okay. hear me out.

for once, i think i've got a great idea.

see, in the philippines, women are expected to select. men collect relationships: the girl they just bed, the girl for display, the girl they bring home to mom, the girl they take out to gimmicks, the girl they talk to in dark secluded places simply because their girlfriends are phony barbie dolls but they can't bear to be seen with the funny, interesting, witty girl who just happens to look a wee bit like jessica zafra. women can't have that. in a country where the bastard daughter of a priest happens to be the epitome of beauty, grace, and everything that a man should want in a woman, girls are taught early on about how lovely it would be if you were to marry your first boyfriend.

some are lucky to meet "the one" so soon.

others, like me, aren't so lucky.

and so while the question of why you don't have a boyfriend yet is quite irritating, it is equally irritating if people note that you've changed boyfriends for the nth time. they raise eyebrows, squint their eyes at you, and shake their heads in disbelief.

sometimes, you can even see a word flash before their eyes.

w-h-o-r-e.

and so we learn to lie, hide relationships, or pretend some men never really exactly happened in our lives.

and in true catholic fashion, feel guilty about it. very guilty.

now, being one of those women who has had several relationships, good and bad, in her past, i've decided that there must be a solution to this, that somehow, i can look someone straight in the eye and say, "yes, pat is my first boyfriend."

see, in math counting theory, you have to assign one number per object being counted. pat=one.

in math you can go forward. but we won't want that, right, cause if we do that, pat would not be boyfriend number one.

there are three ways of counting: counting on, counting backwards, and skip counting.

if we count on, again, pat won't be boyfriend number one. if we skip count, definitely pat will not be number one, it might be pat=1,234,567 and we definitely don't want that.

we can however count backwards, now there's the possibility of pat=one.

and then you remember that numbers don't end in zero, numbers can go into negatives, and we all agree that ex-boyfriends no matter how much we loved them then are definitely no-nos right now. no=negative therefore ex-boyfriend=negative number.

therefore if i want pat=one, i must count backwards from one to determine what number a particular ex-boyfriend was, for example, the martian=-1.

and pat will always be boyfriend number one.