Personal Thoughts While Sampling  The Poetry of  Nick Carbo

 

Secret Asian Man is not only poetry - it is a BIG Filipino-American story compressed into a thin book.  Reading its contents reminds me of the Pinoys I see all over America - but mostly myself. Not that I am  tunay na lalaki ( heaven forbid!) but what this tunay na lalaki exposes is the very core of my being, mannerisms akin to me, feelings derived from mine.

 

Walking in NY looking for Rizal, sliding one's hand in one's armpit and then smelling it ( yuuuuck! ), chat rooms, phone sex - all these are the secrets of  Filipinos  we don't want to share with the rest of the world - but willing to share with each others…..

 

In the first week I moved to America , my company  made me share an apartment with a Chilean and a Brazilian. The very first day, the Chilean hated my smoking, the Brazilian loved me for being gay and he shocked me for walking bare all over the apartment .  When it came to passing PT Licensure, they adored me because  I passed my board easily. They didn't. They passed their Driving test easily. I didn't. From the first day a Filipino enters the American scene, he will encounter unexpected situations and conflicts and though he is famous for hurdling difficulties with flying colors,  he will not stop engaging these for the rest of his  life. Filipinos have to struggle not only against the locals,  they have to struggle against other immigrants. My first year was hell.

 

And that is perhaps why I enjoy reading this recent poetry collection by Nick Carbo - it may be an expose of our little Filipino intimate and dirty secrets but gosh, how many times did I want to talk about them with another Filipino? Non Filipinos sometimes cringe at the way I hug Filipino ladies, pull their hair, call them amore y  querida, or talk to them with disdain as they laugh their heads off (of course my lady Filipino friends know I am gay). They could not understand why Filipino ladies can be this casual and intimate with someone like me. There is an intense sister/brotherhood camaraderie among Filipinos when they haven't seen each others for the longest time. And my, WE ARE LOUD people.

 

Still, lets face it, the talk among Filipinos has different levels - I know a Filipino Therapist who laughs "hihihihihi" with me and "hahahahaha" when an American is present. My Greek buddy in the hospital makes a note of this - and asks me why that is so. I tell him - "It's a Filipino thing."

 

I am of course the worst Filipino to ask. I spin wonderful tales of excuses and reasons. One day a Nurse asked me why I am not married - I told HER GULLIBILITY that I belong to the Ming dynasty's Eunuch Society. We are born and raised to protect the Empress of China so THEY CUT IT OFF at birth. She spread the news all over the hospital and everybody wanted to know how it felt. I furthered my wonderful tale and told them it grew back bigger than ever - they got more curious….

 

The way I promote my fantastic exoticness in America is becoming legendary. One day I am gonna tell you a story about this Filipino who created a world of fantasy as his way of adjusting to his American environ - and perhaps he is the gay brother of Ang Tunay Na Lalaki. Anyway, going back to the Greek, he once asked me also where Filipinos go for worship. I said the Catholic Church. "So what Catholic Church do you go to?" he asked me. Asking me that was a wrong move!

 

 I said I worship differently  because I belong to the Waywaya Religion in the remote islands of the Philippines . His curiosity got so aroused he would not leave me until he got all the information he could get (he is a Doctor by the way and famous researcher) about my religion. I spun a wild story about my worship of nature etcetera etcetera.  And  he believed me for weeks until he asked a Filipino Nurse about Waywaya religion.

 

The point I'm driving at is - we Filipinos are natural story tellers. We love sharing  ourselves' experiences with one another. We don't hide  much from each others. The only problem is - we enjoy giving information more than receiving. Oh yes, ask about an issue and we all have a side to it, but do we really care about the other side? We probably don't.  I am stating  this basing  on the  premise I posted on this site years ago - We really don't care about each others' ideas as shown by our lack of  reading  each others' books. If we are a population who read one another, we would probably be the most cohesive nation in the world. But we aren't. How many Filipino and Filipino-American books are printed-out from different presses annually? Hundreds. How many of us read them? Scant.

And I do not think I'm jumping to conclusions when I say the more we don't read one another, the more we will not get our acts together. How can we be united when we are not interested in what our fellow-Filipinos say? We are a reflection of our politicians' philosophy - My words matter more than theirs.

 

I know I tend to rattle in my website and unlike the good Filipino authors,  I am not  as disciplined as they. Hey, I sit before this computer and start tapping without a second thought. I am not down-grading myself and  I am not sermonizing in this book review but I can't help but think about these thoughts while reading the poetry of Nick Carbo.  He speaks into the soul of a Filipino. He says things that drive nails into the bones, painful and true. And I cannot give emphasis on this more - the Filipino, upon reading Carbo reads himself. His collection of poetry is a collection of well-chosen  words, well-planned, comprehensively- thought ideas. Each word is measured, re-checked, re-worded, and revised without end until the "heart" of the idea is fermented.  Or maybe I am praising Carbo too much - but my dear reader - if you are a writer, you know how much it takes to finish a book. You spend years, 7/24, days and nights and sweat and social life and sometimes it cost you your career - only for this work to be published. Yet, many Filipinos don't care about it. We shrug off our Filipino-authored books as elitist, too westernized, too easternized, too English, too Tagalog, too 'something'. We use all lame excuses not to read them. If all of us will just convert all the time we spend listening to our babbling politicians and our melodramatic actors and actresses and spend that time reading Filipino authored books, we will probably be the most intelligent nation in the world. You just don't know how much you gain in reading authors like F Sionil Jose or Nick Joaquin and you will never know how much you lose if you keep listening to our commentators and politicians who keep repeating themselves. The only thing they talk about is the same stupid arena of politics made up of  the same plot,  only using  different actors.

 

I am one of those who was sucked into the politics of our nation and after two years commenting on it, I  found myself repeating my lines.

 

Four years ago, I created my site to contribute to the promotion of Philippine and Philippine American Literature.  In Philippine Literature  lies the true measure of a Filipino's fulfillment. No wonderful commentator, no wonderful actor or actress, no profound politician can match the extent and the depth and gamut of emotions of a literary work  written by a Filipino. Every time I finish reading a simple short story  or a simple poem by a Filipino I acquire a new perspective in life.

 

Listen:

 

You'll never pass an audition in New York

until you improve your accent and learn

how to sing like Lea Salonga in Miss Saigon.

Did you  bring your Chinese dresses?"

"Talaga? I have to wear dresses

to get a part in a production?" he asks,

fanning himself with a magazine.

"Name the top ten male leads in Hollywood

and how many Asian hunks have you seen

involved in hot sex scenes with Sharon Stone,

Demi Moore, or Goldie Hawn?"

 

Thoughts like these are  secret thoughts in my mind. Secret thoughts kept hidden from American ears. Now they lie exposed thanks to  Nick Carbo.  Read him.

Alex Maskara is Pinoy