What struck me most about the entire trip was the uncanny loneliness of the whole place. Mindanao is known for bloodshed and conflict, the cacophony of its forests replaced by gunshots and war cries. But traveling around the island made me feel its isolation; it is inhabited and yet primodial. I completely felt like a stranger; a visa would have been fit.
From Cotabato City, we went to General Santos City, then we left, via Davao, for Cagayan de Oro City. We then took the ferry in Misamis Occidental to go to Zamboanga Sibugay, and finally, to Zamboanga City, where I took the flight back to Manila. It was more than work: it was too moving.
In Cotabato City, a sleepless town, we went to a Christian university where the toilets for men are virtual advertisements for blow jobs (where you’ll also meet Istadz: a name you can’t trust, but a name you can crust crushed). The city – a proud site of rebellion against the Catholic Philippines – is made up of cultures so diverse that the people decided to speak the language of Luzon, bastardized and cannibalized, to understand each other. In General Santos City, we got off the bus in front of a barangay hall in the outskirts of the City, where gay boys were decorating the stage for Ms. General Santos City, taking turns in sashaying on the ramps of the stage, as if by doing it several times, or through the shrill of their voice alone, they would undress Mindanao of its muslimness.
In the border between Bukidnon and Davao (called Buda Pass), we were asked to disembark and step on some chemicals that would prevent the spread of the dreaded foot and mouth disease. I was so dizzy and sleepy from all the traveling that I didn’t notice the elevation of the place. I would have fallen off in the farthest corner of the country while dreaming.
And when we arrived in Cagayan de Oro, I was amazed by the city’s buzz and movements. There I met cross-dressing gay designers who professed their disdain for cross-dressing parloristas. They brought me to a beach a few minutes away from the center of the city, where the shore didn’t seem to end and the water didn’t seem to deepen. We hitched in a seminary’s van to go back to the city. Just before I left I met a man – generally, a rather rare incident when I travel – who, in his computer shop, made bold moves to get my number.
Time stopped and was subsequently discarded when we went to Zamboanga Sibugay from Cagayan de Oro. There, a hostility against order and promptness was the norm – buses and vans took their time because things just can’t be done sooner. It was even more slow when we reached Sibugay, and the isolation of Ipil, the capital town, which was attacked and razed by a group of atrocious bandits a few years ago, made me feel surprisingly claustrophobic. I wanted to leave the town the moment we were done and I felt so glad we did.
Finally, in Zamboanga City, I was accompanied by gay muslims and gay Catholics who gave no shit about what the Pope and Mohammed said. There, in a city known for its poverty and sharp divide between the rich and the poor, the Catholic Church built a cathedral that looks like an international airport and cost about 80 million pesos. My friend, God (or whomever he praises these days) bless his soul, was busy organizing the first-ever province-wide Gay beauty contest in Basilan, a few hours from the city and one of the most muslim places in Mindanao. It is also the bailiwick of the Abu Sayyaf, which is known to behead homosexuals.
Suddenly I pined for the constancy of my place in the mad streets of Metro Manila. And just when I thought I’d finally be free of the bizarreness of Mindanao, a street vendor approached me in Zamboanga City’s international airport. He offered, in the following order, some Hollywood movies (pirated, of course), straight porn, m2m porn (this he nonchalantly offered after I declined to buy the first two items), and later, erection-sustaining lotions.
