The Spy in the Sandwich

Sunday, August 03, 2025

9:00 AM | The Confessions of Second Hand Rose

“Age changes you. The first half of my life, I wanted to be interesting to many people. Now as I am on the second half, I only want to be interested and invested in the lives of those who are still around.”
~ Gabe Mercado

At the beginning of my birthday month, where I will be turning 50, I cannot help but think inwards and wonder about the ways my life thus far has unfolded. From the vantage point of being half a century old, I see strengths. I see frailties—so much frailties. I see patterns. Definitely patterns. In the sum of it all, what I’ve had has indeed been a singular experience of me being me, warts and all, and barring regrets, which is a useless exercise. But that is everyone’s story, isn’t it? All our lives are singular experiences to ourselves, and we can only hope to derive at least the satisfaction of having lived through all that. Does that make sense?

By the time you’ve reached middle age, you see patterns in the ways you cycle through your days. Do you see patterns in your life thus far? I do. One pattern I see overwhelmingly is how I am the embodiment of the song “Second Hand Rose,” a 1921 tune written by Grant Clarke and James F. Hanley for Fanny Brice, and popularized by Barbra Streisand in the late 1960s. It’s a funny song where the persona complains about never getting things when they’re new, but always getting them second-hand—“Even clothes I’m wearing / Someone wore before!” she complains in the song.

This is the anthem of my life! Because, truth to tell, I mostly never get things firsthand; always second-hand—and to me, I’ve learned to be perfectly fine with that reality. I am, I daresay, a creature of the second place, the second wind, the second chance.

Most of us have some sort of landmarks to measure success in life. I have never subscribed to the common dream of pursuing a cycle of college graduation / corporate job / car / condominium / conjugal bliss / children / croaking. We all have different measuring sticks, but one such that I somehow subscribed to was academic excellence. But I remember that all throughout grade school, I never was a consistent honor student. My record was quite checkered: there was a fourth place finish in the honor roll in Grade 1, nothing at all in Grade 2, a third place finish in Grade 3, none in Grade 4, a second place finish in Grade 5—and then to my utter astonishment, I graduated valedictorian. How did that happen? That was my first experience as a Second Hand Rose.

That academic adventure continued. In high school, there were many classmates who were more brilliant than I was, and so I chose to pursue something I was at least good at—which was writing, and thus I became editor-in-chief for the school paper. I chose an idea of “excellence” in my own terms, I guess. The brilliant classmates I had—all of them women—were ultimately graduated with very high places in the honor roll, but somehow I also found myself the lone male in their company, but one who was quite satisfied with a fourth honorable mention.

In college, determined this time to excel, I became part of the pioneering batch of Physical Therapy students at Silliman University, but a searing soul-searching episode during my first hospital duty in junior year made me realize I was not cut out for the field. I had just battled a losing skirmish with getting ordinary vital signs from the first patient assigned to me, and once outside that patient’s hospital room, I stared down the corridor which was bathed in soul-sucking fluorescent lights—and I realized all this was not for me. So I shifted to Mass Communication, much to the dismay of my family who had already bought the dream of me as a future OFW in some hospital abroad. I was soon in my second course! And I was not in a hurry to graduate either, relishing my second life as a college student now freed from the specter of what seemed to be the wrong career path. Second choices, second lives for Second Hand Rose.

After enduring three years of a halfhearted pursuit for physical therapy training, I wanted to taste what it was like to study abroad, believing that the best time to travel is when you’re a college student. I subsequently applied for a competitive exchange scholarship in Japan. I didn’t get that—the psychological exam I was made to take pronounced me somehow unfit for the endeavor [shades of future mental health issues!], and the slot was given to someone else. I stewed heavily and felt like a loser. But by the next year, the scholarship office decided to award me the opportunity anyway—and I did spend a year as a student in Japan, my first time to live out of the country, and throughout that exhilarating year—I was 21—I gloried in my new experiences, but also cried every night because of terrible homesickness. [I must have cried all my homesickness away that year, because I never became homesick again in future travels.] Nevertheless, in my estimation, Second Hand Rose won.

I finished Mass Com but didn’t even become a journalist. Upon graduation, there was an offer of job with the Manila Bulletin, but I didn’t see myself as a newshound, going around the big city chasing leads. So I nixed that, and went to graduate school instead, belatedly embracing the possibilities of a creative writing career. And just like that, without design, I became a teacher—just as the world began changing in the shattering realities after 9/11.

I taught without a break for a decade after that, and really went earnestly into writing, winning two Palanca Awards in a row—both of them second prizes for the short story. [It would take a few more tries before I got a first prize finish.] I wrote and I taught without taking a break for many years, and finally I got terribly burned out in 2009, which was around the time I also broke with a long-term relationship. I remember almost quitting teaching. I partied hard in the late 2000s, enjoying a second bout of carousing gusto in my early thirties. A second adolescence for Second Hand Rose!

Eventually, tired of partying, I began looking to redefine my life again. Armed with my old idea of taking a break, I applied for an arts fellowship in the U.S., this one with the promise of a week’s stay in New York. I wanted to cure my burnout and heartbreak with skyscrapers and big city life—the anti-thesis of Dumaguete. I actually made it to the final rounds of consideration!—but ultimately, they chose someone else. I stewed again and felt like a loser. But the local administrator of that program [basically, the U.S. Embassy in Manila] soon reached out to me, and felt that I was suited for something else: a fellowship at the International Writing Program in Iowa. And this one lasted three months, plus trips to Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., aaaaand New York. Of course I said yes. Again, it was an instance of not getting what I applied for, but getting something better in return. It happens. Second Hand Rose won again.

[A digression: While I was studying in Japan, I applied for a tourist visa to visit my brother in Los Angeles. I got denied. I tried a second time a few years later, back in the Philippines. I once again got denied—and then exiting the consular offices, I remember being furious and I remembering cursing the American dream before I left the compound along Roxas Boulevard: “I will never ever apply for an American visa again! Someday, it will be you—U.S. Embassy—who will invite me!” Ten years later, it was in fact the U.S. Embassy who facilitated my first American sojourn in 2010. Hurrah for Second Hand Rose!]

After that fateful American fellowship, I returned home, published my first two books, and then became the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center—and to that I poured all my sweat and effort, and all my dreams. Plus I taught an insane overload of classes year after year after year. I was invariably told to entertain the idea of pursuing a Ph.D. abroad, but at the same I was retained as the only CW teacher in the department, and the only one teaching all the CW courses [except for poetry]—which proved confusing. Was I supposed to stay and teach, or go and pursue a higher degree? I somehow was made to feel that taking a sabbatical was not in the cards. By the time the pandemic came, I was ready for a burnout and a meltdown. I broke mentally. [Or at least the Zoom classes, and a bad bout of COVID-19, broke me.] I quit teaching, and I thought that was for good. I didn’t want to teach ever again. I became a social media manager instead.

Of course I spoke too soon. Because I’m back to teaching again, armed with lessons on how to navigate these things without me collapsing, or breaking. Is this, at 50, my second, third, or fourth wind? A friend I follow on X keeps posting the same message every day without fail: “Another day, another chance.” I heart his daily mantra every chance I get, because I believe in that wholeheartedly.

I think what I’m trying to get at in this long navel-gazing essay—cut me some slack, August is my birthday month and this is my birthday essay—is that [1] getting things secondhand is not a definition of who you are, and it’s just the way life is and how random it can be, and it is not fate; [2] getting second places is a good place to be, and first will eventually happen; [3] getting second wind means you are willing to rise above failures and try again; and [4] getting second loves [or third] and finally finding one that completes you means that, yes, you’ve kissed many frogs along the way but there will always be a Renz. Second chances are a gift.

I also believe that whenever I falter in the assorted challenges of my life, the one thing that makes me get up is the idea of persistence. Persistence is the secret formula: you do what you do best constantly and without fail, even with the occasional hindrances, even with occasional failures—you’ll get somewhere eventually. At fifty, I’d like to believe that everything I have accomplished and everything I have been awarded for is really because I have managed to persist. Even when I don’t believe in myself sometimes, even when I demonstrate spectacular failures, even when I disappoint myself and other people because of frailties that are undeniable parts of my shadow self, even when I feel discarded by forces beyond my control, even when I am at the brink of some sort of annihilation [sometimes of my own making] … I’ve somehow persisted.

That, and because I am always accommodating with every second chance [or third] that I’ve gotten.

Hello, August!