A Blast From The Past

Never mind searching for who you are.  Search for the person you aspire to be.  ~Robert Brault

I want my blog to be as personal as possible, in the sense that I would like my readers to have a connection with me somehow. Like, if you read my piece, it’s as if you’ve known me for years. So before I go into writing stuff about love, sex or relationships, I would like to take you into my past. Yes, my childhood. Oh did I bore you now?

You won’t read about a battered child,  a sexually abused  kid  or the account of a former Sakristan or an altar boy. My story is not as revealing as these. My childhood is almost pretty normal, except that I have a different and more personal view of how it was. Don’t you worry,  I’ll do my best to make this as interesting as possible. Let me take you with me in this journey to my past. 

As a child, I had a hard time identifying my "self". It wasn’t simple to have had that sense of belongingness in the vast world we reside. But I knew I was different because I had difficulty blending  with other kids especially boys my age. They always  had a say when I hang out with them. I heard name-callings like they never ended and saw make-faces like they were masked. Yet I knew that I should be just like any kid, without pretenses and as normal as possible. 

I  had two brothers (my other bro’s in eternal peace). And I am the first of the brood.  In my mind, never did I hear a thought from mama and daddy (that’s how I call my parents) about my being different from the boys. Maybe it wasn’t something that they would like to talk about with me. Maybe because I was good at what I was doing, I mean my education. Yes, I excelled in school and that’s one thing I was proud about. I didn’t mess up school or in any way gave them trouble when it comes to this aspect of my life. That alone, may have had given them a reason to just let me be their son, who eventually became a daughter in their eyes! (~wink~)

To make the story short, my childhood may well be like  any other gayboy’s coming - of - age experiences albeit different in some ways. I didn’t even  had any idea how it all started. Early years in grade school, I just found my self to be  effeminate and like one of the girls. I played with girls and  learned to like boys. 

Growing up, I knew what I was but didn’t know exactly how I would call my "self". I just learned that I was separative through the other kids’ mockings. They would call me “bakla” (gay) and later on became a source of  annoyance and pain. Now it doesn’t matter anymore, but back then it was like a  handful of stones thrown hard at me. It always felt like being entombed or stoned to death. The boys and other kids made fun of me but it didn’t hinder me to be  me. I continued to be the person that I was and  no one could stop me from being the way I was.  I understood that there wasn’t anything to change but to grow.  I just excelled in school and kicked other kids’ asses.

Now, I find it funny to hear stories of fathers drowning their gayboys  in a barrel full of water just to affirm their kids’ boyhood. Lucky me, I didn’t go through that phase. Yes I was gay, but never as flamboyant as other gayboys around. I was just being me, the boy with the girly moves, the girly likes, and the girly thoughts. I even thought I was a girl at some point, and I would be back to reality everytime I’d hear them call me names again. 

That’s just it, I was the boy who wanted dolls instead of guns. Girls for friends and boys for kisses. Danced to every Madonna beat and would scream over  the Hansons or the Moffats or the BackstreetBoys. Miss Universes, Worlds and Internationals were  my  World Cup. Pageant queens were my icons  in beauty, poise, and projection. I admired them for their packaging and I was just the boy who hated his haircut and would dream of having those curly long locks. 

I was the boy who enjoyed doing house chores  than playing basketball or pingpong with the kids. I was the boy who read Vogue instead of Playboy. I was the boy who would choose a tiarra over a beret,  my mama’s nighties  over a Spiderman costume.  I had boys for crushes and men for fantasies. Yes, my innocence back then was a bit tainted,  I would masturbate with thoughts of muscled men in mind. Damn, how else would you call a kid like that?(~laughs~) 

Nevertheless, I was a discreet gayboy up to my  Secondary school. I was a virgin who would swoon over the campus hearthrob and watched other boys in basketball games. I didn’t know what to think about back then but I knew what I liked and wanted. I just didn’t know how to do it. Get what I mean? I just didn’t know how to verbalize and express my feelings to someone in  a manner that’s not offending.  Thinking of it now, I laugh at the thought  of how I managed to lived a life of celibacy for a long while when in fact other kids nowadays lose their virginity at earlier ages. But no regrets, I just lived my life the way I was supposed to live it. My parents may have raised me well. And the image I made to myself helped a bit. I just had to be prim and proper and all would be well.

Needless to say, I lost my virginity a few days before I turned 18, during my collegiate years. It was a pact I made to my self, that before I would evolve into manhood-gayness, I would lose my behind’s virginity(~laughs~) and so I did! It wasn’t a wonderful experience the first time, but nevertheless it just made  me more curious and hungrier for more answers  as to what gayness was all about. And this is another story.