"Calamansi" Friends

Last night, after too many glasses of Absolut APeach with Royal in a party, I got tipsy. I bumped into a friend who sells ad placements from a magazine. We had a small discussion about friendship. I told her that since I am no longer working in a company and thus, I no longer buy ad space on her magazine, how come she stopped being around. Is it a case of fair-weather friendship? That we are friends as long as we get something from the relationship?

She used to invite me to attend her fellowship service in Victory Church, and I told her that true worship for God comes in practice, that it is by being the embodiment of what Jesus to others that we become what we preaches. I told her that I do hear mass everyday, and I pray that I become a better person, to be of help to others. She then invited me again to attend church service again this Sunday, and I have to told her pointblank, I don’t even have a cab fare to go to my own church and that I have to walk a block just to hear mass everyday, does she expect me to go all the way to Ortigas just to attend her church service. I had to told her that I have become a pauper, a penniless bum, a poor person, that I cannot even eat lunch at times. She became silent and didn’t know what to say. I ranted her as to what I have become, that I have to rely on the goodness of friends to be able to make it to the next meal. I could not even pay the monthly amortization of my pad, that I have been remissed in payment the past few months. She then told me that I don’t have to tell the entire world of my predicament, that those debts should just be spoken in hush, she said that I don’t look like a person who is in dire straits, with all my clothes on, she thinks that I still look fabulous.

Thanks, but beneath my Costume National shirt, my Seven skinny jeans and my Marc Jacobs sneakers, I have only P40 in my pocket. That I had to walk the entire Bel Air Village from my residence to Fiamma just to be able to take part on the open bar and free food as well as the lootbag. Does she expect me to be in rag clothing to be called poor? I don’t think so, I was tauught that in the darkest hour of a man’s life, or make that a gay’s life, one should be dressed up to the nines. We, the gay community, have looked up to Evita Peron to Brooke Astor to Babe Paley and even Imelda Marcos, that when facing life’s adversity, we should look like a million dollar babe. How do you expect respect if you are shabbily dressed?

Ms. Brooke Astor may have been locked up by his son and became a gossip staple of New York society and yet, you don’t see her to be undressed for any charity event by the Metropolitan Museum. Imelda Marcos was in her resplendent self when she borrowed money from her friend, Doris Duke, the rich Virginia tobacco heiress. Evita Peron might have been from the slums of Argentina and yet, she had no trace of her old persona when she addressed the mammoth crowd of “descamisados” (Argentina’s poor workforce, the “shirtless”) from the balcony of Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential palace.

I may be poor now, but it doesn’t mean that I am out, fashion-wise. I may live in the fashionable district of Bel Air Makati and yet my true finances belie my stature, I am facing a future that is nowhere to be found. My friend said sorry for hearing my sad plight, and on our way home since I decided to hitch a ride on her car, she gave me P500, a move that reduced me to a shame and embarrassment. Should I get it or not? I declined to receive it, yet she insisted. P500 is a lot, it can help me buy the latest Vogue issue or it can help me print out resumes for my job hunt. I am torn now between being a beggar and a miser, with little difference.

Life is really a spectator sports, we could always see how other people are faring with little empathy or with no emotions at all. People are really divided into two groups, those who cheer while seeing one falling down and others who cheer while seeing one going up. People love second acts, reinventions, and giving underdogs the muchneeded push so that Davids get to slay life’s Goliaths. That is why Madonna is still much around, Mariah Carey was able to bounce back on top of the charts, Kate Moss survived the cocaine brouhaha with more endoresements, Vilma Santos was able to rise out of bankruptcy brought about by her brushes with BIR and be the Star For All Seasons cum Governor of Batangas, to think she’s from Pampanga.

It got me thinking, if all my true friends, including the 398 listed under my Friendster will just donate P500 each, will I accept it? It is too much for my pride to accept dole outs when I am in the pit bottom and wait for my fortune to improve, or should I just keep quiet about my situation and just fade away to oblivion? Life will really throw you lemons, and it is up to us if we want to make lemonades. And I am not saying that I have lemon friends, come to think of it, we don’t have lemons in the Philippines, maybe I have “calamansi” friends and I rather make “calamansi” juice instead.