Monday, February 07, 2005

Of Commies and Shootings


On the front page of the Inquirer today, photos of the first gay marriage in the New People’s Army, between a 21-yr old and a 54-yr old. My god, the Reds have turned pink!

*pause*

Imperialista, ibagsak! Dikaturang Arroyo-US, patalsikin!

(P.S. -- Thanks to Jong’s blog for the pic.)

*****

Yesterday afternoon I attended my very first photo shoot party. Hu-whaaat? you may ask. Well, it’s a really inventive way to mix business with pleasure.

My friend, let’s call him D, is a struggling newbie photographer in Manila. In a city with a surplus of professional shutterbugs, he knows he’ll have a hard time breaking into the market. At the same time he also needs to further improve his photo skills. How will he do that if he can’t have people posing for him?

He found the solution in, of all places, Friendster. He noticed how a lot of Friendster pics are slap-dash pics that don’t do justice to the person. D thought, if people had access to professional photographers, they’d want their pics taken by them and post those pics on their Friendster account.

Thus, the photo shoot party was born. D invited his friends to invite their friends over. At the same time, he contacted several people through his Friendster account and invited them over. So D gets to practice his photography skills, the guys get to have better Friendster pics, and people get to swap cards, contact numbers and—maybe, who knows?—body fluids much, much later on after the pictorials. Think of it has having the dynamics of a gay orgy without the orgy, of course. There’s a lot of shooting load going on, but we’re talking loads of film. (Weeeell… actually, digital ang gamit niya.) D wants to keep the pictorial as “clean” and professional as possible—he’d better, because his boyfriend always tags along in every shoot.

There were about 15 of us in the room. There were two couples who had their individual photos taken as well as with their significant other. With matching kiss and hug pa ang posing nila. D asked me to join in just to observe, but I ended up mugging for his camera towards the end of the shoot.

Because D limits his invitees to only gay men, we were all very supportive when one of them, let’s call him Marc, asked to be shot nude. As in totally in the buff. So we dimmed the lights, and Marc posed gamely for D. Too gamely, in fact—he stroked his dick so that in several shots he had a raging hard-on. (Pretty decent size, I’m sure my dear viewers would have wanted to know. Maybe five-and-a-half inches, thick enough.) Most of us put on a blasé attitude, although some of the younger ones were obviously tickled pink. Of course, if Marc had been very buff and very good-looking, we all wouldn’t be as blasé as we were.

After the shoot, D told me to invite my friends who may want to have their Friendster pics upgraded—for a very minimal fee—Php500 yata, I’m not too sure now. (Oh yes, the shoot isn’t free. The payment covers part of the venue rental and the CD where D will burn your pics in.)

So, anybody interested?