just hoping that everything will stop. I don’t like the feeling [of people pointing fingers at me] so I won’t do it to others.”

About this much, I was sure of. The only time she said anything, the first time that she broke her silence, was when a glass fell and broke on her shoulder at a club. “Somebody went up to me and said ‘Ma’am, don’t move may bubog sa likod mo.’”       

On a night out, to take a break from the D List hurricane, Patricia was having fun with friends until something heavy fell on her shoulder. Her hair got drenched, and she heard something shatter immediately afterwards. “Bouncers had their flashlights on me, and then the security ran towards me.”

There was CCTV (“which had time delay when we viewed it”), there was more evidence, and then, there are also Patricia’s battle scars. She showed me the proverbial thorn on her backside, the physical manifesto that in Girl World, anyone could be a predator and it can really hurt if you’re the prey. “It all started in July. They think I’ve been sending these hate comments and hate messages… No offense, but I don’t really read their blogs. I stopped reading when I felt there was tension already.”

Patricia said a lot of things after telling me about the incident, but I was stuck. I had heard a bit of it before from her sister, Pauline. I had heard about her from people, and from D List — her ex-boyfriends, her friends and family, the troll accounts she supposedly made. But it was all fiction to me — not in a made-up way, but in a degrees-of-separation kind of way. Is this — the D List blog, glasses being thrown in clubs — really happening?

“I’m innocent, I can tell people that — but will they believe me?” It could have very well been a question directed at me, a test to an acquaintance — to someone she met in passing, someone who had a hand in making her burn an actual book. It’s a fair question to ask, especially when things implode on you; when you are called a bully, and your innocence is put on trial by strangers.

“They always tell me that this is only the beginning,” she adds. “It’s not gonna end until we find out who it is. So will the real D List Burn Book please stand up?”

Photos by JOSEPH PASCUAL

Produced by RAYMOND ANG

All clothes by PROUDRACE