FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

A few years before I moved to Dumaguete, I used to regularly freelance for FHM Philippines as a contributing writer. I’d cover restaurant and bar features, the male celebrity they’d showcase for the section Quote, Unquote, and yes, I was sent many a time to interview and write about the bodacious babes that appear on its pages (I’ve even done a few covers!).

Anyway, in the thick of my FHM freelancing days, I was set up with a guy whom we’ll just name “Mike.” A non-descript name for a non-descript guy because that’s exactly what he was—vanilla with a desk job.

It was a textbook blind date. My friend gave Mike my number, Mike contacted me after a few days, we arranged to have dinner, he picked me up from our meeting place and we went to a fancy Spanish restaurant. First time I saw him—nothing. No blips, no fireworks, not even foreboding. Like I said, vanilla. He was in dark gray slacks, white long-sleeved polo with the cuff folded up twice, gel-combed hair, and porselana skin. He looked mabango—not because he made you wanna nuzzle his neck, but because he was so freakishly scrubbed down you could scratch him and not get any DNA off his skin.

Dinner was a small talk bonanza, until he said, “So you write for FHM…”

Oh here we go.

[Let me digress: I sometimes kept mum about my FHM stint because I’d get bombarded with all sorts of questions and conjectures. And after a few sleepless nights of toiling at an article, the last thing I’d want to talk about when I’ve finally submitted it and am able to get out and grab a drink is something I’m trying to take a break from. Case in point: Do you think Britney likes talking about child care?]

“Yah,” I replied.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s interesting.”

The guy was trying to be blasé and that kills me even more. So I tell him, “You know what, just go right out and ask me what you really wanna know…you wanna know whose boobs are fake, whose are real, right?”

His face lights up like a junkie’s at a meth lab. And we talk about my experiences in FHM, whom I interviewed, who’s got booty and brains…but the evening sort of just gets stuck there. After dessert (yes, I stayed for dessert, because, as unbearable as Mike was, there are only two acceptable reasons for skipping dessert: 1. getting murdered and 2. it has pineapple)—anyway, after dessert, conversation had shifted into a game of 20 Questions: he blurts out a name, and I answer either yes or no. Well, to be accurate, it was more of One Question, 20 Names; the “yes” or “no” pertaining to the presence or absence of silicone. My A-cups wanted to clamber out of my bra and cab it home. I was on a date with Boy Bastos’s well-groomed cousin. Only I’d have preferred dining with Boy Bastos himself–at least funny siya.