At 38, I am  out of love.

And it is one of the most interesting feelings I feel, strange for a melodramatic gay person like me. You see, I am expecting to cry my heart to heavens and kick everything in my room, drink to sleep, call  my friends for emotional support the instant I fall out of love - but here I am, enjoying the prospect of watching more movies, the prospect of doing things on my own, being independent and spiritually nourished.

I'd never been in love to begin with... I guess.

But at 38, I seem to understand gay love better, it's not as ordinary as any love we know, it requires much more commitment than that between a man and a woman. There is nothing that binds it - it has no sanction from institutions, no Biblical covenant, no society that accepts it, no family to be built from it, and worse, and here my mistake is clear - I tend to confine my so-called love in the realm of the physical. I refuse to elevate it to higher grounds. The reason I'm this way is because I am made insecured by my wounded heart.

What wound is worse than the one inflicted by your poor country and getting uprooted everytime? The only thing permanent in my life is impermanence. And this is perhaps both my weakness and strength as a gay person. I know I can survive everywhere but  I'd never find the happiness of continuity and constancy. In fact I'm always expecting an end to everything I do and feel. That's the reason why I keep all this writing shit, this is the only thread that hangs my life together. All my life I've been moving: I like quoting Liza Minalli's(Ms Bowles) music  line in Cabaret - When something good's bound to happen, something else gets in the way. That's why I like the play Cabaret. I  feel like that 'hor who dances her way until she dies, trying to survive and being happy with little she has. Always brave but insecured. Yes hon, she was wounded.

Still,  she dies the most beautiful queen.

That is soooooo ME!

I am trying to write something nice today because Lent is here. And no matter how devilish I am at times, I still want to tell you guys I pray. No matter how sexual my writing is, well, to tell you the truth, that's where my sexuality is kept: in my writing. I snoozed so I lost. But little gay sex is no loss to me. Especially in America. I don't think people are sexual here, check the stock of Viagra and you'd see what I mean. I still meet  gorgeous gays here who say they haven't had sex for months! Well, that's what they tell me! There is just so many 'other things' to do besides sex in America.

That's probably why God brought me to America - He made  sure I'd work my ass off till sex leaves my Filipino psyche. Let me just tell you I used to be very sexual - I am a Filipino who lived my first twenty-eight years in the Pinoyland - and I know.  Recto, Avenida, Quiapo, Luneta, Congress, Adam's Twelve, Quezon Circle, Cubao's Bakal Boys, etcetera - those are my proofs, oh come on, I've been there, done that. I even was a star in Novaliches. And San Pablo. And Angeles. And Paseo de Roxas.....

Oh, I'd  stop now before you all  realize who I  am. Aha! Yes, hon. You saw me. Where do you think I get all my materials for my writings?

But - that's not what I wanna talk about this Lent season - I wanna talk about spirituality. Ouch! After all that nasty intro I suddenly switch into spirituality! But I must because if there is one person who'd remember Lent it's the gay Pinoy. If there's someone who'd accumulate Saints in his room for Lent (whether spiritually or decoratively, with preference to the gorgeous Mary Magdalene) it will be the Pinoy gay.

Going further, if there is anyone who can explain to you (with passion)life after death, it's a gay person. When I was a kid, a boy claimed to have seen the Virgin - oh he became a sensation, well, he was gay. Gays believe in miracles, imagined or not. Though they commit the most heinous sins, they'd still end up believing they have wings. Yeah, Angels in America.

But seriously,

It's my right to speak about  spiritualism at a time when gays are too angry for the unfairness of the world; I personally would also like to speak against the tyranny of confining the gay image into that stupid little faggot who has nothing in mind but sex. And I'd like to cuss those gays who perpetuate that image to begin with. And I'd like to condemn  this abnormal religion who claims that a homosexual who thinks impure thoughts about another man must undergo therapy or die; while a heterosexual who thinks impure thoughts about a woman must be forgiven.

I personally know only a few Filipino gays, two of them are already dead in their early twenties, not because of disease but because of murder, even when their embarrassed families claim their deaths were due to accidents, my gay spirit says no. Only two weeks ago another gay person was killed here in Fort Lauderdale, robbery, they claimed. My spirit says no.

I know, we gays have been wounded in many ways, not only our asses but our spirits. And instead of lamenting and living over our wounds, it's time for us to find our ways back unwounded. And being unwounded doesn't mean demanding from the world an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We don't demand respect because we earned it. Our healing has only one goal - that one day we'd settle down quietly and instead of living in the dark corners of bath houses or clubs or seedy places and picking tricks among thieves, we'd live in open spaces as appreciated and accepted members of our communities,  where we can be what we want to be  and be the best we can be and choose the best people we can call our best friends or lovers.

I thought that's what Christ died for - our freedom. Freedom to love and to be loved. Freedom to hang our lights so the world can see us the way we really are.

I quit my so called-love because it was a false love.   No matter how hard I tried.... when the only thing that holds a relationship is sex,  it is bound to fail. After falling out of love, the only thing I got concerned about  was the happiness of the one I (at least, I thought) loved so much. And once I was assured that happiness is possible for him without me, I found myself going my own way happily.
 
 

I am always different because I keep nurturing my Filipino wounds - there were so many mistakes in my country that damaged so many of her people. So many displaced families out of economic necessity, so many who died without seeing their homelands again, so many like me trying to make do with what little Filipino is left in us, trying to imagine our country through the lens of our childhood eyes and hoping to see it once more for a week or a month before  returning back to another country of labor and alienation.

Perhaps I'd never fall in love because I am already attached to a land instead of a person.

I feel like Scarlet O'Hara who tries to eat a bitter root in her hunger and feeling so degraded by it  she promised  she'd never go hungry again.

There was always Tara to keep her and nurture her and make her go on living even when everybody else "don't give a damn."

I remember  Lent in my country - I remember the singing of the Passion and Death of Christ, I remember the longest processions, I remember the fourteen stations of the Cross, and the gorgeous Mary Magdalene and St Monica or is it Veronica? who held the handkerchief that copied the bloodied face of Christ,  the longest masses, the solemnest cenaculos, the burning of Judas, the meeting of Mary and Jesus on Easter Sunday. God, how can I fall out of love with my country?

How can I become unspiritual in this spiritual country? Lent in my country never discriminates - we all go to the church no matter what.

And on Good Friday we all moan and groan and cry in prayers especially at three o'clock in the afternoon because Christ is wounded and killed at that time.

Despite the wounding and death of Christ, we wipe our tears and parade with festive air, we all  remain happy - gay or otherwise  - because a gorgeous Mary Magdalene will discover an equally gorgeous Christ unwounded by Easter Sunday.

I am finding my way back home unwounded.
 
 
 
 
 
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