The Uninvited Guest

Check out my HIV/AIDS life story: http://positivelite.com/content/news/news-sections/living-with-hiv/item/ervan-s-story-the-uninvited-guest

I wrote this article about my life as an HIV positive young man in the Philippines for www.positivelite.com, Canada’s online HIV mag. I will be a regular writer there from now on! I am so happy with this opportunity. Check it out guys!

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Immuno-compromised

I have sores all over me:

They scar my fragile surface

Like constellations

Spanning the universe

Of my feeble flesh.

I gasp and sigh.

I hear the delirious

Whispers from my thighs.

These are not moans

But the sole sounds of my bones

Breaking into mourning.

Maybe I should be glad
That something still feeds on me.
I want this love to die
But it cannot be.
It is the disease
Which runs alongside
The potent malady in my being.
Compromised I will forever be.
But with you, I find the strength
To make myself immune 
Against all this insanity.

Overrated

Beloved,
Touch me one more time.
Tell me you love me
Despite the fact that
I am getting ugly.

I do not need your pity
Just another kiss perhaps
Or the pleasure of offering you
The leftovers of the feast that was me
With no fears of contamination.
Death is too overrated.
Youth calls for another chance
Not to grow old and be weak.
The party of life is still on
And I want to be the deejay
And to give you a BJ
Against the wall, 
Upon the cold linoleum
I will let you sip
The fruit of my mouth
As I suckle your lithe tongue
While you leave your watermarks 
All over me.

Maybe I deserve this
Because I was too much of a whore
To possess my own heart.
Maybe, perhaps, by any chance
You might now forget
Or might want to forgetThe secret I told you
And you will make love to me

Regardless of the consequences.

I am waiting for you.
Come whenever you want me.

Moth

Is it real

To feel 
That my life
Is spent on circles
And Escher patterns?
If love is a parasite,
what will it be?
Is it the fungi
On my body,
Milk-white thriving
In the darkest corners
Where the seat of love is.
Or is it like a moth
Whose susurrus sounds 

So sad and so fragile,
Loving the flame 

With no shame?

I want to thrive 

In the memory
Of your kiss.
I want to dream of you
But must I be contented
With dark light and no air?

Tell Me

a poem for Kuya Deo



Tell me, is it the first time
When our eyes stared
at each other as if we wanted
To get out of our clothes
Right then and there that night?

We could have worn
Each other's skin.
You could have fitted me well
Like a warm scarlet cape.
I can go out under the starlight,
Bloody red like that little riding girl,
While you are the big bad wolf
In sheep's clothing,
Lying on the bed, waiting for me.

I will not give in to you easily
But I will make you chase me,
Dazed and hungry across
This shadow-streaked path,
Where nothing exists but us
And nothing ever blooms
Without your breath.
I will not give in to you easily
But know from the start that
You have already caught me
When you first smiled at me.

I am already yours that moment.
But I will make you run after me
So that we can surrender
To each other with the grace
Of predator and prey.
I want to tumble down with you
And make love without thinking
If is this is right or if this is wrong.

Tell me,
Do you like to see me in full bloom?
When all that you can do
Is hold me close
And whisper "I love you"
In the most secret parts
Of my body: My lips
Is a good place to start.
Maybe you will adore me more
If it is my nakedness you admire,
Covering my native form
The way tattoos cover
Your brain with my name.

Tell me when to tell the sun
That he can have a day off,
So you can finally see
And feel the warmth
I hold dear within me.
I will shine brighter
Than the luminosity
Of this fervor inside my heart.

Tell me, lover of the music and the stars,
Tell me when to start this madness
Or when to end this folly.

A Potential Partner

I really like Daddy Pat.

Pat and I talk on the phone every single day. I would call him usually on mornings and after his work, around 12 AM to the wee hours of the morning. What I like about him is that he is always available whenever I want to talk to him, unless he is asleep, working or at the gym.

He lives a very simple lifestyle. He would wake up around 11 AM and I would call him. By 3 PM, he would prepare to go to work and by 4 PM to 5 PM, he travels to work which starts at 7 PM. Lately, we started chatting and seeing each other through webcam while he's at work. He is as handsome as I expected based on his pictures, although he would say that he looks like a provincial man or a carpenter. But maybe that is where his charms lie. He looks a little Latin to be honest, dark-skinned but with rugged Spanish features and a yummy body to die for.

Plus, he is really interesting. He came from the Visayan region. He has been a consistent first honor since preschool to high school and he went to college in the University of the Philippines - Diliman. That university holds a special place in my heart because I wanted to study there. I actually passed the entrance exam and got the course that I wanted in UP but I attended another private but very prestigious university instead because I was given a full scholarship.

Aside from that, my first boyfriend, Rycel, studied in UP. He was a guy I can never forget. Although we only had a summer fling of two weeks but it was so good while it lasted. Rycel was a very beautiful Fil-Chinese-Spanish boy with an insatiable appetite for sex. I was his first lover. I let him fuck me when I was seventeen when he came here in our house. I am terribly digressing. I want to talk more about Rycel but not in this post. I will, in the future.

Anyway, Pat is really a good conversationalist. We talk a lot about anything under the sun. He says his favorite topics are about society, politics and current events, which I confess that I am not really fond of. At the same time, he is not also a fan of reading. He seems to be there every time I call him and he is never busy. Even while he eats or plays Plants vs. Zombies, or while he listens to music, we would still talk. He says it's okay. Sometimes, he would get really moody. He told me that he's like that because of Efavirenz. If he is happy, that antiretroviral may make him giddy as if he is high on an Ecstasy pill. If he's in bad spirits, it would intensify his terrible mood and he would sound like a snooty snob who hates whatever I say and is bent on being irritated with everything.



For several reasons, I really like Daddy Pat. He seems to be a potential partner for me:

First, he is also a poz like me.

Second, he is so damn hot.

Third, he reminds me so much of my greatest love, my ex Poy.

Fourth, we might have sex.

Fifth, I think he likes me.

I do not want to assume anything but I can somehow feel it. On the earlier part of our being friends, I really felt that we might be on the road of being something more than friends. We would really be naughty and even sweet to each other. He even admitted he likes me when I asked him.

However, it all changed when I told Pat about my Kuya Deo. He developed a distaste for Kuya Deo instantly without even knowing him. He seemed to be jealous of him although he does not say it so. He criticized Kuya's being a member of an HIV/AIDS advocacy since Kuya is HIV negative. Pat thinks that HIV/AIDS support groups are crap and does not believe they are effective. He thinks that these organizations do not know what they are really doing because majority of them are HIV negative anyway. They have no idea of what we HIV poz people are really going through. 


Aside from that, Pat hates the fact that Kuya Deo is dominant over me. I told him about the arguments and reprimands I got from my Kuya and Pat thought that my Kuya is a bastard who has no right to be preachy on me. It was from one argument where Kuya told me that I should not act like a counselors even to my fellow poz because I was not trained to be one. Pat thinks that training is not enough. He believes that a poz is the only one who can truly understand and feel what another poz is going through.


Pat is seven years older than me, so he can be also considered as an older brother to me like my Kuya Deo. However, Pat and I are somewhat more compatible to each other that Kuya Deo and I could ever be. He and I would talk about being HIV positive. We would talk about the side effects of our antiretrovirals. We would complain about the opportunistic infections that we have. Since he has been positive since 2011, he gives me advice on how to deal with this virus. In the same way, I can sympathize well with his complaints in life and endure his mood swings.


I can imagine myself being with Pat and even spending my life with him. When I asked him if he wants me to stop flirting, he told me it's up to me. I told him I like him and I would like to be his boyfriend if possible but he told me that he just wants us to be friends. He is reluctant to be in a relationship again for several reasons. Still, like what I do with my Kuya Deo, I always tell Pat that I like him or even say I love him. I would try to be sweet hoping that Pat would reciprocate in the same way but he would only say thank you or giggle without saying anything. 


But despite that lack of verbal admission, I can really feel that Pat is fond of me. Although he may get irritated with me, his temper is fast to pass. By the next day, he is in good spirits with me again. The same thing happens with my Kuya. I can owe it to the fact that Daddy Pat and Kuya Deo are both Pisceans but does it really matter what their Zodiac signs are? Maybe there might be some esoteric and occult explanation on it written on the stars and governed by celestial bodies. But right now, I am just more focused in knowing the both of them more. Kuya Deo, as I discussed in a post I had written earlier, may really be better off as a special companion in my life rather than an actual partner. I can learn how to cope with that fact.


Who knows, maybe Pat is the one I am meant to be with - a lover that will love me the way I want to be loved.

I Dream of You

from Letters to Deo

I dream of you always and in my head, I am the one that you have always craved for. I long for those moments where I would be inside your embrace, your torso upon my torso while the prowess of your manhood stirs up a tempest that would ravage the tender cove between my legs. I want to endure pain for you, as well as explode in the pleasure of being with you.

For I am yours.

I am yours the moment you first kissed me. You branded my lips with your mark. As I tasted your sweet mouth, I felt the force of passion swirling from the abyss of my lonely soul and it welled up from the depths of oblivion, buoying me higher to a glimpse of paradise. You called forth the sleeping rapture dwelling within me, and I was awakened to a more lurid vision of hope and love. 

That I can still make reveries happen in real life. 

That I can still be beautiful in someone else's eyes. 

That I can still be loved despite the poison inside of me.

I am yours, my beloved. Although I can never say that you are mine.

All I really want is you. But I know I can never long to possess you the way I am already possessed with my obsession for you. Desiring you is madness and yet I would rather be called insane and brave than be sensible and a coward.

I still yearn to make miracles happen. It is already a miracle that I found someone like you in the misery of my sickness. Such a miracle should be enough for me but I have always been insatiable. I never knew when to stop wanting. I am still hoping that fantasy and reality are just one and same, reflections of each other, parallel universes converging between the two of us.

I want to tell you this. What if we defy the rules that have been set for us? Maybe if we take courage to destroy all the boundaries that exist between us, we have the power to create another world where nothing really matters but to love and be loved in return.

Will you start breaking those walls with me?

Tell me now, will you?