VIP

I wrote this in one of my journals the other day. Yes I still keep those. For stuff I'm too chicken shit to write here. I'm posting it because I now laugh at it.

I want out.

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It was one of those nights again.

So last night, I met up with my girlfriends, one of whom was R who’s just here on vacation from the States. While doing some catching up in Cuisine at The Fort, we hooked up with these guys from the next table. At first it was just a shot of tequila here and there, (tequila or rum for us, Johnnie Walker for them), then it’s “so where’re you from?” and “ah yeah? So what do you do?” then it’s “where do you guys wanna go next?”. Apparently, one of the guys knows the manager of Embassy, the infamous club next door, and he said he can get us in. Ah I swear, the benefits of small talk. It gets you freaking everywhere. After a few more rounds, we found ourselves getting VIP passes to Embassy Superclub. No lining up, no paying anything. When we got there, we whizzed right up to the VIP section. I saw a neighbor of mine, a childhood friend of my brother’s. “Alam ba ng Kuya mo yung ginagawa mo?” he chided. “Eh ikaw, asan asawa mo?” I shot back. He laughed, “Asa States! Di kita susumbong pag di mo ko susumbong.” And we sealed that agreement with a glass of Scotch. Courtesy of him, of course. Drinky drinky to those neon lights, hip hop and RnB music.

Things got a little bit hot when some people started complaining about who owned which table and what. I was blissfully oblivious to it, because I might have drunk one drink too many. So we moved on to yet another bar, Piedra. We promised the guy who got us in, a guy whose name we can’t even remember, to come back. In Piedra, we met the owner of the club, courtesy of another friend we bumped into. Inside it was jam packed with all these beautiful, perfume-laden men and women. Mostly though, we stayed at the bar, drinking glass after glass of water to combat the tipsiness. There were just too many people then so we went back to Cuisine. There were a couple of guys beside it, so what do you do? You just chat them up of course. You might end up talking to the owner of ETC channel or you might end up talking to a certain DJ who again, just happens to be able to get you into the VIP section of yet another club when world-famous DJ Tiesto comes to town. “Text me, we got two tables there,” he says. “You’ll get me in?” I ask, knowing I’ll never see him again. He goes, “Yeah of course no problem!” We exchange numbers and that’s that. My friend’s sister arrives, says she’s hungry and wants to leave ASAP. The guys groan and offer to pay for all the food we want. Sister says no thanks and we all leave, promising to go back. Which we never do.

I play the part so well, if I do say so myself. I can play this part of Manila nightlife denizen extremely well. “Oh to be young and rich in Manila!” a friend of mine said, only half jokingly. It’s so easy to get swept up in all that glitz and glamour. It really is. It’s great to be able to walk past those people who have to line up, it’s great to not pay anything at all, it’s great to stand on the VIP section, on the upper VIP section at that, and look at all the mass of people dancing, drinking and God knows what else. It’s great to know somebody who knows somebody who can make things like that happen.

I try not to think about it but it does bother me how much I enjoy these things. It’s been a constant struggle for me, to let things be. It would be convenient to say I'm just balancing my upper middle class existence but I know in my heart of hearts, in that teeny tiny part of my self that I don't even want to admit to anybody, is that it has little to do with my being upper middle class. It just has to do with how I perceive myself and how I think people perceive me. I don’t fucking know why I have to insist on making sense out of it. My friend R has a more balanced way of looking at it. She’s not fazed by the glitz and she’s not the type to rhapsodize over anything. I’m trying to look at it at a similarly offhand manner. I just want to be able to just take it as it is. I have to remind myself that this part of me is hopefully not the core of my being, and that I should just enjoy it while it lasts. I have to remind myself that these things just happen. I go out on Saturday nights, I meet these guys, get free drinks, get all-out access to VIP sections to Manila’s hottest clubs, and that’s that. What can I say, this is the world I revolve in, it’s my fish bowl. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten free drinks, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten free passes to clubs, and I doubt it’ll be the last. Maybe the fact that I enjoy these things makes me shallow and superficial, maybe not. I want to recognize it as it is, as simply a fleeting, momentary high. After all, when I wake up in the morning, with a terrible hangover, things are still the same. I’m still me, but with messy hair and the fading VIP stamp on my wrist to remind me that back in the real world, I’m really just ordinary.