The age of weddings and the maleness of being macho

I’m in that age group where many of my friends are either already married or about to get married. Last count, I’ve been to five weddings in the last two years and, by the looks of the way a few more of my friends are going, I’m probably looking at another couple more in the next 18 months. I do like going to weddings. Specially now when all of my friends are busy with their careers and their own families, weddings are usually the only times when I see the barkada in full force.

The only damper on weddings and, maybe in general, this whole age group scene I currently find myself in, is the way some single girls see these as occasions to take stock of their romantic life. I have to admit, seeing a friend off to tie the knot and, at the reception, sitting at a table filled with couples can be really confronting. But then I do have these mental conversations with myself where I assure myself that getting married in your mid to late 20’s is not necessarily something everyone has to do.

By the way, I have Edsa traffic to thank for the ample opportunity it offers me every day to have such self-conversations. Then again, I think of how all those hours stuck in traffic talking to myself could’ve been spent hanging out in places where I could potentially meet Mr Right. Sorry, I digress…

Anyway, such self-assurance would have made for an easy closure to such insecurity attacks if it weren’t for all the people who ask pokey questions like “Any wedding bells in the horizon?” or, worse, do the customary — and very pushy — looking-and-motioning the single ladies at the table to join the fray at that dreaded point during the reception when the bride throws her bouquet before making her exit. And here’s what’s really bad: On one or two occasions, I ended up having to pick up the bouquet off the floor after all the supposedly eligible bachelorettes thought this whole throwing-the-bouquet ritual is a game of dodgeball. Hello, ladies? You’re supposed to climb all over one another to catch the the thing — like they do in the movies!

Ladies, sayang naman that Western cosmpolitan look you took the trouble to put on if you all still act like a bunch of probinsyanas.

At the reception of a wedding I attended late last year, I happened to be standing in line to the buffet table next to Tita, the mother of one of my friends (not her real name). Chit chat, chit chat, then the zinger of a question: “Why don’t you get together sometime with Jun-Jun [my friend’s younger brother, who’s taking up medicine at UE, or whatever — not his real name by the way]? He’s going to be a doctor, you know.”

Okay, firstly, do I really look that desperate?? I mean a younger man — and the brother of a friend of mine at that! Well, sure, he’s gonna be a doctor. But what about me? I’ve got targets too… like making my first million before I’m thirty…

Then there’s the more obvious question? What does Jun-Jun think? Does he even know his mother is staking out wedding receptions, stalking single ladies that she could pimp him out to?

On that occasion, the latter question was quickly resolved. From the corner of my eye, perhaps after a split second gazing wide-eyed at Tita frantically cobbling together a witty response to her question, I spied the familiar form of Jun-Jun’s pale round face from the corner of my eye. Upon glancing briefly in the direction of that blurry image in the periphery, and catching Jun-Jun looking away even more quickly, I realized he was all the while watching us from afar with a smile on his face.

Jees… what’s up with guys who involve their mothers in their dating games? I do know in lion prides, it is the females that do all the hunting while the male lounges around in the sun. Goes to show, maybe our society hasn’t really evolved much.

Hopefully Jun-Jun is not representative of the typical Filipino male. I based that hope on the Philippines being purported to be a “macho” society — macho, as I understand the term, implying an above-average maleness.

I need to get a place closer to the office…

About Kate Natividad

Frustrated artist doing geek for a living.

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• What did the women in the #WomensMarch rallies REALLY want? - January 23, 2017
• The moronism in the Yellow Camp’s petition to the Miss Universe organizers - October 11, 2016