MY RISE to being the region’s premier agent provocateur started in 2000, when I was tapped to write for a new newspaper, and was tasked to “put it on the map”.
Put it on the map is an idiom that doesn’t need the quotation marks.
I placed the quotation marks here because that’s also a direct speech, and the direct order for me when I was hired.
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I do not work well with writing bosses.
So, when I was assigned to be the entertainment editor, I demanded the centerfold, and asked for blanket authority over those pages.
I could not believe it when they gave me everything I asked for.
And I can write anything on these pages, right?
I mean, that’s what I understood of blanket authority.
“Anything!”
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Even sexy stuff?
Even sex stuff?
“Especially sex and sexy stuff! The goal is for you to put the paper on the map.”
And this was in August 2000.
That paper, now extinct, was launched in September Y2K.
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My pages became the most talked about pages in the beginning of the new millennium.
I featured centerfold models—females, and males!
If it was up to the owners, publishers, and editors-in-chief, no male models would ever have made it to the centerfold.
But they trusted me, so there.
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They trusted me because I was good at my job.
The numbers didn’t lie.
I made people buy, and read(!) our paper.
And why shouldn’t they read my sex advices?
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My fan base was more than just the horny college students who would take the centerfold entertainment pages (if not the whole paper) to the toilets for their ultimate entertainment.
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Of my multiple sex advice columns (and I ran several under pseudonyms because who in Western Visayas could write sex columns in the early 2000s?), I had most fun answering sent in questions.
I do remember answering stuff like “How do I make my girlfriend give me head?”
And I was writing pieces in the vein of “How to give the best Monica (after Lewinsky) in the world”.
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My pages also started the phenomenal sex eyeballs in the region.
I published Text2Text personal ads.
Patterned after the American personal ads I’ve seen in the US from 1998 to 1999.
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Thus, my sexy scantily-clad models, my sex advice columns, my “Sex in the City” stories (not to be confused with Carrie Bradshaw and Sex & the City), and my Text2Text ads established my position as agent provocateur, if not the single mastermind of the sexual revolution in Western Visayas.
But although it was largely that, my notoriety didn’t stop there.
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I actually delivered more than print provocation.
I went around as a standup comic.
Held concerts.
Dressed up in flowing clothes, and long blue wigs.
I was a sight at the Dinagyang street food festivals.
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I mean, there was I in blue wigs, blue lipstick, but I was also backed up by a squad of gay friends, and bodyguards.
Who were my gay makeup artist, gay dressmaker, buff drinking buddies, and some lovers of my gay minions.
Imagine three people on my left, three people on my right, and there I was, glorious and most distinctly blue in the middle.
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As my friends say, I was Gaga before Lady Gaga.
How true!
I have mastered the art of stunt performance, of grand entrances, and even grander appearances.
I mean, that should be easy to correlate now with my bold move to stage a nude protest rally in 2005 at the height of the ‘Hello, Garci’ controversy surrounding then-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Or my fabulous costumes at the awards night of the Palanca since 2008, when I wore my now iconic pink suit.
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Throughout my career, I have maintained my provocative position.
Even in social media, I provoke netizens.
Especially the stupids who cannot read with comprehension.
But it is mostly provocation in print.
I mean, how often do I come parading my glorious self in Iloilo?
If I want to be groped and humped by teenagers in MO2 Ice, it works better for me to be incognito. (To be continued/PN)
