I just spent part of the day with a fascinating man whom I met last night. His name is Joshua (coincides with that of a less-savory character mentioned earlier) and he’s about my age. For the past half-dozen years he’s been operating a private school, motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit: the public schools aren’t doing enough for our kids, so let me try my own methods. He’s very proud of his kids (K-5 elementary age) and showed me a book they’d put together to display their work. He wished I could stay here in Manila through next Wednesday for the year-end awards ceremony, to which he’s invited a surprise guest, a well known official in the Philippine government. I immediately thought of my friend Steve Santos back in Boston, who has been coping with public education ever since we met back in ’98.

Joshua also told me a lot about the history of the gay-pride parade, and the internal bickering (so familiar to me, from my own past activist efforts) that led to discontinuance of the Manila pride parade in June. (A splinter group held one in December, but he said attendance dropped a lot.) He also knows a lot about the political group, I think it’s called Ladlad, which is something like the HRC in the USA: their leader, contrary to Joshua’s advice, registered a party-list in the May elections without sufficient membership across the many Philippine provinces. Gay rights here is an interesting challenge. I have found so many kind, gay people throughout the nation, yet it is sometimes hard for them to find each other. And getting a movement going has proven difficult.

Joshua described a hustler episode similar to my own. One of his friends was pulled into the same trap (give me money or I’ll accuse you of rape). My suspicions are true: some corrupt cops split proceeds of any shakedown (of a local or foreigner, doesn’t matter to them) with the hustler. It’s kinda hard for me to make a good recommendation on avoiding those traps: if you don’t talk to strangers, you won’t have as good a time. (I’ve had a blast making friends with strangers here!) If you do, you could walk into a trap. I guess to live life fully, you just have to take the good with the very-occasional bad. Joshua rescued his friend: the hustler happened to pick a hotel whose owner is a close friend of Joshua’s, so the incident was quickly terminated before any great conflict.

Joshua himself, as of last night, was simply another stranger I met on the streets of Malate. I was wandering around at midnight, contemplating going to bed after the previous stranger had led me off to the White Bird go-go bar which is nice but not my kind of place (with a cover charge that exceeded money in my wallet, a mild embarrassment but walang problema, they negotiated a discount). Instead of bed, I went to Bed with Joshua and his friend Bobby. Bed is the big, and apparently only, gay disco in Manila. So I finally got to go dancing! It’s a late-night place, no cover (and no patrons) before midnight and open until well after my 3:30am departure. It was crowded but not over-packed.

Luis’ sister Bess is a very hard-working woman. She couldn’t get together Friday; it’s now Saturday and her constant demands at work caused us to miss our 3pm plan to get together with her tatay (father). Cousin Bien wasn’t feeling well so he couldn’t help get me there either. So Luis and I saw tatay together two weeks ago and I won’t have another chance.

So sad that I face having to go back home to the USA bukas! I thought I’d be homesick, looking forward to Massachusetts after 5 weeks away, but instead I’m wistful that I can’t be here always!

My many kaibigan here are already rattling off lists of places that we should see on our next visit. This evening is the monthly social of Long Yang Club so there is no doubt that the count of kaibigan will climb a bit more!