Dear Lady Who Was Breastfeeding In The Middle Of The Mall Of America,

I saw you.  I saw you and I felt uncomfortable.  Blame it on my maleness, but I don’t understand why a bench in the middle of the Great Mall is a good place to breastfeed.  Why not a less conspicuous place? Down the hall maybe?  Off to the side?

I want to commend you for at least trying to put that blanket over your shoulder.  But, if I can make a suggestion, the blanket over the shoulder thing is supposed to cover the baby sucking on your nipple.  At least that’s what I thought it was for.  If you had used you little fleece blanket successfully, I probably would not be writing this.

You might say that my being uncomfortable with your breastfeeding in the middle of the biggest mall in the country says more about me than it does about you.  I concede that point.

All right, a kid’s gotta eat.  I hear you.   I’ve heard the argument that it’s a natural part of life.  To that I say: So is pooping, but I still go to a room with a stall and close the door before I poop.  In fact, I’d rather not have people walk by me while I poop.  I get stagefright.

And I’m pretty sure that there are more people who poop than there are people who breastfeed.

I think you get my point.

xoxo,

Wile E. Filipino

All righty, now here’s the sitch:  My roommate had some friends over a few weeks ago, and I happened to be home.  So I met this woman, and lemme just say up front that there was no real flirting going on.  I just thought she seemed nice and, truth be told, we only talked for about 10 minutes.  So as she was leaving, she said, I think [my roommate] has my info, so you should get it from her and maybe we can hang out.

It also bears mentioning that this happened to be on the same day that my X and I had the unfortunate “You’re not choosing me” fight so I was feeling pretty salty and not in any mood to even entertain pursuing anything romantic.  But since my X had made it clear that it was time to move on (she was going to a party after all), I thought I should take this as a sign that I should move on too.  What’s the harm in getting to know this girl a little better?

So I invited this girl to come see my friends’ show.  Mind you, the show was a musical, pretty light as far as theatre goes.  It’s not like I was taking her to see Sartre.

And this is the message she left on my VM:

Hey [Wile E.] it’s _______ calling you back… um… Thanks so much for giving me a call I… um… It’s taken me a while to call you back, I’m so sorry.  I’ve been… sick with the swine flu actually this entire week and I’m just getting caught up on, um, work and school again, and so… it’s been… quite the week.  But, um… yeah tonight I have to work actually.  I am… um.  I’m a server at Buca’s so I’m gonna be going into there, uh, and… so yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing tonight so I won’t be able to come and I just wanted to let you know too, um… it was so much fun to hang out.  I, I… have to… you just, I want you to know, I was… I was really tipsy that night, and so some of the, some of what I was saying, I don’t even remember some of the things I said, but I do remember the fact that I got really excited about… plays, and, um, I do enjoy plays, but I think I got really excited [laughs].  Um, and I rarely go see ‘em, but my roommate used to take me to go see ‘em, and so um… yeah I don’t know, I don’t even know, remember everything I said, but… um…  And also, I…um… I don’t wanna be overpresumptuous or anything, but, um… for, like… um.  My, my schedule right now is just unbelievably incredibly insanely crazy busy and, um… it would be fun if you wanted, like, to come hang out with… um, like, if you wanted to for, go hang out with my friends and that kinda stuff that would be awesome… um… but I’m having this time where I’m like, I don’t even know if I have t-time to like, I, I rarely have time to even hang out with my really good friends.  Thursday was like an awesome time to get out.  But I’m balancing a couple jobs and school right now, and so, I’m sure you understand that too, So… um… yeah, if I… If, that’s kind of, I’m sorry I’m even saying this to your voicemail, but um, wanted to just be like clear with… where I’m at and I’m… um… so… Anyways, um… thanks again for the invitation and, and maybe some other time or… um, we can… yeah… get some– get something together and hang out, so all right, I’ll… I will talk to you later.  All right, bye bye.

I suppose she could have just gotten a big neon sign that read, “NO” in big pink letters, but this’ll have to do.

…what the hell is he talking about?

Believe me, I’ve been wondering that same shit lately.  I’m sure you get it by now: I’ve been cheated on and feel pretty salty about it.  Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s unpack it a little.

My acting teacher carries one of those huge podium-style dictionaries in a bag whenever he comes into class.  He says that a lot of times, even when we think we know what a word means, we might have something to learn from the dictionary definition.  So, whenever we come across a word in class that seems important, he whips out his big dictionary.

What I’m getting at is that a lot of people out there might have a working understanding of what it means to cheat or be cheated on, but after being told that it’s time to get over it, I’m starting to think that it might help to whip out my big dictionary and really understand what is going on.

According to my computer’s dictionary program, to Cheat:

To act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination.

To deceive or trick.

To use inferior materials or methods unobtrusively in order to save time or money.

To avoid something undesirable by luck or skill.

The overarching theme is that cheating benefits no one except for the cheater.  That might seem obvious, but if to love is to give, to cheat is purely selfish, the polar opposite of love.

On the effects of cheating: The last definition is to avoid something undesirable by luck or skill.  Something undesirable.  Just to be totally obvious, the “something undesirable” is the partner being cheated on.  I’m sure there are experts out there who can speak to the myriad psychological effects of being cheated on, but the bottom line is that to cheat is to deceive, which opens the door to a slew of issues with commitment, trust, and self-esteem.

There’s a dude out on the west coast, Dr. John Gottman, who’s been studying relationships to scientifically quantify them and what makes them work.  He’s found that relationships are the basis for emotional health, cognitive development, and ultimately, how we learn throughout our lives.  One of the things he’s found from studying romantic relationships over the last 35 years or so is that healthy successful relationships have a positive-negative ratio of 5-1.  That means for every negative thing someone does to their partner, they do 5 positive things.  It doesn’t take a scientist to know that people are more inclined to be self-critical, so for their partner to reinforce something negative about them would require at least 5 positive things just for the sake of balance.

So let’s put this in the context of cheating.  In order for it to be a wash, according to Dr. Gottman’s findings, the cheater would have to do some positive action that carries the impact of cheating 5 times.  Here’s where the cheater’s argument often loses steam.  The argument I’ve heard the most is, “You have to forgive me.”  Ok, yes forgiveness can be helpful, but doesn’t that just let the cheater off the hook?  Why isn’t it the cheater’s responsibility to earn back their partner’s faith and trust if they want to continue the relationship?  So the question should be, “what are you gonna do, cheater, to earn that forgiveness?”

People who are cheated on often blame themselves, are made to feel inadequate, and have trouble with trust in the future.  So what does it say when we focus on whether or not the victim is capable of forgiveness rather than the work that the cheater needs to do if (s)he wants to work it out?

If you’re like me and have a big ol’ red button about being cheated on, that positive thing your partner does for you might have to end up feeling like an Olympian winning a gold medal.  Now try to do that 5 times.

Is it an uphill battle?  Yes.  But if you’re gonna cheat on your partner, you’re bringing that on yourself.  Relationships are already hard work without adding bullshit expectations about being forgiven for something as shitty as cheating.  You’d be lucky if your partner gives you another chance after being cheated on, so take your destiny into your own hands and do what it takes for the relationship to work.

There’s a quote that I’ve always liked from an alternate ending of The Last Kiss :

It’s always amazed me how much a choice you make in a fleeting instant can change your life forever.  I just feel so lucky that the choices I’ve made have led me to exactly where I am… I can’t honestly say that Jenna’s completely forgiven me and for all I know she never will, but a wise man once told me you can’t fail if you don’t give up.  And guess what?  I’m not giving up.

So what is this all about?  Well, it’s time for me to stop feeling sorry for myself.  It’s time for the Wily Filipino Online Pity Party to turn the lights on and kick everyone out.  The hardest thing for me to realize is that for all my self-blaming, the onus falls on the woman who acts dishonestly.

Let this be the warning to you ladies out there.  You’ll never meet another guy like me.  Don’t fuck it up.

Oh, she’s good.  She’s continued to take and take, while giving nothing, and she’s managed to make me feel like the whole thing is my fault.  She’s like a friggin’ Jedi.

The Latest:  She asked if I consider myself single.  “Yes,” I reply, since I don’t have a girlfriend.  The follow up question was, “So if a girl asked you out on a date, you would go?”  “Sure,” I said, “depending on the girl.  If I wanted to go.”  Let’s unpack this for a second.  Societal norms in American culture dictate that in heterosexual dating, the man usually asks the woman out on a date.  I can’t remember the last time I was asked out that didn’t involve the name Sadie Hawkins.  But ok, if this mythical female asker-outer, who has somehow caught my eye, asks me out and I want to go, then yes, I’d probably go.  Hypothetically.

“Then you’re not choosing me.”

She proceeds to tell me that she’s going to accept the fact that we’ve broken up (2 months ago), and she’s going to move on.  OK, so what she wants is a guy to date her exclusively.  Back in the Philippines, we have a term for something like that.  It’s…um… BOYFRIEND.

The nail in the coffin is that I’ve been walking around for the past few days feeling guilty about hurting her.  But wait, what exactly did I do to her?  Break up with her 2 months ago?

She told me that the reason she didn’t want to talk to me, during the weeks before we broke up, was that she thought we’d fight.  And she was so busy that she didn’t have time to fight with me.  I accept that.  We had been fighting.  Our recurring fight was that I was feeling like she was putting our relationship on the back burner (because she’s so “busy”), and it’s hard enough being long distance.  I just wanted some reassurance that she still wanted to be with me because her actions were saying otherwise.  Her response to me was that she didn’t want to feel responsible for my feeling secure in our relationship and that I should figure it out for myself.  So instead of continuing to be an active part of this relationship, she chose to duck and cover.

And now that we’re broken up, I’m supposed to choose her?

This coming from the woman who told me she didn’t want to be “in a relationship,” then continued to date me for 4 more months, saying that she wanted to see where things would go between us.  She eventually told me that she loved me, and a month later hooked up with another guy while she was out of town.  But she made me feel like I didn’t understand the circumstances because she had made it clear that we weren’t TECHNICALLY boyfriend/girlfriend.

She says things like, “You think I’m a horrible person,” and “I ruined your life.”  We even had a conversation a while back about how she felt that she had projected a lot of her guilt and insecurity on me throughout our relationship.  But it all came up again in this latest conversation.  How I think she’s a “bad person.”  The only thing I could say in reply is, “If you took a look at a transcript of our conversation, you wouldn’t see the words “bad person” until right now. YOU keep saying that, not me.”

Look, I know it’s hard, but sometimes when you fuck up, the best thing to do is admit it.  Going around saying, “but look at all the times I didn’t fuck up,” doesn’t really get you anywhere.  It makes you look like you’d rather protect your ginormous ego than admit that you did something wrong once.

“I hurt you and I’m sorry” goes a long way.  A much longer distance than “I didn’t do anything wrong!  except for that one thing.”  Because, ultimately, that one thing can be pretty important.

Her unwavering defense of her out-of-town make out only served to further devalue my feelings about the situation.  Every time she said, “I haven’t done anything since we’ve been exclusive,”  just reminded me that she still thinks that I was being unfair to her by allowing her cheating tendencies (for lack of a better term) to hurt me.

And now that we’re broken up, I’m supposed to be choosing her?

The big question mark in my brain was, why is she calling me from the grocery store to have this conversation?  Did she not think that this might be something I might want to talk about?  She kept saying that she HAD to talk to me today.  She HAD to. Then she abruptly had to go because other people were depending on her for something.  Her roommates were leaving to go somewhere.

Through the magic of facebook, I found out that they were going to a party.  Ahhhhhh, so.  She HAD to talk to me?  That day?  Before the party?

OK, I’m not an idiot.  I’ve been made to feel like my imagination is overactive at times, but come on.  Is it possible that she called to get my “permission” to make out with whoever this new guy is, and he was gonna be at the party?  She’s been so wracked with guilt since the last time she went out of town and made out with some guy, that this time she wanted to get me to push her into the arms of another guy.  I can hear her rationalization right now.  “But I told you that since you weren’t choosing me that I was going to move on.”

Oh, she’s good.  She’s continued to take and take, while giving nothing, and she’s managed to make me feel like the whole thing is my fault.  She’s like a friggin’ Jedi.

As I douse myself with antibacterial hand sanitizer, I can’t help but smile at all the cute kids at the Halloween costume contest at the Mall.  Ok, so escorting the big shrimp isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but every once in a while you get to remember what it was like to be a kid.  Today was one of those days.

There was a woman, who I later found out was Grandma, standing in line to register for the costume contest with her toddler.  I’d guess 2-3 years old.  Pacifier in mouth (the kid, not the grandma).  I walked up holding a sticker out for him and said, “Hey Spiderman, do you want a sticker?”  And Grandma promptly answered, “He doesn’t talk yet.”  Thanks, Grandma, The pacifier was a big hint.  I bet your grandson isn’t, in fact, Spiderman either.

I’ve always wanted to have a kid, and I didn’t really know why until today.  Yeah, kids are disarmingly cute and they have unbelievable imaginations and you can mold and shape them into little versions of yourself.  Perhaps even cooler versions of yourself, if that’s possible.  But that’s not why I want to have a kid someday.  I want to have a kid because they give you a whole different perspective on life.

As a dude in his 30s (yeesh), I know I have responsibilities.  There are rules to follow, and a lot of that boils down to one word: Fear.  Fear of what people will think, fear of losing everything I’ve built up, fear of failure, fear of looking foolish.  You probably won’t be surprised at how many adults turn down the stickers I hand out, while this one sticker seems to make their kid’s day.  The stakes are high for us grownups.  But when was the last time you played?  I mean, yes, we all have responsibilities to attend to, but why can’t we do both?  Why does being an adult mean that we have to abandon the joy of life that being a kid brings?

Kids remind us that we all have the capacity to believe, to love unconditionally, and to live for each moment.  They’re not trying to win some prize or tell themselves “I’ll be happy when…”  Their mere presence in a room changes the energy of that room completely.  Something innocent and pure; they wear their emotions on their sleeves, along with the requisite amount of mucus.  Their joys and their sadnesses are fully expressed, they don’t get self conscious or try to hide their feelings for anyone else’s benefit.  They just are who they are.

I think I have a lot to learn from kids.  There’s a part of me that’s yearning to remember what it was like, and one of the few ways to do that is to be around them every day.  To be invited to play and be silly.  To give myself the permission to smile and laugh as boldly and completely as I feel.  And to let my life be affected, changed by someone else.  Maybe even someone cooler than me.

Speaking of playing:

Have you ever farted as you’re sitting down to go #2 and you end up sitting into your own fartcloud?

Yeah, I hate that.

There’s a guy I work with at the restaurant who is best described as your classic bullshitter.  He hits on girls at his tables, girls at other servers’ tables, well, pretty much any girl that comes into the restaurant.  To my knowledge, he’s got a couple baby-mamas, and yet he somehow gets by with working at the restaurant, where I make just barely enough to take care of myself.  He and I get along pretty well, but I tend not to take anything he says too seriously.  So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself thinking about something he said recently:

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese.”

Someone told me that when it comes to critiquing your art the person who is usually full of shit most days can actually be insightful every once in a while.  In the immortal words of Wesley Snipes, “Even the sun shines on a dogs ass some days.”  Well, this doesn’t really have anything to do with art, but it does have to do with a moment of sudden profundity.

We all benefit from other people’s hard work.  Whether it’s the first Filipino immigrants who picked asparagus, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, sugar cane, or grapes and paved the way for families like mine to follow, or the migrant workers of today who make it possible for my grocery list to stay affordable, I recognize that their situations are often far less than ideal, but the reality is that their hard work has a direct effect on how we maintain our lifestyles.

A while back I found out that I was hired for a job after a friend of mine turned it down.  After the Sloppy Seconds feeling went away, I realized that being the last choice, the right choice, is what’s important, and the rest is just ego. You know how people say one person can make a difference?  Most of the time, we don’t see what we bring to the table, let alone how the things we bring to the table affect the people around us.  But in this case, it paid off.  I happened to have a couple of skills the director didn’t know about in my back pocket that really contributed to the project, so it felt serendipitous that my friend turned it down.

I suppose what I’m saying is that, as cliche as it is, everything happens for a reason.  A little patience and intelligence goes a long way.  We can learn from the mistakes of others if we take the time to really see what’s going on.

At the end of the day you gotta ask yourself:  What is the ultimate goal?  Is the goal to beat everyone else to feed your ego with a moment of satisfaction, or to get the cheese?

Ok, so it just wouldn’t be a Wily Filipino blog post if I didn’t mention something about being cheated on.  So here goes:  I’m fully aware that my heart has led me to be the first rat, and trust me, that big metal bar snapping down on your head sucks balls.  The problem is that I’ve been seeing myself as the rat, and what I need to start doing is see myself as the cheese.  I’m not saying that I ever want to be the other guy.  I just want to be with someone who is aware enough to know that it’s not about stringing me along while she gets something out of her system.  Someone who can resist the urge to rush into things with me when she’s not ready just because I’m “nice.”  Take a second, think, and breathe.  If you really want the cheese, it’ll be worth the wait.

Sometimes winning isn’t everything.  I guess that depends on your definition of “winning.”  If you want to look at it as “second place is the first loser,”  that’s fine.  I’ll be the one with the cheese, and you’ll be dead.

“If you call the tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? 4, just because you call the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” –Honest Abe Lincoln

Neale Donald Walsch writes in Conversations with God, “Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation. Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are not the real thing. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”

My high school religion teacher taught that Love is to give of one’s self for the betterment of another.  To give.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because this has become my definition of love.  When I say, “I love you,” I’m saying that it’s not about what I get.  I just want to make your life better.

Now, let’s be honest, there are more than a handful of people out there who think they can boil Love down to that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you really like someone.  Ok, maybe that’s real enough for them, but what if that feeling goes away?  Then what?

It reminds me of a song from Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye sings to Golde about their decades of life together, and he finally asks, “Do you love me?”  What strikes me about this is the idea that they’ve been together for years and have never told each other that they love one another.  They just did it.  They loved each other the whole time and never said peep.  But the point is that they loved each other.

This isn’t the chicken and the egg; it shouldn’t be a dilemma.  You can say the words and hope that they’ll come true, or you can do the behavior and find the words later.  For my money, the latter sounds like a better idea.  Calling something love doesn’t make it love.  Love is a verb, it has to be active.  At the end of the day, it’s about choices.

Will a piece of paper or a ring or a vow stop someone from cheating?  It depends on how much that person values that piece of paper/ring/vow.  From my experience, it’s not the paper nor ring nor vow that makes the difference,  it’s simply a person making a choice.  Choosing not to indulge a short term desire, but to honor a long term love.  I guess my experience has taught me that the label can only mean something if the choices of the people involved give it meaning.  And a person’s actions, as a manifestation of who they are, what they care about, and what’s in their soul, is the only thing that counts.

Love isn’t totally devoid of feelings, but there’s a caveat:  It’s not about your own feelings, it’s about the other person’s.  Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Love is about the things we do to make the other people in our lives feel good.  And when you’re doing that with your whole heart and soul, it’s not subject to interpretation.

I get it.  Your kid’s a little frightened by the large fuzzy pink shrimp walking by at the mall.  For real, I get it.  If I saw a shrimp that was 10 times bigger than me, I’d definitely be looking for my mom or dad’s legs to hide behind.  But come on, Parents, wouldn’t you wanna try something else before jumping straight to saying “It’s just a guy in a costume.”  Is that supposed to be comforting?  Really?  Killing your kid’s sense of imagination and magic is comforting to you?  All this talk about maintaining kids’ innocence and here you are destroying their ability to believe just so they’ll stop crying.

Why not try to show them how not to be afraid?  They might be scared, but maybe your job in that moment is to demonstrate courage.  Comfort your kid by showing them that unfamiliar does not equal scary.  If fear is the root of hatred, then this might be one of those moments that can shape the rest of their life.

So let your kids dream.  Let them keep that sense of wonder as long as they can.  And while you’re at it, high five the big shrimp.

As I watched the Vikings game today, I thought about how shitty it must be to be a place kicker in the NFL.  A lot of times, your team will run out the clock putting all their trust, hopes, and dreams on you to put it between the uprights.  You get one shot.  One moment can drastically change your life.

I might be crazy.  It’s like the episode of the Twilight Zone where everybody’s face is jacked up except for that one woman, who’s gorgeous by our standards, but they keep telling her that she needs to get plastic surgery.  Yep, it’s that kind of crazy.

I keep hoping that there’s a woman out there who can tell me she loves me without completely betraying my trust.  I’ve been told that it was my fault for not satisfying her needs, or that “it just happened,” or I was being unreasonable because, based on some technicality, we weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend.

I feel like I’m the crazy one because there are people out there who wonder why I’m not married, tell me I’m a catch, and say all kinds of nice things about me.  But for some reason, the women I’m attracted to make me feel like what I bring to the table isn’t that special.

I feel crazy because I’m starting to think that saying I love you is one of the worst things you can say to a person.  Those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know.  When someone says that they love you, I’d really like to believe them, but I don’t.  Just shut up and put your money where your mouth is.

I might be crazy because I thought that being in love was enough for someone to want to be in a relationship with you.  Apparently it isn’t.  I guess this is like Junior High all over again.  You gotta pass her a note that says, “Will you go out with me?  Check yes, no, or maybe.”

I might be crazy because if you’re with me, I’ll probably assume that you are going to run off on me.

It’s the knee jerk reactions.  I recently called my X (yes, we’ve started talking again) and she didn’t pick up.  Usually she turns off her phone when she’s going to bed, so I was surprised that it rang and she didn’t answer.  But the knee jerk was this:  Instead of thinking, “maybe she’s asleep,” I thought, “She’s probably with some guy.”

I can look at a picture of a group of people and tell if anyone in the picture has a crush on anyone else.  In the past, I’ve used this skill to determine whether or not my girlfriend has been cheating on me.  And I’ve been right every time.  It’s just like Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.  I gotta figure out how to deal with this superpower.

I wish that one day someone will look at me and tell their friends that I’m too happy to realize how miserable I am, rather than the other way around.

It would be different if I wasn’t constantly hearing from my female friends about their loser boyfriends and how they won’t even take them to the movie they want to see or call at decent intervals.  It would be different if I didn’t see these amazing women settling for these nothing guys.  It would be different if I could just take every cheating, ignorant, overly aggressive, “bad boy” aside, smack them upside the head and tell them they’re making me look bad.  But the reality is that they are the ones who make me look good.  But still either not good enough or too good to be true.

Doc Brown and Marty McFly taught me about the space-time continuum.  One moment can change the course of history.  And sometimes I just want to hop in my Delorian and go back 10 minutes before she kisses him and tell her that she’s throwing it all away.  But I shouldn’t have to.  She’s not an idiot.  She, like a drug addict, took full stock of me and our future together and still decided to get her fix.

And that one moment changed everything.