On their way home from the hospital, Neurologist Jackie’s 9 year-old son, Ernie, pointed at two cows fucking on the grassy field. He asked her what they were doing. This stumped Jackie momentarily, but she brilliantly answered that they were just playing Luksong Baka. She then went on to discuss the mechanics of the game Luksong Baka, swiftly moving on to other Philippine games like luksong tinik, patintero, and tumbang preso, none of which could ever swerve the conversation back to an afternoon of bovine humping. Coincidentally, this thread of conversation in Viber veered towards the different hobbies we wanted to get into, and Smoketh replied that she wanted to ride a back. Knowing full well that it was a typographical error, that she really meant “bike”, we still asked her with much titillation whose strong, sweaty, muscular back she wanted to ride.

Mrs. T shared that she had told her 5 year-old son that sex education will be in this year’s curriculum. Mrs. T is homeschooling her kids, and we look forward to her talking about human genitalia with a straight face. I cringe at most YouTube “reaction videos”, but I want to see a reaction video of her kids watching her draw and label a labia majora. Back in grade 6 our Biology teacher drew a gigantic penis on the board, and it brought the house down. She really didn’t have to draw it that big, that turgid, that veiny.

Not having anything substantial to contribute about homeschooling and sex education, I asked if any of them in our Viber group would be interested to hear the story of how I learned about sex. No takers for about ten minutes. Thankfully, Smoketh had obliged and said “FINE!”. So I told them the story, which I am also telling here right now. I have to warn everyone that this is, like, graphic.

When I was in grade 4 I was seat mates with the class bully, Ricardo Buenaventura. Up until that year all I knew about sex and reproduction were what my parents had told me. My father said that he drew us on a sheet of paper, sent the illustration to someone over one weekend, and by Monday we were made flesh. I started getting the idea that it was a total lie when our science teacher asked, rather rhetorically, “How do chickens reproduce? Do they share a bed?” I went back to my father to ask what she could have meant, but he just insisted on his artistic abilities. If Hippolyta could create Wonder Woman out of clay, I could make you out of paper, he declared. Then one day, Ricardo cracked a joke, which opened my eyes to the TRUTH.

“What does PLDT mean?” he asked everyone passing by our corner. “Hey Mildred, what does PLDT mean? Robert, you know what PLDT means? Joules, PLDT?”

“Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company,” Joules said, not getting, as always, that it was a joke.

“This is not a trivia competition, Joules!” we should have chorused, but we were nicer back in the day, and snarkiness was not yet a thing.

Nobody knew what the hell PLDT meant, and it started to bother us. When we were sufficiently intrigued, Ricardo gathered everyone around and revealed what PLDT really stands for: Puke mo, Linisin mo, Dadaan, Titi ko.

Mic drop.

It was the most 80’s, most juvenile joke ever, but this had led to a bevy of questions, conversations, focused-group discussions, and parental hysterics. Why would the penis go inside? Wouldn’t that wreck the vagina? Do you also insert the testicles? Of course, Ricardo had ALL the answers, courtesy of all the betamax porn he had managed to watch. He had other sex jokes later on, but none as catchy as PLDT, and he should have quit while he was ahead. He once asked, “What does BK stand for”? The answer: Beta Kantot. It didn’t really make sense, and Burger King wasn’t even a thing that time. We can say that it was the jump-the-shark moment of his short-lived career in stand-up comedy.

Still, we thank the precocious Mr. Ricardo Buenaventura for giving the students of Grade 4 St. Claire, all naive and full of Catholic guilt, their first taste of sex education.

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