Super Serendipity: The Success and Lifestyle Fulfillment

By Isaac Dionaldo

Serendipity had been a friend of mine since I was three. It is a friend that shows up uninvited; it comes when least expected. And when serendipity turns a negative to a positive, it is important to recognize the magic so one can properly celebrate and release the balloons from your grip to the open skies above.

At age three my nanny dressed me up in a long gown and tiara pretending to be the fiesta queen. I marched proudly in front of a big crowd of house guests. Instead of being embarrassed for life, I kept a fond memory of the awkward event, and from thereafter, I completely owned my queer identity with no regret. This was my first serendipity.

After I became a licensed physician and a freshly minted immigrant, the apotheosis of my journey to success was generously handed to me by Dr. Leon Spitz. After only two months of working alongside Dr. Spitz, he decided to retire to New Mexico and entrusted me to take over his successful medical practice in Gramercy Park in the heart of New York City. From my simple aspiration to a lifetime of comfortable income propelling me to the top 1 percent of American taxpayers, this was certainly super serendipity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664193321

Isaac Dionaldo

The author was born to a privileged family in a sleepy little town located inconveniently distant from the more sophisticated and enlightened capital city named Dumaguete. At age three he was still an innocent boy but started to be aware of his different nature, different enough for his three older siblings to shun him. He was not your standard-issue little boy—he was gay. This made him self-conscious and guarded but determined to be true to himself. By the time he was an adolescent, he realized he can only find true happiness in New York City, a city that offered all kinds of possibilities. And so he went for it. His journey was blessed with magic on top of magic until he achieved success beyond his fertile imagination.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

My Angel, My Nanny

S ERENDIPITY USUALLY OCCURS as an immediate cause and effect, but it can encompass an extended timeline of cause and not so immediate unexpected effect.

I will flesh this out with what I considered the first serendipity in my life. I was three years old, and I remember certain things, some memories indelible. At that early age, I was aware that I was not your standard-issue young boy. No one labeled me as queer, but I knew. I was never confused as to who I was.

My nanny was new to the family. She was a young woman, I believe in her early twenties, and very much a hunchback. Being a hunchback, it was easy for me to imagine she had a different and unique life experience. My nanny was practically the opposite of the nanny of my three older siblings who was much older and beloved by everyone. This older nanny was very traditional. She demanded complete obedience and was feared and loved by my older siblings, being more accessible than our parents. By the time I was born, I suspect she was too old and tired to be my nanny. She was a member of the family until her death at a ripe old age.

My nanny, on the other hand, was not a disciplinarian. I was allowed to do what I wanted. I had no toy guns or other toys favored by boys, obviously because I did not crave for them. I do remember many a time playing house by myself in a pretty gazebo on one side of the garden approached by a little arching bridge over a streamlet that led to a small pond with blooming water lilies. My nanny obviously observed I was this different child, and she was indulging my natural tendencies.

Every April my hometown celebrates the annual town fiesta. My father was the town mayor, and our big house was full of house guests, mostly members of our extended family, and dozens of day visitors every day for a week or more often for weeks. The highlight of the fiesta was the crowning of the year’s winning queen in the town plaza, attended by hundreds of celebrants to enjoy the elaborate ceremony and to have fun dancing the night away to the music by a big band.

One time, at home, a day after the coronation of the queen at the town plaza, my nanny dressed me up as a queen, long gown and cardboard tiara. She parted the crowd in the living room, and humming aloud the traditional music for the coronation, I proceeded to march across the living room toward a three-tiered stand for planters, which I climbed and triumphantly sat on the top tier facing the crowd. However, I don’t know how that ended. Was there polite applause? Was there amusement among the crowd? Was there ridicule among some? I am pretty sure there was plenty of embarrassment among my relatives and more so among my immediate family. Was I quickly whisked away by my parents or some older cousins? Was this my idea? It would be hard to believe this was concocted by a three-year-old. Clearly, I was complicit, a willing partner. More than that, I only remember the part that I obviously enjoyed.

What I took away from that experience was gratitude toward my nanny for her recognition and support of my natural behavior and tendencies. She obviously encouraged me to be myself. So instead of a big embarrassment for such an unusual spectacle to be embedded in my memory bank, my overriding take was gratitude for my nanny for letting me be and affirming my very own identity and giving me comfort, comfort that was hard to come by from everyone else around me. My nanny made me comfortable with my gay identity. That is why I recognized this event as my first serendipity.

I was comfortable performing in public as a queen, even proudly triumphant perched on the top tier of the planter facing the crowd. Indeed, I was playing the part as a child, full of childish innocence. I was not yet fully aware of other people’s disapproval of a gay child doing what comes naturally.

My nanny was dismissed after only one year as opposed to the nanny for my older siblings, who was loved by everyone until her death from old age. I don’t know if my nanny was dismissed for being tolerant of my ways or for some other reason. She never put a hand on me. She certainly was not abusive, being the most common excuse for dismissal. No one replaced her.

At age three, I was aware that I was different and obviously gay, obvious in my demeanor. I was not aware of being limp-wristed. Perhaps I talked with a lisp, but no one pointed this out to me, nor was I teased about such a highly ridiculed speech pattern. What was obvious was my lack of interest in toys, like guns or cars, that boys preferred. I never played with a ball or drum. I was this passive child, all prim and proper, always neatly dressed.

I do remember a singular event when I happened to be in the street in front of the house when a mild earthquake happened. I immediately dropped to the ground facedown and both arms stretched out. This impressed the people around who were scared and did not know what to do. It’s possible my nanny told me what to do. This time I went home all messy with the front of my clothes soiled.

I recall one other event at age five when I fell into a very deep and very dirty ditch and I was completely covered in smelly mud. That was traumatic enough, but what was even worse was how much my sisters and cousins laughed and enjoyed my distress and kept retelling this incident with delight for years, even seventy years later, no lie.

I was independent and firm in what I wanted to do or not do. I suspect this was considered as being headstrong and could probably explain some harsh punishment I received from my father at age three and four. He was quick with the rattan whip with the household help. But with me, his punishment of choice was to dump me into a large jute sack usually used to store rice or corn. Then he closed the sack with a long rope, which he threw over a rafter in the kitchen and hoisted the sack up toward the high ceiling. I guess it was his way of making me disappear. I would only be brought down when I stopped crying or fell asleep. I remember being punished this way at least two times.

I don’t believe any of my siblings were ever handed this kind of punishment. My father was mostly benign and kind and rarely provoked. How I managed to provoke him had me intrigued. Was I misunderstood for behaving differently?

Since then I was firmly clear of my own identity, not just about my overall personality, but even more essential my core identity as a gay child, my gender identity. I was fully aware I was born this way. (Haters, please take note.) Clearly this was the incipient phase of my journey to follow my destiny. I was going on this journey single-handed. No support mechanism to smoothly hurdle any bumps along the way. No role model to look up to for guidance. My parents were definitely not hands-on. Neither one of them carried me nor gave me a hug or a kiss. No holding hands. I remember only one event when they happened to be face to face, when I peeped into their bedroom door keyhole and I could see them very close together. At age four I was not sure whether the two of them were dancing without music or fighting without screaming. Otherwise, I have no memory of my mother being around me at age three and four. I have some vague memory of my father at the head of the dining room table. My older siblings definitely shunned me. I had nowhere to go but inside myself.

All I had was my clear and tenacious recognition of who I was. This was the secret formula that helped me forge through my early development. My path and my expectations for the future were clear to myself, so I avoided the confusion and heartache many mature gays experienced because their sexual identity was not clearly established during childhood. For reasons of family expectations and pressure or strong religious belief, some gays married someone of the opposite sex, had children, then ended up confronting a crisis of dishonesty that led to divorce or a lifetime of guilt and unhappiness among all parties involved.

By around age five, I was starting to be aware of most everyone’s disapproval of gayness, and this made me self-conscious, awkward, and timid in public. But I became more independent, contented being by myself. I did not look for sympathy. I did not wait for empathy from the people around me. How could they? All they knew were the obvious caricatures of the gay lifestyle, the very brave hairdressers, and dressmakers or the flamboyant rich older bachelor who had taken his place in high society. These brave souls who managed to own their lives against all odds and who continued to deal with the universal disrespect and ugly derision—these people were conveniently used by the public at large as the only barometer for acceptance or non-acceptance of homosexuality.

By the time I became a medical doctor, my observation about homosexuality became firmer. I was very impressed in the choice of the rainbow flag by the LGBTQ organization because the arc of the rainbow corresponds to the arc of homosexuality. Homosexuals are born with a gay gene that has yet to be identified. This gene proceeds to express itself in a variety of ways. It comes in all degrees of expression and practice. The arc encompasses bisexuals on one end all the way to transgenders on the opposite end. Even bisexuals come in varying degrees. There are male bisexuals who are ultra-macho, capable of sex with women but enjoy sex mostly with men, some going as far as getting married to another man.

Then there are male bisexuals who look and act gay but end up being happily married to a woman and produce lots of children. It’s a curiosity how limited their sexual experience with men had been or could be. The same holds true with very feminine lesbians who end up hooking up with another lesbian, the type who had a take-charge personality and a short haircut. The opposite end of the arc are the transgenders who believe they’re women trapped in a man’s body and can only achieve comfort and fulfillment by undergoing transforming surgery and hormone support. To a lesser number there are women who believe they are men trapped in a woman’s body and aspire for surgical transition and hormonal support.

I find myself somewhere in the middle of the arc. I am comfortable in my own skin, and I have no interest in putting on makeup or dressing up in frilly women’s clothes. But sexually I can only enjoy sex with a manly man. My brain doesn’t identify as a woman, but I love watching a clever woman deploying her feminine charms in all its glory to get what she wants as much as I love observing a testosterone-driven man who can’t help himself.

CHAPTER II

Siblings

I WAS OBVIOUSLY different from anyone else, and I was confidently clear about my gender identity. There was no option but to be independent and content to chart my own course, create my personal roadmap to follow in my life journey. I owned myself, my own spirit, even at a very early age.

Because of my self-conscious and controlled behavior in public as I was growing up, I perhaps avoided overt public humiliation or bullying. But my most hurtful experience came from my family. Not my parents, but my siblings. Since I was three, my older siblings, they were five, six, seven years older, were close-knit like normal brothers and sisters. However, they treated me like a pariah. I did not have any physical interaction or emotional connection with them. I remember the three guava trees in close alignment in the garden that the three of them enjoyed climbing. The tallest tree belonged to my oldest brother, the second tallest belonged to my older sister, and the third belonged to the younger sister. They enjoyed climbing their own trees, gathering ripe fruits and sometimes sharing with their friends. I knew I was too young to be climbing those trees, but I would try to join the fun hoping for a share of ripe guavas, but I was promptly told to go away. This was the closest interaction I could remember with my older siblings in my early childhood. They were decidedly