No, it’s not what you think. It simply means that in the last 12 months, I’ve been going around the country to know more about it.

I went to Baguio not just to sip coffee at the lovely SM shaped like the rice terraces, but to talk to members of its lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) community. I went down to Pampanga not just to attend a reunion with my grade-school classmates at the military base where I grew up. I also got all their names and contact numbers, as primary database. Then I visited one of my parents’ houses in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan and gave novelettes to the transgenders who sell pirated DVDs in Tungkung Mangga. I touched base with my college classmates who lived in Laguna and Rizal, giving them copies of the Pink Card of LGBT rights.

Then, I took the back-breaking, 12-hour bus ride to Santo Domingo, Albay, to address the College Editors Guild of the Philippines—200 of the crème de la crème among the country’s student-paper editors. After that, I went around the Bicol Region – by car, by bus, by jeepney, by tricycle, by bicycle, even on foot. I visited schools, churches, barangay halls, wet markets, even crossed a muddy rice field on my bare feet. Next month, after I have resigned from my job with the United Nations, I am going to the Visayas and Mindanao.

No, I am not a tourist. You may call me a traveler, yes. But a traveler with an aim focused like a laser beam.

I am going around the feel the pulse of the people regarding Ang Ladlad, where I am the chairman. The national organization of LGBT Filipinos that might run for party-list elections for Congress in May. Our platform is fourfold: 1) to support the comprehensive anti-LGBT discrimination bill; 2) to support the bill that would repeal the anti-vagrancy law that some unscrupulous policemen use to extort bribes from gays; 3) to set up micro-finance and livelihood programs for poor and handicapped LGBTs; and 4) to set up centers for old and abandoned LGBTs, homeless youth, and information centers that contain counseling, legal, and educational clearinghouses for HIV-AIDS, reproductive health, and LGBT issues.

That is a mouthful, that’s why I’m going around the country to road-test if this platform jives with what we need.

And it seems like a bingo! Number 3 platform is what many people need in these hard times. Even if Filipinos are still the happiest people in Asia, the holes in our pockets are indeed becoming bigger. That’s why wherever I go, people tell me what they need are jobs. If not that, then some capital to set up livelihood projects for their cooperatives.

But how could a small political party like Coming Out afford to go around the country to listen to the rumblings from the ground?

We don’t have lots of money to burn, but we have the love and charity of our many friends and supporters—some of them anonymous. I went around Bicol and stayed in places owned by my friends. In Legaspi City, I stayed in La Trinidad Hotel, courtesy of the Candano family whose bright children – Cathy and Douglas – were former students of mine in college. In Naga City, I stayed in the sprawling house of the Hernandez family whose son, Joaquin, was a former student of mine and a cover designer of several of my books. I’m going to the Visayas and Mindanao on discounted air fares, and staying again in hotels owned by people who support us.

I go around the country because I remembered the film Gandhi, where the young Mohandas – fresh from law studies in Cambridge and newly returned to India – took a train for months to see his vast country. He wanted to learn more about it, beyond books and biases, so he could speak about it better, and know its deepest needs.

Moreover, I learned to speak Bikol again – the soft, graceful language of my parents – and it has the magic of “Open Sesame!” When I spoke Bikol to the market vendors and waitresses, the drivers and receptionists, the housewives and government officials, they would smile and tell me that my version of Bikol is “so refined.”

Ah. There goes my cover. Because for my trips to the region, I did my homework first. Being a teacher who knew his methods of research, I had everything down pat. I read books of Bikol literature prepared by my aunt, the retired UP professor Lilia Realubit. I listened to CDs of Bikol songs with titles like Mapaiton Palan (It is Bitter) and Napupungao na Puso (Lonely Heart). Naturally, the Bikol I spoke was lofty and lyrical. If I may be allowed this quantum leap, it was like going around 21st-century Paris talking in the French of 19th-century Les Miserables.

Be that as it may, the people were generous. They offered me their best food, which meant pork adobo, and their best drink, which meant Coke. I rarely eat pork and I don’t drink Coke, but in my travels, I ate and drank everything they gave me. I smiled my cheerful Catholic-boy smile, although I knew that when I returned to my room, I would have LBM. Mostly I did, but I endured the stomach cramps. You never, never say “no” to the best food offered to you in a Filipino home.

At another time, in Oas, Albay, my cousin said there were 50 gay men waiting for me in a faraway barrio. It was 11 p.m. and there was a blackout. There were no tricycles in sight. My cousin texted his friend, who came in his motorcycle, and we va-va-voomed into the night. No grains of dust, no rocky road, no chilly wind could stop me from going to the, uh, soiree of 50 gay men in the deepest, darkest barrio of Sabang.

My scoliosis hurt during my 12-hour bus travel to Bicol and back. Since I also have urinary tract infection (UTI), I got a seat near the CR at the back of the bus. Which meant that every time someone opened the door of the CR, or the door swung when the bus zigzagged, I smelt the perfumes of paradise. In the middle of the trip my back hurt so badly. Since I don’t take mefenamic acid (they would scar your liver when you’re 50), I endured the pain. I merely looked at the dark coconut trees outside my window and asked myself: “Why the hell am I doing this?”

Why, indeed, am I doing this? Because I remember Goethe, who said that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Or as National Artist Jose Garcia Villa said: “We have come, are here, for real.”

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