Introduction

Already, one gay reader blasted this novel as a cheap shot, lazily written, pointless, boring, trying-hard, lecturing-sermonizing novel. Worse, it deals with religion and AIDS. I agree with this reader but I wrote this novel nearly 7 years ago, when AIDS was more of a struggle than a disease. I have to admit I used it as a vehicle for my testimony as Someone beset by severe internal conflict as gay and Christian. I wrote Visions of St. Lazarus at a time I was struggling with my homosexuality. To other people and other cultures, coming out and accepting one's sexuality is easy. To me, it was hard. I tried to justify my homosexuality in religious terms here. I wrote this without a plot - it was an explanation to myself - a justification of who I am before my God. I hope you'd understand.

Chapter 1 : Lazaro Sembrano

Will someone say, why, then, this
divine compassion extended even to
the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, but
because it was the mercy of him who
daily "maketh His sun to rise on the
evil and the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and the unjust."

(Mat 5,45)
St. Augustine, The City of God

I take the liberty of chronicling a Gay Sainthood foretold.

My friend, Lazaro Sembrano, was a sucker of tragedy; this he attributed to his mediocre looks and strict Catholic upbringing. As a product of Tarlac farmers, he was replete of superstitions. A mole on the side of his nose was a destiny to weep gallons of tears; his shoulder growth meant a lifetime cross to bear; his buttock birthmark supposedly spawned disasters. He blamed his misfortunes, earthquakes, typhoons, draught, floods, fires and volcanic eruptions to his bodily marks. Their house used to stand beside a cemetery. As a kid, he'd jump over the fence during the burial of anybody and join mourners just for the heck of it; when it was time to wail, he'd wail the loudest. Such nuisance! He said, "To cry for someone you don't know is the highest form of sympathy." He sure found tragedy everywhere.

During his residence in Murfreesboro Tennessee as a nurse, he learned through Discovery Channel that Marlon Brando championed Civil Rights and Native Americans. He wrote him a letter - addressed to Marlon Brando c/o Tahiti - "I'm rooting for you. Sincerely, Lazarus." Just one problem - Brando's activism occurred thirty years ago and was residing in California when my friend mailed him the letter. Worse, when Brando's son was charged for the murder of his half-sister's husband/lover and, when later, this half sister committed suicide for the same reason, Lazaro cried for days. He got hysterical in the middle of A Streetcar Named Desire, where Brando, his wet shirt torn, cried - "Stellaaaaa!" And I couldn't pacify him. His tears were carried-over Guys and Dolls, a comedy. More recently, he wept with Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire. Which reminded me of his previous similar reactions to Kevin Costner's Field of Dreams, Mickey Rooney's BoysTown, Mel Gibson's Ransom. Judging from the looks of these actors you'd become suspicious. Suspicious or not, Lazarus also cried through The Sands of Iwo Jima, All Is Quiet in the Western Front, The Dead Poets' Society, Hamlet, Kiss of a Spiderwoman, Ten Commandments and Chariots of Fire. Nothing could beat the impact of Philadelphia though. On the scene where the young brother of Tom Hanks could no longer bear the dying Tom, I thought Lazarus would collapse!

Call his weeping multi-media. He burst into tears listening to Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, which I bought him for Christmas. He cried over the biography of Ernest Hemingway. I teased him all the time; I said, "Your favorite tree is weeping willow and passage from the Bible- Jesus wept." Lazaro I believe, was born with the largest lacrimal sacs in the world. Of course he is gay.

He'd find travesty in mundane things. I dragged him to a gay bar. When a go-go dancer mounted the stage and gyrated, Lazarus asked me, " What makes a man drop his pants for a few bucks? Is he hungry? Is someone in the family sick? Is his child needing milk?"

Goodness, where did he get these ideas?

When the rich Bill Gates was featured in C-SPAN, I said, "That Gates is one lucky guy." Lazarus murmured something like, "Sadness is written on his face. It is lonely to be at the top." To test him I asked him once, "Is this glass half full or half empty?" His answer was, "Do you realize how many people on earth need clean running water? How insensitive of you to even ask that."

Eventually I had to confront him about his miserable psyche. I commented to him one day, "What is disturbing about you Lazaro is that your love for tragedy is turning you tragic yourself." My question was ill-timed, he was reading Bothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Right after finishing Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice. Which meant he was on the verge of tears. Again.

"I can't help it," he said. "I love tragedy because I'm gay."

"Excuse me. Say that again?" I asked.

"Are you blind? Gays like us are pressed down, buried under the feet of society. Teen-age gays have the highest suicide rate; gays are dying by the thousands because of AIDS; we are deprived of honorable positions, made fun in all forms of Art, condemned by religions, discriminated and deprived of happiness. Can you blame me if I find everything tragic?"

I stood there counting one to a hundred. Sheep. Telephone poles. I was really pissed. "So?" I said, smarting. Did he read something in the Servant of the Bones? When my counting reached fifty seven, I resumed the confrontation. "Stop this weeping now Lazaro, this stupid attachment to tragedy or else you'd join the long list of gay psychotics and eccentrics."

Wrong again, he had an immediate response - crisp, strong, full of conviction. "What else is new Mario? Aren't we considered abnormal now as we stand here?"

I surrendered.

My friendship with Lazarus was, to put it mildly, an act of charity. It began when one of the Filipino nurses in Tennessee tasked me to visit him. She said he was extremely depressed and homesick. I soon found him virtually dead. Socially. He limited his adventures to five places - the SNF where he worked, the Xanadu video store, Kroger Grocer, Texaco gas station, and the library. I beseeched him to come with me to Nashville Mall, hr declined my invite, preferring to mail order from International Male. On week-ends, he'd rent twenty videos and watch them in a row until his eyes hurt. He'd finish reading two novels a week until his vision became blurry.

After our confrontation, our friendship took a sharp turn. He did something unimaginable. My hermit friend who never ventured beyond the two mile periphery of his apartment suddenly turned into Houdini. He vanished.

Because he received his green card. Or so I thought.

That was three weeks ago, on the Feast Day of St. Augustine. In three weeks, he submitted his resignation, hoarded his little property to a Nashville Storage, packed up his duffel bag and drove all the way to Fort Lauderdale. He did these without telling anyone, including me. And I was supposedly his best friend. The rat.

And then, he called me.

"Mario," he said in a mild and nervous tone.

I blurted out my fears and anger. "What have you done? Where are you now? Are you okay? What happened?"

"Calm down," he answered. "I am safe here."

"In Florida?... Why did you do this shit Lazarus?"

"I was visited by St. Augustine."

Being a La Salle graduate, I have a low regard for Augustinians. I am Dominican bred. Besides being sociable, I am practical.

"Do you have a job there?"

"No."

Dammit! "Medical insurance?"

"No."

"Do you have money?"

"A little."

"Lazaro, Lazaro, why are you so impulsive? Do you know what you're doing?"

"Please understand Mario, I need to act upon my visions. They are gifts from God."

I had the urge to hang up the phone, guilty for what I suspect his mental deterioration. I should have done something. I was imagining a headline in Fort Lauderdale: A Homeless Filipino Nurse - Murdered.

And then, Lazaro narrated his visions, he talked as if I was not even in the other line:

LAZARO’S IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

.....