The Slut Button.

Britney punched it. Christina Aguilera punched it. Abby Viduya, Maui Taylor, and Rica Peralejo punched it. The Olsen Twins are old enough to punch it. There’s talk (mostly between the wife and myself) on whether Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan will be the first to give in to the urge, to press… the slut-button.

I imagine the slut-button is housed in a top-secret maximum security location: behind the "O" in the Hollywood sign, perhaps, or locally, somewhere in Kris Aquino’s lingerie closet. If your career expiry date starts to make its presence felt when you’re at that precious age of eighteen, maybe all you have to do is book an appointment with the button, get there with your agent, and push.

They have good reasons for pushing. The considerable male demographic of slavering Internet geeks and pimply teenagers reliably fork over the cash to watch former teen cutie-pies lose their innocent act and bare all. It’s the ultimate male fantasy (next to three-ways with hot Swedish twins… so I hear). All over the Internet, countdowns to hot underage female stars’ 18th birthdays are all the rage. (The Olsen twins, the first prominent subjects of this strange Internet obsession, just turned 18, uneventfully, it seems.)

Pervy? Oh god yes. And there’s good money to be made, milking the desires and wallets of teenagers and misanthropes who, ironically, have the least chance of scoring with their dream underage muffin. Good to know when your cuteness has run its course, and it’s time to resort to stronger stuff. It’s an impulse that’s been around as long as movies have been made. Which leads us back to the slut button. Last I heard, Anne Curtis was seen skulking around Kris Aquino’s front gate...

Today’s Homily: Cultural Catholic.

Just before I flew back from Singapore, Nette and I thought it would be a good idea to go back to Church. Having nowhere else to go on Sundays, I found myself driven to my knees, specifically the leatherette pews at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour.

Being Catholic, I discovered then, was like knowing how to ride a bicycle. You never forget the right response, the right time to stand, kneel, and sit, and the rationale behind some of the more obscure rites. If you’ve undergone the crucible of Jesuit Catholic education as I have, you wouldn’t forget, either, even if you’ve wandered far from the fold. As I have.

Indeed, I am as far from the shadow of the Church as is humanly possible, if one were to judge from a practicing Catholic’s POV. I do not go to Mass. I can read Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins without flinching. I cannot utter the Nicene Creed with sincerity, though I can say it in my sleep. I oppose the Catholic Church’s intervention in the Philippines’ political life, particularly in the fields of birth control and the media.

But you cannot totally undo a Catholic upbringing, at least not without some serious psychic damage. One might say that the vehemence of some evangelicals against many Catholic shibboleths comes from a continuing (and vain) attempt to shake off the baptismal waters. I cannot fight a lost cause; I cannot wholeheartedly say that I am not a Catholic. St. Ignatius is still my personal hero; his Prayer for Generosity still gives me goosebumps. My life is littered with Catholic icons, Catholic truisms, Catholic stories – some of which still ring true, even if the words "I believe in God, the Father Almighty" don’t.

I am a cultural Catholic. There, I said it.

"We are cultural Catholics," writes Anna Quindlen, a practicing Catholic and feminist. "Catholicism is to us now not so much as a system of beliefs or a set of laws but a shared history. It is not so much our faith as our past."

A past that’s both a blessing and a curse. The Jesuits have blessed their more conscientious students with a rich understanding of the faith – along with the implied freedom of choice, like Eve before the snake, to prefer insight over obedience. I cannot reconcile current Church-sponsored misrepresentations of population control with my fervent belief that a family has the right to control the size of their brood. I find it abhorrent that the Church seems to be going out of its way to reward the guilty in the pedophile-priest scandal. I feel disgusted with the Magisterium’s censorship of conscientious Catholic clergy. I have a visceral emotion against these things, the kind that gets under your skin, especially when these run contrary to a lifetime of Catholic instruction.

Yet Catholicism defines who I am, down to my defiance of the Catholic hierarchy which I believe often strays from the original Christian ideals of charity, generosity, and love. I used to think I hated the Church, until I realized that you cannot hate your past – only come to an understanding with it, and perhaps forgive, forget, and go your own way. I have only gone a little way towards that understanding, which may explain why I haven’t fully gone my own way yet. I cannot say I believe in God, yet I still went to Cana with my fiancee, married her in a Catholic Church, and may yet agree to be buried in Catholic rites.

If it sounds confusing, let me say this: I have ceased to look for certainty in the Church, her leadership, and her creeds. I look for a sense of history and continuity that my Catholic upbringing demands. In an uncertain world, I believe this is the best I can hope for. I am a cultural Catholic, which means I believe in my history though my future may lie elsewhere.

Sense of place.

I woke up in a different bed today from the one I got out of last Saturday. Last Saturday’s bed was different from the one I got out of last January, which in turn was different from the bed I woke up in on the same day five years before.

My real address has changed far more often than my online address: my reliable Hotmail account is still the same it’s been since 1996, but I’ve been making the rounds of different residences – and different countries – since then. Xavierville. Tandang Sora. Singapore – Bukit Batok, Grange Road, Bayshore Park. Then back to Tandang Sora, with a month’s respite in a neighbor’s house while we were having ours renovated. The constant moves have made me a sure hand with large cardboard boxes, packing tape, and the nuances of fitting odd-shaped objects into compressed spaces. Minnette has filled in the gaps in my packing knowledge; our glassware has made the trip intact thanks to her practical wisdom (and her Internet research), though I worry that the shattered ceramic mask she unwrapped yesterday may have slightly dampened her confidence.

I’ve switched addresses more than most people switch jobs. Not that it’s an entirely negative thing; I’ve learned to base my sense of place more on the people who matter to me, instead of the walls that bound my night’s rest. I haven’t been as flighty with the people I hang out with, the family I call (all the way in Davao City, a place that a tiny part of me still calls home), or the person I wake up next to. Ten years after college, I’m still downing beer with Mon and Peejo; nine years after my first interview with my boss and mentor Dennis G., I’m still producing radio scripts in his studio; five years after really getting together as a couple, Minnette still begins and completes every day of my waking life.

Yet I don’t really have a home base, don’t really have a psychic center where I’ve built up a good store of memories. Xavierville might have been it – this is where Nette and I first lived together, where Abu first crept his way into our lives, and it was close to where we went to school and met – but my parents needed the money from its sale more than I needed the nostalgia.

So here I find myself, the veritable vagrant of Quezon City. I’m learning to make my home in the middle of Tandang Sora, where tricycle drivers park on the sidewalks (what little there are) and where the next door neighbor is a creepy Born-Again Christian who claims to be wealthy beyond measure at one moment and wants to borrow money in the next. The place has its charms, yes, even counting the creepy next-door neighbor – who else could the wife and I bitch about when we’re settling down to bed? And as long as it’s still the wife I see the first time I wake up, still Abu who pokes me insistently in the mornings for his daily walk, then why would I want to call any other place home?

Boogie Night.

The svelte starlet emerges from the elevator, lithe and perfumed. "I’m ready for the interview. Would you like to… do it… in my hotel room?"

The jaded interviewer cocks a smug look, smirks, and says, "Well, I’ve got all my equipment ready."

"You’ll use all of it… and more. Come on up."

Dissolve to starlet enjoying a highball, while interviewer tries to be professional (as professional as it can get – the interview is for a man’s magazine). "What can you do that turns your man on?"

"Oh, isn’t it obvious?" Starlet crosses her legs, with a suggestion of more to come. "Let me demonstrate…" Cue ‘70s disco music.

Poof!

And so ends the porn-movie version of last night’s events. The real-world version: FHM Australia gets their local outfit to interview a model they shot last month. The poor stooge they choose to execute said interview: me. Model turns out to be down with the sniffles, so we schedule the meeting for Tuesday. Idiot interviewer assumes the hotel she’s staying in has a coffee shop where we can do the interview in peace. However, since we’re talking about the Millennium Plaza Hotel (teetering between decent and cheap-ass quick-bang get-a-roof-over-your-head-while-you-get-laid), there turns out to be no coffee shop, just the lobby, or the model’s hotel room. We choose the room.

So I find myself alone with a half-Japanese, half-Filipina model, in her hotel room, with nothing but my clothes, my tape recorder, and my utter self-consciousness. Why should I be self-conscious? She’s the one being interviewed! She’s the one talking to me about Victoria’s Secret lingerie and bondage and bikini contests! I’m just the guy asking questions!

Doing these FHM interviews is never easy – especially when, on orders from the gruff-but-friendly Allan M., I have to wing it. I entered the hotel room knowing nothing but the model’s first name; that was all that Allan gave me to go with. I left the hotel room knowing much more than is usually revealed in cocktail conversations (Butthead: "You said cock. Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh…"). No "knowledge" in the Biblical sense, mind you. But you can imagine how complicated the situation was, two total strangers having an hour-long conversation on everything from Japanese sex instruments to love hotels to Brazilian waxes. With no ‘70s disco music throbbing in the background to make the going easier.

The door opens. Juliana Palermo walks in, feigning surprise. The starlet on the bed is nonplussed.

"Oh, hi July! I asked her to join us, dear. So you’ll have more material to work with."

The interviewer is cool, despite the strenuous ministrations of the past fifteen minutes. "I can give her some material she can work with…"

Cue ‘70s disco music...

Building more bookshelves.

The house, minus the odd finishing touch, is done – and what a change a month’s work has wrought! Tiled floors in place of vinyl, smooth cream walls in place of dirty "termite-finish" surfaces, and the glow of fresh paint and varnish all over. Nothing left to do but to move our stuff back in.

I’m particularly wound up about the fact that the new bookshelves are ready. Did I mention that I’m a book freak? Yes, precious, yes I am. Nette and I spent much of Sunday afternoon unpacking volumes and volumes of stuff from boxes we’d sealed off years before (when we thought we’d be moving to Singapore for good), and lovingly arranging our collection for display. At last count, we have a little less than 400 books, and we’re proud to say that none of them have that ghastly combination of words "sweet" and "dreams". (If you exclude the collector’s edition of Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.)

One of the few joys I had in Singapore was the instant access to the best bookstores in the world (how a tight-assed culture could accommodate the world’s most freethinking books is beyond me) – Borders and Kinokuniya being just a ten-minute walk from each other on Orchard. If you paid me to waste my time in whichever way I saw fit, I’d earn mucho moolah by heading to Borders to have a go at the countless volumes stacked up on the shelves. I loved the fact that there was always something interesting around the corner shelf, and I can’t count the many "hhhh" moments I had on my almost-weekly visits.

Now that we’re safely (?) at home, Nette and I have time to consolidate the collection, sort them out, and decide what we’re going to give away. Happily, the latter makes for a pitifully small pile – mostly "bestsellers" we picked up from the odd secondhand bookstore to read on long trips. I’m sad to say that the sister-in-law’s copy of the Da Vinci Code will still have a place in the library; but who knows what a few more years might bring?

Did I mention that I’m really freaky about books? I mean obsessively-compulsively freaky. My Sony PDA has a list of all but the most recent books in our library, sorted by author, title, genre, date bought, ISBN, and rating. If you have a Palm-compatible PDA and a similar mania for books, I suggest you log onto Caustic Mango and download the free (for now) Pocket Library and its desktop equivalent. You’ll make your books happy. And you’ll take the first step on the long road towards certifiable insanity.

Not that I’m alone in my obsession. Apropos to the newly-redecorated house and its gleaming new shelves, Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite authors, has this to say: "I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

Today's Homily: The Courage to Believe.

The politicians currently wrangling over poll results want us to believe that they believe only in finding the truth. Few take them at their word. I feel particularly sorry for Nene Pimentel. Many of his former supporters have become disillusioned with his political stunts - especially after his four-hour-long filibuster for what seems to be a blemished, hopelessly-doomed cause.

The rest of us are free to choose our beliefs without any serious criticism, barring objections from family and friends. Despite that freedom, often we don't actively choose: we stick to the faith we've been brought up to believe, and we don't even think about the alternatives. We brush away any doubts, we bury any inconsistencies behind the rites of the faith we've learned to keep. We accept our crib-fed faith as Gospel Truth, and we learn not to ask any uncomfortable questions.

The courage to come to terms with our beliefs does not come to everyone. For those who summon it, the reward can be illuminating: true understanding beyond the pious platitudes. The true seeker rarely finds peace - but understanding never guaranteed peace of mind. The answers to your questions often lead to more questions. But you're a few miles down the road from where you started, and you're making progress: to me, that's what counts.

A few shout-outs to people who I think are walking that lonely road to understanding. Bea has often questioned the Catholic Church's stand on many, many things. It's not for me to repeat what she's shared in conversation, but she's slowly coming to terms with what being Catholic is all about, without a slavish reliance on Catechism and Church Tradition. The beauty of Catholicism is that it's bigger than the people who are running it (or, in the opinion of some, running it into the ground). Despite the outward appearance of conformity, Catholicism allows people like Bea and Fr. Andrew Greeley to keep believing in the Church's inherent beauty, and yet feel free to reject what they believe is a harmful deviation from the principles that Christ originally espoused.

Kudos, too, to my cousin's husband Chris, who gave up a promising career in the hospitality industry to minister to the poor in Davao City. I have my own reservations about his faith (he's a Born-Again Christian - let's just say I disagree with many things they believe in), but to take a stand for his faith like this takes some serious cojones.

I'm not saying we should all be doubters or missionaries, but I think it would make a world of difference if more people asked questions of their own faith. The people who have most obviously failed at this regard are, sadly, now at the forefront of world events. Christian missionary zeal permeates the American debacle in Iraq; there can be no hope for progress when a top American general in a predominantly Muslim country paints his mission in divisively Christian fundamentalist language, declaring that "I knew that my God was bigger than [the Moslems']. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Closer to home, the government's reliance on Church support has turned out to be a deal with the devil - the Catholic bishops are firmly opposed to causes that would help lift us out of poverty, and even the MTRCB has mustered the courage to denounce love between homosexuals (gasp!) as "abnormal". Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in defiance of a Constitution that divides the State and the Church, genuflects constantly to the Will of the Church Hierarchy on issues like population control.

I'm worried that the foremost proponents of their respective faiths, all over the world, have lost the capacity to practice their religions in directions that helped more people. They've institutionalized their religions, made them instruments for policy, for the consolidation of power. To stop this trend, we need more people asking questions, looking for the answer that keeps on asking, instead of having the answers handed to them, with finality, on a cafeteria platter like their pastors or parish priests would like. We are free, more free than we think, to reconsider the Gospel Truth handed down to us by religious authorities. We can doubt cardinals in the same way we doubt Nene Pimentel.

Personally, I would like more Catholics to ask why women shouldn't be ordained, or why contraception isn't a necessary evil in a world crammed full of unemployed Filipinos. I'd also like more Born-Again Christians to ask why Moslems shouldn't be viewed as members of a Satanic religion, why evolution isn't a valid tool for God's Creation, or why good people like Gandhi are spending an eternity in Hell just because they didn't take Jesus Christ as their Personal Lord and Savior.

But it doesn't sound right, having the questions come from a know-nothing doubter like me. More people should be formulating their own questions to their faith, and begin searching for the answers. And even if the answers aren't forthcoming, to keep moving down the road of understanding, step by step, because all that matters is that you're on your way.

Gone fishing.

From Fried Society by Chris Kelly. All rights reserved.

I had a good day today, better than 99% of the days I had in Singapore. I voiced and produced a two-minute soundtrack for an AVP, and presented the finished soundtrack two hours later to a rather pleased crowd consisting of the managing director, the suit, and the video’s director. I wrote, voiced, and produced the whole damn thing myself, so I guess I have a right to be, as the Brits say, "chuffed".

I’m wary, though. I felt too good about the compliments, like I wouldn’t be able to live without them flying my way every minute or so. I also have a tendency to get too complacent with them, like I relax a bit, I get a little less hungry about work, because I feel the goodwill might make them forget my mistakes.

The opposite of that situation is just as bad. Singaporean natives will never tell you if you’ve done a good job, but they’ll get on your case in an instant when you fuck up. Irritating. What’s the point of working if you don’t know what their standard of "good work" is? What’s the point, especially for creative people, when all you get is crap for your bad work, and your good work goes unrecognized?

That being said, I’m of two minds on compliments. I don’t know if I take compliments well. I think I take insults better – I know how to pull an appropriately apologetic look, or a stone-cold "I don’t give a fuck" look where appropriate. Compliments, I have no appropriate bearing on the proper response. (When in doubt, I resort to the bashful smile, but I have a feeling it just makes me look idiotic.)

Abu, there and back again.

Abu’s been around the block further than most dogs (he hitched a ride with us to Singapore and back). He’s been a rambunctious presence in our household since he was a pup; no surprise, then, that we seem able to read his emotions like an open book, and vice-versa.

Even my thinking of taking him out for a walk unleashes his uncontrollable enthusiasm - he jumps around in circles, scrambles down the stairs toward the door, then sits in the corner as I fidget with his leash. Then it’s out the door, master and pet (it’s debatable which of us is which), God have mercy on the plants and car tires on the wayside.

There is no logic to our relationship. Minnette and I love him unreservedly. He loves us (or so his eyes tell) with no less passion. When I first came to Singapore, I had to leave Minnette and the dog behind. Nette would tell me wistfully of their first few months without me - Abu would wait by the window, and wait, and wait. All through the night. That alone guaranteed his trip with us to Singapore, even when everybody else within earshot would tell us it was a bad idea.

Or so common sense would say. His monetary value is zero, except maybe to the kanto boys who have a hankering for askal meat. His breeding is nonexistent, his training is horrible (he only knows "sit", and that only after six repetitions), and he sows destruction in his wake (current tally - seven books, two pairs of glasses, one pen, and three houses’ worth of scratched wooden doors and floors).

But you cannot logic your way to the relationship between a dog and his master. You could try, but somehow the explanations seem to miss the point. Is Abu just the end product of millennia of artificial selection, where the most responsive and affectionate litters survived to breed more responsive and affectionate litters? And if so, so what? Like the Turing Test for artificial intelligence, you can never quantify true love; you can only make a gut-feel approximation depending on the symptoms present. Overwhelming passion. A bottomless capacity for sacrifice. Devotion that asks no questions. Abu stints on none of these. Could you ask for anything less from a loved one? Wouldn’t devotion trump common sense where bringing such a loved one to a foreign country is concerned, and wouldn’t it seem like a small price to pay? I’m entirely convinced that, had it been us on four legs and Abu on two, he would have done the same for us.

To the moon and back.

Die, Dan Brown, Die!

There’s an unspoken contract between an author and his reader. I think the most important clause is, "thou shalt not resort to cheap trickery." The line between sleight-of-hand and deception may be blurred, but once you cross it, you risk disgust, or at worst, on a personal level, a pledge never to read the author’s work ever again.

If I had actually bought my copy of Dan Brown’s the Da Vinci Code, I’d be writing him a gee-thanks-for-wasting-my-time-and-money pissed-off-as-hell note.

Thankfully, I had my copy beamed to me: thanks to the tricky deviousness of Janolo, I have (or had; I have since exorcised my trusty Clie of all crap) a digital text file of said novel. No cash for trash.

Initially, I was actually excited to see what people were gushing about. Bea couldn’t put it down; the sis-in-law was raring to get her hands on her own copy. Even my rather scholarly tito had a fresh copy peeking out from his briefcase, presumably to be read when he’s taking a break from the economic oppression of the Asian underclass. (That was a joke, people. That was a joke. I wonder if the naysayers who constantly blame the ADB for the Philippines’ woes even know how badly we’d have it if the ADB weren’t around. But I digress.)

The book is bad in the worst sort of bad – you don’t realize how bad it is until you’ve flipped the very last page. Like eating at a Mongolian Barbecue Buffet and getting food poisoning once you leave the premises, all you have is the memory of how good it was when the going was good, and a very unpleasant conclusion that makes you swear off Kublai’s forever.

I won’t go into detail here on the numerous deceptions foisted by the author on his readers. And no, don’t give me that "it’s a work of fiction" crap; Brown himself insists to this day that "absolutely all of it" was based on reality. In his own words, "all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies [in the book], all of that is historical fact." But there it is: historical fact? Dan Brown craps on it. From small white lies (like claiming that the Romans called anagrams "the great art" [in Latin, ars magna], when the Latin phrase is in itself an anagram of anagrams, so it can’t possibly have been extant as far back as the Roman period!) to his Gospel acceptance of such shaky sources as Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Brown also resorts to over-inflating the importance of the Golden Ratio, the Knights Templars and other secret organizations, and the Gnostic Gospels. My dad’s a Freemason, but to say that he’s privy to ancient secrets that could destroy the faith is about as likely as my scholarly tito working towards the absolute slavery of the Asian region!

Another thing, Dan: how many times do you think you could repeat "sacred feminine" without your reader wanting to throw your book at the wall? Maybe, like, half the number of times you mention it? Another, another thing, Dan: maybe when you write your next book, could you try to make your flashbacks sound less contrived? Your Neanderthal convicts could have come straight out of the prison in Naked Gun 33 1/3! (You know, where Leslie Nielsen goes undercover in a state penitentiary?)

All in all, it’s bad writing and cheap trickery, disguised in fast pacing that disguises how thinly fleshed out the story and its characters are. The only faith I lost while reading it is my faith in Dan Brown’s abilities. He’s not on my "next to read" list, that’s for sure.

It’s a good thing I got to read the book for free. For once in my life, I actually got what I paid for.

Further reading:
The Skeptic’s review of the da Vinci Code
Google-search on ""da vinci code" critique". Christians understandably feel threatened by the book’s claims, so a new cottage industry has been born – debunking Dan Brown. I’m leaving that to them; I’ve wasted enough time venting already.

Comments to the comments:
because when I try to comment to my own entry, somehow the Blogger interface looks all fucked up... so for now, I'll comment here...
Atty. Sassy, I hope you'll enjoy more than just the layout over the next few weeks. I've got a lot to vent. :-)
Anonymous, My guess is, the fuss was all about conscientious Christians taken aback by claims that everything they knew about their faith was a lie, with that claim being strengthened by the book's tight pacing. There may be something to the Church's perceived misogyny that struck a chord with many of Da Vinci readers - feeding to the word-of-mouth that, in hindsight, probably had little to do with Dan Brown's actual writing skills.
Bea, I hope you didn't imagine I was slandering your taste in books - if it did sound like it, I'm sorry! Please forgive me... (actually, you didn't mention how un-put-downable the book was in your blog, but you said so when you were visiting nette, me, and abu... I linked to that blog entry because it was the one that mentioned your reading the book. In hindsight, should I drop the link to your blog entry na lang?) I actually agree with you that it was hard to put down. Medyo nainis lang ako at the end because I felt he led me by the nose to a pointless conclusion. BTW, doesn't the book's ending read like a shameless rehash of The Alchemist's last chapter? Hero goes off on a quest; quest comes to nothing; then realizes that the treasure he was seeking was hidden in the setting of the book's very beginning? See for yourself; magugulat ka. Say hi to Bruno for me!

Heaven to interview, Hell to transcribe, part deux.

Done with the article. I don’t think it’s that bad, considering that it’s been two whole years since I’ve written a single word for FHM. Chrissy and Alex complained on the way to the shoot last Friday, that it was hard to find a writer that could duplicate the FHM "style". Well, I wanted to say, you could have had one March at the earliest, but until last week he was hiding under a rock.

Now the weather’s far sunnier outside the rock than under. Today Nette, the sis-in-law, and myself went to Cabalen to eat at their famous buffet table. My stomach is still groaning from the effort. Two helpings of caldereta, sizzling lengua, sinangag, ensalada of itlog na maalat, sibuyas, and kamatis, with a heaping serving of ube ice cream to top it off. Much as I enjoyed the "upload" of food, I’m frankly looking forward to stopping off at the bathroom later tonight, light a cigarette, and get ready to, er, "download". (OK, OK, too much information.)

In between the toil of turning Czarina’s thousand-word-a-minute output into words any FHM reader can understand, I stopped by the radio with Nette, the sis-in-law, and our friendly next-door-neighbor Janolo, to listen to his girlfriend jam over the radio on 88.3. His girlfriend, for the uninitiated, is Jaycie: one-half of the Jaycie and Honey duo now making waves on the live scene. (Wishful thinking, perhaps… I love their music, kind of an Indigo Girls thing going, minus the lesbian goodness, but they still keep their day jobs.)

Frankly, I want them to become famous, then boast that I knew them when they were still starting in the music scene. I’m not big on earning glory by myself, I’m happy with basking in other people’s reflected fame. It’s easier than actually becoming famous, only you don’t get as much exposure, and you don’t get invited to as many parties.

Heaven to interview, Hell to transcribe.

I’ve been struggling for the past five hours to transcribe my conversation with Czarina. A nice enough girl, willing enough to talk about awkward sex situations with an overweight mustachioed stranger armed with a tape recorder. If she has any faults, it’s her unstoppable volubility. She’s so quick with her tongue (don’t get any ideas, please, folks, I’m a married man), and her speech is littered with ganitos, ganyans, and the like, that I’m this close to giving up and making something up from scratch.

The interview went smoothly, with one glitch. She was so garrulous that I ran out of tape. Good thing there was more than enough to go with on the one tape I had. Then I decided I only needed what was on the single tape that I brought, and I plan to run with it.

Today's Homily: Charity, as taken from the play "The Laramie Project".

Secondhand bookstores can provide a unique thrill, if what rocks your boat is the same as what rocks mine. When I'm in Booksale, I look for the "hhhh" moment: you're browsing in the least promising pile of old books, and you come across a beat-up volume that nonetheless provides the impetus for a sharp intake of breath.

This week"s "hhhh" moment was brought to you by the Laramie Project. As described on the HBO movie listings, it seemed like a nothing tearjerker-of-the-week, but reading through the script (slight scratches, P75.00) made me wish I had the patience to wait for its debut on cable.

The interviewees recount how the news of a gay man"s murder hit home for the residents of the small Wyoming town where it happened. Particularly interesting was how the different religious congregations reacted to the gay man"s death. Remember, no judgments are passed by the script: what we have are the unfiltered words of the people who were there, with no editorializing from the writers.

Baptist Minister (wished to remain anonymous):

"As for the victim, I know that that lifestyle is legal, but I will tell you one thing: I hope that Matthew Shepard as he was tied to that fence, that he had time to reflect on a moment when someone had spoken the word of the Lord to him - and that before he slipped into a coma he had a chance to reflect on his lifestyle."

Stephen Mead Johnson, Unitarian Minister:

"To his credit, Father Roger, Catholic priest, who is well-established here, and God bless him - he did not equivocate at all when this happened - he hosted the vigil for Matthew."

Catholic Priest, Father Roger Schmit:

"I was really jolted because, you know, when we did the vigil - we wanted to get other ministers involved and we called some of them, and they were not going to get involved. And it was like, 'We are gonna stand back and wait and see which way the wind is blowing.' And that angered me immensely. We are supposed to stand out as leaders. I thought, 'Wow, what's going on here?'"

I thought back then to some Christians I know, and the invisible line that divides them. (not an easy thing to reflect on in the middle of Booksale Megamall.) I"ve met Christians who hold their faith to a single imperative – "God is Love" - and feel free to interpret it in ways that are often surprising, sometimes shocking, but always reflective of real generosity, real love that they share with everyone regardless of their religion.

Across the line, you have Laramie's Baptist Minister, standing with some other Christians I've met. Their faith is contained in the endless minutiae of the Bible - and you must live your whole life to its letter. "The word is either sufficient," says the minister, "or it is not. Scientists tell me that the world is five billion or six billion years old. The Bible tells me that human history is six thousand years old. The word is either sufficient, or it is not."

Taken to the limits that the Minister's side of the line often goes, the sufficiency of the word means a literal belief in Genesis (never mind the countless whispers to the contrary by science); a legalistic interpretation of how you or me or any other person may go to heaven or hell, and a rather uncharitable view of those who stand on the margins of the Bible"s prescriptions of Right, Good, and True.

In this blissful myopia, some of Laramie's Christian leaders missed the opportunity to walk in Jesus' real footsteps. Having trapped themselves on their side of the line, the Baptist Minister and his ilk played Pharisee: reserving their "Christian" love for fellow Bible-believers, forgetting that Christ broke bread with the sinners too. They missed a golden opportunity to show what Christianity should be all about, but I doubt they regret it.

The Word is either sufficient, or it is not: and, in the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's murder, it was not: a gay man's agony made some Christians draw the line between the Bible-believing saved (always one's own side) and the damned, counting those who stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them, thanking God for their blessings - all while Jesus walked in the presence of those on the other side of the line.

I didn't come up with all this as I was in Booksale - or I would have, if the lady next to me didn"t have such bad breath and distracted me from my reverie.

Further reading: "Everybody Hates Us" by Michael Spencer

Back to FHM!

"O, you're back?" says Allan, ever gruff but loveable.

"Yep."

"Gaano katagal ang bakasyon mo this time?"

"Hindi bakasyon. I'm here for good. I think."

"Good, good. May panahon ka pa bang magsulat?"

Ah, the question I was so hoping he would ask.

The question leads me to this afternoon's proceedings, shooting the breeze with a movie starlet. And where else but in the Philippines (and never, never in Singapore, in your wildest dreams) would you be welcomed back by FHM's managing editor with open arms, as if you never left, to the same old interesting shit you did two years past?

By "same old interesting shit", I mean something unexpected to write about each month: this month's specialty is an hour-long conversation with Czarina (not a household name at the moment), a half-Australian movie-star-in-the-making who bares almost all in her first film, Makamundo. The plot seems rather contrived (if you ask me) - Czarina plays a social-climbing slum girl. The girl rattling at a hundred-words-per-minute at the moment is hardly iskwater material - her face is rather sharp, with the angles softening as your eyes travel south. I don't remember how she smells, which is strange. Girls like this always smell like something.

I don't stay for the shoot. Sayang. The people in charge of the shoot now are my age, not the old photogs of two years past who made me feel like they'd slap my hand if I touched any of the equipment. My batchmate Cocoy is assisting with the photography; Allan is nowhere in sight, having left the shoot to the tender mercies of his two assistants (neither of whom look like they're of legal drinking age). I meet Rachel, the costume supplier, who jokingly tells me she's pissed off at my name (but not the personality) - a lover's tiff with her boyfriend Mike, perhaps? I don't ask. I meet the bar's manager, Candy, who looks like we were in the same English class in college. I wouldn't have felt out of place at all if I'd stayed. But friendships and Empire: Earth in Netopia with Peejo come first.

The aforementioned Cocoy is a good friend of Peejo's. Since he's making a token appearance at the studio where he's an in-house director, I SMS him to boast a little.

M: Guess what? I'm with Cocoy, we're shooting a starlet for FHM.

P: So what?! Big deal. I'm at workstation, staring at a wall!

The article I craft from my exchange with Czarina comes out (I think) in FHM's September issue. The first of many? Depends if Allan likes what I send him this Monday. Monday?! I knew there had to be a catch to the effusive welcome.

Getting my life back on track.

It's hard to concentrate on life when you're spinning out of control, and especially when you see other people's lives keep going on at an even keel.

I think I have moments, nay crises, like these at least once every two years: I take a tumble, go around in circles, because I've somehow lost confidence in the direction I've been headed. When you map my life, you'll find, not a straight line going somewhere in particular, but circles upon circles - occasionally striking the gold (not out of purpose, but sheer luck) - never headed anywhere.

Let's review: I've tailspun over the past month: coming back to the Philippines, retreating under a rock, and only now coming out to see the sun. I'm starting work again on Monday, for my old boss, a different company, a better salary than what I was making the last time I was home, and my old rakets welcoming me with open arms.

(secret secret: I'm interviewing a bold star tomorrow for the Philippines' best-selling magazine. I can't hardly wait.)

I'm not exactly back where I started: but I'm close.