LIFE AS A PEG

(This is for all my peeps who are challenged to break stereotypes tagged on them every single day of their lives.)

apologies in advance this one's quite lengthy





This morning when I woke up I was thinking about my awful day yesterday. It brought me to think about a long standing issue that I have since I… can’t remember anymore.

While drinking my instant coffee… my only breakfast today… the line of thought led me all the way to people’s stereotyping on a daily basis.


Yesterday, I went to pick up a long overdue check. It was a payment for a racket Jed and I did a month ago. Normally the payment is ‘kaliwaan’ (cash payment) after shoots because freelance (indie) film production workers have no time to go to banks just to encash a small amount… well, that or even have a bank account to begin with… to be hassled with such inconvenience.

But this one’s for a government Ad… yes, it’s a ‘barya-barya’… yes it’s taxed… and yes, paid in check.

Our checks were promised to be handed to us the week after the shoot. But that week obviously passed by and we were told that the checks will be ready for yet another week. But again, we haven’t heard from them early that week and the rest of it rained so hard and Metro Manila got submerged.

So there I was yesterday receiving a joke of a check that I’ll have to encash in a government bank in Los Banos, Laguna. Naturally, my temper shot up and I texted the person in charge (who’s based in Los Banos) of issuing payments for the staff and crew… told that I have no time to go all the way to Los Banos from Quezon city nor would go there even if I had the time just to exchange a check for pennies. I demanded that it be given to me in cash.

I also asked the person if this has always been their system… and how many times they have worked with freelance artists before to not have thought about the inconvenience they give to people who work with them.

In my mind while walking in the rain on my way to my next schedule, I thought about how typical of it of the government and the people who work inside its system and how they (consciously and unconsciously) breed the mentality of and think of themselves as masters… bosses… gods even… and how this culture within its system lose the trust of its citizens and integrity in general.

I was furious. I haven’t even wished anything for myself from that money… intended to spend it on monetary obligations so I can just move on a bit now and start worrying about how I’ll be able to attend to the rest of my concerns as a starving artist.

Speaking of starving artists… people have a different… yes, stereotypical view of who and what we are. And the people who hire us tend to think that we’re the types who’d do everything and anything… and they assume to have a right to treat us like shit.

Exploitation in the workplace has always been the curse of not only the hardcore among us… even the conservative ones too who refuse to look at it as it is as long as they can acquire a certain stereotypical lifestyle.



There were other matters I was supposed to be facing too yesterday.

There’s my super vain and insensitive friend who’s been testing my patience for quite a while now. He texted me that he’ll just go ahead and buy his formal pieces all by himself (since I never replied to him when he texted me last Monday that he’s decided to shop on Wednesday… without even asking me if I have a free time on that day… which was yesterday).

A close friend and I have been considering dropping him from our friends list not only because he’s always… always… always… awfully late every time we’re getting together (and never runs out of excuses… which always involves his Mom feeling this or that… that we now highly doubt)… that is if he even shows up… even when it’s just a few corners away from where he lives. This friend of ours also have insensitive demeaning remarks on everyone all the time… and he’s not even joking.

His vanity has also worsened ever since he started his current job. His short term goal is to be able to save up for a cosmetic job… not even considering buying himself a new computer on top of all personal needs. He’s only 27.

How vain can one still get, huh?

He kills himself by working out so hard that he has to down energy drinks afterwards and gets sleeping troubles and so he goes to work like a zombie. Then he blames the toxic call center lifestyle.

On our end… we never ran short of pulling him back in reality and telling him that he ought to improve more of his social skills than his physique that’s already way enough eye candy.

He gets frustrated after each date that always turn out bad. He thinks that everyone single these days are just pricks who want nothing but sex with him. Maybe… he ought to go easy on working out so much on his chest and biceps that already make him look top heavy and start thinking of what else could be enticing about him.

Anyway… this always Johnny come lately friend and I were supposed to shop for him for a formal occasion… me being his unofficial stylist… last weekend. He didn’t even bother to provide me a specific day and/or time we’ll be doing it.

Weekends are his days off though… so, he really can pick a day and time to do it. But no… nada… as if I’m bound to wait for him all weekend and whenever he feels like it. La Greta is that you?

Good thing, I couldn’t go Cubao like the usual… so the couple -Carl and Dennis decided to join me at home the whole weekend… otherwise, I could have lost it and gave the ungrateful friend a piece of me he hasn’t seen before.

I’ve been seriously thinking lately too that he might be assuming that I’m bound to bend to every single one of his demands (which he’s also probably oblivious of since he’s that utterly insensitive) just because I owe him some money.

Well, by tomorrow… he’ll have to meet me and hear my issues on him once and for all. This time I will no longer be the softer, gentler friend who always considers his bipolar excuses. And so much for a few pennies I owe him. I’ll even give him an interest if he wants to.

I’m done with his stupid excuses. I’m finally decided on breaking whatever he’s stereotyped me of.



Another concern I have is this trouble with a tribute project that I’ve been wishing to be a part of but couldn’t give a final word to because of a dream job I’m half wishing to get. I’m supposed to receive the final verdict on my application this week (that’s almost over and still haven’t heard of) and that’s why I still couldn’t commit to the project.

I think I just lost my opportunity to be a part of that tribute which was the meeting I went to yesterday after leaving the government office without my pay. I was asked if I could commit to handle the task of overseeing the whole research for the tribute documentary film for a late great film director.

The tribute is sadly the first for the important director. So, it’s an honor to be a part of the very first effort to put out something for the archives for him and of course the Filipinos.

I was asked though who I can recommend to do the job instead… and I suggested someone who can handle it effortlessly… someone I still have a huge crush on… a notoriously sexy skinhead four-eyed snob whom I might have a chance to work with again if only I can finally commit to a smaller research task in the project… if he agrees to take the job that is.

I hope though he takes interest in the project.

I can’t help but think again though of how people and their jobs are seen stereotypically. It’s like an ‘either or’ thing… even among the progressive thinking.

I recall a time when I wanted to drop my network job and tried offering proposals to NGOs and Peoples’ organizations using mass media as the next level platform to advance their advocacy. But ideas like these are very much new to them and all my efforts became futile.

The last attempt like this that I did was early this year. It was also a tribute project that I got into just so I could get that chance to have my ideas entertained by people and groups that got the capacity to make them happen.

Again… nothing for me.

It made me think that it’s because I am no longer a ‘tibak’… that they just couldn’t buy my concepts enough. Or they simply have no trust for media practitioners.

It’s the same feeling I get as sort of a hybrid media production professional. My orientation is both mainstream and alternative and more often than not… this supposedly advantage is my liability.

When I apply and/or work in the mainstream… people tend to think that my ideas and style are too ‘indie’.

Now, whenever I’m in the ‘indie’ circles, I feel like the outsider because a lot of them don’t hesitate in obviously making me feel like I’m one.



Okay, so the last issue I had yesterday was a ‘booking’ that never transpired. It was supposed to be with a guy I just met. Of course, I know very little about him but yes… of course, I am gifted with a good intuition.

He seems like a nice chap. Very humble for a guy who also… more probably… faces challenges every day of his life because of stereotypes. He’s tattooed and has piercing. But the moment I met him online, I got attracted almost instantly.

He wanted to go to my place the same midnight we met online (which was the other night) but I told him that it’d be more convenient for the two of us if we’d meet first (last night) somewhere and have a small talk… get to know each other more.

But again, I wasn’t my best yesterday… and by the time I got to SM North-EDSA where we were supposed to meet I asked him if he could handle me that way. I thought it’d be fair of me to tell him before he goes to our meeting place… since he seemed really eager to get to know me… I didn’t want him to think of me to be a cranky kind of guy. His text message for me early yesterday morning was an invite to sleep over at his place instead if I would like that… last night I thought, I could use it.

When he replied, he asked if we could just meet some other time… when I’m already more ’okay’… expressing his feelings of awkwardness to such situations.

In any given day, I’d understand his reaction. I too would prefer meeting him without issues bothering me at the same time and vice versa. But last night… I was wishing that he’d still come and indulge in my angst.

It would mean that he’s the type who confronts issues… not one who cowards away from them. It would mean that he’s really a force that goes against the tides.

It would mean that he’s truly my type of guy.

But I guess, he’s not… or simply, he also has a lot on his hands to bother accommodating that of a stranger’s.

Maybe he thinks I’m the needy type and he’s got to stay away from me before he gets into trouble.

Dating in general also manifest how stereotyped I am. The mere existence of my blogs… ‘Break-up Stories’ and this one and how liberal I write make some who read them somewhat feel like I’m a slut.

Recently, I had to put an effort on erasing that impression of me of a middle-aged closeted married man (yes another taken guy, Jeez!)… who thought I was playing him when I humbly refused his offer to have sex with him. He told me that he can even pay me if that’s what I was going around in circles for.

Offended I had to virtually bitch slap the old faggot and shake him hard to wake up from his own long standing oblivion.


Haah…

I’ve always been stereotyped just by the way I look.


In my teens, I already looked more matured than the other kids. I was growing a beard when others were still wishing they could at least have kitty facial and armpit hairs.

And I looked a bit too intense also because of my uni-brow and the way I look at people when I talk to them or even just pass by. I have to admit I looked like the usual villains in FPJ action flicks and I often get into fights just because I’m already outspoken and a bit opinionated and some kids think I wanted pick fights.

So, I shaved my brows and learned how to make ‘em look friendlier and plucked my thickening beard that was already connecting with my sideburn (that now reminds of how my Ex thought of himself as a monkey with so much facial hair)… so they’d stop growing (clueless of what a beard can do for me in my future… sigh!)… just so I could look like a more approachable person.

That didn’t help much. I still had a lot of tension with the boys who began to think of me as a pouf (which I still wasn’t aware of myself then).


In college I joined theater groups more than I did in high school. Again, stereotyping landed me on lead roles. Since I’m a Manilenyo studying in the regions (having went to three schools in college… one in Manila, the other in Davao and the last one in Iloilo)… and plays have always been in Filipino, I always get the lead roles even when there were better candidates for the roles.

The last traditional theater group I was with put me in another lead role… a wife beater… that awarded me a hard hitting with an umbrella from an old lady when we toured the play in the barrios. We had to stop the play for a while and I was shocked by what the old frail looking woman did to me!

I also think that because of the roles I played in the group that other members started thinking of me as my characters thus I sort of become the unofficial black sheep of the group. Eventually, I had to step out even when it were some of the elite members who actually gravely offended me in some of our projects… that didn’t change the mind of my very own adviser though, she sided with them. Others decided to keep their silence.

I recall being a part of that ‘In-crowd’ of the group when I started… which I didn’t ask for and was uneasy with because I always had been friendly with everyone. Then, suddenly I felt like the member everyone wanted out of the organization.


When I decided to become a full-time rights and cultural advocate, the older ‘tibaks’ thought I was too middle-class to last. But I spent four years doing what everyone else was doing... and endured even more somehow. In fact, my peer group within my batch was like the magnet of newbies who all wanted to hangout with us all the time… which we always got criticized for. ‘Barkadismo’ was always our issue though we never asked people to stick around us.

I couldn’t help myself if I can’t afford to look like I haven’t bathed in days like the stereotypical ‘tibaks’. I couldn’t change my natural fashion sense for the ‘tanderkats’ just because they thought I was too ‘decadent’ looking to be seen as a serious advocate.

In reality it was the reverse, me and some of my batch draw in more members and supporters (it was during the Erap resign movement) than anyone else in the youth sector that time by just being ‘kikay‘. All we had to do is to walk around the campus wearing ‘malong’ or ‘sarong’… and braid and korn the heads of many allied frat members while doing our improv style propaganda work. We even got to sell t-shirts, shawls and ‘burloloys’ for funds for printing anti-Erap regime leaflets and other campaign mats and expenses like food for those who were staying during the many nights of vigil.

When I decided to grow my hair down to my waist (which might also be a part of the reason why I got so thin because of the lack of protein and other nutrition that I get from a very unhealthy lifestyle) I always get mistaken as a girl but when I start to face them and they see my beard, that’s the only time they realize that I wasn’t. Others who knew me also thought I was a cross dresser… that or a rebel returnee… or abusing drugs.



Years after I left the peoples’ movement and joined in the world of everybody else… and returned to my first love… media practice… still, stereotyping never left my side.

I still get stereotyped because of the way I look, the way I talk, the way I look at things... my conscious decisions in life.


Carl always told me that I’m too accommodating and careful with people. He still doesn’t understand though how much efforts I put up for years to becoming how I am now.


I’ve come a long long way from my troubled childhood. And still, no matter how much I’ve mellowed and learned how to compromise… I still feel like a magnet to things negative. I still bring out people’s aggressiveness towards me… whether they know or don’t know me.

Whether I am very proactive on something or recluse… some still find away to make an issue about me.

My former neighbors here in where I’m currently staying in Novaliches even dared picking a fight with me just because I’m so passionate about a dog that they successfully banished from our compound in the end (so now, we’re worrying about ‘akyat-bahay’ again) but realized who they wanted to go against with after trying me.

No one talks to me anymore in my own compound even when the Landlord finally booted the weeds out. Either they’re afraid to cross me or they feel uneasy with me. Works for me though, I don’t need to put up efforts to do petty social graces anymore. And I’m eager to go back to civilization real soon.



The thing is… for people like me… we’re either too intense or too soft for people.

Sometimes I wish too that I’m just that average dumb ‘yes man’ kind of guy… so I could easily get the job I want… which the amoral ‘yes man’ usually gets.


I think the only time when being stereotyped is advantageous is when it’s actually your occupation… like a character actor.

Megastars fade away eventually but character actors (and great original comedians) remain.

People will always see you as a peg for something associated with your immediate aura and you constantly have to destroy their misguided actions and reactions towards you.

It’s a tiring lifetime task. But what’s more tiring is to do nothing about it.

It’s always hard to find the ones who genuinely understand and respect you when you’re outspoken and opinionated. People think of you as vulgar… uneducated.

I think it’s the other way around. Those who think you’ve got a sore personality are actually the ones who are uneducated… having no opinion of their own nor have their own personality to begin with. They cling to society’s stereotypes because they’re too naïve to realize that they have the mentality of a ‘timawa’. They pressure you to conform because they’re envious cowards who can’t survive without being submissive to the people who sit on their heads.


(August 16, 2012 / Thursday)