post #69 (hehehe)

It's 8:34 in the evening and my ever-so-considerate life partner is still in a meeting, trying to salvage what's left of his future as group head (read: vice-president, yes, even as yuppiescum he can still command respect) in a company that hasn't got its 7S's aligned. (McKinsey's strategy, structure, systems, superordinate goals, staff, skills, and shared values.)

Wow. He's a VP already. Only five years my senior, with youthful good looks (I look older...yeesh) and the bearing of an arrogant graduate from that school along Taft Avenue. (I edit his reports when asked to...now if only I can speak for him at meetings.)

I used to refuse to visit him at work. I may have had the right to stake my territory, but hell, the dirty looks the girls shot me whenever I walked into the building just got to be so unnerving. No, it wasn't that I was the ugly girlfriend to the company's chick magnet...far from it. I just didn't want to look like the insecure girlfriend who, well, was staking her territory.

Hmmm...let me enumerate some of the girls I, or rather, he, had to deal with:

The Spinster Slightly older than he was, in a more senior position (no pun intended) and a VIRGIN. Never been kissed, never had a boyfriend, never...well, the list goes on. She didn't look bad, really. She dressed up OK, her face was, well, OK. He referred to her as his other "babe" in the office, me being the first. They'd usually have lunch and coffee together, and you know, be each other's buddy at work. She was actually quite friendly to me, but female intuition told me there was a snake in the offing. Ha. She was trying to get to my good side. Didn't work.

The Bootylicious Babe This girl had what I didn't: an ass, and it was an ass that all the guys in the company ogled at. Though she worked in another floor, I had felt her smoldering eyes burning my back for months. She had the nerve to try to establish a "friendship" with him, you know, texting jokes and corny anecdotes on love and friendship, when texting was a free service from Globe, anyway. (Yeah, ok, so I secretly checked his messages. Girls, give it a try.) It may have worked, because a long time after that, her texts became, "Why are you ignoring me?"

The Neighbor Oh yeah, the neighbor who was, like, ten years younger. The little girl who blossomed into a fine young lady. The little girl who had a crush on her kuya's basketball buddy. Wow. She really hated me. At her brother's wedding, she totally ignored me but lavished sweet smiles on my dapper-in-a-barong date. ("Kuya, have some cake, o!" and "Kuya, have some wine!" and "O, Kuya, you're leaving na? So early pa!")

How to deal? With quiet dignity. Don't go into a jealous rage nor start asking stupid questions you know he'll just shrug off or deny. Save your energy for bigger things. Like another guy. Heehee.