Wednesday, June 24, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 297.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 17, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 296.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 10, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 295.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 03, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 294.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Monday, June 30, 2025
8:44 PM |
All About Tenderness
I mean to share this earlier in June for Pride Month, but life ... got in the way. Better late than never! But I was moved by Mark Fermill's [ IG: @markfermill ] recommendation for Talk Bookish to Me PH [ IG: @talkbookishtomeph ] of my book DON'T TELL ANYONE: LITERATE SMUT [from Anvil Publishing: IG: @anvilpublishing ]. There's some sex in it, yes, but the book is really a distillation of what I know about heartbreak, about loving, and about longing, done in the most tender way I can write about all these. That he highlighted two of my favorite stories from my own end of the book is also a kind of affirmation for me. I cried when I wrote “Compartments.” I was exorcising all my heartbreaks when I wrote “The Boys From Rizal Street.”
You can order the book from Lazada at this link.Labels: books, love, Pride, queer
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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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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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Wednesday, June 19, 2024
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 192.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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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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Wednesday, June 05, 2024
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 190.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 28, 2023
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 141.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 21, 2023
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 140.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 07, 2023
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 138.
Labels: poetry, Pride, queer
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Tuesday, June 06, 2023
11:41 PM |
The Sissies in Dolphy's Wake
I’m finally able to watch [a very bad copy of] Mars S. Torres’ Jack and Jill [1954], the first significantly queer Filipino film, which catapulted Dolphy to stardom playing sissy roles, but when viewed through the contemporary lens unfortunately suffers by centering heterosexuality as the sneering norm, and by being the epitome of the retrograde sexual politics common at the time. I’m currently studying how this depiction of Gorio/Glory paved the way to the sissy superstardom of Herbert Bautista [briefly, in the 1980s remake of Jack and Jill], Joey de Leon [Barbi!], and Roderick Paulate [Petrang Kabayo!], all of them straight men who made their showbiz fortunes by tackling stereotypical sissy roles; and finally, Vice Ganda, who, whether you like her or not, actually reversed that trend of straight male comedians doing drag by being an actual gay actor doing gay roles.
It also strikes me that the OG Jack and Jill was the proto-Parasite: two poor siblings, a tomboy and a gay man, get into the employ and graces of a well-off family, the first by pretending to be a cis male chauffeur, and the second by pretending to be a cis female ripe for adoption. Crazy movie.
Labels: film, philippine cinema, Pride, queer, sissy
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Friday, June 02, 2023
7:00 AM |
Pride Books!
HAPPY PRIDE! Get my book
DON'T TELL ANYONE: LITERARY SMUT and these other fine titles from Anvil Publishing to get a whole range of the Pinoy queer experience! You can get it from Shopee through this
link.
Labels: books, philippine literature, Pride, queer
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Saturday, July 02, 2022
4:27 PM |
Letting Things Flow
It’s not at all like riding a bike. You remember the proverbial promise, of course: that once you get on one after years of not doing it all, all the memories of biking will come running back to you. The skill was dormant—it only needed awakening.
It’s not at all like that, I’ve found.
There I was at the very beginning of June—or more truthfully, the end of May—and I was surveying the landscape of things-to-do for Pride Month. With some familiar trepidation I set about making the blueprint of activities, consulting certain trusted people I knew on what they wished for to happen for 2022’s return of Pride Month—and ascertaining how to set about making things actually happen. The trepidation was par for the course. When you try to reach for the moon, as all plan-making eventually is, the fear of not being able to leap towards luna-tic goals is a normal by-product of the process.
But then something else happened. I found myself seized by doubt and fear. This double-whammy was beyond the scope of mere trepidation. Trepidation is just normal nervousness as you embark on a journey—but you nonetheless make the first step. Doubt and fear are something else entirely. They are dark shadows that whisper to your ears, “You will never be able to do this”—an insidious pair that can paralyze you if you let them overwhelm you.
What struck me was that what I was about to do was something I have always done before, often to great success. For all my years of doing events and cultural shows in Dumaguete, I realized that the pandemic had extracted a terrible cost: it made me forget the instincts and the muscle memory I used to rely on when I went about organizing things.
I didn’t know what to do anymore, and I panicked.
It was not at all like riding a bike.
For our first event for Pride Month, I had planned to do a screening of the gay films directed by Jay Altarejos. I’ve always wanted to do this, as far back as 2018—but there were always circumstances that prevented their proper implementation. This time around, I was determined to make this screening work. I knew how to program it: I wanted to do two screenings, plus a little lecture sandwiched between. I found the most appealing venue to hold it: the first time I saw the screening room of Mugna Gallery in Bong-ao, Valencia sometime last April [way before the gallery opened], I wanted to do screenings in its perfectly appointed space. And I knew I could get the films to screen: the director is one of my closest friends—and I knew he’d be more than willing to help. [In fact, he flew in to Dumaguete from Manila on his own volition, just to help out and be present during the screening—which I found very touching. I love the generosity of good friends.]
Nonetheless, I was so panicked about the logistics that I found myself gasping for air. Will people be patient enough to stay for five hours, to do two screenings and a lecture? Will people find Valencia too far away to bother going? Will I have the time and energy to prepare the lecture I wanted to do? Will we do chairs, or will benches do?
The questions suffocated me.
On the day itself, while we set about prepping the venue for the eventual activity, Mugna Gallery’s Vince Lopez noticed my shallow breathing and my nervous ticks, and quickly read what was going on in my head. He told me: “Don’t surrender to the fear. Worry and work, but don’t fret. Let things flow.”
He was right. The event was a success, despite all my doubts and fears! People came, people stayed, people took part in a rigorous Q and A with the director himself. Why was I worried?
It took me a while to fully grasp Vince’s advice though. As I moved on to tackle the next event in my list, the doubts and the fears returned, gnawing at me—sometimes paralyzing. It worsened when I was locked out of Facebook, and could not properly facilitate all the things I needed to do. But Vince’s words eventually cut through my own paralysis—what people with ADHD call “the wall of awful”—and I realized I could do one thing: work as hard as I can, and as best I can—but then just let things flow. There is no reward for fretting over things beyond our control. When the challenges come, be creative [and brave] with your solutions—but just let things flow.
My biggest challenge was holding the panel on same-sex civil unions. It was happening at the tail-end of the week when I was totally cut off from communicating with the necessary people involved in the program—I had lost my cellphone and I had been locked out of social media. When my means of communication returned, I was faced with an immediate challenge: the host had an important work-related event he had to attend to and thus could not be present during the live-stream of the panel. I thought, Fine, I’ll do the hosting. Luckily enough, we got a good venue, and a good set of guests to talk about the issue—although one of them would be joining us from Manila through Zoom. Something I have never ever done before in all my years of curating and presenting panels. [I actively avoided Zoom events during the pandemic. The format just did not make sense to me.] And an hour before the event, we found out that the tech guy who was going to handle the livestream would not be coming—but he did leave us with a video camera. I immediately nixed the idea of the livestream, and settled for a taping we could edit later for uploading as a video. And then the Zoom. The terrible Zoom ordeal. We had two premium accounts at our disposal to use—but the first one needed a code which was sent to the owner’s email [and the owner was apparently napping and could not be reached], and the standby one just could not be accessed via normal channels [and our repeated attempts at log-in eventually had Zoom suspending the account temporarily]. I made the choice to use my free Zoom account with its dreaded 45-minute limit—and because we were frantic for time, we started the panel, with the camera filming us and banking on Zoom to record the video participation of our esteemed Manila guest. It was a fantastic panel. The guests were very forthcoming and articulate, and the audience was firmly with us all throughout the discussion. We wrapped up the event with a bang—interrupted only by having our Manila guest log-in twice because of free Zoom’s time limit. And then I discover that in the haste of starting the program, I had forgotten to press Zoom’s record button.
By then I had begun to rely on Vince’s advice: Don’t fret. Let things flow.
And this was my take: the meat of the panel was the scintillating conversation between the panelists and the audience. It was an enjoyable talk, and we learned a lot. But the technical side was all snafus. Do I consider the event a success or a failure? I chose success. It did what it set out to do—engaging people in a conversation about same-sex civil unions. We couldn’t share that conversation outside our room in Bethel Guest House, of course—but why fret over things beyond our control?
For the rest of the month, despite all the obstacles and challenges [and occasional skirmishes with people], I found the mantra—Don’t fret. Let things flow.—to be a source of comfort. I began to relax. And I began to see how things just fall into place when you just try to handle them with creativity [and bravery]. For Pride Pechakucha, for example, we only managed to book our venue for sure five days before the event because of unforeseen circumstances—but we got it. Then we lost our provider of the LCD projector and screen—but managed to tap the help of friends who lent their own equipment. [I was especially touched by Mayor Ipe Remollo’s generosity. We could not find anyone to lend us an LCD projector, but the City Tourism Office told us that the only machine that was not attached to a wall at City Hall was the one at the Mayor’s Office—but no one was allowed to take it out or borrow it. So I sought out Mayor Ipe that very day, luckily found him right in front of the Presidencia, and when I made my case—he immediately released the machine for us to use. And then Silliman University Culture and Arts Council’s Diomar Abrio contacted me, providing me another machine to use. So we had another LCD projector on standby! Which was eventually helpful, because the cords of the LCD projector from the Mayor’s Office was incompatible with my laptop, which we discovered an hour before the event—so I used the cords of the CAC machine instead. Talk about serendipity.]
Don’t fret. Let things flow.
Part of my reprieve was finally allowing myself to think of all the events as experiments in post-pandemic behavior. We used them as gauges to measure participation and interest. Let’s see if people are ready to mingle and to partake of events despite pandemic fears. Let’s see if people will come on their own accord, without having to be urged by a teacher requiring classes to attend such and such [hahaha]. Let’s see if people are willing to go to not-so-accessible venues for an activity. Let’s see if people will care. Let’s see if an intimate set-up, following COVID-19 protocols, is enough to conjure magic. All these among other things. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised, again and again, by how things turned out, given the challenges of the times. We even had devoted attendees who tried to go to all our events—and some of them even turned out to be tourists in Dumaguete and were just visiting! It was amazing.
So, don’t fret. Let things flow.
Labels: dumaguete, life, organizing events, Pride
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Sunday, June 05, 2022
4:15 PM |
Why I Want a Rainbow Pedestrian Lane
It’s June, and it’s Pride Month.
It has been a while—two long years of pandemic restrictions, in fact—since we last celebrated Pride Month in Dumaguete. And like a phoenix whose fiery resurrection is done up in all the colors of the spectrum, we’re back! Albeit in more intimate considerations, given protocols we need to follow for the pandemic we are still living in. And when I say, we’re back, I mean this: all I can see right now is a vision of a Dumaguete pedestrian lane done up in all the colors of the rainbow.
Why this vision of a local pedestrian lane in these colors? I was asked this question by local journalist and friend Judy Flores.
I thought about it. And it came to this: Pride Month all over the world has always been about visibility for a very marginalized sector, which continues to suffer prejudice and injustice every day all over the world. Visibility is power. Visibility is a privilege of being seen, and being accepted for who we are. Visibility is a fight since the opposite of that is living in the closet where we have no voice.
Rendering a Dumaguete pedestrian lane in rainbow colors is a very visible way to signify support, especially by the LGU, to the concerns and welfare of its LGBTQ constituents.
Imagine a city street painted in the colors of the rainbow! It will be immediately recognizable, it will probably becoming Instagrammable—and it will be a testament to the city’s pledge to welcome diversity of all kinds and to promote inclusivity, especially with regards sexual orientation or gender identity.
A rainbow pedestrian lane project, which has been done in many progressive cities all over the world (and notably Manila, Mandaue City, and Quezon City in recent years), is a dream. Dumaguete joining their ranks will be significant.
We actually started doing Pride in Dumaguete in 2011, but not on Pride Month! I still remember this well. It was in December, and a bunch of us were invited by the Dumaguete City Health Office to make an LGBTQ contingent for their World AIDS Day parade. We took the invitation, and ran with it—and made our contingent “the first gay pride parade” in Dumaguete City. I remember walking the streets of Dumaguete in that parade, making myself visible for the first time in that capacity. It was tremendous and terrifying all at once—but there was a celebratory feel to that parade in 2011 that will forever remain etched in my best memories. I remember walking along Real Street in the public market area and heading towards Freedom Park, and seeing someone from the top floor of one of those old Art Deco buildings waving a rainbow flag. It was an elderly woman, although we could not see her face. We waved back. Was that her way of saying, “I’m part of this parade, too!” and “I’m making myself visible this way”?
There were a couple more Pride Parades after that, but nothing big and nothing really memorable. I can’t even find pictures of them. One in particular [was that in 2014?] just encircled Silliman campus, starting from the West Quadrangle fronting Silliman Church and ending at the Silliman Ballfield. In 2016, however, we had a bigger one, and this entailed an entire city tour. But it was held in July. In 2017, we had an even bigger one, led by Sol De Castro. But it was held in August.
And for the most part, Pride just meant parades.
In 2018, I volunteered to become the lead coordinator, and I wanted to expand the scope of Pride in Dumaguete to not just be about parades, but be a month of celebrating LGBTQ life with various events, including a drag show, a film screening, several fora on important issues, a poetry reading, an athletic gig, among others. We christened the event—which we hoped to be an annual occurrence actually held on Pride Month—“6200 Pride,” after our zip code.
But there was a personal reason why I volunteered: I was especially moved by an incident that horrified me. A good friend—a very talented dancer—had recently died of AIDS in Dumaguete, and his family was particularly horrible in their treatment of him in his last days—denying to everyone that he had the disease, denying him visitations by friends, and denying him the proper medical care that should have been given to him. I was so furious I decided to make Pride Month 2018 an extensive celebration of the LGBTQ, with particular focus on HIV/AIDS. [We had a seminar, and we offered free testing!—all courtesy of the Silliman University Medical Center and an organization of medical students.]
The last Pride Month we actually celebrated was in 2019, led by Shamah Bulangis. We had no idea it was going to be the last for a good while.
For 2022, coming off the pandemic, we are back and our goal is to highlight the mental health of LGBTQ people. Statistics show that LGQBTQ youth are most vulnerable to depression and suicide because they lack the necessary support they need in dealing with their sexuality, especially in a society that still condemns it. We can’t have more dead gay youths. We can’t have more people suffering from depression and anxiety just because they feel unloved or unwanted. (Or worse, bullied.) This is our focus for this year.
6200 Pride is not really an organization. It is more of an umbrella that coordinates various organizations, and helps facilitate their activities for Pride Month. It has always been a loose movement composed of a ragtag bunch of friends and volunteers who believe in the issues of the LGBTQ community. Under this umbrella organization, we have PETALS Dumaguete, headed by NORSU’s Carlou Bernaldez, which is the LGU-recognized LGBTQ group in Dumaguete. We also have Silliman University’s Illuminates of the Spectra [or iSpec], the school’s latest LGBTQ organization. But 6200 Pride also includes other groups that are allies of the cause. For 2022, an organization called Humanist Alliance Philippines, International [HAPI] is doing their share of Pride Month events—including art exhibits and various talks.
In the meantime, 6200 Pride is pushing—indeed, pushing!—for that rainbow pedestrian lane. We also have a writing contest that invites local LGBTQ to talk about their experiences as queer people. We also have a screening of the films of Jay Altarejos, a forum on civil unions with Jesus Falcis, another forum on mental with Bing Valbuena, a community reading project focusing on Carlo Vergara’s iconic graphic novel Ang Kagila-gilalas na Pakikipagsapalaran ni Zsazsa Zaturnnah, a staged reading of Dean Francis Alfar’s Short Time with YATTA, and a Pride PechaKucha where we will talk—in that unique brand of fast presentation—about drag, about writing queer stories, about coming out [or not], about partying, about queer art, about trans life, and about queerness in Filipino pre-colonial society. [For more information about the schedule of events, please look up 6200 Pride on Facebook.]
It should be a fun June.
I’ve been asked before: what rights are you fighting for in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental? There are so many issues that concern the LGBTQ community in the Philippines, among them the possibility of recognizing civil unions, the management of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the mental health welfare of gay youths, among others. The fight to make things like this happen will be long, but talking about them in the community will be a good start—and this is where Pride Month is essential.
Visibility is all.
People tend to say that the Philippines is more tolerant of its LGBTQ citizens, so why are we still doing Pride? But we still face discrimination in the workplace and in the family, among other things. And often this discrimination is not overt. Trans people, for example, are still being denied the rightful expression of their identity in many functions, like graduation, and are discriminated against in terms of opportunities in the workplace. Pride is about bringing attention to these things, but it is also a celebration of how much we’ve come so far in this fight.
We do get pushbacks when we push the envelope further in the name of acceptance and diversity. Sometimes we ask: are we effective in sending out a clear message? And sometimes we ask: are our own members of the community even hearing us clearly?
The Dumaguete LGBTQ is a very particular community for me when I come to regard the whole thrust of Pride Month—because while we do get active participation by a very middle-class and very young demographic [mostly students and professionals], we are still actually courting the participation of those who are in the other classes, particularly the working class LGBTQ who work in beauty parlors, who do pageants, and others. They have shown some reluctance in joining our cause for so long, and I’ve always wondered why. Is Pride Month too burgis? I want to tell them that our fight benefits them in the long run, and that it is essential to join hands to show solidarity in this clamor for visibility, for our rights, and for our welfare.
In the end, beyond rainbow pedestrian lanes, I envision a Dumaguete that welcomes all to the City of Gentle People, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Because in a world that values diversity of all kinds, it is best to promote inclusivity. This means extending support to efforts, like 6200 Pride and similar activities, that promote the rights and welfare of a very marginalized sector of society who has historically been vulnerable to prejudice.
Join us.
Labels: dumaguete, negros, Pride, queer
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Wednesday, June 01, 2022
4:05 PM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 87.
I used to do this regularly, posting poetry I love every Wednesday, before I decided to take a long social media retreat for the sake of my mental health in the middle of last year. In honor of Pride Month, I'm resurrecting this regular posting. Happy Pride!
Labels: philippine literature, poetry, Pride, queer
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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.
Labels: dumaguete, Pride, queer
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