Reports from home were both enraging and instructive.

Enraging because I can’t still appreciate the art of dying senselessly, much more if death is spawned by someone I have been expecting to protect me—someone whose mouth I feed because of the tax I pay to the government.

Enraging because I cannot imagine dying from the hands of a proud and loutish military personnel whose existence depended on the fact that he gets a share of my salary.

Enraging because I didn’t expect somebody I know would find death for the simple reason that he wanted to curb the horniness of a military personnel by defending his friends.

Anton’s penchant of being violent was always hidden by his bubbly character bizarrely twisted by his being soft-spoken. Among friends, he was always known as one of those who will buy a friend’s fight, always willing to gamble just to protect a friend.

This he was able to prove right until Sunday night when he was felled to the ground by a military personnel’s gun who earlier wanted to “table” Ayee’s female cousin, Mutya, inside bar in Kidapawan City.

Like her gay cousin who has won several gay beauty contests, Mutya was also charming and beautiful. Their family belongs to one of the old rich clans in Kidapawan City.

Initial reports had it that the suspect also grabbed Ayee’s butt. The boorish character of the military personnel irked Anton who, with Ayee and Mutya, ganged up the military personnel until the latter was pinned down.

Because he could not contain the shame of being a loser, the military personnel fired his gun hitting Anton. Killing Anton.

Another gay friend, Rolly, described what happened very clearly in the vernacular—Mao nay kaso sa crime of pride. Army gikulata ug bayot, natandog ang pride…gipusil ang bayot.

But the report was also instructive. For one, it tells me to anticipate the possibility that, like Anton, I can also be killed by a military official whose family, the Filipinos feed.

And that it can be soon.

Anton’s death was instructive because it tells me to appreciate the darkness of irony.