After work I drove my car to Boca to meet James and his gang. They included James' partner, Oscar the Brazilian who was very nice and very much domesticated. There was Chloe who was on a business trip to do a photo shoot for a magazine. A model from Italy, whose name was Alessandro was accompanied by a Pinoy photographer Marlon. Marlon showed me the magazine covers he produced in the past that left me awestruck. And Mario, my ever dependable friend from Miami completed the gang. Besides James and Mario, I did not know the others personally. I would not recognize Chloe, who in her prime years in the Philippines was a top model and a TV actress, had she not been introduced to me. But I am getting ahead of my story here.
I looked for James the moment I stepped into the Boca village they were staying-in for the week-end. "I am by the pool," he told me via cell as I waded through the splendor of the tropical paradise where their cottage was embedded. Familiar plants and trees greeted me: mangos, star-apples, bananas, gumamelas, bougenvillas, and others I could no longer identify by name - that for a minute I thought I was in the Philippines. "Over here," James shouted. I directed my eyes and steps toward his raspy, shrilly and thin voice.
"You've never changed James. You look so young," I said. I hugged him and I was sincere with what I said. When was the last time I saw James - ten, fifteen years ago maybe? I can no longer recall exactly. He was like a chameleon in each of those brief encounters. There was a time he was rounded and bouncy like a ball, on another occasion I saw him a muscular model stepping out of a GQ magazine, and now, he looks like a queen who stepped out of a botox session. Best of all, he has a hunk walking by his side.
James' lovers are as ephemeral as his looks. "Who is this new guy James?" I asked.
James introduced me to Oscar the Brazilian, his new lover, and this triggered a deja vu in me. My mouth curled awkwardly -- "So what happened to Mike?" I remember Mike, James' old lover who was a Fil-Am through and through. How nice it would have been had they partnered forever. Mike was the best friend of Bino Realuyo and there was a time I thought of hanging out with Bino through Mike. I was thinking of interviewing the novelist, do his little spread on my little web site, but that never materialized and may never materialize with the heavy schedule I have with my PT job. Added to that, James and Mike have parted long long time ago. How could James divorce Mike who was cute, educated, intelligent, not flaming and he was...
"Mike was studying to be a lawyer, wasn't he?"I asked.
"He is practicing now in DC."
Mike would have been a good catch. I was contemplating this until I realized Oscar the Brazilian was there listening to this question and answer portion of the beauty pageant. I was talking about the ex in front of the current. Oscar must have thought I was the rudest gay person he ever met. But he kept his composure calm, just as manly as any Portuguese would maintain his composure in rude moments. There was nothing wrong with the hunk - he's good looking. BUT. Too nice though. Too nice can be a deterrent to me. I want men with balls. Rough. Rednecks. Great challenges. That's why I'm loveless. I'm susceptible to marry a criminal.
Everybody was quietly staring at me. Seems like they were scared of what my big mouth would ask and say next. I had sense not to go on with this 'beso-beso' with James in front of Oscar. I will eventually find time alone later with him and I promised myself I'd squeeze every bit of information I could get out of him. But right now --
Really, right now I just want to spend time with my old time friends. Life in my neck of the woods isn't as glamorous as Chloe. I've been working everyday and even when I greet everybody with phrases like "You look so young" they hardly respond with the same to me. It's really unfair. Here I stand, direct from lifitng and exercising patients, smelling sweat and looking so haggardly, coming down in my rickety Toyota Corolla, greeting people from New York who are ready to step out of magazine covers, all relaxed, all so ready for photo shoots, cell phones ringing every five seconds, opening trinkets of clothes, all happy, very rich and oh so fulfilled in their glamorous careers, how do you think I feel? How do I feel? Of course I felt like retreating to my provinciano mentality. Y'know it, here are my friends from the big city visiting me in my little nipa hut. So I walk to my clay pot of rice to see if I need to cook soon. I check the bamboo jar for some sweets for initial offerings. Then I go out to catch the chicken for tinola and adobo and later the pig for lechon.
"Alex Maskara," James nearly screamed, "Will you shut up and sit down here and talk properly?"
Apparently I was asking if everybody has eaten, does everybody need anything from the store? How can I make you all comfortable? Really, it's hard to get out of this provinciano funk of super hospitality that gets everybody so uncomfortable. Even Chloe put her cell phone on hold, stared at me like asking, who is this guy? Her eyes sought James' begging to know how I even became his UP classmate. Then her cell phone resumed ringing. She shrugged her shoulders and went on chatting about her business. James said, "Don't worry about anything Alex. We will go out tonight for dinner."
I was about to contradict him - how about the chicken and the roasted pig and the rice and look, I already prepared the fire and the clay pot - but I thought it better to shut the provinciano right there and then before I get thrown out of the cottage.
I am fully dysfunctional nowadays. I blame it on the never ending stress of OFW life: when I assume everything has gotten better, something new comes up. A new problem here. A bill there. An expense due yesterday. All the while I'm working and letting days and years pass by. Since I turned mid-40s, I get tired easily so I never get out anymore to 'spend good times'. I become less concerned about my future and instead get focused on the future of the next generation. Worse, I don't care about my looks. I am the only gay in town who don't trim my eyebrows until the barber looks at them in an amused odd way and offers with delight to do the job for me. I wake up with my eyebrows' strands crisscrossing they scare the shit out of me while looking at the mirror. The worst part is I don't care. Mario and Kiko tried their best doing a make over on me until they gave up. They brought me to the high end fashion stores of Neimann Marcus, Macy's, Aber whatever combe, Gap, Banana rama Republic and when I whined about the prices they gently led me to JC Penney, Walmart, Marshall, Ross and TJ Max and when I still complained about these stores, they just dropped me at the flea market and waved goodbye saying, feast on all the trash, boy.
When I work seven days a week, in hospitals, why in the world would I need fashion? I wear scrubs in my job and running shorts in my runs and casual shorts when I roam. I may have the best leather jacket and leather hot pants but if there is neither a day nor a night out for me, then the leather may just as well rot and degenerate back to nature. I was given up by many gay friends as un-salvageable, somewhat beyond repair and redemption. That's life. The good thing about being the way I am is - nobody pays attention to me. I can roam like a ghost and nobody would even suspect. The last time I went back home to the Philippines, I was shoved and 'given the stare' in LRT like I were any provinciano that just arrived to the big city. I rode jeepneys and was pushed and squeezed and was told to move like a peon who just left work. I was walking leisurely in PICC and a car nearly ran me over, the driver blasted the horn at me, rolled down his window and yelled, "Tumabi ka tanga!" I stared at him stupefied by the ease he mouthed the insults. I realized right there and then that I have now gotten used to American drivers who give way to pedestrians. There is a standard 'respect' between drivers and pedestrians in the USA. It is easy to forget that in Manila rudeness is an ordinary thing. I smiled and bowed my head at the driver. I could have told him that Luneta, Manila Bay and the CCP grounds were practically my home when I lived in Manila. And when I was still living here, cars usually ran slower to respect people who walked. But -- I am now swerving away from my story.
James and I settled down in a corner to update each other about our lives. It was the usual chit chat over the excitement of immigrant life that eventually fades to the daily grind and struggles we face at work, at our homes, in the neighborhood. We prefer not to talk about politics - religion and politics are banned in conversations among friends whose opinions are as far apart as the earth's poles. James and Chloe are friends of the former First Lady and I am not. Chloe is like a sister to the former First Daughter and I can't imagine myself in their company. Yet, despite all these differences, we managed to be civil and act like the best of friends. We are still the best of friends, I'd like to think. At the end of the day, what remain are NOT the people we know but the people we love. At the end of the day, what remain are NOT our associations but the special bonds we formed in our common histories. So there I sat with James as we recollected our college years. Every now and then, his phone would ring and he'd be screaming and smiling one minute then get serious and intense in another.
As a gay person who no longer knows how to socialize, I watched James with admiration. I've never developed social graces in growing up and the little I have learned soon disappeared with my hermetic life here in the Palm Beaches. James blossomed like a butterfly in New York. He'd regale me with tales about people of grand names in the Philippines and I was happy just listening.
About a famous Philippine politician, James said, "I was riding the elevator to get up to my condo in Manhattan and there was this Filipino Politician who looked at me and asked, "You look Filipino, are you Filipino?" I looked at him and answered, "Yes, I am Filipino." Then he asked, "Are you the janitor here? You know I am planning to buy a unit in this building." James was shocked by this Politician's assumption. "No, I am not a janitor here, man!" he answered. The Politician was obviously pissed by his response and said him, "You know who I am don't you?" And James in his usual self with eye rolling and bored sighing declared, "No!"
Good for you James, I said, for once give these arrogant politicians the shit they deserve. "I don't know what they think they are made of," James said. "They think they own Filipinos with their minute titles and feel more intelligent than the rest with their minute brains."
We laughed. Yeah, politicians to us are nothing but mendicants. Take their positions out of them and they'd hardly be able to climb as high as James have climbed in the world where real business operates. Buy a unit in Manhattan, my ass. Talk about pork barrel expenditure there. There is a big difference between buying a condo unit in Manhattan from the money you worked hard for and from the money you stole from taxpayers.
I'd rather be greeting Melanie Marquez, if you ask me. Melanie or Mimi to James and Chloe is one spectacular Filipino I'd like to meet. With her standard English and diction, I'd like to match her wit with my own idiosyncratic English. And because we are both Kapampangan I want to find out if we are really blessed with wide jaws as Mario would say about Pampangos. Mimi's wide jaws however magnify her beauty, my jaws, oh well, never mind. They are the inspiration for the movie Jaws, James claimed. Chloe who was listening interrupted us, "Mimi is not who you think she is. All that funny, broken English is intentional. Mimi will not be where she is now if she were not smart."
Just as smart as Chloe herself, who through the day, have managed to reveal herself to me. But I'd rather not get Chloe get involved in my tale, she is very happy in her situation, very private and deservedly so after all the trials and struggles she went through in life.
I want to talk instead about the three of us, James, John and me. Three gays, three 'syokoys', Tres Marias with 'lawits'. Oh don't be shocked by my political in-correctness, I am not running for any political office, and I'd rather be hated for being brutally honest than be loved because I am good at faking. Yes we are gays and though we can be feminine and loud in our private company, we know how to act appropriately in regular, mainstream situations. John is a body builder, James used to be a professional dancer and choreographer, and myself - oh what am I? I am the melodramatist in the group, the man full of angst and trepidation, yeah, full of drama - proof of this is found in this web site. I am one who can convert the most mundane event into a tear-jerking gut-wrenching Shakespearean play. I am a product of a zarzuela and moro-moro extra. But all our wondrous personas disappear in in our professional lives.
We're all professionals, all in the medical field, and because of this, we know how to act and look 'it' in our careers.
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