The Boyfriend App

Chapter 2: The Bad Boy

Chapter 2: The Bad Boy

When Kate was in junior high, grades 7 to 10 in the Philippines, students were divided into sections based on their academic performance. First, the sections borrowed the names of the planets in the solar system, then flowers, then chemical elements (or at least the most precious metals) and finally scientists. Luckily, Kate and her friends always managed to land the top sections. And so, she was in 7-Mercury, 8-Sampaguita, 9-Platinum and 10-Einstein.

It was certainly debatable whether Mercury was better than Earth by being closer to the sun, or whether platinum was more precious than gold or palladium; to say nothing of there-is-no-disputing-tastes themes like flowers and Albert Einstein. But then again, the practice of dividing students based on anything would raise even more questions, so nobody asked how the school admin came up with the section names.

Josh and his gang, who called themselves The Retaliators (Filipino: Resbakers ), mostly belonged to the same sections back in junior high and suffice it to say that Kate rarely saw them.

Kate only barely tolerated Josh’s high school gang activities. She thought it smacked of immaturity. But then her heart would oddly speed up every time she saw Josh riding to school on his dark-blue-and-white Ducati and wearing the black helmet with a cute emo skull sticker. And when he offered to drive her home one day, her knees felt weak and threatened to buckle under her. All her friends advised against it and insisted they just wait for the public-transport jeepney or walk 3 miles to Bayan (literally “Town”), where most students lived. They usually did that to avoid the cramped jeepneys and save the nine-peso fare.

“It’s too hot to walk,” Josh said. “UV’s gonna damage your skin. I’d hate for that to happen.”

Against all logic and the alarm bells ringing inside her head (she had never ridden a motorcycle in her life, only a public-transport tricyle or auto rickshaw, which had a side car), Kate answered breathlessly: “All right.”

As he gave her his only helmet and fastened the strap delicately under her chin, she thought he was confidently intimate and got a blast of his designer cologne, which was perfect for the weather in the tropics. She also thought he could be gentle if he wanted to, contrary to what everybody expected of him.

He tilted the motorcycle so she could lift herself. At first, Kate was undecided between straddling the passenger seat and sitting with both her legs on one side. Josh helped make up her mind by saying she’d enjoy the ride more if she could feel the wind blowing in her face, which was not a terrible idea considering that the skirts of CITS-HS girls (and those in most Catholic schools) are one to two palm-widths below the knees. Heels no more than one inch tall and no knee-high socks, period.

Her heart was beating so hard she worried he might feel it through her middy blouse and the Adidas jacket on his back. As the wind whipped hard against them and her arms tightened around his abs, he didn’t shout back at her to try and make awkward conversation. Instead, he let her savor the moment; the thrill. But she also thought he drove slower and more carefully on her account.

All the while what occupied Kate’s mind was the fact that people were looking at them from the jeepneys they passed by. Some jeepneys were full of schoolmates from various grades. At one point as they rode parallel to a jeepney, several seniors who were inside, presumably friends of Josh’s, cheered and whistled at them through the windows. They acted rowdily and did whatever they pleased. Josh flashed a finger gun at them and did a silent “pow” before overtaking.

That evening, Kate’s friends couldn’t wait to bombard her with questions. Her Messenger and phone inbox blew up with teasing and congratulatory messages. The fact that the rumor mill revolved around her made her glow with pride and feel like the prettiest girl in school. She was on grade 11 after all and Josh was arguably the coolest 12th-grader.

It was a match of polar opposites. But Kate didn’t care because, the heart of the matter was, she saw the potential for Josh to change. She even thought she could be the catalyst for that change. She certainly felt it was her job.

The next day, Josh offered to drive her home again and, what touched Kate more than anything else, he also bought a bottle of sunscreen for her in case she said no. He needn’t have because she readily accepted his invitation. And then, the day after, he whipped out a purple helmet from behind him with a similar emo skull sticker, only girly. And for all the following days since, he became her personal chauffeur even though Kate always asked to be dropped off a couple of blocks away from her house. She felt she wasn’t ready to introduce him to her parents. She could never tell him but she was kind of embarrassed.

Josh sometimes waited for her to be finished with a special group work or with her duties as Student Council secretary. She would pack a fresh set of civvies so she could change and spray herself with the perfume that Josh gifted her on their first monthsary. They also sometimes took detours to drink soda and eat French fries at fast food chains (but not the diner where her ma worked) or hang out on breathtaking hill overlooks that were slowly being developed into resort-subdivisions.

During those intimate moments, Kate learned a great deal about Josh. She realized it hadn’t been easy being lumped in the lower sections. There were a lot of negative influences and, worse, a great deal of peer pressure. Even if a student wanted to study, he would be dissuaded by his classmates. And the effects stuck till senior high as evidenced by the fact that most of The Retaliators had selected the Technical Vocational Livelihood (TVL) track.

Josh thought that by being the leader of his gang, he was actually saving everyone from bigger trouble. At least he was able to keep the less predictable members in check. Josh confessed he was sometimes scared of the members and it gave him enormous pressure to maintain his leadership. His being in a relationship with Kate, for instance, raised concerns about his becoming soft and unfit to lead. She made him look weak.

“I guess you’re sort of my Kryptonite,” Josh told her.

Josh made all these confessions to Kate and more – about how he felt as an only child, just like Kate, and his mother being a caregiver in the UK like so many other Filipino professionals lured by greener pastures overseas and driven away by her mother country’s lack of opportunities. She would care for so many patients and children but not the one she missed the most: her own child. She dreamed of someday bringing Josh to the UK on a residence card but with the UK leaving the EU and protectionist politics creeping in, that dream was taking longer and becoming more remote.

This explained why Josh never lacked money or material things. He was practically loaded and had the best imported sneakers and comic books shipped on his birthdays. He could afford to eat at restaurants every day, which he did because his father was usually too wasted to look after him. Apparently, the LDR with his wife had driven Mr. Guerrero to loneliness, the bottle and into the arms of a different woman each night.

It was kind of backwards but Mr. Guerrero had started to live the single life and Josh was in fact the more mature of the two. Of course neither he nor Josh told his mom about it but somehow his mom knew (Josh suspected it was because a relative or neighbor had informed her) and there were talks that his mom wanted a divorce. Josh simply thought it was long overdue because early on, he had noticed that his mom and dad talked less and less over the phone and, on the rare occasion that they did, they argued.

Hearing all these things, Kate felt that Josh was more mature than everyone gave him credit for. Being the alpha male in his group also meant he had leadership potential. Kate was convinced his involvement in a gang and petty school pranks was just a temporary phase, something that most male students went through. Why, even university students had their brotherhood troubles – initiations, inter-frat scuffles. And when it came down to it, she, Lor and the Bali Girls weren’t the Mean Girls but they were no angels either. It didn’t mean she supported or encouraged cliques, just that she understood.

In hindsight, Kate had been rationalizing The Retaliators’ actions like copying homework in the men’s bathroom (forcibly taken from a teacher’s pet), cheating during exams, cutting classes, gambling, vaping and doing blow, putting whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair and duct-taping a student to the wall. It was Kate’s theory that, because of CITS’ high academic orientation, the varsity teams for both men’s basketball and women’s volleyball were next to non-existent. Kate knew because she was captain of CITS’ volleyball team and they had entered the conference-level competition, where they were promptly and effortlessly eliminated. Kate thought the disorganized organized sport was a viable explanation for all the pent-up teenage male energy.

The usual places Josh and The Retaliators hung out were the rooftop and The Bowl. The first was part of the brand new school building and was supposed to be off-limits to students but somehow The Retaliators had a duplicate of its door key. The second, The Bowl, was a two-acre natural depression enclosed by forested, undeveloped land and was in effect like a park. It was a ten-minute walk northeast of the academic buildings and Josh had invited Kate plenty of times but she accepted only twice.

Part of the problem was because Josh usually went with his gang, and Kate, apart from Bernadette the Super Glue, would be the only girl if she didn’t bring a chaperone. The Retaliators brought guitars, a soccer ball, comic books, cigs and e-cigs, gum, firecrackers and, Kate was sure, plenty other stuff that wasn’t wholesome, which was why she was scared to be with Josh at The Bowl.

But the main problem was Josh’s Roman hands and Russian fingers. Understanding the problems of early pregnancy not from the antiquated and Church-approved s*x ed videos they were forced to watch in MAPEH but from real-life examples like her neighbors, Kate was determined to hold on to her virginity till she was 100% certain of her feelings. This was the cause of many an argument between her and Josh, the worst of them had him calling her a prude and blaming her for not “putting out.” No matter how hard they argued and how many times he invited her to his house, she was adamant. She said that if Josh truly loved her, he should be willing to wait till she was ready.

“And when would that be?” Josh asked with a frustrated look.

“When we’re married.”

That sent him into a rage. Kate didn’t think his wait would be that long but it was a good go-to answer. She didn’t care about the other girls in school who either confessed or lied that they’d done it. For her, everything needed to be perfect. The perfect guy, the perfect place, the perfect moment. It drove Josh crazy when he couldn’t understand what she meant by getting her “in the mood.”

Every time she said no, Josh would sulk and they might even have a cold war for a few days. But he was always gentlemanly enough to stop touching her when she told him to. He said it was because he respected her. Kate suspected it was because he knew how stubborn she was about the issue.