The Philippine Online Chronicles

O ano, kelan mo ibibigay ang tikoy namin?

I asked my Chinese gay friend one morning when he came over. We have been friends for a long time and we have brought him home several times after our usual night outs but I have never made it past their gates. We would always bring him home and leave as soon as their guard opens the gate.

He lives in one of those buildings in Binondo. He lives with relatives who, like him, are 100% Chinese. He would often tell us about his relatives who just arrived from China, regaling us of their eccentric ways. Although my friend is pure Chinese, he was born and educated in the country and, he says he feels more Filipino than Chinese.

Every Chinese New Year, he would just bring over some tikoy but would never invite us over to their house. We all know that his family celebrates the coming of the Chinese New Year lavishly but somehow, there has been a silent consensus that we would never ask him to invite us over.  We figured that it was better for everyone if we did not meet his family. You see, we are party to the biggest secret in his life. More secret that his relatives who are in country illegally; my friend is gay and his family does not know it.

The secret is so deep that even my friend would only acknowledge that he is gay when he is drunk. He would talk about coming out but such subversive thoughts often came when he had one drink too many and the fears that have been inculcated in him had been deadened. It was always the same story; he would be full of bravado but would deny everything the next day, saying that it was the alcohol talking.  It was just a phase he would say, he would eventually marry a nice Chinese girl and settle down.

Right.

Having gone through the same denial period, I knew nothing I would say would make him think otherwise, he needed to go through the motion and realize the folly in that belief himself. It was not something we could force him to acknowledge, he had to get to that realization himself.

The story of someone refusing to come out from the closet is generally the same regardless of race but for someone who is Chinese, it seems to be worse. Male children are prized and are expected to provide for the rest of the family. Those who are well off are expected to get into the family business when they are old enough. Being an only child, my friend was expected to do just that when the time comes. It didn’t really matter that my friend was more interested in interior design than selling automotive parts and accessories.

To make matters worse, his parents have took it upon themselves to look for someone who, in their opinion, would make a suitable wife for our friend. Someone suitable would be someone who was Chinese and as well connected as they are. He would laugh whenever he would tell the story. He found it extremely funny how his parents mistook his not having any girlfriend as a sign of being a playboy. “Kung alam lang nila, wala akong girlfriend kasi may boyfriend ako!” he would say whenever the topic comes up. If his parents only knew, not only is he in a relationship with someone who is not Chinese, he was in a relationship with a guy!

But his being in the closet often takes its toll on his relationships. Boyfriends would often grow tired of being kept hidden even to most of his friends. Only a few of us are privy to this side of his life. He would say that there was nothing wrong with being discrete. “Di mo naman kailangang pangalandakan eh, pakialam ba ng ibang tao,” is what he would tell his partners, but for someone who was proudly out of the closet, such discretion was intolerable after a long time and most of them would often leave in disgust. Love, it would seem, cannot flourish in the dark.

My friend seems to take these frequent failed relationships as a sign that he was not really destined to be gay. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that it is his being in the closet and his refusal to leave the closet that pushes these people away. Or maybe, he just refuses to accept that fact, having been conditioned since birth that he had to ensure the continuation of their race.

Being Chinese makes it even harder for my friend to come out since they are often clannish and whatever his parents or his grandparents decide to do, most of the clan would follow. For him, coming out would risk losing everyone of his family. In one of those drunken moments, he said that his parents would condone his being unfaithful, even help him if he killed a person but would never accept him if he comes out. Being gay he said, would be worse than being a murderer.

I have never really delved on the reason behind this fear. Maybe he has seen it happen to another family member or someone he knew that he is so sure that this is what would happen if ever he decides to come out that we have stopped telling him otherwise.

Thinking about his situation makes me somehow thankful that I am Filipino. With the things my mother has put me through to rid me of my gayness, I can only imagine what else she would have done had we been Chinese.

As for my friend, all we can do is be there for him and pray that he would finally step over the invisible line and start living beyond the closet. As one of his ex-boyfriends said before, “try to live life openly, life is better outside, trust me, subukan mo lang, baka magustuhan mo kasi masikip sa closet, nakakangalay.”