The setting is intimate and all too familiar: a room, a lamp, a question hanging in the air. Three characters—two people, and the tension between them. Drinks are sipped, conversations are clipped. One of them eventually breaks the awkwardness, liquid courage in his veins. A small sentence, met with a kiss on the forehead. Then the dam breaks, and the two are united in their first kiss. The sentence that broke the silence?

“I’m bisexual.”

As a popular Bible verse says, love always hopes and perseveres. And this is true for some couples more than others. There are more things in the world of romance and dating than your simple Romeo and Juliet story.

How I Met Your…

When one is young and looking for love, one tends to remember everything—the first glance, the first smile, the first fight. It’s in this area that we find the first and most basic similarity that gay relationships have with heterosexual ones, and the stories behind them are just as interesting, eventful and yes, romantic.

“I met him on the pedestrian bridge between Glorietta and Landmark,” says Aaron*, an Ateneo graduate. The first thing that attracted him, he says, was his fashion sense. “Our eyes met, and I felt the shivers. We spent a good three seconds just staring at each other.” Sadly, the boy was on a date with Aaron’s roommate. Out of respect for his roommate, however, he didn’t make any efforts to establish contact.

But after a falling out with his roommate that led to his moving out, Aaron decided to try and contact the man from his walkway encounter. “We decided to meet up in Greenbelt—it was love at first sight,” he recalls.

For Jason*, whose story opened this piece, his relationship became the tipping point that led him to acknowledge his identity. “I thought I was straight at the time; yet, just a moment later, he said hello… And that was my downfall,” Jason says. “When I told him I was bi, that was the first time I had ever said those words, even to myself.”

Unlike most heterosexual relationships, Jason and Aaron didn’t go through the traditional courtship. However, elements of the process are preserved. “While I didn’t have to court him, I would always bring him things like cake, tiramisu, even McDo every time we saw each other,” Aaron recalls. “And he kept all of the boxes [I gave] as mementos. I would also give him his favorite flower after [our] fights.”

Perhaps the elation felt by gay couples partly stems from the feeling of shared concerns. “When I found out he was gay, I was so happy,” remembers Jason. He speaks with the conviction of someone lost in a happy memory. “Let me tell you, after that night, there was no shame on my face—just a big smile.”

Stumbling blocks

Like any partnership, gay relationships have their own share of problems. They deal with fights, conflicts and differences. A gay couple, however, faces some issues that heterosexual couples don’t have to deal with.

Because there are two guys in the relationship, sometimes lines can be blurred. “I was raised to be a straight guy—taught to pay for dinner, to hide the girl from incoming traffic, things like that. When both of you were raised like that, it can be a bit funny.”

Aaron shares something a bit more blunt. “Men are ten times hornier than women, ten times more often.” He treats this as a simple statement of fact, albeit one with many implications on the relationship. “You get a [charge of] emotional and hormonal impulses that undermine the process of getting intimate on an emotional level.”

However, Aaron notes that having intimacy beyond the physical is necessary for a long-term relationship. He says “How can you grow with someone, if all you can think of is jumping each other?” (“Of course,” Jason cracks, “there is no problem of unintended pregnancy.”)

For gay couples, marriage is the elephant in the room—the option that must be discussed yet remains unavailable to gay couples. “When you reach that point where you really find the one, what’s the next step?” asks Aaron. “There’s nothing left after living together. There’s no way to make it official.”

Jason, who lives in the United States, views things in a more hopeful light. “I’d love to be married to my boyfriend. Marriage takes care of assets, the children, the medical emergencies, and, here in the US, even divorce,” he says.

However, Jason has his troubles as well. “I’d love to have children! But we obviously can’t have any of our own and adoption agencies still tend to avoid gay couples.”

Get used to it

In a time where movies like Brokeback Mountain and Milk have sparked discussions, as well as garnered major film awards, it seems as if the world is finally beginning to accept the fact that “they’re here and they’re queer.”

“Societies, in general, are becoming less homophobic,” says Jason. “But you can’t lump people together and expect a meaningful answer. Cities are much more open to gay couples than rural areas and young people are more tolerant than older ones.”

Aaron also thinks that Philippine society is gradually getting more accepting. “More and more people are becoming openly gay, and that simply means that society— schools, families, barkadas—are suppressing it less and less.”

Two Romeos

While it might seem trite to tie everything back to acceptance and tolerance, the fact is that even with everything said about the maturing attitude of people towards homosexuals, most people are still uncomfortable with the idea.

Jason notes, however, that the Philippines’ acceptance isn’t yet fully formed. He says of the Philippine mentality, “You can be gay, openly gay, if you’re in ‘non-serious’ jobs like entertainment… But not if you want to enter banking, education, politics, the priesthood, or other ‘respected’ occupations.”

And this non-acceptance can extend to the realm of love—as in, some people still see it as unnatural to genuinely love someone of the same sex. “Most homosexual relationships still need to be discreet, if not totally secret. You will always be concealing your love for someone, and that’s very frustrating,” says Aaron.

At the end of the day, gay couples feel the same joy and pain as those in a heterosexual relationship. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was a great one—but the story of two Romeos can be equally compelling, tragic and romantic as well.

*Names have been changed to protect the individuals.