Gay lives

Richard, also called Rich, works as a copy editor of a newspaper. He is 29 years old and he studied in the country’s most exclusive Catholic university. He came out after college but still lives with a closeted uncle in an apartment close to this office. He is also looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong places.

One day, he meets Brent in a gay bar. It is not the kind of gay bar where go-go boys dance with only a blue bandanna wrapped around their forehead. In this gay bar in Malate, with its aquamarine walls, you can just drink and pose. If you’re lucky, you would meet someone later, talk and drink some more. Rich did meet Brent. They go home and have intimate relations. Between the night’s afterglow and the morning’s hangover, they decided to live in. Rich is only too relieved to leave behind his crazy, closeted uncle.

Brent, 25 years old, is a college drop-out who is taking up Culinary Arts in a school run by Austrian chefs. He wants to work in a five-star hotel later. His Dad died when he was five and his mother raised him alone. She runs a small grocery store in España, Manila. She is a cheerful woman who has an inkling into her son’s gayness, but she does not mind. “He’s the only one I’ve got,” she thinks while checking the inventory of her small grocery. She is only too happy to help him in his dream of becoming a chef.

Brent seems cool, calm and collected. But inside him, like a gash that nobody sees, is a fear of abandonment. At first, he didn’t want to live in with Rich. Later, he said “yes,” because Rich made him feel secure and loved.

Rich and Brent try to have a monogamous relationship. Their friends are happy that – in a world becoming full of strangers - they found each other. When Rich cooks, Brent does the dishes, and vice-versa. Brent does the laundry but hates pressing the clothes, which Rich can do with such utmost care. And so the guys eat simply but well, have clean and well-pressed clothes. They even go to Palawan to celebrate the third month of their relationship.

But later, things begin to change. He tells Rich that for him, love really means “pure friendship.” He allows Rich to go to the bars again. Rich does this with great reluctance and pain. One day, he meets Cedric in a party. They dance and talk. Later, Rich writes about it in his journal, in vivid details.

Unfortunately, Rich leaves his journal lying around. Brent reads it. He knows it is his fault, for letting another man into the relationship. He decides to leave Rich. Sadness falls on the house like twilight. Rich goes home to a house full of silence. He decides to ask Cedric to live in with him. Cedric says that for him, Rich is Mr. Right Now. But Cedric even adds that seeing each other on weekends is best. There is space but no distance. The other one is just a text message away. Rich listens intently, quietly, his heart throbbing in his chest. For who knows, Mr. Right Now may become Mr. Right after all.

*      *      *

Raul, 29 years old, is working as an editor at a government corporation. He used to be a journalist who now wants a quiet life, away from the noise and the lunacy of the press room. He is amused now by the slow, agonizing turning of the bureaucratic mill. It is in sharp contrast to his nights, which he spends hooked to the internet.

After taking off his crisp Barong Tagalog and his tailored pair of pants, Raul has dinner at his condominium unit in Ortigas. He has a housemaid who comes to his house at 6 a.m., cooks and cleans for him, does his laundry and irons his clothes and promptly vanishes at 6 p.m. It is a good schedule, right to the point, because after dinner, Raul begins to chat.

In cyberspace, he becomes a different person. Or persons, more like it. He wears different masks. The lurkers in the chat rooms do not favor men who are fat or effeminate, thus the tagline: No fats, no femmes. But this is OK, because Raul works out and is straight-acting. With his skin the color of honey, deep-set eyes and nose like the beak of a parrot, he is a catch, indeed. Add to that a mind sheathed in polished irony and wit! With these gifts, Raul demolishes them all. He plays games with the men – verbal games mostly.

Only once did he have an actual, physical meeting with a chatmate. The guy happened to be Rob, one of his schoolmates in college. Rob is a self-supporting student in college and an orphan. Sad and good-looking, he is the kind of man Raul would fall for. A perfect fit. The first time they met they had dinner, they talked and Rob came home with Raul.

But Rob said it is better if they do not live together. So Raul lives in his condo, while Rob stays with his aunts in Pasig. Not a far commute and they could always meet at the Podium, to have coffee and share a piece of cheesecake, or walk a block away to catch a movie at Megamall. When the first month of their anniversary fell on a long weekend, they went to Sagada, their skin soaking up the chill air of the woodlands.

However, Rob finds Raul intense and aggressive. Having been used to a life all alone, he cannot cope with the vividness of Raul. Too present, too real, so very here and now, like vine around the vase of one’s throat. They drift away from each other.

Raul goes back to his life before Rob. Workhorse by day, internet hottie by night. He edits the words of his bosses and trawls for friends in the internet. Who knows, one fine day, those bodiless, anonymous men in the Net at night would materialize into bright, young men, with faces golden in the sun.

Who knows?