“Dear Migs…” And so begins another letter to Migs, the anonymous blogger behind the enormously popular blog ManilaGayGuy or MGG (at www.manilagayguy.net). Since Migs began his blog in August 2006, it has been generating, on average, more than 40,000 daily views from all over the world, making it one of the most-read and most-accessed blogs in the country.
More impressively, the site has attracted thousands of impassioned comments and feedback from readers, effectively turning the site into an online forum-cum-community. Somehow, Migs’ blog entries—often honest, heartfelt, humorous reflections on the everyday joys and challenges of his life as a thirty-something urban gay man—inspire many readers to share their own thoughts, and even life stories, with other readers.
This book gathers in book form the most popular and memorable letters Migs has received and posted on his blog. Here is the anguished young man wrestling with the newfound fear, confusion—and thrill—of his emerging sexuality. A “chick magnet” asks, “Ano ba talaga ako?,” while a guy on the verge of getting married seeks advice on a forbidden experience he can’t seem to forget. And in a moving piece, a former activist remembers his doomed love for an NPA warrior.
The letters are not exclusively from gay men. A wife sends a cry for help against an unconventional third party in her marriage. Another woman writes with a different story—hey, she’s happy being wife to a gay husband!
On a different front, a letter-sender insists that naturally straight-acting guys like him do exist—and readers once again take to their keyboards, spawning an extensive thread of opinions and discussion that reflect the diversity and richness, the beguiling humanity, of MGG’s online audience.
In a unique twist, the best and most useful of those comments have also made it to this book. While quite a number of local blogs have been turned into books, this should mark the first time that readers’ comments have also been published along with the original blog entries.
It’s a deliberate decision. “I believe that such sharing is valuable to many of us,” says Migs in his introduction… The blog's readers have enjoyed life's wonderful diversity through such interaction, and the encouraging thought that one is not--never--alone. I hope that with this book, you, the one reading this, will be encouraged to open your mind and your heart just a bit more--to accept not only others, but, more importantly, yourself.”
