How Will I Know

“When did you realize that you’re gay?”

Ganito kami noon...

Growing up, I didn’t know I was. But I knew didn’t quite like what boys should like: girls, sports, soldiers and guns. Worse, I was interested in art. I suspected I was different, but I didn’t want to think that I was bakla.

...ganito kami ngayon.

Because at that time, being bakla meant you were less than a man. Being bakla meant you were the butt of jokes. Being bakla meant you wanted to become a girl. Bakla was Dolphy in the movie Fifita Fofonggay. Bakla was comedian Georgie “Atching” Quizon, Dolphy’s younger brother, who always played a gay role in the movies.

He looked so much like his older brother,
but he ended up playing second-fiddle to him.

All throughout grade school I thought, “Nah, I can’t be one. I don’t want to be one.” And that feeling persisted all the way until high school. One day I decided to be nerdy and research “homosexuality” in the library. And what I learned was encouraging: Almost all boys and girls go through a “homosexual stage,” so I guess I wasn’t different after all.

I clung on to that throughout high school and college, even when I had intense, unrequited crushes with boys. Hey, it’s just a phase, right? But by fourth year college, I was like, “This phase is taking too long!” I had to confront myself with the possibility that maybe I was gay.

The good thing about college was, one, I knew more positive gay role models in school, and two, I joined the theater group, where I was reassured that there were straight people who were more accepting of gay guys. But still, I never had sex with any of the gays and accepting straights in college theater. Instead, it was in another theater that I had my first sexual experience.

It was in the movie theater.