The Adventures of Peter Valentine

November 8

The Gorgons of Batch '86, Peter Valentine's girl friends, are not, by nature, mean or cruel. But they are the necessary evil in the love story of Valentine and Luke. That was what went on in the mind of Valentine as he reflected on his Saturday morning after the group chat broke up for the weekend.
Valentine loved the girls dearly. But although they might think that they were only thinking of his best interest, the girls often overstepped their boundaries. And this overstepping of boundaries, which was greatly helped by the Internet, had a most detrimental and vicious effect among Filipinos in general, and not just his girls, Valentine thought.
Valentine grew up in a culture where acquaintances bump into each other in public, and they ask, or are asked, very casually, "Where are you going?" As if the inquisitor has any right to know, or the interviewed has any obligation to tell!
Valentine could think several awkward replies: "I'm going to borrow money from my neighbor." "I'm going to catch my cheating husband in the act with his cheap mistress." "I'm going to prostitute my body so that my family could eat today."
But that's just Valentine thinking as a writer.
In real life, Filipinos are often content when the answer to the question of Where? is no more than a vague "D'yan lang," which translates to "Just over there."
Now, in this new millennium, when advances in the Internet and telecommunications technology became widespread, the Filipinos became not only boldly intrusive, but also audaciously meddlesome. Because they're feeling protected by their virtual anonymity, or hidden by their fake online personas, they jump right in, and comment nasty things to social media posts that they otherwise wouldn't have the nerve to say in real life.
And because of the Internet, Valentine theorized, everybody would do any, and all, sort of crazy things just to be famous.
For a fact, Filipino boys don't readily show their dicks to anyone they meet on the street. At least, not in Valentine's hometown, or in his experience of travels in the Philippines. Filipino boys may wear very tight jeans to show off their bulge, or they may even show some garter of their fake Calvin Klein briefs, but they don't just let their dicks hang loose. So Valentine wonders, What drives these boys to send their dick pics to him and other strangers online? And what about these masturbation clips on video calls—these vidjakols, or vidjacalls, or whatever you call it, that proliferate on sites such as Twitter, for example?
Why has anybody, normally nobodies, but just now armed with cheap phones that have cameras and wifi connection, suddenly become a celebrity for the wrong reasons?
But back on the overstepping of boundaries. Do people really have the moral right to comment on Xander Ford's face before, and after, his transformative plastic surgery? Or should the people really be interested in his coming out as a supposedly bisexual after the scandal of his alleged rape of his ex-girlfriend?
Or going further back, did Xander, a mere product of cosmetic surgery, have any right to comment on Kathryn Bernardo's legs, or was it all fame whoring and a grand publicity stunt to get online bashers, and the meddlesome public's attention?
Again, boundaries!
So, what were the girls thinking accosting Luke like that? And why betray Valentine in front of his prospective boyfriend? Traitors!, Valentine thought.
So, after Luke has left the chat, and when he finally had a chance to talk, he lectured the girls on appropriateness and impropriety. Sure, he said, they could talk without filter. They can swear and be vulgar, be honest and direct. After all, they were in their 50s. But only to each other! And only because their almost daily chats have forged that bond of closeness and intimate knowledge. They understand each other's quirks and sensitivity!
Luke, however, is a new addition to the mix, he insisted, a foreign element to their culture of crass familiarity. A stranger the girls shouldn't even talk to more than just say "hi" and "hello."
And to make sure that his girl friends understood, Valentine said, "I love Luke. Strange it may be for you that I can decide on this matter in less than 48 hours, but I know, for a long time now, what I'm looking for; and I think that Luke has the potential to be it. I really like him. I only hope that your insensitivity and intrusion didn't ruin whatever it was that fate has destined for the two of us."