DESERT PATROL
BY GUIDO FRANCO

Desert Patrol (une aventure sous les tropiques) by "G.F.", was published by Les Editions de la Jungle in Paris in 1980.

Its publication provoked an extremely hostile account of the author in issue 7 of Pan, a magazine about boy-love, published in December 1980, which identified him as Guido Franco, a rich dandy in his 40s: "Born in the Netherlands, he has dual Dutch-Swiss citizenship, has a home in Geneva, a villa on Ibiza and an apartment in Paris (Quai de Grenelle 59), but he spends much of the year travelling about the Far East in countries where boy-love is possible, checking into five-star hotels." The reader is referred to the original article for its extended and more subjective damnation of the author, where it is admitted that its hostility stems from unhappy interaction in Ceylon between him and "a vacationing staff member of Spartacus" (the Amsterdam publisher of Pan; Spartacus's owner, John D. Stamford was a regular visitor there, where, in his own word, he "sampled" boys personally for ability to satisfy introduced customers of his travel literature) and a feeling that Desert Patrol betrayed confidences.

Franco, who used his real name for authorship of a sequel to Desert Patrol, Prières pour des paradis meilleurs, issued by the same publisher in 1984, was a photographer and some-time journalist who died in Thailand in the 1990s.

The setting for Desert Patrol is Sri Lanka and the Philippines from around the turn of 1978-9 to around February 1980.^[1]

Presented here is a translation into English by Edouard, posted on the website The Vending Machine in 2015. The illustrations (all photos by the author) are exactly as in the original French edition, that on the front cover (shown immediately below) and several others later in the book being of Lapu-Lapu, the Filipino boy aged 13 ½ whom the author describes himself as adopting.

G.F.

DESERT PATROL

(An Adventure in the Tropics)

First published in French 1980 by Editions de la Jungle

TVM English edition 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[Preface]           

Ordinarily this book should never have been written, still less published. First of all it upsets the received views and taboos about the subject of children. And secondly it will displease certain queers who will blame me for painting a less than favourable portrait of them, and especially for mentioning their private hunting grounds which should have been kept very secret indeed! And what is more this book proves nothing, leads to nothing, and is based upon no sociological or hygienic system. Here the author is in plain view within what he claims to be describing, and he himself becomes the subject. A lamentable affair. Mixing up the photographic and literary genres. Mistiming his entrance and probably his exit. Abandoning his lady-friend on the footpath. In short, in every respect a book with little to recommend it, you have been warned!

For the rest, “Desert Patrol” is a title which appeared one day by chance on one of the photographs. It became the title of the book; after all, why not? The “Desert Patrol” is the army of boys who, in the metropolis of Manila, busy themselves with the wrecks from the Occident who have arrived encumbered with their dreams, their fantasies, and the X Guide. Organized in gangs (there are the Rizal Park boys, the Harrison boys, etc.), with clearly delimited territories, they are tirelessly available to the “tourists,” who relieve with them the tensions and frustrations accumulated elsewhere. For these services they do not ask much: a few pesos, jeans, T-shirts and some love.

They have no future.

It is to them, obviously, that I dedicate this book.

G. F.

 

 ^[1] In the Philippines section of the Epilogue, “one year later” than the preceding ones, references is made to elections which can only be the local ones held in January 1980 and the visit of the Prime Minister of Singapore, which can only be that undertaken 27-29 February 1980 (nine to ten months before publication of the book). The Ceylon section of the Epilogue, preceding the Filipino one, implies inclusion of a date just before the New Year, ie. in December 1979. Therefore Chapters I to II were set about a year before.