Ladlad 3: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing

Ladlad 3

An Anthology

of Philippine Gay Writing

Ladlad 3

An Anthology

of Philippine Gay Writing

EDITED BY J. NEIL C. GARCIA

AND DANTON REMOTO

Ladlad3: An Anthology of Philippine gay writing

by J. Neil Garcia and Danton Remoto, editors

© Copyright to this digital edition, 2016

Copyright of the individual works remains with their respective authors. No part of this book may be

reprinted or reproduced in any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright

holders.

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Version 1.0.1

Contents

Editor’s Note

Introduction

Fiction

Michael Francis C. Andrada

Boy Scouting

Ian Rosales Casocot

The Different Rabbit

Honorio Bartolome de Dios

Giyera

M. Protacio de Guzman

Epiphany

Paul G. del Rosario

Kotong

Andrew Drilon

Happening

J. Neil C. Garcia

Kitty and Vergil

Jose Claudio B. Guerrero

Essence

R. Zamora Linmark

Inches

Ino Manalo

Pakiramdaman

Xerxes Matza

The Collector

Danton Remoto

City Lights

Rolando B. Tolentino

Kulay

Gerardo Z. Torres

Magpakailanman

Poetry

Romulo S. Baquiran, Jr.

Silahista Atbp. Ngayon

Ronald Baytan

Distance

La Puta del Mundo

Christopher E. Cahilig

Sa Iyong Kaarawan, Itay

Ernesto Villaluz Carandang II

Sa Higaan

Mark Anthony Cayanan

Between Sleeps

The Loss

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana

The Long History of Kissing Boys

The Result

Nestor de Guzman

Agahan

Sa Kapisan

Paul G. Del Rosario

Sa Tuktok ng Bundok

Gary C. Devilles

Pneuma

Jaime Dasca Doble

Unstill Life

Awit ng Dilaw na Rosas

Eugene Y. Evasco

Hardinero

Silab

Gilbert D. Francia

Alimuom

Sa Gabing Kay Dilim

Ralph Semino Galan

Your Name

Bago ang Bading

Felino S. Garcia, Jr.

Ecce Homo

The Return

J. Neil C. Garcia

Gift, 2

Prayer

Raymund M. Garlitos

Kuwadernong Rosas

Alex Gregorio

Alice and the Small Door

Sad Movie

J. Pilapil Jacobo

Lalaki

Panauhin

Alwyn C. Javier

Ang Abay

Arvin Abejo Mangohig

The Gaze

Catalog 3.0

Roel Hoang Manipon

Irreconcilable Differences

Francis L. Martinez

Love

The Prey

Nicolas Pichay

An OCW Tries the Personals

Danton Remoto

The Ring

Malate Night

Rommel Barona Rodriguez

Sanib

Sapit

Louie Jon A. Sanchez

Katapusan

Retrato sa Opisina

J. Dennis Teodosio

Si Sandra at si Sophia

Ang Galit ko kay Eba

Charlie Samuya Veric

The Renewal of Self

Camilo M. Villanueva

Awit Para sa Mamang Magbabalut

Niccolo Vitug

Behind the Monastery Walls

Ernesto Superal Yee

The Garden of Saint James

L. Lacambra Ypil

Epilogue

Because I was Looking

Notes on the Authors

Editor’s Note

Lodestar for the Elections

Three days of the week, I teach English at the Ateneo, telling my students sematary should be cemetery, high school is spelled two words, and that even if I wrote an erotic poem in their Filipino textbook Hulagpos, I was not, am not, and will never be the persona sitting on another man’s lap in that scandalous poem. Twice a week, I am taking my last two subjects for my Ph.D. in English Studies at the University of the Philippines. And once a week, I have my political meetings.

It is on a day like this, on a fine Saturday afternoon, that I am going to the Manila Yacht Club for my next political meeting. When Ang Ladlad, our lesbian-gay-transgender-bisexual (LGBT) political party filed our papers for accreditation in the Congress party-list elections of May 14, 2007, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) blanched and said, No, you didn’t have enough people for a national constituency. Yes, right. To paraphrase the Pussycats, And don cha! Don cha say that without checking, too, the membership roster—with real names and addresses—of the many other party lists of dubious provenance that were allowed to run in the last, super-messy elections.

My reading was that the powers-that-be were threatened by Ang Ladlad. They must have thought that if we got at least two seats—and surveys said we would—that would be two seats against the administration. But how did they know that? We only had two political statements arrived at through a consensus: 1) No to Charter change and yes to a Constitutional Convention of duly elected members; and 2) A stop to political killings of activists and journalists. That was all. Nothing about impeachment, resignation, and such for the sitting President.

When I heard of this and actually read a memo that allegedly came from the powers-that-be, I smiled: the political party that began with a book has become a force to reckon with. And why not? Of the 45-million Filipino voters, 4.5 million would belong to the LGBT voters’ niche, if cross-country studies are to be believed. Why do you think politicians fell all over themselves endorsing Ang Ladlad for party-list accreditation in the last elections? I grant them good will, of course, but also I grant them shrewdness and political acumen. They sniffed the wind, and what they sniffed was this: the Pink Vote has arrived. Were you there among the throngs of people registering as voters in the last elections? If you were, did you ask the many transgenders why they were signing up? Who were they voting for in the party-list elections? Ask them, and ye shall know.

The über-origin, of course, of this political party is the book you are now holding in your hands. Our first anthology came out in April of 1994. By June of that year—and appropriately enough, the Pride Month of the LGBT movement—all 2,000 copies of Ladlad were sold out. Salesgirls at National Book Store would tell me of gays stud-looking enough to qualify for Ginoong Pilipinas asking, in their deepest, lowest voices: "Miss, saan ang Ladlad?"

The second installment of Ladlad came out in 1996, and together with the first outing, the two books with pink covers became permanent fixtures in the Philippine Books section of National Book Store. I was helping NBS and Power Books then, dispensing free advice on book-selling, and I suggested that they change the word Filipiniana into Philippine Books for certainly, when you entered Barnes and Nobles in L.A., you do not see a section called Americana. They complied. And then, I also said that Philippine books ought to have pride of place and displayed prominently, on the first shelves, of the Books Section. So any book-lover who enters the store would see the books at first blush, come near, open the pages, and inhale the very words of his or her own writers. To their credit, NBS also did that.

And so now, when you go to the more than 70 branches of National Book Store all over the country, you would see the Ladlad series of gay anthologies—as well as the other books of J. Neil Garcia and myself—there on the first shelves. Standing tall, breasts thrust out, bottoms pointed up, and one foot poised forward.

The anthology gave free mileage to the Ang Ladlad political party, especially in the urban areas where the students congregate and where—as studies show—gay men eventually come out because of the liberal education in the schools, the company of peers, and the books that are now out there, for them to hold and to cherish.

We also have to give credit to Mrs. Lourdes Vidal, my former English teacher at the Ateneo, who published her romance novels in Tagalog, and gave me thousands of free copies. Marked with Donated by Ang Ladlad, these freebies went around the country, were read avidly and passed from hand to hand, and added to the word-of-mouth campaign that we were waging.

There was also the Internet, where we have a huge and colorful presence, with our website and discussion groups and e-mail exchanges. Our alliances with more than 30 LGBT groups nationwide also bolstered our ranks, as well as the support of straight people—brothers and sisters of LGBT Filipinos, friends and relatives and such—who rallied around our cause. I also appeared countless times in the tri-media of television, radio and print, from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 2 a.m., and toured the Bicol Region—my bailiwick—for a whole month in the summer of 2006, talking to students, teachers, market vendors, farmers, fisher folk, government officials, and priests. In short, from 2004-2007, we worked on our pre-election campaign strategy, and I swear to Nefertiti, we worked our butts off.

But the Comelec—as stodgy and as ancient as their wooden building that later burnt down—would not, could not, budge. To their eternal discredit, because it soon gave way to the mess in the accreditation of party-list groups, the madness that was the elections, the lunacy of the counting that was slower, slower than a snail climbing Mount Fuji.

Then I tried to run for senator and the Comelec called me a nuisance candidate. There I was, with several other nuisance candidates: a deranged woman named Cinderella, a man whose namesake is a razor blade, a whole menagerie from cuckoo-land. But I attended the en-banc session, brought my CV and my letter of appeal, and crossed swords with Chairman Abalos, who would later become the Alphabet King. After all, if Richard Gomez could run, whose platform on education was to buy toothbrush for poor kids, why couldn’t I, who would, before buying toothbrushes for toothless public-school kids, first make sure they have bread and milk so they wouldn’t drop out of Grade One?

But Richard Gomez was allowed to run because, in the Comelec’s very well-argued resolution, he was accompanied by celebrities when he filed his candidacy, and I was not. Hello!? I’ve never been paranoid, but there is some shadow lurking somewhere here. Because two weeks before I was declared a nuisance candidate, a big survey of government workers and officers was done. The kulelat candidates of the administration were ranking 32, 34, 38, but there I was—still teaching at the Ateneo, waiting for classes to end so I could campaign—ranking higher than their race horses. But again, Comelec said we lacked the resources for a national campaign. We showed them a financial statement of P1.5 million when you need, as they say, P50 million for a senatorial campaign. Thus, I was forced to run as a congressional candidate for Quezon City’s third district, and ran a campaign on sheer adrenalin. I lost. But in my heart I knew that God has prepared a karmic sword for those who have humiliated me publicly. Recent national events prove my point.

The day after the elections I felt relieved. I got my copy of Elizabeth Jenning’s book of poems, Extending the Territory (Carcanet Press, 1985) and began to read. For many months, the book had languished on the table beside my bed. I felt sad during the campaign season for one reason: I could not read anymore. Every day I would go home, tired beyond belief, my feet aching from the day-long sortie, my hands sore from all that shaking, my face painful from all that smiling. The moment my back rested on my bed it was nirvana: I would wake up the next morning, only to campaign once more. Erwin Oliva of the Inquirer online edition asked me what I missed most during the campaign and I told him, The time to read. He said he would do a survey of the books the politicians read before the campaign, and I told him, Good luck, my friend.

And so when I lost I was relieved because I could read again and return to my old life as an absent-minded professor with what my students called a fearsome reputation (translation: I made them read books without movie versions). I began my post-election life by reading Extending the Territory, which Douglas Dunn, writing for the Glasgow Herald, called poems outstanding…[for their] wisdom, hard-earned from grief and religious faith.

Even if I have another political meeting on a day like this, I am happy because after the meeting, I would go to Makati to buy books. The person I am meeting had sent over his chauffeur-driven SUV, shinier and bigger than my library, to pick me up and bring me to Manila. I said I could take the LRT 2, get off at the Recto station, and then take a cab to the Manila Yacht Club on Roxas Boulevard. But he said that is a "no-no for our senatorial candidate in 2010. You are an important cargo and you have to be handled very carefully."

Uh-oh, I think to myself now as I remember his exact words. Most of the time, I feel like a speck of moissanite, but these guys make me feel as if I were a ring of diamond. Invariably, they are all kind and polite. I must remind them so much of their stern English teacher in college. But today, the sun shines brightly. Our SUV flies over the Katipunan overpass, down to C-5, circling Makati, seemingly gliding on air. Smooth as silk, as the airline ads would put it, with a blast of cool and subtly perfumed air that makes me forget I am in sweltering Manila.

The person I am meeting is a pleasant man whom I had met once, and he is asking me to join them in the 2010 presidential elections. He is not the candidate, but a consultant of the candidate. He suggests that I draw up a budget for my own campaign, and he would show it to his boss for approval. I tell him he is the third person I am meeting after I lost in the May 14 elections, with the same agenda. Then I ask him, Why do you want me to join your group?

He says, Because you have no skeletons in the closet. It’s easy to campaign for you.

I answer, "Oh, I have no more skeletons in the closet. In fact, I am now out of the closet." The man nearly chokes on his callos and laughs.

The memory of his laughter makes me smile now as his SUV drives me to Makati. After his laughter that broke the cavernous silence in the Yacht Club, he said, That’s why we like you. You’re quick on the take. You don’t have to memorize your answers. By the way, who’s your speech writer?

This time it was my turn to laugh. I told him my campaign is too poor to hire a speech writer, and I just make things up as I go along. I’ve been teaching English, I tell him, for 21 years. You survive those rich brats, you can survive anything.

Then he turned serious and asked me: Professor Remoto, we admire your bravery and your work. What, really, makes you tick?

It made me feel like a clock—or a time bomb about to explode—but this question burns in my mind now as I write this Foreword. What makes me tick is the knowledge that what I am doing is right. It is the thing to be done, right here and right now. I fought bravely and took no bribes in the last elections, even if my bugged cellphone began to sound like a marketplace: all those voices.

Some say that books are mere vessels and words have no bones. But revolutions have been waged, and countries liberated, because of mere books, simple words. As the famous text message every New Year puts it, we should always be like birds poised forward into the future: we should leave behind all regret and bitterness and pain.

It is in this spirit that we are offering you Ladlad 3. The pieces in this book show that, especially the pieces that throw a new light, give a new angle, to gay writing in the Philippines. Alex Gregorio rewrites Alice in Wonderland into a poem. Ian Rosales Casocot gives us a gay children’s story called The Different Rabbit. Honorio Bartolome de Dios shows us a beauty-parlor worker who