"Recovering old negatives, one story at a time."
The first thing Rene taught me wasn't how to walk in high heels.
He taught me how to walk without them.
That was my first lesson.
Every afternoon after school, while Sadeness by Enigma echoed through the room, I walked back and forth on my tiptoes.
"Keep your shoulders still."
He'd place a hand lightly on one shoulder.
"No, no..." he'd laugh. "Relax."
At thirteen years old, I had no idea why my shoulders mattered so much.
A few days later, I found out.
Rene disappeared into another room and returned carrying a pair of shoes.
Six-inch chunky platform heels.
"You want me to wear those?"
The first afternoon was a disaster.
I wobbled after only a few steps.
Every time I reached the end of the imaginary runway, Rene would tell me to do the pageant turn.
That terrified me even more.
I was convinced I'd fall.
I just looked painfully awkward.
So I'd walk back to the beginning...
Before anyone ever taught me how to smile for judges or walk in six-inch heels, my childhood belonged to the outdoors.
My happiest memories weren't spent in front of mirrors. They were spent under the Surigao sun, where scraped knees were badges of honor and every afternoon seemed to invent a new adventure.
When classes ended, school didn't really end for us.
It simply became our playground.
Long after the final bell had rung, my classmates and I stayed behind playing sentro-sentro—what everyone else called patintero—until the sky began turning orange. We stretched Chinese garters higher than we thought our legs could reach, jumped over each other in luksong baka, carefully crossed luksong tinik, and took turns wobbling around on bamboo stilts until someone inevitably lost their balance and everyone burst into laughter.
Then summer would arrive.
Summers belonged to Tigao.
Every vacation, my cousins and I gathered at my grandparents' old two-story house, where boredom simply wasn't allowed to exist.
One day we'd help harvest corn beneath the afternoon sun.
When the tide slipped away, we'd wander the shoreline carrying buckets, filling them with seashells until they were almost too heavy to lift.
When the tide returned, the sea became our playground once again. We'd borrow whatever bangka we could find—sometimes one with bamboo outriggers, other times a smaller one without them. It didn't matter to us. We'd push away from the shore and paddle across the calm water with no destination in mind, convinced every little journey was the beginning of another adventure.
Inside my grandparents' house, our imagination took over.
We tied tiny toy soldiers to thin plastic bags with string and threw them from the second floor, convinced we'd invented parachutes.
We made bubbles from hibiscus flowers.
When Beyblades became popular, every cousin suddenly wanted to become the neighborhood champion.
Every new craze became our newest obsession.
Our favorite game, though, was complete chaos.
One unlucky cousin would wear a blindfold while everyone else scattered across the upstairs of the house.
No one was allowed downstairs.
Balanced along staircase railings.
Anything to avoid getting caught.
For a while, our strategy worked perfectly.
Then one of my cousins somehow learned how to climb the walls while blindfolded too.
Suddenly nowhere was safe.
The game finally ended the way most childhood adventures did.
One of the adults walked upstairs...
...and found several children clinging to the walls like oversized house geckos.
We all got thoroughly scolded.
Looking back now, I'm amazed none of us broke a bone.
Somewhere between all those summers, I secretly learned how to ride a motorcycle without telling my parents.
I kept the secret until one afternoon my father caught me confidently riding my uncle's motorcycle.
Needless to say, they weren't happy.
But by then there wasn't much anyone could do.
You can't exactly unlearn riding a motorcycle.
Looking back now, I realize how little beauty occupied my mind.
I admired beauty queens from a distance. One of my older cousins competed in pageants, and I remember cheering for her from the audience when I was little. Years later, I watched rehearsals for Miss Madrid at my elementary school and thought the contestants looked graceful beneath the stage lights.
But that world felt impossibly far away.
Girls like them wore gowns.
Girls like me wore sneakers.
At twelve, one boy even serenaded me in the middle of the night.
I politely turned him down—not because he wasn't kind, but because he happened to be a distant relative.
My grandparents were far more upset about it than I was.
That was about as dramatic as my love life had ever become.
I was much more interested in climbing trees, racing my cousins, playing baseball with the neighborhood boys, joining spider derbies with my brother, or wondering what game we'd invent next.
Then one ordinary afternoon during math class, my teacher looked around the room and smiled.
A week later, she walked up to me and told me our year level had chosen me to represent the freshmen in the upcoming school beauty pageant.
She spoke to my mother instead.
the little girl who had spent her childhood in sneakers, balancing on bamboo stilts, paddling bangkas, and hanging from the walls of her grandparents' house suddenly found herself standing in six-inch platform heels.
That's how Rene entered my life.
He wasn't just my trainer.
And one of the funniest people I've ever met.
The first time he looked at me, he reached into his bag.
Out came a bottle of Eskinol.
Then a little pink oval container of Chin Chun Su.
"We're going to need these."
He said it so matter-of-factly that I couldn't even be offended.
He wasn't trying to change me.
He was preparing me for stage lights.
Every afternoon followed the same rhythm.
Sadeness for the evening gown walk.
Those songs became the soundtrack of that summer.
Keep your shoulders steady.
At first Rene corrected everything.
One afternoon I reached the end of the runway...
and started again before he even opened his mouth.
He just sat there watching.
Sometimes I practiced without him saying a single word.
I knew exactly what needed work.
I wasn't practicing because he told me to.
I practiced because I wanted to get it right.
The chunky platforms slowly stopped feeling impossible.
One afternoon Rene disappeared into the other room.
When he came back, he wasn't holding the chunky platforms anymore.
He was holding a pair of silver stilettos.
"The ones you'll actually wear."
After spending weeks on my tiptoes and balancing on six-inch platforms, the stilettos almost felt weightless.
I laughed because I caught myself walking on my tiptoes again.
The shoes were already doing the work for me.
The chunky platforms weren't for the evening gown after all.
They were for the Golden Peacock.
A shimmering gold bra-style top.
Matching gold shorts that left my stomach exposed.
A towering feathered headdress supported by bamboo strips that felt twice as heavy as it looked.
It wasn't sewn onto the costume.
It was attached like a belt.
Hidden inside was a mechanism that folded closed until I pulled two ribbons hidden in my hands.
The moment I pulled them...
the golden peacock feathers expanded into a full circle around me.
I really did feel like a peacock.
We couldn't afford a corset.
Foundation wasn't just for my face.
Anything the audience might see beneath the stage lights.
I'm amazed by how resourceful everyone was.
Nobody had expensive equipment.
They simply made things work.
As Foundation Day grew closer, school stopped feeling like school.
My adviser wasn't just my coach anymore.
She was also one of the pageant's stage directors.
Every afternoon she was organizing contestants, dancers, cues, rehearsals, and production numbers.
Since I was already part of the dance troupe, I practically lived backstage.
My favorite moment came during Billy Crawford's Bright Lights.
That was my little moment to shine.
Dressed in a denim tube top, a pleated denim skirt, a golfer hat, and silver stilettos, I represented the United States with an entire dance crew behind me.
Twenty-two years later...
I can't remember the choreography.
But I still remember waiting for my cue.
For the talent competition, my adviser created something I had never seen before.
Instead of singing Part of Your World, she dressed me as Ariel and had me perform Under the Sea.
An old giant clam prop from a previous school production became the centerpiece.
I emerged from the clam singing with sea-creature dancers surrounding me.
I delivered a monologue grieving the destruction of marine life.
Looking back now, I realize my teacher wasn't just preparing me for a pageant.
She was teaching me that performances could carry messages.
I secretly hoped I could win Best in Talent.
Maybe Best in Interview too.
Those were the categories I understood.
Those were things I could prepare for.
The organizers gave us five possible interview questions beforehand.
On pageant night we'd draw one by lot.
My aunt—our next-door neighbor and one of the high school teachers—helped me write answers for all five.
I memorized every single one.
today I barely remember the question I actually picked.
I only remember talking about sweat, tears, and blood.
One afternoon all five candidates gathered for a meeting.
The other girls came with parents or guardians.
My mother couldn't leave school.
So I stood beside the two people who had quietly become my pageant family.
Nothing unusual happened.
That evening, after rehearsing the Golden Peacock at a relative's house with ceilings high enough for the enormous headdress and tail, my adviser asked us to stop by her house.
She asked how training was going.
"The heels are impossible."
"I'm going to tell you something."
"I'm not sure how you'll react."
"But I hope it gives you a new reason to do your best."
After the meeting had ended, she'd overheard one of another contestant's relatives talking.
My adviser defended me immediately.
Neither wanted me to hear it.
I didn't confront anyone.
Not because I suddenly cared about being beautiful.
Because I wanted to prove that I deserved to stand on that stage.
my jaw hurt from smiling.
The stage lights were so bright I couldn't see the audience.
I looked at Rene before I looked at the trophy.
That one belonged to both of us.
I thought about Bright Lights.
About those sixteen counts.
Then came the final announcement.
For the first time that night...
I wasn't smiling because someone had taught me to.
I smiled because I couldn't stop.
A few days later, one of the writers from our school paper interviewed me.
Before we even started, she smiled.
"I already have the title."
Beauty Queen at Thirteen.
"I like the sound of that."
I don't remember the interview anymore.
I don't remember the questions.
I don't remember my answers.
I still remember the title.
After the pageant, I returned the chunky platform heels.
They were never really mine.
Rene still had other girls waiting to train.
Somewhere, another nervous thirteen-year-old would wobble through the same lessons I had.
But before we said goodbye, he handed me the silver stilettos.
Years later, I wore those same shoes again during ballroom dancing in my senior year.
after everything that had come before...
they were the easiest pair of heels I ever wore.
Maybe that's how growing up works.
At first, everything feels impossibly heavy.
Then one day you realize you're walking in shoes that used to terrify you...
...without even thinking about them anymore.
Recovering old negatives, one story at a time.
