Gay men in their 30s

(These remarks were delivered by the author at the launch of "Gaydar: Essays" at Powerbooks Megamall last Dec. 18, published by Anvil. The book is available at National Bookstore branches and in Powerbooks.)

Since I have just turned 30 years old, let me share with you some random thoughts about gay men in their 30s.

Gay men in their 30s have learnt that the law of gravity is beginning to take its toll. Everything begins to sag. The hair begins to thin out and fall. The chin begins to form a twin. The belly begins to form a triplet, such that the layers of the midsection begin to look like the Banaue Rice Terraces. So when this begins to happen, we should stop taking soft drinks, stop having longganisa in the morning and lechon kawali in the afternoon, say goodbye to sisig with cerveza negra for dinner.

We breathe heavily when we walk up to the second floor. Our eyes begin to blur. And wrinkles, ahhh, they begin to stretch like many worry lines on our foreheads and under our eyes. So we begin working out in the gym, surrounded by all those sweaty men groaning and grunting. We begin to apply anti-wrinkle creams and put on all kinds of lotions and potions on our faces, necks, and bodies. We take to aromatherapy and massage – and I mean the real one, guys, not the ones where they poke you with horizontal objects.

Everything begins to sag except one thing. It’s not what you’re thinking it is, but yes, you are also right on that one. It’s the only thing that remains stiff and solid and strong.

Gay men in their 30s are a little bit better in terms of love and relationships. I said just a "little bit better," and we’re not talking about myself here. The world knows I am the last person in the world to ask about love, because when I am in love, I get married after a courtship of 10 days. Don’t you just hate the word "marriage?" Now, now, we should not be bitter.

Gay men in their 30s begin to appreciate the many permutations of love and sex. Oy, we’re not talking about orgies here, ha, which, for those of you who have done it – and I am sure some of you have – is really a boring gymnastic activity. There are three of you, or four, or heavens, the whole gay volleyball team. But the guy you like is doing it to somebody else, while the guy you do not like begins to paw you. Eeewww, as they say in my favorite internet chat room, www.gay.com. So while the guy you don’t like begins to lick your belly button, you just look at the ceiling and think you might be better off at home, listening to the cool love songs of Diana Krall.

Gay men in their 30s begin to appreciate the gradations of attraction. Some of us do not sleep with anybody else except Mary Palmer and her five daughters – or maybe I should say the five sons of Mary Palmer – because we are saving ourselves for the love of our lives. I used to tease my friends who do this very Victorian activity – I mean the saving of one’s self for one’s true love. But I guess it also has its plus points. Like a laser beam, you focus your energies, your very self, so that when that man comes into your life, the relationship is like an explosion almost radioactive in its intensity.

Some of us have f– buddies with whom we toss and turn in bed, on the sofa, in the kitchen, or other parts of the house. Or maybe even in the car or the elevator or the highest loge seat in SM Megamall Cinema 4. Personally, I do not like the phrase "f– buddies" because it’s so direct and a bit vulgar and, therefore, so American. I’d rather use the word "friend," o di ba?, to refer to somebody we like and trust and who turns us on. He is somebody we do not fuck, but somebody we have sex, or make love to. But the lines, like the lines drawn on the sand, are clear: We are just friends, baby, and let us not talk about love because we are not (yet) ready for that. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. But as the Zen masters would put it, let us enjoy the moment. But I guess the Zen Buddhists are the last people I should paraphrase when I am talking about desire.

Some of us are like rabbits merrily jumping from gay bar to bath house to gay sauna to movie house to park to street to eskinita to God-knows-where. We lock eyes with somebody who looks at us with such a malagkit na tingin (sticky look) we know he was not just our classmate in high school 10 years ago. Sometimes we talk with them before we go for it, sometimes we don’t. What is exchanged is the delicious thrill of the moment – the touch of skin to skin, tongue to tongue, hand on nipple, fingers to butt. It’s a thrill so electric you would wish it would last forever, but it doesn’t. You’re lucky to even have 15 minutes. Or 15 seconds.

A few of us are into relationships. The parameters of commitment are clear: Whether it’s an open or closed relationship. Personally, I favor a closed relationship, when you do not allow another person into the relationship, whether for sex or to fill an emotional need the partner cannot meet. You let the relationship take roots first, deep roots. The horizon of the future is drawn: This year we will save money so we can go to Bangkok on a trip together. Ummm, excuse me, maybe not to Bangkok because that sin city is not a good place to go to when you are a couple. Take it from somebody who got married there. Maybe Hanoi, with its beautiful State Opera House and its slow, languorous rhythm of life. And in five years, you plan to leave this apartment and move together into a house of our own, whether nestled on a hill or sitting beside the sea. It doesn’t matter where, as long as it is a house both of you own, and you will live there together – forever.

But I tell my friends who are into relationships to savor the moment and I send you all the good vibes in the world. Stop the jealousy and the mind games and the overweening desire to control the other. Do not feel bad if he cannot text you within a second you have sent your text message. Remember to be nice to each other after a full day’s work. Walk with him outside the mall – in a park, beside the sea, or near the ridge with that tiny volcano like an eye in the distance. And savor the happiness of being hugged and kissed and made love to by this man who loves you.

But remember, too, that one day, in God’s own good time, this might end. The man you love might find somebody else to love. Or you begin to fall in love with another man. Or the man you love falls ill with something terminal, like leukemia, and just suddenly vanishes from your life. He does not want you to see him suffer; he does not want you to take care of him anymore. When this happens, you see your whole life crumble before you.

My friend Randy David said in his column two weeks ago that, perhaps, this is what all of religion and philosophy wish to tell us: To accept the very briefness of life and of happiness, and therefore, to enjoy its full flowering. My friend, the poet Rayvi Sunico, also wrote about this in his poem, that the beautiful is also sad. This is way the sakura blooms, only for a few days, and this is also the length of a haiku, telling us everything we have to know about life in all of three lines.

I do not know where I am in these pigeonholes I have just drawn. I think I am between stages. I have been badly bruised this year, when my relationship fell apart after five months. But I have decided to move on and began dating again. Since I am a sticky rice, I really like the men of Southeast Asia powered by all that rice! But what I am really just after is conversation and coffee and laughter and cheer and love. But if love does not come, then I’ll have my conversation and coffee and laughter and cheer.

But still and all, I count myself lucky. As long as I can put all these things – all these slippery things – into words, then I tell myself I will be all right. As the poet Carolyn Forche wrote: "The heart is the toughest part of the body. / Tenderness is in the hands."

And so we move on, with eyes fully open, into the glorious chaos that is life.