‘Don’t condemn me, I also need it’

By Alex P. Vidal

“I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor until I was with you, and I realized: you don’t realize you’re on the floor.” – David Levithan

A FORMER physical education (P.E.) teacher, stricken with a life-threatening disease from Cagayan de Oro City in the Philippines, has only one wish before she dies: acceptance and understanding from family and friends.

“Most of all, they must stop condemning and blaming me (for what I did) because I also needed it (the thing she did that “angered” them),” appealed 75-year-old Exotic (not her real name).

Exotic, back in the United States in May 2025 after spending 16 months in the Philippines, is suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS ), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a neurodegenerative disease that causes nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to die, affecting voluntary muscle control, with no cure and a, generally, limited lifespan.

“I wish to visit Europe, particularly France, Portugal, and Italy this year while I can still walk, talk and think,” suggested Exotic, who married Felipe, a Portuguese-American insurance executive, in Forest Hills, New York in 2018.

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Exotic’s first husband, Rienerio, employee at the Cagayan de Oro City Agriculturist Office, died when the couple was still living together in the Philippines in 2008.

They have two children: Adelfa, 48, married and a registered nurse, and Dideros, 44, single and a crew at McDonalds in Brisbane, Australia.

Exotic was part of a group composed of 12 tourists from Cagayan de Oro City that toured the United States in 2011. Five of them, including Exotic, overstayed; the seven went back to the Philippines.

Exotic, who worked “under the table” as caregiver, obtained legal status in the United States after marrying Felipe, whom she met in the house of the elderly patient she was taking care of in 2018.

Stricken with Rapidly Progressive Neurodegenerative Disorder, a sickness that included a Prion disease (like CJD) and some forms of Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Felipe, then 77, died in a nursing home at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Brooklyn, New York in 2021.

Exotic, 70 years old when Felipe passed away, found a new flame, 44-year-old Paulino, a Puerto Rican uber driver, in early 2022.

According to Goldo, 68, a Filipino immigrant and Exotic’s long-time “best friend”, Exotic occasionally invited Paulino to stay overnight into her apartment in Woodside, Queens in New York.

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Manila-based Adelfa and Australia-based Dideros were strongly against the tryst, especially Adelfa, who openly registered her aversion in text messages and sometimes in the social media.

“Nay, unsa man ni? Nakakahiya na. Tama na.” (Mom, this is embarrassing. Enough),” read one text message Exotic allegedly showed Goldo, who also stayed in the same apartment.

Goldo said Adelfa and Dideros suspected Paulino did not love their mother, who provided Paulino with regular “pocket money,” including budget for the car gasoline.

While Dideros was pulpy, Adelfa was furious after allegedly seeing a stolen short video taken inside the apartment’s balcony at around past 2 ‘o’clock in the morning showing their mother and Paulino, a burly and tall Lothario, both standing and “having a disgusting sexual rendezvous.”

Exotic denied she was the ferocious woman in the clip smeared in darkness. When confronted by Exotic, Goldo vehemently denied he was the one who took the video presumably from a cellphone.

“There were two other individuals renting in the apartment, not just me and Exotic,” Goldo argued.

“But Teepak and Ewash (names of the two other renters in the apartment) don’t have the cellphone number of Adelfa,” Exotic ribbed Goldo.

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After a heated fracas, Exotic and Gold parted ways and joined together again in another apartment after Exotic and Felipe were engaged.

Felipe, an ill-tempered and racist, according to Goldo, earlier questioned Goldo’s presence in his wife Exotic’s life and suspected “they had something going on.”

But Exotic assured Felipe “Goldo has been a longtime friend and partner in mahjong and card game businesses.”

“Business” meant Goldo, who was unemployed on several occasions, “managed” the area organized by Exotic for habitués of mahjong (a Chinese tile-based table game) and Tong-its (a Filipino three-player rummy-style card game).

Goldo cooked food for mahjong and Tong-it players and got compensated from the “tong,” a tip or etiquette payment, collected.

News about Exotic’s sexual peccadillos before meeting Felipe, especially the night the unsavory video with Paulino was taken, reached their community in the Philippines and among circle of friends in Woodside, Queens.

This enraged Exotic’s family and “conservative” friends askance at a woman senior citizen’s appetite to coitus. Exotic felt like a pariah, and she gradually ebbed into depression.

As of this writing, Exotic never admitted she was the vicious woman in that controversial copulation video but reiterated her appeal for forbearance and understanding.

Goldo said doctors were studying whether Exotic was also afflicted by Diogenes Syndrome, known as “senile squalor syndrome,” that involves extreme self-neglect, hoarding, and total social isolation, often arising from traumatic life events.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)