I was a very shy kid. A painfully shy kid. I didn’t like playing with other children I didn’t know much. When I was still very young, around four or five, I was sometimes contented with just watching from our window those jologs kids who lived right across our house playing tumbang preso.
The only memories that I have during my pre-school years are those of playing with my two playmates. Yup, one, two. I only had two playmates. The first one was a second-degree cousin, Ewa, who lived just beside our place. And the second one, Egay, was a grandson of my Lola’s friend. They were both my age.
Most of the time, I would ask my Lola to fetch these two playmates so that they can come over to our place where we would play various games young kids then played. This was the time before Playstation or Gameboy was invented. Lego and Atari would come in a few years later. So we had to content ourselves with playing toy soldiers, matchbox cars and baril-barilan. You know, the usual stuff little boys play with.
At that very young age, Egay already showed signs that he was different. From my point of view at least, his preferences of toys were kinda different from Ewa’s and mine. When Ewa and I would like to play shooting toy soldiers with toy guns, Egay preferred playing with dolls. Ewa and I would convince Egay to just line up his doll with our toy soldiers so that we could shoot it too. But he would rather comb the hair of the doll while watching us shoot down those toy soldiers.
But there were also some games when all three of us could play. For instance, in our version of the bahay-bahayan, Egay would always insist that he be the mother – complete with a flower tucked behind the ear ala Jasmine Trias. Had Brokeback Mountain already been shown then, I guess we could have also convinced him to play Cowboy with us.
As fate would have it, I lost contact with these two playmates when our family moved to our new home. And years later, I would just hear stories from my Mom about Egay. That he had already decided to come out. It wasn’t much of a surprise. Everyone knew it was coming.
I guess he didn’t have as much confusion as Rustom did in coming up with that decision. No butterflies and no female friend pissing in the garden needed.
