Sunday, June 30, 2024
On the last day of Pride Month, a book feature from my publisher on their social media!
Misgivings aside, I’m quite proud of this story collection which I share with Shakira Sison. DON’T TELL ANYONE: LITERARY SMUT, from Anvil Publishing, is an anthology composed of five erotic lesbian stories [Kia’s] and five erotic gay stories [mine]. I wrote these stories in the mid-2010s, although I knew I could not publish them anywhere. There was just no way a magazine would publish an erotic story, much more a gay one. The only place for them was a book, and I’m glad Andrea Pasion-Flores [before she became the big boss of Milflores Books] accepted them for publication.
Every time someone asks me, “Where do I start with your stories?,” I always tell them, “If you’re brave enough, try my gay porn.”
But it’s not really porn, hehehe: it’s more elevated than that. It’s about passion and longing and the humanity of heartbreak. Trust me.
One story in it, “The Boys From Rizal Street,” has gotten so popular, it’s anthologized internationally and translated to other languages, too!
Get the book on Shopee here.Labels: books, life, philippine literature, Pride, queer, writing
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Wednesday, June 26, 2024
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 193.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry, Pride, queer
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Tuesday, June 25, 2024
9:48 PM |
'Ladlad': 30 Years of Unfurling the Cape and Paving the Way
Finally, it’s out! My essay on the 30-year legacy of Ladlad, the pathbreaking anthology of Philippine gay writing by J. Neil C. Garcia and Danton Remoto, now out on Spot.ph. An excerpt:
In 1994, I was nineteen, a twink lost in the world the way only someone who came of age in the 1990s could be. I had no idea I was a twink—that was queer nomenclature I would only come to know in my worldly thirties and the world had evolved enough to have specific names for what used to be an identity no one talked about in polite circles. I had no idea either what to make of the surging tempests I had inside of me as I braved the hormones of adolescence and took in, without a map, the hazy landscape of desire you could not deny a young man at the beginning of his prime.
This was three years before Ellen DeGeneres famously came out on American television via her eponymous sitcom and unleashed a cultural touchstone for what Oscar Wilde used to describe, a hundred years before, as “the love that [dared] not speak its name.” [Actually, it was his lover Lord Alfred Douglas who penned this line in a poem, but the phrase was used in Wilde’s gross indecency trial which would decisively blanket in silence all manner of things gay, until cracks appeared in 1969 because of the Stonewall Riot.] This was four years before Will & Grace would grace our television screens and pave the way for mainstream acceptance of characters who just happened not to be heterosexual. In the Philippines, the show was carried by Studio 23, a UHF channel that largely escaped conservative notice simply because it was a smaller station and catered to a niche audience.
In the Philippines, at least in popular culture, to be gay was defined largely by the movies—and for about 50 years since Nemesio E. Caravana toyed ever so lightly with the notion of queer attraction in Kaaway ng Babae (1948), to be gay for the Filipino was to live out a phase awaiting eventual heterosexual conversion, such as in Tony Cayado’s Kaming Mga Talyada (1962). Or to wallow in guilt and ennui (and camp), such as in Danny Zialcita’s suite of queerness in Si Malakas, Si Maganda, at Si Mahinhin (1980), Mahinhin vs. Mahinhin (1981), T-Bird at Ako (1982), and Lalakwe (1985). Or to identify with Dolphy’s definitive caricature of the sissy in Jack and Jill (1954), which would generate decades-long copycats in many movies starring Roderick Paulate, Joey de Leon, and Herbert Bautista. In 1994, Paulate famously played twins separated at birth in Maryo J. de los Reyes’ Bala at Lipstick, where one twin is a tough guy and the other an enterprising shrill running a beauty parlor.
The year also saw Mel Chionglo release Midnight Dancers, a spiritual sequel to Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer (1988), which also largely defined the Filipino gay experience as one that is seen largely through the eyes of (an often straight) male stripper. The early 1990s were not a good time to find complex gay representation in Filipino pop culture.
I was a budding cineaste then and definitely heard of Chionglo’s film—which came to me in bootleg VHS through God knows what source. (Perhaps a neighborhood video store?) I must have played that movie a hundred times on the family VCR, always discreetly and in the dark cloak of night—hoping my Born Again mother would not rouse from her sleep and catch me.
It was with the same delicious trepidation that I would come across a copy of the first Ladlad, which described itself in its subtitle, and in such an arrestingly forward manner, as an “anthology of Philippine gay writing.” There was no mistaking it for anything other than what it declared itself to be. The simplicity of that admission would create such an upheaval that thirty years later it would be difficult to ignore the fact that for many gay people in the Philippines, the publication of this book could very well be our own version of the brick thrown at Stonewall Inn.
Read the rest at the link. Happy Pride, everyone!
Labels: books, film, life, memories, philippine cinema, philippine culture, philippine literature, queer, writers, writing
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Saturday, June 22, 2024
Done! Submitted to the editor! I had so much fun writing this, on the 30th anniversary of Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing. Will post the link when it happens. Happy Pride to all, especially Danton Remoto and J. Neil C. Garcia!
Labels: books, life, memories, philippine literature, Pride, queer, writers, writing
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Accept with grace even the disappointments, because life will throw you a lot of these. The secret is not to stop trying. [Always a hard thing to do.] But do try again using the hard-earned wisdom of hindsight.
Labels: life
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Thursday, June 20, 2024
Renz and I absolutely had no plans to have a cat. I mean we both love cats [we constantly send each other cat videos], but we didn’t plan to keep one because we were both so busy. But this one barged into our lives very decisively, we had no choice really but to take care of her. Meet Orville.
Labels: life, love, pets
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Wednesday, June 19, 2024
12:52 PM |
Back to the Grind
Back home. Back to work. Back to making the to-do list happen. It’s raining in Dumaguete, but at least I got to have some taste of “summer vacation.” [They don’t even call it that anymore. They call it a “mid-year break,” which just breaks my heart.]
Labels: life
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7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 192.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Monday, June 17, 2024
4:36 PM |
Piaya, Napoleones, Atbp.
The plan was to go back home to Dumaguete today, but I extended my stay in Bacolod just to be able to watch Kurt Soberano’s Under a Piaya Moon on the big screen. [Vince Groyon wrote the screenplay.] This was such a joy to watch, and you really have to be Negrense to revel in this film in a deeper level. I’m glad I caught this in Bacolod, a most appropriate place to watch this film, and I’m glad I extended my stay here, because I’m sure I won’t be able to watch it anywhere else. When oh when will Dumaguete filmmaking take on stories like this? I’m kinda growing tired of the macho slapstick that seems to define Dumaguete film.
Labels: film, food, negros, philippine cinema
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Sunday, June 16, 2024
10:00 PM |
Bacolod Roundup
June 14, Friday. At the Gawad Tolentino of the Tolentine Star, the official publication of the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos in Bacolod. My speech was titled “The Writer at Dusk,” to follow their theme of “Nocturnal.”
June 15, Saturday. It was my first time to be at The Negros Museum in Bacolod City, and it was an honor that they hosted my talk on writing a literary historiography of Negros. [The new Negros Island Region being proclaimed official suddenly makes the project worthwhile.] The whole talk lasted until 4 PM, with a great and long Q and A at the end. I always thought doing this project was such a lonely effort, but today I found kindred spirits. Thank you, Tanya P. Lopez, for making this happen!
Later, at the studio of Bacolod-based Dumaguete artist Kristoffer Ardeña. We had a great time catching up over coffee after this studio visit.
Later, at Italia in Paseo Verde for dinner with
the Elsie Coscolluela. I know she rarely goes out these days, so I’m truly honored that I had dinner tonight with her! I discovered the short stories and poetry and plays of Ma’am Elsie in college, and I’ve been a fan since then — and delighted over the fact that this Palanca Hall of Famer is from Dumaguete and is a Sillimanian, although home for her now is Bacolod. It was my honor to play a version of her father in her iconic play
In My Father's House when it was finally staged in Dumaguete in 2013. I love this night.
Kulang ang three hours with all the talk we did! Thank you, Rayboy Pandan and Sally Pandan, for making this dinner happen!
June 15, Saturday. I didn’t plan to do this but I had some time to kill in Bacolod so I visited the Orange Project.
Later, at the welcome dinner of the 24th IYAS La Salle National Writers Workshop at Raymundo's Diner in Talisay City.
Labels: art and culture, bacolod, negros, philippine literature
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Wednesday, June 12, 2024
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 191.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry, Pride, queer
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Saturday, June 08, 2024
12:00 PM |
Notes on the Writing of 'You Don't Love Me Anymore'
In 2009, the writer Lilledeshan Bose invited me along with other writers to transform some of her dad’s talisman drawings into literary pieces. The great Baguio artist Santiago Bose had died a few years back, in 2002, and Lille wanted to put up an exhibit of his works (along with their literary interpretations) in something she called Confessions of a Talisman.
That’s when I began writing “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” I was only able to send her an excerpt, because I couldn’t quite finish the story. I felt that it was going to be the story of a husband and wife who have slowly fallen out of love for each other, with the burning of the husband's anting-anting by the wife becoming the ultimate schism in that relationship.
I based it on my memory of my parents. My father once abandoned us when I was a tween, but came back after a few years to live with us again — with an anting-anting in his wallet that he picked up from some adventure in Manila. [He swore by its powers.] This freaked out my mother, who was fervently Born Again, and I remember her taking the anting-anting from him and burning it, and shouting all manner of “In Jesus’ name!” while doing so. That whole scene is embedded in my memory. I wanted to make that the basis for my story — and this may be why it took me such a long time to finish. I didn’t want it to be too autobiographical.
Year after year, I would come back to the story, writing a paragraph here, another paragraph there. One year, I decided to set it in Malaybalay, Bukidnon for some reason. A few years later, the husband became a writer, and the wife a maker of longganisa. A few more years later, he wasn’t just a writer, he was a writer of balak [or Binisaya poetry]. The story built on like that. And now it’s finished.
The illustration below is the original Santiago Bose art Lille gave me. This story will be one of four new stories to be included in the reissue of Beautiful Accidents to be published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2025. Obviously, I’m still working on the new edition.
Labels: fiction, writing
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Wednesday, June 05, 2024
I’m full of gratitude today. It’s one of those days that make me realize there are people in the world who do care for me, and are there for me, and who wish me well. They know who they are, all the people I’ve interacted with today. Thank you.
Also, I finally finished writing this story! Finished it while waiting for my turn at my dentist’s clinic! [Note: I began writing this in 2009, and it has taken me fifteen years to finish it.]
Also, after months of quietly suffering, I fixed my dental issues and can finally eat properly! [But it was actually my dentist who texted me I needed to go to his clinic ASAP yesterday, without appointment. And then
gihatod ko pauli. Full dental care!] Thanks, Xandro Dael!
Labels: friends, health, life, writing
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7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 190.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Tuesday, June 04, 2024
9:15 PM |
I Feel Violated
Somebody tried to use my credit card for a significant purchase in Japanese yen. Immediately reported it — but now my card has been discontinued and will get a replacement card in seven working days. But what the hey. Scammers are awful.
Labels: crime, life
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Sunday, June 02, 2024
9:00 PM |
Anniversary Weekend
We’re belatedly celebrating our 11th anniversary together, first with a staycation at UNWND Boutique Hotel Dumaguete [
so comfortable!], and now a dinner, because May was just fraught with so much busy-ness. Having dinner now at our usual anniversary resto, Adamo.
Labels: life, love
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