I don’t hear Swardspeak being spoken out loud often. I usually read it online with the voice in my mind and that always pales in comparison. So, hearing a street full of people shouting protest chants in Swardspeak filled me with a giddiness I only felt the first time I fell in love. This Pride felt more alive. Maybe because I came in with ambivalence, only wanting to take pictures. But I think it’s because I chose the right crowd to be with. In that moment, there was joy and there was hope that the future won’t be the same as the present.

Bakla? Agi? What’s that?

I want to be consumed by hope for the future. I want everything that we’re doing in the present to be all worth it. This thing I am writing or this thing I am doing must have a purpose because if not, then why would I turn towards it? Jose Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity came to me when I needed my MFA thesis to have a working theory. My project was a novel in verse with the main character as a phenomenon of time, Decade. With Decade, the title of my project and forthcoming from Grana Books in 2024, revolves around a queer character with indeterminate origins and abilities. I’ve modeled them from characteristic of epic heroes in the Philippines but subverting masculine expectations such as going on grand adventures or getting multiple women like they’re trophies. Basically, the novel in verse is just Decade existing, desiring, trying to escape its author’s control, and yearn for the future. One of my panelists clocked what I was doing and asked me to just name Decade as Austere because I’m masking my autobiographical gesture with a lot of deferrals from the self.

This self-deferral is present in all my work. I have to be extraliterary to explore the self. I was a fiction writer first before I became serious with poetry. That sort of explains it. I’d rather use characters than be me. Besides, my gay longing is better when it’s not acknowledged and it manifests in unexpected places (No, I haven’t talked about it with my therapist). But seriously, I like to experiment with my poetry. There’s more freedom in it and there are better LGBTQ+ writers who write affectively effectively.

I am enamored by the thought of the horizon. The horizon contains the potential of things, the fruition of labor done in the present. Muñoz posits that we must insist on a queer futurity because the present is so poisonous and insolvent¹. I hold on to this utopian vision because I don’t have anywhere else to be naïve in. In love and in life, I have lost most of my naivete. But if I and the queer movement wish for a better future for us, then we must build from the past towards the future. I admit I have used this argument to justify my absence in the present sometimes. But when work needs to be done, I am there. I just have to wait for myself for a little bit but I do arrive.

The word queer is new to the Philippines. It does not have an equivalent word here, although some have domesticised its spelling to kweer. In Let’s Get Real: Queering the Queer in the Philippines, literary critic J. Neil Garcia, says that concepts from the West do not become understood all that fully hereabouts, and although they may appear to be circulating within much of local discourse (in that the actual words are being spoken and written within the different registers of our cultures), their significations slip helplessly away from their actual performances. The only relationship I have with the word queer is my use of it in the academe. It’s a good word that embraces everyone in the gender spectrum but I have no connection to it other than its universal usage and my study of queer theory.

The bakla is widely used in the Philippines and holds a number of meanings such as drag queen, gay, hermaphrodite, homosexual, queer, third sex, and transgender². The word bakla is used in the Tagalog-speaking regions of the Philippines and in mainstream media. I don’t have a strong relationship with the word bakla. When someone calls me that, there’s a wall of unfamiliarity. I don’t turn my head towards it. I like the Swardspeak version of it more which is baccla with the two soft Cs replacing the hard K. You have to say it with more flourish. In my region, I am called an agi³. People called me agi even before I knew what it was. My existence just gave it away, I guess. I spoke softly, swayed my hips, laughed girlishly. I was filled with shame and guilt over something I didn’t understand. I was told to fix how I spoke, walked, and positioned my pinky finger when holding things. In the early 2000s, my mother would tell other teachers and relatives that I sang Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and recite bible verses, proud that I can do that at a young age but ignoring the fact that I was effeminate. My father and other relatives would tell me not to be agi or they’ll put me in a sack, hang me on a tree, and beat me till I become manly.

In ‘The bakla, the agi: our genders which are not one’, Jaya Jacobo presents the meanings of agi⁴: ‘agui’ is registered as ‘señal’ (sign), ‘huella’ (track),’rastro de lo que paso’ (trace of passage). It also refers to the act of walking by (pasar andando), manifesting in various aspects of the voyage, as ‘transitar,’ ‘transito,’ ‘transitorio.’ Paradoxically, it conducts itself as a ‘hidden trace’ (tandang̃a tago) by way of ‘ostugo,’ intimating the aleatory rhythm of passing through, its visibility alternating between countenance and camouflage. When I was younger, the other children would call me agi and when I looked upset, they would switch inflection and say, ‘Excuse me, ma-agi ko.’ (Excuse me, I’ll pass by.) To pass by, to become an indeterminate phenomenon that only settles when it wants to was not a concept I thought of back then (I didn’t have a masters at age 8). I only felt thwarted.

The agi is always in motion⁵. A movement is necessary to arrive at something, somewhere. I share a utopic vision with my LGBTQ+ family in attaining our rights. This shared goal identifies us as a phenomenon, separate from our sexualisation and sexuality. To be bakla or agi or queer is not a static identity but that moves in gay time as opposed to straight time⁶. Both J. Neil Garcia and Jaya Jacobo want to examine the merits of a universality of queer experience with which English is the main mode of discourse.

The LGBTQ+ community in the Philippines have contributed to the excitation of literature and the arts. Pick a genre or form and a queer person is eating it up and leaving no crumbs (I had to get it out, okay?). I am only one of many-many writers who write their kabaklaan (queerness) without shame. There are many landmark LGBTQ writings in the Philippines. Among those are the three Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Writing books from the late nineties and Tingle: Anthology of Pinay Lesbian Writing from 2021. Also in 2021, Katitikan, the literary journal of the Philippine south, published their 4th issue of Queer Writing with the intention of representation outside of capitalist powers which only see queer identity as another source of profit, and the insistence of the queer voice and queering of language. The zine and comics community are rife with queer opportunities too. Rejecting control from mainstream and traditional publishers and editors who think of profit, zine-makers in the Philippines create truly new art.