GIGI GOES GAGA

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE

My friend Stacy sent me a note and this link today. She wrote:

This lovely Australian gentleman was on Oprah today. I hope his wonderful short film puts a big smile on your face. There are those days when the human race amazes me in a good way! Just try not grin from ear to ear, I dare you.

People tend to tell me lots of things, much of it sad and painful. I wish this guy could travel around around these parts sometime soon; they can certainly use what he offers for free. And if you're feeling a bit down right about now, I'm sending you a virtual one from me as well.

Hey Stacy, thanks for the smile today and for brightening up my day yesterday. I'm still trying to find a way to lure you down south because everything's a gazillion times more fun when you're around.

Oh -- and speaking of free wonderful things. Stacy and I spent hours at the South Coast Plaza yesterday doing some heavyweight shopping; we were actually tired and sore by the time we limped our way back to the car. But something we saw revived our spirits, gave us our second wind, so to speak.

We walked by Abercrombie & Fitch and espied a gorgeous man standing inside by the store entrance. Now although this might not sound unusual at all (since everyone knows good looks are an unwritten but universally understood prerequisite to getting a job as a salesperson at any of their stores), this man actually made us stop right in our tracks. He was the usual tall, blonde, tanned, ruggedly handsome sort of fellow you might see ringing up your jeans at A&F -- but he was completely shirtless. He wore a fur-lined hoodie jacket and possibly jeans (both our eyes stopped at his impossibly defined six-pack so we really can't say what he looked like from waist down), and he stood pretty much immobile like he was a mannequin. Which, I suppose, was his raison d’être that day.

Stacy and I stood outside looking in, took a minute to catch our collective breath and admire the view a bit more. And then she looked at me, her eyes dancing wildly, and with the naughtiest smile, announced her brilliant idea.

"I think I'm going to go up there and tip him," she said. There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in her voice, just sincere gratitude. I only wish he were holding up the same sign the Australian guy did in his short film. Now THAT would have definitely made me happy.

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

Those who know what my father does for a living assume (rather logically, I admit) that our home is a masterfully landscaped paradise, a showcase of all his best and brightest ideas.

But they would be wrong. So completely, utterly, not-even-close-to-the-ballpark wrong.

Our home, for as long as I can remember, has always been a jungle. It's not a house merely surrounded by trees and plants, it's been long swallowed up by them. I no longer remember what its basic structure looks like; old pictures now fill in the gaps of my memories. One of my favorite features of my childhood home is one I haven't seen since I was a toddler (and barely, even then): arranged in a floating pattern on the front wall are square blocks, each inscribed with a character of the pre-hispanic Tagalog alphabet. I must remember to ask my father which letters he selected and why, since I'm pretty sure we don't have all 17 of them displayed. And now that I think about it, I need to find out why he chose the design motif at all -- was it in honor of his father, my lolo, who was a Tagalog poet? Or was it simply an aesthetic decision?

While I was growing up, before I became truly interested (almost obsessed, really) in plants and horticulture, my surroundings looked nothing more than masses of leaves obstructing the view beyond the walls. But now that I've become the kind of person who visits garden nurseries in the weekends the same way I trawl through malls, I can appreciate the extraordinary variety of plants that my dad still brings home regularly. I see each plant as distinctly as I would every heartbreakingly gorgeous pair of shoes displayed at Barney's, and I have to resist the urge to bring a few cuttings back here with me lest I be detained and fined at LAX.

My dad is eccentric in the way most artists tend to be, and he doesn't much care for what people might say about him. And although I sometimes shake my head when he explains his decisions, at times I am simply floored. For instance, if anyone remembers Makati in the '70s and can still visualize the row of trees that dotted the center of EDSA, it might be interesting to know that we nurtured their mother tree, from which they all sprung, right in front of our house in between the front and side gates. The same tree that I used to think simply took up too much space and hid even more of the house, to me suddenly represented history, a remembrance of when the city I grew up in was not yet a harsh concrete jungle.

TAGGED AGAIN -- BOO!

Irene tagged me with a Halloween meme a week or so ago but I thought I'd wait until I got into the spirit of things before taking a stab at this. Okay, I'm joking: I'm the self-described Halloween grinch and so I NEVER celebrate this occasion. Still, this looks like fun so I'm doing it anyway.

At the risk of being pelted by all the parents reading this, I'll admit the only thing I do on October 31st every year is -- poof! -- disappear. I used to stay home in complete darkness and eerie silence and hope my neighbors would think I wasn't home. I'd ignore the doorbell ringing over and over and over (why anyone would think my home was open for candy-giving business has always been an absolute mystery to me), but I finally got swallowed by guilt and so now I simply hang out at a restaurant far away from home until I know trick-or-treating time is over.

The best part about this is that I end up commiserating with the other folks hiding from the little ones dressed in costumes. I call them "my people;" no one else understands us and although we live one day out of the year racked with guilt and shame, at least we don't feel obliged to make a mad dash to the store after a hard day's work just to buy bags of cavity-causing candy, only to run to our front doors every few minutes handing them out. I'm ducking now.

LOOKING FOR DIANE

When I was in my early 20s I was the Los Angeles bureau editor of the largest nationally-distributed Filipino-American newspaper. During those years I used to get together regularly with a friend, the aide of a high-profile Democratic senator, for legislative news and insider gossip.

Now this friend was a bit of a rogue and I knew quite a bit about his many romances; the man certainly had an eye for the ladies. So one day as he was driving me back to my office, we got on the topic of whom he found attractive and what qualities he considered most sexy about a woman. And then, all of a sudden, he started talking about ME.

He said that I was smart and hadn't fallen for any of his stupid moves, and that he thought I was attractive in "a Diane Keaton sort of way."

Now if someone told me that today I'd be extremely flattered, grateful even. But when you're barely in your 20s you'd rather be compared to someone who's at least your age (or looks it) and is perhaps alluring in a more obvious, smouldering sort of way. At that time the standard image of Keaton was in her Oscar-winning Annie Hall role: androgynous-looking, quirky, and even a bit ditsy. NOT the way she dazzled in the much more recent Something's Gotta Give, where she's my fantasy of what I'd like to be in my 50s -- so completely accomplished and still hella sexy that even a young doctor who happens to look like Keanu Reeves could completely desire her (and not in a creepy Oedipal way). And she even gets to break his heart.

At the time I think I knew what my friend was getting at, but I was still slightly disappointed that he saw me in that light. And realizing that, I was even more disappointed at myself for being slighted at being described by this man essentially as a smart, attractive woman. I scolded myself for being a hypocrite; after all, how many times had I said that I wanted to be valued for my intelligence and talent instead of how I looked? And remember when I got so angry at the award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter who asked me what someone as "cute" as I was was doing at the dreary press conference we were both covering?

I haven't seen my old friend in a long, long time; he's still in politics but now I only read about it. I can't help but wonder what he would say if we had the same discussion today. Would he still say I reminded him of her? And how would I feel if he didn't?

I can't wait until I'm at that age when none of it matters. But more importantly, I hope when I get there I won't be trying to freeze my face into one blank stare. I suspect I won't ever like the wrinkles on my face, not even then, but I'd like to become the kind of woman whose bright eyes and smile make the lines just fade away into the background. Just like Diane.

I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND

When my husband and I were still dating and just starting to talk about marriage, I told him that what I wanted was for us to be one of those old couples you see holding hands as they walk along very, very slowly. If we couldn't commit to that, then I didn't want to get married at all.

Of course, he promised, but I knew he thought I was merely being sentimental. I, on the other hand, knew fully well the weight of my words. I know how stress and multiple responsibilities can strain a marriage, how being parents can make people forget they were spouses first and how too-busy lives can cause all forms of intimacy to diminish or disappear.

Many people evaluate the state of their relationships largely based on their sex lives but I don't. I know how sex can simply be about lust or even power and have nothing to do with love or real intimacy. And the one thing I've noticed through the years is that when a man needs me, needs to be with me, he holds my hand.

A long time ago I was in a short-lived relationship that should have been over before it had even begun. I still remember the day I knew it had ended; the boy was driving and I noticed he didn't take my hand to hold between his and the stick shift like he always did. When I slid mine into his instead, I felt his fingers tense up, just as the rest of his body did, and then we both slowly pulled our hands away. That was it, there was nothing needed to say, and we broke up immediately.

A recent New York Times article extolled the virtues of hand-holding -- of how it signifies belonging and protection, expresses connection and intimacy, and how it brings comfort and security.

Blogs and online forums are rife with complaints of those who say their significant other does not want to hold hands. “When we go out, we always have a blast, but the one thing that bothers me is that he never holds my hand in public,” writes a woman on a “love advice” forum on www.lovingyou.com.

For older couples, letting go of hand-holding may be one more sign that they are pressed for time and too swamped for little acts of intimacy.

“When do we make time to hold hands?,” said Dr. Eells of Cornell, talking about his own marriage of 15 years. “Not very often.”

It looks like my husband and I are on the right track and he's kept his promise to me. He and I always hold hands, or at least we're always touching or brushing against each other in some way. We do it without thinking, when we're doing absolutely nothing, and especially when we're too tired to talk to each other. When we're in a crowd, he seeks my hand immediately to let me know he's there and that we won't lose each other. Hopefully, we might just become that hand-holding old couple yet.

HOW TO BE A PERFECT BEAUTY

When "supermodels" like Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks confess to all of us that not even they look like themselves, some of us think they're merely being humble. There's no doubt these women -- just like all women who end up representing the biggest names in the cosmetic and fashion industries -- are truly beautiful. But the thing is this: the images we see of them on the pages of glossy magazines or in the flickering lights of our television sets are manipulated many times over. No one truly looks like that in person, no matter how many cosmetic or surgical procedures they undergo in order to try.

There's no doubt I love fashion and beauty, but I know that it's one thing to want to look good to feel good, and quite another to give in to self-hatred because we can't measure up to increasingly unreasonable standards. We all need to remember that of all the things we can do to improve ourselves, the physical is the most ephemeral and so it makes absolutely no sense to spend most of our time on something that we can't bank on for long. I think of it in the same way I do as buying a brand-new car: from the moment you drive it off the dealer's lot, it begins to lose its value. So we all have to find within ourselves what never fades and what can only get better: our hearts, minds, and character.

Anyway, the folks at Dove produced this short video to remind us that aspiring to resemble the fake images we see and envy only make us appear just as inauthentic and simulated. Not a good thing -- unless, of course, that's the look you're going for.

REUNION

I've already started making plans for my next visit home; it's my high school reunion in mid-October next year. It's a two-day event, I've heard, culminating in a scripted and choreographed show requiring weeks of daily rehearsals and a budget large enough for small theater groups to kill for. I have mixed emotions about the whole thing, to be quite honest. I know we're only following decades of tradition but it makes my stomach queasy just thinking about all that money that could go somewhere else, to something vastly more life-altering or to at least something important. Of course, just what would be considered more essential than what's already been allocated for is highly subjective and cause for heated debate; we all have our pet causes and our passions after all, and I certainly have mine.

Many would argue that maintaining tradition is important and this is certainly true (especially for schools that depend so much on the loyalty and generosity of a proud alumni for survival and growth). And the bottom line is, that as much as I'd like to challenge my classmates to dare blaze our own trail and define for ourselves who and what we are in our own inimitable way, I know when a battle is doomed before it is even fought. This means I'll most likely be singing and dancing on stage this time next year, as tens of thousands have before me.

I've convinced myself that despite my misgivings I'm attending primarily to catch up with folks I haven't seen since I shuffled and slid along stone-floored corridors dressed in regulation white sailor top and red plaid pleated skirt too many years ago. There were about 240 girls in my graduating class and although I can still recognize most, I realize now that I only knew so few of them well or even at all. For four years we survived high school by leaning on our own cliques and tribes for support, relying on them to forge our own sense of identity, albeit one based on the common face of the group. There were clearly defined and delineated boundaries separating US from THEM, the others outside our own little worlds, and we presupposed that they were simply whom we were not. And, of course, we were wrong.

It's funny how our memories simply freeze when there are no new ones to replace them; it's like our minds will certain people into states of suspended animation, where they never evolve, grow, change, and age. As a result I've heard there are those who won't attend because they don't want to be reminded of the labeled boxes they were once shoved into (bitch, slut, dimwit -- for instance). But because my memory is short -- and because these past couple of years I've been enjoying getting to know former classmates I never once exchanged more than five words with during those years when we saw each other daily, I can't wait to renew contact with all the rest as well.

I love getting together with the girls any chance I get. It's like we're 16 all over again, giggling and gossiping, as if there were no worse problems in the world than pesky homework and broken hearts. When we're together we forget we're not products of our choices and consequences through the years and instead believe we're still malleable, still full of promise and potential. And then reinvigorated by the remembrance of youth and its hopes and aspirations we go our own separate ways again, ready to take on possibilities we've since forgotten about or given up on.

That's what this reunion means to me, at least. It's not about who we were as a fixed mark or memory, but rather who we've since become and who we can still be if only we dare to dream as we once did. And for that I'll bear with the static rituals of tradition, especially since the important thing is that some things may never change but that we do, and in all the essential ways.

JUST A LITTLE TOO HONEST

My co-worker says she always knows when I’m trying to hide something from her. And she’s right. I’m a lousy liar; at my worst my eyes start shooting off in different directions, my cheeks get rosacea-red, and I stammer. When I manage to remain composed, I’m too composed, I don’t blink, not a single muscle moves, it's like I'm trying to mimic a statue. It makes me wonder how I got away all those years as a teenager, trying to hide whatever form of mischief I was up to from my parents. (Or maybe necessity is truly the mother of invention and now I merely have no need for subterfuge.)

I used to be better about hiding my feelings, even if I’ve always been too transparent for my own good. But today if someone asks me how I feel or what I think, I just go ahead and say it; maybe it’s because I simply don’t have the energy or patience to try to skirt around the truth. I mean, seriously, I no longer possess enough memory cells in my brain to remember what I did three days ago so if I lied about something, I’d soon forget my fictional account of what actually transpired. In a way I’m like a dog that’s inept at covering up her bone; one slight kick at the dust in the ground and in a flash what was once hidden is now completely unearthed and exposed.

We’re all taught as children that it’s not good to tell a lie; as we get older we learn that a white one is acceptable if only to protect people or prevent hurt feelings and drama. And I am aware that sometimes it might be wiser not to be so forthcoming, at least for self-preservation’s sake. For instance, not too long ago, during some pretty honest conversation, I admitted to a man that I pined for him for years. My girlfriends are cringing now as they read this; why on earth would I say something like that (so uncool!)? I suppose it's because it was so far back in the past that I could freely admit to it and not feel any shame or remorse, and besides, it was the truth. I also couldn't think of what harm such honesty could bring -- and it also made me smile to think that once he and I reached that point in our lives when we mostly looked back instead of forward, then he could take comfort knowing that he was once loved so, so much. Hey, we all could use some of that, right?

Don't get me wrong, some days I wish I weren't so candid and frank, not so much to protect myself but to spare the feelings of others. Still I'd like to think that those around me prefer to deal with as little guesswork as possible. Mystery doesn't suit me anyway.

So now I wonder, how much honesty from others can I; handle? For instance, if I asked the same guy what I actually meant to him all those years ago, could I bear to hear the truth? Or would I find myself hoping he was a really good liar instead?

But just as I don't usually offer my opinion unless I'm asked, I've learned not to ask unless I'm ready and willing to be at the receiving end of someone else's candor. Honesty is a good thing, it's true. I just try to keep in mind what my friend's wise old Chinese grandfather used to say, "Sometimes too good is bad." And then I shut up. I think I need to do that more often instead.

BROKEN PROMISES

When I was in my early 20s my best guyfriend and I made a pact: if we weren't married to anyone else by the time we were 60, we'd marry each other instead. Done deal. We negotiated the cut-off age based on hope we'd find the "right one" as well as what we thought our real chances were for finding that person. But we also discussed why we'd even bother to get married if we were still (hopefully, happily) single by then.

Companionship, I think was the primary factor, we both said we didn't want to be alone in our old age. Sex, if I remember correctly, was my reason; I said I wanted that guaranteed for as long as I lived. He looked at me strangely (or was it with disgust?), I think he was trying to imagine my wrinkled ass and wilted boobs on our wedding night. I told him he should be so lucky someone was offering him sex at all, even if it was for way out in the future.

Somewhere along the road of our friendship, he and I became a "couple" -- but just for a short month -- I think our respective failed romances and relationships had convinced us that dating one's bestfriend might be a good idea, that it might actually work for us. Well, it wasn't and it didn't, so fortunately we had made another pact the night we decided to experiment with the boyfriend/girlfriend thing: no sex, at least not for six months (which was longer than most of our other relationships had lasted at the time). Still, breaking up wasn't easy and after we slowly built up our friendship again, I reminded him we still had our pact. Just as I did after I got divorced and was single again.

He's still single today (by choice) and I suspect he's only too happy I'm not anymore. I think through the years he's learned not to merely settle for anything, just as I have.

Another great friend, also an ex, recently reminded me of a decision we had made about 15 years ago. At the time he posed a hypothetical question: if somewhere in the distant future we saw each other again (we were by now living in separate continents) but were already committed to other partners, would we -- uh -- reconnect if given the chance to do so? Apparently we both said we would.

Well the distant future is probably here, or at least we're at the age we thought we'd be when we'd face that prospect. And so we asked each other what we'd say today. I said no, he said no. We predicted wrong, but finally we got the decision right.

Some promises, I suppose, are made to be broken. Only to make sure we're not at the end.