Tag: memoir

Angels in Sodom
On our first Christmas at the church, we invited our friends Beaver, her boyfriend, and their pet parakeets to join our family for dinner. It had been snowing for days prior and I fired up our kitchen making a bean feast: soaked cattle beans baked for a day with pork, molasses, and spices. The warm aroma mixed with the crisp fragrance of an 8-foot pine tree hung with Christmas lights and toys in the living room made the gothic structure feel like home.

On Christmas morning Jay made shepherd pie while I simmered spiced wine on the burner. Beaver braved the blizzard and brought frozen fiddleheads she had harvested from her family’s farm last spring. I sauteed the greens in butter and served it up simple, a little taste of spring coming eventually. For dessert she had made a blueberry stollen but was completely upstaged by my kid, at 20 years old, who baked a psychedelic seed cake so light and enchanting like it was made by fairies.

We sat by the Christmas tree basking in the joy of togetherness. Beaver played her flute, Jay sang and played his acoustic guitar, I sang and played ukulele, the parakeets chirped happily. We exchanged presents, then Beaver and company drove home. Jay and I continued to sing and play more songs.

During a moment of sleepy contentment, we heard a knock on our front door. I opened the pointed arched door to a young man, big, dark blond hair and mustache, dressed all in black.

“Are there services?” he asked. “We heard music.”

I looked at Jay and our 20-year-old kid. I contemplated the possibility that we might have a troublemaker asking to enter our home. Jay is a fierce protector. I rely on his instincts.

He asked, “Are you a musician?”

“Yes,” the stranger answered.

“Then come in,” Jay invited.

Another stranger joined the man and they both entered our home. The second one was older, balding, and had a dark scruffy beard. He had a brick red shirt underneath his coat, jeans, sneakers.

I could feel the nervous energy. We’d just let in two strangers, grown men, into our home at nine o’clock on a winter night. If they had malicious intent, could we defend ourselves?

The men looked around. From the outside our home looks like a church. We have a steeple tower and tall stained glass windows, but inside the space is filled with our hodge podge of antique furniture, books, designer toys, and music instruments.

Jay strapped his electric guitar on. The first stranger sat at the drum kit. The second man sat and fiddled with the electric bass. They were horrendous. Jay knew what he was doing, of course. It’s his instrument. But the man on the drums was making an awful racket and the man on the bass guitar made halfhearted strums.

‘Tang ina, I couldn’t bear it. “May I?” I asked for my bass guitar. The man turned it over to me.

This prompted a switch around. The first stranger got up from the drums and asked if he could play Jay’s guitar. Jay sat at his drum kit. That was more like it. I played bass to Jay’s beats, and the man surprised us with pretty awesome blues riffs on the guitar. It felt good bumping to the beat as I thumped on those fat bass strings. Everyone was in their element.

“You’re a hot bass player!” the second stranger said. Then he started ranting like he’d been waiting to front a punk rock band all his life.

I wish I could have recorded our jam session on my phone, but I didn’t dare break the spell and change the mood. We kept playing, laughing. We couldn’t stop. It was a moment of pure liberation.

“Are you guys angels?” the second man asked in a pause from his rant.

I was thinking they were angels before he asked it. Later on, Jay told me he was thinking it, too.

¹ The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth ²and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.”

– Genesis Chapter 19

Never mind the rest of the chapter. The rest of it is fucked up and one of the reasons why I rejected the Judeo-Christian tradition when I was twelve.

But two strangers came to our door asking for services and we had the most fun jam we’ve had in ages. As we quieted down, the men fixated on our kid’s euphonium sitting on the large bookcase, unplayed for years. They took turns attempting to play the horn, prompting our kid to clean it and blow beautiful low notes himself to cap our Christmas night. By ten o’clock, the strangers were gone.

I’m going to file this along with the other strange visitations. An auspicious omen for the coming year. A memory that makes me laugh wildly.

Jay and I played music at an open mic in Maine on New Year’s Eve, then packed the car and drove south to Miami to take our kid back to college after the holidays. We brought the winter with us all the way down to the Carolinas. In South Carolina we stopped for some catfish. I played the piano they had in the corner of their place.

We’re back home now and ready for 2025:
- Write my memoir. I’ve been talking about this for ages, it seems. Write madly, furiously, “like I’m running out of time.”
- Post more regularly on this blog, maycam, and social channels.
- Read more! Read the masters and classics. (Currently reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut) Read more POC authors.
- Make clothes out of the handwoven fabrics my Mom brought from the Philippines. (The scarf I am wearing in these photos is handwoven by the Yakan tribe.)
- Give myself more handpoke tattoos.
- Get my songs on music sharing platforms.
- Play music more. Write more songs.
- Walk more year round. Swim more this summer.
- Spend more time with friends. Get out. Invite them in.
- Stay sexy. Stay dangerous. Stay focused.
What are you excited to do in the next 12… uh, 11.5 months?

Love, Lust, and Liberty,
January 16, 2025
Batgirl

When I was five I was Batgirl. Not just on Halloween. I was Batgirl everyday, everywhere. Eventually my Mom convinced me that I didn’t need to wear the costume to be Batgirl. After all, superheroes are still superheroes even when they are in their civilian clothes. I adored Barbara Gordon just as much as I did Batgirl. She is a Librarian, a real hero in my book.

I went into first grade at a Catholic school run by nuns. (I wore a tan uniform on regular days and an all-white one they called our gala uniform for when there was Mass on a special day. But this is irrelevant. Anyway…) One afternoon after school I was snooping around the nuns’ cloister and found a giant fruit bat, the famous flying fox, hanging upside down from the rafters. I don’t know how big it actually was, but six-year-old me remembers it as humungous. I may as well have seen God. I trembled in awe and fear, backed away with my wide eyes glued, hoping the creature does not fix its powerful gaze upon me.

For the rest of my life the Bat owns me. I invoke her powers when I need resonance and echolocation, courage in darkness, rest in uncomfortable circumstances.

Like that time in New York City when I met the Man I would marry. It was the middle of a blizzard. He invited me to his place on Staten Island, a Victorian Mansion haunted with giant ceramic demons hanging from trees, feathered Indians made of stone, and life size Nativity figures looking out from inside the street-level fence. Indoors there were grand pianos, antique furniture piled on top of each other, a billiards table in the basement, and taxidermy birds, fox and a giant elk head mounted on the other side of the wall his third floor bedroom loft was against. By the time I got in his bed, we had already been out three times and I was wondering why he wouldn’t make a move on me. So I kissed him. That was all it took. It unleashed in him the giant wild horned beast just a wall away from our heads. We fell in love.

There was one afternoon when he and I walked from the Mansion to the Staten Island Ferry bound for Manhattan. He stopped me, and bent to pick up a black plastic Batman ring on the snow-white ground. Then he took my left hand and slipped the toy on my ring finger. Realizing what he’d just done, we both became nervous. A strong gust of cold river wind hit us. I pondered it all while the winding winter wind whipped at us. At that time I hadn’t yet told him I was Batgirl. What was going on? Who gave him a clue? And most importantly, did it mean I could hang upside down with him for the rest of my life? The Lenape natives called the large island south of Manhattan Aquehonga Manacknong, “Sandy Shores and Haunted Forests.” Those island ghosts knew.

Watch my Batgirl movie at MAYCAM

Decades later, my Elk-Man and I live together in a big old 19th century farmhouse with a barn attic full of antique furniture, art, and toys of our own. I’m still Batgirl and this is where I hang.

September 17, 2021
When I think of home…

I think of tropical monsoons and coconut trees swaying in the furious wind. I think of guavas and mangoes and spiders as big as a man’s palm.

I think of the hot California valley, swimming pools, and strawberry fields as far as I can see.

I think of New York city streets, libraries and museums and theatres and cafes.

I think of a Victorian mansion with a view of the Manhattan skyline. I think of art, antiques, and taxidermy. I think of bohemians and decadence.

I think of a California cottage by the bay, overrun by ivy. I think of dot-com days and swinging nights. I think of friends on the futon.

I think of a home by the lagoon. I think of ducks and geese and my baby. I think of young buff men fucking my thirsty mom body.

I think of a little red cabin by a Maine lake. I think of being underwater all summer.

I think of a modern cottage on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, surfers on the beach below, sand constantly between my toes.

I think of an old farmhouse and barn in Maine. I think of ghosts and absolution.

You are my home and I am yours.

June 22, 2021
My Secret Life

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. Almost nine months later I was born, which informs me that I was either a honeymoon baby or the shotgun that made the wedding happen. I never asked. I know that whether it was through forbidden lust or wedding night excitement, I was born of passion between two young and beautiful people. I like leaving it at that.

Throughout my life I found that at my best I exude sexual power, passion, desire. I am a natural flirt. I make love to everyone I encounter in one way or another. At my worst I am ashamed to draw attention to myself. My very existence is a disgrace, a hushed up secret people whisper about while they shake their heads and click their tongues knowingly.

I was born with jaundice, so I remained at the hospital for two weeks after my birth. My parents visited me daily, but I learned that I could cry my head off and still not be held if it wasn’t on schedule. By the time I came home from the hospital my mother said that I was such a “good” baby. I never fussed. At less than a month old, I already knew how to take care of myself, not be demanding, just take what I get and don’t get upset.

I spent my childhood being the “good girl.” I truly was. I took everything I learned about Jesus and life to heart. I read voraciously. I was thoughtful, diligent, quiet. But I had a lot of questions that no one around me could answer and pretty soon I learned to silence those questions because they bothered people.

Upon reflection I realize that I’ve always had a well-developed secret life. It’s where I put all the unanswered questions, the provocative ones that most people don’t dare utter. It’s where I stored my ugly feelings, jealousy, anger, ambition. It’s where I learned about sex and desire. It’s where it was okay to be “bad.”

On the outside I continued going to church, getting good marks at Catholic school, singing at choir. I got so good at being “good,” so good at seeming good to make other people feel good. In college I got involved in theatre and it freed me. For the first time I could be “bad” and be applauded for it. I didn’t know it then but in time I noticed that I almost always got cast in sexy roles: the femme fatale mermaid, the hyper-sexual old maid, the tragic drug addicted porn star, the powerful whore… the list goes on. I inhabited these characters like my life depended on it, because for a brief moment my secret life could breathe, speak, move.

When Jay and I first started dating he saw me in one of my shows, really saw me, and helped release that secret me into the real world. It was so exciting! The badder I got, the more he liked me.

Then the internet saved many an introvert’s life, mine included. Jay and I dove head first into the web, full send. My secret life thrived online, right here on this blog that I’ve been writing since 2002. I found people I connect with: critical thinkers, sexuality explorers, creatives and geeks of all kinds. We all brought our secret lives together to create this world, one blog, one post, one tweet at a time.

This photo is from January 2002 in Las Vegas when I attended the AVN convention. I’m looking out to the Venetian hotel courtyard, naked as a newborn baby, arms outstretched taking up space. Not a care for anyone else in the world. Not a fuck given to anyone else’s opinion. Open to any and all experience. Young, bold, and stupid.

So much has happened since. Life has had its way with me, blown me up, knocked me down. It takes a little more bravery to get back up and keep going after my confidence is shaken but here I am again, standing naked looking out my window in January 2021, a little wiser for the wear, taking up space. I am still here. I am worthy.

I know where my power comes from. I trust it. I step into it. I belong here. This is my rightful place. I am worthy of this space.

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

January 17, 2021
Hello, Gina.

Thank you for appearing to me in my dream. You look beautiful! The whole dream was lit in the romance I have come to see in places and people I miss. I am in an old Spanish style house in an unknown Philippine province. I am putting clothes away in a cabinet. The capiz shell windows glow in the sun. It is high noon but cool indoors. I hear a tricycle pull up outside, bags being loaded. I go out and there you are, about to get on that tricycle.

“I’m going back to Manila,” you say. “Come with me.”

I shake my head. “Not right now.”

I really want to, but I decide not to. I still have things to do. I don’t think too hard about it.

So I watch you go off on that tricycle kicking up sepia dust on that bright sunny day. I’m filled with joy having caught a glimpse of your otherworldly beauty. I feel the loss of having chosen to stay behind.

I woke up crying and realizing the impact of another dream I had, about a month before you died. I didn’t give much importance to it at the time. I blogged about it, but didn’t name you, or let you know it was you. I was embarrassed. It revealed more than I was willing to share.

In the dream I was walking along a beach with you. There are two guys with us. I don’t recognize any of them in my lexicon of real life guys, but in this dream world we are hanging out with them. You throw off your clothes and jump in the water. The guys follow quickly. I fumble with the buttons on my white shirt. It is taking me so long to undress. I woke before I am able to join you skinny dipping.

I didn’t understand it then. I didn’t see that dream as a premonition. I felt remorse for being too late, regret for moments I let pass because of some stupid reason or another, a crippling awkwardness about things. A little over a month after my dream, you slipped into a coma and died.

The last social media post on your timeline was a picture of the last beach you were on. Your kids brought your ashes to that same beach. You had gone skinny dipping for good.

One of these days I will be able to join you in the ocean or ride away on a tricycle. Maybe I’ll catch you the next time you come around. As the sky goes dark tonight, I am reminded that pain is not the enemy. It merely points the way to the wound. Before we tend to it, we have to understand what the injury is. We have to allow ourselves to experience it. Then we can take steps toward healing and transformation.

Everything is a gift.

Love,

Excerpt from Coming and Going by Regina Abuyuan:

I suppose a lot of fallen beings now miss The Garden’s heavenly Fruits. And I’ll tell you why:

In that place exists Complete Bliss. A Fruit—any Fruit—plucked from its enchanted trees, and savored garden-fresh is guaranteed to bring you to the Ultimate of your Being—no matter what level of Be-ing you might be at the moment. This is an experience many seek, for both enlightenment and pleasure, and it is because of this service that many bitter beings—those denied access and who sulk salivating hungrily at the Gates—call it The Cosmic Brothel.

Yes, dear friends. In The Garden one could find the Supreme Fuck, and reach the mind-shaking, soul-stirring Orgasm that could fire up your neurons swifter than Hermes on speed and expand your consciousness faster and greater than Zephyrus could ever impress with his smoke-rings.

In The Garden, Orgasms are made into Legends. That rumor about Osiris and Isis making out in The Nile and a crocodile biting off Osiris’ Venerable Dick? It occurred Right Here, when he won Isis (then a plump, ripe, rare Fruit-Woman specimen, in bloom only for every dozen millennia) in a game of dice, and chose to hump his prize in the Stream of Mother’s Milk where a gameful lizard nipped at his member. Strengthened by the milk, Isis was blessed with the awareness to search for the still-throbbing penis while Osiris howled in unholy pain. You all know that the search proved futile, but since then every being was aware of who wore the proverbial pants in the family.

Isis was one of the few fruits to achieve Deity-status, which she probably earned by impressing upon everyone that the heat that possessed her loins equaled only the determination to find her mate’s penis. There’s nothing like a single-minded, driven woman, and she got her due reward! They never found the real organ, but being the cosmic beings they were, they discovered alternative ways to get it on, and always, in the warm creaminess of the Stream, which, in their more affectionate moments, they called their “mother”. It is because of this, perhaps, that some have thought Isis and Osiris sister and brother.

October 16, 2020
Strange Things

Shortly after Lilith: Queen of the Demons was published Jay and I became friends with a young woman named Lillian. She had straight black hair down to her waist, an hourglass figure, and a pretty smile. She used to visit weekly, always dressed impeccably from head to toe. She and Jay spent a lot of time together, cooking and baking all kinds of goodies. They were friends and sometimes they were lovers.

When Lillian was a baby in Vietnam, she suffered a fire injury that required her to undergo surgery. The operation left her without a belly button for the rest of her life. Just like Lilith, who was not born of a human mother, fashioned out of clay by God.

It was uncanny and I thought it auspicious to have her in our lives. There was a point when she began looking for a house to buy in which we could all live together, but it all changed when she met someone else. They got married in a whirl. We never saw her again.

I will always consider her arrival as an otherworldly presence. The divine moves in mysterious ways. I cannot begin to fathom it. I can only be thankful when it happens.

Another strange visitation occurred when I was recording the audiobook for Lilith: Generations of Cain. I didn’t notice it while I recorded, but during playback the angel and demon names were obscured by static.

The first time it happened I got a shiver down my spine. I took a pause, then went back in front of the microphone like a soldier. Every time it happened I got more stubborn and determined to get through the text. Lilith: Generations of Cain is all about the power of names. It seemed to me that a presence, divine or not, was making me work hard to pronounce these holy and unholy names.

This past summer as I worked on Lilith: Beyond the Deluge, I was on a business call with someone who went off tangent about strange situations he had found himself in, seeing supernatural creatures among people in New York City, hearing people’s thoughts from across the room. He said he felt like he could tell me these things he never told anyone. I listened to him for an hour before I wrapped up the conversation and brought it back to business. I asked for his name.

“Michael.”

“You have an ‘el’ name,” I mused. Many of the angels (and some demons) have names that end with ‘el.’ Azazel, Samael, Rafael, Gabriel, Baraqiel, Daniel, Michael…

“Ah, so you know…” He sounded pleased. “It comes from God’s name ‘El Shaddai’ and ‘Elohim.’”

I thanked him again and said goodbye.

Before he hung up he said, “You will hear from me again.”

I thought nothing of it. Even when I pulled out of the garage and saw a crow sitting in a tree across from me I didn’t think to tie anything together.

I should mention that it was a special day, my Dad’s birthday and my (great grand aunt) Lola Ilyang’s death day. I facetimed with my Dad that evening, but the only way I connected with Lola Ilyang was from mysterious events that happened all day: a swarm of bees robbing my hive, the phone call from an angel, the crow in the tree. Everything brought me memories of her.

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These are two separate instances this past summer: 1) when my hive was being robbed by a neighbor bee colony. My worker bees defended their hive fiercely. I’m so proud of them! 2) when it came time to kick the drones out of the hive. My worker bees need to store as much honey as possible before winter and get rid of useless eaters. These noisy bachelor bees are bird food before sunset. 🐝🐝🐝 #honeybees #honeybee #bee #bees #hive #beehive

A post shared by May Ling Su (@maylingsu) on Sep 15, 2020 at 5:44pm PDT

Laurelia (Lola Ilyang) was a spinster who lived with her little dachshund, Cupsi, in a hut in the middle of a tobacco field in Pangasinan. She was the first witchy woman in my life. She had long salt and pepper hair. She told stories of the kapre smoking her tobacco. She entertained our maids by reading common playing cards for divination.

Ten days after the odd phone call, my mother tagged me in a Facebook post. My college friend died. Deogracias Cruz. Is there a name more God-like than his? The Facebook post contained a video of Deo singing the Prayer to St. Michael.

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”

The man on the phone said I would hear from him again. I did not know it would be this way.

That afternoon Jay invited me out to the temple he had built in our backyard, overgrown with yarrow and lupines in the spring; tansy, mint, and goldenrod in the late summer. Jay spent the summer clearing around an arrangement of rocks and made paths to it. He decorated the place with Hindu gods and goddesses, Balinese wooden animals, and a statue of Quan Yin. There is a bed of marbles of various sizes, a solar system at the foot of a wooden frog. A Nag Champa cone burned and dripped smoke down a path in the rocks. As soon as the incense burned out, it started to rain. Thunder. We went inside.

I made chicken soup from scratch. It’s a long process that begins with boiling a chicken carcass into broth. My daughter named it “Mama’s famous chicken soup” way back when a butcher in California used to gift me with chicken carcasses whenever I came around his shop. I set aside a wishbone for my collection. I keep several wishbones in a little teapot. I realize it’s kind of witchy but it makes me feel lucky.

Deogracias. Thank You, God.

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

September 16, 2020
Kontessa

My daddy forbade me to get naked for a college play. He didn’t realize it was not his call to make. I was eighteen. I could make my own decisions about my body.

I had just finished a run of my first professional theatre gig. “By George!” was a musical revue of George Gershwin starring Dulce and directed by Behn Cervantes. I was a wispy little chorus girl, but I had a solo part after Michelle Gallaga in the song, “I Got Rhythm.” It was a showstopper!

Throughout the run and for weeks after it, I hung out with Dulaang UP kids. Even though I went to Ateneo, I auditioned for a part in the play “Fili,” adapted by Floy Quintos from Jose Rizal’s “El Filibusterismo.” Director Tony Mabesa must have been amused by my novelty because he cast me in a big part, the role of Kontessa, the Kapitan-Heneral’s whore.

Sisa was Eugene Domingo, who had briefly changed her name to Geena Domingo to assume a more dramatic persona. She was a student then, not the big comedy star she is now. Dolly de Leon, who later in life got a plum part in the international movie Triangle of Sadness, was her alternate for the role. But this was long before they became superstars. Back then, the big star of the show was film director Mario O’Hara as the protagonist Simoun.

Rehearsals were exciting. I was getting a master class in theatre performance from the best in the Philippines. I tried my best to keep up when we read through the entire script. I was in one big scene with chunky monologues and several lines back and forth with the Kapitan-Heneral. I was off-book and ready when it was time to get the scene up on its feet.

Sir Tony had me enter with a lit candelabra in each hand. I recited my lines, projected my voice as big as I could make it. My scene partner, the Kapitan-Heneral, was played by a flamboyant opera singer. I couldn’t let my voice drown alongside his. At center stage I was directed to hand the candelabras to the Kapitan-Heneral, kneel in front of him with my back to the audience, and undress.

Undress?

Sir Tony was serious. I would be getting naked onstage.

My heart raced. My face heated up. I felt small. Literally. I had no tits. I was very self-conscious about it. We weren’t even onstage at the time. We were in a rehearsal room with unforgiving flat fluorescent lighting. I sheepishly removed my street clothes and returned to my spot center stage. The Kapitan-Heneral looked down at me. He was enormous.

“Drip wax on her,” Sir Tony directed from behind a desk. The stage manager sat next to him coldly taking notes on her script.

I continued my lines, gasping every time hot wax hit my bare skin. I felt all eyes on me. Cast and crew held their collective breath as a virgin had her first taste of Dominance and submission. Public humiliation. I didn’t know any of them and none of them knew me. I was an outsider. Just a doe-eyed girl from Ateneo who thought she could run with the cool kids at UP. I felt so alone.

As the scene drew to a climactic end, Sir Tony said, “This is where you have an orgasm.”

“What’s an orgasm?” I asked.

Sir Tony laughed a big booming laugh that echoed throughout the rehearsal hall and in the back of my head for years to come.

“You poor girl.”

Sir Tony took out a cigarette and stood up. The stage manager called a break.

We worked the scene in the succeeding rehearsals. I grew in confidence each time we ran it. I was determined to conquer this role. Eventually, though, Sir Tony decided to get someone else to play Kontessa, a woman named Grace, who rumor had it was a Muslim princess. She was a grown woman with full breasts and dark hair down to her ankles. She fit the part more than I did. She knew how to have an orgasm.

I’m trying to imagine my 18-year-old self as the Kontessa. Not yet five feet tall, a tit-less waif. I would have been the child prostitute version, which is not without a visceral power of its own.

I was demoted to the part of a common whore. I wore a blonde wig and a big poofy dress. I had a couple of lines and got to kiss Sir Mario O’Hara at the beginning of the play.

I got asked out on dates a lot during the run of the play. Maybe I was fresh meat from Ateneo. Maybe it was the challenge of giving me my first orgasm. Maybe that very first wax dripping scene rehearsal played in their imaginations more often than they could bear it. More than my naked body on display, I like to think it was my innocence, vulnerability, and courage that captivated them that day.

This is an excerpt from the memoir I am currently writing. I am so proud that I got to work with Sir Tony Mabesa, who recently won the MMFF award for Best Supporting Actor in the movie Rainbow’s Sunset.

Update 4 October 2019: RIP Sir Tony.

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

December 30, 2018
My Friend For Life, Gina

I went to an all-girls nun-run Catholic high school in the Philippines, very strict and narrow-minded. I was a good student but something as trivial as my asymmetric hairstyle got their nunnery panties in a bunch. What made high school life worth living was Gina. She and I connected on an artistic and literary level. She was a huge The Cure fan, so I drew her a portrait of Robert Smith. She wrote me a fantasy article for Town & Country magazine, in which I am a fabulous art curator and married to Johnny Depp. We talked endlessly about ideas for stories we wanted to write someday and we talked about sex. Sure, we had no experience whatsoever, but we were teenagers. Sex was an obsession.

In college she went to UP and I went to Ateneo. She partied hard with her sorority sisters. I got sucked into music and theatre. She invited me to an Upsilon event once. I felt out of place. Our paths divided for the time being.

She tracked me down in the mid-90s when I was in New York. I was performing Off and Off-Off-Broadway. She was a young single mom, making it as a writer and editor in Manila. She found out I made my own body products so she asked me to write an article for her fledgling magazine, Earthian. It was granola and green long before it was a thing. I accepted. It was my first published piece.

In the mid-2000s she discovered an obscure anonymous blog I was writing about my pregnancy and home birth. She asked if she could publish it on Working Mom magazine. How could I say no to celebrating my infant’s birth on the pages of a glossy magazine? Gina made me feel like a celebrity.

When she found out about my porn, she stayed on my side all the way. She defended me against attacks behind my back from people we went to high school with and if you knew her, you’d know she unleashed a fury on anyone who crossed her or her loved ones. I flew to San Diego to catch up with her when she visited in 2010. We were regulars at her pub, Fred’s Revolucion in Cubao X in 2012. A few years later, she and her family were guests in our old farmhouse in Maine. We shared stories, beer, and laughter indoors while our kids ages 11 and 12 built a bonfire in the backyard because that’s the kind of parents we were and that’s the kind of kickass kids we raised.

She roped me in to write for Agam, the book of photos by her husband, photojournalist Jose Enrique Soriano. As executive editor, she included me among 24 contributing writers – accomplished poets, journalists, anthropologists, scientists, and artists from the Philippines. I felt like the black sheep among those luminaries, but Gina was my champion. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She autographed my copy of the book: Will always be your friend, fan, and supporter – living vicariously through your groundbreaking work. Love you.

Tuesday night I got a message from her husband. Gina was in a coma in St. Luke’s ER. No one saw it coming. He asked for prayers. When an atheist asks an agnostic to pray for a Catholic, you know it’s serious. I prayed. I used all my mental energy to summon her back. “Come back, Gina,” I commented on a recent Facebook post in which she had tagged me. Come back, Gina, I thought constantly day and night. Come back to us. Thursday around 5 in the morning I woke up with a cramp in my chest. It pinched everytime I breathed. My heart literally hurt. I messaged her husband, “Tell me something, anything.”

She’s gone.

“She loved you and we were looking forward to visiting again.”

I had a difficult loud ugly cry by myself until Jay came out of his studio and held me and we cried together. I am so glad he got to know her. I’m glad I have somebody to grieve with and celebrate her life with.

Gina recently posted a fabulous profile picture across all her social media channels and even more fabulous photos of her and her kids at a kiki ball. Just last weekend her kids thanked her for giving them “a rich uncommon childhood.” She said she won the “lotto of life.” Her latest piece, my favorite yet, the crass and soulful Patricio, was published online on Esquire posthumously. I joked to Jay that it was a memorial-worthy social media presence, one to aspire to. He asked me not to die until my profile pictures got really old and ugly.

I got out a bottle of beer from the fridge, spilled some in her honor, and drank to my friend. Gina had a sharp wit and a fiery nature. She was a fierce mother and a fierce friend. She burned brilliantly, my friend for life. Gina burned fast, but she burned exceptionally bright.

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

November 30, 2018
I remember NYC on 9/11

This photo was taken at Ground Zero of what remains of the World Trade Center. On September 14, three days after the planes crashed and burned the Twin Towers, it rained. By nightfall the rain ceased and dust settled in the city. It was time to go to the funeral.

I headed for East Village. St. Mark’s Place was bustling. People were in shock but in good spirits, a camaraderie that graciously emerges when tough times unite a group of people. I had Japanese noodles at a hole in a wall so crowded it felt like the end of the world. We all slurped our noodle soups like it was. After that I knew I was ready for my pilgrimage downtown.

I walked around the barricades to make my way closer to the ruins. Even in shattered pieces, the World Trade Center was impossibly huge. First responders worked round the clock. I took a good look and got out of their way. I bought an American flag off a vendor and tucked it into my bag as I walked away. The subway smelled of Lysol and burnt flesh. Firefighters off their shift slumped in their seats on the train. They stared dead ahead of them in between nods at people who thanked them for their service.

I had a ticket for Rocky Horror Picture Show on Broadway in my pocket, purchased weeks prior. The show was going on that night and I wasn’t about to miss it. Dick Cavett was the Narrator. He talked about life and death and life going on. Each one of us with beating hearts do our part to keep life going.

Back then, New Yorkers were in it together, regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. How did that same event that united a city become the catalyst to a war with no end in sight?

Love, Lust, & Liberty,

September 11, 2018