The Adventures of Peter Valentine

November 6

When Valentine joined the girls in the Ochenta y Seis group chat, the conversation was still about the old gossip about which batchmates hooked up with which batchmates during their 30th high school class reunion about four years ago. Apparently, there were many!
Valentine enjoyed this kind of talk a little because, at least, they were not spreading new lies, but just recounting some funny, if awkward, history. And after all, they were just talking about some "common knowledge."
It had been the consensus of the gossips and rumor mongers that the half-penetration thing really happened because codename Robert himself has narrated a version of the incident to "the boys" of the batch, codename Gemma has explained her version to her circle of friends, and codename Elena stood by her own version even when she wasn't really part of the scandalous sex scene.
It's a familiar story that can happen to you, especially if you are in your mid-forties, and when you have been connected to friends and classmates by social media, and especially Facebook, after 2010.
Elena and Gemma were best friends since high school. Gemma ended up as a domestic help in Norway, while Elena ended up marrying Gemma's high school fantasy Robert.
Fast forward thirty years later, Gemma was now wild like a Scandinavian salmon, still single, still had the hots for Robert, and had some serious Norwegian krones to spare. She invited Elena and Robert, and three other friends from high school, for a weekend in Boracay. And when everybody was already drunk to stupor one night, she led Robert to the beach, and by the rocks, offered her Norwegian-flavored pie; on the condition—and this is were it got its notoriety—that Robert "only dip the tip of the ladle."
The metaphor was crazy, but it survived until now because it was either too funny, or it was what was really said, or both. The group chat had another great laugh about it.
The topic changed a few more times before the girls zeroed in on Valentine's current state of affairs. And not wanting to sound like a loveless sorry loser in the time of the pandemic, he blurted something about his just concluded record-making four-and-a-half-hour chat marathon with Luke Paclibar.
The girls were vultures. Harpies. Gorgons.
Perhaps they were really well-meaning witches, but Valentine couldn't help feeling they were too protective of him. And in a way, it was a little insulting to him that they would insinuate that he cannot be trusted with his own instincts and decisions especially regarding boys and amorous relationships.
The girls' lines of dialogue were accusatory, banal, and commonplace. Valentine made a mental note not to use them in his novel. In his Principles of Dialogues, Valentine has established that dialogues must only be used sparingly. And only when the writer cannot do better than the exact words of the characters. He has arrived at this particular principle as a fictionist who also write plays. So that, while Valentine may say that you can write a story using dialogues only, in his mind, he really thinks that if you can successfully do so, why not just write a play? Or as Plato did, write dialogues! Why pretend that you can write a story if all you can muster are just dialogues?
Valentine has half-expected the toxic questions that the girls threw at him. He could imagine his mother and siblings, his aunties and cousins ask the same: How old is he? What's his job? Are you sure he's not only after your money?
And he wanted to remind them that these were probably the same questions that were asked of Martin when his late husband told his family and friends about him.
In the end, Valentine, thinking about a beautiful dramatic line of dialogue, only said, "I really wish you could just be happy for me. Be supportive of me. I do not need your protection. I do not need an army of warriors. I am falling in love, not going to war. And falling in love carries with it a risk of being hurt—always. But I am ready to get hurt. I'm a big boy now. I'm 51. And I am so ready to get hurt."
The girls knew even from high school that Valentine could be very stubborn. So after mellowing their tones and adjusting their positions and opinions, they changed their topic to discuss the much delayed results of the American elections, and everyone wished that Donald Trump would finally be kicked out of the White House.