Check yourself

When I was about 14, I was asked by Teen magazine to write a column. (There have been several publications in human history that carried the name “Teen magazine” — this particular one was published in the Philippines, had Celine Arvisu-Quinio for a publisher and editor, Lina Espina-Moore for a literary editor, and featured in its pages models with big hair and shoulder pads, brightly colored geometric shapes, and early work by Jessica Zafra.)

I was given the column on the strength of a short story I had written for them — or to be more precise, on the strength of the public reaction to a short story I had written for them. Entitled “Creation,” it was a sappy twist on the Pygmalion myth, and had apparently generated the most mail of anything Teen magazine had published in the previous year (and this was actual, written-on-dead-trees, pre-email mail). Surely the teenaged readers of the Philippines would appreciate a monthly dose of first-person wit and wisdom from the young writer who had entertained them so! SPOILER ALERT: No.

This was my first attempt at a regular column, so I wanted to do it right (“As opposed to all the subsequent attempts, which you deliberately f***ed up?” hoots a heckler. Guards, throw that man out, but please be sure to rough him up first.) I was given suggested topics: dating, parties, the usual pressing concerns of the youth.

Problem: I had been on exactly one date, and attended maybe two events that could be called parties, but only due to a process of elimination (they weren’t concerts or lectures or mass executions). As for that one date, chaperoned as I was by the older cousin whose friend it was I was taking out, it gave me as much insight into girl-boy interactions as gazing at the night sky would yield information about the inner lives of Martians.

I wrote about dating and parties anyway. And it was, predictably, a disaster. My idea of teen life had been shaped not so much by actual living as by repeated viewings of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. High school, I supposed, meant ditching classes, making out with your girlfriend, stealing cars, committing fraud on an hourly basis, dancing on parade floats, and property-destruction-as-therapy (I was mistaken, of course — all that would be postponed ‘til college). The point is, I did not write as myself; I wrote as a poorly-assembled idea of what a teen magazine columnist should be.

The results were so bad that not only were they never published, Teen magazine stopped asking me for stuff. And then 9/11 and the financial crisis happened. That was how bad those columns were.

Lesson, as they say, learned. I would come to write many columns over the following years — for websites, and broadsheets, and magazines — culminating in my weekly stint here at the STAR. And no matter what reports I hammered out, no matter what daydreams-on-paper I delivered, no matter what allegations or calumnies I spread (I didn’t, actually; I just always wanted to use the word “calumnies”), there was and is always a core of firsthand, stone-solid truth.

Writers are liars, as many have observed, but they don’t literally mean that we cheat on our taxes or impersonate policemen for fun. We present a scenario that more clearly communicates the idea that we want to come across — and, if we are worth anything, it is a strong idea, a good idea — rather than cobble together unconvincing attitudes or unedited minutiae.

Columnists present reality, but it’s a curated reality, not just straight reportage or unalloyed angst or “scandal vomit,” to use a term a writer-friend coined. In that sense, social media has made us all columnists, curating our realities for our readers. The same lesson stands: people understand that this is a view filtered by the idea or ideas that you want to convey, but there must be a basis in truth for you to be effective or entertaining. We present the shiny bits of our lives not out of a desire to deceive, but out of a need to enhance and emphasize, to communicate. Ideally, at least.

To put it much more simply, I’ll quote a Sting song I used to sing to myself around the time I was not following the advice contained in its very lyrics: Be yourself, no matter what they say. Even though he was no Englishman, Ferris Bueller would have approved.