a trojan war inside my ribcage

after imitating a fugitive by frantically touring provinces in central luzon country (my hometowns nueva ecija and tarlac, and their neighboring pampanga), i was officially back to the urban jungle that's aplenty with ravishing male forms. this state of belongingness i confirmed when i dropped by a mall to meet a boylet and whoa, beauties flourished like newly-sprung flowers in the midst of manila wreck. hunks here, cuties there, and a slew of gender-bending males rendered my gaydar on red alert. since the guy i was bringing pasalubong to is a pretty, pretty babe, i had to restrain myself from creating extra effort to look more attractive to other pamintas than i should. why, i don't wanna jeopardize the deepening interest i generate from troy.
yeah, troy's the also-ran to my biggest crush for the time being. his name is enough to make one recognize the ill-fated asia minor city associated to the mythical beauty of helen. i just wish that this angelic face is not so vicious to me or any admirer as to prepare his fans' club to wage among ourselves an epic battle by the polluted manila bay. notwithstanding his lack of height (he’s a couple of inches short of my ideal 5’8” tall guy), he is fit to become my third boyfriend: he is boyish looking, he is good-natured, he is smart, and he is an ilonggo from capiz. well, the mention of that visayan province reputed to be the lair of viscera suckers does not make me flinch, although paranoid people might already be fearing for my future as sacrificial food for the aswangs. if i must refute that the magnificent capizeños have homegrown vampires in their midst, this falsity was used by the colonizing spaniards in order to swing the natives’ faith to the catholic friars from the mystical babaylanes, whose powers (to transform into asu-asuan, among other evils) allegedly originate from the devil.
if there is something diabolic about troy, i must say it is his uncanny good looks which lesser mortals like the rest of us will envy to death. the hiligaynon-speaking capizeño resembles the mr. university i had a crush on five years ago, boyish countenance and all. if not for troy’s charming binisaya lilt while he’s narrating to me how his eyewear company bag got stashed of a few thousand bucks, his other mobile phone and an eyeglass frame which he would have to pay through salary deduction, i would have taken him for the straight jp gone macho gay.
i know of two other troys who share the same extraordinary allure: troy montero of the local showbiz and troy, my ertswhile boyfriend sam’s hotter brother. troy the celebrity stirred quite a ruckus the first time he and his vj brother kc hugged the philippine media limelight. praises for him ran from the simple, orgasmic “oh!” to “he looks like he sprang straight from a laboratory experiment!” however, following the same fate as those of other imported fil-somethings who never got to master the native tongue, he is now a has-been even before he made it really big in modeling, acting, hosting, dancing, singing and, of late, in undressing to show off his rather aging body in skimpy briefs.
meanwhile, the hotter brother of my second beau is as tantalizing as troy the artist. the first time sam brought me home to introduce as his friend (much to my relief under the pains of being thrown into kanlaon volcano if sam so much as acquaint me to his family in la castellana, negros occidental as his lover), the half-naked troy (upper extremities…okay?) so mesmerized me that i almost groveled on the floor in reverence. if sam is the ilonggo version of elijah wood, troy is the ilonggo gabby concepcion. while resisting gallons of drool from spilling off my mouth, i wondered why the buff brother did not even put on his shirt even at my paminta presence. the answer revealed itself when he moved toward the fridge and drew out the cabbage he’d mince for dinner. hmm, dieting; he must have just wrestled against the gym equipment before we lovers arrived. i looked about and discovered a photocopied book which troy perused at the moment: mitch albom’s tuesdays with morrie. the guy reads! that makes him more intense than sam for me or for any literature major for that matter. i would go on to gift troy ravelstein by nobel laureate saul bellow, but then i likewise gave sam the sun also rises by another nobel laureate ernest hemingway if only for my ex-boyfriend not to suspect that i was a gift-bearing greek out to pillage the fuentebella genealogy. good that troy seemed straight, for i cannot imagine myself doing an ina raymundo in the gay film version of jeffrey jetturian’s tuhog with the comely negrense brothers as my leading men.