The Origin of (Big) Love

Crazy at Puerto Galera!

Amid all the amazing and wonderful experiences that Tobie, Prince and I have gone through over the course of the first 6+ weeks of our relationship, we often find ourselves asking how this all started. Every couple or whatever-you-call-your-relationship goes through this as you try to dig back into your memories to try and figure out when exactly everything actually started. And one can come up with some pretty complicated chains of events and related tangents that all lead up to the final outcome - life is crazy that way.


I once wrote a blog post documenting how Tobie and I first got together, so let's try to map out how the three of us found each one another in this big, scary multiverse. It's actually pretty tricky.

Even chocolate comes in threes!

From a technical standpoint, Tobie, Prince and I started our new Sietch family on January 23, 2012. It started as a conversation over Facebook after a rather emotional weekend and was formalized thereafter (because we live in an age when Facebook relationship status changes hold water). But we still managed to meet-up for "lunch" near my office where we shared a meal, reinforced the commitment and enjoyed some chocolates that I had purchased for us.

People who need people...

Or maybe the real turning point was a few days later when Prince got sick while we were in the middle of one of those "growing pains" arguments that all early relationships go through. As much as we had agreed to give this relationship a shot on the 23rd, naturally a lot of doubts remained for us to deal with. And we've had quite a few struggles here and there, but every time we've gotten past them and have emerged even stronger than before.

Quality time with Prince.

Or maybe a key moment was on January 14 when Prince and I first spent some quality time together outside of O Bar. I was tired from work and he was still weary from his poi gig the night before but we met up at Cartimar to get his dog Poy-Poy groomed and to just get a chance to talk more and figure out where all this was headed.

The emotional New Year's reunion.

Maybe we really knew this was going to be more than just a casual friendship when we were surprised to see Prince at O Bar Ortigas on New Year's Eve and seeing him made both me and Tobie deliriously happy. I remember writing that it had been the best New Year ever, and I know a large part of it was because we got to spend the night with Prince again. This also marks the first time he had ever jumped me and thankfully I was able to catch him and carry him. And what's crazy is that we had all see one another at O Bar

Even then I indulged Prince with regular photos with Tobie.

But then there was also that night when Tobie caught Prince sitting alone and somewhat teary-eyed outside the bar and he decided to stop, offer some comfort and support and a little Christmast gift as well.

One of my first non-performance photos of Prince

Or perhaps we should count back to December of last year when I had more opportunities to use my vacation credits and O Bar had Prince and his poi partner Bench perform more as part of the lead-up to the anniversary celebrations. It was during this month that I finally got to meet Prince after hearing a few stories from Tobie about the poi performances during the nights I couldn't go to the bar because I had work.

Possibly Prince's first photo with Tobie (his camera)

Or should we trace the events back even further to when Prince first started performing at O Bar Ortigas and managed to work up the nerve to approach Tobie and ask for a photo together. And this is given how Tobie is notorious for shooting down guys who hit on him at the bar - for some reason he didn't object to Prince's little request.

Tobie circa 2008

Heck, the story can go all the way back to Tobie's early Malate days before he and I had gotten together and he was just another customer among the many. Prince wasn't a performer at that time - he was also just another guy who'd go to O Bar. But then he'd notice Tobie off to the side and found him cute and harbored a bit of a crush - a crush he never expected to "fulfill" about a year later when he saw him again at O Bar Ortigas.

And yes, we buy matching shirts.

Whatever our origins or how far back we trace all the different events that possibly had something to do with how the three of us eventually got together and started a new kind of family, what matters is where we are now and our plans for the future. But that doesn't mean that it isn't fun to look back at the past and laugh at our ups and downs and marvel at just how far we've come in what seems like so short a period of time. And it makes the journey forward all the more exciting, too.