Everybody has a chapter they don’t read out loud.
Singer-actor Mark Bautista stayed for a time in Seattle, Washington, last year for the United States staging of the hit musical “Here Lies Love,” which he first performed in London three years ago. While in Seattle, Mark went through a life-altering experience. He barely missed the bullets from a gunman who fired two shots at the vehicle next to the car where Bautista was in.
Bautista shared the harrowing incident on his Instagram account. Perhaps it made the artist realize that life was too short to stay in the shadows forever.
In Seattle, Bautista also had the opportunity to meet and exchange stories with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, the son of legendary beauty Gloria Vanderbilt. When Here Lies Love finished its run, Bautista decided to extend his stay in the US, taking up a music-video directing course at the New York Film Academy.
The anonymity afforded him a lot of time to reflect. Call it soul-searching if you will. And it certainly did good to Bautista, a chance to pause and take stock. Would he consider trying out his luck in a foreign country or jet back to Manila and continue his musical career where his dreams began to take shape many years back after joining a singing tilt on television?
It was also at that point when Bautista was offered to write a memoir. Was he going to write a whitewashed book, or was it the chance to break free from societal dictates and industry expectations and finally come as he is—a beautiful and talented man who has had to struggle with his sexual orientation?
Mark Bautista decided to do the brave and the unthinkable.
The artist knew there were risks involved. Should he write about his truths, there were other parties that would inevitably be dragged into the spotlight. And in an environment that was at best tolerant of others’ sexual orientation, the move to write a tell-all book could prove to be a career suicide.
All things considered, Bautista pushed through with it and that book, titled Beyond the Mark, according to initial reports, immediately became a best seller. It also spawned a much-expected media circus around the characters involved in one of the book’s delicate chapters.
In that said chapter, Bautista recounted an “affair” with a man, also a celebrity, which he didn’t name. He and the mystery guy did become intimate, while the latter was involved with a woman. When the woman found out about the “secret,” she got mad as hell and, what followed, in Bautista’s own words, “turned into a spectacle.”
Bautista decided it was best to avoid the man. Whether he had truly loved the man who shall not be named, only Bautista could shed light on it. And whether it was an intricate, intense, mutual kind of intimacy, we could only speculate for now.
But while the spectacle was hogging showbiz headlines, Bautista smartly kept mum. He knew the best thing to do was to pursue his own goals, keep working at improving his skills, spread his once-clipped wings and start loving himself more.
In this age of social media where to pass judgment has become as easy and quick as clicking on a button, the whole world could continue to spin Bautista’s confessions any which way they want, and he couldn’t care less.
The talented young man’s journey and worth, after all, go beyond that one controversial chapter. There are more facets to this man that are even more interesting and inspiring. Like, perhaps, his being an eternal dreamer who didn’t stop at chasing after his dreams.
Mark Bautista has made peace with the past and, in the process, has let go of it. He has sought and found his own closure. He has hit the mark that once seemed too enigmatic and elusive.
Now, a new beginning beckons. He is truly free—and happy.