Episode 6:
Captain Ooze and the Sex Orgy Ring
Excerpted from Chapter 2 of “INSATIABLE: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery”
By Melecio F. Turao
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For all its pretensions to high cosmopolitanism, Iloilo City has never seen a city life steeped in decadence. Not until Donald Pump comes to town. He was once a Dancing Bear model who got fired because of frequent premature ejaculation. And being Filipino, he was not quite as well endowed as his Latino, black, and European counterparts.
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He comes home to Iloilo with his savings, and sets up a modeling agency. He offers false promises to applicants. He tells them he works closely with celebrity makers, and he can turn his successful auditionees into famous screen actors and product endorsers. The modeling agency becomes an overnight sensation. Donald Pump has to hire some people to fend off modeling and acting hopefuls who have camped for days in front of his house.
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The few exceptional ones whom Donald Pump has selected have been housed somewhere in the inner city streets. They are told to wait for the agent from Manila, who is said to be coming in a few days to pick them up for final audition in Makati.
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Soon, the hopefuls start to disappear one by one. No one knows that Donald Pump’s modeling agency is, in fact, a front for a secret orgy ring. Before he left Dancing Bear he was able to ink a deal with his fellow reality show pornographic models, who have ties with the Mexican mafia, to set up an orgy ring in the Philippines, where they say sex is cheap. And the orgy ring starts in Iloilo, which is, after all, famously known as the City of Love.
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When the secret orgy ring commences, it initially attracts lonely housewives, senior citizens, and the moneyed gay population. The trick of the trade has affinities with the movie Eyes Wide Shutin that members of the orgy ring speak in codes and passwords. Soon, the orgies reach the ears of Iloilo’s fringe characters and intellectuals.
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It has reached Felino Garcia’s attention as well. As a leading figure in gay studies and postcolonial scholarship in the city, Felino is intrigued to get down to the bottom of the cultural phenomenon. He finds that there is so much to unravel and lay bare in the orgy ring’s relation to Iloilo’s repressed desire and power relations. So the scholar goes sleuthing on his own, after classes at the University of the Philippines.
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But our scholar-sleuth has eyes only for stiff young men. At a karaoke joint in Villa Baybay, Felino falls for a 17-year old college boy who whispers “Follow me” in his ear after singing a song. Felino follows the boy out of the karaoke joint into a narrow path. Felino gets whacked over the head, and blacks out.
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Meanwhile, at the Prima City penthouse, as Peter Solis Nery prepares to write another column for Panay News, he reads a curious item, not a spam mind you, in his email. He gets an invitation to watch an experimental play put on by a group called Obscurum Circulum Copulatio. No mention of any other information except a cell phone number. Peter takes a fancy on the offer, and calls the number. He gets an instant seat reservation. A voice prompt gives the rest of the juicy details, and off he goes.
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Our gay scholar wakes up under a flood of lights on the stage. He is in the middle of a spectacle. A perverted play, if you will. Tonight, the secret orgy ring pulls off a stunt no secret orgy circle in the Philippines has ever done before: Everyone present at the ongoing orgy will witness what they call a “massive attack” whereby a dozen well-trained studs will rape a subject on the stage.
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The feat is announced over the microphone by a hooded man in his 50s, who sounded like a popular radio commentator. The details of the act get a resounding applause from the orgying crowd. As if the details aren’t gory enough, the man goes on to say that, tonight, being an historic moment, the crowd will get to see actual human castration in the person of Felino Garcia, professor of history and queer studies.
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Peter Solis Nery sees and hears all this back in his chair. It only takes him a millisecond to recognize his dear scholar-friend tied like a wild animal on the stage.
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Captain Ooze comes to the rescue. First, he gets the twelve rabid stiff men out of the way. Captain Ooze strings their stiff penises in a whorl so they can’t move an inch. Then, he flies naked Felino out of reach upon the roof.
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The hooded man who sounds like a famous radio commentator screams over the loudspeaker: “It’s a raid! It’s a raid!” Perverts and groupies in various states of undress run for cover. Others risk their limb and appendage breaking down the door, leaping their way out of sight. Captain Ooze whisks his elastic arm, and gets a hold of the hooded man. His hood comes off, and he turns out to be Johnny Molido, the rumored radio anchor who is on the drug lords’ payroll.
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Captain Ooze squeezes his balls for information: “Who is behind the secret orgy ring?”
Captain Ooze gets a prompt answer: “It’s Donald Pump, sir!”
“Don’t call me Sir!” He tightens his grip round the poor radio anchor’s scrotum. But by then, Donald Pump has escaped incognito.
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The stage is now empty. Seats are all abandoned. Felino Garcia sobs on top of the roof. But Captain Ooze sits by his side, with an arm over the other’s shoulder.
Between true friends, one need not be a superhero. Captain Ooze saves his best friend, and breaks the secret orgy ring.
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Mel Turao’s brilliant book, “INSATIABLE: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery” is available from Amazon.com.
If you are lucky, you might find copies for sale (likely P500) at FDCP Cinematheque Iloilo, or Troi Oi Vietnamese Restaurant at The Boardwalk in Iloilo City. (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
