Frances Tracy C.

Pasicolan BS Management II- B Lit 1- H (MTh 1:00-2:30 pm)

The Girl in the Drum
(An Essay for J. Neil Garcias The Conversion)

It happened in a metal drum. They put me there, my family that loved me. The water had been
saved just for it, that day. The poem begins by describing an open show of the savage treatment
that awaits the boy in the hands of his father. The brute environment is evident in the picturea
rusty metal drum full of water, smelly and stained clothes in the basins, piled dishes with swills
in the sink, and flies hovering around the muddy and dusty area. The father found the boy hiding
in his dead mothers closet and dragged him in the open-air bathroom. The boy slipped into the
cold water of the drum, his father moving his head up and down the water, asking him, Girl or
Boy! The boy kept saying, Girl.. But in the end, the boy declared himself as a boy. In the end,
the boy confined to what his father, family, and society would want him to say and to be. The
girl, the other half of the boy, drowned and died in the drum, and will never be seen again.
The first half of the poem portrays an open show of the horrifying death of the girl inside
the boy through the powerful demonstration of a mans strength and authority over the inferior.
Coming from a machismo family, the father will use force, if necessary, to straighten his crooked
sonto awaken him from his senses and to align him to the right gender. LGBTslesbians,
gays, bisexuals, and transgendersare no longer new to our society. But Im wondering why
LGBTs are still unacceptable to most people. These people were born and grew up thinking they
were normal, but perhaps a particular instance made them feel that something was wrong about
them. They were confused with their sexuality, the feeling of being born in a wrong body. A
woman in mans body (or a man in a womans body) or both man-woman in one body. It was
only manifestation of their internal impulse (genetics and hormones) and external impulse
(influenced or learned from the environment). And revealing their true identity was difficult, but
the hardest part of the revelation is whether they will be accepted or not. That is why some are
scared to come out of their shell, and denying themselves from their true identity.
Homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders are the common subject of ridicule and assault.
Most of them were physically and psychologically abused (i.e. scorned, beaten up, drowned in
the drum, or even raped) in the hands of the strangers and, worst, in the hands of their family
mocking their being differentlabeled as pest to the society. Some were converted, forced to
act and to feel like what they are supposed to, just like forcing a left handed child to be right
handed. Those who got away were the lucky ones. Was it wrong to be born in a wrong body?
Was it morally wrong to be a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or a transgender? Was it wrong to be true to
who you really are? Isnt what society does to LGBTs far more unethical than being born
differently?
Years have passed by, the boy is now a grown-up man. He has a wife. He has four sons,
and the fifth son is on the way. He is not scared to show his authority and power over his wife.
He even had some talking sense with his wife just like the talking sense he had experience in
the hands of his father and uncles when he was a boy. As a grown man, he drinks with his uncles
who pride themselves with gin. But sometimes, he would think of the girl, the girl who appears
in his dreams. He would remember the girl, his other self, who drowned and died in the waters of
the drum. In his mind, I should feel sorry but I drown myself in gin before I can. Better off dead,
I say to myself and my family that loves me for my bitter breath. We die to rise to a better life.
The final half of the poem portrays the expectations of the society to a manon how a
man must act and feel. The boy who was now a grown up man boasts his achievements (i.e.
having a wife, four sons, and demonstrating his brute force and his authority as the man of the
house), mocking societys concept of what constitutes a man. The boy brags his achievements
from being converted, the testimonies of his acclaimed masculinity. His conversion was his
salvation that justifies his being a man just like his father. But his denial of the girl that still
remained inside him makes him an empty and dead person. His acclaimed masculinity is a
shama denial of his real self and of his real happiness. His self and his life are comparable to a
rusty, hollow, and empty drum.
Isnt lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender are a man, a woman, or both man and
woman in his/her own manner. But what does it take a man to be a man, and what does it take a
woman to be a woman? I think a persons masculinity and femininity is determined by the
choices we make and roles we play in our society and not only the body where our soul is
contained. I think humans has a second characteristica man in a woman and a woman in a man
in them. I think a man isnt a real man if he only imposes his strength, power, and dominance
over women. Thus, a real man is someone who knows how to do what women does (i.e.
domestic work such as cooking, laundering, cleaning the house, and tending and caring for
children), and respect women as his equal. Gender is a choice, your own preference, that is, no
one could ever tell you who are or who you should be.