What started as a job herding sheep on a mountain in Wyoming became a love affair that lasted through marriages, kids, and divorce. After sharing a tent one summer night, Ennis and Jack finally went beyond the bounds of their sexuality to dwell on the complexity of forbidden, gay love.
While Brokeback Mountain helped widen the acceptance of gay love in some areas of America, contemporary society has a way of setting its norms when it comes to homosexuality.
Outside the silver screen, however, gay men disprove the stereotypes with their own stories of commitment and relationships, which exist in a spectrum too elaborate to be confined by social standards.
Into the wilderness
Ted*, a senior, is what many might call a playboy. He goes out and sleeps with men, no strings attached. In terms of settling down, the farthest he goes is engaging in flings. He attributes this to the string of heartbreaks he recalls to have experienced when he was 17. Because of this, Ted claims to have mastered the craft of becoming a heartbreaker himself. “For the past few months, it was just [about] fulfilling my sexual appetite with [the] hot men I date,” he says. “[But] I always realize that the guy I’m with is not good enough for me.”
Like Ted, Adrian Pescador (III AB IS) says he has been molded by a bitter past of being toyed with and lied to by older men he had fallen in love with. As an effect, he avoids long-term commitments with men. At present, he is involved with seven men at the same time. “I’ve never been in a serious relationship,” says Adrian. “All I’ve had are one-night stands.”
Danton Remoto, English professor and chairperson of Ang Ladlad, an organization of Filipino Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgenders (LGBT), sees the media as a big factor for the trivialized view of gay relationships, with television programs showing gay men as incapable of having long-term partners. “[The media is] resorting to slapstick comedy where you make fun of [people who] are different,” he says. “[That is why] the typical person [also] tends to make fun of someone’s physical difference or gender dissimilarity.”
Remoto emphasizes that while gay men are guilty of these urges, he says, “Heterosexuals can be just as guilty of sexual overzealousness.”
A new social space
Libidinous or not, gay men continue to proliferate their presence in society as they tap into the world of media. “We have set up gay communities everywhere, even virtually,” says Remoto. “The rise of online social networks for gay men has opened up another new environment for them.”
One of these virtual communities, Adrian says, is Guys4Men, which he has been a member of since he was 17. It is there that he comes across potential flings by joining chat rooms. In his experience, he says he has met and hooked up with a 32-year-old teacher, a 52-year-old French-speaking Dutch, and a randy pastor.
But for Adrian, Guys4Men does not just satisfy his urge to engage in cybersex. “It’s about meeting people that I will never meet in the environment I’m in right now,” he says of the Ateneo scene. Adrian says he encounters intelligent people who are concerned with political and social issues while in school. Given this, he observes that the men he meets in chat rooms are different from those he meets in the university.
Carson*, meanwhile, visits Downelink, another gay social networking site, which he claims to be less sexual in content compared to Guys4Men. He says the website rests more on social interactions. “Downelink is like my comfort zone because that’s where I’m able to let out my hidden desires, insecurities, and secrets,” says Carson.
But adventurous Ted has a different idea of the goings-on in such social networks. He is a member of Connexion, an online network for the homosexual community where he gets to meet up with men he can go traveling around different places with. From Manila to provinces like Bacolod, Baguio, and Cebu, and all the way to New York, he has made traveling – and sex – companions.
Coming from a conservative family, Ted admits that he finds hooking up with other gays an escape from the traditional environment he was brought up in.
With this expansion of the gay community online, Ted, Adrian, and Carson find a new channel to living the carefree life they long for. It is where they say they can truly be themselves and where they can find true acceptance of their sexual orientation.
Committed hearts
“When [one goes] out there, [he encounters] all sorts of realities, [which] include gay men having sex all the time,” says Remoto. “But this doesn’t mean we [gays] should be stereotyped.” He claims that some of his homosexual friends have been in relationships for over 10 years, which prove that gays can also maintain relationships based on love, respect, and commitment.
Carson – whose longest relationship lasted for two years – attests to this. “A lot of gay men are just into partying and hooking up,” says Carson. “But I want a real relationship.” His current relationship has been ongoing for seven months now.
Adrian, however, does not prioritize relationships at the moment. “[My] biggest [concern] is to do well in my studies and be successful in my career so that I can raise my own children in the future,” he says.
Despite current flings and romances, Ted, Adrian, and Carson all agree that there is more to being gay than what is portrayed by social standards.
Remoto agrees with this and has only one thing to say to those who wish to stereotype this particular sex populace: “There’s just no time and space for judgmental mindsets in our century.”
*Names have been changed to protect the individuals.
