"Curt Urbanozo pictures"
Epiloque
“When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. It is time to ask what can we do right, not what did we do wrong. Forgive yourself and move on. Have the courage to reach out for help.”
Bernie S. Siegel, MD
I keep rewriting the more appropriate end to this self account. Exceedingly, I may have over strained my efforts, considering developments these days. I can’t decide on which point to emphasize, just as to cancel everything out, given all these descriptions here. Well, as others before me, needlessly, might have said, this “written undertaking has not been easy.” The idea of leaping beyond the unseen borders of pornography and graphic writing will always be opened to challenges of conventions. It takes an uncluttered mind to do this, which state obviously has hounded me in this endeavor.
“Where do you wanna sit?” as she pointed to me the chairs where I have the option to sit during my visit to my therapist. First, I recall that the idea wasn’t really as dreadful as most of us would like to believe. I chose to sit beside the office window that overlooks the busy thoroughfare where lots of passenger jeeps pass by. Laid on the small table are those photo mementos of my therapist’s beloved ones – her husband whose looks remind me of a Latino matinee idol, and perhaps, her children.
“Hmmm, I must have seen him (her husband) somewhere” as I told myself after pondering that his looks can indeed be overbearing. There were other pictures, and some framed paintings. I felt comfortable. The city looks dirty and rather overbearing, and on that particular day, I felt hot about the immense heat of the sun casting its beam all over that side of the metropolis.
She arrived in a light colored pantsuit made of fine material, in a tailored-cut that fits her thin figure rather well. Rather tall, she was expectedly quite articulate. We hit each other instantly quite well, though looking back, she must have considered me a difficult case. I remember that she mainly uses group therapy to work on her cases. Remarkably, she pointed out the many numbers of clients she have, belying the notion that people generally disdain at the idea of visiting a therapist. This is pretty interesting in a society where most people I’ve met practically lead dual lives (perhaps, this explains the observed trait that most Filipinos make it well in adjusting to the living demands of far-away and culturally different, materially advanced countries, but this is another point, altogether). She pointed that I can eventually join the “groups” if I feel like doing so, or she thinks I’m ready for the idea – I didn’t really feel like joining them, anyway. To be fair with her now, she provides group counseling. Within the context of the “group,” an individual sees himself / herself in a wider context. Expressed “support” then comes in the form of views from all the members of the “group.” As for my therapist, I saw her name from an article written, perhaps, by one of the participants in her “groups.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s (I must have been mistaken by now on this) article gave me an idea where to seek help on how to cope with these ongoing complexes of emotions. I felt she could professionally provide relief to some extent.
If I recall it correctly, we majored in the same undergraduate course. Apparently, she had to explain that her son is gay (as if it matters to me). I like to give her credit for being brave about the fact, as she continued to point out certain commonalities that may exist between her son and myself. Her son stays in San Francisco, USA as he finds the Philippines to be extra homophobic, particularly, at the “wrong places.’
Nevertheless, I felt her endearing sympathy, somehow. She exhibited an interesting kind of flair in handling my case, very motherly yet rather sophisticated at the same time. Though I’ve noticed that she’s coping herself with basic issues related to this kind of different sexual orientation. Particularly, she apparently, finds it hard to have a very goodlooking son who may be unable to provide a continuation of their family’s lineage. But how basic things can get indeed, I was sarcastically telling myself on this kind of somewhat disturbing attitude towards those whom they know personally as having this kind of preference. But between her son and myself, a very wide gape of range of activities exists. We simply do not compare, it seems to me.
“Why do I like to engage in casual, anonymous sex? The wilder the variety, the more varied, the better?” I tell myself I attempt to put my condition in a basic statement. She couldn’t hear me, of course. She wouldn’t dare give me an answer.
It seems to me that she was trying to cast off her bewilderment, but I must have been imagining things then. To be fair, she was trying to be rather helpful. But she must have been disturbed somehow, as she was telling me that her son has been lately into crossdressing, which activity I do not find tasteful, nor funny. I guess, it’s a matter of taste (as they say).
“Do you think I can really help you?” as she was stressing some point, during the talk on some concerns I had to press on to her, thinking I’ve been unable to cope with the demands of long, complex string of chance encounters amidst attempts to develop a long term.
She has not been able to answer my queries satisfactorily. “You’re too complex,” as she heaved a deep sigh at the apparent inadequacy of meeting my sexual needs.
I figured “Does it really need to center only on sex? Maybe, I must have focused too much on that mainly with my anonymous activities?”
Certain events have been disturbing me. Why bother to account in writing for all these, as I kept telling some friends in the many circles that I’ve been moving in and out all along. I must have met the wrong persons, but I had to convince myself that all these took place for me to learn from them.
In some pages of my other journal that I’ve maintained all these years, I’ve attempted to work on some explanations, no matter how confused my entries way back then (reading them now, I personally find them, rather tiresome, redundant):
“………………............................................................Having garnered that number of encounters at this point, I like to offer some attempts to explain briefly why I’ve grown somewhat tired and weary of these encounters. The motivation behind all these encounters must have been the fleeting (momentary, physical) pleasure that I experience from each encounter. Moreso, I tend to acquire some learnings along the way as I garner more experiences. Hence, likewise, the preparation of this book. Perhaps, I can find some relief on how economists explain the decreasing level of pleasure and satisfaction that I derive as I get to engage more and more in this kind of casual sex that I’ve gone out to explain in this narrative effort. Of course, there’s no denial that there’s something more psychological beneath all these activities, which the interested reader must have figured out on his/her own by this time. Yet, it seems that the more I get to engage in casual sex, the less the satisfaction I receive. And this is not being blasé about the whole set of encounters I have had so far. And at the same time, I don’t want to engage in a monologue as to my own psychoanalytic viewpoint on what has been ongoing in my life these past few years. I guess, this emerging psychoanalytic interpretation is better left to professionals.
Rather cheekily, I like to smile as I find consolation that this desire to engage more and more in casual sex, despite its inherent AIDs related scary scenarios / possibilities, can be explained by what most economists explain behind the law of diminishing marginal utility (no matter irrelevant this definition could get, but nevertheless, it’s an attempt to provide some kind of outlook at all these). This, likewise explains why, at this point in time, I have gained a certain level of distaste in engaging in this kind of casual sex, after gaining a certain big number of encounters in this kind of lifestyle. This actually happens on certain nights. It’s as if the number of encounters presents an appropriate measure of knowledge about this whole kind of different lifestyle. Perhaps, I’ve nevertheless reached a certain level of plateau with regards to my efforts to engage in casual sex. Perhaps, I like to admit that it is certainly due to this recognition after having pondered on the meaning behind all these encounters. Certainly, I like to explain my self somehow, that’s why I tend to engage in conversations with each of these chance prospects I’ve met in the Walls (to exclude all the other areas where I have met all the others). It is in the desire as well to keep myself from engaging in solitary psychoanalysis, no matter how absurd and stupid this idea can get. "
Meanwhile, I like to spread fully the wide expanse of my clipped wings this time. The diverse awe-inspiring souls hover lightly beyond there. They’re merely waiting patiently for my advent. I reckon, I will have to join them as well. The remainder of this continuing chronicle will have to be provided by all the rest of those delightful, loving yet lost souls out there.
“I am part of all I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world whose margins fades
For ever and ever when I move”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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