Camp It Up

The idea first came to me while waiting for our flight to Malaysia to start boarding. My officemate Jay (who was with me on the trip) was raving about the pre-wedding seminar that he and his fiancée attended that prior weekend. What struck him was how the whole thing was one huge compatibility test; if the couple pass with flying colors, the chances of their marriage succeeding is high. In fact, the whole seminar seemed designed to discourage rather than encourage couples against married life. The idea behind it is to dispel all romantic notions of marriage that often are the source of conflict within a marriage.

Last Friday evening I ended up counseling a friend and fellow blogger about his increasingly rocky relationship with his boyfriend. We stayed up for more than three hours in Eastwood, trying to work things out. Then Saturday afternoon I stepped out of the iBlog Summit for a few minutes just to counsel another blogger-friend on his shaky long distance relationship.

(The irony is that I’ve never been in a relationship ever. I’m just lucky, or maybe unlucky, that I know lots of folks—friends, actually—who’ve gone through the rollercoaster ride of falling in and out of love with the right or wrong person in the right or wrong time and have learned or not learned their lesson well. And I kept asking questions—easy questions, difficult questions, stupid ones, obvious ones, ones that probed deeper, unlikely ones, surprising ones. But never ask me to analyze myself when I fall for someone.)

And several months ago lobster_tony posted in his LiveJournal his idea of putting up a sanctuary for gay folks. Click here to read about it further.

So it occurred to me: what if I put up a Relationship Camp for Gay Couples? We’re not out to encourage gay marriages (heller, Catholic Church kaya?!) but rather to provide a venue wherein gay couples can put their relationship to the test to see if indeed they have it in them to make the relationship last long. It’s a Compatibility Boot Camp, but with stilettos for the cross-dressers and pointed-tip Paul Smiths for the pa-mhintas.

The camp will be held on a weekend in an enclosed, secure area in Puerto Galera (I’m thinking of the land nearest the area that they call “Jurassic Park”). Couples will undergo various exercises and tests, ranging from written tests to physical ones.

Important questions will be raised; important issues will have to be faced. Do you have matching personalities as well as matching wardrobe? Are you sexually compatible, or is one of you getting the raw end of the deal (and no, he need not be the bottom one)? Are you financially up to it, or will a sale at Prada mean the two of you will be eating instant noodles for days? When an argument arises, do you resort to shouting and quoting all the contrabida lines from Sharon Cuneta movies? Will it be Madonna more than Mariah, or vice versa? Pa-mhin or pa-girl? Campy or sarcastic? To chat or not to chat? Club Bath or Fahrenheit? Long distance or not? Exclusive or open?

The final test will have all the couples in a pitch-black dark room. They will all be naked, and the only instruction they have is to find their partner in the dark. The challenge is for the participants to go through the exercise without it degenerating into a free-for-all orgy. They will also not be given a time-limit; participants should feel that they may be stuck in that dark room for the whole night. At an unannounced hour, the lights will suddenly be switched on. Bistuhan na ‘to!

A camp full of homosexuals is going to give new meaning to the word “camp”. And that’s why I need help on the name studies for this camp. It’s too expected to play on the word “camp” so I’m kinda staying away from that, but you guys might come up with something brilliant along those lines. Anyway, do give your suggestions.

What would be the name of the camp? And what other camp exercises would you suggest?