Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Alias, "Boy..."

You'll hear it in the streets of Manila, among kanto boys drinking their beer bottles. In high schools, among barkada of boys teasing one another. In men's locker rooms, amidst sniggering of name-callers. In shady drug lord dens, among whispering policemen for a crime bust to report to media.

And much more popular, in Philippine movies, as part of action film dialogues and comedy film posters, all featuring male leads.

All these are aliases that start with "Boy", like Boy Tondo ("Lumabas ka na diyan, wala ka nang takas!"), Boy Dako ("Padaplis nga sa iyong malaking..."), and Boy Bawang ("Pabili po").

Remember these films? So who played the roles of Boy Ahas,
Boy Recto, Boy Pana, Boy Tigas, and Boy/Kanto?
It has been part of our pop culture and society, to attach this short tagline at the end of a feared, respected, or ridiculed guy's name. Usually used for males, the nickname signifies what the person is known for, like a certain trait, characteristic, physical feature, a previous deed, or recurring action. It's given by their male peers, during kantyawan or jeering sessions, and the men may be branded for life, whether they like the nickname or not.

But what's so unique in Pinoy slang is how these monickers start with an "alyas" (or "also known as"), then followed by "boy" with the unique descriptor after it.

So to hear someone called "Juan Dela Cruz, Alyas Boy Tigas" may make you go run for your life ("tigas" = hard, strong man) or make you curious about his assets ("tigas" = hard, erect thingy).

Now, in Manila's Gay Bar scene.

Given that these macho dancers are all men, name-calling among these young guys won't be that far. The names are usually hush-hushed among them, used as private jokes. But when the monickers start to spread among the bar employees, he's dead! Just listen to the DJ when he introduces some of the guys, as he'll use the ridiculed nickname as part of the spiel. ("Please wel-kem... Boy Vienna Sausage")

Two such monickers got me intrigued. The stories of Boy Torrid and Boy Kant*t


"Ruiz"*, alyas "Boy Torrid": I met Ruiz in the hosto bar "Neighborhood"* last year. He's 21, around 5'6 in height,  moreno, and has a pretty-boy face that usually makes heart throbs out of campus varsity basketball players. Imagine a shorter and darker Wesley Gonzales, but with better nose and less wide lips. A thinner Pinoy-version of Kieran Culkin, if you wish.

Inside this hosto bar with cheap drinks, their typical clientele are usually the "bar girls", or girl hostesses working in other girlie bars. These poke-poker-face girls come there after their work, usually at 3AM wearing short skirts, low tops, and very high shoes. And what they look for is to have a good time with a guy of their choice.

So being one of the better-looking hosto models of the bar, Ruiz was frequently requested by these girls to be tabled with them. Different girls go to the bar every night, and he'd usually be picked first during show-ups.

He might have taken his hosto job seriously, because once seated, he'd do his smooth, suave "the moves" quickly to his customer - smiling with his dimples, holding hands, arms around shoulders, whispering sweet nothings. He'd use his swabe charm to make the girl comfortable with him enough, that after a few hours, their companions would just notice him and his guest doing the lip locking.

Yes. French kissing beside their companions. On the couch. In the open where everyone can see. Every night. With a different girl. And that was why he got to be branded as "Boy Torrid" by his companions.

To be honest, when I heard that this was his so-called monicker, I got disappointed. Not because he was tabling other girls, even if I'd been tabling this guy for weeks. It was because I never experienced some torrid tongue-to-tongue action with him.

Anyway, good riddance. I don't think where he is working now, "Answer for The Emotionally Needy" gay bar, allows such passionate love or saliva-sharing.


"Padua"*, alyas "Boy Kant*t": He was a new all-the-way macho dancer in the gay bar "Home Base."* He's nearing 30, short at around 5'3, brown skin whitened by powder, and unlike Ruiz, doesn't have a pretty face, despite his boy band / Patrick Garcia haircut of the mid-90s.

All-the-way male strippers are among the favorites of gay men to watch for obvious reasons. But only a few of them get tabled, as gay men I noticed would prefer to sit beside a handsome cutie-pie face than an ugly angry dick.

On one night, however, this particular gay customer in his discreet-looking black jacket was mesmerized somehow with Padua. Maybe it was how the new stripper approached gay customers during "area." Unlike the others who would just stand tentatively at the customer's side, Padua would confidently straddle the sitting customer with his erect cockatoo directly in front of the guy. Then grind a little, and whispering while waiting for a tip. That night, the discreet gay fellow might have enjoyed that one-on-one area session too much for him to get a not-so-goodlooking ATW dancer to sit with him.

Or maybe the discreet fellow had another agenda in mind. Because a few hours after, they were spotted by an impersonator at one dark corner in the empty 2nd floor of the gay bar. What were they doing, which lasted for more than half an hour? Talk? Yeah right! It was the reason why Padua got his scandalous nickname. Discreet gay guy in his discreet black jacket was apparently a bottom.

This was not surprising however, if that gay bar had a private VIP room where a customer and his requested dancer could do whatever they please. So even if the dancer might have done something similar, no one else in the bar would really know or care. But to do it out in the open in the room-less "Home Base"? (Plus, where did they wash?)

Mr. Discreet Gay Fellow might have liked the experience too much. He returned to the bar the following night, with the same discreet black jacket, and tabled the same guy. Did anything happen then? Nothing really, or anything too scandalous. Oh, except for another MD coining the monicker for Padua that night, without them knowing that their dirty deed has spread to naughty ears in the bar.

Even the black jacket gay customer was given a nickname. We called him "Pa-Kan."

Conclusion:

The use of these nicknames has been so ingrained in our male society, that it's used in the lowliest of tabloids, to some showbiz personalities (Mo Twister, alyas Boy Laglag), to commercial products and services (Boy Lechon) and even in the high seats of the government (Erap, alyas Boy Agila, Mar Roxas, alyas Boy Padyak). Try searching in Google and Youtube, and you'll find numerous of these Boy Kamote or Torpe or Kuripot or Tanong or Manhid or Bastos or whatever descriptor that can be thought of, with their own web pages, blogs, pictures or videos. 

Not all nicknames start with "Alyas, Boy", of course. Even the most famous of monickers for macho dancers came from a local 90s film R-rated local film starring Jay Manalo. Remember his name and what he was known for? For sure, some macho dancers in the 90s were called the same if he was known for his horse-sized asset. Despite being in pop culture for almost more than a decade now, the nickname can still be heard being thrown about in gay bars at this time. 

So be curious if the one you're eyeing or tabling is called "Totoy Mola." 

- Blog Article by GB Goer, Alyas "Boy Hayok"

GB Goer
Learn more: Lessons from Gay Bars in Manila
http://machosandhostos.blogspot.com/
email: char.affairs@gmail.com



Photocredits: old movie posters from http://video48.blogspot.com, http://stevenwilson-forskins.blogspot.com
http://masculinked.tumblr.com/post/4085969485/to-zip-or-unzip-that-is-the-question

5 comments:

  1. GB, to me, nothing beats smooching in a bar while in full view of everyone. The sad truth though is that for most of our GBboys, the machismo that, surprisingly, still permeates the gaybar culture is enough to prevent most from liplocking with their gay client, no matter how bango, or how generous or simply how nice one has been to them. They stand to earn pogi points only when they snag a girl; no matter if it be a pokpok hostess who most likely has cobwebs lining her uterus from recurrent HPV infections, or pus draining down her pussy from gonorrhea, or a swarm of pediculosis pubis waiting behind that cheap nylon thong that she wears under her Divisoria pekpek shorts. Hahahahaha!! Halata bang may pait? Hahahahahahaha!! Ewan ko ba? Karamihan pa din talaga tanga at nadadala sa buyo at sulsol ng kasama nila sa trabaho. Pero what to do? Straight eh.

    Once in a while though, you run into someone who just takes all that shit and throws it back into the sullen faces of untabled cohorts. Maybe someone who really, really needs the tip? Maybe. Or just maybe, someone who has better sense on who between the balahurang pokpok and the well-mannered (but dangerously horny) discreet man will bring him a lesser chance of acquiring oral thrush and at the same time, reward him with greater "generosity".

    Pak na pak! Nobela itu. Dama namang malalim ang pinaghuhugutan davah?

    Minsan, nakaka-meet tayo ng ganitong otoko and boy, award na award ang karanasan ng diwata sa gabing iyon. Banatan sa harap ng madla. Shocked and mga lason (read:babae) na naliligaw at tili sa inggit ang mga kafatid. Ang saya na, ang sarap pa. Hahahahahaha.

    Once ran into a guy whose head spinned with the play that we did in the VIP room. Sobrang wild daw pala ang lola ninyo. I replied that nothing comes to close to being wild as kissing torridly, not in the VIP room, where all is kept in secret, but out there in the bar's floor, where the mostest(?) of derring-do's is way too seldom done.

    (Which is weird, considering na bar nga yan para sa mga bakla di ba? At ginawa yan para pasayahin ang mga bakla. E ba't mga pokpok lang pa ang umaastang reyna-reynahan? Hmpff! Weird.)

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  2. I love your blog! I was just wondering, how come you don't have Google AdSense yet? With the literature prowess that you execute in your blog, you'll definitely earn decently with AdSense.

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  3. @v, omg. that was a very long nobela, errr, comment. Haha, what did those poke-pokelya girls do to your guy ba, for you too feel such deep-seated anger towards them? haha. maybe i need to interview you for your life story, and then I'd just find that we have similarities (yeah, my boy #3 left me for a pokelya, 2-3 weeks after his telling me "i love you").

    But i truly agree with you on these men and their machismo. Maybe how these monickers started from the non-tabled "walang magawa" na MDs, while waiting and bored inside the dressing room. Poking fun of those who had an advantage over them. Inggit factor.

    Hmmm... about the doing it wildly in the open, haha!!! Gorah! Had that experience na with a Latino stripper way back (that's another post). But I'd rather be discreet in my own little corner snuggling with my "lover boy." charot.

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  4. Hi elmerlovesoreo! Thanks thanks!! Well, I'm just starting, and I didn't want to clutter the blog with too many ads. I started with nuffnang, as you can see, but there's still nothing. I'll try AdSense later when I wake up in the afternoon (just came home from another gay bar session). But I appreciate your kind words and advice!

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  5. I agree. You can rake in money thru ads and perhaps the money can help some of your MD boys. Chorls, Mamang!

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