BB Genes

I grew up in a brainy lot of boys, but our younger triumvirate is more known among our contemporaries as the enfants terrible. I guess all three of us were bestowed with the brain gene. But it hardly ends there.

On top of that, the eldest of the trio has one more gene. He has the one that allows him to cope with all sorts of people in varied life situations. If ever you have the chance to meet my brother, you will be floored by that charisma -€“ that certain magnetism that is like a passport that allows him unrestricted access to all social animals of the earth. Poor mortals who have been in places with him never ever notice that he had interest in only a few of them. During our recent bonding years while the two of us were having our stealthy naissance as newly self-accepting masculine gay brothers, I remember him telling me an anecdote about Virginia Woolf spending a night at a party. I surely like the cold humor of Woolf -€“ very cerebral, not physical. But I wouldn'€™t have had her composure and would have purposely spilled red wine on gowns of society mistresses and came off smashing a flute glass on the face of some debonair of a gentleman who was full of himself (social gatherings are never devoid of this species).

On the other hand, our youngest also has an extra - the super-perseverance gene. He accomplished major breakthroughs in his chosen path much earlier than his kuyas. He entered academic profession much earlier than anybody else in the family, getting offered a junior faculty position at the flagship campus of the premier state university right after graduation from the university. He handled reinforcement lecture classes for sophomore students at the electrical engineering department during his final year as an undergrad, seated at the student council of his college at the same time. All these tucked with his busy schedule for an undergraduate thesis that almost did not run at the deadline! I was awed by all these. This blatant rolling up of a boy'™s sleeves in a "can do excellently" attitude. I was never more proud of my brother when he pulled it all up together.

But what about me? What did I have?

It was another brain gene. Sans the coping gene. Sans the perseverance gene. Geneticists say the genotype symbol for the male human phenotype is XY and the one for the woman phenotype is XX, the Y gene being dominant over the recessive X. Aside from my XY gene, I probably have a BB gene lurking somewhere in my DNA waiting for the crew of the Human Genome Project to map with scientific accuracy the mysterious phenotype it represents. It took a chunk of my 20™s to muster the skill of coping. And I had long doldrums in my path. My writing cycle was erratic. You would even wonder why I call it a "cycle" at all.

During one of those rare visits of my writer friends to my country nook, I was introduced to a producer of a lifestyle program of one of the two major television companies in Manila. When my friend told the lady that I am a literary writer (an anomaly in an out-of-urban place like Palawan) but I don'€™t do commissioned writing, she was aghast. With composure of course. Suddenly wanting for a word to say, the producer smiled and just looked at the space where I was.

But what can I do? I am uneasy with commercially commissioned work. I am wired to miss deadlines. Besides, salon style work never appealed to me at all, except for one idiotic time during a street party in Malate where I and my younger set of friends composed a rengga out of boredom. On the other hand, I ache for inspiration. The lure of commercial success in a culture of pop tart makes me squirm. Money is like sex. After you bought what you have had in mind, you feel empty. After I've spent myself in bed with my partner, I often wonder why I did it -€“ thus the compulsion to smoke a stick of ciggy after the act. It's not guilt. It's a simple case of - yes, like that. Like that network producer staring into empty space.