MEDIUM RARE

Often enough, I used to tell myself, it might be fun to be a travel writer in my next life.
Just as often, I would remind myself that traveling professionally would merely buy me a lonely life. All those solo trips flying hours and hours cooped up in a plane . . . long nights alone in some hotel or BnB . . . eating without conversation. . . No, I decided, choose something else, a decision that firmed up after reading what the American surgeon general had to say: “Loneliness kills.”
Then came the invitation to join Ruby Coyiuto for lunch. It was Lolit Solis’ birthday, my daughter Pat-P said, and Lolit’s confreres would be there, too, Gorgy Rula and Jun Lalin. Ruby is not in showbiz but her “Flawless” beauty business makes her a natural ally of showbiz folks, their managers and pals in media.
Eager to see Ruby again – her mother was my classmate in high school — and hoping to catch the latest unprintable news about movie stars, I accepted her invitation. (What if instead of travel writing my next job would be as a movie writer?) Appropriately, lunch was set at the restaurant owned by Dina Bonnevie, herself a celebrated alumna of the silver screen.
In the room reserved for us, Jun was typing away on his laptop. Lolit regaled me with her account of how the “boredom” of sitting out a four-hour dialysis was the worst part. And still I waited for her and the two guys – three showbiz chroniclers in one room, under one roof! — to spill the beans on the latest rumor or news of any up-to-the-minute feud between Lolit and her antagonists. “No feuds for now, I must be getting old,” she chuckled.
Or the movie industry is? Maybe it’s tired? Taking a break while in recession? Just when I’m wondering what it must be like to transfer to the showbiz beat and be palsy-walsy with Albert Martinez? What’s he like in person, I persisted. Lolit, Gorgy, and Jun were in no mood to thrill me, answering with a non-reply, “He’s a nice guy” – not even after I tried to draw them out with another question, “Who’s his girlfriend at the moment?”