coming out amidst cruel intent

i came out to my parents last sunday. it was absolutely harrowing...and i've seen so many coming out stories, i've heard so many true to life horrifying tales of revelation but all of it pales in comparison to a first person perspective experience...naturally. i expected as much. what caught me off guard is regardless of how many times you imagine it and rehearse it, you will always be caught off guard...naturally. knowledge doesn't mitigate it's severe blow.

every saturday, i take my girlfriend home and we spend the whole day together in my room. i know, very suspicious but i behave likewise with all my visitors, friends or...special friends. it's just that i'm very shy and i find it excruciating to put myself in that position wherein you introduce someone to your family and you have to act as a bridge between the two, initiate conversation...that kind of tedious social foreplay. i thought by now, my parents have gotten used to that. at least i don't disappear and come home at 4 am in the morning, i bring my party home. they never really called my attention regarding the matter. on the contrary, they seem relieved to see that i actually have friends and that i'm not totally socially retarded...that is, until my girlfriend came along. the weird thing is, it's strange how parents all of a sudden turn psychic when you don't want them to be. i can't help but think about all those times wherein it pains me to say something and i hoped they would just read my mind...but they're just completely dense...and now that i'm counting on their denseness, they turn surprisingly intuitive. seriously, there is no justice in the world. haaay...

anyway, it was a saturday, my girlfriend and i lay exhausted on the bed. i heard my mother's voice outside, she was calling out for me. we quickly got dressed but not quick enough. my mom had to knock a few times before i could open the door. she brought along some food and left.

the following day, she and my father went into my room and we had "the discussion", erratically raising their concerns with sword tongues darting at me. they asked me flat out, are you gay?, to which i responded in the affirmative. it was better to admit to that rather than say yes to their first suspicion that me and my special friend were doing drugs...but now, come to think of it, maybe they would have been more relieved if i was doing drugs instead. and as cliche as it is to say this, it's just sad that people could be such bigots...especially the people you deserve utmost understanding from, people could have so much hatred in their hearts for things that they don't see coinciding with the way they live...how they call themselves liberal and yet have so many rigid reservations in their so called open minds, how they deem everything else outside of their world is a joke, how people think they can own people and brand them like cattle...i'm not angry. youth has exhausted my aggression. the whole angst thing died with grunge, kurt cobain, and the split of the smashing pumpkins. i just had this moment of sadness, for bigotry. for people. they'll never accept me and my life will be a constant cycle of explanation and re-explanation every time i enter the room with my wife, at office parties, at PTA meetings, etc, etc...should i choose to live this life, it would be that.

as embarrassing as it is to admit, sometimes i feel a sense of glorified martyrdom for choosing a difficult route...like it means something, like living in the martial law years and singing revolution songs when there's actually something to revolt against. it just seems silly to sing those songs now in revolt to our own stupidity for engaging in the purely symbolic act of choosing which puppet to run the government...or whatever, you know? yes, embarrassing to admit, sometimes i feel justified and full of depth and meaning to be gay, to have something to fight for and in doing so, eradicating possibilities to be stagnant and steady lang...like fashion...

but most of the time, it's just exhausting. nobody deserves to be under so much scrutiny and half mind assumptions that pass off as universal truths with no counter argument. nobody deserves to be under so much hatred, ridicule, or malicious notions. nobody deserves to fight just to live or be.

the thing is, they did it with such cruel intent, gathering information, espionage, lording over power and authority, asserting ownership like a farmer owns livestock, summoning god into the discussion, painting pictures of lesbians as copies of glenn close from fatal attraction...god, i don't know where they got that...they say lesbians are psychos who will kill all of them should i break a girl's heart...i'm putting them in danger, acheverlu-cheverlu...what can i say to that? jesus, which lesbian did they meet? that psychotic aileen wournos from that charlize theron movie? wow mhen...and to think, me, who has managed to stay away from drugs, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, finished my higher learning within 4 years even though i was not academically inclined, got a stable job even if my grades weren't exceptional, hangs out with equally good children although i would love to get dirty sometime...me...can't i be trusted just a little bit? i'm not smart but i'm not stupid either. i've learned things along the way. lessons of the past generation, not all of them applies anymore. i've picked up a couple of things that are more applicable. the world is dynamic. a little trust would be nice. i'm not stupid.

they did it with such cruel intent...it's hard to enumerate all of it. trauma has eradicated memories of it.



on the other hand, there's this sense of liberation. as they went on and on with such homophobia that makes brother mike of el shaddai seem like a liberal dirty dawg, i can't get over the fact that i actually said it. i'm gay. yeah...i'm gay. I'M GAY. i said it. like...naturally. all of a sudden, years of hiding came to an end. what lies beyond has open wide. frightening, yes, but uninhibited. i remember the times when my classmates in elementary asked me upfront if i'm gay and how i denied it furiously...i'd get teased because i look like a boy and how i kept myself from crying because i felt that would dignify their accusations...when i grew my hair long when i was in the 5th grade thinking it doesn't really make me feminine, there are many rock stars who grow their hair long...how i had to listen to my friends divulge on their crushes while i kept quiet knowing that should i indulge myself in the endeavor, they would surely freak out...how i exerted such effort to look feminine when my sister started exhibiting signs of homosexuality and i didn't want to be held responsible...how i fought the consuming passion i felt for my buggy knowing had i pursued it, regardless of outcome, it will destroy both our lives...how i kept all of my desires alone, when i'm broken, i kept it alone...how alone i was for such a long time...it's over. there's nothing left to hide.
and they said so many hurtful things with such cruel intent but it doesn't defeat the fact that i am free...i'm actually free, or in the threshold of freedom on my way to entering it.

so i'm ok. i'm actually ok.

the plan is, i save up...seriously save up and move out as soon as possible. life is elsewhere. gone are the aspirations of film and art or whatever...for now. maybe in the future, it will find me again. in the meantime, i have to do this so i could start. i'm way overdue but at least i caught it. i'm lucky enough to share this milestone with the right person...but either way, i'm doing this with or without her. i'm starting up the "piso para kay krystal" foundation. hehe. this is going to be rough and crazy but, gawd, it'll be one heck of an adventure.

one love

randomness # 9 receptionists, scar revision derma treatment, pedagogy of faith, and sango the burger master

i was walking along the halls of the gallery, the building right beside my office. i came from makati cinema square, bought myself twister fries from mcdonald's and smoked a couple of cigarettes before having to go back up to measure the time when it's reasonable enough to take another cigarette break. not that i'm a total addict, it's just that i don't have a project at the moment and i'm not busy enough to be distracted from my lips' desire to clasp on something...i'd rather smoke than pig out. both are unhealthy options, i'd opt for the one less fattening. i don't smoke as much when i'm busy...honest! it breaks the writing momentum when i go downstairs too often to take a cigarette break. so there.

i'm not an addict...i just have a lot of respect for the ancient recreational practice of herbal loving...on the 8th day, god created tobacco. amen.

i'm taking my time, slow steps that would still suffice as a normal stride, looking at shops and offices along the way...i feel sorry for receptionists who man glass door and glass window offices. imagine a whole day just waiting for people to come and go, guarding a threshold you can't completely enter...whole day, everyday...unwillingly put under exhibition by the glass doors and windows that leave no room for privacy...how do they check their friendster on a slow day? or watch you tube? or take a quick nap...i always sleep in my cubicle after lunch...they don't have that privilege. sometimes i would talk dirty to my girlfriend on the phone, tell her how i would like to sneak her in my cubicle, hide her under my desk, and let her eat me out the whole day...which come to think of it, i can actually do. those glass door window receptionists people can't do that. they can't even talk dirty on the phone, i'm sure. and i think, how lucky i am. well, to be more accurate, i think that if you think hard enough about it, anyone or any circumstance can be lucky. eyeing me as i enter and exit the glass frame, i'm sure they're thinking the same thing...how lucky they are that they're a lot closer to mcdonald's or something...i don't know.

i pass by one of those derma clinics at the gallery...unless i'm seeing double, memory tells me i've seen numerous similar clinics on that building. anyway, at the door there was this tarpaulin that enumerated the services that the said clinic offers. i read it to pass the time, waiting for my cigarette to burn out at least 3/4's of the stick...they had this one service called scar revision...and i thought, how do you revise a scar? i mean skin regenerates over the open wound. the scar is where it's supposed to be. one would have to eradicate the memory of perforated flesh for a scar to be revised. how does one do that? then i paused to ponder a little bit further...am i still thinking about scars in a literal sense? because i have a tendency to attach metaphorical chorva to certain things, especially when the said mundane thing is used with something that is not usually associated with it...scar...revision...scar revision. it's like when i wrote this paper about the book pedagogy of the oppressed in practice and i used god and religion as an example...to which my professor replied that god is a totally different subject matter that has got nothing to do with education (the main topic of pedagogy of the oppressed)...to which i answered god cannot exist without education. that's all that he really is, a series of theories and concepts accumulated over time and disseminated through education. god lives because of education, and he will continue to exist as long as someone is educating and some people are willing to listen. that being said, doesn't god employ the method of banking education? he (or those who educate people about him) instills and instills and we can't doubt him because every question is dismissed by a dead end mystical response. we learn, sometimes erroneous information but we learn...he, on the other hand, doesn't learn anything from us. he doesn't engage in classroom sessions and open panel discussions. why can't i use god as an example of what paolo friere described as instigators of banking education and oppression of the mind?


revise your paper, he said quietly.

ok. it's one of those times. scar revision is...well, scar revision. they could have said scar removal but...ok, scar revision. maybe they make it look like a beauty mark or something, purely random like something that one is born with. a rose bud on porcelain creamy white skin. yes, scar revision. it is what it is.

meaning is overrated. i mean to say, what meaning actually does is to make a concept overrated. words are dead symbols and sounds. perception attaches meaning based on individual perspectives and that mental editing process is overrated. it always is. even if you try to be humble or if you try to minimize indulgence on the mental editing process of understanding...if you try to take things in the literal, most basic sense, meaning will always be overrated...conspicuous, unrelenting, unforgiving, always kinetic...never potential...

i don't want to think. i want to go to strawberry fields. i want to get a new shirt, those long shirts that are long enough to cover your pant zipper, not too tight, not to loose, hangs off your body just right, makes you look thin type of shirts. i want a new one like that...in a different color. i love red but people are starting to call me the red menace. yes, i'll close my eyes and not think. just want stuff.

i made my way back to my office. in our building, on the first floor, there's this japanese burger place that, i swear, makes the best burgers ever. my personal favorite, the kimpira rice burger, seduced me into submission with its japanese sushi rice as burger patties, seaweed replacing the conventional and boring cabbage and lettuce, unrecognizable strips of vegetables cooked in what i think is a cross between oyster and teryaki sauce...which they simply call "japanese mixed vegetables", crispy crispy bacon...it's the best thing ever. SANGO...that's the name of the place, sango, the burger master. yes, it's a bit expensive but, my god, it's worth it...i once saw paul from up dharma down pigging out in sango. people actually pilgrimage to sango. it's that good. i was eyeing sango on my way upstairs. the owner noticed me. he's this short and stout friendly japanese guy who greets everybody within a 50 feet radius from his restaurant. he urged me to come and eat but my pay day is still a week away, i politely refused. i watched him walk away quietly as he noticed that i was clutching a mcdonald's plastic bag. i think i just broke his heart. hehehehe...no way...well, he shut the door behind him quietly...it was so japanese. before making my way upstairs, something on sango's door caught my attention. i saw this sign:

wanted: we hired a delivery boy. question inside.

i laughed out loud. people must think i'm this crazy person. i thought...wow, he's like proud he hired a delivery boy so he had to announce it. hehehe...and there i go again. attaching meaning...

hmmm...nah! that was just really funny. haha!

pop marriage

it was that crazy filmmaker from last tango in paris who conceptualized that theory that i'm trying to put into action: pop marriage...with his lilting french accent, he spoke softly and yet enthusiastically, pop marri-yaghh...his lips curl, unable to curb the wide-eyed child coming out of siesta wonderment at the onset of a brand new game of langit lupa...how unbecoming of a stereotypical nonchalant french man, i thought to myself. almost bordering on being naive...but if he can curb his pessimism, so can i. so hence, i curl my lips and feel the words escape the tiny opening on my face that rarely parts to hold all my thoughts back in. the sound, so foreign to me with its french pronunciation...pop marri-yaghh...that's what we'll do. our love will gyrate to the sweet and sickening synthesized lullabyes of n-sync or whatever it is that you listen to, songs pathogenically conquering the air waves and yet my memory still refuses to give it abode. pop marri-yaghh...i told myself...pop marri-yaghh..i promised you. we'll wear overalls and breakdance to sharp crescendos and when the songs pause between intervals of endings and intros, when our silent contempt engulfs the dance floor, when at times you scream to no avail because i cannot comprehend pop, we simply take off our overalls and become man and woman once again. make love in the silence of intervals and dance when the music resumes. pop marri-yaghh. there's no need to understand, only to feel the need to dance.
no longer will i wait in vain, ask for a last request, try as nelly furtado once belted before she herself metamorphosed to an all-too pop for her own good diva. case and point, even nelly furtado knew that pop marri-yaghh is the way to go. it is there between you and me, a plateau only perceived by subjective perspectives of altered drum loops in protools.

you and me, we are pop.

every time i call, i am announced by pop, intrusively breaking the air when your phone rings.

what's that?, i asked.

stickwitu by the pussycat dolls.

so you're saying every time i call, that song just accompanies my arrival? a song from the pussycat dolls?, i asked slightly embarrassed, remembering all the times i called and imagining how many people now associate me with that song.

yeah...it's my song for you.

really? what's it called again?

stickwitu...no spaces, the h absent, the "you" completely misspelled.

"you" completely misspelled.

"you" misspelled.

i'm misspelled?

yes..."you" are misspelled. completely misspelled. you completely misspelled.

welcome to pop marri-yaghh!

that song is me now.

i am pop.

i can feel tiny hairs stand on end as she breathes down my neck. she refuses the tiniest click of the mouse to escape her as i delete five years worth of 20 inch rains that fell constantly on my pavement colored skies, five years i danced to teardrops falling on my face, creating puddles on crevices that used to be empty...that which filled me for five years...gone by a single click of the mouse. my buggy's 20 inch rains, liquid as they are, can be erased by bulk.

i looked down on my shaky hands resting on the keys...a tear fell on my finger, but it filled no crevice. i'm flat...that's what pop does, makes you flat...but easily consumable...like seeing a horizon with nothing but grass.

so i watch my buggy die by my own hands, minute movements of pressing and clicking...and i thought, how fragile she actually is, how breakable five years can actually be...i scanned through this short story she wrote about being asked about desire and yet not being able to put it into words, about euphemisms and riddles and how i fancied that story belonged to me although i know that's highly unlikely...click...delete.

unan...delete

katha...delete

daliri...delete

mahiwagang kitay...delete...

killing her to the sound of pop hovering in the air

and all i know is you've got to give me everything...

shhh...stop singing...not now, hon.

nothing less cause you know i'll give you all of me...

you think pop has no depth? maybe you can write an ensemble script with a chronological scheme like 21 grams, you can convert bramantip to barbara to whatever, consume all these books with small font, as thick as the yellow pages, no story and no pictures, maybe you actually met john galt in one of your soul searching trips in the walls of intramuros, maybe you can write a very detailed integrated marketing campaign that will last for 6 months with virtually no budget, maybe you can contemplate on the existentialist motivation of wallpaper being wallpaper...but you can't figure me out...how's that for depth, hon?

i give you everything that i am...

you're not suppose to do that. i want to be with someone who loves herself enough to be able to love someone else without much self-deprecation and insecurity dramas...

i'm handin' over everything that i've got...

stop omitting the g's in your gerunds...or any word that ends with ing...like when you say mornin'...it annoys me. ebonics is bad enough...it's like you make this effort to sound so illiterate.

cause i wanna have a real true love...

isn't that kind of redundant? and what is real true love anyway? if there was such a thing, it would be the most selfish thing in the world...something that makes you feel like you're entitled to own a person or be owned...it's selfish and unnatural. people don't own people...we all grow old alone because the act of putting our raw thoughts into words dissolves emotions and it disintegrates further as it travels catacombs of preconceived notions of the concept under discussion...when you think you've touched someone, the truth is they're only touching themselves with their own ideas that were summoned by something slightly similar to what you said. the truth is we all masturbate, and we just fantasize about each other. that's real true love.

wanna is two words...want and to...for educational purposes.

don't ever wanna have to go and give you up

that's your prerogative. i don't own you...i will never try to. i respect you too much...the least you can do is show me the same courtesy.

stay up till 4 in the morning and the tears are pouring and i want to make it worth the fight.

hmmm...tears...are love's currency...that's funny...

what have we been doing for all this time?

i don't know...

baby if we're gonna do it, come on and do it right

right is relative

i took one last look at the computer screen but there was nothing to look at.buggy left no footprints as the tides swept her away...i'm left with nothing to look at but a horizon of dead calm seas of black waters and moonless nights. and the singing won't stop. synthesizers sound like ringing in the ears when played over and over again. pop.

and all i know is you've got to give me everything...nothing less cause you know i'll give you all of me...

but there's nothing left to give...don't you get it? the least i could do is to open wide and let you pierce some holes...wouldn't the right to do so suffice?

okay

okay

okay

pop!

i travelled 9000 km to give it to you

some wong kar wai shorties...

peter pan's unaccounted for disappearances

when people die young, they stay young forever, like vampires who roam endlessly on nights that stretch for centuries and centuries on end. hopes and dreams we once held for them, images of tequila shots and lime kisses in celebration of her college graduation, her first stick of cigarette, the first taste of the dreaded sinco on her class card, conversations on so many topics we have yet to talk about, growing old together and watching each other die as old women, and looking back on pictures of flawless skin, braces, and realizing that we were actually beautiful and we didn't enjoy it that much...these images die, far outshone by the abrupt ravishing of a fiery demise. they will never grow old.
and that's ok. it's like flying with peter pan, soaring through neverland skies on nights that never end. even as aspirations to go beyond birthdays yet to be celebrated die, what was had would suffice. it was a good life, undeniably well-lived.
and then a phonecall shatters the images of peter pan flying through the stars...the fizzy voice on the other line reveals that peter pan is actually a 40-something year old man in green tights ever-watchful of the fragile thin harness that held him up high, a secret we little kids always knew but dare not question. that's the magic of peter pan...you can't tell for sure where he came from, and even if he tells you up front, it all sounds...how do i put it? barbero...
the secret was that peter pan, the boy who never grew up, had a heart that harbored a fugitive and that neverland was born out of clandestine touches on late afternoons when the classrooms are empty, little love notes circulating an unsuspecting conduit of hand after hand until it finds its way home, split-second kisses when no one is looking, stolen embraces on far off places when degrees of separation go beyond six,our endless denial in his defense when PTA's are held...gawd...how we screamed at the top of our lungs that peter pan held no such sentiments of dysfunctional love, that he had a child-like glimmer in his eyes that will never go out...it's all a lie, and we knew that we were lying...we knew...and with that, we harbored the same fugitive. cold water ran through my spine as i heard the confirmation to this secret we all knew but ignored, this secret two years overdue...still potent as it was the first time i caught a glimpse of wrinkles on peter pan's supposedly flawless, child-like skin.
we grew up together...but peter pan had this secret life...and that's ok. we all do anyway. it wasn't as hidden as it was supposed to be. we can see through it, this secret world, and yet he denied us passage up to the very end.it died with him in the fire, the child, the fugitive he loved so much, their clandestine neverland...it was his, and his alone right to the very end.
as i press the end button on my celphone, i thought about what i knew and how it all fits with what was just confirmed. i thought about how much i knew of the people i love and how much i let on in exchange.i logged out from my email account and clicked the link to return to the yahoomail page. i typed my girlfriend's yahoo id and pondered on the thought of crossing unto the darkside. i promised myself that i'm not going to become one of those relationship assholes who are so enamoured with each other that they forget the concept of people's right to privacy.i'm not gonna do that...i'm not gonna do that...i told myself...
but i did...crossover unto the darkside. i felt this rush of voyeuristic pleasure as i sifted through email after email...her ex-girlfriend was just the right type of asshole who was cowardly enough to break up with women through email. i felt like a perverted lesbian version of nancy drew as i connect the dots of information i recognize, bad habits that were cited that i have been acquainted with on unguarded moments, etc, etc...
i remembered her scarred left wrist that i kissed in reverence of the past loves that brought us in the refuge of my room, how in this bloodbath, we stumbled on the same puddle and found coagulated semi-liquid masses that resembled hearts...now that i have crossed the dark side, i wonder if it is a prerequisite that this voyeuristic endeavor of knowing passwords and reading someone else's email should be requited in our case. i scanned through my emails and marked the ones that i deemed too painful to be read by eyes that love me. as i took a deep breath before erasing all traces of a love that once shook the core of my own private neverland, i found myself reminiscing through encrypted declarations of love that sustained me for almost half a decade. i read them all over again and watched it die in 2x fast forward speed.i can't, for the life of me, just cast her words out to sea...she taught me how to love and she taught me well. this is where i came from. this truth serves no purpose of enlightenment for the present, only to mark the days that came and went between point a and point b...but i can't delete these emails. i can't give her my password.
so for the record, peter pan never grew up. neverland is a world of lush greens, fairies and pixie dust, one-legged evil pirates who always lose, and little children who can fly.

pixel dust and pixel fairies

my life is moving in a straight line, long and winding before my heels that used to be bare. and shoes are overrated. i can still feel the cracks underneath my soles, the pebbles that found their way on crevices between my toes. i look straight ahead, there's a tiny white dot at the end of the road that holds no hidden pixels within its spherical outline, how it reminds me of Truman when he set forth to break free from the false life he has known and at the edge of his world, he finds a wall painted with the sky, perforated by the pinocchio-nose protrusion on the front of his sailboat. that's what the tiny white dot is, a wall with false skies, where i can pierce holes with my fingers. that's not too shabby when you think about it. it would suffice. i would have touched the sky.
and pixels are overrated anyway. "they're just tiny little dots within dots", i tell myself as i take snapshots of the horizon with my ancient nokia 6170.

try

and she said: our heart stops every time we sneeze. that's why it feels so good, to be numb from the pain for just one second.

and i thought...that is the most corniest thing i have ever had anyone say to me to get me into bed. totally beats out the time a guy once asked me how i liked my eggs in the morning...to which i replied: unfertilized, i hope...to which he reacted by just standing with this stupid look on his face...which made me wonder whether or not he understood the relation between eggs and fertilization. i mean, he brought it up. i just played with it a little...i assumed he knew about eggs and everything it entails...i felt a little disappointed. it only comes every once in a while wherein you have this slightly witty response to some random conversation-illiciting comment and it makes you hope that you have instigated a potentially fruitful mindfuck or repartee...but there it goes, as he shifts his eyes from my lips to the top of my head, to the side, to the side, to the side...and i go back to my beer and dream of breasts.

and so i'm here, breasts on top of mine...trying to salvage every ounce of desire i have left after her libido-sucking wordplay. then i think of...how it seems she always knew the right words to just fit that empty space. she didn't speak often but when she does, she shatters the world into silver sands that sift right through my fingers, how i miss remnants of soot and earth trapped in beads of sweat in my palms that are constantly wet, always wanting her, her alone.

and this is very wrong. the thing with sex is that it should only involve two people at one time...or for those of the risque nature, only the people present should be accounted for...otherwise, there are way too many people in the world and nothing will ever be sacred...not that all exertion should be, just that, if we can, we must recognize that finite pieces retain their finite nature by acknowledgment of their attributes for what they are and not by what they remind us of, to want something other than the finite piece we have right now. we owe them that. otherwise, we can never fully touch them. apples are apples, oranges are oranges..."a" is not "f"...nothing is sacred, but we exist. you, me, your breasts, my breasts, your body, my body, your loins, my loins...i want to be finite as you are so you can touch me as i am and i want to be right here and not so far away. i hope you're here too...because there are way too many people in the world...

"what are you thinking?"

"what? nothing...just...that's...um...that's pretty cute...sneezing..."

"you're mocking me..."

"i mock you not..."

"fuck you..."

"you wish..."

(laughs)

"it is cute...i've...um...never thought of sneezing in that light. i mean, really? how do you know?"

"shut up..."

(laughs)

"i'm sorry...sometimes it just feels so gay to say things like that...like the moon and your hair and shit like that...it's so gay..."

"but we ARE gay..."

(laughs)

"and i thought you were a writer...i was expecting panty-twitching lines from you..."

"oh...now you mock me..."

"you have this thing for mindfucks and shit that i don't get and i just want you...to be right here, you know?"

(pause)

"yeah...i know...i actually know."

(pause)

"shhh..."

"what?"

"what do you know? i think that mildly resembled mindfucking..."

"hon, that's just foreplay."