Whatever happened to class

No. This is not about the battle of the dirt poor against the filthy rich. That one is a struggle that many are inspired to join in as they find the wide gap present right smack dab in the middle of their own lives. Talk about misery loving company or simply associations: you are empathetic to others because somehow you see yourself in them.

This one here is a story about the rich and the famous—both, of course, are debatable--allowing the demise of their class. Thanks to the company they keep intimately, especially those whose education and understanding of what is classy is limited only on the clothes and the scent that they wear and never on the attitude and character that must supposedly come out as the best accessory than the big hoop earrings, French tips and pouting lips.

Now think of the word copycat. Then, put the word “poor” before the word copycat. What do we have then? Correct. Quintessential social climber. Indeed.

This leaves me to explain why I mentioned education. Class is something that can be taught and learned. It can be acquired from constant beso-beso with the poreless cheeks of the rich and the famous—stress some more on the debatableness of the words rich and famous. Exactly, the cheeks of your designer and artist friends.

Understanding, I also say, because someone with class must understand—always—the existence of social stressors. And breeding, something that is a freaking must-have for someone who claims to be classy, must not be surrendered to anger.

Yes, Virginia, you do not succumb to the temptation of releasing your self-devised weapon of mass destruction—those French tips, love—against those who do not find you physically attractive; those who call you--in malicious whispers or through a megaphone--“ugly” or “starfish” who “must better go back to the sea.”

If you have breeding and you are really sosyal like your real sosyal friends, all you have to do is just smile at those who find you ugly or starfishy (my apologies to all species of starfish) and sashay around, ride over the air of freedom that since you’ve had under your wings for being an out gay who never had any issues about his sexuality or had to undergo that suffocating experience of staying inside the closet for 18 years.

Or you approach them, still sashaying as if you just won a major award in the Miss Gay Paquibato beauty pageant that you know they are so afraid to join in for fear that they will pass out during the question and answer portion. Then whisper in their ears—“Kung starfish ako, tuyum kayo!”

And then smile and walk-out, and sashay some more.

Yes, I pity you and your anger. It’s painful to be called names. So go on. Call them names, too. Summon the goddess of ugly names and smear it on their beautiful, beautiful—thanks to foundation and diamond peeling—faces.

Call them maya, mayette, mayang bungol, flores-de-maya, pathetically-pretentious-gay-male-who-claims-to-be-bi-and-top-only-with-girls-but-bottom-with-boys, social-climbers-we-are-alike. Call them pobre. Call them pa-sosyal-unlike-me-because-i-am-really-sosyal. Take out your purse. Show off your money, something that you must have because your sosyal, anyway.

But do it in whispers, please. Do not scream. That will only hammer down the perception that you are a screaming faggot. That’s derogatory, of course. I mean, to be called faggot is derogatory. And it’s a double whammy if you are called a screaming faggot, no matter how true.

Because your friends are classy and sosyal, you do not smear their reputations by dousing beer on the beautiful, beautiful face of the maya who called you starfish. Or engage in a cat fight with them—slap the maya’s face and throw him off under the table, to say hello and kiss the fence.

And, because you are classy, too, just like your friends, you do not run and leave the poor, poor maya crying on the shoulder of another maya—the scene of which reminds many gays of the time when they so badly needed to win a beauty pageant but sadly lost.

Yes. You are not supposed to run. I told you…you sashay your way out. That one is graceful exit; sashay your way out and leave the poor, poor mayas paying the P1,800 damages. All by themselves.

And you are not supposed to do this in Rizal Promenade on a Saturday night. Not in Rizal Promenade where one can buy two kilos of flesh straight from the counter--for free.