The Wake

Gibbs, Ronan and I visited the wake of Danton Remoto’s father last night. The wake was at the St. Ignatius chapel inside Camp Aguinaldo.

Now here’s something we ought to know about the Philippine military; because it is woefully lacking in funds, the people have learned to just share and share with one another their meager resources. (Ironic that the institution tasked with wiping out communist insurgents are the ones exercising a communal existence. But I digress.)

To wit: Danton’s dad is sharing a room with another military corpse. Two coffins, two groups of monoblock chairs facing them, two tables full of pica-pica, coffee and tetra-packed juice drinks at the back. And of course there were two sets of mourners.

On the Remoto side, Danton’s guests included friends and colleagues of the rainbow kind. I saw gays and lesbians of varying persuasions and get-up, from the subtle to the obvious. On the other side there was one yuppie-looking guy who kept looking at Ronan. We teased him and goaded him to introduce himself to the guy, but he declined.

“Why?” we asked.

“It would be so cheesy if friends ask you, ‘Where did you two meet?’” he said, “and your answer is, ‘At a wake!’”

“Ah,” Gibbs and I nodded.

But then this hunk of a guy wearing a green “Incredible Hulk” t-shirt walked into the room and went straight to the other wake.

“Puwede na,” Gibbs whispered under his breath.

“Naman,” I seconded.

Danton approached us. After the initial chit-chat, we eventually asked out of curiosity who the other person lying in state was. Gibbs had noticed earlier that one of the flowers displayed came from the Phil. Sports Commission.

“Oh!” Danton said in his trademark half-whisper, half-excited delivery. “He’s the chairman of the Philippine Bodybuilding Team!”

Whoa.

And Danton happily recounted how on the first night, his side of the room was full of fairies and trannies while the other side was full of bulky hunks.

Damn! We missed not a wake, but a soiree. I swear, the set-up is perfect for a one-act play—someone call Chris Martinez, asap!