I grew up in a house with a lesbian aunt. When I was about 6 years old, and she was in high school, she taught me my first card game. She used to bring her friends home all the time, and we'd spend hours in her room playing Monkey Monkey and Gin Rummy. I still think she's the coolest tita I have; she brings me to restaurants, was among the first to teach me to smoke (don't try it at home!), treats me to coffee. She's also a one-woman woman. Her girlfriend, as long as I can remember, is still Ate Angie. She's as much a part of my family as my aunt is. If only I could say the same thing for my other aunts who are in denial about my tita's sexual orientation.

So anyway, I end up in an all-girls school for elementary. Inadvertently, I had classmates who looked like guys. Something about the lack of the opposite sex prompted a bunch of kids in my batch to act the part. The were really handsome, too, for a bunch of mid-puberty girls with budding breasts. I remember one girl, her name was Michele, I think, but she wanted to be called Mitch. She had stringy hair and braces and these huge glasses, but she was "cool" in the grade-school meaning of the word, which in 1992 meant she knew the dance steps to Simply Red's "Stars" and had met at least one Gwaping. A bunch of my classmates got this huge crush on her, passing around notes in class about how cute Mitch was. And the weird thing was, these were heterosexual girls, with posters of Jonathan Brandis on their walls and New Kids on the Block Fan Club memberships. Somehow they associated Mitch with one of the boys, and Mitch didn't really seem to mind, even courting a couple of girls, her letters written in scented pink Sanrio stationary. Naturally, my classmates swooned.

I read about this study once where there was this all-female frog population in some pond somewhere. So a bunch of these frogs grew male reproductive parts. See the connection? But then I'm digressing.

What is it about all-girl populations that produces this kind of sociological association? Because I eventually went to a coed high school where there was plenty of man-to-man action but no female action as far as my batch was concerned.

I remember this funny encounter my friend Dottie had, talking to our classmate Jeremy about all the gay action taking place in the male dorms.

Grabe, no, yung mga nangyayari sa dorm remarked Jeremy.
Oo nga, e laughed Dottie.
E sa girls' dorm wala bang nangyayaring ganyan? Jeremy asked.
Wala, no! At least sa alam ko...
E di ba... roommate mo si Audrey? Jeremy asked, all serious. Dottie just had to laugh. Audrey, one of my best friends, plays basketball very well for her small stature, and walks like a man. As far as I know, she's not lesbian. But then she's a member of a basketball team where 14 teammates and the two coaches are all lesbian, so I wouldn't really know. Let's just say that I wouldn't be surprised if one day she announces that she IS lesbian.

But compare her to my grade-school batchmates who went to high school in the same exclusive school we spent grade school in. I used to go back there every December for Family Day, which was actually just an excuse for the students to make porma and get out of that stupid uniform we had. One such day, I met up with my old friend Rachel.

O, sino na ang ka-on mo ngayon? she inquires.
Ha? I am confused. "Ka-on" is a new word.
Sino yung ka-on mo... yung... she motions two fingers intertwined.
Ah, may guy, kaklase ko... I grin.
Ako si ----- she gives the name of one of our batchmates. My jaw drops.
Ha? Talaga? Ah... ok Rachel was one of those very prim and proper girls with nice background and who would end up in the society pages one day.

So I go to UP for college, where I meet genuine lesbians my age, and it's funny because I realize that a lot of my grade-school batchmates were just experimenting; you know, due to the absence of boys in school and an excess of maternal hormones. And I respect that, that's as much a part of their growing-up experience as going ot a coed high school and learning the literal meaning of kups was mine.

I'm proud that I went to UP where people accept you sa you are, and am ashamed that my lesbian aunt still has a hard time getting my grandmother and conservative relatives to accept her, even though she's past 30. I love that a couple of my friends are lesbian sisters and they tell me all about their love life but am upset that they can't share their stories with their kuya who is also my friend. I am amused by the fact that Audrey's been courted by 4 of her teammates but I also know that if she DID turn out to be lesbian, her mother would never accept it.

I guess we still have a long way to go as a society in terms of accepting womanly love. But they're just the same as us: they get infatuated, fall in love, get rejected, go to Eastwood for gimmicks. One day we'll see them just as we see each other.

As for me, my lesbian experiences include only two events. (1) Making out with my friend's then-gf on a dare. She had a tongue ring, so that was exciting. And (2) making out at least three times with my good friend K at our recently concluded Christmas Party. The first was sober, the next were not. Rumor has it the last kiss lasted more than 20 seconds, but no one really knows for sure, we were all too drunk to remember clearly. We do have pictures to prove it, horrid picture of a torrid kiss. Really dusgusting. We both consider each other really hot chicks with no lesbian tendencies. If anything, we did it for our male friends, who seem to find all demonstrations of woman-to-woman action a real turn-on.

Now that I think about it, what is it about men and lesbians? But then I'll save that part for my sex article. Hahaha.



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postscript:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
To quote the Counting Crows: Maybe this year will be better than the last.
Peace!