This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on October 14, 1999.
“It’s either you’re straight or you’re gay or you’re just bloody frigid,” my friend declared in a dismissive tone before digging into a bag of potato chips. It was a lazy afternoon in the university, and we found that the red stone benches around the sunken garden provided us a place to rest not only our tired bodies but also our minds burdened by the day’s dose of academic requirements. The shade of a gigantic tree and the sullen expressions on our faces made us inconspicuous to the passing crowd of equally weary students eager to get out and relax.
It had always been like that with me and David. We talked about anything under the afternoon sun: politics, music, literature, fashion, guys, movies, media, more guys, sex. We shared the same enthusiasm for nice broad shoulders and well-defined lips. We debated about body builds and hairstyles. He liked big brawny men, jock-types who look like they’ve been going to the gym ”big time.” I preferred leaner ones, those who seem to keep fit just by doing manly chores around the house if they aren’t out playing basketball or playing the drums or the guitar.
To me, guys who go to the gym are vain. Every Wednesday afternoon, David went to a gym to work on his abdominal muscles and to hunt for ”prospects.” To put it crassly, he liked to get laid every Wednesday, right there in the Olympic-size swimming pool, just before it was closed for the night.
”How does it happen? Why is it so easy for you?” I asked, remembering my past experiences with trying to catch some guys’ attention, to no avail. ”It’s easy,” he said. ”Our eyes meet. One of us approaches the other. Small talk, casual sex, instant satisfaction.” He described it the way a cook would tell anyone how to boil eggs. I looked at him hard, searching for any trace of emotion that would convey what he really felt about the whole business. His face remained impassive, until I asked him: ”Well, is he finally the one?” He burst into laughter. ”Nagpapakasaya pa ako, okay? Saka na ‘yan,” he said. If anybody told me four years earlier that I’d be holding such a conversation with a homosexual, he could have gotten either of two things: my famous stare that makes anyone feel like fungus, or the kind of laughter that would make him feel like an idiot.
* * *
Back in high school, there was this peculiar character named Don, who preferred to be called Donnie. That was fine with me, but the whole school talked about him behind his back during class hours, and then mocked him seconds after classes were dismissed. The Freak, he was called. It was no secret that he was not a boy, because he walked and talked funny and his cheeks were rouged. Even the most fashion-conscious among us girls could not determine whether it was cosmetics or his natural skin color. The brothers would not have tolerated students wearing makeup in school, much less boys wearing blush-on.
But neither was he a girl, because he wore the standard uniform for high school boys, used the boys’ CR, and was the seventh tallest in the boys’ line (he would have been third had the school authorities allowed him to wear his platform mukluks). But one thing’s certain: Donnie crimped his lashes.
One day after lunch, the students were taking their time walking from the canteen to the main building where classes were to resume in 15 minutes. I was alone, a third-year nerd who was friendly enough (based on her willingness to share her answers during tests) to join any clique but who valued her identity too much to associate herself with any of them. I felt him trudging not far behind me, a contrasting picture of absolute dejection and peacefulness at the same time. He never looked at me. He never minded the rowdy bunch of guys who were cracking jokes and hooting insults.
For a moment I felt what it was like to be in his shoes, an outcast scorned by people who could only see black and white and not the nuances that made up real life. People who thought they were perfect and therefore they had the right to look down on others who took a different path. Then, he looked up and returned my stare with a darker one. ”Ano’ng problema mo? Anong tinitignan mo diyan?” he said with a voice that sliced my silence, with words that shot through me painfully.
* * *
If I had been male, I would’ve hit on her the moment we met. She wasn’t physically attractive–”red meat,” as I’ve heard some men put it–but she exuded beauty in everything she did, every gesture she made. The way she tossed her hair; the way she pursed her lips when she was thinking and snapped her fingers when she finally came up with a brilliant plan; the way she could hold a long, drawn-out argument on the nature of Anne Rice’s Mayfair witches; the way her throaty voice lilted and filled the whole tambayan whenever we asked her to sing; and the things we would talk about without pretense or shame–any of these would have been enough to make anyone fall for her. Anyone, including me.
She was open about being bisexual. She disagreed with the popular notion that bisexuality was a myth. ”When one falls in love,” I remember her saying, ”one sees the beauty of the soul, and not the body it comes in.” I also remember her asking if she could kiss me. I saw nothing wrong in it. In fact, everything about it was beautiful.
* * *
There’s an ancient myth I read, which is about how human life started. It says that in the beginning, the gods created three main beings each made up of two identities: male/male, female/female and male/female. They filled the earth. Then the gods decided to split them all up. They hurled their thunderbolts and there was a loud bang. Suddenly the whole world was filled with male and female beings, all wandering aimlessly, all getting drawn together and pulled apart as they ventured through a lifelong quest for their missing half.
You might think it’s easy for me to say all these things because I appear heterosexual and therefore I am acceptable to society. But I have gone through my share of experiences and have proven to myself that I am what I am. Right now, I’m in a serious and intense relationship with my boyfriend. This February, we will be celebrating our third anniversary. Like many other happy people, I have never doubted my sexuality. Sometimes no matter what other people say, no matter what society thinks, coming to terms with one’s sexuality, accepting one’s self for the person God has made him or her to be and standing up for one’s right to be happy can make a world of difference, a world of bliss. A world where everyone is gay.