MY LIFE AS ART

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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Friday, January 20, 2017 
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TOMORROW night, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 at 5:30 p.m., the literature racks project of The Peter Solis Nery Foundation and the Ilonggo writers will be launched at Esplanade Uno Cafe.
Proudly called “MANGGAD: West Visayan Literature”, the simple glass racks, or estantes, display a reasonable collection of existing books by West Visayan authors. (You can’t believe the out-of-print stories of West Visayan books, as if, we, Ilonggo authors, are always sold out!)
Just how many books are there in the racks, how many titles? As of this writing, I, just by myself, have 15 titles in the collection (and mostly they are last remaining copies in print; think books published in 1994! Think vintage Nerys!); and Kasing-kasing Press, the biggest producer of contemporary West Visayan literature in recent years, has 17 or 18 titles from writers coming from Aklan, Antique, Guimaras, and Iloilo.
The literature racks, which will also be available at the Cinematheque Iloilo on Solis Street, and the Casa Real Gallery in the Old Provincial Capitol, exhibit not only the literary wealth and treasure, or manggad, of Western Visayas, but the coming together of the region’s writing community – not only literally, but, more importantly, in spirit.
Among my 15 titles in the collection are the last remaining copies of Fantasia and A Loneliness Greater than Love.
Fantasia is a two-story collection of my early Palanca-winning years. Published in 2001, it put together my first prize-winning magico-realist story Lirio (1998), and my third prize-winning sci-fi Ang Pangayaw (2000).
Fantasia is significant for me because, in my bid for councilorship in my hometown of Dumangas in 2001, I distributed copies of it instead of political fliers. The story was well-documented by journalist Ma. Diosa Labiste on the pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
While the booklet/chapbook bears my own DreamWings Publishing logo, it was really printed as a gift of my printer/publisher-friend Rosendo Mejica II of Makinaugalingon Printers and Bookbinders. Needless to say, with 7,000 initial print copies, it is my largest printed, and most widely circulated title.
A Loneliness Greater than Love (2000) is my sort of coming out of the closet book, although I never publicly acknowledged that I was gay until I got married with an American of the same sex in 2008.
Look at the dedication of A Loneliness…: How to Make a Peace Offering – “This is how to make peace with friends and enemies / You have embarrassed by writing this book, / And to embarrass friends and enemies who have / Embarrassed you by the tales they tell – / The shameless sacred stories that managed / To make their way and find themselves in this book: // Dedicate this work: // To great lovers who have suffered in the name of a love that dares not speak its name. // This is how to make excuses for this book: // Not!”
I recently reread A Loneliness… on the occasion of my giving a copy of it to a (gay) boy I got a crush on. (Don’t worry, he’s legal; but not quite a man yet for my taste; thus, the label “boy”.)
I really feel A Loneliness… is a strong lyric collection. It’s homoerotic obviously, but forgetting about sex for a while, I think that it can be truly transformative poetry. You read it, you understand Filipino gay sensibilities. It might even convert some heterosexists. That’s too high an expectation for a book of “catalogued quirky instructions”, but I’m just saying…
A Loneliness… came out of my year’s stay in the US, when I turned 30, and decided I wanted to give up my virginity. I was celibate until I was 30 because I didn’t want any sex scandal; and until then, I thought that gay sex is scandalous. Think 1998! Think about growing up in Iloilo in the 1980s!
Then, when I gave up my virginity, I went on a sex-binge. I finally tried and practiced all the Kama Sutra and Oriental sex manuals techniques I’ve studied all those celibate, but not so innocent, years!
So yes, however much I distance myself from A Loneliness…, it is a most personal work, and pretty revealing of my early gay (just coming out of the closet) years. Years when I thought that all gays get it passively like girls. Years before I discovered I am really a top dog, and pretty good at keeping that dominant position.
Read again how I tried to disguise and pretend: How to Deny Authorship of a Book:
“Imagine you can walk somebody’s shoes / after talking and walking with then for a mile. // Imagine you can bring to life the memories // Of them dead who once said you could write / (And that you were beautiful because you could cry / Retelling the stories they had told a hundred times). // Imagine you can write about ballet shoes / And the swan-men who wear them, and their lovers, / And their sons and dogs and quirks. // Imagine this book.”
But although I didn’t entertain boyfriends, or even ideas of boyfriends, before I met my once and late husband, I did love boys and men in secret. Chaste obsession, Platonic love, infatuation, unrequited bromance, whatever you call it, I had it, too. But my late husband was really my first boyfriend, I swear.
Confession: Once I gave up my virginity, all hell broke loose… but only outside of Philippine waters! I didn’t water my plants in my own backyard! That’s why you didn’t get any sex video scandals of me! And whosoever gossips I had sex with benefits in Western Visayas between 1999-2006 is a big fat liar! Notice all the exclamation points?
But I’m definitely not naive. (And I know where the Dinagyang orgies are!) When on a sex spree, I’m awesome, wonderful, and amazing. Their eyes roll like crazy, as if possessed! My poems can attest to that.
How to be a Stranger and Still Enjoy It: “Some nights, I wait / For a stranger’s touch – / That dangerous, lustful, / Greedy, impatient sensation. / Some nights, I become the stranger.”
A Loneliness… is not my best work, and it may not even be representative of even just a half of me. But I’m proud to have written it, and I’m proud to have the balls to self-publish it 17 freaking years ago, long before the iPhone was invented, and just about when Nokia 3310 was king!
A Loneliness Greater than Love: Buy it, read it, or die angry!/PN

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