One of the boys

MANILA, Philippines - Imagine your barkada in your mind’s eye. Picture yourself with your best bros going to gigs, drinking until the sun comes up, sharing relationship problems... think of all the tribulations you’ve been through together, the bonds of camaraderie forged in the fires of friendship. Got a solid mental image? Good.

Now, imagine the gross, awkward boy bodies of your bros melting into a puddle, revealing mathematically perfect curves underneath. Imagine their body odor and dragon breath carried away on a gently rippling breeze that leaves behind the sweet scent of a prairie meadow at twilight. Observe their gnarly hobbit feet shrink into dainty little slippers; their caveman faces, once pockmarked and oil-stricken, slowly liquefy and begin to glow with a pearly luminescence.

Imagine how much better it would be if your bros were broettes instead.

Game na: Isabelle Abiera makes the boys man up in this Emperador Light TVC.

The best thing about broettes (or tombros, or just “bro” to a lunkhead guy at the end of the night) is that they’re emphatically not girls the way regular girls are girls. Katy Perry, who titled her breakout album “One of the Boys,” is a solid example: she loves floral prints and can still drink you under the table. It’s that “best of both genders” combo that makes broettes so much fun to hang out with.

I sat down with two dyed-in-the-wool broettes to ask them questions about toeing the line between the best parts of both sexes. The first: Pat Sarabia is the drummer of bands Wilderness & Twin Lobster; she’s also a chain-smoking, brandy-swilling southie who can mix it up with the best of them. The second: Bianca Delos Santos, a.k.a. the first girl to ever out-drink me, ended up becoming my wife. Pre-marriage, she spent time surfing in Boracay with the locals and beating up her best friends with her Capoeira skills; post-marriage, she spends time surfing the Internet and beating me up when I don’t fold the laundry (please don’t kill me).

YOUNGSTAR: You tend to hang out more with guys than girls. Why’s that?

PAT SARABIA: Mostly, we’d just be sitting around in a group and there’s a kind of... tension. Sometimes girls need to relax a little. With guys it’s always more chill. You don’t have to worry about so many things when you’re hanging with a group of guys.

BIANCA DELOS SANTOS: in almost any social event — athletic, party, karaoke, whatever — I found that most girls usually just stand around with their arms akimbo. They’re self-conscious! It’s obvious that they really care what other people think about them.

I used to find it easier with guys because I wasn’t very complicated as a person. Girls were too high-strung for me; also, I also came from an all-girls’ school so I was surrounded with them all the time. I prefer to hang out with lesbians now. It’s like the meeting point between guy and girl.

Nite lite: Pat Sarabia splits a bucket of beer with me during the interview.

Is there any one-upmanship going on? Do you feel the need to prove yourself?

PAT: No, It’s just the same. I never go out with the intent of “I’m going to out-drink people.” I just want to have a good time. I’m always helping people along to have fun, like “Come on! Let’s do it!”

BIANCA: No, but maybe they do. The gross things that guys say about girls, they’d always say it front of me. If a good-looking girl walked by, they’d say “I’d hit that.” Or if they’re joking around, like they’re humping each other as a joke... it didn’t make me feel awkward, I got used to it. But the minute they were in the presence of my other friends who were girls, they started behaving!

Did your guy friends ever come to you with their girl problems since you’re a girl? Kind of like they’re looking for the inside track on how girls think?

PAT: Sometimes, but it’s really just making kwento. No one’s coming up to me and saying, “Hey, can I ask you something?” I don’t think me being a girl even factors in. I don’t even see people that way; if I had a guy problem, I wouldn’t go up and say, “You’re a boy, so you must understand.”

STICK: It always starts with, “Do you think she likes me?” and I answer with, “I don’t know, just ask her out.” Once they’re in a relationship, guys really complain about clinginess more than anything. A lot of guys in relationships feel suffocated. When it comes to girls, guys are really girly; they’ll over-think things just the same.

Since you’re a girl within a predominantly guy barkada, do any of your friends ever try to hit on you? Any advice for guys with crushes?

Iron butterfly: Broettes are the perfect mix of male game-ness and feminine wiles. Photos by EM NATOLA

PAT: Yeah, there were crushes. They weren’t regular instant crushes, like where you just keep texting someone all the time... there wasn’t any kilig feeling about it. It was a like secret thing; people wouldn’t instantly go for it. After years, they’d go and say, “I’ve had a crush on you.”

If you have a crush on a girl, don’t make it a primal thing; no one ever went after me like that. There’s a level of respect there.

BIANCA:  No, no one liked me! It made me feel bad growing up, but they told me years later it was because I was “one of them”; they’d tell me, “No way, you’re like my cousin.”

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For guys who have crushes: if you wanna get a broette, you probably don’t know she’s a broette; that’s probably why you like her. It takes a guy outside the barkada to really appreciate what we can do. The others take it for granted.