KNOWING (Part 1)

My story is the typical Filipino bisexual man’s story. I have been moving, speaking and feeling the way I do since my childhood. Malamya. Malambot. Effeminate they say. My grandmother sort of knew of what will my sexual preference will be but she kept quiet about it telling off my critics that I will outgrow it. Even my aunts who noticed that I was very fond of drawing women in Maria Clara clothes also kept quiet about it reasoning that it was an artistic phase I am going through. But not my father.

Work it!

After my parents’ separation, my father lived with us in the two story house of my grandparents he helped built. The second floor has three rooms and a big receiving room for guests near the stairs and I was occupying one of the rooms. Once in awhile when I get bored I would play alone in the receiving room. I was still in elementary, when father came home for a vacation. Thinking I was all alone in the house I played dress up using blankets and cotton kulambo (mosquito net) that my grandmother collects, fixing it like a ball gown, then I will dance around the room and utter dialogues fit for a princess, unfortunately I didn’t hear my father coming up the stairs and he saw me in full regalia. His first born son, a drag princess!  The next thing I heard was a booming voice of my father saying: “Stop doing that! Take those things off you!”

 I immediately took off all the blankets and put it back in its proper place while my whole body was shaking. I was feeling different things at the same time: peeing, puking, vowels moving and my sweat drenching my whole body. I locked myself inside my room waiting for things to happen, until I was called for dinner. Everybody was silent as I was I taking my seat at the dinner table. Father was seating directly in front of me. I am like an ice cream melting away. Then with a deep voice father said that he would not like to see me again do such foolishness, and if he catches me again, he will beat me like hell, then asked me: "Bakla ka ba?"

What would be my answer to that pang-Miss Universe question?

Me: Hindi po.(Prinsensa po! Ching!)

Pudra: O hindi pala, tigilan mo yang katarantaduhan mo!  

Me: Opo.

Shokot na shokot aketch mga mare! As in bongang-bongga!

From then on I suppressed the princess in me.