The New Dentists

Pepe Serapio

Hi. My name’s Pepe Serapio and I’m here to blow your mind…in a non-terrorist kind of way. Please don’t call the police. 

I’m actually writing this introductory editorial, which was requested by our young Editor-in-Chief, without my laptop. That’s not an important fact for anyone but me. Like most modern writers, I work well with technology. Without it, I’m pretty much screwed. 

Speaking of getting screwed, my laptop died the other day. The blue screen of death killed it. Now I’m trying to piece together this thing with a stiff ballpoint pen and a yellow pad paper that’s too flexible for my taste. This whole traditional thing is both annoying and frustrating. Cholo said that someone said good writers write with a pen. This just goes to prove that I’m nowhere near being a good writer.  

I do like low expectations. Less stress for anything I write means I get more chance to blow everyone’s minds, though I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon. Money makes the world go round and it’s making mine spin aimlessly. 

After reading all that, you probably get the idea that I’m one of those lazy, narcissistic, random and technologically-reliant writers and, by jove, you’re absolutely positively correct. Don’t ask me who jove is, I’m not British.  

Growing up in a feminist habitat, mainly because everyone around me was female, I developed a sense of retarded sexuality. I’m physically a man though emotionally a woman and philosophically a go-between. My strange infatuation with the color pink doesn’t help my case any better.  

My late aunt was the one who pushed me to love and live writing. She was the one who told me it’d be awesome to learn to express myself through words. She, herself, was a failed novelist so it was only natural for her to dump her lost passion to a younger and more new age version of herself. Why me and not one of her two daughters, I did not know. All I know is that she loved the English language and I had to love it, along with literature and the world of the Yanks. 

At first, I was oblivious to the fact that I wanted to be a writer. As a little girl, I was more inclined to be a doctor, a cop and even a spandex-clad spider person. Writing was just a hobby. It was something that kept me from boring myself to death, which ironically is now synonymous with every waking day of my adult life.  

During my grade school years, I casually ventured into campus journalism and it was pretty much boring. We went places, entered contests, won our shares, went up the stage, smiled at cameras and went back home. It was a never-ending cycle and I failed to notice anything great with it.  

The same thing happened with high school, except it was much more profane and more hormonal than before. The inclusion of cute tsinitas pretty much upped my game and things became a little interesting, if not retarded. What was the point of texting girls that I liked them, flirting with their hopeless romantic brains, if I was to only run away and avoid them in person? See what I meant when I wrote retarded? 

I was never out of the campus journalism picture ever since I started out of a whim. I was always the Feature Editor or the Editor-in-Chief, for some ungodly reason, and the latter required me to speak ad lib most of the time. As awkward as that was, it actually helped my speaking powers. Then I became Spiderman for a while before one of my clones took over and I returned to my boring normal life again. 

Inevitably, growing old often gives us maturity or a fake sense of it. On my second year of college, I was taking up Nursing then, I had an epiphany, or a stroke – I can’t really remember much of it except for the fact that right there and then, I immediately knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: bang tsinitas write. 

After a year of freelance, with Philippine Star Supreme and Level Up! Games Philippines, I’m now here with The New Dentists as its newest Editor (which probably won’t be the best experience for Ms. Wang). Coincidentally, I’m also graduating this year.  

Looks like new chapters are raring to be written yet again.

Pepe is taking his Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Aklan Catholic College. He believes that with great power comes great responsibility. He also believes pink spandex is prettier than black ones.