a story every day

The SO says that I meet the most interesting people. I don't really know how I do this. It just happens. They talk, I listen, they say interesting stuff about their lives.

As a writer, I believe in thievery (not plageurism), that ideas, maybe key phrases come to me from someplace, someone else. Creativity to some extent may be a matter of knowing what is good to steal. I think it's what drives me to believe that just about every person out there has a story, and an interesting story at that. You just have to wait for them to tell it to you.

Anyway, had dinner with a friend that was in town over at Toppings Too in Union City, which the yellow pages says is on Smith street, but it's really on Watkins, behind Paddy's cafe. She brought along another friend, I'll call Don (not his real name).

With people I don't know, I often spend most of my time listening, because, well, I'm trying to learn about this person. Don is a gay pinoy, out and happily in a relationship, living in the suburbs of the Bay Area. It's not the typical Filipino city like Daly City, Union City or Vallejo. It's one of those old white flight cities, that are just inundated by Filipinos, kind of like Concord, where you ask yourself, "when did all these Filipinos move out here?"

In the course of conversation over some fabulous sinagang, fried bangus, and taho, (we highly recommend Toppings Too) the SO asked how the two of them met. They said they met doing HIV and AIDS education work in the community and somewhere in that banter they mentioned that Don had been in the seminary, a Jesuit, who I hear tend to be kind of strict in terms of following Catholic doctrine. His mother cried when he went to seminary. You'd think she would be happy since some Catholic Pinay mothers swear a son in the seminary is a ticket to heaven. She was Methodist. They didn't believe in this ticket. It was his father, Hawaii plantation grown, who was the not-so-strict Catholic.

I couldn't pass this up. I had to ask. There had to be a lot of gay men there? He said of course there were. And AIDS was actually quite prevalent, but the church kept it quite hush. The church is very good at keeping things secret. It's one of things that bothers him in the way the church is run. How this secrecy costs lives. He began to suspect something when a main priest died of "pneumonia." Later in his AIDS counseling work, he would see some of the old priests at the workshops. This was the late 60s/early 70s.

A turning point came to him when he met a former Jesuit priest who was gay. The former priest followed the Thomas Aquinas model of thinking and reasoned out the reasons he could not stay in the church. Don would later write a letter straight to the Vatican asking for dismissal. He did the same thing. He wrote that he believed his destiny was to have a relationship with another man. The Vatican person replied, well, don't you think this goes against church doctrine? (ie how can a priest who supposedly believe in the church, believe in this?) Don replied that he could no longer serve his full duties as a priest with his informed conscience. What could they do? His informed conscience told him he couldn't stay.

But, as he said, he didn't throw out the baby with the bath water. He still believed in many of things he learned in the church. This just happens to be the deal breaker in being a priest.

Later, our friend would write an article about him being gay in a magazine. He didn't think anyone would read it. He didn't think anyone read that magazine. Next thing he knew, his aunties were calling up his mom, asking her if it was true, asking if he dressed in drag, asking if he was sick with AIDS. When his mother called him, she said they always kind of knew, and why did he have to "come out" this way? He's not sure what was a bigger shock to him, that all his relatives read the article or that his parents "always knew"?

Don's friends keep asking him when is he going to write his book. Wouldn't that be an intriguing book, whether it was fiction or not, the journey in and out of the Catholic Church in the early days of AIDS. Sign me up for a book now! He knows he should. You can hear it in his voice when he sighs that he hasn't written anything yet. What I also hear in his sighs, is the doubt that his life really is not that interesting. He lives in the suburbs with his partner near his elderly parents. How can that be interesting?

It's the self imposed doubt of most writers I suppose. Even when people tell you you've got the makings of a great story that basically writes itself, somehow, having lived it, it seems rather mundane. This is what fascinates me about writing, whether it's poetry, short story, or novel, that in the proper telling of a story mundane life can be the greatest story ever told. The trick is, convincing yourself you should tell it.