Johnny Cheapskate: Burberry and Ralph Lauren Upgrade

I wish I could wear t-shirts to the office; Work requires all my shirts to be collared. Unfortunately, you gotta spend a pretty peso on a really good one.

So I became very happy to find out that I could buy really good Burberry and Ralph Lauren polo shirts at the last place I’d expect to get them—S&R. You’d need a membership to shop, but it’s quite worth it. Obviously there’s not a lot of people going there for pique shirt shopping so you get dibs and a bigger chance that a random manong won’t be wearing the exact same shirt. Everyone already knows that Burberry and Ralph Lauren are of excellent quality and that they look good at the office. The slim fit and the custom fit shirts are perfect. They’re not becklette shirts—they’re pogi shirts. I’ve stocked up on them for work and play, so I might not be wearing my normal plain crew neck shirts as often as I used to. T-shirts still need to be only around 200 bucks, but I allow myself to spend a little bit more for the office.

Burberrys were at less than 800 bucks, Ralph Laurens at less than a thousand. They even still had their Neiman Marcus price tags attached, costing 125 USD originally. My crew necks just got upgraded.

Johnny Cursive's Uniform

Except for actual work days; office requires me to be a little more office-y.

My normal uniform for church, movies, beer, diskuhan, eating out and random errands is the 200-peso crew neck shirt from SM department store. It has no frills, no print, no hassle--for the price of a Japanese meal. Nothing but a good fit, neither slutty-tight nor sloppy loose, the way all cotton t-shirts should be regardless of the price tag. I just throw a jacket or a button-down shirt on top if the occasion (or the weather) demands it. I have them in red, military green, black, white, brown, and 3 different shades of blue. I pick them out of the closet by random, cutting deciding time by half. And because I have no hairstyle to speak of (unless semikal is considered a hairstyle), most of the time is spent on the appearance of the bottom half a.k.a. the more important half.

When my navy crew neck got worn out with tiny little holes from machine washing/mangling, I went ahead and got myself a spankin' brand new navy blue crew neck and nobody else but myself could tell that I bought a new shirt. I just couldn't justify spending more than a thousand bucks (or 500 bucks, for that matter) for a goddamn t-shirt.

Too Gay (?) # 2: Man Scarves

It's fabulous and absolutely inappropriate for Manila weather. The existentialist question of "Gay or European?" becomes answered by the manscarf-in-Manila by default, I think. Is it too gay? Or am I just praning?

I daresay the only acceptable man scarf in the Philippines is the good morning towel.

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Nothing wrong with it -- props to those who can wErk it. Nothing wrong with dressing gay or too gay; it's an option. I'm just going for a different look, I guess. Straddling the closet and the real world is hard work!

Too Gay (?) #1: White Shoes, White belt

To pull this off while trying to look and act straight is a lot of work. My sidekick says it's a giveaway. The baklameter goes badingdingdingding!

Discretion doesn't always come easy and item #1 makes it harder to look straight.


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Nothing wrong with it -- props to those who can werk it.

Johnny’s Closet has a Backdoor

And he’s thankful for it

I opened a blog last month with the intention to unload and express the old fashioned way, like cursive on a journal and ink on a sketchpad but a lot less messy. I got to read a few other blogs and felt a quiet kinship; it's been a pleasant surprise, this blogosphere thing. It's like finding out that my closet has a backdoor that leads to a free city that is part Secret Garden, part Narnia, and unapologetically gay. I could hop out of this backdoor to stretch my legs from time to time.

I have blogged under my real name at some point. However, I felt like I had so much to write about but couldn’t. I was going through funny or hot or interesting experiences but had no faerie friends to share them with. I wanted to write about that time I slept with this Sprite TVC dude who consistently stole my underwear after every tryst, how I wore my crummy beaten up bacon underwear which he stole anyway, and how that led to my realization of the liberating breeze of occasionally going commando. I couldn’t blog about it then. My friends and classmates and relatives had access to my previous blogs where I wrote as a straight guy. How fucked-up boring those blogs were. I’ve been living mostly as a straight guy and straight people can be absofuckinlutely boring most of the time. I could almost concede to the fact that their sole purpose on this planet is procreation and taxes.

I’ve met several bloggers already, but mostly before I even knew they wrote blogs. Days after being partnered, I found out that my sidekick carried a blog that shows his insightfulness and fascinating wit, giving him 5-digit pogi points that I had to factor into the pogi point matrix (painstaking but worth it). I’ve been good friends for a couple of years now with J, the person who introduced us, and it turned out he blogs too. I’ve hung out with J’s tropa a few times and I enjoyed their company before finding out that the entire group had some sort of blog. I met sidekick’s faerie friends and instantly liked them. They blog, turns out. Jessica Zafra’s Twisted series has been my staple lavatory literature even before I found out about her blog. Jessica Zafra regulates my bowels better than fiber and curdled milk, God bless her.

The pink blogosphere’s gravity is throwing the Earth out of orbit. Or maybe it’s just me that has unconsciously gravitated towards it. Why not? It is a free city that is part Secret Garden, part Narnia, and unapologetically gay.

Johnny keeps Straight People in his Closet

Being out to my best friends who happen to be a straight couple has a completely different set of dynamics on its own. For closeted guys, it’s usually either you’re completely closeted from your straight friends or you’ve come out and then the friendship isn’t the same anymore. Sometimes a faerie will be lucky and he will have straight friends who remain loyal post-outing.

I love Adren. He’s my straight guy friend and he loves me back in a brusque brotherly fashion while his girlfriend Martha is my straight girl best friend who treats me like the sister she never had. Ironically, with his tisoy features, body-consciousness and luxurious lashes he'd look better as the gay guy among us. Even after I’ve come out to Adren, we still share the same interest with girls although his fondness for females is sexual while mine is (very) distant outside-looking-in and clinically objective. He still enjoys sharing his beerhouse anecdotes like he was sharing it to a frat brother, as he always did, but to me it sounds like the Na’vi explaining their mating rituals. On a good day I could make it sound like fax tone.

Nightcrawler snogs Cerise. Drawn on a random day ages ago.

I find it extremely thoughtful that he made the effort to go back to our old Philosophy lessons on Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” with its articles on sexual fluidity to convince me that my gayness is but an anomalous falling from grace.  I could almost blog about his personal discourse on the topic but I refuse to (meaning: I can’t). He is as intelligent as he is stubborn. One fine day when I felt especially annoyed, I brought up the topic of the fluidity of sexuality and declared how he might factually enjoy sucking cock in 2010. That ended his lecture.

Adren is, like friends should be, brutally honest. And I especially value this honesty because in my situation it is not easy to have a very close straight guy friend who will give you his truth. What could be very true, and very sad, is one thing that he told me a couple of weeks ago over a bucket of beer: “…but we’re never going to be 100% O.K. with the idea that you’re gay.” Inside my signature tipsy smirk was my voice getting caught in my throat. It is painfully true. That’s why he always invites me to see dancing naked Na’vi boobies in hopes of converting me. Or why he’d bring up the topic of how great it might be to make tiny baby Johnny Cursives. Or get very academic and appeal to my geekier side with Foucaultian philosophy. But the beer bottle I share with them is half full, not half-empty. Apparently it also never gets empty. They are still my friends, and the dynamics of a closeted gay guy being best friends with a straight couple is their struggle as much as it is mine. I didn’t come out of the closet to them; I’ve invited them over to mine. And it’s a hot, cramped closet with the smell of moth balls. It’s also very pink. Hot pink.