JULIA Cameron’s advice on having a weekly Artist’s Date brought me to this new café at a downtown mall. I sat there, waiting for the Spanish latte to cool down while eyeing their high-carb goodies’ display and deciding which is the least evil—the cheesy bread perhaps? Cheese is low-carb, but not the dough on which it sits.
I ended up with the pork-floss bread since pork is more low-carb than cheese.
I wasn’t exactly hungry. I just had beef kare-kare at a resto nearby, the kare-kare that was good for two to three—I included my cottage-cheese thighs and mile-wide hips in the count. Yes, despite the weight loss, I still have mile-wide hips. Go figure. Most probably, this would always be my figure. Haha.
There was a lot of ganap happening outside of that café. It was a Saturday afternoon, the young ones had already banished their TGIF hangovers to Siberia, and this was now the time to relax and get ready for Saturday night. And as if to prove my minute brain’s point, a boy and a girl entered the café. Since they were both looking at each other with goo-goo eyes, I presumed they were on a date. But the guy was so gay, how could she not see the obvious?
To let us understand this phenomenon, here’s a quote from Isaac Asimov: “It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face.’ But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?”
And then, a trans woman entered the café, and the guy started to stare at her, with his eyes following her wherever she went: to the cashier, to a table inside the café, to a table outside of the café. I was so tempted to approach his date and tell her, Girl, forget about the goo-goo in your eyes, his eyes are already on someone else.
Yes, she’s in dire need of the most intuitive gaydar.
There are gay men who are still in denial and would date women to prove they’re macho. Para que? They would only end up hurting their own selves, and also hurt the women who may fall in love with them. It’s the madlang pehpohl’s cruel judgment that keeps them from coming out. And their business partners may abandon them because of their sexual orientation, they’d lose friends, their family won’t accept them as they are. All those what-ifs.
I have a gay friend who has come out only to a few friends. I call him Tita. Sometimes I forget that I should never call him that whenever we’re with other people. That’s how awkward the situation could be.
Still, to each his own. To come out or not. That’s the question. Which should not be a question anymore in this age of driverless cars, flying cars, drones, and smartphones that are smarter than us. Beliefs and norms should be updated already.
