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[av_heading tag=’h3′ padding=’10’ heading=’Also, Love (Part 5)’ color=” style=’blockquote modern-quote’ custom_font=” size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ custom_class=” admin_preview_bg=” av-desktop-hide=” av-medium-hide=” av-small-hide=” av-mini-hide=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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February 9, 2018
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I KNOW I repeat myself about “guys taking advantage of me financially.” But among my many fears and objections about getting into a gay relationship is that I really don’t want to be used by men the way they exploited many of my gay friends in the Philippines. I am just smart that way.
On the third day of our Internet affair, I told Reisters R, “I don’t believe in endless chats. If you want, we should meet so we can see if we are a match for each other. Let’s not make this long. Let’s meet, and if we like each other, we’ll take it from there. If not, we move on. No harm done, no drama, no broken heart.”
I have decided. If he didn’t show up, I wouldn’t chat with him anymore. I was not naïve. I knew a lot of cases back in the Philippines about people falling madly in love over text messages. And in the end, they got their hearts broken because it’s just a game — a prank, a sick joke, a mischievous stunt — for their heartless partners. No eyeballs, no meet ups. And someone gets stood up in their rendezvous. I didn’t want to be a victim of those. I am just smart that way.
He said, “But I’m 3,000 miles away from you.”
“How many kilometers is that?” I asked, because I was too lazy to convert miles into kilometers. Why America doesn’t subscribe to the metric system, I cannot understand!
He laughed. “I’m on the East Coast, on the other side of the continent, by the Atlantic Ocean. About five hours of straight, non-stop flight.”
I was disappointed. I thought this would not work. Our situation was just too hard. We were too far apart. I was about to say goodbye and move on without much harm done, no drama, no broken heart, when he said, “If I send you the tickets, will you come to Maryland?”
My friends in L.A. warned me I could end up killed by this American I did not really know. I could turn up a corpse in the basement freezer; or be the new chop-chop gay guy in the news; or, and this gave me the nightmares, become fresh meat for his dog.
But I decided to be brave. In my mind, “No guts, no glory.”
R picked me up at the Baltimore Washington International Airport. It was late autumn 2006 (“I want to see autumn!”), and I hadn’t experienced any autumn feeling in sunny, desert-like Los Angeles.
On the East Coast, winter was approaching. R warned me that it was going to be cold in Maryland, unlike summer-feely California. “It will be chilly,” he said. He gave a forecast that temperatures could drop to as low as 19°F, which I didn’t convert into degrees Celsius. Why America doesn’t subscribe to the metric system, I cannot understand!
So that I wouldn’t freeze to death, I bought a cheap matching bonnet and mittens in L.A.’s Chinatown. They were red, which also matched the knitted sweater I bought in Baguio ukay-ukay before I came to America.
When I see my photos from that time, I can’t help but smile because I really looked like an Eskimo from Alaska! But I was a vision in red, R later said.
R said he fell in love with me at first sight. And I believed that. (To be continued/PN)
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