My name is not Susan

Years ago, in the Philippines, I learned through gay writer-friends that a dictionary on gay lingo was being developed. Unfortunately this development did not see fruition primarily because of the dynamic nature of gay lingo itself. The said that by the time this dictionary has seen print, the terms that it contained would have been obsolete, replaced by new terms. One could argue that this can be addressed by releasing editions of this dictionary on a regular basis. After all, more words are continually added to the English language each year so why should gay lingo be any different?

But then again, would this be financially viable to whomever publishes this dictionary? How big is the market who will snap up copies of this dictionary on a yearly basis? Even if many gay lingo terms end up on the mainstream, many think that the idea of a gay dictionary is, at best, a novelty. I remember that Ralph Galan and Ronald Baytan edited a small, pocket-sized gay dictionary. It was cute and it made for a cute gift to give your uber-butch friend or relative. I don’t know how well it did it terms of sales because I didn’t see a second edition but then publishing it might have just been a one-shot deal. I don’t really know.

One viable option, I think, is to have an on-line dictionary that can easily be updated once new information (terms and what-not) is available. Kind of like a wiki-pedia (homo-pedia?) page that can be updated by a number of homo-linguists. 

I mentioned something about how some gay terms and phrases have made it through the mainstream. I had observed this long before, mostly with my older relatives. My earliest recollection of this is an older aunt who referred to money as anda. In the early 80s, I think this was spurred by the popularity of some musicians whose lyrics where both lyrical and colloquial. The band Hotdog comes to mind. I think advertising also played a big role in this. I remember an old advertisement for a multipurpose cleaner. A girl was ready to eat her pastry but it fell to the dingy counter, so she she couldn’t eat it anymore. She gloomily sighed and hopelessly uttered, ‘Gu-tom Jones na ako!‘ Tom Jones was, still is (I think) a gay term for hungry.

About a couple of weeks ago, as Ted, Vic and I were walking home from a dinner at another friend’s house, we were talking about this thing. Vic was marvelling at how many famous names and phrases have been assimilated in gay lingo. We had fun enumerating these names in that impromptu and mobile brainstorm.

Some examples: Luz Valdez (after a Filipina actress, meaning to lose); Winnie Santos (after a sister of a famous Filipina actress, meaning to win); Laila Dee (after yet another Filipina actress, meaning someone who just lays  back in bed during sex, doing nothing); [Gu]Tom Jones (the famous singer, meaning hungry); Purita Sanchez (after a celebrity, meaning poor or broke); Rica Peralejo (after a Filipina actress, meaning rich or monied); and, Tita Maggie[lagid] (after a mascot of instant noodles, meaning someone with visibly large gums), etc.

We also noted how these terms have evolved over time, so that one name could replace another but retain the same meaning. Some examples: Eva Kalaw, a decidedly 70s term (named after a lady senator) which meant to defecate, became Eva Carino, after the mother of a tremendously famous Filipino actor, in the 90s. [P]Ayatollah Khomeini (after Iran’s leader in the 70s) became a term for someone who is slim (Payat in Filipino), which later evolved into Lapis lazuli (the color) because lapis is Filipino for ‘pencil’.

What about the term for gay people? In every city or province or country I go to, it is very fascinating to observe how homosexuals are referred to by gays and lesbians themselves or by the community at large. The list is inexhaustible, I’m afraid. Whenever I am back in Manila, I always encounter some new term to learn frommy gay and lesbian friends.

Just recently, I encountered yet another new term for gay men. BAIT (pronounced as bait, but with a longer A), coined by a fellow blogger. It’s supposed to be a contraction of Bayot, which is one of the Filipino terms for gay men.

I am not proposing any analysis on the dynamic nature of gay lingo. But I remember one funny story that illustrates it yet again.

When I was working with TLF (an NGO working with gay men on HIV prevention) 8 years ago, one of our  projects was to support the formation of gay student organizations in 4 universities in Metro Manila. T was a student leader in one of these universities, around 17 at that time, a bright and cheerful guy. He became fast friends with M, a colleague. M wasn’t a stranger in gay lingo. His normal way of speaking was peppered with it. T, meanwhile, spoke his own brand of gay lingo. I remember it to be utterly complicated, like changing the last syllable of words into ‘rex’, or something like it. I personally found it difficult to understand. I, however, didn’t expect M to have the same difficulty. One evening, M and T took the same FX (a public utility van that seats 10 people) from our office in Manila to M’s home in Quezon City. On the 90-minute ride, T did nothing but talk. According to M, the other people in the FX stared in wonderment at what T was saying. I laughed.

I asked M if he understood and M said that he had to ask T frequently what he was trying to say. Both of us laughed harder.