IN THE MID-2000s, specifically between 2003 and 2005, avant-garde Ilonggo newspaper columnist Peter Solis Nery, and his writer/graphic artist friend Ronelo Ladiao (before the latter became music producer and filmmaker) created a superhero character called Captain Ooze based on Nery’s life as a newspaper writer a la Clark Kent.
Of course, by then, Peter Solis Nery has already established himself as the only (respectable) sex guru in Western Visayan newspapers.
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I mean, Peter started writing his sex(y) columns in the now-defunct The News Today (TNT) in October 2000.
The newspaper started in September 2000, but to help put the newspaper on the map, Peter was given blanket authority to write whatever craziness he wants to write starting October 2000.
But that’s really another story.
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In 2004, having gained so much clout from his legendary output in TNT, Peter transferred from TNT to another newspaper, where he was also given total (editorial) control of his written works.
To say that Peter Solis Nery could write anything that Peter Solis Nery wanted in those early years of new millennium is pretty much the truth.
The same truth that is carried over in his (re)incarnation in Panay News.
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In fact, when Peter moved from his second newspaper affiliation to the bigger Panay News, his only condition was to be treated the same — as the Ilonggo celebrity writer that he is.
And so it happened that before his first article was printed on Panay News, the newspaper ran two weeks of announcement for the coming of the writer into the Panay News fold.
I really don’t think something audacious like that ever happened to Ilonggo journalism before then.
And obviously, never again since Peter Solis Nery.
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So, how did Peter Solis Nery manage such a coup?
Most of it rests on the fact that Peter Solis Nery was already a multiple Palanca winner before he joined the Ilonggo newspaper industry.
But also, because Peter has a most brilliant imagination.
And a good understanding of his newspaper readers.
And a fearlessness to talk about sex when the conservative Ilonggo newspapers wouldn’t even print the words “penis” and “vagina”.
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But enough of history.
Here now is Episode 1 of Mel Turao’s “The Adventures of Captain Ooze”, Chapter 2 of the book, “INSATIABLE: A Literary Biography of Peter Solis Nery”.
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Episode 1:
Limitless Libido Abiding
by Melecio F. Turao
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The circumstances under which Captain Ooze came into being were rather plain and simple. He didn’t reach planet Earth aboard an alien crib nor through a sexual congress between a mutant and a woman. Captain Ooze was born out of the inner torments of two star-crossed gay men in their early twenties, who, for lack of something productive to do in the workplace, decided to read the hymns of Aleister Crowley one late afternoon. Numerology, horoscope and showbiz gossip were all the rage amongst educated women and closeted men in the workplace at the time. And the two gay men were certainly no exception.
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For reasons known only to Scientologists and fashion consultants, the two gay men were perfectly comfortable going by the names Phoenix and Tormented Teener. They had a deep curiosity for life and its mysteries, especially the central role of feelings in shaping one’s chosen universe. Phoenix and Tormented Teener grew up in a conservative Catholic Ilonggo family who, by virtue of being such, may have had to interfere with their children’s decisions for the most part, especially since they didn’t prove to be capable of thinking and doing things on their own without dear mother’s help.
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Phoenix, the resourceful one, bought a copy of Aleister Crowley’s Hymnsfrom a thrift shop in Iloilo’s Chinatown thinking it was one of those popular music magazines that featured all-gay anthem songs by Queen, Erasure, Modern Talking, and Bamboo. He came to know about Aleister Crowley’s passion for the occult and his sticky position in English literature days later. Tormented Teener pitched in help by Googling, and fact-checking online.
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But their late afternoon reading of a love spell meant to undo a lover’s goodbye went haywire. There shouldn’t have been any presence of doubt and thoughts of vengeance, according to the procedure. Phoenix and Tormented Teener did the ritual in anger after overhearing their female colleague leave the workplace with snide remarks about jilted gay men being poor penis suckers.
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What transpired in the process was something of a celestial spectacle: in place of silence, the ritual went with a bang. The two gay men were zapped out of place by what looked like a gigantic cum shot that flashed from the book and wrote itself across the sky. The sight left the gay men wetting their pants. From where they crouched on all fours with their gooey discharge, they saw the gigantic cum shot streaked east of the city.
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Back at Prima City in Dumangas, Peter Solis Nery was doing his obligatory postprandial reading. Which meant it couldn’t have been any other than The Complete Kama Sutra. He was running a daily sex advice column that generated ire and imitation from all quarters, and he felt he had better top his readers and critics.
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After a longish chapter on spiritual libido abiding, he looked up the page to admire the sky seen from Prima City’s penthouse. He briefly felt a weight of somnolence come down on him for which reason he stretched his arms to yawn. The gigantic cum shot from the stars found a home in Peter Solis Nery’s mouth.
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Thus, Captain Ooze, comforter of the unloved, and defender of the oppressed, was born in the most awkward of circumstances. Armed with a forked tongue and multiple orgasms, Captain Ooze sets out to correct wrongs, and bring criminals to justice. (To be continued/PN)
