If it's not home, maybe you're living in it wrong.
A family member of mine who was planning to leave the Philippines permanently told me that my optimism about the country was misplaced and that he was getting out while he could.
The exchange boiled down to a little game of retorts of "this place is hopeless" and "well I'm hopeful" and "that won't change things" and a few minutes of wracking my head and then "alright... well happy trip".
Right before we talked about his trip, he was the guy I respected, admired, and wished I could be like the most.
I never knew we were related until he recognized me at a Christmas party in 2006. My ex was busy spreading himself around the room as I nipped drinks from the bar and pretended I wasn't uncomfortable, and this guy came along, told me my full name and introduced himself as my dad's cousin. I recovered a few minutes after to ask him how on earth this could have happened. Since then we've met up a few times to just talk, or stepped outside big family dinners where he's suddenly be invited but quietly ignored. I always felt he was the open secret the whole family had. "Oh he's just not married." "Oh he's busy so we don't invite him." "Oh Joseph we just never mentioned him to you because you two are uncannily alike!" That kind.
I loved talking with him. He had the compassion to understand how hard it was to be gay in a family and culture like the one we shared, but also the firmness and maturity that only a family member could have as he told me to not be such a ho with my boys, come home safe after nights out, and respect my mom when she was nearly impossible to do so to. He saw and understood the two parts of me I could never reconcile, and I loved him for that.
The ways I looked up to him made what he said so much more disappointing, because I used to feel the same about the Philippines: I was in high school, thinking about four socially easy years at Ateneo, and complaining about how hopeless the country was to an expat friend of mine at a cafe near my house on an afternoon sneaked away from the parents. He said something like this: look around you, and think of a place where you can be with your boyfriend with no one lynching you for being gay, eating a good meal for just a few dollars, look out at blue sky and beautiful people, and have so many wonderful friends within a few miles of you.
That changed it for me; I had been cooking up some idea in my head that anywhere on earth would be perfect compared to this place. I had somehow concluded that no other country could possibly be as congested, as polluted, as badly-run by corrupt government, or as poor. My friend didn't defend this place by denying its problems; he defended it by reminding me about how great the good things about it were.
He made sense, and I stopped expecting paradise to hit me the second I moved out of Philippine territory, and started looking for places right which came close: I have Batibot at Mass Comm for afternoons with the best friends I've ever made; Caloy's and Bia's cozy houses for conversations; Judd's little dorm for drinking and friendly spooning; a dozen malls with everything I could possibly need to survive, except for love, fuck love; Regla with Lara and all the rest of the condo girls in my life; Quiapo and Cubao for little trips and identity and photographs; and my friends again- the Batibot crowd, the Divas, the odd collection of people I used to have sex with, everyone I love, wherever we are, and it's all right here.
I guess my uncle must not have any of that.
The exchange boiled down to a little game of retorts of "this place is hopeless" and "well I'm hopeful" and "that won't change things" and a few minutes of wracking my head and then "alright... well happy trip".
Right before we talked about his trip, he was the guy I respected, admired, and wished I could be like the most.
I never knew we were related until he recognized me at a Christmas party in 2006. My ex was busy spreading himself around the room as I nipped drinks from the bar and pretended I wasn't uncomfortable, and this guy came along, told me my full name and introduced himself as my dad's cousin. I recovered a few minutes after to ask him how on earth this could have happened. Since then we've met up a few times to just talk, or stepped outside big family dinners where he's suddenly be invited but quietly ignored. I always felt he was the open secret the whole family had. "Oh he's just not married." "Oh he's busy so we don't invite him." "Oh Joseph we just never mentioned him to you because you two are uncannily alike!" That kind.
I loved talking with him. He had the compassion to understand how hard it was to be gay in a family and culture like the one we shared, but also the firmness and maturity that only a family member could have as he told me to not be such a ho with my boys, come home safe after nights out, and respect my mom when she was nearly impossible to do so to. He saw and understood the two parts of me I could never reconcile, and I loved him for that.
The ways I looked up to him made what he said so much more disappointing, because I used to feel the same about the Philippines: I was in high school, thinking about four socially easy years at Ateneo, and complaining about how hopeless the country was to an expat friend of mine at a cafe near my house on an afternoon sneaked away from the parents. He said something like this: look around you, and think of a place where you can be with your boyfriend with no one lynching you for being gay, eating a good meal for just a few dollars, look out at blue sky and beautiful people, and have so many wonderful friends within a few miles of you.
That changed it for me; I had been cooking up some idea in my head that anywhere on earth would be perfect compared to this place. I had somehow concluded that no other country could possibly be as congested, as polluted, as badly-run by corrupt government, or as poor. My friend didn't defend this place by denying its problems; he defended it by reminding me about how great the good things about it were.
He made sense, and I stopped expecting paradise to hit me the second I moved out of Philippine territory, and started looking for places right which came close: I have Batibot at Mass Comm for afternoons with the best friends I've ever made; Caloy's and Bia's cozy houses for conversations; Judd's little dorm for drinking and friendly spooning; a dozen malls with everything I could possibly need to survive, except for love, fuck love; Regla with Lara and all the rest of the condo girls in my life; Quiapo and Cubao for little trips and identity and photographs; and my friends again- the Batibot crowd, the Divas, the odd collection of people I used to have sex with, everyone I love, wherever we are, and it's all right here.
I guess my uncle must not have any of that.