the first boy I made love to was the most reticent of the five sons of the sternest fisherman in our village. and he blabbered every time he came.
in the lagoon, one early evening in may just two years after I have fully mastered the multiplication table, he eased his member into my slick palm. and the warm foam scoured me to my red, honest core. there wasn't any truth more honorable than what I told and asked him.
lami-a nimo dong, uy. asa man ka nakat-on ani?
you are so good, boy. where did you learn this?
in the first time that my warmth came to know of a boy's love, he would slide into me like he would fillet handily a big, silvery aguma-a in only three counts.
he loved me, he whispered back. this was all the truth i needed to know to let him know me honestly, without a jolt, not a jar.
i was young then, too young I realize now, and i believed him. i am older now yet i still sometimes find myself looking for reasons to believe him again.
there were other men since, and some of them, like jojo, made me an extremely honest and fumbling boy again. for most of them, i could not be.
nasarapan ka rin ba?
was it good for you as well?
lamely, i would oblige with a yes in a language that could never say my truths.
i remember staring at the contorted face of jojo, trying to say the ineffable in his kapampangan, while sweating over me. and i remember getting giddy, then falling, hurtling into a void familiar. then I started to be truthful with him.
lami-a nimo dong, uy. uli ta sa amo, pa-ila ila ta ka kang mama.
you're so great, boy. i'll take you home and i'll introduce you to my mother.
then he stopped being in rhythm with me and he unwrapped her arms around my wet back. with his wetness, he wiggled free, away from my shadow and started to grope for his underwear rumpled with the bed sheet that littered the floor of my city room. clenching his shrivelled briefs in his right hand, he jumped out of bed and gave me that stare.
huwag mo nga akong bisayain pag nag-do tayo. nakakaturn-off ka, e.
don't you ever speak bisaya to me while we're doing it. you turn me off.
over beer or just plain moping from losing someone i have decided to be with forever, only the brusqueness of my bisaya, the language i revel in, the language, too, of my pains, would tell me the cruel honesty of such loss.