How does it feel to grow old?
I don’t feel it. Last week, I saw my former student Robbie Kwan Laurel at the Ateneo’s Rizal Library. In a loud voice, he said to me: "Who’s your doctor? Why do you still look the same since the 1980s? What do you put on your face?" Ah, well, I don’t have any doctor except for Dr. Yotoko who prescribes cream medication for my skin allergy due to the pollution and the extreme heat. I don’t look the same since the 1980s. Although I’m still 5’11’, I now weigh 145 lbs. It’s still 10 pounds short of my ideal weight. I don’t put anything on my face, except sun block.
I guess looking old in the end is a matter of genes. My mother was 60 years old when she attended the launching of my first book, Skin Voices Faces: Poems, in 1991. Since it was a hot summer, she came in a sleeveless red blouse, jeans and sandals. When my co-teachers asked who she was, I said, "My 60-year-old mother." She looked like a 40-year-old woman going to Rustan’s to shop.
What do you eat?
Everything, except ampalaya (amargoso) because I was forced to eat it when I was young, and pork because it has a peculiar smell. The secret is to eat a little of everything so you don’t feel deprived. So I eat a little of the panna cotta that Roberto Bellini makes in his restaurant in the Marikina Shoe Expo, since both of my parents are diabetic.
What will you do this summer?
I will work for Ang Ladlad – the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) network in the mornings, and I will teach English in the afternoons. I will look for funds, meet people, plan our strategies for the political party. At night, I will watch the films I missed last semester – including Harry Potter, Spiderman, and Batman.
What do you think of Brokeback Mountain?
Even before it was shown in the cinema houses, several male students of mine were lending me pirated DVD copies. I asked them, my eyes widening: "And who gave you the idea that I would like to watch movies like this?" Then I got their DVDs before they could return them to their bags. I read the story by E. Annie Proulx when I was in Davao City in 2000, doing research for Bagong Buwan, the movie on the Muslim conflict by Marilou Diaz-Abaya. The story enchanted me. Ang Lee’s movie version is painful and luminous. It reminded me of my boyfriends. Except one, all of them were younger than me and repressed to the max. Paraphrasing the surgeon-general: "Repression is dangerous to one’s emotional and mental health."
What do you think of Rustom Padilla’s revelation on TV that he’s gay?
As I’ve said in TV Patrol – and the next day, in Magandang Umaga, Pilipinas – we have to thank Rustom Padilla for giving a face to bisexuality, because he claims he is bisexual. I told Mario Dumaual that Rustom gave to Pinoy Big Brother its "Brokeback Moment." And when the inquisitive Mario asked me for my last words, I looked at the camera, wagged my school teacher’s finger, smiled and said: "Kapatid na Rustom, hindi ka na nag-iisa (Brother/sister Rustom, you’re no longer alone)."
What are your forthcoming books?
Ladlad 3 is now in its production stage. I’ve just read the page proofs – all 300 pages of it! There’s love and longing and, well, ah, a lot of sex in this one, written by a young and new generation of gay writers. They can write about sex as if it’s the most natural thing in the world (maybe it is). I’m also reading the page proofs of Rampa: Buhay Bading 2, whose cover will feature a painting by the inimitable, incomparable Gilda Cordero-Fernando.
Moreover, I have just read the page proofs of Happy: The Best Philippine Short Stories, with a man and a woman in dishabille on the cover, done by my talented friend Jasper Espejo. Lots of love and sex, too, but of the heterosexual kind (sniff). I’m also updating Phil. Gay Dict. (The Uncut Version), or the Philippine Gay Dictionary. The words we collected ended in 2000, and God knows that our snake sisters have a whole new cocktail of words added to the bakla-bulary.
So four books, plus I’m waiting for word from Anvil when Afraid 2: The Best Philippine Ghost Stories and my novel, Pearl of the Orient, will be scheduled for publication. I’ve already sent them the manuscripts for part 2 of this cottage industry of mumu tales. I’m not a busy person.
Don’t you want to be published abroad?
I want to. In fact, a few months ago, the highly-rated journal Blithe House Quarterly published my short story, "Poinsettias." You can do a Google search for Blithe House Quarterly and read the story if you want. But remember, I took up graduate studies in Publishing and I know the publishing game in the West rather well. When I returned to the UK in 1993 for a grant, I sent my manuscript of poems to Bloodaxe Books but they returned it, unread. They said, "We are not soliciting manuscripts at this point." Which seemed to be a fib, because my friend Marion Lomax had just told me that Bloodaxe was asking for a new manuscript from her. Or in the US, where I have Fil-Am writer-friends in New York whose novels cannot be published because 1) They sound too much like Gabriel Garcia Marquez; 2) The novels deal with the Philippines and not the United States; or 3) Our marketing department will have difficulty selling this book.
In short, here, there, and everywhere, what matters in the end are the product you are touting (the novel should be short, exotic, moves at a fast clip) and the literary agent selling your manuscript to the publishing house (he or she should be a smart-ass and knows his or her way around the block).
But since my parents are migrating soon to the US, I will ask them to handcarry my manuscripts of selected poems and selected short stories. We’ll never know. My parents might prove to be my lucky charms.
Don’t you want to live abroad?
Sometimes I still do. A place with no traffic jams, with clean air, with less political static would be nice. But it would also be cold, fast, and lonely. I’ve taught English and Creative Writing in the US, but I guess I still feel better when, at the end of the sem, one or two students would write a personal note thanking me "for introducing our country to us."
Why do you want to run for public office? Won’t it just corrupt you?
I could afford not to. I have my teaching and my writing to keep me happy. But we have to push the anti-discrimination bill against lesbians and gays in Congress. It’s been there for nine years. Like the anti-rape and the anti-sexual harassment bills that took as many years, the anti-discrimination bill needs constant and focused prodding to become a law.
It just shows the depths of our cynicism when young and well-prepared candidates step up the plate and run for public office but instead of supporting them, we jeer at them. "You cannot change the system." "You can only do so much." "Can we have a slice of your pork barrel?" "You’ll just end up like them."
I don’t intend to change all the system, but parts of it. I may not do much, but I will do something. The pork barrel will go to the following projects: micro-finance and livelihood programs for the poor and handicapped LGBTs; drop-in centers for golden gays and young people driven from their homes by parents, which centers contain counseling, legal aid services, and information on LGBT issues, as well as on HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. And no, I won’t end up like them. On top of the regular salary, the only thing I’m asking for is a clothing allowance, because drycleaning those darn barong tagalogs cost P100 per pop.
What do you do when people like these piss you?
I just close my eyes and wish to God that a boil would grow on their asses so they’ll have difficulty sitting – or sleeping.
In the end, what do you wish for everybody?
I’m also for world peace.
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