If sex remains taboo in the Philippines, gay and lesbian sex is still even more unspoken. “How do you do it?” is still the most common question queer Pinoys get. Even after that question is answered, there is still the popular notion that only heterosexual sex is “the real thing,” and anything else is just a deviation or an attempt to replicate the male-female dynamic of human contact.

This book makes up for this history of invalidation. An unprecedented dirty dozen, Sison’s and Casocot’s stories are direct and unflinching. They make no qualms or apologies about the nature of sex between two men or between two women. They explore courtship and contact between same-gender partners with humor, hesitation and obsession, and eventually take the reader with them as they reel from heartbreak.

Whether you consider straight sex “the real thing,” or are among the LGBTQ community that is hungry for a true account of Filipino gay and lesbian loving, one thing this collection and its characters do, over and over without exhaustion, is to keep on trying.

Ian Rosales Casocot