It has been days of dreamless trance, of waking up without any hint of erratic make-believe worlds of my soulless state. The universe, echoing through my existence, calling for an escape from the living behind the dark curtain of the night, and condemning me to stream through conscious existence.
I turn the light's switch on. Waking up on a Monday morning has been easier for the past two weeks with the prospect of live-streaming Sherlock at four in the morning. It wasn't too much; most won't probably understand the ridiculous amount of time I spend on my fandoms and the gaiety they bring. But I am on my happiest, without the thrill of alcohol and the shrill tinsel joie de vivre of last night's party, I am alive for these moments.
The inevitable, today I went to San Sebastian College to enrol for their bar review classes. My parents, the consistent pressure they were, initially insisted I remain in UP, like I have not spent the past eight years in its embrace. But like any personal decision I have made prior, I have to soberly argue my case until they cave in to the obvious logic of my choices. This living has to be mine.
The day couldn't have been better: cold January breeze, the sun bashfully peeking behind the white sheet slits of the clouds . I equally gloat and suffer for this kind of days: cold breeze like a warm chocolate drink-topped with marshmallow I could not drink. Walking the dirty, crumbling on its own filth, streets of U-Belt, I thought I saw my life finally branching out before me, like the complicated and twisted pavements and mud I was traversing. But it was too early to say, the day almost too perfect to rationalize dispositions. Tough, the next few months will be.
The nauseating abundance of drama of the past weeks was luckily hyped by the season premiere of Girls. I refused to go to work today with the prospects of making some time for myself. It was a compelled triumph with the company of Lena Dunham's brilliant, erratic but most often than not's slap of reality. There is comfort in watching, whether it is a film or a television series, lives reflecting your dull own, lest with more poetic arguments and color-coded sequence.
I gave up doing my thesis a few minutes ago. For someone facing a deadline at the end of the month, this baneful attitude of self-doubt is killing me. Outside, the moon with less than its majestic full self compensates the black robe of the night with its crowning halo, something the scientific mind would see as a premonition of glim days ahead. But for tonight, I will let it shed light on whatever darkness that sleeps in me.
Passing
I have been a negative of a person lately. That unending feeling of hollowness, all black, silence. The effect of the past days of festivities had me jumping from being constantly active and broodingly sad, with no established point of origin or end, perpetually alternating driving me mad. At night sometimes, I just feel the need to have someone to pour myself into. But I have been burning a lot of bridges lately. A psychologist I worked with a few years ago suggested I should go talk to a doctor. But I am not wise and rich enough to take pleasure in the luxury of science. I have hopes that the end of the festivities will cure the old brag of my existence. Day six.
Breaking back: a review of 2013 gay films
Overall, 2013 was a good year for gay film. From Soderbergh's swan song to books-turned-movies to a change of tempo for more renowned directors, the past year saw peaks and heights and presented the world with handful of films to watch.
First, my favorite gay film of the year. I have to hand it down to Michael Mayer's middle-eastern drama Out in the Dark. Palestinian psychology student meets Israeli lawyer; typical boy meets boy right? No. With the current Israel-Palestinian conflict as its center, the film's appreciation of love amidst societal prejudice made Out in the Dark a compelling drama.
Now, to the drill.
The year opened with Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra. The award-winning made-for-television film tackled the life of famed Liberace; and with an all star cast lead by Douglas and Damon, the film was a worthy end to Soderbergh's lustrous career. With a great opener, the year was on firre.
The big three film festivals, as usual, gave mostly ground-breaking and more familiar avenues for the cinephiles. Cannes gave its highest honor to Kechiche's Blue is the Warmest Color. Yes, this may be a cheat since it is a lesbian film, but Blue is one of the best movies of last year. You have to stand 30 minutes of gratuitous girl-on-girl sex scene, but the emotional turmoil of identity confusion and heartache was easily universal. The other lauded feature was Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake. Combining early remnants of the pure cinema movement and Hitchcockian psychology, the movie may be a test for those unfamiliar with the genre, but the result was a satisfying and perplexing mystery thriller. Berlin and Venice produced Szumowka's In the Name of and Kyu-Hwan's The Weight, respectively. I still have not seen both films but the general consensus has been favorable so far.
Independent film festivals also did not disappoint. Sundance showed Krokidas' Kill Your Darlings, one of the most anticipated film of the year. With Daniel Radcliffe as beat generation founder Allen Ginsberg, the film surrounding the murder by Lucien Carr was easily one of the audience's favorite this year. Interior: Leather Bar was James Franco's take on the missing clip of the 1980 ground breaking film, Cruising. Copolla's The Bling Ring, which started in Cannes, went on a well deserved film festival spree. Una Noche, Pit Stop and Snails in the Rain also made some buzz from film festivals all across the globe.
Though no Weekend(the best gay romantic film ever made), romance was also in the air. Lacant's Free Fall about a married policeman who found himself attracted to a man, was dubbed as Germany's answer to Lee's Brokeback Mountain. Though not as brilliant as the latter, Free Fall stood on its own as a tale of isolation and prejudice with a common yet engrossing relationship on its stand. This is the same premise of Wasilewski's Floating Skyscrapers, except in this one, the girl clung on the swimmer guy. Berger's Hawaii is one for the hopeless romantic.The Argentinian film was about two childhood friends who met again after many years and the rekindling that came thereafter. Fox's follow-up to Yossi and Jagger, Yossi, followed the titular protagonist years after the ending of the former film, coping with love lost and search for one in this age.
Gay in film cannot be discussed without mentioning Pedro Almodovar. In 2013, he gave us the funny, raunchy and fabulous I'm So Excited. For a fan of his works, his latest was a break from his usual dark and dramatic pieces. The flight attendants may just be a classic in Almodovar filmography.
One of the better emerging director (probably the hottest, too), Xavier Dolan went for double this year. Laurence Anyways was given a worldwide release establishing Dolan's name as a force with his two other films, I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats, on his back. His epic-length third feature film tackled a man on his way into becoming a transgendered woman. The other film, expected to have mainstream distribution this year, Tom at the Farm, will be Dolan's first venture into the psychological thriller and for a fan, I couldn't be more excited.
2013 also saw popular books turned into films. David Sedaris, one of the best essayist of today, had one of his essay turn to the silver screen. Alvarez' COG was adapted from Sedaris' experience when he worked in an apple orchard. Out actor Jonathan Groff was brilliant. Hartinger's Geography Club became Entin's in the cinemas.
Unfortunately, 2013 saw the dearth of Asian queer films. A few years back, a lot of independent filmmakers in Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan pushed for more active worldwide release of films, showing a different perspective of gay culture. Now, except for The Weight, the only East Asian movie that made buzz was Chen's Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, which is not even a good film in my books.
Since we are talking about the negatives, let me say the bad films did not disappoint. Though I tend to stray from critically panned films, usually ignoring tla releases, I managed to squeeze a few, in case I disagree (note: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, now a classic, was then a lambasted film in the 70s). Porn actor Sean Lockhart's Triple Crossed, much like his previous attempts and contra his great performance in porn, was lazy and pathetic. Galea's Monster Pie and Orlean's Capitol Games seemed like a fan-made fictions taken from an internet forum. Evan's The Happy Sad was trite. I was ambiguous towards LeMay's Naked As We Came.
Queer scene in this country became visible, I will hand that positively. Vice Ganda on the peak of her career, the popularity of My Husband's Lover and probably an attempt to attract a new market, bigwigs produced several gay-oriented films. Now, I am not saying the films were good, because they are not. Girl Boy Bakla Tomboy and Bromance: My Brother's Romance, both by the Wenn Deramas (whose name is synonymous to garbage in my dictionary), were an attempt to milk out more cash, as with Tom Rodriguez's Gaydar. Low-budget, machine acted, and cheap films still continued to play in cinemas in Quiapo and Cubao. But on a bigger picture, I think it was good that there was more visibility. Don't get me wrong; I bet there are good films. Cinema One's 2013 winner, Bukas na lang sapagkat gabi na echoed more of Thailand's Weerasethakul's revolutionary plot, including homosexual practices in communist groups. There are possibly still more films there, but my interest in Filipino films this year has admittedly dwindled for valid reasons, so spare me any elitist comment.
I still have a few films to watch. Vallee's Dallas Buyers Club, with all its Oscars Buzz, is still waiting release here in the Philippines. Plus, 2014 is here with a lot of prospects from the biopic of Alan Turing to Ira Sach's return to Sundance to HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart. So here's to another year! Cheers!
*Titles are linked to youtube trailers
** Writing this entry is like a breathe of fresh air for this blog. Haha.
Drunk conversations
"You should meet him. I swear you'll like him," she said while on the verge of crying, mourning a recent love affair lost in the inevitable pit fall of long distance relationship.
"I do not do blind dates," I repeated, for the seventh time. It was a slow ill-starred night, no tense, no rebellion, probably because it was not even seven in the evening. Our company had settled with early drinks recently, always eager to find empty comforts in our beds and the uneasiness of the coming work and school weeks.
"They always end up to be some horrible one night affair for the less adventurous. 95% of the time, I will tell myself that the other person, completely devoid of information about me, relying on sweet talks from you or whoever has set us together for a lame dinner too expensive for a student, is too good for me. I will always think he's too good for me because he probably is. And as for the other guys, I will feel pity because I will never be into them as they are, I presume from their attempt to converse film by immediately mouthing Citizen Kane, into me. Either way, I always end up feeling bad and depressed because it makes me realize I can't get the love I want," I continued.
She's on another bottle of alcohol. The slow tedium of the night was being filled with the sentimental songs playing in the bar. Not the best drug for the malaise of the heart.
"Maybe you should look for the love that you need, not the one you want," she said before taking a long, deep take on her cigarette. "We are not getting any younger, optimistic."
"That't bullshit. You know more than to settle for a yearning so shallow," I rebuked.
She just shrugged her shoulders. Maybe all the heartbreaks, so tender yet inevitable, was consuming her body, her existence. Or maybe it was just the alcohol.
"I'm not becoming some incurable romantic, but you should hear me out. The problem, I think, is that we settle for the love that is convenient, something that does not wake you up longing in the middle of the night, but rather, I don't know, just when you are taking a piss or folding your sheets, you're just 'Oh, this love is enough, I'll take' but you know deep inside it is not the demand that would preoccupy your days and nights with burning friction. If you capsulize love into just receiving, the needing, you are not doing yourself or the other person a favor," said the alcohol, which made me go in a law student rant marathon.
The place was getting crowded, under the pretence of false cheerfulness from the yellow lights and random cut-outs and memorabilia on the cluttered white wall. Our phones ringing from detached pieces of our lives, unaware of our agonies. The night sky outside stingily black from the lack of stars and the dirty pollution.
"We are supposed look for love that would make our hearts leap just by the thought of the other person on the other side of the room, probably just shaving his week-long stubble, which is not even at all, not a tad romantic, not because you need some stranger to leave unwanted hair on your bathroom tile but because that is the intimacy that you have always wanted. You gush over the fact that you are not just close, but ductile. Something, someone that makes you ravenous, so hungry you cannot even remember what it feels like to be void, all those years of being on the edge gone," I made my final case. This is not my spotlight.
"You want or you do not want at all," she muttered under her breathe while she drowsily grabbed her bag and motioned for me to do the same. If only I weren't so tired and full of feathers from the vodka, I would have insisted we drink our bodies to Pompeii. The night time is worst now.
"I do not do blind dates," I repeated, for the seventh time. It was a slow ill-starred night, no tense, no rebellion, probably because it was not even seven in the evening. Our company had settled with early drinks recently, always eager to find empty comforts in our beds and the uneasiness of the coming work and school weeks.
"They always end up to be some horrible one night affair for the less adventurous. 95% of the time, I will tell myself that the other person, completely devoid of information about me, relying on sweet talks from you or whoever has set us together for a lame dinner too expensive for a student, is too good for me. I will always think he's too good for me because he probably is. And as for the other guys, I will feel pity because I will never be into them as they are, I presume from their attempt to converse film by immediately mouthing Citizen Kane, into me. Either way, I always end up feeling bad and depressed because it makes me realize I can't get the love I want," I continued.
She's on another bottle of alcohol. The slow tedium of the night was being filled with the sentimental songs playing in the bar. Not the best drug for the malaise of the heart.
"Maybe you should look for the love that you need, not the one you want," she said before taking a long, deep take on her cigarette. "We are not getting any younger, optimistic."
"That't bullshit. You know more than to settle for a yearning so shallow," I rebuked.
She just shrugged her shoulders. Maybe all the heartbreaks, so tender yet inevitable, was consuming her body, her existence. Or maybe it was just the alcohol.
"I'm not becoming some incurable romantic, but you should hear me out. The problem, I think, is that we settle for the love that is convenient, something that does not wake you up longing in the middle of the night, but rather, I don't know, just when you are taking a piss or folding your sheets, you're just 'Oh, this love is enough, I'll take' but you know deep inside it is not the demand that would preoccupy your days and nights with burning friction. If you capsulize love into just receiving, the needing, you are not doing yourself or the other person a favor," said the alcohol, which made me go in a law student rant marathon.
The place was getting crowded, under the pretence of false cheerfulness from the yellow lights and random cut-outs and memorabilia on the cluttered white wall. Our phones ringing from detached pieces of our lives, unaware of our agonies. The night sky outside stingily black from the lack of stars and the dirty pollution.
"We are supposed look for love that would make our hearts leap just by the thought of the other person on the other side of the room, probably just shaving his week-long stubble, which is not even at all, not a tad romantic, not because you need some stranger to leave unwanted hair on your bathroom tile but because that is the intimacy that you have always wanted. You gush over the fact that you are not just close, but ductile. Something, someone that makes you ravenous, so hungry you cannot even remember what it feels like to be void, all those years of being on the edge gone," I made my final case. This is not my spotlight.
"You want or you do not want at all," she muttered under her breathe while she drowsily grabbed her bag and motioned for me to do the same. If only I weren't so tired and full of feathers from the vodka, I would have insisted we drink our bodies to Pompeii. The night time is worst now.
Unnecessaries
The neighbourhood's glee, or whatever remains from all the years' exhaustion, is taming down in somber. It is getting late. I am on my second bottle of wine and will probably be up for more. The heads of the house, though groggy from the day's work and the alcohol that flowed as early as six this evening, are watching a sermon on the television, rather lackadaisical.
I do not get the festivities in my veins, cold and blue and battered from all the years of expecting and never having, rather getting the undesirable, the throw-ups. There must be a few things drunkenness can remedy, but like the merriment of the holiday season, all the past gulps had made its present effect spiritless. Even the presents seem lackluster, transfiguring into a query of budget and sucking up to some higher up.
So while the rest of the world is opening their presents, I cannot help but contemplate on things given I so long wanted to disregard, take back from its trashed gift wrappers and ribbon and seal again, never to be pondered at.
One. I need no pressure more than what I bear now. I have walked this life in constant fear of shamelessly disappointing, crumbling down to the anchors on my feet, boulders on my shoulder and thorns in my head. Yes, it is the last year of law school; the prospect of wearing sablay, then a glint from afar, seems restlessly nearer. "Your younger cousins look up to you," you always say but you never wondered, or if you did you never cared, how I always have to look for some platform to stand on.
Two. Spare me the pity. I do not need those uneven, enigmatic looks from you. I fell into this pit of unrequited, disgusting appetite for you. And the hell, I was left all bruised in the rut. So stop.
PS. I really don't know what I want for Christmas. A complete early version of Proust's In Search of Lost Time has been in my mind lately. Also, I may be drunk so pardon this piece of shit entry.
I do not get the festivities in my veins, cold and blue and battered from all the years of expecting and never having, rather getting the undesirable, the throw-ups. There must be a few things drunkenness can remedy, but like the merriment of the holiday season, all the past gulps had made its present effect spiritless. Even the presents seem lackluster, transfiguring into a query of budget and sucking up to some higher up.
So while the rest of the world is opening their presents, I cannot help but contemplate on things given I so long wanted to disregard, take back from its trashed gift wrappers and ribbon and seal again, never to be pondered at.
One. I need no pressure more than what I bear now. I have walked this life in constant fear of shamelessly disappointing, crumbling down to the anchors on my feet, boulders on my shoulder and thorns in my head. Yes, it is the last year of law school; the prospect of wearing sablay, then a glint from afar, seems restlessly nearer. "Your younger cousins look up to you," you always say but you never wondered, or if you did you never cared, how I always have to look for some platform to stand on.
Two. Spare me the pity. I do not need those uneven, enigmatic looks from you. I fell into this pit of unrequited, disgusting appetite for you. And the hell, I was left all bruised in the rut. So stop.
Three. Cut the crap on your personal issues. I know I have always been the go-to guy in our group when personal drama strikes. But I can only bear much, especially if you were the last person to be seen as the blessed fuckin virgin innocent mary in your life. Stop the everyday text message, facebook chats and constant bickering. I told you before I wanted to slap you, but you took that as something metaphorical, an attempt on my part to create an illusion of hardness so you could be tough. No, I really want to take a hit on your face, so reality can take one after.
Four. No, I am not half-done for being single. Rub the presence of your significant other, bath in the glory of waking up every morning with an early morning text message from him, create the illusion of being complete when with him, but please, do not attempt to generalize the world as wanting, abominably desperate for another human to consummate his existence. I am cozy and gratified in this aloneness and you should respect that.
Five. I do not need this negativity. But I live in this gift I have fed my own for the past few years now. The trouble was, I had been this man all along, I simply hadn't though about it. But an escape plan would be nice in the future.
I take it back. The wine has taken its toll. I am now alone in my room. The silence is depressing me. I'll just probably shut my eyes so the world will drop dead.
PS. I really don't know what I want for Christmas. A complete early version of Proust's In Search of Lost Time has been in my mind lately. Also, I may be drunk so pardon this piece of shit entry.
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