The Spy in the Sandwich

Friday, June 29, 2018

1:14 AM | The Long, Sweet Monday

It had been a long Monday, the 25th of June.

The emotional peak for that day for me came early. We had just finished doing our presentations on four specific aspects of gay lives—Prof. Michele Joan Valbuena, former chair of the Psychology Department at Silliman University, talked about the spectrum of gay identity; Atty. Golda Benjamin, instructor at the College of Law, talked about current legal groundings of the LGBTQ; J Marie Maxino, instructor at the Department of English and Literature, talked about the nuances of gay living; and I talked about gay representation in culture, focusing mostly on movies. There was a huge crowd gathered around the American Studies Resource Center of the Silliman Library, and we were fielding questions.

Soon a girl came up, and in a shaky voice that ran the gamut of being scared and being tired revealed to the crowd how she was recently forced to “come out” to her family and how she was now flailing in her relationships with them, essentially asking us the panelists in that Pride Month forum how to be brave in the face of all that.

This is the thing many people don’t get about queer lives: often there is the heartbreaking ostracism from the very people who are supposed to care for us, no matter what. The details of the girl’s story and how she delivered it shook me—and I must admit I cried in front of everyone. It was a very emotional moment, an unexpected one, simply because it struck me as being so brave, that decision to speak up, in public no less. It must been such a driving thing for her, to be compelled to ask.

I remembered a friend from five years ago, for example, who was told by his father that if he didn’t “turn straight” in six months, he would be forced to leave home. A former student also told me that once she was in a fast food restaurant with a very close relative who, upon seeing a couple of lesbians exchanging affection in the line at the counter, promptly told her that if she behaved “like that,” she would also get the boot. How many more stories like these are out there? I bet thousands.

For J Marie, her emotional moment came right after our panel when a boy came up to her and revealed how he had to flee from his hometown all the way to Dumaguete to get away from all the bullying.

And that was when I realized this was why we were doing all the things we’ve been doing for Pride Month in Dumaguete: to make visible all these issues no one wants to talk about, to create a safe space for discourse, to allow people to reveal of themselves without fear.

Truth to tell, when I found myself starting 6200Pride three weeks ago with only about seven people eager to help, and with no budget whatsoever, I made an effort not to think about the gargantuan demands of pulling off a Pride Month, which suddenly had ten major events to manage. I didn’t ask for these ten events; other people suggested them with so much enthusiasm I felt compelled to help them realize what they wanted.

“You want a drag show?” I remember telling Sol De Castro, for example. He had been, for the longest time, the leader of Silliman’s ISPEC, the campus’ organization for LGBTQs and allies, and had developed a drag persona called Solé, but had yet to put on a show in all the years he had stayed in Dumaguete. “Fine, let’s do a drag show,” I finally told him—without actually knowing how it was to actually pull off a drag show. But we did it, and it was an awesome success.

“You want a panel on coming out?” I remember telling Felix De la Pena Mosqueda III, the local leader for the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines Alumni Community-ISLAS. “Fine, let’s do that, too.”

Victor Giorgio Villegas was adamant about having a talk on HIV, and a free testing. Karl James Villarmea wanted a separate panel on queer faith. And so it went.

So sure, June 25 had been a very long Monday, and June has been a long month—but so far, we’ve done eight events out of the ten we’ve set out to do. We did the coming out stories last June 22—and that was an eye-opener for everyone, because we took care to have good representation: we had a lesbian, a gay man, a trans woman, and a trans boy still calling himself queer, all talking about the challenges and repercussions of coming out. We did the HIV talk last June 23, and the free clinic for testing as well—and that was huge challenge, stigma-wise, but we did it anyway.

We did a fun run and walk in the name of ecology and gender rights last Sunday, because Karl thought we should start thinking about the interlacing of disparate issues in our complicated lives.

Then on June 25, we did four [and a half] events in total: a jampacked panel on gay issues; then the panel which tackled queer faith—which was a long, very interesting event, held at Magdamo Hall at Silliman, the home of its Religion and Peace Studies Department; a zine fest; a poetry+music event; and the unfurling of our gigantic rainbow flag.

In the end, I went back again to my early question: why were we doing this? Because we didn’t have to, you know. But I’ve realized it is for that girl who cried, and for that boy who escaped his bullies.

Some things are bigger than ourselves; and long Mondays are fine in the light of all things.