Men in Cebu City

By Denver Ejem Torres

I KNOW a smart and beautiful lady who is crazy over Piolo Pascual. She fantazises about being his girlfriend and eventually being married to him. But he is a superstar and she a regular girl. They move about in different milieus and slim is the chance for them to even bump into each other. But why she continues this sort of virtual affair, I am curious.

Another one who I know from my office, a rather sexy, nice, charming and pretty lady, is unable to pick from a handful of matches she has on Tinder. The App says that they’re a match but when they meet up, it turns out the guy is no good. He can’t even talk. He brings nothing to the table but a boner. She desperately wants a boyfriend but what’s keeping her?

One lady, who’s a friend, has been enjoying the company of lesbians. She admits to me that she likes men and wants to be married to a man someday. She just does not trust the men here anymore. What did the guys ever do to her that made her into what she is now?

Most of my female friends are unanimous that men in Cebu are the lazy type. They do not think of the future. All they say is their mom will take care of it. She’s disgusted by her exes who turned out to be not only mama’s boys but are not yet over their childhood. They are, as the ladies say, hot, sexy, party-loving men-children who are in a perrenial search of playmates.

I know, too, of several ladies who don’t find local guys interesting. They like the foreigners better. But what led to this conscious choice? And they have been clear that it is not about the size of the bank account but the level of maturity. These ladies, I assure you, are not dating old men from Germany. Their cases are definitely not May-December.

And there’s a long list of similar situations. We haven’t even talked about the women I know who are with two-timing men and men who have girlfriends but also at the same time have secret gay-lovers.

But I’ve been thinking about it really. Why do these ladies participate in this kind of affairs? You know, admiring, wishing for, loving someone who is as far as Pluto (as in the case of Piolo). Or the lady who starts dating lesbians after several cheating exes. Or in the case of the lady having trouble picking out the suitable guy who’s just in the neighborhood. Does this say much about these ladies or much about the options available to them?

One will wonder if this fantasizing over men removed from one’s reality, this thinking twice (as in the case of the Lady in Tinder), the lady traumatized by cheating exes, the ladies who find local men immature and no sense of future, a symptom of an ill that plagues our society. Do these cases point to a certain truth about men in Cebu nowadays? Do we have a shortage of dateable men, men worthy to be boyfriends or husbands?

*Denver seldom writes about love and related stuff, bu he is truly curious about the state of the dating scene in this city. For your feedback, send it to denver.ejem.torres@gmail.com.