MANILA, Philippines - How are gay relationships different from straight ones? Surprisingly, not by much — maybe even healther than yours.
As a straight guy with a lot of gay friends and a lack of morals when it comes to downloading TV shows and movies, I’m constantly exposed to the ideal of the perfect gay relationship both in real life and in media. Gay couples in my social circle have great jobs, complement each other well and, when they disagree, do so like sensible people; on TV, it’s all smiling dudes in matching sweaters driving Mercedes SLKs to their high-paying jobs or slinky lesbians introducing their partners to cosmic dimensions of pleasure that no man could ever hope to achieve.
On the other side of the fence, there’s always some fresh atrocity committed in my hetero friends’ relationships (“Sue found Jim cheating and stabbed him in the face with a stiletto heel”), and the straights haven’t fared much better on the screen recently either: James Bond continues to do the best Ladytron impression ever by destroying every woman he touches and Lori got served up as zombie brunch without patching things up with her cuckolded husband.
What do they know that we don’t? I sat down with gay bros Jak/Daxter and les-bros Link/Zelda (not their real names) to unearth their recipe for success. Is there a designated giver and taker or do you switch? Do girls really kiss better than guys? What are your thoughts on Brokeback Mountain? If you want to find out the answers to these questions and more, stop reading now because you are a horrible person.
YOUNG STAR: What are your jobs and how did you meet?
ZELDA: I’m a visual artist and writer; Link’s a freelance video director. We met through a mutual friend who invited us to the same Cubao X gig.
J&D: We met online through www.downelink.com when it was still popular (ha, ha). We co-own a business.
So far, so normal.
Is who makes more money ever a point of contention?
LINK: We’re just happy to be able to afford the stuff we like and the difference (between what) we make isn’t really so glaring. Or even if it were, it wouldn’t really matter.
J&D: We co-own a business, and that means all the money we earn goes back to us. We agreed to receive the same pay every month although sometimes one of us gets (or borrows) more money from the business. It’s not an issue anymore because we both compromise with each other’s needs (and wants).
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There! There, this is what I mean. They’re behaving like rational human beings when it comes to money. Any normal man and woman would’ve had at least five major fights and an aborted break-up over money or who buys what for who by their third monthiversary.
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Traditionally, hetero relationships group various tasks under roles: the male as the breadwinner, the woman as everything else, etc. Do you find that you and your partner handle specific roles (traditional or non) or are things more spread out?
L&Z: We just check on each other and make sure that we’re both being responsible for our own stuff.
JAK: For the house chores, it just goes down to who’s good with what. Daxter does the cooking and cleaning because he’s really good at it. We both make decisions and compromise with each other.
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The concept of keeping your self-sufficiency while also engaging in mutual support with your significant other and divvying up tasks based on aptitude is so logical that I immediately erased it from my memory because I cannot understand it. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then gay people must be from… wait for it… Saturn, the most hermaphroditic planet ever because of its combination of beautiful ice rings and commanding presence. If you expected a different planet, I told you to stop reading already and I’m not going to ask again.
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A common (mis?)conception of gay relationships is that same-sex partners assume normal gender roles. Do you find this to be the case?
ZELDA: Link can be perceived as “the man” in the relationship, because of how she dresses or because she’s the one who drives all the time, but she also possesses more feminine qualities, like being a super stickler for neatness. I dress more “like a girl” and like makeup.
In the gay community, I think it’s natural to assume that these couples actually do assume hetero-normative gender roles. I’ve met some people though who really do assume the roles and take them seriously.
JAK: I’m more assertive and Daxter is more sensitive, especially in decision-making, although he does most of the power tasks. In our business, most of the time I’m the authority because I think more aggressively. I think it’s more about personality and skills rather than gender.
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Every liberal-minded heterosexual Filipino reading this article just had an aneurysm from the realization that gay people operate inside a relationship framework 20 years more advanced than theirs.
You agreed to this interview only under the condition of anonymity. Why is that?
ZELDA: I come from a pretty conservative church and family background. I feel like openly saying it will invite a lot of questions I don’t want to deal with and it kind of gives people who read it the right to judge or ask me about it, since I volunteered the information. When people (a.k.a. new people I meet, strangers on the Internet, not family) ask me about it, I don’t lie about it, but I also don’t like talking about it because it’s a private matter.
JAK: I’m still not open about it with my family. They’re very traditional born-again Christians so it’s a little hard for them to understand. Honestly I think most of us are still scared to be criticized by the public especially to those who are so close-minded. We are in the Philippines. Everyone has a lot to say. We’d rather stay private and happy.
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Probably the worst thing about the Christian stance on homosexuality is that it’s based on what Old Testament God said and did. Old Testament God also allowed Job’s children to die so he could win a bet with Satan, killed scores of Egyptian children so that the Israelites could go free, and commanded Moses to kill all the men, women and boys of a defeated army (sparing the little virgin girls, of course). Looking back, God did a bunch of things that God probably made kind of a bogus call on, so here’s this Jesus guy to square everything so it’s all cool now, right guys? Let’s let bygones be bygones and for the love of myself, can you just drop it already?
My takeaway is that, with the absence of gender to dictate things, gay couples are able to pick their roles according to strengths and preferences as well as switching roles when it suits them, which leads to less friction and a more complementary relationship. That’s technically also what a modern heterosexual relationship ought to look like, but the straights just aren’t totally there yet. Out of sympathy for my beleaguered hetero sisters still trapped under the boot of chauvinism, I will humbly make like Shasta McNasty and behave like the biggest sexist douchebag possible to chase them away from men and into the accepting arms of a lesbian, thus giving them the equal relationship they so deserve.