Tom Bliss:

Noel, thank you so much for sitting down with OUTWORDS today.

Noel Alumit:

Proud to be here.

Tom Bliss:

Could you start by saying and spelling your name for us?

Noel Alumit:

Sure. My name is Noel Alumit, n-o-e-l a-l-u-m-i-t.

Tom Bliss:

Thank you. When and where were you born?

Noel Alumit:

I was born in 1968. Happy New Year, January 1st, 1968 in Baguio City, the Philippines.

Tom Bliss:

Okay. Can you

Tom Bliss:

tell me about Baguio City?

Noel Alumit:

Let's talk about Baguio City, which is high up in the mountains of the Philippines, and they didn't build a road up until 1912 from lowland Philippines, like Manila, up to Baguio City. So it didn't have the hundreds of years of colonization that lower part of the Philippines had. It has maintained a lot of its

Noel Alumit:

cultural identity and its spiritual identity, actually which I've been trying to reincorporate into my life today. It is also a place known for having indigenous Filipinos, which I am, we're called Igorot, I-G-O-R-O-T. And it's something that a lot of Igorot people are very proud of.

Tom Bliss:

I know spirituality plays a huge role in your life.

Tom Bliss:

What was the indigenous spirituality like in the Philippines, and how have you incorporated it?

Noel Alumit:

Sure. A lot of animism, so a lot of respect for --

Tom Bliss:

And can we just start with you including the --

Noel Alumit:

Sure. The spirituality in Baguio City up in the mountain areas of the Philippines had a lot of animism. So there was a lot of respect for objects that we might consider, just objects, that this chair has a soul, these clothes

Noel Alumit:

have a soul. Certainly, the trees have souls, the sky will have a soul, right? It provides a lot of respect and reverence for our environment. That's one. There was a lot of practice around the lunar cycle. The planting, harvesting of rice, for example, was an important part of the lunar cycle. I've been trying to incorporate lunar cycles as well as lunar worship

Noel Alumit:

into my spirituality. That's been a really, really important aspect of my life, and that includes observing Lunar New Year. I'm taking the mantle of Lunar New Year in the Philippines. That's been an important part of how I practice, in addition to other things. Another part of indigenous practice that I think is really important, and this is a lot throughout Asia, is ancestral worship,

Noel Alumit:

paying homage to my father who passed away, aunts, uncles who passed away, as well as queer people who have passed away. Queer Asian people have passed away. An important queer icon to me is Montgomery Clift. My first novel was called Letters to Montgomery Clift. I acknowledge him as a queer ancestor in my life.

Tom Bliss:

And what is the history of queer culture in the Philippines?

Noel Alumit:

What is the queer historic culture of the Philippines? It goes back a long, long, long way, actually, before colonization had sort of diminished our identities as queer people, particularly what we might now call as trans people was an important part of the culture. The word

Noel Alumit:

has a lot of meanings, some people say it specifically means trans people but it could also mean gay men. They adopted the word tomboy for a lesbian, for example, . So it has a long history in the Philippines that's still present today, actually. So I think that acknowledging our queer past

Noel Alumit:

is an important part of who we are as a people.

Tom Bliss:

What was your family dynamic, especially around queer?

Noel Alumit:

Well, my family dynamic when it came to queerdom was mixed. We didn't talk a lot about being queer or me being gay or anything like that. I know my father,

Noel Alumit:

like many fathers actually, and I've had compassion for my dad who expected to have a straight son. I think most straight fathers expect that. And fortunately, he became more accepting at the end. Yeah. He had gone back to the Philippines, so a lot of my coming out and growing up, he sort of missed my

Noel Alumit:

immediate family, my mother, my aunts and things. They met my boyfriend, for example, or boyfriends. Yeah. But my father was not a part of that. Eventually, later when he came back, my dad asked me, "You meet a nice girl?" It was at a family gathering, and there was that strange silence . I think my mother quickly changed the subject and eventually told him, so he never brought it up again.

Noel Alumit:

It was something that we didn't talk about, but now it's become such a normal part of my family. I have queer relatives in my family. It's gotten to be a lot more acceptable in my family and community too, I will say.

Tom Bliss:

What was the family dynamic like when you were born, and can you tell me about your immigration?

Noel Alumit:

Sure. The family dynamic of when I was born was a really interesting

Noel Alumit:

dynamic because I feel like saying it was a pseudo-arranged marriage. I say pseudo because it wasn't maybe a traditional arranged marriage where they didn't know each other, where people just would say, "Oh, you're marrying these people." They knew each other. But my grandparents, their parents arranged their marriage. Yeah. So, as a matter of fact, my aunt knew that my mother was getting married before she did.

Noel Alumit:

My aunt told my mother, "Oh, you better come home right now, because they're talking about dance and marriage for you right now." She went, and then she found out she was gonna be marrying my dad. And that's how they started. My mother was not too pleased about it. I don't think my father was either, to tell you the truth. But they both respected their parents. Also,

Noel Alumit:

since they had made their arrangement, my mother wanted them to take it back, and my grandparents on my mother's side said, "We can't do that," so they ended up getting married, and it was a marriage that lasted -- Well, until my dad's passing in 2004. Now, granted, they were also Catholics, so the idea of divorce was impossible, but somehow, they made it work.

Noel Alumit:

Somehow, somehow, they made it work.

Tom Bliss:

How old were you when your family immigrated to the US and where did you go?

Noel Alumit:

I was born in the Philippines. Now, I left, not even two years old. We went from Baguio City to Boston. I think with a short stint in New York. I was there for a very short time, but it's still interesting to me that even though

Noel Alumit:

I've been there for a short time, it still had this indelible impact on me about who I am and where I come from. I've visited several times since, and whenever I return, there is a sense that -- Particularly from the part of the Philippines that I was from, Baguio City, in my province, I said, "Oh my gosh, I can really sort of see that where I'm from, because I see so many people, people with similar features as mine, where like, these people, we could be related really,

Noel Alumit:

I don't necessarily see that in other parts of the Philippines that I've been to, like Manila, but when I've been in the Philippines, in the Mount Province, I'm like, oh, I sort of see our family resemblance. I can see my father's faces and the people here.

Tom Bliss:

Where did your family immigrate to, and what's the story? I know there's a good story about the hospital when you first arrived.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah, the way my family came to the United States is that my mother had an

Noel Alumit:

offer for a job. She said, sure, so she came with my dad, with my older brother, Jesse. We had to leave my brother, my younger brother, John, behind because when she said "yes" and got all the paperwork to come to the United States she didn't know she was pregnant. So with the time that elapsed, my brother was born at that time, so he had to come later. We showed up and the hospital

Noel Alumit:

saw this little family and said we only wanted you, we have housing for you as a nurse, but not for a husband and two small children. My dad looked through the Boston phone book, looking for some familiar name, and we found an uncle. We found an uncle. He called my uncle and said, "We are in Boston.

Noel Alumit:

Can you help us out?" And Lolo Marvin took us in, actually, in Boston, and gave us our first home. My father had always been appreciative of that act of kindness and honored him even to this day. To this day, Lolo Marvin still has a special place in our hearts.

Noel Alumit:

Because he was so kind. We stayed in Boston in what is now a very trendy part of Boston, the South End. It was not that way back in the early 70s, late 60s, early 70s. My memories of that place was first of all, the snow, the cold. I will say that my first performance gig was in Boston. I was in elementary school,

Noel Alumit:

not even -- What is that preschool? I guess they might call it now, and we were asked to dance, and so I did a little dance and a teacher and probably cast doctor said, "That little boy." I end going to a studio, a local TV show in Boston, and dancing my little heart out. I have fond memories like that in Boston.

Tom Bliss:

What was it like going to this? Do you remember going to the TV show?

Noel Alumit:

And I do, strangely. I mean, it was one of those life moments, even as a kid, it felt like -- Well, like the kids show, people remember the TV show, Romper Room, there was like a bunch of kids, a bunch of kids sitting around, and a guy came in, started to play the guitar, and I guess the director would sort of point at you, and when you got pointed at,

Noel Alumit:

it was time for you to start dancing. So pointed at me, I just got up and just started dancing, you know, however, you dance when you're like two or three years old, whatever that is. I came home and my family, well, they were proud of me, but they couldn't find a child to watch me because I guess it was a live TV broadcast, so we don't have records of it, but I have

Noel Alumit:

memories of it.

Tom Bliss:

How was Boston for your father? I know you've talked about some harassment that he received.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah, Boston at that time was a really, really interesting place. Yeah. And we lived in, I guess what one might call the ghetto now. We lived in the ghetto, a lot of immigrants in particular live there, a lot of people of color lived there. My father

Noel Alumit:

was hurt because I think he, like so many people, had this idea of what America was about, this American dream, and he didn't expect to be harassed by the cops, for example. The drunken cops who would come into the buildings and harass people. Also, where he worked, people tell him, "Go back from where you came from." My dad

Noel Alumit:

would lie, and I think this is a good lie, I do think it's okay to lie once in a while. And he would say, "I'm Native American." "This is my home." We'd have a good laugh about that. I know we couldn't do that today, but it was his way of fighting back. It was his way, you know, he says like, "Hey, look, when it comes to dealing with racists, sometimes, being the

Noel Alumit:

honorable one isn't necessarily the best thing to do." Because we keep expecting that from the oppressed, "Well, you need to rise up to the occasion." "You need to be better for it." "You need to --" Like, why? So my dad would get angry with them, which is fine. Anger sometimes can be justified. I think that hurt my dad and

Noel Alumit:

sort of affected how we were raised in this country. Certainly, at that time, in the 1970s, as a post-civil rights generation, it was a really important learning time.

Tom Bliss:

How old were you when you left Boston, and where did you go?

Noel Alumit:

How old was I when I left Boston? I was four, I guess. Yeah, I was four years old.

Noel Alumit:

We took a road trip from Boston to Los Angeles. I've been in Los Angeles now for, ooh, over 50 years, which is amazing to me. We settled in an area, which is -- We first came to Los Angeles when I was four, and we lived just south of Los Angeles High School, if you know where that is on Olympic. We lived just south of that.

Noel Alumit:

We chose that spot because it was like a little village for us because we moved in with my aunt, it was my father's sister, we stayed with them. And then we ended up moving into a house just down the street. On that particular street, there were three Filipino families, and we're all related to each other . That's why I called it sort of

Noel Alumit:

our little village, our little town there. It was also, at that time, I experienced my very first earthquake. I remember my first earthquake. The walls were shaking, things were trembling, and I just was this little boy walking around like, wow, what's going on here? Not knowing that would be my first of many, many, many earthquakes in Los Angeles.

Tom Bliss:

What are your earliest memories of living in Los Angeles, going to school, growing up?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. My earliest memories of Los Angeles was, a kid going to Queen Anne Elementary School, and that school had a lot of black kids, some Latino kids, some Asian kids who were Filipino and Korean. That area would eventually grow into having a very large Korean community. When

Noel Alumit:

I was a kid in the 1970s, at Queen Elementary Schools, something that was happening at that time was busing. They were trying to integrate schools. So we were these kids from the inner city going to be bused into Bel Air. And Bel Air was very white, of Asian people. I don't remember any black people at all at this

Noel Alumit:

particular elementary school in Bel Air. It was an eye-opening experience on many levels, because I'd never been to Bel Air ever. Like I'd been, you know I'd been in Los Angeles for several years now, and I'd never been to Bel, I'd never seen houses like that. I've never seen a neighborhood like that. I ended up going to school with kids whose parents produced or worked on TV shows

Noel Alumit:

that I watched as a kid, and they were quite cavalier about their dad working on some TV show. I thought that was amazing to me to be exposed to that, to see that, because the communities that I grew up in were, one, very immigrant, two very working class, and sort of see this this whole new world was mind boggling, yet at the same time, enchanting, because

Noel Alumit:

it wasn't necessarily that I had this class consciousness but it sort of introduced me to the vastness of Los Angeles, the vastness of the United States when I was a little kid. And maybe that was a good thing. That was a good thing. That was the importance of busing, for little kids to sort of see how different people live, how different cultures live. Was that good or bad? I don't know. But I will say those were the very first time I

Noel Alumit:

sort of had white friends, so I had white friends. That was the very first time that happened. I know that was the first time that some of the kids ever had Filipino friends or people of color friends. That was a really interesting time, I think, to be a child. Yeah, it was a very interesting time to be growing up in Los Angeles because it felt like the adults were fighting about this, the adults were fighting about this, and kids were kids.

Noel Alumit:

I think there was some confusion about what was going on, knowing that the social air was shifting to some degree. And to have that influence us in ways that we don't necessarily realize that's influencing me today, still today, about how I see the world and how it shapes my point of view.

Tom Bliss:

Now, you have a lot of stories about just the culture shock of that experience. You have one about a seatbelt.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. The culture shock I experienced as a kid was really, really interesting because I felt like it became, there was a degree where I felt like my family was on survival mode. I mean, we were just like on survival mode. In Bel Air, there was a bigger sense of like, oh, we can sort of settle down and take care of things. I was

Noel Alumit:

in a friend's car, like a white car, and they said, "Oh, don't forget to buckle your seatbelt." And for some reason, that was so strange to me, to buckle my seatbelt. And she says, "Your family doesn't tell you to buckle your seatbelt." And I said, "No." The worry on her face was just -- I remember the shock in her face. Well, we didn't necessarily think of that, maybe not wearing seat belts in the 1970s it

Noel Alumit:

was that big of a deal. But the look of shock and worry in her face is something I still remember today. It almost felt like, oh gosh, don't you care about your children? Don't those people over there and that neighborhood care about their children? I'm like, well, yeah, they care about their children. They care about us all the time, so much so they worked all the time to provide for us, to make sure that we were safe, and that I do believe that it's a big part of where my work ethic comes from.

Noel Alumit:

I work all the time. I'm busy all the time as well as being mindfully busy and finding time for myself and being peaceful. But I find work to be valuable because I saw my parents work all the time. And even when my father was passing away and we're around his deathbed he said to us, "What are you all doing here? You should all be working." Even at that time, he was like, you need to be working. So

Noel Alumit:

which can be a great thing, but it can also be a damaging thing, because something now I know later in life is like this high, this idea of always doing can be detrimental. This thing I'm doing, working constantly on the move can actually be dangerous for people, myself included.

Tom Bliss:

Let's talk about when you first started to become aware of your gay identity.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. How did I become aware of my gay identity? Well, gosh, I knew I was gay as a boy. When I looked through what was then the Sears catalog, we were like, look through the Sears catalog, and I would see these handsome guys, and I would just get this tingling in my heart. I would just see these images of these handsome men. I knew that there was just something to that,

Noel Alumit:

like, I felt the attraction to these guys immediately which I did not feel to the pretty women in the catalog, in the Sears catalog. I felt there was this sense that I might be a little different. I like boys and I remember even as a child, wanting to have that kind of special bond with other boys. I had

Noel Alumit:

lots of girlfriends, I will say that. I mean friends who were girls and those were awesome relationships. I think, mutually, when we were being bused and we were at this particular school, that was the very first time I was ever introduced to square dancing . I've never squared danced before. At the school in Bel Air, we learned to square dance. There was something

Noel Alumit:

about the teacher teaching us that square dancing that I thought, I think this guy might be gay. I didn't know what the word was, but I felt like this teacher was queer just from what he was saying and things that I got really interested in. For example, square dancing was one, and he would recommend this new movie about the life of Judy Garland .

Noel Alumit:

I actually watched it. It starred Andrea McCardle as a young Judy Garland, and I actually remember watching it because of his recommendation, and I knew who Judy Garland was as a kid, so I ended up watching it. But my relationships with girls at that time too was, I was the best dancer when I came to square dancing. The girls would fight over me says, "I want Noel to be my partner," "I want Noel to be my partner."

Noel Alumit:

I mean, to the point where it actually kind of stressed me out, everything, being stressed out as a kid, because there were several girls who wanted to be my dance partner. That was the good thing about the whole bus situation, was being introduced to this new culture. I had no idea what square dancing was. I didn't know what was going on, so being able to share different cultures was really cool for them and for us, because I know

Noel Alumit:

something that my school brought was a lot of the black girls would do these really cool, intricate dance steps, and the white girls would be watching awe and trying their best to imitate that, which is not too different from today, . Seeing that and sort of seeing that kind of exchange was really interesting and really, really awesome.

Tom Bliss:

You talked about watching Phil Donahue

Tom Bliss:

as a child on the show of Female Impersonators. Was your dad present? Can you tell me that story?

Noel Alumit:

Yes. I was a kid when I was watching Phil Donahue, and Phil Donahue was a big talk show host, and I was watching it with my mom and dad one afternoon, and they did a whole episode on drag queens. I don't think they call them drag queens, I think I call 'em crossdressers, people who cross-dress. But now we might call 'em drag queens because they're people

Noel Alumit:

who did it for entertainment purposes. Yeah. They had a club in Chicago that was dedicated to people in drag and dancing. They were amazing. They were fabulous, and you wouldn't even know at all the difference. The subject came up about masculinity and manhood and performance, and my dad made it very clear, you're going to grow up and become a man.

Noel Alumit:

Just from the tone of it, I can tell that he did not want a drag queen son, did not want an effeminate son. I mean, and he knew immediately that I was probably a queer kid. I was this guy who walked around the house doing Lucille Ball impersonations, you know what I'm saying? It was very clear that I was gay. I think that that was something that

Noel Alumit:

my dad struggled with. My mom was more welcoming of that. We were having dinner one time, and I guess I was being loud and flaming and talking about something, and my dad told me to stop acting gay, stop acting like that. He kicked me under the table. But the universe

Noel Alumit:

had to revenge because he ended up kicking the table leg , which I'm sure hurt him. But my mother had been my advocate at that time, and she saw that I was hurt, and she just like tapped me in my head and just to let me know that it was okay to let me know it was okay. I'm a mama's boy today. I have no problem saying I'm a mama's boy today because she loved me. When I

Noel Alumit:

did tell her, I came out, the big reveal that was coming out, she said, "I know, I know. I was waiting for you to tell me." And that was a wonderful, wonderful bond I had with my mom.

Tom Bliss:

Can you talk a little about Filipino mothers, especially those with gay children?

Noel Alumit:

When it comes to Filipino moms, gosh, with my friends,

Noel Alumit:

when we laugh and joke about it because they are loving, Filipino mamas are loving, they are sweet. They are our biggest advocates. But boy, can they be mean. I mean, boy, can they just , you know -- Boy, can they be mean sometimes. Then just really bordering on tiger mom. I feel like,

Noel Alumit:

because my mother also has no problem pointing at my flaws and insecurities. I like to think part of it is sort of the English translation of their thoughts, English translations of their thoughts. I'll give you an example, one time I said, "Mom, I'm thinking about going back into acting again." This was just several years ago. "I wanna get back into shape

Noel Alumit:

and lose some weight." She says, "Why? I'm sure there are roles for fat people like you." I said, "Oh, gee, yeah, thanks mom." I'm sure she meant to be like, it's okay, be who you are, love who you are. I see that now, but at the time, it was shocking. But I know she just tried to say it in a way

Noel Alumit:

that was, I guess, direct and sweet, but it had the wrong tone to it sometimes. I know she'll say something to give me the reverse effect. She'll tell me how I'm not good at something so I can prove her wrong at it. At the same time, you know, it came to the point, she'd criticize me so much that I would

Noel Alumit:

exclude her from things. Like I said, I didn't tell her about shows I was in. I didn't tell her about writing I did. Then later on, she'd be mad that I didn't tell her. She's like, "Why am I hearing from your aunt that you had this published? Why am I hearing from my sister that you were in the show? Why aren't you telling me?" Now, I've gotten better about saying, "Mom, I'm doing this," at least I tell her, and she can opt out of it.

Noel Alumit:

She does a lot, I guess my mom's that kind of person who's like I'm not going to your stupid party, but you have to invite me anyway . She is that kind of person. I think Filipino moms are awesome. They're great. They're our biggest advocates. But I think something they try to do is keep us humble . So like, ooh. Okay,

Noel Alumit:

I'm humble. I'm humble. You've humbled me enough.

Tom Bliss:

Your family moved to Filipino Town before it was officially Filipino town. Can you tell me how old were you? What was that like?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. My family moved into Historic Filipinotown in 1970s. We got our home specifically in 1978. In 1978, and the neighborhood was changing, and there were still --

Noel Alumit:

We took the house over from a white family who was leaving the house. We had actually several white neighbors in the neighborhood who also ended up leaving. Yeah. I remember being a kid and telling my friends at my old neighborhood, "Oh, yeah, we're moving, we're moving." And they asked about our house, and that it was a two-story house. And all the kids

Noel Alumit:

were just amazed that I'll be moving into a house on the second floor. I knew how special that was. I knew how special that was. I knew it was special, even when I was in the neighborhood in Historic Filipinotown. A lot of Historic Filipinotown, still today, even with gentrification, still has a huge working class feel to it. A lot of our parents did not have glamorous jobs or high paying jobs,

Noel Alumit:

but somehow we made it work, and there were kids that would invite into our home, and they couldn't believe the amount of space that was in our house. I understood sort of the gravity of the situation that we were able to -- To be home owners was one thing. It was until later that my mother told me, just like the hard work and a sacrifice it took to get that house, my father had just gotten his real estate license

Noel Alumit:

at the time, too. Even though he had a real estate license, most of his jobs still fell back on being a security guard. I mean, that's how he made things work, is that he was a security guard. One of the things that our family is proud of today, is that he secured this house for his family. There was a lot of Filipinos in that neighborhood and I was talking to them not too long ago

Noel Alumit:

about being Filipino in that neighborhood. I think it gave us a really sound idea of who we were as people in the world, because I will say that I've met Filipinos who were not raised in the Filipino community, who were raised with non-Filipinos or more mostly white people. I guess the sense of who they are as people, or their security and who they are as Filipinos or individuals on earth pales

Noel Alumit:

comparison to those of us who grew up in communities where there are lots of Filipino people, that I've noticed that working with people and dealing with people, was having that pocket, I would say that a good number of people I grew up with were either Filipino or Asian. Having that in my family was an important part of who

Noel Alumit:

I have today, what I do today, and what I stand for.

Tom Bliss:

So you have some very interesting stories about acting out on being gay, developing your queer persona at a young age. Can you talk about how that started happening?

Noel Alumit:

Sure. How did my queer persona start to evolve? In the 1980s, in particular, 70s, 80s was, I will say that I'd been an adventurous child, adventurous young man. My father would go out into the parks, for example, and in the parks, I'd sort of sense activity in the parks. I'd sense, oh, look at those. There are a lot of guys

Noel Alumit:

hanging out at the park, and that was sort of this first notion, oh, that's sort of where queer people are in the parks. I was 14 years old when I began to go running in the parks, and I've noticed, oh, there are more people in the parks, more people in the bushes. There was something exciting about that. There was something about that that was very exciting.

Noel Alumit:

Yet, at the same time, there was something scary and somewhat shameful. They thought, oh, this is where gay people are. We're sort of, obviously not in the mainstream. We're obviously not out and proudly, not then. Having to be in this place as a young queer person, it was confusing. It was confusing, sort of, seeing, oh, that's where gay people are, sort of in the shadows

Noel Alumit:

of society in the shadows of Los Angeles. Yet at the same time, there was a part of me that was grateful to see that it was grateful, oh, at least there was some place I can go to. There was some place where I can go and sort of meet people. Frankly, there were times I went to the parks and I met people my age. I met other teenage boys in the parks also, and some of them I actually was in school with. I said, "Oh, hi."

Noel Alumit:

Where we would just sort of run into each other and we didn't necessarily say it out loud. Sometimes we wouldn't even acknowledge each other, but we just saw each other. We saw each other in these venues in Los Angeles, in these parks in Los Angeles, roaming around. It's interesting because now I think we sort of talk about that time as rebellious, as cutting edge because

Noel Alumit:

we were young queer people trying to find our place in the world. If that place in the world was in a bush and a park, well, so be it. At least we were somewhere, or at least we were somewhere. Eventually, that changed. Thank goodness that we have a broader presence in the world. I lost my virginity by meeting someone in the parks. I was a teenage boy when I lost my virginity.

Noel Alumit:

I remember taking the bus, the number 10 bus, and Filipino town, the temple bus that took us straight to West Hollywood. Yeah. Getting off that bus, there's the West Hollywood park. Back then, that park was magnetic. I mean, there was a lot of cruising as we called it. There was a lot of cruising in the park, a lot of cruising in those areas, that went on. I remember

Noel Alumit:

going into that park, and if you remember that park, you sort of walked that park and there's Santa Monica Boulevard and looking at the bars with all the gay people, at the same time. I was not fully out, so I was sort of like in the bushes of this park. I was sort of like, within the trees of this park, watching gay life unfold in front of me. I'm thinking that was strange and exciting, would that ever be me? The kind of cruising that we did too

Noel Alumit:

as a teenage boy, being out in the world sort of seeing where we were, there was something strange about it, exciting about it. You'd also have to say there was also something shameful about it, because I thought, oh, we can't be ourselves. We have to be sort of in the shadows, in the bushes, in the bathrooms, or in our cars. I remember being in a car in a park and a police officer,

Noel Alumit:

a security guard just like knocked on our window. "What are you doing here?" And that went on for a long time, not just necessarily with me, but that wouldn't necessarily happen for straight people. If there was a boy or girl in the car sitting there, talking, I don't think they would've been approached the way I was approached when I was a kid with a guy in a car. I remember just being so scared,

Noel Alumit:

being so scared of being found out that, I knew that if something happened to me, if I was taken to prison or arrested or whatever, that it would just kill my parents. It would kill my parents that something like that happened to me. I had to be very cautious and very mindful of my surroundings, and be careful about not being caught being this wandering soul in Los Angeles.

Noel Alumit:

This young queer kid, this young queer Filipino kid. Something I will say about that time is that period two could be very, very dangerous to be a young queer boy in Los Angeles without mentors, without a safe space in school or whatever. I found myself in very precarious situations. There was some cases where I felt like I barely escaped with my life,

Noel Alumit:

and I just thought to myself, well, that's sort of gay life. And looking back, that makes me sad to think that was part of gay life, because the gay life I have today is filled with joy. It's filled with happiness. It's filled with being out and proud. I know a lot of what we have today is because of what we did before, but there was something that was truly scary too, about being a young queer kid,

Noel Alumit:

that if something happened to me, I don't think anyone would've looked for me. I think people would've just sort of been okay with my disappearance.

Tom Bliss:

Did you have a sense of your intersectionality then within the queer community, being a person of color?

Noel Alumit:

When it came to this intersectionality of my race and my sexuality, I was more aware of the fact that, gosh, everyone's very white and everyone is very white. Yeah.

Noel Alumit:

The closest I came to that actually was when I was a teenager, going to a club in West Hollywood called Peanuts, and Peanuts in West Hollywood just was feel all of us. I think it was, I would say like 90, 95% were made up of black and brown people, of drag performers and things. I saw people I went to

Noel Alumit:

school with at this place, even though we didn't acknowledge each other. But I remember looking at a woman thinking like, I knew you were a dyke from way back . We were in school in sixth grade. And I'm like, I knew you were a dyke from way back. But even then, we did not see each other. Like, we didn't necessarily -- She was Latina dyke, and like, "I knew you were," and she probably thought "I knew you were too." But, we didn't say anything.

Noel Alumit:

I still remember seeing her on the dance floor to this day, that I just remember just dancing, dancing., dancing, dancing, dancing. And from that club, Peanuts, that was the very first time I actually brought home a boy. I think I was 16 years old. I brought home a boy to my actual home, to my actual bedroom. And my family were like, "Who is this person?" I said, "That was just a friend. It was a friend." And I had the joy

Noel Alumit:

of kissing a boy in my bedroom, a really sweet, cute Latino kid. So here we were, this Latino kid, this Filipino kid. We went out a couple times, actually. We sort of met up a couple times, and then as things do, it just sort of faded. That just sort of faded. But I think that that space in particular was really, really important, particularly for young people,

Noel Alumit:

because they allowed people who were younger in this club. I think, back then, there were clubs where even 14 and over, you know, I prefer that scene over another club that I went to. I only went there once in West Hollywood, was called Odyssey. I was going this club in called Odyssey. I saw a marked difference between Odyssey and Peanuts. I mean, it was just obvious that it seemed like that there was a lot of drug use

Noel Alumit:

at Odyssey. I feel like people were strung out and they were not having the kind of fun that I saw black and brown people doing at Peanuts. Now, there was drug use and alcohol use at Peanuts too, but I felt like there was just, there was this people, it just seemed like they were dancing more. And at the Odyssey, they just seem to be a little bit more , you know? Like, I'm not coming back here . I'm not coming back here. It was really interesting to

Noel Alumit:

sort of see that that's in Los Angeles, very different.

Tom Bliss:

Yeah. I think the whole idea of kissing someone in your bedroom, and since so many movies, so many TV shows. What does that drive, do you think, to being part of the story that is told kids about what it means to grow up and

Tom Bliss:

have crushes and have kisses in bedrooms and for queer people to try to find their way within that framework?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. The idea of growing up gay in what we might call a traditional setting where we get to meet another boy, go to a dance with another boy, I think was denied to a lot of us.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. Particularly, my age and older, that when I think about people today coming out at 14 and going to their prom with their boyfriend, that just amazes me. Just amazes me. I will say that it seemed like, at least in the circle I ran in queer people who felt more accepted in that community ended up just making better decisions about their lives. That's just what I saw, that we just made better decisions about our lives, better choices that we can do. To have

Noel Alumit:

that sense of infatuation as a young person, I think is important. To have that infatuation with a young person, to have someone reciprocate that is important. That something like that is possible to find that we could have that sense of sexual tension as young people is important. That sense that we could be special together, I think is important.

Noel Alumit:

Because I think what can be damaging sometimes, well, and many times, is to express your love or attraction to someone else, and be completely shut down. Shut down, violated, abused. I was fortunate that, at least at that time, I should have had a sense that there was someone to kiss. I think knowing that there was someone to kiss is

Noel Alumit:

a really important idea for young people, not having sex, but just to have someone to kiss and be it sweet and gentle. I remember that kiss to this day because it was so lovely and so wonderful. I think having those kind of opportunities for people as opposed to shaming them, as opposed to making them feel bad, the person who gets to kiss someone and have it

Noel Alumit:

reciprocated and feel validated will become a totally different person than someone who was shut down, who was ashamed and told they were bad. Something about my family. I think that was really awesome. Yes. Maybe it wasn't great that they had a gay person, but they never disrespected anyone I brought home. That was a good thing. When I brought that guy home into my bedroom, my older brother says, "I hope you guys aren't doing something nasty or something." "You did something nasty,

Noel Alumit:

didn't you?" But they never were violent about it, they never said anything bad about it. I think that, too, is part of Filipino culture, is that, "Hey, look, if you come into our home, as long as you're a decent human being, have some food, have a seat, rest." I think Filipino people in general are just very hospitable people. Whenever I brought home someone, they were very kind to them, including when I did come out

Noel Alumit:

and I brought home a boyfriend when I was in an actual relationship. There were sometimes though where I brought home guys who were just friends, they were just friends of mine, nothing romantic or sexual at all, and they just assumed that they were my boyfriend in a romantic sense. Like, no, that's okay. But my mother still will talk about, "Remember that boy you brought home for Christmas." I'm like, yeah, I brought home because he had nowhere else to go, I wasn't romantic. But she just assumed,

Noel Alumit:

and perhaps rightly so, to bring home a boy for Christmas that he's someone special in my life. He was someone special in my life as a friend, but not romantically.

Tom Bliss:

I also want to kind of touch on -- I do want to get to your adult life. I think it's so interesting, there's a stereotype of being how hypersexual

Tom Bliss:

gays are, but you talk about the underlayers of the sexuality of gays finding their identity, of having all these other meanings, because there's really not any other place for them to develop an identity, and it's through sex. What was it about the sexuality of the gay community that stood out for you? And what was underneath that?

Noel Alumit:

What was it about gay sexuality that stood out for me? And what was the underlying meaning about that? Well, I think men in general, one of the ways they will communicate is on a sexual level. Yeah. On an attraction level, I think. I do have to say that sometimes I would see guys having sex in the bushes. One, that was shocking to me; but,

Noel Alumit:

two, I also understood it. They were looking for some sort of connection any which way they could. I think what's happening now today, that did not happen then, was how do you ask someone out? How do you say, "Do you wanna get a cup of coffee?" I had no skills about that. I certainly didn't feel I could talk to someone about that. I think a

Noel Alumit:

big part of my sexuality when it was driven with sex is normal for teenage boys, that it was just being able to experience my sexuality. Growing up as this healthy male, feeling this tingling in my groin, was something healthy. That I see now is healthy, before I was worried because, gosh, I'm thinking about sex all the time, not knowing that I was a normal part of what it was like to be a growing boy. I'll tell you

Noel Alumit:

right now, that sexuality, particularly as a Filipino Catholic boy, was not a good thing. I went to confession once at the Filipino church I went to, and there was a Filipino priest there. Then in confession, I said, "Forgive me, father, I have sinned," doing the entire ritual, "I masturbate." And this priest said to me, "Son, you have to come back

Noel Alumit:

at another time because I don't have enough time to tell you what you need to do to absolve your sins." Can you imagine? I was like, tell this teenage boy that he's having these hormones, he's having these experiences and saying -- This sense of like, "Oh, you need to come back a later time because what I have to tell you for what you just did was just not good." That was unfortunate. Of course, this was

Noel Alumit:

an old school priest from the Philippines, so again, that kind of message was not good, and going into spaces where gay men were having sex, yes, there was shame. Yes, there was fear. Yet I'm glad that I was able to also honor my sexuality as a young American boy, with people who are willing

Noel Alumit:

to engage with me. The best part for me too, so we might have sex, we might do subject sexual, but it was also the conversation afterward that was really important. It was the conversation afterward, the hugging, the snuggling, the kissing, whatever that might be. Now, there were lots of instances where there was not that, sort of got together and just sort of did the deed and left.

Noel Alumit:

But also have to say that that too was an important part of my upbringing, to have a sense of what my body was about and can do is something that I've been thinking about more often these days as I age, because I think, oh, my body is changing. My body is not reacting the way I'd like it to be, my muscles are more sore, I'm more stiff. To experience

Noel Alumit:

the agility of my body, including in a sexual way, I think was a very uplifting thing for me to do. That's one. Two, I do have to say I was a lovely young man. I was gonna put my pictures. I was a lovely young man. I think that that's one of the ways I got validation in the world. Maybe there weren't people who looked like me

Noel Alumit:

on television, maybe I didn't get that, but there were people who were attracted to me. In some small way, there was something validating about that. There was something validating about being someone being attracted to me, being attracted to who I was, being attracted to the skin, these eyes, this face, there was something about that that was ultimately also very affirming,

Noel Alumit:

because it did gimme a sense of who I was. It gave me a sense of what my body could do. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Yeah. Particularly at a time when all that shit was bad, all that was negative and horrible. Even though I felt maybe a little weirded out about it, strange, I look at that time now, I'm like, it was a validating time for me.

Tom Bliss:

So with all

Tom Bliss:

the meaning behind sex and sexuality for young gay men, for you as a young gay man, how were you impacted by the AIDS crisis?

Noel Alumit:

How was I impacted by the AIDS crisis? That is a huge, huge question, because I was 12 years old when I saw my first news story about this, and Connie Chung, I remember her specifically. Connie Chung said that there was this disease hitting gay men.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. And I just knew innately that she was talking to me. Like I knew that she was talking. At the time, I didn't know how big that would grow, what that would mean in the early 80s when I first heard about that. But I knew, huh, something's up. Something's up. And that impacted

Noel Alumit:

my behavior out there. I think there was a -- Like I knew penetrative sex was not a good thing. I wasn't necessarily big into penetrative sex at that time anyway, , it was sort of like, yeah. But at the same time, growing up in the 1980s as a young gay man in the 1980s, and I see these news stories, these whisperings about AIDS

Noel Alumit:

was just earth shattering. Also, my mom was a nurse and she worked in an AIDS unit, and sometimes she would come home and tell stories about what it was like to work in an AIDS unit. I think one of the reasons she told me was she was trying to, in some way, warn me about this thing called AIDS out there. My mother would tell me these very sad stories about how

Noel Alumit:

she'd heard about a gay man once he found out his diagnosis, he jumped out a window so that his death certificate could say suicide and not AIDS. Yeah. That was just overwhelming to me. I remember watching, they would interview gay men who were now living with AIDS, who were dying with AIDS, and these men were tore up. I mean, these guys looked like

Noel Alumit:

they'd gone through hell and back, not even did come back, they were still in hell. They were like, oh my gosh. The physical deterioration of these men was just overwhelming to me. Feeling that kind of sadness. Yeah. At the same time, camaraderie with them too. I will say that something that the AIDS crisis did do was it did introduce the gay community to my mother, for the very first time.

Noel Alumit:

I will say that my mother also talked about how wonderful the gay men were. She would talk about how those gay guys were amazing. Those gay guys, those lesbians. My mom won't talk about how those gay men, those gay women, they took care of each other in ways that she never saw

Noel Alumit:

straight people take care of each other. She would say how just the love that she witnessed in the AIDS unit, I think gave permission for her to be okay with her gay son, gave her permission to say, oh, these were not sort of like these weirdos and freaks and outcasts that you might see in movies. These were people with feelings, people with compassion, people with love.

Noel Alumit:

I will say that it was impactful in ways that we may not understand, because it also showed the level of love that queer people are able to provide. Yeah. The level of love and support that we can provide for each other. That's one. It was also eye-opening because places where I thought the love would come from did not come. That there were places

Noel Alumit:

of faith who espouse being loving, who espoused being compassionate, who espoused caring for their fellow human beings, and when the opportunity came for that to happen, it did not happen. It did not happen. There were some cases where it did, there were some cases where there were some great Catholics. There was some great people of faith, there was some people who stepped up. But I felt like the majority of that

Noel Alumit:

was terrible. I remember singing in the choir at my particular church and choir members talking about someone in the congregation who's dying of AIDS and the head priest at a time would not provide last rights for this person. No. And last rights is an important ritual in the Catholic faith. That

Noel Alumit:

broke my heart a lot, because that too was an awakening portion for me. Oh, the people who were supposed to provide love and support somehow couldn't do it. But people who we thought were outcasts and freaks were, so, that was eye-opening too, that informed my existence in the world. That informed who I was as a person of faith in the world.

Tom Bliss:

Can you talk about your work at the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention team?

Noel Alumit:

Ah, yes, my work at the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team. My work in the Asian community in Los Angeles was a direct result of the racism in the gay community. I tried to enter gay spaces at the time, and I just not feel wanted or supported. I just didn't feel that, so something I

Noel Alumit:

learned is what goes someplace where I do want you. And there were queer Asian spaces who wanted me, at first started off when I started working for East West Players, as a young actor, as a person who just graduated with a degree in drama, that East West players was more than willing to welcome me, East West Players is the premier Asian American theater company in Los Angeles that's still going strong today.

Noel Alumit:

When I went there as a volunteer, they accepted me, and soon they hired me. I was in charge of the public relations and marketing. Part of that job was to invite people to come see the shows. One of the groups I remember inviting was APIT. We were having a play that had gay undertones to it, so I wanted to invite Gay Asian people, and we invited APIT to come. I did the introduction of the show, and that's how I met

Noel Alumit:

the wonderful duo of Joel Tan and Dean Goishi. They invited me to apply for a job there eventually. I applied for a job and I got the job. I'll never forget this interview, because they asked me questions like, you know this job, which does AIDS education, would require you to go to places like bath houses

Noel Alumit:

and bushes and sex clubs, or out in the boulevard at night. Would you feel comfortable doing that? And I answered, "I did all of that last weekend." I had no problem doing this job, because they said that up until that time, they were interviewing lots of guys, but there were more like the office that came up in suits, with briefcases, and they

Noel Alumit:

wanted to interview for this job, and here I was, this queer kid, just out in the clubs, out in the parks. I became a really good fit for that organization. I spent, gosh, maybe the next 19, 20 years doing work with them. I gave my youth to the cause, gave my youth to AIDS,

Noel Alumit:

I gave youth to Asian AIDS, queer Asian AIDS, the gay community. And I gave it willingly. It was easily one of the most informative times of my life, transformative times of my life, because it was a place where being queer and Asian were advantages in the world, and not disadvantages of the world. It also introduced me to a larger

Noel Alumit:

queer community too, that was just amazing. But a lot of queer people of color who were doing specifically work in people of color communities, the Black AIDS Institute, for example, was really important. Minority AIDS Project, Vienna Star, the Wallace Memorials. It provided the entree to a lot of communities out there. Here's the thing about being with those communities, whether it'd be with people of color

Noel Alumit:

or with more mainstream gay people. I was reflecting on that, not too long ago, that some of us were so traumatized for our upbringing, that one of the ways that it manifested was infighting. Yeah. A lot of us fought with each other, yelled at each other because it was filled with AIDS and tension and our friends dying. There was also a lot of drug use going on, so we're dying of age or dying of drug use, some of us were being gay

Noel Alumit:

bashed to death. One of the ways that manifested was that there was a lot of fighting going on. And of course, what will happen now, I see some of those people I fought with today, or we were at each other's throats, and all we can do is give each other a great big hug. All we can do is say, "How are you? Boy, that was a hard time, and we made it to the other side, baby." Be careful, because the enemies you have today might become your

Noel Alumit:

best friends later in life, , which has been the case. So sometimes, I know we want to kill each other then, but boy, I'm glad we were there and worked on the other side.

Tom Bliss:

One of the things that really struck me that you said was seeing POC people dying of AIDS versus how it was presented in the mainstream. Also, how doing that work,

Tom Bliss:

part of your role was to make gay Asian men feel good about themselves. To do that, you had to learn how to do that for yourself first. Can you talk about that?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. Coming out as gay, I know I wouldn't have been able to do that if it weren't the fact that I had to embrace the community that I was serving. Like I talked about that Connie Chung segment

Noel Alumit:

and all the news stories up until that time, about LGBT people was primarily white. I mean, it was all images of white people. Particularly it came to AIDS, and I graduated from college and I had a lot of time because I wasn't gonna school anymore. It was suggested to me to start doing volunteer work. I did volunteer work at the Chris Brownlie Hospice for people with AIDS. They were dying

Noel Alumit:

of AIDS at the time. I remember walking into this hospice, and I expected to see gay white men dying. I was not prepared to see women in this hospice. I was not prepared to see black and brown people in this hospice. I was not prepared to see a Filipino, a woman who looked like one of my aunts dying in this hospice. Yeah. And how that just like, I mean, whew, it blew open my world.

Noel Alumit:

It blew open who was living and dying of AIDS at the time. What was really sad to me about that time is that a lot of the people, it seemed, wanted to die secretly. Like, they didn't want anyone to die. Matter of fact, there was someone there who I knew, we had mutual friends,

Noel Alumit:

she was trans, she told me, "Please do not tell our friends that I'm here. Please don't do that." And of course, when you're doing volunteer work, you promise anonymity. I still have not told some of our friends about this person. Yeah. And sometimes they might say, oh, wonder whatever happened to so and so, and I'm just quiet. The people I saw in there were also people -- Gosh,

Noel Alumit:

there were "famous people" in there. There was a guy there, handsome white guy, who said that he wrote a book and I looked him up, yep, he wrote a book. Seeing that, and they didn't want anyone to know. The sense of shame. "Please don't tell anyone I have AIDS." "Don't tell anyone this." I remember being there, and there was a young black man who was dying, and his mother was

Noel Alumit:

there with him. I was sitting with the family, the mother and his dying son. She gave me the card to her church, and she said, "Oh, please come by and visit our church." And it was a famous black church. I thought to myself, where is everyone? Not just with him, but for everyone here. Like the Filipino, I know we have strong family connections. Like I know, like

Noel Alumit:

the Latino people here, the Black people here, the AIDS people, we have family connections. Where are they? There was so much shame about who they were as people, about who they were with people with AIDS. They'd rather die anonymously than with people they love. I thought, oh, that was so hard to see. When I had the opportunity to teach self-love to other queer Asian people, I think

Noel Alumit:

that was an enormous calling that I'm grateful that I step up to. Yeah. Now, here's the thing, in order for me to teach other queer Asian people to feel good about themselves, I had to feel good about myself. Yeah. I was coming up as a young actor at the time, and there was no way that I was gonna come out of the closet at that time. Gay actors older than me says, "Do not come out of the closet. Don't do it."

Noel Alumit:

But I felt to myself, like, I could not properly tell other gay people, other gay Asian people, to be proud of who they were if I weren't proud myself, you know? So in the 90s when I began to come out as a performer, as a gay performer, that became an important part of my self-love and my self-acceptance, to be able to say that I'm this gay actor, openly gay Asian actor was

Noel Alumit:

a big part of my development. I'm glad I did that. That did instigate a sense of self-love that I felt was authentic when I began talking to other people about it, particularly other gay Asian men about it. That became really, really important.

Tom Bliss:

Can we just get a little sound bite about Asian Pacific lesbian and gays organization? I know June Lagmay, Terry Gock, we've interviewed them. I know you work with them a lot. Can you just

Tom Bliss:

talk about that a little?

Noel Alumit:

Oh, wow. What should I say? Well, Terry Gock was actually one of the founders of APIT, so that was really, really important. Yeah. I don't know if June knew me, but I certainly knew of her. I do have to say, what was interesting about sort of that different generational push was APLG, for example, was

Noel Alumit:

an organization known for Asian and friends, Asian friends. Translation, white people. It was like Asians and white people getting together, each other. When I was coming up, there was a big emphasis of like Asians loving other Asian people, Asians loving ourselves. I don't wanna say it's a huge divide, but there was an obvious divide

Noel Alumit:

that there were those of us, like, "You know what, it's okay for other Asian people to be in love with other Asian people, to be romantically involved with other Asian people." Even though that was a stress factor to say, "Hey, why can't we date ourselves? Let's date ourselves." "Let's date other Asian people." Which is not strange today, but back then, that was like, mind boggling. Asian people dating other Asian people? You're kidding me. Being able to find that

Noel Alumit:

kind of beauty and self-love -- I remember, I'm always gonna attracted to Asian guys, then some of my crushes in school were with Asian guys who did not have crushes on my back. But I had this Japanese American boyfriend, and for some people that was like, amazing that I had a fellow Asian boyfriend. And in communities of color, that too was kind of a big deal. I remember some rice queen

Noel Alumit:

getting mad at me, he said, "Why are these Asians dating each other? That means I can't date them." It was like, I was too bad, dude. Too bad. Then it was this joke at the time, but it was, to actually have Asian people dating ourselves was actually quite revolutionary. I did a campaign for the LA Gay and Lesbian Center,

Noel Alumit:

and in that campaign, there was a scene of me kissing another Asian guy, his name is Peci, and they showed this picture of us kissing. Now we don't look at that as such a big deal, but back then, in the 90s, had two Asian men kissing each other, was like, whoa, whoa. APIT was really big about that. APIT did these campaigns of Asian people loving other Asian people, introducing

Noel Alumit:

that to ourselves, saying, "Hey, look, what's wrong with Asian people loving other Asian people?" Let's also make that the norm. So to find ourselves in our relationships and to find ourselves truly loving each other in every possible way was just the most beautiful thing, truly the most beautiful thing.

Tom Bliss:

So by this time, you have a lot of lived experience,

Tom Bliss:

which will, let's get into your career.

Noel Alumit:

God, we have not even talked about ,

Tom Bliss:

Right? Before though, I just want to know where you're at with your personal life. I know you gave up drinking around -- This would've been at your time in this job. What was that like for you?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. I will say at that time, it was traumatizing. I mean, it was traumatizing

Noel Alumit:

as far as when I saw the world. I talked about how hard it was seeing communities be left out and left alone. Yeah. That there were those of us who were dying alone, and in secret, they didn't want anyone to know that we were dying of AIDS or being gay in general. It affected me in the most profound ways. I also talked about being a young gay man in the world

Noel Alumit:

as a teenager there was sexual violence that I endured, that traumatized me in ways that I did not understand at the time. To experience sexual violence as a young man, and had nowhere to go to talk about, because what I'm gonna tell the police that I was sexually assaulted as a teenage boy by another man, they're like, "What were you doing?" "Well, I was there, at that park. I went home with that man." "Well, what do you expect?"

Noel Alumit:

So I knew immediately to shut up about that, about any violence that I experienced, whatever racism I experienced, any kind of oppression I experienced, like, who would I talk -- There were no support groups for that, and I internalized that, internalized AIDS. One of the ways that manifested for me was that I started drinking a lot. I started using drugs,

Noel Alumit:

and it was all a horrible downward spiral. Fortunately, I was also in therapy at the time and my therapist noticed that I was engaged in a lot of destructive behavior and it was influenced by drugs and alcohol. She suggested I enter their chemical dependency recovery unit, a fancy word for rehab, and you should go there.

Noel Alumit:

I went and I sought services there, support groups there. They put me on act abuse to discourage my drinking, which makes you violently ill if you start drinking. I went to that program, probably 23 years old, 24. And I met when I was 25, so I haven't had a drink or drug since

Noel Alumit:

1993. Yeah. One of the best decisions I've ever made was to enter recovery and feel those very, very important feelings and not numb them out to mature as gay man without influence of drugs and alcohol. We didn't know this then, but we know this now about the human brain not fully forming until you're 25 years old. To have

Noel Alumit:

some of my brain form at that important time of my life was a really good thing. So being able to meet other people on the road to recovery was important to have to trudge that road with other fellows was an important part of my development, was an important part of my life as a queer Asian man in the world.

Noel Alumit:

Now, even in recovery communities, yes, you experience bullshit. Yes, she'll experience racism and homophobia. But for the most part find people, at my level, find people. They want to make sure that we were successful. I remember being in rehab, and the wonderful guy was my case manager, Don Morman, and

Noel Alumit:

I said to him that I just had so many issues and so much self-hatred and so much rage in the world about being gay, about being Asian. So much bitterness and anger about who I was and what the world did to someone like me. She says, well, we'll help you. We'll find someone to work with you. I says, I want somebody who was queer.

Noel Alumit:

I want a mentor or sponsor who's queer Asian, and had at least 10 years of sobriety, and I didn't think anyone like that existed. He said, "Okay, we'll get you that person." And I met a Japanese American lesbian who at the time had 23 years of no drinking or drugs, 23 years of sobriety, and she helped me for a lot of years, a lot of years,

Noel Alumit:

and she spent her childhood in a Japanese American internment camp . So she had no bullshit for whatever thing I had to say, she was like, they took away everything from her when she was a kid, they took away everything, and her family had to start over and things. When it came to me talking about things like how unfair the world was, she was just basically just shut up and don't drink.

Noel Alumit:

She was , just shut up and don't drink. Just shut up and don't drink or use, just do that. I understand that these horrible things going on in the world, but right now just shut up and don't drink, and see what happens from there, that I couldn't get into this -- And sometimes become an important part of my spirituality today is before I start thinking about those external shifts in the world, what internal shifts can I do in myself?

Noel Alumit:

What can I do internally? You want the world to be less racist or start being less racist yourself. You want the world to be less sexist or start being less sexist yourself. You want the world to be a little less homophobic. Start dealing with your own internal homophobia. So all of that, the importance of the internal shifting and the world and how it ripples out into the world, by me being those less things, and that means there's less racism, less sexism, less homophobia, less oppression in the world already

Noel Alumit:

just by starting by myself. That period of not drinking allowed me to grow spiritually. Oh, wow. If I didn't like the words I was born into, did you know, you could leave? You could leave. That was monumental to me. I left, ended up going to get my Divinity degree in Buddhist chaplaincy. It's an important part of my life today.

Noel Alumit:

An important part of how I see the world today, how I lead my life today as a man, a gay man, a gay Asian man, a gay Asian male artist in the world today. Yeah. That has been a strong part of my foundation and what I try to put out in the world.

Tom Bliss:

You've said you had to go through all that and get sober before you could start your celebrated writing and performance career. Mm-Hmm. .

Tom Bliss:

What was it like doing your first show in the 90s, your first one-man show, writing your first book? Can you kind of talk about the artistic scene in Los Angeles that you carved out a niche for yourself in.

Noel Alumit:

Yep. Growing up in Los Angeles, first of all, you're just surrounded by the arts. You're just surrounded by the arts, entertainment, creativity, all of that, right? And I knew deep down

Noel Alumit:

that that's who I was in the world, that I was this creative person, this world, that I was an artist in this world, and my first love was and still is acting. Yeah. I went to school, went to debt, tens of thousands of dollars so I can get my acting degree. So like to be an actor in the world, and I've been part of the union since 1985, since I was 17 years old. I got my first agent when I was 16 years old. And back then,

Noel Alumit:

you know there was one agency in Los Angeles that took Asian Americans, one. There were other agencies that sort of had an Asian person in their client list, but not a lot, but there was an agency called the Bek Agency, and they primarily worked with Asian American actors. And Giley was an agent there, and he was my very first agent was that place. And he just knew immediately that, gosh, being an Asian

Noel Alumit:

actor in the world is tough. I went through the trades and it was very rare for me to find roles for Asian Americans in there. I saw one for a place called East West Players. They're looking for singers and dancers, chorus people. I sent them a picture of my resume and they hired me. I was a chorus boy at 17 years old. In East West Players while I was a student at Marshall High School, so

Noel Alumit:

and I will say that even though it wasn't said out loud that was also my first introduction to meeting other queer Asian people. It was not out loud, but you knew that there and a lot. There were a couple of guys who actually ended up coming out and doing very well for themselves. You know Alan Moka and Tim Dang were two people in my mind who just -- Alan was the lead of the show, and Tim eventually became artist

Noel Alumit:

director for East West Players, so I was this kid seeing these guys perform at a very high level. I was like, oh my gosh. These are incredible performers.

:

These are incredible people doing amazing work in the world. At the time, the artistic director was Mako, who was an Oscar nominated actor, to sort of be in that presence was really, really amazing.

Noel Alumit:

Tim Dang was the one who told me about SSC'S BFA program in acting, and then I applied because he told me about it, you know Kearney Young, who was one of the executive producers at the play at East West Players, actually wrote one of my college recommendation letters, which was really important to me, so having that foundation was an awesome experience. Now, being

Noel Alumit:

at that school, at USC, you know, roles were kind of limited. I will say that one of the roles that I always remember was doing a play called As Is and in the play As Is, it was a play about AIDS, and by William Hoffman, I believe. And we would do research, here we have this whole cast with a lot of gay people

Noel Alumit:

and a lot of allies back then, we just call 'em fag hags, but I know we can't call them that today, but they're glad they called themselves , by Headss, and we would just go out into West Hollywood and go dancing, and that was our research, was to go dancing in the gay clubs in West Hollywood which was wonderful and amazing, and had a great time. That was also an empowering time for me because the character

Noel Alumit:

I played was this white Jewish guy, and I remember doing interviews that were interviewing people for the play. I did an awesome job, and they said, well, would you consider doing one of the other roles not one of the leads? That was a very first time I said, "No, either I get a leader or I'm not doing a play." I mean, in my mind, I said, no. Because it was also a role where I felt like I could be authentically myself,

Noel Alumit:

to be openly gay, masked by being a play. And of course, me and the other actor in that play, actually, there were probably several actors in that play who were gay. We didn't come out offish until later. But to play this gay character, to explore AIDS in that way was a monumental creative achievement as a young actor in the world, and eventually graduating

Noel Alumit:

into that world, graduating the world with AIDS and HIV, graduating the world where being Asian was not cool. Recently the actor, Ke Huy Quan, won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor for Everything Everywhere All At Once. I'm sure he'll win the Oscar for that role, too. We're about the same age, and he talked about he left the business for decades because there was no work, and he was

Noel Alumit:

at a higher level of acting than I was. If he left the business, well, geez, an actor like myself, what are we supposed to do? When it came to act, well, I guess I just gotta write my own roles. I gotta do my own creative projects. When I was at APIT Joe O 10 handed me a flyer that's this free writing workshop for gay people of color, "Noel, it's free. Do you want to go?"

Noel Alumit:

And I said, yes. And it was taught by a woman, the late great , who created a space specifically for queer people of color to write. I want to say that these safe spaces and things was an important part of my development when I was in Kaiser, getting my act together as a person in recovery

Noel Alumit:

Don Norman, a gay black man, had opened a space specifically for queer people of color, so to have these safe spaces where being queer and being a person of color was open, and we can celebrate that and talk about amongst ourselves about what that meant for us. That kind of processing was so important to who I was in the world, so important to my understanding of who I was in the world.

Noel Alumit:

It was that kind of foundation that resonated outward, into the world. One of the ways that I was of service besides just doing AIDS work, is that I was, for a short time, I served on the Asian American subcommittee of the Screen Actress Guild, for example. For a short period, I served on the AIDS Council of the Screen Actress Foundation.

Noel Alumit:

They did not have a gay affinity group at the Screen Actress Guild at that time. I remember specifically asking an elder, a queer elder, I'm thinking about starting a gay group at the screen after guild, and he said, "No, don't do it. Don't do it." He eventually came around and says, "Maybe, if you want to do that, you know, see what happens." But there were gay people at the time in the entertainment industry says, do not come out. That's career suicide. Don't come out,

Noel Alumit:

but I'm glad I came out and lived myself as true to myself than a person who was closeted. Yeah. I can't even imagine my life without that.

Tom Bliss:

So 2002 was a big year for you. Your first novel comes out and it wins a lot of awards, and Out magazine names you one of the 100 influential people that are queer. Can you tell me about that period of your life

Tom Bliss:

and also the process of writing your first novel and translating all that you feel and all that you have been through into a craft?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. I will say the early 2000 was an important time for me because it felt like everything I'd been working toward was coming together. It felt like it was coming together in a couple different ways. One, I was touring as a solo performer, so I was touring the country

Noel Alumit:

performing and acting with the work that I wrote myself. I started taking writing class in the 1990s with writing novels and writing short stories. A novel I started at that time was called Letters to Montgomery Clift. I wrote letters to Montgomery Clift because I was introduced to a novel called The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which wrote Letters to God, and my very first time I ever heard of such a thing as an epistolary novel. Yeah, Letters to Montgomery Clift.

Noel Alumit:

And so it seemed like everything was coming together. My very first book deal was coming together by a wonderful, independent publisher named MacAdam/Cage, which has since closed. But it was an awakening because it was also a time where I was putting forward what I thought was my best, most honest work. And still,

Noel Alumit:

I faced rejection with that, that every major publisher turned down Letter of Montgomery Clift. Mainstream theaters were not taking a look at The Rice Room: Scenes From a Bar, my gay Asian one-man show. Queer spaces were taking a look at it, some Asian spaces were taking a look at it, but there was also a time where all of a sudden there seemed to be this interest in sort of the work I was doing, what I was doing, writing and performing, that my education

Noel Alumit:

and drama was also coming together. What I loved about those spaces, those queer people of color spaces, was to ask, who are you? What can you say? What are you contributing to the world? And one of the things that came out of that was, yes, my solo shows, but also this book, Letters to Montgomery Clift, an homage to this amazing gay man who led the kind of life that I don't want to lead.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. He was closeted. He was an alcoholic, and he died at 45. Now at that time, this idea that gay men died in their 40s was an unfortunate truth. Yeah. That there were certainly gay guys dying of AIDS in their 40s, 30s, 20s, dying of AIDS. If it wasn't AIDS, it was something like

Noel Alumit:

drug use that there were dying of. So having to be able to find a resilience in that time was important to me. I found that resilience through queer people of color spaces, yeah. That was an important time for me, having to write that novel. Boy, gosh, if you were ever want to talk about an exercise, an endurance, try writing a novel, because that can just be, ooh, to have that much focus, to have that much time, to have that much love

Noel Alumit:

being poured into something, particularly a first novel, it is soul crushing. It's soul liberating at the same time. Yeah. It is in this amazing experience of, and Letters to Montgomery Clift was talking about a specific Filipino and Filipino-American experience. It's a story about a Filipino boy suffering the effects of the

Noel Alumit:

Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, and how his life was outwardly changed because of that. His parents disappeared because of the Marcos regime in the Philippines. And that is true for thousands of people in the Philippines, that the Marcos regime made people disappear. Thousands of families were affected because of that, and they're probably still affected by it today. And so I was writing this novel

Noel Alumit:

that was very Filipino, yet at the same time was also very queer, because Montgomery Clift was a queer icon. For me, growing up as young actor in the world as a young gay man in the world, that I sensed Montgomery Clift's sensitivity and his beauty and his struggle, to tell you the truth, his struggle, something I suspected was that Montgomery Clift, and when he died, he had a male nurse

Noel Alumit:

who took care of , a black nurse took care of him, and they called him his nurse. I found out later through very reputable sources that it was not any nurse, it was actually Montgomery Clift's lover, it was his last lover. That was important for me to find out. When I did, to know that a Montgomery Clift could love a person of color, was important to find out.

Noel Alumit:

And so writing this novel, people was like, I don't understand the Marcos regime and gay identity. Well, that's why I'm writing, because it made complete sense to me, to bridge these two worlds, because, when you think about the gay experience, we're not necessarily talking about the gay experience when it comes to immigrants. We're not talking about the traumas of dictatorship or war, and how that also informs the gay experience. That the gay

Noel Alumit:

experience only a particular kind of experience, usually white, having trouble finding a boyfriend when the queer experience is so complicated, so complex. That you have queer people coming from war torn countries, coming from countries where there was dictatorship, where there was war, famine, and plague. Those stories, particularly a novel

Noel Alumit:

like Letters to Montgomery Clift, I think informed the gay narrative in a totally different way. Yeah. Informed the gay narrative about who we are as queer people, who we could be as queer people. To have this gay Filipino kid come out and discuss politics and social awareness, I think was earth shattering at the time. Yes, it was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Yes, I got a notice,

Noel Alumit:

like 100 Queer People. An award that was important to me that I got was the Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association, that there are libraries out there, librarians out there, queer librarians in the world, who are stalking American shelves with gay material like Letters to Montgomery Clift.

Noel Alumit:

What that meant to me was phenomenal. Growing up, I grew up with the Echo Park Library as my home branch. I remember going to the Echo Park Library and checking out Under the Rainbow by Arnie Kantrowitz, my first queer book ever, and now I have books in that library, I have books in that library.

Noel Alumit:

They have a section focusing on Filipino Americans in the Echo Park Library, and my books are there. I remember when letters to Montgomery Clift came out, I did a talk at the downtown LA Public Library. I used to go to that library when I was a kid, looking for Filipino American material, going to the stacks of the library, looking, barely finding anything. Now my book was in

Noel Alumit:

that library, my book was available there. My books are available there. To have that, to write and have books and libraries, to have books out there for people to read makes me happy. That there are people who've used my work for their doctoral dissertations mean something to me. That is part, sort of, the ivory tower discussion,

Noel Alumit:

there are people who cite my work, whether it was as a writer or as an activist, that they are using my work as foundation for hypotheses in America is incredible to me. That's amazing.

Tom Bliss:

Wonderful. . Can you talk about performance spaces in Los Angeles that have been meaningful to you and, and spaces for writers as well?

Noel Alumit:

Yeah. There were

Noel Alumit:

spaces in Los Angeles that were important to me. There were several spaces, and I think we wouldn't have had it if it weren't for the fact it was Los Angeles, if it was on the West Coast. The first one was East West players, where I went to, the first Asian American theater company in America who openly welcomed me. I don't think I even had to sing, actually, it was a musical. I don't think I had to sing or dance, actually I think I came in, they met with me,

Noel Alumit:

and I started working with them. When I graduated from college, I ended up going back to them, where they officially hired me, where I ended up working with them. Another space that was really, really important to me was Highways Performance Art Space in Santa Monica. Oh my God. The work that was coming out of Highways was incredible to me. There were three people at the time who were very meaningful to me, obviously, almost Tim Miller, the artist director. And

Noel Alumit:

two performers and administrators there were Dan Quan and Danielle Brazel. Those three people just -- It provides spaces for me and other artists like me was instrumental in our development as artists in the world. Now, let me tell you, like a lot of artists, they want to feel wanted, they want to feel wanted, they want to feel understood. Because, believe me, there is lots of rejection out there.

Noel Alumit:

Any artist will tell you that there's lots of rejection out there. To have a place in the world says, "We want to hear what you have to say." "We want to see what you have to say. Come on over. Come on over, let's explore with us. Write something, see what happens." So Highway was a really important space for me to develop my skills there. Another theater that was important to me was the Celebration Theater. I did a few plays for the Celebration Theater, which was a gay theater here in Los Angeles

Noel Alumit:

A Language of Their Own was an important project that we did there to explore queer life, specifically queer Asian life, was amazing. That play, A Language of Their Own, which has been staged many times. I auditioned for that character. Originally, the character was Korean and they changed the character to be Filipino, just for me. They just said it made more sense

Noel Alumit:

that there would be a gay Filipino guy in the world, more than a Korean queer guy, although there are lots of Koreans, but they said, oh, we're gonna make this guy Filipino, and that has been consistent to today. Those three spaces were important because the importance of being ourselves. The Gay and Lesbian Center provides spaces for that too. I did my very first reading at the Gay and Lesbian Center

Noel Alumit:

where I did a reading about romance, I think, being gay and Asian and falling in love, I think it was. Having that space was important. Another space that was important was Penn Center, Penn Center, USA West, which is more into the Penn-America overall. Pan America. They had a program called The Emerging Voices Fellowship and it came from this idea

Noel Alumit:

that the Penn organization in general, particularly at that time, back in the nineties, was overwhelmingly white here, it was an organization specifically for writers. I looked around the membership and says, gosh, everyone here seems pretty white, so maybe we need to create a program for underrepresented writers. I think I was, it's been going on for over

Noel Alumit:

25 years now, but I was in the third class in 1998. It was only the third class. And from there that was the first time I had an inkling that letters to Montgomery Clift might be something, because I submitted pages of letters to Montgomery Clift as my sample pages. Yeah. They called me in for this, and I ended up getting this fellowship. And that fellowship, the Emerging Voice Fellowship,

Noel Alumit:

which is still going on today, it has now become a national fellowship, is still a coveted fellowship. One of the reasons it's a coveted fellowship is because there was a high publication rate for that fellowship. One mentor in that program said that Emerging Voices had more published authors than some MFA programs in the country. That was amazing to me. I've done a lot of volunteer work for them since,

Noel Alumit:

for a lot of these organizations since, because, one, as much as I gained, it's always important to give back. Always important to give back.

Tom Bliss:

Can you tell me briefly about Skylight Books?

Noel Alumit:

Oh, my God. Skylight Bookstore was an amazing place. I want to talk about A Different Light bookstore. I need to talk about A Different Light bookstore as a queer space, because they used to have two stores, and they're both gone. They used to have the space in Silver Lake,

Noel Alumit:

I remember just wandering in there and seeing these images of gay people and gay stories in this space. Actually kind of freaked me out a little bit that we could have whole shelves of queer stories and queer lives, and queer thought was just mind blowing to me. Unfortunately, both those stories have, have since closed. But something that did emerge from that time period is a bookstore

Noel Alumit:

called A Different Light, in the ashes of another bookstore of Los Angeles called Chattertons. Yeah, A Different Light came. Carrie Slattery was the director of the bookstore at the time, wonderful, wonderful woman. She was doing a play. She was awesome . She was doing a play, and she had done all of their events at that time. She had to go do a play, and she was looking for somebody to host the events. Yeah.

Noel Alumit:

At that time, I was doing volunteer work for them. Anyway, I was coming in, cleaning up and doing inventory for them, which meant to sort of come in and cleaning up the place once a year. the guy who was my neighbor named Tim, who's my neighbor. They needed someone to host events there, and I was available, and I've been hosting events there for over 20 years now. Yeah, through thick and thin, I've been hosting events at Skylight Bookstore

Noel Alumit:

for decades now, and it's still something I love doing. I love working with writers. I love talking with writers. I love introducing writers. I love questions, so that too has been an important part of my Los Angeles life. Yeah. The Sky Bookstore. It is just a gem of a story, not just in Los Angeles, but in the United States.

Tom Bliss:

Nearing time, I do have four questions I wanna ask at the end, but before that,

Tom Bliss:

I read a great thing about you taking your Bodhisattva vows and coming out to your mother as a Buddhist.

Noel Alumit:

Yeah.

Tom Bliss:

Can I get that story?

Noel Alumit:

Sure. My transformation as a Buddhist, I've always been a seeker. I've always been someone who believes in a different realm other than ours. I was able to explore the world of Buddhism,

Noel Alumit:

one, because of recovery that encouraged me to investigate or look for a higher power that works for me. That's one. Two, because I was working in the Asian community a lot, I was working for decades that Buddhism, Hinduism was not anything new to this community, so it wasn't like it was some weird, strange thing. It was already part of the culture. Being able to have access to that and finally got my own development as a queer person. The movement for me to become a

Noel Alumit:

Buddhist started because of my father's passing, he sort of fell back into Catholicism. He wasn't necessarily a spiritual man. And I didn't want to fall back into something later on in my life. I want to embrace something that I really want for myself. Buddhism seemed to be it. Yeah. I started off with meditation, started off with prayer, and I began to say, "Hey, I am really a Buddhist." That's what I believe. I believe in these Buddhist tenets of

Noel Alumit:

compassion, of impermanence of change of reincarnation. What the sutras talked about is something I believe, I believe in them. I made a step to start studying Buddhism seriously. I went back to school at 44, graduating at 50 -- it's never too late, if you wanna go back to school, go back to school -- and being

Noel Alumit:

able to experience that. I will say I had this honest discussion as a Catholic with God, I felt like, what was going on at the church at the time, like, was not gelling with me. I remember being in prayer and asking God, like, what should I do? And this voice saying, "There are other ways to find me. There are other ways to find me." Whether that was God, whether that was Jesus, I don't know. But

Noel Alumit:

it was permission for me to go seek. I found this Buddhism, and Buddhism has been a big part of my journey and my life today.

Tom Bliss:

How did you come out to your mother as a Buddhist?

Noel Alumit:

How did I come out to my mother as a Buddhist? It was easier coming out to my mom as gay than as being Buddhist. My mother welcomed me as gay, but being Buddhist, when I said, "I'm Buddhist,"

Noel Alumit:

she says, "Do what you want." She just was like, alright. Gosh. She loved me as a gay man. Buddhism? Not so much. What changed it for her though, was when I was taking my vows, my Bodhisattva vows. In this particular tradition, you needed three preceptors, three monks to come and ordain you. Yeah. So there was one

Noel Alumit:

here in the United States, one from China and one from the Philippines. It was that monk from the Philippines, who lived in the Philippines, that there was something about him coming from the Philippines that made my mother happy, to have a monk from the Philippines come all this way to ordain all of these Americans, including this Filipino American, made my mother proud. When they said he was from the Philippines, I looked at my mother and a

Noel Alumit:

huge smile was on her face. So when we talk about representation, representation can mean a lot to some people. It meant a lot to my mom.

Tom Bliss:

In our preparatory materials. You said the one question you wish you were asked is, "Is God important in queer life?" Is God important in queer life?

Noel Alumit:

Is God important in queer life? I think it can mean a lot to lots of queer people.

Noel Alumit:

One of the best things I also did in my life is I served on the community advisory board for the young men's study at Children's Hospital. Yeah. They were doing work around the beliefs attitudes of young gay and bisexual men. Research showed that the gay, bisexual young men who had a spiritual life, who believed in God actually made better decisions about their lives

Noel Alumit:

than gay men who did not. Now, I will say that, can you make great decisions about your life as an atheist? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. But I guess there was something about young, gay, bisexual men who believed in God, who believed that there was someone in their corner. Despite the dogma, despite everything out there that said otherwise, that young gay, bisexual men with

Noel Alumit:

spiritual life were less likely to use drugs. They were less likely to have unprotected sex. They were less likely to do these things. Maybe because in some of the churches or temples or mosques that we belonged in, there was a behavioral code that people are willing to engage in. Not the bullshit about being gay as a sin but the importance of like, maybe loving yourself, loving someone,

Noel Alumit:

that was important to us. I think Pew did a study of LGBT people, like 50% of us don't believe in God. Fine. We've been able to thrive regardless. But something I've said to people of faith, priests and pastors, I said, "LGBT people are willing to make bad decisions if God was in their life. By you pushing us away, you are actually

Noel Alumit:

encouraging us to go down a wrong path. But by accepting us and embracing us, our community, your sons and daughters are more likely to make better decisions about who we are in the world. Choices of what we do with our careers, with our families in the world can be better if churches, temples, and mosques accept us more."

Tom Bliss:

Four quick questions.

Noel Alumit:

. Okay.

Tom Bliss:

Don't think about 'em too much, intuitive answers. If you could tell your 15 year old self anything, what would it be?

Noel Alumit:

If I could tell my 15 year old self anything, I would say to him, "Go ahead and kiss that boy. Go ahead and ask someone out. Don't be afraid." All the guys that I was attracted to at that time, they ended up being gay anyway, and I ended up telling them, "I was so attracted to you, I wanted to kiss you." And they

Noel Alumit:

would say, "I wish you kissed me." So I would tell that to my 15 year old self.

Tom Bliss:

Do you think there's such a thing as a queer superpower? And if so, what would it be?

Noel Alumit:

Is there such a thing as a queer superpower, and what would it be? Yes, absolutely. I have to say, being queer is such a magical thing. It's a magical life. I mean, like the art world in itself, where would we be without queer people?

Noel Alumit:

I will say, what field has not been touched by queer people, including spirituality and religion? I think being in this world, having this, I do believe that there is such a thing as what indigenous people will call two-spirited, that we get to have the best of all of these different worlds that I think that if we had a queer superpower, it would be able

Noel Alumit:

to understand that balance of masculinity and femininity. Yeah. Being able to understand that there's so many people on the polar opposites, but the superpower of being queer is the balance of masculinity and femininity.

Tom Bliss:

Why is it important to tell your story?

Noel Alumit:

Why is it important to tell my story? I'm understanding now

Noel Alumit:

how I wish I had someone like me as a young man, like I know that, and I know I'm from Los Angeles. I grew up in Los Angeles, but there's still huge swaths of the world where queer people are being hit on, are being killed, are being abused, are being shunned, are being oppressed. I know

Noel Alumit:

that with a project like this, with the internet, that a story like mine can mean a lot to some queer Filipino kid out in the province of the Philippines, some queer Filipino kid whose parents are service workers in the Middle East, whose parents are nurses in Europe or in America, whose family members may not be welcoming of LGBT people. I know what that can mean to a queer

Noel Alumit:

kid anywhere, someone who looks like me. So this is one of my ways of offering that back to my clear ancestors. I know someday as I age, I will be a queer ancestor to somebody. I will be a Filipino ancestor to somebody. And as a person who worships and prays to queer ancestors and Asian ancestors, I know how important that symbiotic relationship is.

Tom Bliss:

Last question.

Noel Alumit:

,

Tom Bliss:

As you know, OUTWORDS captures and shares LGBTQ histories through in-depth interviews. What's the importance of a project like OUTWORDS? And please use OUTWORDS in your answer.

Noel Alumit:

Sure. The importance of OUTWORDS is that it is providing a historical document to history, that we need that. That so much now when

Noel Alumit:

we sort of study history, we're saying, oh, that person could have been queer in the Bible. That person could have been queer in history and I wish we had something, a tool like this to say, yep, that person was gay. To say, "Yep, that person was gayer than New Year's Eve." We need to be able to say that, and out loud, and say that with joy that we provide stories of our lives that are fully complex.

Noel Alumit:

I hope with my interviews specifically, that I say to LGBT people everywhere that we are capable of happy endings, that we can have good ends to our lives. I'm having a good time right now and hopefully my life is way from over, but that's possible, that happiness is possible for us.

Tom Bliss:

And happy beginnings, . Thank you

Tom Bliss:

so much, Noel.

Noel Alumit:

Thank you. Thank you very much.