eulogy for a friend

When I asked Ali about his skin cancer before the start of Cez's church wedding, he spoke lightly of it. It was as if he just contracted the flu. He said he would be starting chemotherapy sessions the month after that. I was not sure if he noticed it but I was worried, terribly worried. But the way he spoke about the matter somehow assured me that things would be all right, as things are wont to do whenever we over-worry about them. Our conversation was cut short because he had to take pictures of the wedding (he was the official photographer) and I had to play the piano for the wedding march. That was six months ago. I just learned thirty minutes ago that he would be buried this coming Thursday.

I was probably the very first person from his high school batchmates to have learned of his condition because his mom had informed my sister about it in December. It came as a shock, and, somehow, I got the impression that it was not something to be divulged, not right away.

However, I felt that this was something my high school friends should know, too. So, after having whored before Ali’s camera the whole night at the wedding, I told some of them about it. They had the right to know. And, I thought, should the inevitable happen, they would have had time to cherish the person while he was still alive. The inevitable did happen. And all we can cherish now are memories.

Years ago, when dreams still ran high and science investigatory projects were considered the pinnacle of our achievements, Ali was a constant companion. Not a lot of people may know it but we did become quite close especially during the last year of high school. We used to hang out a lot, together with Bonny. He used to go to our house, and, sitting side by side on the piano bench, we would play Blue Moon in four different variations—jazz, classical, pop, and just plain funky. He played primero and I secondo. He marveled at how effortlessly I would shift from classical to jazz in one bar. But when he himself learned the trick of musical improvisation, he got so adept at it he started doing it with practically every pop song.

After I had taught him the rudiments of reading notes, he got to play slightly more difficult pieces. He was a fast learner and his interest in the instrument never waned. Later on, he got good enough to play regularly in his church, Iglesia ni Cristo.

“Improvisation is not allowed there,” he told me once, after playing in church. “You have to strictly follow the music sheet.”

I don’t want to take the credit, though. I merely showed him the door and he entered it with gusto, like most of the other things he engaged in—photography being one of them.

At a time when text messaging was still unheard of, we would spend hours on the telephone mostly talking about his exploits with girls or those he merely fancied. There were instances when I actually fell asleep and he would wake me up by pressing a button on the phone, which made my earwax shoot out of my eardrums, that jerk!

During those phone calls, too, he got to bare his dreams, which, unfortunately, I don’t remember anymore. Only the more lurid parts of the conversations got stuck in my mind, as these regular talks were always punctuated with laughter, jokes, and general rubbish. Suffice it to say that I got the privilege of knowing the other side of him. He was always seen as a class clown with a big nose, someone who didn’t seem to take things seriously, who always made fun of things and found something funny in anything. In our regular phone calls, I realized that he was dead serious about many things in life.

Whenever we would visit Bonny, we would deliberately pause at his gate (even if it was wide open) and call Bonny’s name out loud in a sing-song manner, he doing the base part and I the tenor part. It was one of those things we did to amuse—or annoy, depending on the case—Bonny.

At Bonny’s place, we used to watch the 10th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables. He loved the musical so much that he read the thick, unabridged English translation of Victor Hugo’s original. He lent me this book and, somehow, I never got to finish reading it, preferring the abridged, simplified French version. This dilapidated book is still in my shelf at home.

His sister being a ballerina, he was able to procure complimentary tickets for me and Bonny for a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the main theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines with none other than prima ballerina Lisa Macuja playing the lead. It was the very first ballet I had ever seen.

We shared a passion for music. The Phantom of the Opera, of course, was our favorite musical during that time because we had to do our own version of it for a school competition. I played the title role and he was one of the unforgettable, nameless extras trying to look good in the background. We fabulously lost the competition to a group that lip-synched the whole thing.

We used to sing Tong Tong tong pakitong kitong to the tune of Phantom of the Opera; again, he did the base part, I the tenor. We would sing it whenever we were bored. Or just to annoy whoever was within earshot.

He told me once that whenever he would hear Think of Me, he imagined his future wife to be that girl, to have that pristine voice singing with yearning and longing. I have yet to hear Maria Mariquit sing to know if, indeed, she sounds like Sarah Brightman. But even if she doesn’t, I’m sure Ali saw in her much more than what a fictional Christine Daeé can ever offer. And I have yet to see Karl Matthew, his baby who will never know how fun a dad Ali could have been.

Ten months ago, when Ali took touching pictures of my father’s funeral, I had no inkling that he would follow suit. Ten months ago, too, his mom told me how happy Ali had been when he got his new car. “He was like a boy,” she said. And in many ways, that’s how I, his high school classmate and friend, would remember him, like a boy with a happy heart and a big nose.

Life has a way of playing jokes on us. Or should I say, ‘improvising’ at the last minute. The joker sometimes leaves earlier, making the hall silent, desolate. The jests, the antics, the fun, however, would never ever die. They will linger as long as we need them.

Goodbye, Ali. It had been one hell of a ride.

let's beat street kids to death, they're not human!

I was reading John Bayley to while away the time as I queued for my ticket at the train station. He was talking about his boredom as a bourgeois kid in a golf course somewhere in Littlestone, England in the 1930s. His hobby was to collect used golf balls and bury them in the sand like crocodile's eggs.

This childhood nostalgia was cut short when I heard a commotion. A few paces from where I was standing, a security guard lifted a long cane and brandished it in the air. A boy, a street kid, wearing a soiled, oversize blue shirt and a pair of blackened shorts, cowered on the ground beside him, refusing to stand up. I thought the guard merely wanted to scare him off the train station's premises because beggars weren't allowed there, but he grabbed his scrawny arm to make him stand and whacked him hard on the butt. The child pretended it didn't hurt. Not a sound came from him but the impact sent him sprawling on the floor. He covered his behind with his grimy hands.

The guard forcefully dragged him away and sent the cane whirring down again. I'm not sure which body part it hit because I turned away and looked at the violent scene again just in time to see the boy grimace in pain. Still, not a sound came from him. His face was again stern and resolute, the grimace having faded as soon as it appeared. The people who were impatiently queuing for their train tickets craned their necks to get a better look. Some women gasped. But most of them surveyed the incident with curiosity, if not with indifference.

The guard dragged the boy toward the stairs, beat him some more, this time more vigorously, and hurled him down the steps. The boy, of course, did not fall as he got hold of the railing and clung there like a cat under attack. The guard turned away and walked proudly back to the station. I heard some unintelligible cuss words from the boy and then something flew and hit the guard's nape. From afar, it just looked like an empty plastic bottle of water or something lighter. Infuriated, the guard turned and ran toward the stairs again, his stick and his truncheon ready to attack.

They exchanged curses and threats. He, no doubt, hit him again with his two weapons because I saw both his cane and his club rising and falling from behind the low concrete walls of the stairwell.

Having beaten down his enemy, the guard hurriedly went back to his post. He had the air of a soldier who had just done something patriotic for his country. Apparently, the boy wasn't ready to surrender. He ran up the stairs again and shouted in Tagalog: “You son of a whore! You can only do such things because you're a guard! You wait and see!” And he let loose more Tagalog expletives.

I got my ticket and walked with big strides toward the turnstiles. I had seen and heard more than I should. I stowed Bayley's book inside my bag, suddenly losing interest in reading about the travails of rich, English school boys.

guava tree

You won’t find me sitting on a tree branch and drinking in the breeze, soft against my skin. Those days are long past. Too far removed from what I have become. Like the last time I climbed down the guava tree in our backyard, never to climb it up again, not so much because I outgrew the tree as because the tree grew weary of my presence. You know too much for your own good, it said. Innocence is the prerequisite of childhood fantasy. And I was losing that, inch by inch. Was it not the point of education? To erode innocence and replace it with doubt? Or did I equate innocence with ignorance and antagonized the two?

To put me to sleep, my grandmother used to sing an ancient folk tune that spoke of a huge moon and a woman yearning for her lover, while I thought about my playmates who were out in the sun, playing backyard football. My grandmother noticed that I wasn’t in the mood for a siesta. With a slap on my behind, she sent me off, murmuring some cusswords which I had yet to learn and enunciate properly. I felt guilty then. I wasted her time and her saliva. It was not easy to sing songs like that. And it was easy to feel guilty back then, when days were long and afternoons lazed around shamelessly.

It was so much fun to be a kid again and be capable of just one emotion at a time. Cry when you’re pissed. Jump when you’re happy. Hit the idiot next door when you’re mad. But everything is ambiguous now. Nothing is classifiable. No definitive answer to anything. Which is what I have always wanted, really. When my diffidence as a child was replaced by assertiveness as an adult, something slipped away so stealthily I hardly noticed it. Or had it been there in the first place? Much of the boy still lingered within, perhaps nursed by my artistic proclivities. It only came out when I felt like climbing the guava tree again, which had long been cut. On its site yawns an ugly hole on the ground which should have been the foundation of a new house my family wanted to construct there.

If I were a poet, I would’ve waxed poetic about all these and romanticized even the guavas that dangled in that tree. But I am not. And there is not much to sugar coat anyway. Childhood memories are intrinsically sweet, until reality grows like an incurable pimple and nothing is the same again. Beliefs get flushed down the toilet, emotions become more complex, songs no longer speak about a huge moon and a yearning woman but of an evil sun that whips the ground until it breaks and gushes forth black mud, thick and ugly like a child’s rhyme swelling epical with a convoluted plot and twisted characters, each desiring to bring down the other in a mad rush to get to the top and to feel some semblance of an emotion, like that feeling that one gets while one sits on a tree branch, feet dangling, face upturned—drinking the breeze that is soft against one’s young skin. But that tree exists only in one's memory.

my teacher's titties

When I was in kindergarten, I remember having a blast peeking through my teacher's blouse to have a look at her titties. Before you conclude that I have been a maniac since I was five, let me tell you that it was nothing sexual for me. I didn't have a boner while watching her bosom jiggle as she bent over to pick up books and stuff. Besides, doing it with a woman 40 years my senior isn't exactly the kind of thing that would make my blood do the boogie up and down my penis shaft. It's like making out with your own mother. Oedipus Complex is just not for me. And it wasn't boob-envy either, if there ever is such a concept.

I just enjoyed looking at her breasts. That's all. The fact that it was taboo made the experience more exhilarating. It was like conquering the unconquerable.

She wasn't a bombshell or anything. Far from it. Aside from being fairly advanced in age, she was probably the worst teacher I've ever had. I was so afraid of her that I would rather pee in my shorts than ask for her permission to go to the bathroom. I used to cry a lot in the classroom, too. I was the type of kid who would wail hysterically if my father so much as left the parents' waiting area to go pee. I just couldn't stand the thought of being alone in a room full of strange kids herded by a terrible teacher who exposed her titties every time she bent over. And she didn't even wear a decent bra. It was yellowed and tattered at the edges.

She had this strange habit of dismissing her pupils' brilliant answers as sheer luck. I had no idea why she did that. All I knew was that I grew scared of her day after day. Being the only pupil who required a guardian to be always present during class, I, naturally, was already marked by this teacher. She had nothing but disdain for me and my behavior. She sneered at me most of the time, which caused me to clam up even more, and, of course, gawk at her titties longer.
Strange how kids have such dirty thoughts. Or was it dirty at all, considering the lack of sexual intent? It probably was my way of getting back at her. Surely, having some pupil ogle at your titties is a small price to pay for traumatizing kids who peed in their shorts. Since she was my very first teacher, she became the epitome of what a teacher should be. I had the impression that all teachers were monsters who were always ready to growl at you and then show you their titties. This made me become an introvert all throughout gradeschool.

Things might have been different if she hadn't been like that. If she had only worn a blouse that wasn't too loose, or a bra that could actually conceal what it promises to conceal, then I wouldn't have probably turned out the way I did (a horny bastard, that is). Of course, it's much too simplistic to blame everything on my teacher's boobs. That's totally unfair to mammary glands in general. At any rate, I sort of enjoyed seeing her ancient bosom (yes, go ahead, you can cringe now). I just wish she had already outgrown her old habits. Otherwise, we would eventually have kids who would associate titties with gall bladder problems.

drink while you work

Contrary to what some of you might have surmised, I am not closing down this blog. No way. And I didn't die of cancer of the toenails or anything as dramatic as that. I'm very much alive, thank you very much. Work just got in the way. You know how it goes: you quit your job, find a new one, go through all that adjustment shit and you get so busy you finally forget about the stuff that once kept you alive. Well, I didn't actually forget it. I just, sort of, like, well, yeah OK, maybe I did forget about it. I've been so engrossed with the new job that I didn't, couldn't possibly keep log of my exploits, much less keep my lanky body in bed for more than five hours every night—or morning (god, my circadian rhythm is so screwed up already I don't know if it is day or night).

After two months of silence, I'm coming back from my hibernation. Not wiser, not better. Just a bit less sober. I should have my blood tested for alcohol content. Or rather, I should have my alcohol tested for blood content.

I won't be coming up with any Coehlhean crap about my long absence. No words of wisdom either. I was just, well, absent. And in my absence, I didn't write anything. And that's that. End of story.

I've acquired some new habits, though. Like drinking beer while having breakfast, which, one time caused me to accidentally sprinkle brown sugar instead of pepper into my bowl of lugaw (rice porridge). The damned thing looked so much like pepper, for crying out loud. They should label their condiments properly or else some customer would one day sue them for condiment misrepresentation or something. Stupid restaurant.

There were also times when I would sip red wine while at work. Believe me, in my line of work, having a little alcohol in your system helps you do your job better. And management's lenient on this. When our CEO came over from our main office in Europe last December to see how operations were running here, he walked around the place carrying a beer and sporting a dorky Santa hat. Shortly after, all administrative personnel, including our big boss, followed suit. They all started wearing Santa hats everyday until our Christmas break. One look at them and I knew that this is THE company!

Just imagine the reaction of applicants, all dressed to the nines for their interviews, as they enter our office and are greeted with two huge plastic King Kong fists that growl when punched and a stuffed Mickey Mouse with his right hand in his briefs, fondling his crotch.
The fridge in the pantry is teeming with bottles of beer, Sol de Chile, Absolut vodka, flavored lambanog (local wine that kicks ass) and, on lucky days, even Jägermeister. Even the carpet is stained with dried up wine (and Buddha knows what else), remnants of wild office parties whose highlights were animated discussions on sexual perversities.

With a very young workforce (our CEO's only 31 years old and our country manager is two years younger than I am), the company is understandably given to drunken celebrations at the least provocation.

What's good about it is that these people know how to draw the line. Business is still business. The company may seem one whole big party but when the work shift starts grinding, everyone means business. In fact, one employee, who was hired two weeks after I had gotten in, has just recently been fired because of poor performance. Which caused paranoia levels to soar, especially among new recruits like me.

On that fateful day, the clueless guy reported for work only to find that his schedule for the day had already been wiped clean. Then the manager called him to the conference room to give him the axe. He requested if he could stay for a few hours just so he could clear his desk but the boss said it would not be a wise idea. He had to leave immediately. Minutes after he went out of the execution, er, conference room, his proximity ID was already deactivated and could no longer be read by the door scanner. Thus, he had to stand there and wait for another employee to tap her ID onto the proximity scanner and open the electromagnetic locks for him. When he finally got to his workstation, he just took his stuff and left. No weepy farewells.

That's a bit harsh, I know. But it's part of the contract. That's why I'm thinking of other options now, just in case I get axed, too. I don't really mind getting fired. But I've started to love this job already. I may not have found friends here yet (I'm a natural snob) but I do love it here. It's such a small company and everyone does not seem to have egos at all. Everyone has their own eccentricities and nobody seems to give a hoot about it. For a weirdo like me, that's quite an ideal workplace.

Also, the big bosses sneer at hierarchical shit. They all make you feel that you are at the same level with them. But once you screw up, well, you pretty much know where your ass will end up.
So, while I try to adjust to this new job, I'm always on my toes, always on the lookout for the looming axe. But I'll just enjoy this while it lasts. I can't see the fun in getting anxious over something that might not even happen at all. I'd just surf the waves and see where the tides will bring me.

This blog is now officially alive again. I just don't when the next entry will be.

Thanks for all your greetings, comments, messages, and violent reactions. I've missed you all. God, I'm starting to sound like some phoney actor receiving an Oscar.

This crappy post will do for now.

Ciao!

I love to puke after drinking

I almost forgot the relief that comes with puking one’s innards out after some heavy drinking. The last time I really vomited was months ago, when I downed barrels of tequila (or was it rhum?) mixed with Vishnu knows what. Intoxication makes bartenders of anyone, and it makes any mixture, however odd, taste sublime. That was also the time when I, in drunken stupor, proposed to woo one of my high school friends while Alona was cleaning up puddles of vomit on the floor and Cez was on all fours, claiming that she’s washing clothes. This whole bacchanalian exercise was caught on video, which I haven’t seen yet. I don’t know who the hell has a copy of it. They’d just probably show it during my funeral or something and have a good laugh at how goofy I had been when I was still alive. Yes, make fun of me, you assholes!

This time, though, what made me puke the morning after was just some cheap beer at a tacky joint with a confused and overworked videoke machine. Don calls it Hell. But Hell does not sell five bottles of beer for just a hundred bucks. That’s more like Heaven’s thing, if you would ask me.

Beer has never made me puke before, especially not that kind, which tastes just a bit better than water. This tells a lot about the deterioration of my drinking prowess. I should start flexing my liver muscles again so it can load up as much alcohol as it used to and perhaps gear up for more discussions on philosophies and beliefs; sex and lust; betrayals and trysts—stuff that drinking sessions are so rife with. I got home at six the next morning, reeking of beer-soaked morning reveries. A few hours after, I was face to face with the toilet bowl, unloading my angst with steady bursts of mush and digestive juices. And then came relief.

orgasmic

Bows glided in fury. Masses of red locks wildly thrashed. Black gowns creased and rumpled over quivering legs excited by cleanly executed trills. And Poulenc did cartwheels onstage.

Oboes pedaled up in silky restraint. Young, white, feminine muscles on bare arms contracted with every agonized pianissimo. Eyelashes flitted like flies escaping the swat. And Prokofiev limped gaily with one leg.

Flabby cheeks shook jelly-like with passion. Worn-out leather shoes traced the rhythm on the carpeted floor. The uncontrolled tittering of a half-Japanese, half-French violinist infected the crowd with mirth. And Debussy jacked off in front of us.

“She must have had jutes, that girl,” my seatmate, a classmate in German class, was referring to the giggling half-Japanese performer. Maybe I had jutes, too. I could feel it. Either that or the wine I had gulped in the lobby was now tickling my brain cells. And my limp body was surfing the air thick with the wailing of strings.

One more number and I was already one of those animals in Saint-Saëns’ Le Carnaval des Animaux, jumping about in ecstasy, cavorting to the bassoon’s gossips.

The French performers had requested that the aircon be turned off. It’s bad for the instruments, they claimed. The Francisco Santiago Hall of PCI Bank was, therefore, a bit warm that night. Add to that the heat generated by the young musicians whose passion seared the walls, and of course, the hot, heavy breathing of the guy seated on my left, who was already seeing talking cellos and walking clarinets in his dreams.

The zest of the performers was contagious. It was clearly their life. And they were living every note of it. Every flick of the bow, every dizzying cadenza, every squirting glissando was relished. They were enjoying the whole experience, and so was I.

Fingers stabbed the ivory keys. Applause attacked the ceiling like drugged bats. Seats clinked and creaked as the audience rose for an ovation. And I had an orgasm.

to the stage

It’s good to be worlds away from moronic Hollywood crap once in a while. Last weekend I was back to my old love, the theater.

Friday night, I sprinted to the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) Little Theater to watch the ballet recital of my nine-year-old niece, Shekanyah Grace. I played the doting uncle to a proudly beaming little niece in a stiff tutu.

Entitled Vive la Danse, the two-night show featured French children’s songs and folk tunes, to which girls (and two boys) danced excitedly. The performance was faulty, what with a riot of shaky arabesques and uncertain pliés. But amateurish recitals are not watched for the performers’ virtuosity. You go there to cheer for a relative or a friend, which was exactly what some members of the audience did, rather overenthusiastically. They hysterically shouted “Bravo” or “That’s my daughter!” or “My daughter is there!” or “We love you Opalyn!” everytime their daughters went onstage. One guy, in an attempt to be funny, even shouted “My daughter’s not there!”

I almost screeched “Who the fuck cares? Go grab your freaking daughters and get the hell out of this theater!” Maybe there should have been a lecture on theater etiquette before the show. If Bobby Garcia were there, he would’ve thrown a tantrum.

I see some promise in Shekanyah’s performance. Although she still dances rather carelessly at times and she still has some pockets of baby fat, she already has the grace and the limberness of a ballerina. She was, in fact, one of the two students who got Distinction when their ballet class was evaluated by an Australian ballet school a few months ago. That means she’ll be flying to Sydney sometime soon for a ballet scholarship. I’m so proud of her.

What bothered me, though, was the speech of their head ballet teacher. Before the recital started, she came out in a micro-mini, showing off her long legs in distractingly white stockings, and sat on a black bench onstage. Reading from a black folder, she said she had asked the Lord to give her her own ballet company because she wouldn’t want her “girls” to be swallowed up by mainstream ballet groups that would make them wear sexy costumes, dance sensual dances, and star in “Dracula, the Ballet.” Then, she led a prayer so that she and her “girls” would be in the right artistic path, or something like that.

If all ballerinas had this mindset, I guess we’d end up with nothing but the ballet version of “The Passion of the Christ.” And then the line between art and religious propaganda would forever be blurred.

Saturday night, I was in RCBC Theater in Makati for Actor’s Actor Inc.’s Once on This Island. After seeing the first scene, I knew that it was going to be a great show. Some familiar theater stalwarts were in the cast and they hinted at a promise of a great performance.

There was Menchu Lauchengo-Yulo (who gave a sensitive portrayal of Ellen in the Manila run of Miss Saigon and who was such a hilarious witch in Trumpets’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Michael De Mesa (a fine film actor who played Collins with depth in Rent, although his singing leaves much to be desired), Bituin Escalante (her Mimi in Rent was one of the most memorable; who wouldn’t be enthralled with her huge voice?), Bodjie Pascua (any theater person who doesn’t know this veteran thespian must seriously think of changing careers now) Jett Pangan, May Bayot, and other familiar talents with unbelievably soulful voices.

Surprisingly, Jeffrey Hidalgo was part of the cast (unless it was just some guy who looked like him; I didn’t get to buy a souvenir program so I have no way of checking). It wasn’t hard to notice him among the talented cast members. He stuck out like a wad of booger on a glass tabletop. His accent was distracting and he was too boringly plain to essay the role of a handsome and appealing French mulatto. His character came out flat, drab, and uninspiring. His pop singing style, albeit not lacking in control (in fairness to him, he has improved a lot since his That’s Entertainment days), was ill-suited for the character, making one think what on earth Ti Moune found so lovable about him. Whatever German Moreno taught him in his now-defunct inane teen show did not prepare him for the legitimate stage.

(Little bit of trivia: he was in the same ROTC battalion as I was back in college. I remember we used to snicker derisively whenever he would ask permission from our commander to go home early. We thought, since it was a Saturday, he still had to prepare for some Vegas-style, Bellastar-type production number in Saturday Entertainment. The price you have to pay for being one of Kuya Germs’ boys, or gels.)

But Jeffrey was a minor distraction. The fire of the rest of the cast was enough to salvage the show. All throughout the musical, they swung from character to character; did some SM work; became human props; and supported each other on a minimalist stage draped with native bamboo Venetian blinds. The energy never waned, which riveted the audience. The singing was restrained and controlled. Despite the wild dancing and thrashing onstage, their voices, amazingly, still sounded clear, tireless, and powerful.

Still humming the last line of the last number (…that’s why we tell the story…), I came home refreshed that night. I think I would make veering away from idiotic Hollywood rubbish a habit from now on.

feminist without a vagina

“Babae, tangan mo ang kalahti ng kalangitan (Woman, you control half of the heavens).”

That was the only line I sang and it spoke volumes about my views on women’s rights and gender equality. I couldn’t put it more succinctly. I performed that with a leftist cultural group during the International Women’s Day Celebration years ago.

Accompanied by a violinist, two guitarists, and a congo player, I sang back-up vocals (we just repeated that line over and over again, in varying degrees of loudness) while a man with a booming voice recited a poem about women’s rights (or more specifically, on how we trample on them). Also on the stage were a handful of dancers (we called them ‘movers’) who physicalized our music and poetry.

We performed on a makeshift stage erected right in front of the Welcome Rotunda monument. Up there, I could see a small crowd of about two hundred women’s rights advocates in the audience (mostly from Gabriela and other progressive organizations), squinting in the harshness of the midday sun, but still enjoying our performance. That inspired me to do my best onstage.

This also brings to mind the two Vagina Monologue performances I was lucky to be part of. Nope, I didn’t do the “Reclaiming Cunt” monologue because, obviously, I don’t have a cunt to speak of. I’ll leave that to Harlene Bautista whose Tagalog version really brought the house down.

I was merely one of the back-up singers.

Once a year, New Voice Company celebrates V-Day, a special event that centers on women empowerment. The central piece of this celebration, of course, is the performance of Eve Ensler’s smash hit, The Vagina Monologues. Instead of just the usual three actors, New Voice invites around sixty women from different fields to perform the monologues and/or sing, dance, or deliver a speech onstage.

The first one was held at the Music Museum and the second, at the Folk Arts Theater. Although most of what I did was just sing back-up vocals, perform with the choir, do a group movement piece, and stage-manage in between, I felt so proud to be sharing the same stage with such powerful women as Cheche Lazaro (she even took a picture of Elnard, Oliver, and me while we were back-up singing for Monique Wilson and Celeste Legaspi’s “The Prayer”), Alya Honasan, the late Zenaida Amador (founder and erstwhile artistic director of Repertory Philippines), Baby Barredo, Tammy Monsod (a superb thespian; daughter of Winnie Monsod), Winnie Monsod, Cherry Gil (who was so engrossed with our warm-up exercise before the show that she stayed flat on the floor long after all of us had gone up), Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, Mitch Valdez, Celeste Legaspi, Nannette Inventor, Monique Wilson, Cynthia Alexander, Grace Nono (I told her to use the microphone onstage but, in a moment of panic, she used my mic backstage which was off!), Rep. Lisa Masa, Roselle Nava, Regine Velasquez (who, having flown from the States, was catatonic when she arrived; when I told her to get ready, she sprang up and walked toward the edge of the wing, thinking that it was already her cue to sing), Rina Jimenez-David, Angel Aquino, Angelu de Leon, Sampaguita, Harlene Bautista, Belinda Panelo, and a host of theater actors, singers, writers, directors, and advocates of women’s rights.

What was I doing there even if I didn’t have, er, a vagina? I’m proud to say that I do not conform to your usual mold of a guy. I hate chauvinism and I despise machismo. I believe everyone, regardless of sex, is equal, therefore, in the eyes of the law, everyone should have equal rights.

For ages, this phallus-obsessed world had suppressed women, relegating them to the outskirts of mainstream society, regarding them as delicate, fragile, good-only-for-sex creatures who must not open their own doors but should open up their legs for men anytime. I say, it’s about time that we, men, realized that having a dick does not guarantee us special privileges, that women are also capable of doing anything men can do, sometimes, they can even do it better.

Having said this, I don’t blame other men for harboring Jurassic perspectives on gender and the role of women. We have been conditioned by eons of crooked thoughts and philosophies regarding male superiority, religion being the chief proponent of gender inequality. The feminine has been so demonized that we almost equate women with the “darker side” of humanity.

They are the Magdelenes, the Eves, and the Bathshebas whose only goal is to seduce men and sidetrack them from their noble, testosterone-heavy missions in life. Man, you’d have to be dumb not to notice the glaring patronization of women in the Bible. You can only name a few who admirably stood out—Mary the mother of Christ, Deborah the prophetess, Queen Esther, and Miriam the sister of Moses.

And that is just Christianity. We haven’t even talked about Islam and other world religions that ignore the power of women! Talk about obliteration of the sacred feminine.

But what I cannot stomach most of all is the resignation of most women about this issue. Some of them would rather choose to conform and admit that they are indeed inferior, that this is still “a man’s world.” Their only idea of womanhood is to play second fiddle to a man—any man. That is how much some women have ingrained this culture of inequality.

My ideal woman, therefore, is not your usual timidly demure, delicately virginal girl. My ideal woman is strong and bold. She knows what she wants and knows how to get there. She has her own mind and she does not wait for men to open doors for her, or to offer her their seats. She is willing to be on equal footing with a man in a relationship and not be subjugated by him. She understands her sexuality and is not afraid of it. Best of all, she does not conform to any of those societal shit that dictates what a woman should be.

Now that we’re celebrating International Women’s Day, I salute those brave women who have defiantly broken the mold and are struggling for a better, more egalitarian world. You do have the right to control half of the heavens.