When two years ago I decided to move to the Philippines and live in a southern island city in Mindanao called Davao, I knew that I’d find a lot of cultural differences between my old home country – the United Kingdom – and my new home country. Language, food, TV, traffic, the general attitude of people: they all came in ways that surprised me, sometimes pleasantly, and sometimes unpleasantly. But I’m not complaining! While I knew that I had to make adjustments, I also knew that the differences were what made the idea of living somewhere else a very attractive idea.
One of the differences was in the department of gay dating. Being gay in the Philippines is a lot different indeed from being gay in UK. And a lot more promising, being that I like brown skin, black hair, smooth body, little feet. But while Filipinos – and Asians in general – may see a white man in their country as a kind of commodity, thus making it a lot easier for people like myself to stand out, I still found myself hardpressed – and, at the same time, hesitant – to get hold of someone whom I can really be intimate with. Some were just looking for fun. Some were just looking for funds. Some came in and then disappeared after the first night. Some didn’t even show up on the first night. Some cheated. Some were jealous in ways that I could never imagine. Some of the men were absolutely wonderful human beings, but were restrained by the Catholic upbringing that typifies the general Filipino way of life. Some, like in a gay spot in Manila I had visited a few years back, wanted to take advantage: I was drugged without my knowledge, or stolen from, or dismissed as a matchmaker who wasn’t serious about love himself.
Not that I wasn’t serious; being alone in a strange world, a different world, I was simply determined to exercise caution and not get too carried away in the dating scene. Still, from all the misadventures and mishaps of being gay in the Philippines, I learned that there also can be great fun and great joys – and that they didn’t necessarily involve sex or money or both. From hundreds of forgotten names and faces, I stumbled upon several who are worth remembering and keeping as my best friends. And from countless encounters in which I have been lost in translation, I discovered some real gems who not only respected our differences – but celebrated them, too.