The continuous negotiations of the bakla and gay narratives and/or performativities and these ambiguities prove that Philippine gay culture has always been a problematic discourse, especially if the discourse is in a search for identity. The bathhouse performances, which my informants regularly engage are proofs of this dilemma. The bathhouse phenomenon has created a new gay narrative complicating the discourse for gay identity: to be paradoxically closeted and un-closeted is a fad. The bathhouse as I argued has become a huge closet, a metropolitan closet where my informants seemingly perform the Philippine kabaklaan and the American gayness. However, there are other ambiguous performances than this paradox especially when the bathhouse is about to close. For instance, the notion of performing masculinity is suddenly dissolved whence it is a persistent and important script beginning 7 pm. The notion of incest as a bakla engages sexually with a fellow bakla is also dissolved as the bathhouse comes to its closing time.
The bathhouse appears to be the space for a modern gay culture. Nonetheless, in performing their conception of modern gay culture inside the bathhouse is a manifestation of appropriating an alternative sense of gayness which appears to be very ambiguous. Based on the narratives and performances of Gabe, Ariel, Rowell, John, and other members of this bathhouse present three texts: (1) that of the bakla, (2) that of the gay and (3) that of ambiguously another. It is in this light that the bathhouse offers continuous negotiations of identities in order to create a performance of a supposedly modernized gay culture. In the final analysis, the whole performance inside the bathhouse is my informants’ ways of delivering an alternative Filipino modern gay culture. I have presented that this deliverance of an alternative Filipino modern gay culture is always fluid and dynamic – always changing, always moving, always dancing, always shifting in performance.
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