Apparently, I’m funny. Like, sobrang funny. I only got a sense of this a few years back, when, somehow, I found myself cracking jokes at writers’ festivals and people would laugh uproariously. I’d crack another one and they would again. And again. And again. Prior to my Dance Massive performance in 2019, I did a minute’s worth of spontaneous quipping and—hindi nga—the laughter I elicited was up there in terms of volume level. (I wasn’t even there to make jokes; they were just preamble to my dancing!) Afterwards, a famous professional comedian who was also on the slate told me I should consider a one-man show at the Comedy Festival, or at least a fusion comedy-dance gig for Next Wave or something. A professional comedian. Ang galeng, diba?
Later, a friend who was in the audience commented, ‘Love your work! Give Adolfo a mic and he’ll make it “The Adolfo Show”.’ Another friend who was there said, ‘The best thing about this is that people think you’ve planned out this whole routine, but I know it’s just you, like when we hang out.’ She’s right: none of those jokes would be planned. The other friend’s also right: they’re always all about me. Often, when I talk spontaneously like this, I won’t even remember most of what I’ve said.
The feeling, I guess, is like being possessed. Give me an audience and something comes over me, like the headiness of champagne three flutes in. I’m Filipino, so performance skills are a must, lest you risk disownment. But I’m also a bakla, which means I’m bongga and I live for the fame. I live and die by my ego and the manifold ways other people engorge it through fanfare.
Later, a friend who was in the audience commented, ‘Love your work! Give Adolfo a mic and he’ll make it “The Adolfo Show”.’ Another friend who was there said, ‘The best thing about this is that people think you’ve planned out this whole routine, but I know it’s just you, like when we hang out.’ She’s right: none of those jokes would be planned. The other friend’s also right: they’re always all about me. Often, when I talk spontaneously like this, I won’t even remember most of what I’ve said.
The feeling, I guess, is like being possessed. Give me an audience and something comes over me, like the headiness of champagne three flutes in. I’m Filipino, so performance skills are a must, lest you risk disownment. But I’m also a bakla, which means I’m bongga and I live for the fame. I live and die by my ego and the manifold ways other people engorge it through fanfare.
*
When I was six—in grade one, back in Manila—one of the boys (let’s call him ‘Rico’, for privacy reasons) yelled at me across the school basketball court, where I was sitting with some girls playing with Polly Pockets: ‘Hoy, Adolfo, bakla ka ba?’ Was I? I replied, ‘Hindi ’no, may girlfriend kaya ako.’ I wasn’t lying; I’d been going out with one of our classmates for about a month; I’d even given her a ring with a plastic green star on it to make it official after her mom and dad said I was ‘perfect’ for her. ‘Gago, ’wag kang magsinungaling—everyone knows bakla ka. Baka gusto mo pa nga ako maging boyfriend mo, e.’ He then laughed a demon laugh, thinking he’d bullied me, except I chuckled to myself imagining him as my boyfriend because, in fairness, gwapo naman siya.
Mahilig ako sa gwapo. Everywhere I look, there’s someone gwapo. We make fun of men for their inability to objectify women discreetly, but god help anyone telling a bakla to restrain himself in the face of a hot man. I say ‘himself’ because that’s how we translate it, even though Tagalog pronouns aren’t gendered. Plus, a bakla wouldn’t strictly consider himself a woman, nor is he likely to take on what, in queer and critical theory, we refer to as the global-gay discourse that frames his identity as a ‘third gender’. A bakla is a bakla, and this encompasses anything from a cis man keen to sleep with other cis men, to what we in the West would call a trans woman. You know what does define a bakla? Our undying love for—and unashamed ogling of—gwapo men. Let’s call us connoisseurs of the cute. Or sexperts on spunks.
Occasionally, I see the bakla, or something like it, in Western media—the campy gay man, I suppose. Titus Andromedon from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is one, and possibly one of my faves. I’ve been told I’ve osmosed his hair-flicking (even though, punyeta, I’ve had long hair since 2005 and Tita doesn’t even have hair), but, more importantly, watching him is like watching me walking down the aisle of a supermarket. Or my corridors at home. Or down Fitzroy Street in St Kilda at 9.46 knowing full well I was meant to be in the office by 9.30. Anything that resembles a catwalk, basically. Like, I could be a model. Like, when I visited Manila in 2016, a casting agent came up to me while I was checking out cool socks and asked if I wanted to be a hair model. Ang taray, diba?
Mahilig ako sa gwapo. Everywhere I look, there’s someone gwapo. We make fun of men for their inability to objectify women discreetly, but god help anyone telling a bakla to restrain himself in the face of a hot man. I say ‘himself’ because that’s how we translate it, even though Tagalog pronouns aren’t gendered. Plus, a bakla wouldn’t strictly consider himself a woman, nor is he likely to take on what, in queer and critical theory, we refer to as the global-gay discourse that frames his identity as a ‘third gender’. A bakla is a bakla, and this encompasses anything from a cis man keen to sleep with other cis men, to what we in the West would call a trans woman. You know what does define a bakla? Our undying love for—and unashamed ogling of—gwapo men. Let’s call us connoisseurs of the cute. Or sexperts on spunks.
Occasionally, I see the bakla, or something like it, in Western media—the campy gay man, I suppose. Titus Andromedon from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is one, and possibly one of my faves. I’ve been told I’ve osmosed his hair-flicking (even though, punyeta, I’ve had long hair since 2005 and Tita doesn’t even have hair), but, more importantly, watching him is like watching me walking down the aisle of a supermarket. Or my corridors at home. Or down Fitzroy Street in St Kilda at 9.46 knowing full well I was meant to be in the office by 9.30. Anything that resembles a catwalk, basically. Like, I could be a model. Like, when I visited Manila in 2016, a casting agent came up to me while I was checking out cool socks and asked if I wanted to be a hair model. Ang taray, diba?
When I was a teen, though—by then I knew I was bakla without uttering the word, and my parents were sneaking meetings with priests who suggested I be cleansed with the Holy Spirit—there was nothing worse than being compared to Jack from Will & Grace. I loved that show to bits and I’d tell myself, every episode, ‘You can be gay, but be like-Will gay. A respectable gay.’ Echoes of this self-effacement would reappear later, as when I wrote in my 2004 coming-out letter to my dad that I ‘won’t be like those screaming fags at the mall’. Or when I’d told peers in my late teens that being gay was just ‘something in the background’ and ‘not core to who I am’. Or when, in my early twenties, I wore cardigans and buttoned-up shirts to stifle all sense of flamboyance because flamboyance equals Jack equals bakla and, diyos ko, ’day, the worst thing in the world would have been to fail at passing as straight.
Except, tangina naman, why would I have wanted to pass as straight! There’s so much power in the presentation, in the guise. Some time ago, I listened to the podcast Food 4 Thot and the hosts were talking about the sheer Machiavellian force of this thing called ‘gay mouth’. Troye Sivan has a gay mouth, they alleged. But then again, from their descriptions, I reckon Mary J. Blige also has a gay mouth, so… ewan. In any case, I sat in front of my mirror promptly afterwards and watched my mouth make shapes for an hour. I was convinced. Okay, or: after a film festival’s program launch in 2017, my work wife and I ended up at Crown Casino (kasi we’re sosi like that). While waiting for her to finish up in the bathroom, I leant against a pillar and, when she finally emerged, she took a paparazzo shot of me and we posted it on Instagram with a caption noting my ‘naturally flamboyant stance’. A work of art.
By now, I’ve come to terms with all this queer-performativity stuff. I’ve actually written about it heaps—even making the cover of one of Australia’s most prestigious literary journals, Meanjin, in unpacking this topic. I guess what I’m saying is that, these days, hindi na ako nahihiyang aminin na I am mother-flipping Jack. And also Karen. And also Grace. Really, pretty much everyone from Will & Grace except that wet blanket Will.
Except, tangina naman, why would I have wanted to pass as straight! There’s so much power in the presentation, in the guise. Some time ago, I listened to the podcast Food 4 Thot and the hosts were talking about the sheer Machiavellian force of this thing called ‘gay mouth’. Troye Sivan has a gay mouth, they alleged. But then again, from their descriptions, I reckon Mary J. Blige also has a gay mouth, so… ewan. In any case, I sat in front of my mirror promptly afterwards and watched my mouth make shapes for an hour. I was convinced. Okay, or: after a film festival’s program launch in 2017, my work wife and I ended up at Crown Casino (kasi we’re sosi like that). While waiting for her to finish up in the bathroom, I leant against a pillar and, when she finally emerged, she took a paparazzo shot of me and we posted it on Instagram with a caption noting my ‘naturally flamboyant stance’. A work of art.
By now, I’ve come to terms with all this queer-performativity stuff. I’ve actually written about it heaps—even making the cover of one of Australia’s most prestigious literary journals, Meanjin, in unpacking this topic. I guess what I’m saying is that, these days, hindi na ako nahihiyang aminin na I am mother-flipping Jack. And also Karen. And also Grace. Really, pretty much everyone from Will & Grace except that wet blanket Will.
*
In the Philippines, we do this thing called barahan. You’re chatting away, but then find yourself trying to one-up your companion with something wittier, sassier, funnier to the point that they’re ‘plugged’. We bakla are masters of this; perhaps it’s a fostered defence mechanism, a prickly verbal shell to ward off teasing like what I got from papa Rico at the basketball court. (I stalked Rico recently and he’s gotten buff, but with a slight belly and hairline receding a tiny bit, and, grabe, gwapo pa rin siya—pero now levelled up to a full-blown zaddy.)
Part of what makes barahan extra effective is the incorporation of Swardspeak, the sociolinguistic term for Philippine gay argot. It’s so culturally potent that even straight people end up using it. Swardspeak features things like wordplay, rhyming slang, pop-culture references, cross-language bastardisations and deliberate mispronunciations. The very gay sounds /j/, /v/, /sh/ and /z/ are added aplenty. The word ako turns into akesh; halaman, into julamantrax; huli, into Julie Andrews. Hello becomes Haller! Kamusta ka, bakla? Nasightness mo ba si papa kanina sa vahay? Baka wish niya akesh gawing jowa! Charot.
What I’ve come to understand is that bakla culture is smart-alec culture, and me being funny is Jack stealing every scene or Jean Grey letting out her true Phoenix form. It all—my final pop-culture nod, I promise—spills out like word-vomit. Who needs the Holy Spirit when you’re filled with the spirit of bongga, diba? Don’t crayola for me, Australia.
Part of what makes barahan extra effective is the incorporation of Swardspeak, the sociolinguistic term for Philippine gay argot. It’s so culturally potent that even straight people end up using it. Swardspeak features things like wordplay, rhyming slang, pop-culture references, cross-language bastardisations and deliberate mispronunciations. The very gay sounds /j/, /v/, /sh/ and /z/ are added aplenty. The word ako turns into akesh; halaman, into julamantrax; huli, into Julie Andrews. Hello becomes Haller! Kamusta ka, bakla? Nasightness mo ba si papa kanina sa vahay? Baka wish niya akesh gawing jowa! Charot.
What I’ve come to understand is that bakla culture is smart-alec culture, and me being funny is Jack stealing every scene or Jean Grey letting out her true Phoenix form. It all—my final pop-culture nod, I promise—spills out like word-vomit. Who needs the Holy Spirit when you’re filled with the spirit of bongga, diba? Don’t crayola for me, Australia.
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