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AT SOME POINT, everyone talks about me.
This, of course, is expected when you're the product of Netflix, chill, and a broken condom. Just as my mother and father broke to my grandparents that they were going to stop at one kid, God thought The fuck not. They kept me not because Roe v. Wade has been overturned and abortion was not an option, but because we were a Filipino Roman Catholic family and abortion was never an option in the first place. Actually, I don't know if they even considered terminating me ─ I've yet to ask Papa about that. It did keep my Lolo & Lola's* thoughts up high for a grandson for a while, only to be disappointed again when God thought Hell to the no! and decided to make things worse for everybody.
Look, even if I was planned, I don't think what I became will help my case. This is expected when you're the family's troublemaking 'emo-goth' lesbian K-POP stan disaster child. You're instantly going to be the topic of family gatherings and you'll be the bad example your cousins are going to be compared to if they do drugs instead of studying hard to become a doctor or something. I'm not sure if it's the same with the other Asian people that we're friends with, but it usually starts with how much weight I've gained, the tells stories about I found myself in the middle of two alien invasions, why I couldn't become like my Kuya** Fritz or Mickey, why I talk like that, why I wear clothes like that, and ends with how I will never be happy in life because I'm 'tomboy' and I'll never find a man to have babies with. Harsh, but that's the reality I have to deal with.
You don't have to worry about me, though. I never really cared for what they said, whether they're my family members or the Karens down the street. It's a thing that my sister told me when we were younger, just around the time she was diagnosed with Juvenile Huntington's disease and people were sad not because she might die soon but because she wouldn't be able to do Taekwondo anymore. There's not much we can do about Tita*** Janice gossiping about me when she hasn't had much luck with her AFAM sugar daddies any way, so there's that.
I have a love-hate relationship with being the centre of attention. My popularity bled from the shabby rooms of a relative's 60th birthday party to the wax-polished floors of the schools I went to. Strangely, it was for all the right reasons. They'd tell how pretty I looked (as they should), how I was so brave for coming out of the closet when others couldn't, how good I danced, just doing things that should be done because it's the 21st century. I was praised, respected, and although the teachers would scold me for sending a bully to the clinic, my classmates loved me because I only did it to save a boy's ass from being beat. It just gets ugly when all that people think of me is the flamboyant gay kid who started fights: they don't see the street-smart, kind-of-nice cinephile lurking behind the resting bitch face that made Flash Thompson pee his pants. My reputation precedes me, but that's okay.
