Day of hearts

Everybody loves a lover, especially one who is faithful to his love. Through two children and a stormy failed marriage, Britain’s Prince Charles remained largely true to the love of his life, Camilla Parker Bowles.

Now he is going to formalize their union, and the world – except for what’s left of diehard Diana loyalists – if not exactly tickled, is ready to give him his happiness. Even Diana supporters in the pugnacious British press have given their nod to the wedding of the future King of England and his Princess Consort.

There are the usual nasty comments about Camilla’s looks, but obviously this union is not built on superficial concerns such as the woman’s capacity to fit into a drop-dead slinky Versace mini dress.

Toward Princess Diana Charles was unquestionably a cad, and he should not have married her when he wanted someone else. Diana was the tragic, wronged princess whose prince turned into a frog.

But no matter how gorgeous the woman, when a man has memorized every aspect of her body right down to her ingrown toenails, and he has become tired of her giggling when he undresses, he tends to think: "There has to be more to life than this." Especially when the man is in love with someone else.

She’s just coming down to earth, Camilla gushed, flashing her heirloom engagement ring. Some things are simply meant to be. Pray that you get so lucky.

On Valentine’s Day, romantics sigh over the happy ending of a long, tumultuous love story.

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Love makes the world go round, and today we take time out from politics and other boring stuff to get into the spirit of Valentine’s Day.

Filipinos are incurable romantics and delighted by love stories. Where else in the world can traffic get tied up for hours because couples are engaged in a kissing contest by the bay? (Okay, maybe there’s Chile.) I don’t know who cooked up the tacky title "Lovapalooza" – surely someone in the age range of my grandma, may she rest in peace – but all that energetic smooching can be fun to watch.

It would be interesting to keep track of the smooching couples, to find out how many affairs will last beyond six months — the period that experts say amorous ardor starts to flag. This has to be around the time that the guy no longer finds the girl’s ingrown toenail cute, or the girl decides there are better-looking hunks out there. This is the period when reality bites, when the guy who vowed to divorce his wife decides that he can’t afford to let her take him to the cleaners, so he just grins and bears the loveless marriage and dumps the girlfriend instead. Love is blind; money brings enlightenment.

Staying power as in the Charles-Camilla union is becoming more rare in an age where it has become so much easier to hop on a plane and start a new life in another country. Fear of commitment can make today’s ardent lover tomorrow’s overseas worker, bags packed for Dubai and waving goodbye.

The same unhappy ending is often in store for romances between Filipinas and expatriates. While several such affairs have had happy endings, most of those expats are simply passing through. It is so easy for an expat to end the affair and say goodbye for good when there’s a letter from the home office recalling or reassigning him at the end of his tour of duty. If he himself asked for the recall, the woman need not know. Ignorance is bliss.

Back in the days of the US bases a typical romance between a GI and a local girl lasted the price of two or three pigs. An officer who was stationed in Subic said his young subordinates, barely out of their teens, had a common story about Filipina girlfriends. The girls did not ask for payment for sex so they were considered sweethearts rather than plain hookers. But then they started asking their soldier boyfriends for P500, ostensibly to start a backyard piggery. Back then the exchange rate must have been about P5 to $1. The boys usually forked out the money. After a while the girls would ask for another P500 for a second pig.

Sometimes a soldier stuck around until the third pig, the officer said, but usually Casanova shipped out after the second one. I imagine most of those GIs did not even bother to give the girl the courtesy of a perfunctory goodbye. The girl was simply left with a broken heart, and hopes that she would still find Mr. Right.

The hope wasn’t entirely unfounded; some soldiers did marry their girlfriends and bring them back to the United States. Marriage, however, is no guarantee of living happily ever after, as Princess Diana found out. One such union soured quickly; the cultural divide was simply too great and GI Joe realized that there was more to marital bliss than having a wife who brought him his slippers every morning. They eventually opted for divorce. The parting has been so messy he now thinks all women have the intellectual and emotional range of a semi-literate teenage floozy.

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A dear friend once wailed to me bitterly in a long phone conversation about betrayal by her first and only love. Unable to murder the rascal or give my friend a big hug, the only thing I could tell her over and over was the cliché that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart will probably dismiss that as bull and prefer the part about not having loved at all to the heartache.

Romantics can only hope that they will find their soul mate as Charles and Camilla found each other 35 years ago. We laugh at reports of a tapped phone conversation where Charles was caught wishing he were Camilla’s tampon. In Manila naughty coup plotters reportedly caught a member of the Cory Aquino Cabinet cooing on the phone to his sweetheart that he loved to smell her armpits. I know women who, even as they guffawed over the stories, were impressed by such male devotion.

We are tickled by people who know how to love and are willing to take risks in the name of love. Prince Charles must now be finding out that it’s true: love, and the world loves with you.