Are you ready?

For one moment, I thought I should let you in my most private of private life even for a while. Something tells me it's about time I breathe another life to an old but very meaningful letter I wrote my mom not too long ago rather than let it gather age and irrelevance. I acceded, initially with some hesitation, but replaced quickly by an overpowering sense of personal joy and bliss.

I have written a thousand letters in the past. At one time, I thought I have written so much I wouldn't have problems weaving words to express myself. I was wrong. Coming-out letters are different. They're probably the most difficult to compose. It took me hours to even just start off. I can only manage a blank stare. You want to cram your entire lifestory in several paragraphs hoping you assuage fears, clear misconceptions, erase prejudices, solicit acceptance, invite love, all at the same time.

So now, with much delight, I'd like to share with you that letter I wrote which brought tears to mom's eyes for a while, but which gained me her love, admiration and respect. The least I hope that'll happen are two things: That friends will know me more while soon-to-be friends gain support from my story and do whatever they have to do to make living truthfully an object of immense desire.

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Dear Mamang,

I had a very difficult time starting this letter. For several weeks, I had been putting off doing this because I couldn’t get myself to sit still in front of the computer and start writing. There are many things I wanted to say and I get lost along the way.

There are three things I really wanted to say.

First, thank you for extending your stay here in Manila. You could have opted to leave right after your birthday, but you stayed on. It may not be obvious to many, but your reason was certainly so clear to me. I’d like to think you decided to wait for a few more weeks behind Papang so you can be with me during my birthday. That was very touching. And I was deeply touched. I really appreciate it.

I have certainly grown. From a young boy who enjoyed playing in the streets back in the province, I have matured to become an independent, responsible, kind, generous, and intelligent young man. I have never directly described myself this way because I have always tried to be unassuming, but a closer look in me reveals that I am these, in one way or another, in more ways than one.

For all of these, I couldn’t think of any other significant influence on me than how you have brought me up. I have witnessed several images of everyday things you have done in the past, which for you may have been ordinary, but have always remained very vivid and strong reflections of the kind of person I would like to turn out. For instance, I couldn’t count the number of times when, as a kid, we would rummage through my old clothes and things in search for something that may still be useful for the neighbor's children. I was very young that time, about less than ten years old, but I have fond memories of those times. They taught me charity, generosity, and selfless giving. Which, up to now, I still very strongly hold.

Going further down memory lane, I still have very glowing memory of that evening when I was in Grade 3 and, with your help, I was able to memorize a complete section of the multiplication table while on a motorcycle trip on our way to visit relatives. You were very patient and encouraging, and I felt very good that night. There was also that morning in kindergarten when I figured in a fight and you came running to my rescue. I felt very relieved knowing you were there, but at the same time, embarrassed that I somehow failed you. Which may be somehow what I'm feeling right now.

But I don’t regret turning out to be what I am. This is the second thing I wanted to say. More and more each day, I am convinced that a huge part of the kind of good person that I am may be explained by it. I have grown and matured to understand that there is nothing that should be regretful or disheartening or chilly about being gay. It was not your fault in the first place. It’s not a question of whether you failed to do something or not. Worse, it’s not even a question of you having done something which you could have opted to do otherwise.

I respect your religious sensibilities and those things that you have grown accustomed to believe because you grew up with them. But in my generation, maybe we were more bold in questioning things and beliefs so it was easier for us to be open to other ways of looking at things.

Please believe me when I say that I am very happy with myself. And as a parent, I am sure that is what you would like your son to feel. There have been a few hitches in the past, but I have managed my way through. One of them was telling my only sister. It may surprise you to know now that she has learned about me for more than four to five years already. She, like everyone else, was shocked, but after getting back her composure, came to accept the reality and embraced me with more love and acceptance. She promised not to ever tell you because that was the proper thing to do. Now, we’re more open with each other. What this revelation did was make me feel good about myself. I am deeply proud to say that I am honest and true with myself, something that other people cannot imagine to do in their lifetime. I am glad God was generous with me to give me so much courage and love.

And that’s exactly why I am very thankful for God’s infinite wisdom. The God that other people came to identify and grew up with was somebody who was supposed to love only straights and not those kinds of people who were deemed abnormal. This made me question some people, how can they worship a God like that, one who’s judgmental and plays favorites? What reasons could He have that He created a certain group of people straights and others non-straights? It’s something very mind-boggling.

I’m happy that the God that I worship is so hugely understanding and perfect. Since He is perfect, He creates things perfectly. He doesn’t make anything less than perfect. So when you come to see things from this point of view, all people are perfect and normal regardless of race, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation. The kind of person one is is not ever measured by whom he or she goes to bed with. It is by how one treats another person. That’s why, people who are quick to judge me never intimidate or bother me. I know deep in my heart that they cannot convincingly claim superiority over me or another person in whatever terms. Applying this in my case, you will now understand that I am as perfect and normal as any other person. There’s nothing wrong with me.

Lastly, I would like to assure you that I will continue to be the kind of good friend and good son that I am. This hopefully should be enough to make you feel strongly each day. Please continue to do things that you enjoy doing in the States and not worry so much about us here.

Thanks for your love and support. Thanks for your strength and resilience. And most of all, thank God you’re my mom.


Love,
J.

Cry songs

As of my last count, there were only three songs that make me cry or at least misty-eyed. Two of them are OPM's, the other is an old Carpenter song. These three have never failed to practically stun me and render me motionless for a few moments while I sigh heavily and switch to a sentimental mode or whatever is left of a once romantic self I have known.

Recently however, there was one more song added to that list. It's something not new to me since I have heard of it many times before either on the radio or sung by my sister when she makes herself a glass of iced tea. I would just ignore that song and let it pass. It came back to haunt me a few weeks when I heard it performed by local school-based all-male choral group.

I froze. And I allowed myself to weep.

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I will be here


Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the sun does not appear,
I will be here.

If in the dark we lose sight of love,
Hold my hand and have no fear,
‘Cause I will be here.

CHORUS
I will be here when you feel like being quiet;
When you need to speak your mind, I will listen.
And I will be here when the laughter turns to crying;
Through the winning, losing, and trying, we’ll be together,
‘Cause I will be here.

Tomorrow morning if you wake up
And the future is unclear,
I will be here.

As sure as seasons are made for change,
Our lifetimes are made for years,
So I will be here.

CHORUS
I will be here, and you can cry on my shoulder;
When the mirror tells us we’re older, I will hold you.
And I will be here to watch you grow in beauty,
And tell you all the things you are to me;
I will be here.

I will be true to the promise I have made,
To you and to the One who gave you to me.

Wetness First

I recently transferred gyms. I now have to walk around 250 meters from my office building to work out instead of merely transferring elevators in an adjoining building as has been the case in the last few years. My old gym seemed like another family to me and I will miss some familiar faces, but sadly, it had to close down at the end of the month because it wasn’t making enough money to carry on for another year. It had been in the red for the last two years or so, management says.

My new gym seemed to be the only logical option for me to transfer. It’s near, new, and, well, classy as some deem it to be. It’s on the eighth floor of one of several towering structures lining up Ayala Avenue. Although you can’t really enjoy the cityscape from that height, at least you can make out the stretch of the entire business district when you look out the glass panels. One quick look at the street traffic below and it can make or break your plans of heading home after a workout session.

Three years ago, I checked out this gym when it started operations. I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t have good vibes on the place. I felt like a stranger. True, it was, at that time, considered to be the most modern gym in this side of the city. The other gyms just stared and sighed as they watched their clients move to this new place. Among others, it had wider space, 30-plus cardio machines, five to six aero classes everyday, fully-airconditioned, and of course, a free-flowing offer of complimentary softdrinks, iced tea, and coffee for members, which has become the most popular attraction for the gym. It has in fact swayed some people I know to actually enlist. I still don’t understand how this has influenced some people to actually sign up, but it had. It’s not as if one is able to wolf down gallons of these drinks to become so significant a factor.

Things have been OK for over a week now. I don’t know most of the people there, but that doesn’t bother me. I go there knowing my workout program for the day, hit my one-to-one-and-a-half-hours exercise routine, hit the showers, change, and leave. I sometimes opt to spend a few minutes in the sauna to loosen tensed muscles, but I end up getting more stressed and uneasy. Everyone seems to be constantly on cruising mode.

But that’s another story.

My Lolo Cesar

My maternal grandfather Cesar is a huge man. Not tall, but huge. Everytime he walks in a room, he has this certain commanding presence you would think he’s the tallest man who ever lived or one who holds the most number of inventions in the world or the only person awarded the Nobel ten times. The truth is, he’s just about 5’6, no famous discoveries to his credit, while the closest he got to Nobel was a Gintong Ama award he received from His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin in the late 1980’s as one of the country’s top ten fathers that year.

That award meant a lot for him. It should be. For somebody who endured all imaginable difficulty raising eleven children to be all professionals today, the recognition he got was a mere speck of the honor and praises he should really be showered.

His story began in 1929 in an island called Itbayat, the northernmost inhabited island in the Philippines. As the eldest child in the family, he took on the burden of looking after the family from a young age courtesy of a father who drank too much, gambled too much, and absent too much. At the tender age of 14, he assumed the duties of a family provider. He agreed to have ropes tied around his waist as harness when he joined road construction along the island coast. They blasted rocks and pushed them several hundred feet on the shoreline below. One false footwork and death eagerly lies ahead. For a few more pesos, he also enlisted as one of the many manual laborers who paved a vast grassland in the outskirts of town to make way for the main airport in the island.


Located four kilometers from the main town, this spot was where my grandpa manually labored pushing off blasted rocks off to the sea for a few centavos a day.


Next time you visit Batanes, stop by this spot called Paderes Cliff and remember Lolo Cesar.

God is good, my greatgrandma would unashamedly declare whenever he remembers his son, my grandpa Cesar. She never said it in so many words, but he was her only comfort in those countless years when she endured a marriage that overflowed with all but love and devotion. Nobody actually knows how my grandfather felt in those many turbulent years worsened even by the Second World War. Even up to this time, he keeps most things to himself, not even his late wife, my very photographable grandma Tina, probably had any knowledge of.

That’s why I felt very privileged when Lolo Cesar asked me recently to go over the manuscript of his autobiography. From over 30-plus grandchildren, he picked me to do a once over on his draft. I felt honored, really flattered. Apparently, he has been spending time writing his thoughts and stories in the past several years. I can only surmise he knows he lived a very colorful life that remains unrivaled to this day, one that needed to be told in my generation to keep us from being swayed over hurtful or sometimes ruthless ways.

Now in his late 80’s, he’s enjoying the fruits of his labor in far USA. He probably stands shorter than 5’6 today, still with no celebrated invention, but a life well lived.

Campus voyeurs

Several years ago, I took a day off from work one fine day in December just to catch what has turned out to be only annual major midday event inside UP campus that holds back time and everyone’s breath for a few minutes. The occasion, referred to as the Oblation Run, has become so famous it has merited coverage from every major local television network as well as interest from droves of people, mostly alumni or non-UP students, who troop to the university for reasons we may never know.

The crowd starts to thicken around a quarter before 12 o’clock. Students cut classes, teachers give way to pleas from students, people clog all corridors and stairways, everyone pushes everyone around to get to a prime spot, camera-wielding viewers jostle their way to the front. The air is hot, there’s no place move, you trade breaths with whomever is beside you, everyone’s hungry, everybody gets restless. The campus is virtually a small mad and wild city. Girly --- and, well, manly --- shrieks become deafening as several completely nude men descend from a car and, from there, jog their way in the middle of the crowd enroute to a raised platform where they spend a few moments raising clenched fists while shouting chants of whatever theme or campaign or struggle their group advances. Mostly it’s about a critical current school-based issue like tuition fee increases or a persistent national concern like care for the environment or anti-corruption.


Photo courtesy of a website

In the middle of the chaos the last time I watched, when I was mindlessly staring a woman in her thirties sitting silently on the pavement across from where I was, I kind of thought how amusing it was for everyone in that place to shed off their shyness for one time and satisfy, in my theory, one’s natural voyeuristic tendencies. Every one in that place I’m sure has a different reason for being there. Some noble, some trivial. But in my limited thinking bandwidth, I got stumped trying to find out what other reasons could there be to explain people's brave presence there. I understand if someone cites "educational purposes or entertainment reasons," but for most, it's not far that a judgment game arises: How do I compare? How do I fare? Am I at par? Is everyone cut? Is that how I look when naked?

But those lines come most likely from the boys. The girls, on the other hand, have a far more hilarious take on it. More often than not, it comes in the form of a question. With waving hands and yelling voices, they come asking, "Where is it? Where is it? I see only hair! It's all hair!"

I can be nasty too!

Without holding back, F. just blurted out to me, “Yeah, get in there. Guys are just waiting to get laid inside. Go get your share. Looks like you need it.” It would have been different if it were just the two of us talking because we’ve known each other for quite a while. But, my god, we were in a group of around seven, some of whom I have met only that time. F. didn’t stop there. Holding my elbows, he motioned as if to drag me inside the bar. That was it. I could no longer restrain myself. I was seething inside. I furiously shot back, “If this is how you get your self-esteem, please spare me. I don’t need men to make me feel good.”

He turned silent. He quickly realized I wasn’t joking. It wasn’t difficult to see why. It was as if I transformed into some goddess of doom right there. Some of the people in the group probably noticed what happened, but I tried somehow to carry on my conversations with them. I didn’t want to spoil their night. We were outside a popular bar along Makati Avenue famous for its not-so-flattering history.

There are very few occasions when comments from people suddenly make me defensive. One of them would be this. I don’t welcome the idea of people thoughtlessly picking on me (or whomever for that matter) thinking it’s OK since we know each other or we call each other friends from way back . I especially abhor the idea of people doing that in the pretense that it’s just a joke or a source of fun or to reinforce a point. What right do they have to do that?

I normally just ignore unkind remarks from friends or otherwise which I find disagreeable or, at the very least, senseless. I put on an unaffected front and start counting sheep and stars most of the time. Not because I like to be known as the next bitch in town, but I have figured, it’s the only way to spare me from unnecessary arguments and useless spats.

My unfortunate encounter with F made me realize I am far from perfecting the art of being unaffected. I will probably have a long way to go to master it. You see, I haven’t completely lost that urge to throw back stinging one or two liners to nasty and below-the-belt comments either from pathetic people aspiring for the slightest attention or wicked souls living inside alluring persons

Birthday lola

Her body's response to chemotherapy the last five months has been a source of joy for everyone in my family. For one week each month, my 77-year old grandfather's sister Lourdes has patiently visited the doctor's clinic for treatment. Later today, her 78th birthday, she's scheduled for the last doctor's appointment this month. It will be her 25th chemo session to add to the five more set on the last cycle next month. Afterwards, she'll be off for a well-deserved vacation.

I just spoke to her on the phone a few minutes ago. She was bubbly as usual. Her animated laughs obscured all the signs of her battling colon cancer. We spoke a bit of the home, we remembered relatives, and then she mentioned about wanting to go out with me next time I visit the mall. I sensed boredom. No one really ever’s taking her out on the three weeks she’s given to rest after each treatment cycle. A widow, she’s staying with her sister in an apartment that also houses a daughter’s family. She's made to feel at home there. Tita Baby's three kids are enough to shower the house with fun spirit. While it may not really compensate for something she's grown accustomed to, it's enough to keep herself reminded of Batanes. Her other source of amusement, I presume, is getting the kicks out from watching television or the calls from her children or grandchildren which come very seldom. She misses home so much. But I think she misses her grandson Joseph a lot more.



Joseph's story is one for the primetime soap operas. At nine years old now, I'm not sure if he's been told how he came to the family. Not that it matters, but I just thought he deserved to know. This photo of Joseph holding some wild flowers which I took last year when I went home to Batanes will be exactly what I will give my Auntie Lourdes later as present. She'll be excited, that's a given. But more than that, I'm even surer I'm going to see tears.

Solitary sense

Words fail me sometimes. No matter how much I try spouting them flawlessly out of me, I seem to make no progress at all. I get stuck, I get cramps, I lose things. I then close my eyes and carefully weave thoughts as I talk to myself. Sometimes I get lucky, other times I'm just a poor unfortunate soul.

But there are occasions when I'm at my best, when I mouth carefully selected thoughts and words with the least effort as if I've spoken them from birth. I sit tall, I look through, I talk sense. Most of the time, it's about the heart, its affairs, pains, and longings. I never claimed to be an authority on this, it's just that maybe I spent more time trying to learn from things that happened to me before.

That's why I find time to travel alone to places near and far. I save up for this, I fix my schedules for this, I consider this sacred. Finding time for yourself should figure in the list of things everyone should do. It's a rewarding tribute to one's self. It's never an issue of being a loner or hopeless depressive as some of my concerned friend worry about. For me, it's an act of love, in fact the only time when self-love comes out appealing.



I don't expect people to understand in the same manner that I don't expect love prospects to shine for all this year. But behind all of this is one simple prayer: I hope things work out for all of us this year. As a start, I'd like to give everyone flowers.

Hello 2005!

When everybody else was busy scouring wetmarkets and groceries on new year's eve to complete the traditional 13 rounded fruits, I spent that day quietly treading on the muddied ricefields in my favorite village up in Banaue.



I endured a nine-hour bus ride, several landslides, one-hour jeep ride, and finally an hour of downhill trek before reaching this heaven on earth. With just me, a bottle of red wine, and my Carpenters cd.

A swollen start

It hasn’t even been a week since the start of the year and I’ve already figured in a dreadful accident. Something tells me faintly, this must be a horrifying year for me. But I hope the gods in the heavens won’t allow it. Feng shui, for one, has declared this year to be good for rat people. I don’t exactly subscribe to it although it merits my attention more than horoscopes, but things have been pretty OK since I got back from spending new year in a secluded village up in the Cordilleras.

Last Wednesday, I joined around 15 friends in a volleyball game near my place. They have been playing weekly since last year. While I’m not present all the time, they make sure that I’m updated on the playing schedule. They can always make use of another set of hands. A few minutes into the first set, I leaped to block a net spike only to plummet on the toes of the other player. The uneven surface was just what my feebly already-injured right ankle needed to twist so badly it swelled up awfully in a matter of seconds. The swelling seemed to race in the same speed as Arnel frantically attempted to undo my shoelaces.

That night, my sweet gurl friend Joy slept over to make sure the 24-hour cold compress is completed. Although I didn’t actually need her help to deliver me to the bathroom for some nocturnal personal activity since I was still able to hop my way anyway to the urinal, I was comforted by her presence lying there beside me on the floor without any complaint as I slept raising my legs to rest on my bed. My doctor friend said I had to elevate the injured ankle.

And so the next few days, I was practically holed up in my bedroom. In a way, I was glad I had so much time in my hands so I was able to finish several DVD’s I have long bought from my favorite Makati Square stall. It turned out to be a perfect way also to test the new set of 5.1 speakers I got myself for christmas. I would watch badminton on cable in the afternoons only to wait for the early evening newscast. I would sleep afterwards till around midnight and would be awake to watch some more movies or ESPN till my eyes hurt or I’d remember that I’d probably be the only one awake in the whole city, whichever is earlier.