IN THE “The Adventures of Captain Ooze” (as it appears in Mel Turao’s 2017 United States-published book, “INSATIABLE: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery”), Peter worked in a newspaper of a different name.
I’m changing the name of the newspaper here to Panay News.
Because, well, it is courtesy of Panay News that you get to read these stories by Mel Turao.
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I tend to reward those who are loyal to me.
I also like “punishing” those who aren’t avid as fans.
So, I’m picking up Episode 2 exactly where we left off last time.
If you missed it, this could be punishment.
But it’s not like you can’t trace the beginning of Episode 2 if you look hard for it.
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Episode 2, continued:
Captain Ooze and the Third-rate Copycat
by Melecio F. Turao
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On its third month, Potpourrievolved into a sexting and dating corner. Peter relished reading, and refereeing, the SMS messages. He’d offer advice to his readers on many issues ranging from erectile dysfunction to life on other habitable planets. It stirred quite a sensation, reaching as far as the City Mayor’s office. It didn’t take long until Peter Solis Nery was placed under close watch by the city’s moral watchdog appropriately called Task Force Adam’s Apple. It was named after Iloilo City’s singularly notorious striptease club.
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Along with hundreds of SMS messages that Peter had read and replied to, came Tuesday’s (the wannabe singer). She said that she has crafted a melody, albeit without words, and was looking for a lyricist to complete the song. Peter got wind of the doomed lyricist who, according to lore, had taken to spending much of his time singing to his goats. Peter texted Tuesday to come see him in person, and he was going to see to it that she’d get the help she needed.
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Tuesday came by the editorial office next day. Peter told Tuesday to head off to Sta. Barbara because that was where her bright future lay waiting for her. Peter said the legendary folk composer who was largely forgotten, but whose songs had been turned into anthems at drinking binges, was living a damned life on the fringe.
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Tuesday wasted no time. In half an hour, she reached Sta. Barbara, rode a motorcycle up and down four valleys and a river, and thus, beheld the lonely lyricist’s stooping hut. There was a brief exchange of flares, strange really, and everything that needed to be said was said. A pact was made: Juan, lonely lyricist, would lay the words on to the melody, and it was going to be Juan’s last ditch effort at having his one moment in time.
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The song failed. It got drowned out in dozens of other similarly written songs that ruled the Iloilo fmradio stations. It could not break through the impenetrable wall of low taste that had been in place since Peter Solis Nery was six years old. Our dear author could only heave a deep sigh as he saw Tuesday off out of the editorial office as a gesture of consolation.
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There was no word from Juan. After years of soaking the sun and singing to his goats you could not expect him to care less even when the world ended right then and there. That night, Tuesday made a pact with the devil. Or so she thought.
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The event played out like a dream sequence. On waking up, and partly due to an obsessive-compulsive attack, Tuesday sang the poor song to herself as she looked in the mirror. To her surprise, the song took on a totally different tune and syncopation. It sounded so strangely beautiful that Tuesday thought it was sung by a West End actor. Indeed, it was no longer the old song. It was far removed from the pastoral, quaint and lazy feel that it previously evoked. It had transmogrified into a monster hit the moment it got airplay. The song came to be known as Babae Po Akoor the Evil Coming Out Song.
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In the days that followed after the first airplay, there did seem to be only one song being played all over Western Visayas. Tuesday became an instant hitmaker so that she could not grapple with her instant celebrity status.
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On the 13thday, something happened. Warts grew on the face of everyone who had listened to Babae Po Ako. Married women started complaining of inadequate husbands; churchgoers grumbled about the parish priests’ detailed discussion of ugly hairstyles, the CBCP issued a pastoral letter in swardspeak. In short, everyone was coming out gay.
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Things turned for the worse when Tuesday’s song hit the gold record mark a month later. After the feat was announced on radio, she began to experience a visceral physical change. She was turning into what she sang about: a plain-looking woman who gets mistaken for being gay, but loathed being gay. There was no stopping the transformation.
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Acutely attuned to LGBT issues, Captain Ooze came to the rescue. He found Tuesday in the throes of an aberrant hermaphroditism.
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On landing, Captain Ooze challenged Tuesday, the Aberrant Third-rate Copycat Singer, to a karaoke duel, which the musical monster accepted readily. But tough luck for our superhero. Peter Solis Nery, a.k.a. Captain Ooze, was no singer. The Aberrant Third-rate Copycat sang Regine Velasquez’s Narito Akoin alternating female and male voices; Captain Ooze broke into Queen’s Radio Gaga.
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For lack of anything to go by with the results, the two decided to slug it out with their bare hands. And this was where Captain Ooze took an opportunity to sing The Power of the Cross, a church song that he learned as a missionary in Macau in 1994. On hearing the first stanza, the Aberrant Third-rate Copycat shrank like a used condom. By the song’s end, she was as thin as a rubber band.
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Captain Ooze saved the Iloilo airwaves from sonic damnation. In deference to Tuesday’s death, local composers finally got along together and set up a record label solely for LGBT singers and artists. (To be continued/PN)
