"a poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why." -- percy bysshe shelley
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the world's greatest zoo in the world's greatest city. this is how the bronx zoo bills itself modestly, p.t. barnum modest. and for impressionable immigrants, comme moi, who inhabit the environs three, no, four blocks around this sprawling forest of a complex, one can not help but be sucked in to this hype vortex.
i got my first apartment in this area during what east coast society columnists would have described perhaps as a gorgeous late spring-early summer weekend. people from the hood were out on the streets, uncharacteristically smiley and wont to strike up unprovoked conversations.
but then, i have probably wasted many a gloriously splendid day just staring at the animals, times i could have productively employed initiating valid human contacts.
from the thirty or so animal exhibits, indoor or outdoor, i try to have no particular favorite, although starting last year, i have shunned the world of birds pavilion.
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i have always been drawn to the world of birds pavilion ever since i started going to the bronx zoo. irresistible bird songs, dazzling displays of plumage, and the most gorgeous intern/guest greeter in the entire zoo.
he is one of those ethnically ambiguous stunning guys. to me, he looked like he was sired by a dark skinned hunky puerto rican papi from a voluptuous west indian hot mama. the greenest of taut olive skin, the most piercing brown-green eyes, a very proud castillian nose, the works.
oh, did i mention that this guy was absolutely ravishing?
so there it was, the bashful mortal gay Pinoy trying so hard to make contact with the olympian latino adonis.
what to do, what to do? pitiful ruse: come up to the guy and ask any question. about what? about birds, perhaps? genius. great idea.
moi: hi, how's it going?
god: it's aight.
moi: (sigh!)
god: can i help you?
moi: (in more ways than one) hi, could you tell me if the national bird of my country. i mean, i come from the philippines. um, could you tell me if our national bird, we call it maya, is it represented here? i mean do you have mayas here in this pavilion?
god: i'm sorry but if you're from the philippines, then your national bird would be the monkey-eating eagle or simply the philippine eagle.
moi: (blush) oh, thank you.
nothing else to do but fly to the nearest exit. fly, fly away, sister, fly.
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this was like two or three months before my immigrant visa was approved.
i decided to do my friend here in new york a favor. i agreed to house sit his newly built mansion on a hill in a bucolic northern mindanao town.
so from frenetic manila, i flew to what i thought would be an idyllic month of literary pursuit. i reckon, this would have been the most opportune time to finally sharpen those juvenile poems that two years ago i have had the temerity to submit to the university of the philippines national writers workshop.
end of story, the american consulate approved my visa uncharacteristically early, my poems stayed sophomoric and I was inducted into this cabal of local gay men, totally screaming and could not care less about it, whose sole purpose in their daily existence was this unrelenting pursuit of the best fuck, ever. well, at least for any given night.
was not really into the local guys. always felt slightly pedophilic whenever i was with any one of them, even the avowed mature ones. but there was this guy who, for all the most puzzling reasons, i was drawn to.
i have always been partial to lanky men, the ones whom you could reasonably suspect to have had some serious bout of primary complex (read: adolescent tb). but this one was chubby and had some ghastly sartorial taste.
it turned out, i was not the only one, as well, to have issues with this boy. my newly found best friend was trying his very best to dissuade me from hooking up with this portly boy.
"but why?" i asked this parlorista friend of mine. "mayang bungol man na siya, (he is a deaf maya)" he said.
a deaf maya? this is the gang's code name for a closet case.
i persisted and asked why would they call them this. "because they are the types who refuse to hear the true song of their heart," this manicure and pedicure gay person said this like it was the most banal thing in the world to say.
and then just like that. then and there, i have decided i can never be the poet i have always deluded myself to be. i can never come up with a metaphor as soaring as this one.