the culprit

i was with a date who invited me to a party where he would be hosting an event when my memories started flowing in... while he was practicing his spiels and thinking of lines, we were watching a madonna video... i suddenly blurted out "sya ang dahilan kung bakit ako ganito... at mahilig sa music..."

OMG.. si madonna? of course not. i hated madonna so much during the early years of my gay and audiophilic world...

it was when high school when i found out my real preference. i was watching studio 23 (during that time adik na adik ako sa american series ng studio 23 noon - time of my life, john doe, then came you, charmed, buffy, angel), then may isang show dun.... 25 hottest celebrities under 25 (not sure baka 21 hottest celebrities under 21). they were doing the countdown until the number one was revealed. said to myself, "hmmm... cute sya." i became attracted. kulot pa sya nun. took note of his name and the band he belonged to.

at dahil hindi pa uso ang internet sa akin nun (malay ko sa iba), i told myself, i needed to get their album para may picture ako nya (so high school no?). so i bought their album. and i listened to it and i loved it. i even bought songhits para may pictures ako nya. (now, im telling myself - "waaaaah, so high school talaga").

and that's when i started loving music. and being gay as well. until i found another cute boyband member... bought their album... and listened to it... and enjoyed it...

along with my increasing awareness to the gay side was my increasing collection of casette tapes. i remember going to school stuffing my bag with six casette tapes and my walkman... i came to a point where i would literally save my allowance to buy an album. i was buying an album every week... until now i still have most of the casettes that i bought. i think that last one i purchased was enya's album...

casette collection ko...

until na-expose na ako sa gay world.. and sa lahat ng uri ng music.. and neither faded...

now, of course, hindi na casette... cd/dvd na. and thanks to the internet... music is more accessible (kahit illegal... bad bad)... thanks to the makers of ipod, music is now lightweight and portable..

as of right now, my ipod has 11,500 songs and more than 700 music videos...

when i finished telling him all the reasons why, madonna's second mtv off her latest album "hard candy" has already started...