Carpe Diem means Seize the Merchandise

I’m one of those guys who live by the present. I enjoy the journey more than the destination. I admit that there’s wisdom to visualizing your goals and working towards reaching them; the problem is, people are too preoccupied with their goals without paying much attention to their actions at the moment.

Does a reached goal equate to happiness? Not all the time. There are too many factors that can confound the experience of perceived success. What happens when you have already reached that goal? Like good citizens, we abide by the law of diminishing returns as we try to look for new goals, reboot, and wallow anew in the notion of lack.

“Life is what happens while you’re making plans” is how Kulay, my favorite OPM band of all time, would sing it. Work on a perfect now and tomorrow falls into place is how I like to think about it.

There’s a danger to enrolling in my school of thought though. Isaiah 22:13 quips the existential caution, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” to emphasize the impermanence of life. However, I for instance could sometimes take it differently and simply miss out on the future effect of my current actions. Carpe Diem has evolved a new meaning: seize the merchandise.

Thanks to Horace’s Carpe Diem, I am now a proud owner of a credit card debt that’s probably too big for a 25-year old dude like meself. Get now, pay later, is an American pitfall that I checked out and tripped into. I don’t even like most Americans that much.

My gold card is now in the safekeeping of my gal friend to keep me from amassing any further debt. I’m only keeping my lowly BPI edge for the necessities. When Horace wrote about Carpe Diem, I bet he wasn’t aware of the revenue he was going to give the card companies.

My mom gave me a really good tip: Ask BPI to increase my S.I.P. balance and then have my balance transferred to a fixed monthly amortization for a period of several months. That has saved me a truckload of interest and has also forced me to make fixed payments instead of the minimum. Now I no longer wonder when the hell it would get paid off.  None of my friends ever suggested something like that. None of my officemates too. And I happen to work in a financial institution.

My sidekick and I are in the same stage right now. We’re both trying to get more financially streamlined. He’s the newest good influence I have in my life. He has lit a fire under my ass to take action, and 2010 is the year we get there.  2010 is going to be the shiznit!

Oh snap! I can’t believe I actually quoted the Bible in this entry.

Johnny Cursive and Sidekick catch the Colds

My sidekick and yours truly caught the Colds recently.  Maybe it's somatic lovesickness? Nah. I'd blame it on stress and December weather. We should both stop the smoking and increase the hours of sleep. I'm already getting 8 hours and apparently it's not enough. Must increase vitamin intake -- C, B-vitamins and maybe a bit more vitamin J. We need kisspirin and yakapsul. And increase the time spent together to huddle-cuddle for warmth. Our time spent together is at a healthy level but I seem to can't get enough. Mush much.
   

Papa Cyclops braves the snowstorm. Drawn in December 2000

Campus Pre-Coitus: Where it began for Johnny

I had a reunion last Saturday with my GH high school tropa and their respective girlfriends. I wasn’t able to bring my wonderful boyfriend because last time I checked, he wasn’t a girl.

I have always enjoyed the company of my straight friends with our signature no-holds-barred, uncensored and unadulterated all-male harutan that the girlfriends couldn’t do anything about. I’ve been in that school since kinder, so that makes it 13 years with rowdy male classmates with too much testosterone for their own good.

LSGH: fun times, good friends & lots of cute boys

School was fantastic. Fist fights were rampant but easily resolved by a common love for the almighty Hustler magazine. There’s too much male competition and most boys had no choice but to be sporty. I drifted to soccer for a couple of years in grade school and then martial arts for another couple of years in high school. The most popular boys were the basketball jocks, followed by the track & field boys. The track & field boys were hotter. Those in wall climbing and swimming seemed to have a world of their own; only the parents cheered for them. Volleyball, of course, was 90% faeries. They had their wings early. In the spirit of healthy competition as the apotheosis of man’s quest for excellence, there would also be a jackoff race to see who gets to shoot their load first. These events would happen in sleepovers and never in school premises. It doesn’t happen like it does in the Fratpad website; in our version, it’s just one dude in the CR and the action is timed until he steps out with the evidence on his hand. But sigh—I didn’t get to join any such race. “Sayang Johnny di ka sumama ang galing ni Aquino 2 minutes lang tapos na.” 5 cute boys in a race? Had I joined, I would have been done in 10 seconds or less.

I also always looked forward to swimming class. One great thing about swimming class was that board shorts were not allowed. We were all required to wear Speedos, including the coach. Every year, there would be a different hot coach in a Speedo. LSGH only hires hot coaches. Blame it on the La Salle Brothers. Once in a while there would be a classmate with the unfortunate hard-on in his banana hammock. He’d get teased for the rest of the day. My good friend Marco always got teased that he kept getting the stiffy every swimming class, but the truth was, his was just a big schublig. And he had to prove it to save face and gain a few secret fans.

My school always had dry humpers. Sometimes someone would thrust behind you while you buy tacos in the cafeteria. The worse happens when someone gets dominated, pinned face-first on a wall and then feel someone’s bulge on his ass, or similarly pseudo-raped on his bunk bed while on a retreat. It’s guaranteed to piss a lot of boys off, hence the popularity of the method. One thing’s for sure though: I wasn’t too annoyed with it. When someone does it to me, I'd throw a few requisite cussing while smiling with fulfillment deep inside. Then I'll punch the cute bastard on the shoulder. Not too hard, lest he never does it again. I'm just so glad only the cute and semi-cute ones do it because they're the only ones who could get away with it.

Just like Chino. Chino was a dry humper. He was a Candymag cutie and one of the 69 Cosmo bachelors when we were in college. He’s also quintessentially straight and with an overdeveloped libido, like Stiffler. And he’d always jokingly pinch a nipple or dry hump a katropa. When I told him about me, he’s remained a gracious true friend and kept my secret safe. However, he wouldn’t dry hump me anymore. Sometimes he’d forget that I’m a faerie whenever he kids around. Then I would jokingly hump him, he'd realize that I could possibly enjoy it, and he turns pale while running for cover.

Being one of the boys in an all-boys school had its perks. It was a lot tougher for the effeminate faeries, unfortunately.

Deathchair

I saw a chair in the Bratpack store in GB5 and thought that it was nifty. It caught my attention from afar and it totally invited me to sit on it. I was running my fingers on its surface while I admired its colors and in half a heartbeat I flinched and got the hell back on my feet, cursing.

I know some people who'd rather sit on an electric chair.

The Gambit Effect

With art, I got 3 masters: Fernando Amorsolo (a distant lolo), Stan Lee and Nelo from “The Dog of Flanders” cartoon drama series (ya know, that kid who had a dog named Patrash. That little boy drew really well).

Stan Lee was the main man. His cross-hatching and over-all ink work from the 90’s was perfection. I have fallen in love with his Marvel Comics creations and X-Men in particular; they have influenced me so much and opened the doors of art and literature for me (yes, comic books count as literature). Stan Lee had so much power over me when I was still a twink. But he probably did not have so much influence over me as much as Gambit the X-Man did.

Gambit, ink on paper. Drawn on a horny day in 1998, 2nd year hischool.

Gambit. Now that man’s hot. Everything he touches ends up in hot explosion. His French accent coupled with his tousled hair and scruffy devil-may-care rockstar nonchalance was too much for a growing faerie like my pubescent old self.  I could’ve imagined the musk emanating from his hot body hidden under that worn-out trench coat like the undulating heat of sand dunes on a desert afternoon. Everything just lent to a mystery and je ne sais quoi so successful on me that I tried to emulate it during my (very few) visits to Bed. Most visits I was alone. I would come in a turned up hoodie, stay on a corner and drink my beer as I observe the crowd and absorb the music. Then maybe flash a Gambit smirk. Or a Gambit wink. Then wait to be picked up like a bitch.

It would be so convenient to blame my sexual orientation on a fictional character, but sometimes I could be very much convinced that Gambit gave me the purple faerie wings.

That bastard. That sexy, sexy bastard. 

Johnny Cursive misses the Kanto Gym

I cannot even begin to be nice to people in my gym now in fear of it being misconstrued as a pick-up attempt.

I have a neighborhood kanto gym that I used to frequent. It’s on the penthouse of a mid-rise condominium owned by our vice-mayor. Incidentally, this condominium is pink so I refer to it as the pink gym. I only go there on rare occasions when I’m pressed for time and I need to lift iron. What I miss most in that gym is the fact that it is a gym that does only what it’s supposed to do – help me in my journey of trying to look good naked. I could wear raggedy shirts and frayed shorts while kidding around with strangers. The boys are friendlier and all conversations do not have a trace of come-ons. It’s a good mix of members – awkward and lanky high school kids, blue-collar workers, bouncers, cute guys and the occasional female. People in my kanto gym openly talk to everyone about workout routines or the latest video scandals. Laughter is common and welcome.

I don’t get that in FF. I can’t ask about workout routines without sounding sexually interested no matter how deep and manly I register my voice. When I tried to be nice and open to casual conversation, either the dude responded with one-liner answers that would prevent any further dialogue, or mistook it for some sort of signal. I’ve been a member for a year now and I haven’t even met a gym buddy. The nearest to a gym buddy was with a trainer from a platinum branch who used to work at a hardcore bakal gym. Mas masaya rin para sa kanya magbuhat sa hardcore.

The branches I frequent are Megamall, Robinson’s Summit and The Fort Strip. Overall, I’m getting most comfortable in The Fort. The members don’t really look at me and probably it’s because there are lots of hotter guys, or majority of the members are straight. Plus the celebrities will always get the attention from both straight and gay boys. In Robinson’s Summit I cannot help but feel like I’m being sized up or debated if I’m a member of gaydom. In The Fort Strip, I could unwind in the sauna in peace; in Megamall or Robinson’s Summit steam rooms, other guys look at your crotch area without even trying to hide the act. That’s just my experience.

Naughty gym encounters aren’t really for me, now that I’ve got a boo and even when I was still single. Finding sex in the gym feels like desecration for some of the more conservative guys and that includes me. Johnny Cursive has quite a few very conservative sensibilities. That’s why I miss my dear old pink gym where all the straight and straight-ish boys are. If only the dumbbells were not so rusty.

Johnny Cursive has an empty Wishlist

I am in front of my office PC right now thinking of what to put in the 2 separate excel wish list spreadsheets in our shared drive: one file for my staff’s gift exchange and one file for my boss and colleagues. I’ve been thinking for a couple of hours now and I haven’t really put anything in them.

My wish list last year included an Asos jacket, a metal Skullcandy mic & earphone set for the Iphone and a couple of jazz-era oxford dress shoes for work. It included photographs, product codes, exact price and where to buy.


Those aren’t in my wish list for this year anymore. I can’t seem to find anything to put in my new wish list. I’d hate to be corny but being a freshly-partnered dude, my mundane wishes have taken a backseat. I’m already getting more than what I’ve wished for.


I apologize if my entry has stimulated any sort of gag reflex. I’ve had the history of eliciting gag reflexes from boys but usually not from my writing.

Guy picks up Johnny Cursive Twice

K is a really good illustrator friend of mine and I treat him like a brother but I call him ninang. He helped unravel me from my cocoon and showed me how to flap my purple faerie wings. We’ve shared a lot together in the 2 years I’ve known him including halftone methods in Photoshop, hangovers, and bottom boys. We also share the fact that we’re both very closeted. It’s a claustrophobic closet vaulted by paranoia and it’s also very pink.

***

So ninang texted me that he saw some dude that I mentioned to him a few months ago:

“Pare nakita ko si Dave (not the real name), ung nakaseks mo dati. Yung kalbo sa Facebook mo. Hanep ang angas kung makatingin kala mo stret.”

“I-sexy time mo na  ninang. Bottom yan pero di ko tinusok. Isang kalabit lang yang lecheng yan.”

My first encounter with Dave was in a coffee shop outside Gateway Mall. He was a good-looking skinhead guy with a tan fresh from wakeboarding. He also looked like my Cosmo bachelor straight katropa from college. I was busy with my cookie and milk when he approached me. An hour later, we were getting frisky under the sheets in Cubao. We exchanged numbers but that was the last we’ve heard of each other.

A month after that, I was eating somewhere in Ayala with two colleagues when I saw Dave eating alone a couple of tables away, looking all smug and with a generous smattering of angas. He was looking at me when I saw him and he wouldn’t avert his eyes, so I nodded my head in acknowledgement. Because I was with officemates, I didn’t approach him even after he gestured for me to come. I just texted him after I left the place.

                “Dave chong! si Johnny to, lagkit mo makatingin kanina ah. Musta na?”

                “Johnny who? Are you the guy kanina? Have we met before?”

                “Yeah, in Gateway.”

                “Did we have sex?”

I can arrive at 3 conclusions:

1)      Dave is a big slut with a bigger case of the fugue.

2)      I am a forgettable lay.

3)      I am capable of catching some guy’s attention and I am a forgettable lay.

Getting (almost) picked up twice by the same guy left me bamboozled beyond belief. Whether I should’ve felt stoked or cock-slapped in the face was beyond me.

Johnny Cursive can't drive

I struck a deal with my mom that I will learn how to drive this year. There  are only 3 weeks left of this year and all I know is how to (nervously) start a car. I’m a 25-year old guy who can’t drive.

So far I’m surviving without the skill. I try to convince myself sometimes that driving is overrated. The truth is, I’m scared. I’ve had many stitches and broken bones from all sorts of mishaps. When I was 6, I was sitting on the gutters beside my playmate and his leg stopped a nearby van from running over mine.

So it’s MRT, taxi, and the jeepney for me. To get to work, I ride the cab. If it’s that time of the day where there are no available cabs passing by my area, I take a jeepney going to Makati Ave’s Pacific Star and that’s where I ride a cab. If I still can’t get the cab, I take the Ayala loop jeepney.

 

Ayala Loop Jeepney, ink & pencil on paper; drawing shipped to Florida

Commuting is a unique exercise. I’d like to believe that it boosts one’s immune system via cardio amidst all the free-radical exposure.  My gym membership cannot replicate that.

Commuting gave me interesting experiences, such as frotteurism in the MRT rush hour. Whether it’s some stranger’s cock on my thigh or a boob pressing on my shoulder blade, the inappropriate contact is just not OK. And don’t even get me started on the gropers.

Come to think of it, yeah I think I’d like to start learning how to drive in 2010.

Johnny Cursive is a faerie

Drawn a few months back on a gloomy day. Ink on paper, colored by Photoshop

Elements of Swardspeak as Catalyst for Telepathy

Phoebe to Christopher:

“I-kembot mo dito yung chervalou na kiniyeme sa’iyo ni kuwan.”

Now what the fuck was that about? That was a mind-boggling conversation I’ve eavesdropped from officemates some time ago. Hearing it was enough to lose my wits. But that’s just because I was not a part of that dialogue.

Christopher opened his drawer and took out a slightly crumpled brown enveloped and tossed it over to Phoebe’s desk.

I was impressed.  Two perfectly functioning human beings were able to communicate with naught but a gurgling of arbitrary words. Heck, the words they used were so meaningless that a simple eye contact between the two of them would have sufficed.

Swardspeak has provided Filipinos with more tools of convenient communicating with such words as chorva, kiyeme, and chenelyn, on top of the more common kuwan and ano. Filipinos are gravitated towards over-decorating (food, jeepneys, fiestas, conversations) so combine this with gay flamboyance and you got one hell of a riot. I am still learning the language of my kin, and I’ve been relying heavily on context clues to catch up.

Communication by arbitrary words is made possible by rapport and empathy. This is why Phoebe, a gorgeous babaeng bakla, and Christopher, your gay-next-door, were able to have that example of seamless communication. It appeared to be the initial stages of telepathy. Like the psychic connection between twins or a mother and her child; except this connection is with two crazy baklitas. I was around the Ateneo Spirit Questors for a couple of years and most of them, including the moderator, were gay. I’m not surprised that the demographic that benefits mostly from communication via chervalou are the gaykin. We’re all better at the esoteric, psychic bonds, empathy and rapport, and the chervalou word fillers have been effective catalysts.

I enjoy hearing or reading swardspeak and I would love to be fluent someday. However, there is danger in relying too much on convenient word fillers that pull you away from exerting any effort in locating specific words, whether in English or Filipino, to convey your message. People are getting lazy. This is why I was peeved by schoolmates who knew no other language than Taglish. They could not (or worse, pretend not to) speak straight Filipino but they couldn’t speak straight English either. And it’s perpetuated by the convenience of Taglish. The seemingly innocuous chervalou might do the same.

Bottom line is: if the person is articulate in two or more languages (ex: Filipino, English, and Swardish), he gets 500 pogi points.  And if he’s eloquent with his body, that’s an additional 10,000 pogi points.

(My baby has accumulated approximately 256,000 pogi points as of this day)

Literary Precum

This is word vomit. I’ve chosen a more prosaic existence after being bohemian for the longest time, hence the loquacity leaking out of my ears and gibberish under my eyelids trying to get the hell out. I don’t blame them; my mind can be a really strange place sometimes.

I’m no stranger to blogging but I am a stranger to getting organized. I’ve probably started around 3 or 4 blogs to document my piss of consciousness. And I forget where I piss sometimes. However, I vividly remember pissing on the poor tree in the middle of the Ateneo quadrangle one college evening but I digress. Some stuff I wrote are probably in some dusty online corner while the others I actually wrote in the lost art of cursive. Here’s a new blog to document my new shiznit in this new chapter of my life.

I am just a 25 year-old dude with a few things to say.

***

I’ve been working on being the one for some guy instead of wasting my time consciously working on finding the one. To see yourself as “single and looking” is an excellent reminder of your own perceived void that needs filling. Although there’s nothing terribly wrong with taking control and heading out to the haystack with a magnifying glass, the resulting strain and frustration is not something I would enjoy very much. So I thought to myself how nifty it would be to work on becoming some person’s the one. In this needle-in-the-haystack metaphor, I ditched my magnifying glass and began work on being the shiniest needle I could become.

The realization came about after I have ended my first relationship. I was 19, overwhelmed, suffocated and confused. The aftermath of the tumultuous combination of a relationship I walked away from, school, freelance work, band gigs and family stress left me all hollowed out. My self-esteem needed to be dug out from a pile of crap. So deep into shit, exhuming it took more than three years.

That was equal to three years of celibacy. No fornicating, no kissing, no dating, no boys. Not even the liberating company of the gay kin, only the dire straights. I relearned the uncomplicated pleasure of the company of friends and my own self. There’s a gazillion sources of happiness out there and I’m thankful to have had the time to stop and smell the roses, although that did not erase the fact that I had also fettered myself from any romantic or even sexual possibility. After 3 years, just as I was turning 24, I decided to start taking care of myself more and paid more attention to how I looked. I found myself a couple of online friends to show me the dynamics of being a 20-something gay guy. In the process I found out my own market value and where I was to be taking my wares.

My very own gay brand identity (“gay brand identity” deserves its very own dedicated write-up) was a straight-living homo-nouveau. I was just learning how to be gay after years of hiatus; I knew that this fact could potentially be charming and I banked on that too. I was aware that I was a fit, straight-acting, nice-looking, rugged and smart guy. I had my vanity but I was very careful not to be conspicuous about it. This brand identity served me well for the next couple of years. It was a hedonistic couple of years if I may add—a slew of hookups, dating, courtships, threesomes, boys, boys, boys.

I had a lot of fun and affirmation. With my growth at work, reconnection with my friends (the bunch of them straight), improvement on my home life and a thriving (but safe) sex life, I built up my self-esteem and created a healthy positive attitude. As I was slowing down into my sexual denouement and going back to my serial monogamous default, the universe has conspired to bring me to my loving partner in perfect timing.

I now have more reasons to just keep growing. This time it’s gonna be with someone I love.

I am Johnny Cursive and this is my new leaf.