A brief history of an evening gone awry
“How do you know Don?”
As you crawl through your thirties, you slowly come to terms with the fact that the only things from Sex and the City that happen in real life are the sad, tragic ones: Bad dates. Messy breakups. Messier reconciliations. Finding skid marks on a guy’s underwear. Celebrating your 35th birthday alone. Choking alone in your apartment. Having to ride a public bus for a weekend getaway. Losing your confidence to a 13-year-old with sapphire braces. Losing your orgasm.
At this point in my life, I’m half-expecting that I’m going to die by accidentally falling out of a high-rise window.
But sometimes, nice things from Sex and the City do happen in real life. Like when your friend gets his book published.
I’ve known Don since 2010. We followed each other on Tumblr and Twitter, then later met during a book giveaway I did along with other fairly interesting and seemingly friendly guys from the Internet. This group would become my inner circle, our shared affinity for words expanding the vocabulary of our friendship.
We wrote in school. We write for work. We write for leisure (or some of us still do, at least). Tumblr and Twitter weren’t just Internet dumps; they were sacred spaces. And when writing had to be set aside for writhing, they were a means to survive. We could recite The Devil Wears Prada script from memory. We collectively clutched our imaginary pearls while Meryl Streep, in a gold caftan, was fretting over an editorial decision in The Post.
Like OPM, print is dead. But here is Don’s book, a shining beacon of hope for every thirty-something boy stagnating in Mandaluyong, pretending to be enthusiastic about marketing at work when he was really procrastinating by reading Vulture TV show recaps in an incognito browser tab.
“Who are you with?”
My social anxiety shot up from the standard level of 75 to about 90 the moment I stepped into Don’s book launch. I am terrible in social situations. And I’m not being coy or anything. I legitimately break out in a sweat, stutter and palpitate. Normally I’d rely on friends to prop me up in situations like this. I would hide behind them, using their social skills to shield me from the dreadful prospect of having to talk to other people.
This time, I was on my own. Sed had just moved to Hong Kong. Elvin was in Singapore for work. Royd was stuck somewhere in the Upper East Side (Antipolo). Jansen is in Taiwan. Claren’s been dead for 9 years already.
I had to man up. I was tasked to buy copies of Don’s book for the rest of us, have them signed by the author of the moment, and get everyone a limited-edition photo card. I was there to represent paragraph 10 in the acknowledgements. Our friendship started more than a decade ago with me giving away books, and now here I am clutching a stack of Brief Histories for international distribution.
Don and his boyfriend Pow waltzed around the room, basking in the collective glow of everyone’s pride and affection. They occasionally checked in on me and each time they did I hugged and clung on to them like a steerage passenger on the Titanic holding on to debris and trying to stay afloat in the cold, dark Atlantic.
The DJ played a Celine Dion track early in the set. I feel like I’m about to hit an iceberg.
“Are they also your friends?”
I still find it difficult sometimes to explain how you know and become friends with people from the Internet.
They were all over the room. There’s Aldrin, an ex-flatmate of mine. JL shot our group once for a Team Magazine spread where I was misquoted as the hookups guy. Reymart stayed over for a few days to nurse a heartbreak in the room that I shared before with Don. Petersen, who I last saw in Claren’s wake, said hi and took my photo.
I grimaced at the camera. “Ganun pa rin itsura mo!” (You still look the same!) he guffawed.
How do you interact with people you haven’t talked to in years? Is that Tony Lou? How about people you’ve only talked to once? Does Ysa recognize me? How do you start a conversation with someone you’ve only exchanged private messages with? Should I say hi to Rik? Is that even Rik? Do people remember you if you were introduced to them only once? Does Carlo remember that YouTube black hole slumber party (page 60 in the book) that he interrupted, which caused me to have a mild panic attack and prompted me to shut it down by flipping an air bed?
It was only 7 p.m. and I was already exhausted from barely speaking.
And just when I thought I was doing a fine job at dodging people, a guy I sort of dated and led on for half a year entered the room. I turned my gaze hard to starboard, hoping that I could reverse the engine to avoid colliding with a wall of ice that could break me in half.
How does one say hello to a person you’ve hurt?
“Are you also a writer?”
I’ve always been uncomfortable referring to myself as a writer. I sometimes still indulge in the Carrie Bradshaw fantasy, but instead of saying “I’m a writer”, I would say “Well, I have/had a blog.” It’s as if saying it like that wouldn’t burden me with the gravitas attached to being a writer and the persistence and discipline that it required.
I was the editor of my high school paper, but I struggled to meet my deadlines. I breezed through English class, but I failed to win a single essay-writing contest. I still Google “who vs whom”. I was in a literary organization in college, but I was published in its folio only once.
It was a poem that I wrote 10 minutes before the deadline for the next issue. I was told that the deliberations committee had unanimously voted for it to be published, and that there were varied readings about that one indented line near the end:
the sunset flesh of the fruit. Scrub off
the rainy-day skin. It regains its sheen,
like a cheap engagement ring year
after year. Dinner will be
served tomorrow at nine,They didn’t know it was just a formatting error that I didn’t bother to fix after I changed the font prior to printing.
What I lacked in bylines, I made up for in internet vomit. I kept several blogs throughout my twenties: wingspread, retrospectacular, high on diesel and gasoline, flight101, sfarfallio, raccattapalle, gate57. I like to think that each one represented an era in my life, and that they reflected a strong editorial direction. In reality, it was all just random shit to help me deal with the humdrum of day jobs and the occasional quarter-life crisis.
When my job started to take over my life and 27 started feeling like a mid-life crisis, I shut down my inactive Tumblr and LiveJournal. I haven’t written anything substantial since then. The last things that I wrote with as much gravitas, persistence and discipline I could muster were the following:
Obituary for Charlie, the family dog (2022)
Imagined verses to Drag Race songwriting challenges, also known as the Post-Modern Poetry Collection Volume 1 (2022)
Explicit Pinoy rap verses with homosexual themes, also known as the Post-Modern Poetry Collection Volume 2 (2022)
A reflection on Bad Genius, a Thai film about a high school exam cheating scheme (2017)
Obituary for Wendell, a friend from high school who joined a communist group and got killed by the army (2016)
A Facebook post searching for a replacement flatmate (2015)
My dating app bio (2014 to present, multiple printings)
If I accidentally fall to my death out of a high-rise window at a party (losing my balance because of an anxiety attack), these would be my Seven Last Words.
“Do you want me to get you a beer?”
A random guy introduced himself and offered drinks. Like me, he went to the book launch alone. Naturally we ended up standing beside each other at the back of the room. He didn’t know Don personally. He had only read Don’s CNN article on “boys’ love” (BL) series and was curious to read what else Lazada’s number one bestselling author for November 2022 has written about.
“Na-adik kasi talaga ako sa BL nung lockdown,” (Because I got addicted to BL during the lockdown.) he said.
I made the same face that Petersen captured on film earlier that evening. BL series are not a fantasy or escape; these are delusions. There’s no such thing as a hot affectionate flatmate. Cute guys on the internet don’t just randomly message and beg to chat with you. The straight guy in your Catholic all-boys school doesn’t fall in love with you; he yells “bakla” (faggot) to your face.
I will admit that I reluctantly finished the series Gameboys and Gaya sa Pelikula only because a guy I liked then was an avid viewer. Like the characters Gav and Cai, we would go on long video chats dissecting every episode and filling the quarantine void with banter. “I like talking to you because you’re different,” he said one evening. “Most guys I meet on Bumble are just for fun. You’re not like that.”
He would later deflect my intention of wanting to date him. “I see you more as a seasonal kachikahan [chat] friend,” he said. I will embroider seasonal kachikahan friend on a lace doily someday.
“So ano yung mga gusto mong pinapanood?” (So what do you like to watch?) the random Don Jaucian fan asked.
“Yung siraan ng buhay,” (The ones where lives are ruined.) I said, as I finished my second bottle of beer.
“Are you going somewhere else after this?”
I couldn’t tell if Jansen was suggesting, ordering or begging me to do something: “Fuck a cute boy from the event dbfhjdjdjfjf.”
Eh, I told myself as I changed my shirt for the third time 20 minutes after I was supposed to leave my apartment.
I’m well past the maximum age and physical requirement of meet-cutes, let alone a hookup from a social event. But with the prospect of menfolk from the Don Jaucian multiverse attending the book launch, I toyed with the idea that maybe an Aiden Shaw storyline could still happen however remote the possibility.
The book launch was indeed the Avengers: Endgame of gays. The room was teeming with hot guys. Guys whose faces and bodies you know too well from deep-diving into their Instagram. Guys whose screenshots are furiously traded every day among your group chats, ticking off everyone’s daily nutritional requirement for desire, despair and disdain.
Guys you can only admire from afar. Guys you will never get to talk to. Guys you will never look as good as. Guys you will never get to date. Guys who will, in a wild and most unexpected turn of events, actually date you only to later say “Ok ka sana, kaya lang mataba ka.” (You could’ve been ok, but you’re fat.) or “I hope you commit to working out because I just want you to be the best version of yourself.”.
Fuck these cute boys dbfhjdjdjfjf.
The lights went dim and the music got louder as the evening went on. Everyone started dancing and singing while I retreated further back against the wall, the handles of my tote bag drenched in sweat inside my fist. I tried to bob my head to music, but I couldn’t find the beat.
Don’s publisher would later tweet how nice it was seeing gay boys reveling in their safe space. I was kinda dying.
It was time to leave. Thankfully, I had a perfectly timed escape plan and a perfectly acceptable alibi. At 8:45 pm, I hugged Don and Pow goodbye and booked an Angkas ride to IKEA.
Some people go to therapy. I go to home stores to stroke the linen and hoard scented candles.
I only had 30 minutes to do my shopping before it closed, but I wasn’t in a rush. I knew my way around the labyrinths of the showroom and marketplace floors. I knew where the shortcuts were. I spoke the language of the catalog. I always found what I was looking for. It was still full of people, but I effortlessly waltzed around basking in the collective awe at mass production and retail on steroids. It was bright inside. The lights didn’t lie.
It was my safe space.
I bought plastic storage boxes and ziploc bags. I went home to start packing my apartment, because I was going to move to Ukraine for work in a couple of weeks.