The Gay Guy

Andrew and I have been slowly settling in to the Puerto Princesan lifestyle. I found a great laundry place that does laundry by the kilogram. The first time I went I wasn't sure of what to expect. I put all my laundry in a duffle bag, hopped into a tricycle, sped to the NCCC parking lot, and walked inside the tiniest laundromat I've ever seen, fictional or real. It's literally a room wedged between an internet company and a travel center with a young woman surrounded by mountains of clothes. Anyway, I walk in, plop down the bag and tell her what I need. She takes the bag and proceeds to scoop all my clothes out with her bare hands. I'm standing there with Andrew, watching wide-eyed, as my dirty drawers are piled high onto a scale and weighed. The damage, besides psychological, was 90 pesos. Holy shit! I'll gladly endure strangers manhandling my drawers for 2 bucks!

Anyway, the real point of this blog entry is to tell a potentially entertaining story (See what I did there?). So, Andrew is big on massages. He's always getting them at little places along the main strip, Rizal Avenue. One day he decides to get a girl to come to his room instead of going out. To make a long story short, they start seeing each other casually as friends, or not, whatever, it doesn't matter. Today Andrew asks me to go meet the girl with him. He said they were going to Baker's Hill, a local attraction with a few animals and minor sights. "Fuck it", I proclaim. I've got no problem being a third wheel.

We get to the place where we are meeting her when he gets a call. Apparently she's bringing a friend. "Whatever", i proclaim. She shows up a few minutes later with her friend, and as soon as I saw the two of them I knew exactly where the day was going. I was expecting a woman, not an obviously gay man.

We exchange pleasantries and pile into a tricycle. We drive for about 10 minutes, crammed like....crammed like, something...crammed in a small space......*cough*

We arrive at Baker's Hill and start walking around. there really isn't much to see except a few bored animals and a hilariously gay dinosaur (I'll post a pic soon). At this point the gay guy isn't paying anyone much attention. All is well. We decide to walk up the road to Gov. Mitra's house, a huge government home that doubles as a guest house. The property is open to the public to walk around and enjoy. We walk around a little bit, making small talk, and generally being bored. On the way out the gay guy starts walking next to me, asking questions, being friendly. I think nothing of it. Or maybe I just didn't want to think of it. I should have thought of cats, or Easter, or Rock Band 2. Man, I really want to wail out some Pearl Jam "Alive". That's not gay.

We continue talking a little bit here and there on the way back to Baker's Hill. At this point Andrew's lady friend and the gay guy are talking in Tagalog quite a bit more than before. I take note of this for no good reason. When we get there we decide to go to the most heterosexual place on earth: The Butterfly Pavilion. So we hop in another tricycle and speed away.

We arrive at the *sigh* Butterfly Pavilion, pay for the tricycle (Sidenote: they didn't pay a damn cent either time. Andrew and I footed the bill), and walk up to buy tickets. A sign informs us that the butterflies aren't very active in the afternoon, so we decide to go the hell home out of it. Actually, first the gay guy decides to talk to his sister on the phone for 20 minutes, passing her around to talk to us, complete strangers. She was nice enough though. We start to walk towards the intersection when the gay guy and the lady friend begin to talk again in Tagalog. Andrew put it eloquently: "Dude, I think they're trying to figure out if you're gay or not". After this the gay guy asks me about religion. Specifically, he asks if I was a Catholic. Without thinking about where it might head, what day of the week it is, or how "Catholic" I actually am, I say yes. Excellent news, because they are heading to church and would love us to join. Fortunately Andrew had a pre-planned bullshit meeting to attend with a make-believe person. Unfortunately for me, he completely sold me up the fucking river with: "But Matthew's free". I quickly made up some "family phonecall night" story and focused on hating Andrew.

We are still walking towards the intersection while I'm thinking of a nice way to let this dude now that I'm not gay and not interested in him or God when, and I swear this to be true, a giant truck full of young men drives by, all of them shouting and waving: "Hey man, what's up", "Hey dude", "What's up man", and "Looking good hot-ass". Well, it's all true except that last one.

We all catch a tricycle, drive to the end of our road, say our goodbyes, and generally breathe two distinctive sighs of relief. Andrew is away from the girl he was barely interested in to begin with, and I....well you can gather why I am relieved. So that's the end of the story, or it should have been.

I'm sitting down, about to waste time on the internet, when my phone beeps. I have a message. It's from gay guy. How he got my number I'll never know. I don't even know my damn number. He tells me how he had a great time. I do not respond. We go out later to Itoy's coffee house and I tell Andrew about what happened. He figures gay guy got my number through the lady friend because Andrew needed to use my phone to text her one night. Whatever, we have a little laugh and order some food.

Later, I get home and have 2 new messages. They both are from gay guy, preaching the bible and the good word of the Lord. I do not respond.

Oh man. I wish i had a big steaming plate of Sizzling Sisig right now.