Ang mutually exclusive ay tumutukoy sa dalawang pangyayaring hindi maaaring maging parehong totoo.

Di ito nalalayo sa kasabihang nasa Bibliyang “Hindi maaaring pagsilbihan ng isang alipin ang dalawang panginoon nang sabay.” Ngunit habang ang nasabing nagmula sa banal na aklat ay may mga binanggit din patungkol sa Diyos at sa pera, ang mutually exclusive ay mas malawak ang saklaw kaya’t maaaring gamitin para ihalintulad o paghambingin ang kahit anong dalawang konsepto sa matematika, pangyayari, pakiramdam.

Sa programming, may tinatawag na Boolean data type. Ang data type na ito ay maaaring “tama” o “mali.” Ang itinatalagang halaga kung tama ay 1 at 0 naman para sa mali. Kung may dalawa tayong konsepto, pangyayari, o pakiramdam, at ituring natin silang mga data types, ang mga posibleng values na makukuha natin ay 00, 10, 01, at 11. Kung ang mga nasabing dalawang konsepto, pangyayari, o pakiramdam ay mutually exclusive, maaaring makuha ang 00, 10, at 01 ngunit hindi ang 11.

Gumamit tayo ng mga halimbawang mas madaling maunawaan.

Data type number 1: ang pag-inom ng iced coffee, decafeinated, served in a mason jar with a paper straw, and with extra whipped cream, at pagpost nito sa Instagram, #stressreliever #compromise #freewifi.

Data type number 2: ang pagtulong sa mga kawawang bata sa lansangan na walang tsinelas, marumi ang kasuotan, at pinagpatung-patong lamang na mga karton ang natutulugan.

Madaling magpatuksong pumalakat gamit ang Facebook status at sabihing, “Ang daming mga batang nangangailangan tapos yung iba dyan pakape-kape lang, #pasoshalpamore.” Ngunit kung susuriing maigi, hindi mutually exclusive ang dalawang data types. Pwedeng si ateng nagkape ay pagkalabas ng coffee shop, binigay yung extra croissant nya dun sa batang nanghihingi ng limampiso. Habang si ateng nag-rant sa FB, na nasa bahay lang, kaya nga bitter dahil di makagala, malamang di rin naman nag-effort lumabas at mag-ikot sa mga kalsada para maghanap ng mga paslit na matutulungan. Ang dalawa pang maaaring posibilidad ay may isang ateng mahilig magkape at allergic sa mga bata at may isa pang ateng tumutulong sa mga bata at nagkaka-anxiety pag umiinom ng kape. Pwedeng magkaibigan sila, pero di sila nangingi-alam sa isa’t isa.

Naaalala ko tuloy nang minsa’y tumambay akong mag-isa sa isang kapehan malapit sa bahay.

Gaya ng inaasahan, may mga batang nag-aabang sa mga lumalabas na mamimili upang magbakasaling mabigyan ng mga barya o tirang pagkain—katakam-takam tingnan ang mga pastelerya roon.

Tiningnan ko ang makukulay na tinapay sa platito sa harapan ko.

Napagdesisyunan ko nang ipabalot ito at ibigay sa isa sa mga batang ngayo’y naglalaro na habang wala pang dumaraang kustomer.

Tapos ko rin naman itong kunan ng larawan upang ipost sa Instagram.

Kelangan kasi updated ang account ko.

Baka kasi isipin **** nawalan na ko ng sigla at nagmumukmok na lamang sa bahay simula nang tumigil na tayong mag-usap.

Baka tuloy magmistulang ang kalungkutan ko at ikaw ay mutually exclusive.

Na dumarating lamang ang kalungkutan sa tuwing ika’y lumilisan,

O na iniisip ko pa lamang na maaari kang bumalik, ito’y napapalitan agad ng kaligayahan.

Do make it clear if breakfast is included. If not, make a disclaimer: "I am in the belief that you coming over is good. But that somehow this twisted world resulted in someone twisted as me. Who although enjoys the company of someone like you at this hour, cannot accommodate you past sleep. That you can choose to either leave before I doze off, or that in the morning you will readily accept if I can only open the door out for you. You can make yourself coffee. But know that I am wary of being with awake people while I am asleep, as I think you can easily understand."

There are two types of people in the world: the foodies and the cranky ones. I do not intend to be the latter.

Do make sure you expect only as your place can allow. You cannot hope for me to clean up the eye makeup that heavy drinking had caused to drip down my face when what you have is but a cracked mirror and a broken sink. I cannot fix myself up amid your chaos. I would have to look the part. Act the part. Smell the part. You either want me to receive you messy or put you back up. And I know there aren't too many choices, but still. You gotta make one.

Do say only words that you will not choose to forget the next day. Do not make promises of more future promises. Do not paint images of love, kindness, and honesty when we both know our story will only last as long as this night. This is not a contest on who'll be more unforgettable. We both know why we're here in the first place. We both remember too much.

Do consider the possibility that a sleepover may include only sleeping beside each other, but that it does not mean "nothing happened." A conversation can **** me up just as much, perhaps even more, than the real thing. You cannot share to me a universe that you expect me to pretend not knowing the next morning. You cannot accuse me of meddling when you've told me a story of how umbrellas scare the crap out of you and so every time it rains, I remember you. And so every time it rains, I text you, "Where are you?" not in the possessive way others do, but simply to make sure you are somewhere dry and not dying.

Do smile at me the next time I see you, even if we both know we've tried to avoid each other. I, only because I felt you were trying to avoid me first. Even if bitterness starts welling up, please do not look away. You perhaps may have been a mistake, and I may have been yours as well, but we've never been followers of others' ideas of what constitute a tragedy. My love, our love may to them look ugly, but we've agreed their beautiful ***** anyway. Every time they tell me you like a pretty thing, I always think you are being sarcastic. And that only I could see your sardonic point.

[Beer break]

At heto naman ang mga bagay na sana'y 'di mo gawin.

Kung ipagpipilitan mo ang kwarto mo, sana'y siguraduhin mo na mas malinis ito kaysa sa akin. Na 'di ka nakatira sa bahay ng mga magulang mo (dahil maingay ako at matatanda na tayo) o wala kang ibang kasama (sa parehong kadahilanan). Kung tatluhan ang hanap mo't 'di mo naman nakayang sabihin na may ibang babae na pala sa'yong kama ay mas mainam pang makipaglimahan ka na lamang gamit ang iyong mga daliri, mahal.

Wag mo ipagsabayan ang pagkain at ako. Alak at ako, pwede. Ngunit kung ikaw yung tipo na pinagsasabayan ang sarap ng dila't kalamnan, bibigyan kita ng ibang numerong tatawagan. Tayo'y Pilipino't kapag pagkain ang mapag-usapan, kasali ang tuyo, bagoong, balut, at itlog na maalat, mahal ko, seryoso ka bang maihahalo mo ang mga isip-isip na'to sa klase ng almusal na binabalak mo? Je ne suis pas Francais. My kisses will not make you think of food.

Wag mo akong ikalia. 'Di ko ikakahiya anong oras man akong lumabas mula sa'yong tahanan, basta lamang 'wag kang sumalungat kung ang tanging bukambibig ay galing ako sa kanya. Kung ako'y matingnan at mapansin ang biyak-biyak kong puso ngunit bakit nga ba 'di magawang mapalitan, kapag ba'y sinabi kong ito'y dahil sa'yo sana'y 'wag itatwa't angkinin **** minsan kasi'y nabanggit mo na ako . . .

Kaya't kaibigan, 'wag naman masyadong pikon 'pag ika'y na-friendzone, kinakausap ka pa rin naman, diba? 'Wag mo sabihing tunay ngang mas nana-isin mo ang trahedyang dulot ng malisyang 'di nabantayan. 'Wag mo sanang isipin na ang bawat pagpakita ko ng kahinaan ay pagtatawag na bigyang ligaya ang katawan kung masid mo namang lungkot ang siyang nakapaglapit sa'ting dalawa. Walang paghihiwalay sa pagkakaibigan, at kung sasabihin **** wala na tayo'y ipagkakalat ko na minsan nga'y naging tayo, pumili ka.

At ang huli'y sana 'wag **** ipamimigay agad-agad ang sarili mo sa sinuman matapos sa'kin. Madali kang mahalin. Mabilis kang matutunang unawain. 'Di naman sa kita'y ina-angkin. Ang sa'kin lang ay sana'y 'wag **** pagsabayin ang lahat-lahat . . . ng dinarama. Hindi lahat handa na ika'y mahalin ng buong-buo, lalo pa't 'di isa-isa. Tuloy nagmimistulang halimaw sa ilalim ng katre, kahit sa katotohanan nama'y kapareho lang na minsan di'y naging musmos, kapwa walang alam, kapwa nangangapa, kapwa takot, ngunit patuloy pa ring sumusubok.

https://soundcloud.com/lanox-alfaro/the-dos-and-donts-of-1

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I have a friend, a transgender woman.
Let’s call her Miss Portugal.
She looks more womanly than me, acts more appropriate to our gender.
Every time we walk together, people would look at her first.
She was more attractive.
I would be thinking, “I wonder if they know she is not a real woman.”

Yes, yes, this poem will be about acts or thoughts of discrimination.
Those coming from me.

We were once invited to a small party, I got there first, and men asked about her.
I answered them matter-of-factly, of where she was and that she would join us shortly.
But I was waiting for the punch line.
As though not believing that they could be interested in meeting her, for real,
knowing that she also has . . . you know.
What they have.

She had a long-time boyfriend she met back in college.
They are not together anymore, but they were together for many years,
since they were freshmen ’til they already had jobs after graduation.
He was as straight as any of my male friends could be,
part of the gang,
with as many antics and tricks up his sleeve as your average kolehiYOLO.
But it was love at first sight for him.
At the common bathroom of their boys' dorm.
He was confused as to why a girl was there.
They became one of those distinguishable couples around campus.
He could be seen riding his bike around school while she sat at the backseat.
Their love story is one I like to tell when I am at a certain level of intoxication and with a certain kind of company.
I would tell it with so much flair, you’d think it was one out of a romantic Korean telenovela.
It was that hard for me to believe that I was a firsthand witness to a real-life gay love story.

I have another friend, a transgender man.
Let’s call him Buttercup.
He is a writer, a brilliant one.
When the friendship was still new, when I had just found out he wrote, after reading some of his works,
there was that familiar envy,
if not for the words he got to first,
then the dark but rich experiences I may never have.
I found myself consoling my half-inspired, half-humbled ego
with the fact that he had more suffering.
As though I knew that just by simply being so,
he was already at a disadvantage by default.

He used to be overweight.
I used to think the, well, heavy transgender men I see intentionally gained weight to lose their curves.
Then BC decided to go on a diet.
I was confused for a moment.
Then finally science came to rescue my logic back and reminded me about the heart stuff.
How dumb of me to have been more concerned of how people like him should appear that I could easily have overlooked my friend’s need to have a healthier lifestyle.
Then his no-rice diet worked.
He began to look better.
I think he felt even better.
There was the envy again.
But I was too lazy to follow his advice,
to follow suit,
so I, again, consoled myself with the thought that he was not considered a woman anyway.
Women become envious when other women lose weight only when they’re straight.
Even beautiful lesbians aren’t a real source of insecurities.
You could be dating the likes of Brandon Boyd, they’d not be able to care less.
Although it is possible the same cannot be said of your boyfriend regarding your two beautiful lesbian friends.

BC had a girlfriend, who was also a friend, still is.
There was a time when we shared a flat.
One time, my Christian preacher of a mother visited.
I introduced BC and his girlfriend as cousins.
I wasn’t ashamed of them.
I just wanted to spare myself from a barrage of questions my mother would have surely aimed at me had I told the truth.
Here I was, perhaps the most open-minded friend they have,
yet just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation,
I was able to easily shove their identities into hiding from the very people closest to me.
I did both sides a form of disrespect.

If I were to draw conclusions, I would begin with,
So shallow people give shallow judgments.
Therefore it would seem the depths I’ve tried to dive into through these years of “freethinking” instead only caused my own prejudice to sink deeper.
Only to become more difficult to recognize.
And here I was trying to “educate” this particular sort of people spewing off ignorant nonsense when I myself am still lacking,
although not in tolerance,
as most of us now are so quick to use as a defense that our treatment of the lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transexuals, transgenders, transvestites, queers, the questioning, the intersexual, the pansexual, the asexual is satisfactory,
but certainly in the acceptance that what they are are, what you are,
is as natural as what I am,
what we are.

LGBTTTQQIPAS

I've read portions of the Motorcycle Diaries.
I remember the part where Ernesto Guevara was with his sweetheart and contemplating whether to stay with her or continue on with his journey.
I've always thought if he stayed with her, there would not have been that revolution he was so known for.

I don't have that dilemma.
I don’t have to choose between you and the rest of the world.
You gave me up.
But surprisingly I am not sad.

Your love was a cage, and I only realized it when I got out.

I’ve always, always wanted to write about something with significance to the greater run of things and have always wondered why I just couldn’t seem to will myself to.
I realize now it was because you had almost taken monopoly of my thoughts.

I would be pondering the changes I had to make around the house to minimize our wasteful consumption, then in the next minute, I would be wondering what you were doing at that same moment and forget, hopefully just temporarily, what I was planning.

I would read about late-stage abortion and bawl like a lunatic for how people could stomach such cruelty, and I would plan on doing something, anything, that will get people’s notice and somehow move them into action. Then suddenly thoughts of you and your son would steal me from my justified desperation and divert my focus from something of importance to shallow imaginings of how I would be willing to rearrange my life to accommodate your "baggage."

Then here, I let a few days pass before continuing.
I was soon to learn we grieve for a lost love twice.
The first is easy. We could survive the lack of romance.
But losing the friend seems the difficult part.
Like a change in the other that we know we cannot learn to accept,
so we go on with the cutting off, to at least leave with the memories from happier times.

In retrospect, the whole incident was not so different from waking up with a hangover that was to be the longest yet, with a few abrasions from getting smashed by the skating area, at my age—and size,
which wasn’t even all that bad.
It occurs to me that perhaps it was a protest for how I wasn't feeling as bad as I expected myself to be.
After all, I had written a few days ago, "You gave me up. But surprisingly I am not sad."
But I cannot possibly work along this logic.
For if I were to physically feel as bad as I think I really do,
I’d be really, really ******-up.

And So I find myself asking these questions:
Was I wanting to die?
Was I angry?
Did I want to hurt—myself or others?
Was I just paying the price for having too much fun?
Or was it only to see that impossible odds can only be overcome through impossible means?
But sometimes even those don’t work still.

But maybe it was why I had wanted it in the first place.

This poem is a veiled love letter.
Another shot at resisting the drifting away.
A refusal to accept the quickness of your brushing off my account of our could-have-beens.
I pretend that while you are still not mine, you are asleep, and so I let you.
You may awake too late or just in time.
I may find or look for distractions, or I may yield to impatience, which is the more probable.
But between here and then are going to be strings of tender words
To remind you,
at perhaps not evenly spaced intervals,
“that we'll always have each other. When everything else is gone” (Incubus).  

In a certain lifetime, we didn't get to meet.
We lived separate but nevertheless great lives.
But there was always a longing for something we just couldn't pinpoint,
like when you're listening to your favorite artist singing your favorite song,
and you look to your side, expecting someone to be there,
also entranced by the music,
but all you see is either an empty space or a stranger bobbing her head,
who, although as understanding, just isn't going to look at you
in that way you want to be seen.

We are extremely lucky that in this particular space-time combo,
we somehow got to learn of each other.
There are many failures I've eventually become grateful for because otherwise we would not have ended up in each other's stories.
And I'm very, very glad for the risks I took that somehow led to my roads crisscrossing with yours.

In another lifetime my heart is full and unbroken,
but unused and safe until time caught up with it.
Now here we are close enough that I can easily hand it to you.
I don't care if you keep it or destroy it, but ******* take it and do something with it
because it's yours either way.

On a day in our other life, we are screaming plenty,
maybe at each other, maybe only in our heads,
but even inside those angers, there is still a certain kind of comfort,
that we are entitled to madness for what the other has done to us,
that our rages are justified because no one else should be able to stir us so anyway.

But in another life, I am not reciting lines.
A house woman waiting to go back to writing.
Bound by the rules of contentment.
Every visit of melancholy met with guilt.
I wouldn’t have cats because I’m not good with routines,
so maybe I will find contentment in books,
while imagining the worlds I am reading,
also always dreaming of my own—
how in another life I am your favorite troubadour,
singing, “J’adore, monsieur, mon cher.”
How the lilting verses of all others are also heard by you indeed,
but not in the same way you listen to mine.
Because you know that my poems are also yours.

But in all of the possible lives we have, we know how there is vanity in our kind of affection.
You, for instance, are fascinated with the thought of how these lines would not have been if I were thinking of another.

They say whom we love affects who we become.
Have you liked what I have become?
I know I cannot ask the same of you.
A lot of people have changed you.
There is barely anything left of you from years ago,
when you were somehow fleetingly mine.
But there is.
And that's how I still recognize you.

You did not ask for forgiveness
Not because you feared
Nor of your pride—not even of laziness.
We both knew—it was pointless.

We aren’t simpleminded, you and me.
We know forgetting is not easy.
We could drown ourselves in happy pills and cheap thrills,
But even hungover in mornings, we remember.

You asked me if I were angry that you ****** my friend
[I thought of saying, “You colored her one shade of gray,” but whom should I kid?]
You misunderstood my confusion with jealousy.
The girls I envy, I want to bed too.
You chose the wrong friend.

I am not generous with drama.
It occurred to me you only wanted to crack me open.
“You are rock hard,” you told me.
I wanted to reply, “Yeah, harder than you get sometimes.”

You did not cheat nor lie to me.
I was there as you went back to your base self.
You disappointed me too much that I chose to sleep
rather than stop you with your “darker” games.

Was there love there at all?
Maybe . . .
Why else would today be cursed with the rank reek of a great desire gone stale?
Like a ***** gone jobless for a week.
And it is not the stink coming off from me.