(Thanks to Phillip Kimpo, Jr. for the pictures, and no, I wasn’t paid to write this. - Marocharim)
I’m a “face your fears” type of person, but if there’s anything that can scare the shit out of me, it’s the open sea. Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway can kiss my ass.
It’s the weekend for the National Writers Workshop, and Mr. Alfred Yuson – with his kindness, graciousness, and generosity – sent us all to a beach weekend at Antulang Beach Resort, just an hour and a half away from Dumaguete City by shuttle. It was fun, of course, but this all comes with the trite and fair warning that I have a really serious and irrational issue with open bodies of water. See, when you lived much of your life in the mountains and you had one too many accidents at the beach, you start to have serious fear issues.
So the first line of defense would be that while your roommate and co-fellow in creative non-fiction would be equipped with beachwear, you would wear a jacket and a Guns N’ Roses shirt. My plan then backfired, since the beach weekend had us going on a cruise, a swim, and just about every frolicky activity that has something to do with open seas and swimming pools.
Then again, the problem with the first line of defense would be that when it’s broken, you have absolutely no freaking choice but to go out to the water and pray to whatever gods may be that you won’t drown. Or the sea monsters won’t rise up from the surface and swallow me alive. Or that the sunblock had enough SPF in it to completely block out the sun. Bea and Mo didn’t want me to wear sunblock for the cruise, and Sir Ian started making passing jokes that I may end up glittering a’la Edward Cullen. But I did manage to lose the jacket.
