It's ridiculous how badly I want to walk inside that place.
Manila is full of places named like that.
"Royal Laundry & Alterations"
"Finest Travel Agentâ€
“Princely Barâ€
“Princess†isn’t just a nickname in the Philippines. It’s one of the most common names for girls. My buddy was fucking a girl named Princess Snell, after she fucked Manny Pacquiao.
She's basically the reason Manny is embarrassing himself on the global stage talking about gays and Sodom & Gomorrah. His horror show of a wife cracked it and to save his marriage (divorce isn’t allowed) he basically had to agree to get insanely religious (is there another kind?) because she’s a sociopath Catholic. Her priests would have gotten their filthy creepy claws into him and drilled him so brilliantly with Shame...that he lost his next fight. Well that’s my theory, in any case.
Pacquiao's two daughters are named "Princess Mary Divine Grace" and "Queen Elizabeth". You couldn't make this shit up. Naming your children after Royalty or Gods is actually Number 3 on Spot.ph’s Top 10 Ways Pinoy Children are Named.
Quote:
3. Royalty Awards. Premise: Give your kid a self-esteem boost early on by giving him or her a royal title. For girls, it's usually either Queen or Princess. For boys, it's usually either King or Prince. Pinoys have not yet gone crazy over titles such as "Emperor," "Sultan," "Duchess," or "Duke." Popular representatives: Princess Mary Divine Grace Pacquiao, Queen Elizabeth Pacquiao, Princess Punzalan, Princess Snell, Princess Revilla, Princess Ryan, King Gutierrez
The Number 1 Way Pinoy Children are Named? ROFL.
For boys: Boy
For girls: Girlie (or Lady).
You see this shit everywhere in the Philippines.
Burger’s Burgers - "our burgers are the best!†(the owner isn’t named Burger, I checked! He just thought it had a nice ring to it; their burgers were actually inedible, but that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Burger’ lied twice)
Better Bar - "home of The Artists!"
I kept hearing about these famous artists all the time; everyone kept talking about The Artists who were - apparently - crazy party animals but no one had pointed them out to me so I had no idea if I’d even seen them let alone met them. I’d ask about them whenever someone would mention them but they’d blow me off thinking I was mocking them or something. Everyone knows who The Artists are.
But I didn’t have a clue what they looked like or what kind of art they produced until I met CJ (Christina-Joy - there are lots of people with trailer trash names in the Philippines but very few can afford luxuries like a trailer home, of course). Well it is a Catholic Country.
They'll be hard pressed feeding themselves every day. Those priests know what they're doing. They're practised. Children get served after elders, of course; elders must be respected because they’re older. And wiser. But then the Bible doesn’t say “Respect those who are wiser.†This is by design. The Bible was written to be a manual for exploitation and the funny thing is, there is only one reason anyone would ever want a child to respect them.
They want to force the child to do something which isn’t in the child’s best interests. You don’t need respect when you can make a convincing case for the child to want to do what's in the child's best interests. All you’d have to do is make the logical case to the child for why acting in their own best interests is in their best interests.
In any case, two-naming your child like Billy-Bob or Christina-Joy is kinda sweet, really. What is it really but “agreeing to disagree� CJ is an tiny little girl - sorry "woman child" - very agreeable on the eye, and she was booty calling me only every Tues night / Wed morning (because I suspect she has some tiny little children she never mentions; they’re classified - the alternative is that they are dead, which might explain why she tries to hide her C-section scars which I have never noticed, from me).
Oh heck she's a little too happy to be the former mother of recently killed children, so I guess she's just really ashamed of her childbearing or really shrewd because she's obviously fooling the crap out of me or really stupid because no one has ever hidden a C-section from someone they're fucking, in all of living history. Almost certainly, she's all three. When we hooked up (at 4am on a Wed morn) she asked me what I “normally did on Tuesdays†hah. I didn't know really, so I told her I didn’t have a set routine for Tuesdays. I was curious, so I asked her why she wanted to know my Tuesday routine.
She had no reason, would you believe? I didn't. There was no reason - whatsoever - for her asking what I normally did on Tuesday nights. I snickered. She was just idly wondering, is all.
So every Tuesday evening or Wednesday early morning for the next nine weeks straight, CJ called to ask me what I was doing. As it turned out, I did have a set routine. I'm a filthy liar. My Tuesday evening routine was - apparently - "Not Doing Anything". Then it became "Fucking CJ". Well, that’s not entirely true. It was still "Not Doing Anything" but I would take a 15 min break at some point to fuck CJ, before returning to normal scheduling.
CJ, for her part, might only have been interested in sleeping with me for my FHM and Esquire magazines. One week, I didn't have any when CJ came in - I think the maid threw them out or stole them or something - and I was 20-30% certain CJ was just going to leave. She was not happy. CJ loves her (my) magazines.
But CJ loves other things as well. She’s a complex and layered girl. Other things are important to her as well; her idea of a good time is not limited to magazines and disappointing sex. One Tuesday afternoon she called to convince me to take her to some club and I wasn't interested but she wasn't taking “No†for an answer. She was selling the Non-Sale and she whispered conspiratorially (no one else was on the line, that I was aware of) "They say you can meet The Artists there."
I had been about to fake a disconnection and the way you do that, when talking to someone on the phone, is to hang up whilst you’re in the middle of making an emphatic point and then you turn off your phone. I’ve been hanging up on people for over a decade with that trick and never once have I raised any suspicions. But suddenly, she had my full attention.
Exasperated, I yelled out, "WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE MYSTERIOUS ARTISTS THAT EVERYONE KEEPS RAVING ABOUT?"
She wasn't able to tell me; not directly. I considered pushing the issue but her evasiveness was somewhat blunt, so the conversation turned to more important things which is to say, she rambled on speaker-phone whilst I gave something else my divided attention. I scanned her babble for bits of information subconsciously. I vaguely understood she was especially excited about her new dress on account of its prestige (or is it heritage?). Who knows with fucked up Catholic Values. I don't even try to make sense of them because not a single one of them is sensible, if you think about it.
They're a bit like Catholicism, in that way, if you think about it.
CJ had a new dress that she was going crazy over, except it wasn't new. It was pre-loved. She had bought it for a steal at the second-hand markets. I was intrigued. When I bought pre-used clothes - and I have - I was never this enthusiastic. I knew there was more to this excited story of pre-used clothes, so I waited for her to tell it.
CJ had a new dress that was formerly owned by one of The Artists. My ears pricked up. The elusive Artists. Are they all girls? But I sensed a con.
Not wishing to ruin her moment, but not wishing to let her continue to believe in a lie either, I pointed out the obvious. "CJ, how do you know it was actually owned by one of The Artists? Whomever sold it to you could have just claimed they got it off one of the artists!"
Not quite. Hah. CJ explained.
One of The Artists had sold the dress to her.
My head was spinning. This made no sense. Why are widely recognised Artists selling their old clothes at the markets? Suddenly, I was laughing. I asked CJ what the difference was between an "artist" and a "celebrity". I was laughing because I was pretty sure I had solved the mystery of The Artists.
CJ confirmed my suspicions. Artists are pre-celebrity. In other words, they haven't created any Art, per se; but they’d sure like to. They just haven't managed to break into the Art industries yet. They’re working very hard to get that big break; desperately hoping to get recognised. All it takes is one shrewd eye to spot their talent and give them a shot to impress. And the world will be their oyster. That’s why they hang out in ‘Hi-So’ nightclubs and bars. Party. Party. Party.
You might wonder if that is really the best forum in which an aspiring Artist can expect to be recognised for their skills, but of course they’re not really Artists. They just have big dreams. And this is why you can find them on weekend mornings selling the clothes of their broken dreams to little CJs and other celebrity-obsessed children (all with children of their own, of course; who may or may not have recently been killed). They must have children to be celebrity-obsessed. You appreciate the prerequisite, I’m sure. If they didn’t have children, they’d be Artists themselves.
The celebrity-obsessed all had big dreams. Those darn children just got in the way, is all. If it weren’t for their kids, they know they’d probably be on the cover of the magazines they are obsessed with reading and gossiping about. It was the life they were supposed to have. Then they got knocked up. Au revoir, big dreams.
But those dreams don’t really go, do they? Retired, perhaps; but still punching the clock every day at 9am.
As it turned out, I had come across The "Artists" before. All over the world, actually. And the Truth is, they work so hard it’s almost hard to ridicule them. Almost.
They work harder than you have ever worked in your life. For all the effort they put into getting that big lucky break, you’d think they’d be better off trying their hand at - I dunno - acting classes. Singing lessons. Challenging other aspiring artists to endless Walk-offs. But they want to take the ‘shortcut’ to the entertainment industries, and that is their prerogative I suppose. But I happen to know for a fact that impressing disinterested industry power-brokers is a tricky proposition. They’re going to be up against one of three kinds of “mover & shakerâ€:
Queers (which is why pretty boys have a much easier time of it than pretty girls, and also why the pretty boys are all bisexual; look, it’s a small price to pay for your dreams)
Existentially-depressed straight pricks (who are brutally cold and not easily impressed by leg-splitting; but then who ever would be? Only their fathers, is the answer - or did you think girls realised they could use sex to get what they wanted around the age of 12-14? I assure you, they would be a lot brighter if they only started using sex to manipulate that late in the game)
Bullshit artists (hard to hate the player, when you’re playing the same game)
They're not prostitutes, come on. Show a little respect for what they’re doing. Prostitutes demand payment. Artists simply give their “favours†away. It’s a shrewd investment, really. Wouldn’t you put down a few (hundred) initial deposits to lay-by your dreams? Aspiring Artists are forced to. They’re not going to get their dreams the old-fashioned way, are they? Who would work when you could just fuck your way through life.
They fuck anyone who they believe could be a Launchpad to their dreams. Or a Stepping-Stone to a Launchpad to Dreams. There’s lots of Stones. It’s called Networking. The Stones will explain this to them, one imagines. Or the Stones that pick up their phones. One imagines there aren’t many of those. So they learn the lesson one way or another. It’s a hard slog, getting to your dreams. How badly do you want yours?
Artists are dreamers so they are desperate to please. It’s just, they have no - technical - ability. So they work hard desperately trying to give their bodies away in nightclubs and bars where they imagine they might meet someone who will fuck them and then maybe - who knows - give them a spot in a toothpaste commercial? Or introduce them to someone who might fuck them and - who knows - maybe they know someone and you get the picture.
CJ explained all this to me, albeit with slightly different phrasing. I understood what she was saying, perfectly. CJ then paused, to confirm that I understood the difference between an “artist†and a “celebrityâ€. CJ loves to teach me things. She is so patient with me. One gets the feeling she would make an excellent mother. At least until her children are 5 or 6, at which point CJ and her children are going to have to agree to disagree on a great many things.
Alternatively, CJ is going to have to put her foot down.
CJ is a sweetheart, don't get me wrong. She’s no tyrant who would enjoy torturing her children. CJ will just know - like every mother in the world - that the key to Happiness is _not_ the path CJ took to her misery. You see, CJ knows her mother failed her. She doesn’t hold it against her mother; after all, CJ knows she was a handful. But every single mother in the world knows that. They also know they’re nothing like their mothers. CJ will not fail her daughters the way her mother failed her, letting her get away with way too much. CJ will know what she needed. She needed her mother to put her foot down.
CJ will have forgiven her mother for failing to keep her in line. She’ll know by now that she was a real handful, and because raising children isn't as easy as it seems. She understands what her mother explained to her, about children; and how it’s not as easy as it seems. CJ will have reconciled with her mother but reconciliation only comes full circle once daughters have children of their own so that they can see, it’s not as easy as it seems. And this is why every mother of a grownup child wants grandchildren. They just want to reconcile with their daughters; and for that to happen, they need their daughters to understand.
Being a mother is not easy when you're an imbecile.
Imbeciles understand this, but they can only learn things the hard way. At which point, they forgive the imbeciles for being imbecilic when they were “a handful†whilst simultaneously setting about "doing it right". Their mothers did it wrong, which is why CJ and all the other mothers like her got trapped by childbirth into their currently loveless marriages. Sometimes it's the other way around, but few mothers who are trapped will ever acknowledge that fact. They just genuinely want the best for their children and they know they are not happy (how could they be, having been robbed of celebrity so cruelly), so they will put the foot down because they know what would make them happy. Being a wild success. A triumph. A celebrity.
The thing is, they've never been any of those things. So they don’t have a clue about Success or whether the celebrities in their gossip magazines are even Happy. They just look at celebrities and think, "That's happiness." Well, it might appear that way to someone who struggles with the anonymity and lonely restlessness of being a housewife. They don’t see the horrifying reality in front of their eyes; they’d love to live in the glare and flashes of the paparazzi's invasive insanity. They’d love the attention. They know they would.
But here’s the thing. People lie all the time. Celebrities lie more than most. How would anyone know whether celebrities are happy? They don’t tell the truth. I didn't even know John Travolta was gay until his sexual assaults on male masseuses made the news.
Allegedly. Everything written about celebrities is alleged. “A close friend who doesn’t wish to be named told us these impossibly personal and obscure bombshells about their celebrity friend.†Look, if CNN can do Syrian Danny, tabloids are going to do whatever they damn well please.
This is the Reality you are lied to non-stop about. I saw this happen in front of my eyes in Bangkok in May 2010. Everyone lies non-stop.
I didn’t even know John Travolta was gay. Maybe John Travolta was equally as clueless, in regards to that Topical Matter of Public Interest & Popular Culture.
But CJ is so sweet; she wouldn't hurt a fly. She will simply Al-Queda her children for Love. She will torture them because she knows - she just KNOWS - that if her mother had put her foot down harder, and firmer, when she was a little slut teenager splitting her legs for anyone who made her feel older than the other girls her age, or more sophisticated or worldly than the other girls her age, or more important or valued than the other girls her age; if her mother had just cracked the whip on her, CJ knows she wouldn’t be unhappy now. If only her mother had tortured her more, why she would be a famous "Celebrity" or "Scientist" or even "Madam President of all of Westphalia". Because who the hell knows, when you’re a celebrity-obsessed imbecile dreaming of unrealised imaginary potential. Illusions about illusions. Uh oh.
But CJ will not want her reality to be her children's. She will want to give them a better shot at that glass ceiling. She will not want them stuck in a miserable marriage, pulling their hair out at screaming children night after night until...
“Thank God it’s Tuesday.â€
CJ is a miserable wife who is bored of her miserable husband, who has been bored of her for as long as he can remember; ever since the hubbub of the initial delusions died down into reality. But reality can be illusionary. He will have wondered what happened to the CJ he literally lost his mind over. He’ll have been horrified trying to work out what happened to the fun, playful, precocious (impossibly stupid but kinda adorably so) little girl who wrapped him around his finger and signed him into a Catholic Contract of Boredom and Misery, for his entire life. He will have thought she changed. He might even have wondered whether he was the victim of her manipulative deceit.
That’s assuming he even thinks about her still, at all. He’ll move on quickly, chasing versions of his lost wife.
But CJ hasn't changed. CJ just got moved to Tuesdays, where CJ can be a child again. In the reality of CJ where CJ isn't tied down with marriage and children, CJ is free. She can fuck whomever she pleases, and lots of guys are interested in pleasing her on Tuesday evenings. CJ never grew up, because growing up is not something that automatically happens as you get older (but isn’t it cute of the Catholic Church to fool Toddlers into having children).
CJ on Tuesdays is who CJ is supposed to be. She’s living two realities and the Tuesday reality where she’s a free girl again, is the correct reality. And in reality, CJ is kinda fun.
It’s sad that her children will never get to know who their mother really is because CJ doesn't know who she is. This is because CJ is filled with Shame at the things she does on Tuesdays. She has fun. Catholics leverage guilt onto that luxury. But without fun, what would be the point in living life? So CJ takes her one night a week, and she has fun being who she is supposed to be. She doesn’t realise it, so she pays for it in misery and shame. She’s not going to stop doing it though. She’ll just live in pain. Catholics know fun is the Devil. Our misery and our suffering brings us closer to God.
It is for this reason that Catholics (representing all religions) and all religions have created all of the suffering in this miserable world. All our misery and all our suffering has been controlled; by design they make us suffer to bring us closer to their god/s. If humans didn't suffer in misery, what use would humans have for their Middle Men of Religion? They will manage your misery with pleasure. Filthy vile creeps. All they manage to do is create suffering. Priests are all the same; whether they’re chaplains, padres, monks or ministers.
You can let them minister to your pain, if letting them administrate you makes you feel better. But if you wanted to stop feeling like shit, you should stop taking your car to the mechanics once a week. You might be surprised at how much better your car will run if you stopped paying for others to have an incentive to invoice you. Call me crazy, but whenever I paid for pain to go away, Pain sat up and noticed.
What would you do if someone paid you to go away for good, every single time you bothered them?
In agony, I would watch CJ grow up a decade without realising she's never actually grown up at all. She’s faking her motherhood. She just doesn’t realise she has nothing to be ashamed of. But you can’t tell CJ that. She's still a little girl on every Tuesday night of the week. She just doesn't realise she has nothing to be ashamed of. You couldn't tell CJ that. CJ knows she's a mother with important responsibilities, but she is terrified because she is still a child and cannot understand why she hates - and loves - and hates - and loves - the little teacup humans that bring her so much joy - and so much misery.
CJ is a devout Catholic, which means CJ is a basket-case of shame. She'll take her shame to her grave with her, although the realisation hit me just now that some creepy pedophile knows all about me from CJ. Well, he knows my name and that I was fucking her. I actually know a great deal about CJ; she knows next to nothing about me. CJ sees illusions and believes they are real. It's ironic, but entirely understandable. She's so focused on sustaining her transparent ‘opaque’ with her classified privacy and deceit and lies and covered-up shame (her perfectly non-horrifying C-section scars she goes to such agonising trouble to keep ‘hidden’ from me, the fact that she’s a mother with children at home [that might be trouble for ‘her’ sake], her lifestyle, her marriage, even her name was a lie until she suddenly became CJ one day). She’d introduced herself, pretty and giggling, as Kathy. “With a special K.â€
*giggle*
It's the Secret Lives of Slaves who don't realise they have very little to be ashamed of, until they start lying about their shame. They don’t realise they’re slaves. They don’t realise they were conditioned to make the mistakes they’ve made. They believe they’re in control. They think they’ve got choices. Right and Wrong, right? CJ knows how ‘Wrong’ her choices are. I watched in agony as she hated herself in the hour before she would leave, where she puts on 10 years of ‘maturity’ and inflicts more self-hatred than anyone could possibly feel in a lifetime of being sane.
I watched CJ ‘grow up’ this way over half a dozen times, early on Wednesday mornings. Bracing herself to return to her traumatic reality. As the third of 12 children, I have a vague idea of how chaotic and noisy and misery-inducing that reality might be for a child who doesn’t realise she is not supposed to be a mother. She’s supposed to be having fun. It’s not the little terrors’ fault that their parents had them without having the first clue about why they were having children or a clue about how to raise children (I understand this is a common mistake made by children who have children for reasons as solid as “it’s the done thingâ€).
It’s the thing that’s done. That’s not a reason to do it. Parents are following the template laid out for them by those who breed slaves by tricking Toddlers into having babies who suddenly become toddlers no Toddler can handle. But for Toddlers, children are the next ‘logical’ step. They’ve been married a few years, the husband has a job, they only have regular sex with one person, they’re bored of each other, they have a house they think they own but they don’t understand they’re merely renting it at the pleasure of Power - they have no standing Army and in a world of Power, you only own what you control at the pleasure of the US military industrial complex. Toddlers don’t understand complexities like these. They have children because it’s “the next stepâ€. But the reality of a house turned upside down by young children you haven’t a clue how to raise to be intelligently happy, will be psychotically chaotic. You’ll be a wreck. Children are exhausting.
CJ was quite lucky to have me, really. I know how amazing yall are at sex. You would likely keep a pretty girl like CJ up all Tuesday night and long into the early hours of Wednesday morning with your legendary passion, stamina and virility. At least with me, CJ got to relax on her one night off with her (my) magazines before getting a good night's sleep. That's the only night of sleep a week she’d get, I’d wager. Children only ever sleep, intermittently.
When I told her I was leaving, her fears were for me. Of course. Would I be okay without her? CJ is so ‘patronising’, it's really quite adorable. It’s how she’s trained herself to be. She needs to care, so she cares in ludicrous spots. The Truth is, CJ is just a little girl who only cares about having fun. Everyone is stupid to her, because she fools everyone.
She believes she does.
I was always a little stupid, in CJ’s eyes. After she had explained to me the difference between "celebrities" and "artists", she stopped to check that I had understood her explanation. Had she been clear enough?
I did. And she had been.
As it turns out, I knew The Artists quite well. I bragged about this to CJ, knowing it would impress her.
"Yes, CJ. I understand perfectly, thank you. You’ve solved the mystery for me. We actually have The Artists in Australia as well but they're called something else."
"What do they call The Artists in Australia?" CJ asked.
CJ
Threaded Mode
