DESERT PATROL IV: MANILA ii AND BAGUIO, 1979
BY GUIDO FRANCO
Presented here is the fourth part of Desert Patrol (une aventure sous les tropiques), a travel memoir by French Swiss photographer Guido Franco published in 1980 and introduced here. It concerns what Franco saw of the pederastic scene involving local boys and foreigners in early 1979 in Manila and Baguio after he returned to the former from Pagsanjan (these all being places in the Philippines). The illustrations are all from the original book and photographs by the author. All but the last are of Lapu-Lapu.
[Manila II]
The whole night (I hardly sleep at all) I watched his [Lapu-Lapu's] face, his shoulders, his neck, and felt the contact of his body.[1] It is a never-ending observation. Sometimes I go to sleep, but every time he turns, I wake up and the observation starts again.
Even in the day time it doesn’t stop, I observe all his gestures, I listen to everything he says, I pay attention only to him and to the wind in the trees.
We came back to Manila yesterday by the Express-way, each wanting to hold the wheel, Noel making me nervous, touching everything in front of him, the air-con, the radio, the wipers ...
We didn’t go to Baguio. We’re heading for Manila because Lapu-Lapu has things to do with his pals.
It seems that they discovered a Japanese from last year, staying at the Manila Hotel. The chap wanted a boy, so Lapu-Lapu gave him Noel,[2] for two hundred pesos. The Japanese also gave a hundred pesos to Lapu, and to-morrow they have to accompany the descendant of the samurai to the airport at seven in the morning with Dany-boy.
“You think I’m a cheap boy!” Lapu protests. “I see very clearly that you think that. There are heaps of characters who have offered me tons of cash if I did what they wanted. But I didn’t want to.”
* * *
I’ve been to see Lapu-Lapu’s father and mother, who sell cigarettes in Pilar Street, near Padre Faura. They will agree to their son’s coming to Europe.
“He has some bad friends,” the father said, “but before he was a good boy.
We made an appointment for the following morning at the travel agent he knew, to get information. When I arrived, they had already prepared everything. For three hundred pesos the agency would be able to procure for us the necessary false declarations (indispensable, apparently),[3] and as for the passport, it would cost just on a thousand pesos.
It was his father who took care of the formalities. As for Lapu-Lapu, he didn’t seem enchanted.
“You’re going to Europe? Oh how lucky you are!” the girls told him.
In fact I hardly see him. When he’s not at Harrison Plaza, he’s at Velvet Slum,[4] or he’s roaming the street. Yesterday evening he told me that he had to go to his grandmother’s funeral wake, and he came back at midnight with his pals. He had the Velvet Slum stamp on his hand, the one they apply at the disco entrance to identify the clients who have paid. I asked him whether his grandmother was at the disco and he got annoyed. He claimed it was the remains of the stamp from the previous evening.
“I see very clearly that you don’t believe me!”
He sulks, turns his back on me, and goes under the bed to sleep.
“Hey!” I attempt. “Is that how you act with your other clients?”
“The blokes who pick me up at Harrison, they take me to their room, they kiss me, touch my body if they like, they give me a little cash and then I never see them again,” he told me.
“While as for me,” I state, “I’m still here.”
“That means nothing,” he tells me, generously.
“But you know ... you’re not the only one who wants me. Often blokes have asked me to go to Europe with them. But I didn’t want to. Every day when I go to Harrison there are chaps who follow me ...”
* * *
He has bought a horrible visored cap, blue, with Yamaha written on it. I do everything he wants, because with him it is useless to argue.
In the mornings he is generally in a fairly bad mood, and I endeavour to avoid him at that time. In the evening he comes with his pals Joseph and Dany-boy and one cannot speak to him. At night he’s tired from hanging around in Velvet Slum or in the streets, and besides, he really stinks as soon as he takes off his Adidas.
“Go and wash your feet,” I then suggest.
Nothing doing.
“I will damage my feet if I wash them now,” he says.
No way to get that out of his head. He calmly reads his comics in tagalog[5] and listens to The Long and Winding Road on the radio. No way to shift him.
This evening, enough was enough, and we dragged him by his feet to the kitchen to go and wash himself. He was greatly offended and packed his bags.
“I don’t want to come to Europe with you. You treat me like a dog!”
After all, that might be a good idea. He packs his bags, but because he is tired, he goes to sleep.
* * *
At Harrison Plaza I find Edwin again.
“You’re not angry?” he asks me.
“Angry? why . . . why should I be angry?”
Ah yes ... it’s true, he promised me he would come back that evening, but didn’t come. What did that matter. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes ... and then can I come with you to San Carlos?”
Always in a hurry, Edwin.
I like to have someone with me, but not for that.
“The other evening,” he told me, drinking his Cola, “the other evening was too late, I thought that ...”
What is he talking about?
He is with a pal, with large sad eyes, a small mouth, and skinny arms.
“Do you want him as well?”
I look at the pal. What could I really do with him?
I don’t want anything at all.
And what would Lapu-Lapu say if he found them in my room….
* * *
There has been an argument with Lapu-Lapu and he’s gone off to Harrison Plaza. Twenty past eight now, and he hasn’t come back. At times I tell myself it would perhaps be better if he didn’t come back.
* * *
He came back, and left again after a quarter of an hour. I’m going to throw him out, I’ll put his bag in the corridor and lock my room, I don’t want to see him again.
* * *
He arrived at eleven, the door was open. He undressed and went to bed. I didn’t tell him to leave, I wouldn’t for a moment dream of that.
Baguio[6]
We set off—finally—for Baguio. Lapu-Lapu had declared that he would not come without Noel, but at the last moment Noel changed his mind, because of his girlfriend Belle; he left his things at San Carlos and went out to look for her ...
Along Blumentritt at forty in the shade—but there’s no shade— jeepneys, lorries, markets, collapsing houses, seemed to take up all the available space. Hell. How will we get through? Life will stop here. Finally, a road ascending to heaven, stretches across the remaining rubble of Manila and runs to the North.
“That’s it,” Lapu-Lapu tells me, “it’s the road to Baguio.”
We will never turn back.
* * *
During the day, children ride horses, but in the evening we’re bored stiff. Lapu-Lapu had to be vaccinated against smallpox in anticipation of the trip, and had to go to the dentist. He is beginning to be cheesed off.
“People tell me that I’m lucky to come with you. But as for me, I don’t find that I’m lucky. I’m not happy.”
“And why not?”
“But what are we doing here? I can’t have all my teeth taken out! It’s always you giving the orders. I feel that if I come with you to Europe, I will have to do everything you say. To-morrow I’m going back to Manila.”
“ ... ”
“Besides, did I ask you to bore me stiff in Europe? No, you see. It was you . . .”
“But you accepted.”
“Ye-es. I shouldn’t have. Anyway, I’ve changed my mind.”
But the following day, he came to me again:
“Are you really sure you want to take me to Europe?”
It was a moment when I was no longer sure of anything.
“I thought,” I began, “that you wanted to stay at Harrison Plaza.”
“Well yes,” he said, “Harrison Plaza is the base. It’s not night like here.”
“ ...Well then ...”
“ …sometimes I go back to my parents at night. There’s not even a corner to sleep on the ground ... then I go to Velvet Slum, or to Luneta. Is it true that you will take me to Europe?”
“Hm ... you’re not certain of that?”
“No, he confessed finally. There were already three people that promised to take me to their country, and they didn’t do it.”
* * *
We left Baguio by a different road.
At Bauang, on the China Sea, there is a beach and a few hotels. Raphael[7] would have wanted to stay there a few days, to dance on the sea, light fires on the beach at night, but it’s no good.
Lapu-Lapu is anxious to be back in Harrison Plaza.
“Let’s go to Manila. Let’s go.”
* * *
Continue to Desert Patrol V: Manila III
[1] The author here is continuing to write about Lapu-Lapu, the thirteen-year-old boy he had met a little earlier in Manila and had just taken with him to stay a few days in Pagsanjan (a town famous generally for its waterfall and famous among boysexuals as a place where the boys sought sexual liaisons with visiting foreigners). The name Lapu-Lapu is romantic, recalling one of the earliest recorded Filipinos, the chief whose men killed in battle the explorer Magellan in 1521. [Website note]
[2] Noel Lavalle, 14, was a half-Filipino, half-French boy whom Franco had also met a little earlier in Manila and had just taken with him to stay a few days in Pagsanjan along with Lapu-Lapu. The two boys had quarrelled almost constantly. [Website note]
[3] In its introduction to the Philippines, the Spartacus International Gay Guide, 1979 edition, which catered to boysexuals as much as to gays, noted that “It is very easy to fall head-over-heels in love with a Filipino, but there is discrimination against them by many Governments, making it difficult for them to get residence permits in Europe, America or Australia.” (p. 376) Nevertheless, Richard Rawson, a regular boysexual visitor to the Philippines at the time, told in The Paggers Papers (Amsterdam: Acolyte Press, 1993) of many Europeans who had been able to take Filipino boys to live with them in Europe for at least long stays. [Website note]
[4] Harrison Plaza was Manila’s first shopping-mall. Opened in 1976, it quickly became a popular place for city kids to hang out and a popular place for foreign boysexuals to meet interested local boys. Velvet Slum was described earlier as “the disco for drag queens and drug addicts.” [Website note]
[5] Tagalog: language of the Manila region. [Author’s earlier note, repeated here]
[6] Baguio was a city in the mountains about 250 km. north of Manila. [Website note]
[7] Raphael was the author’s natural son, born in Rome in 1967 and so then aged 11 or 12. Franco was usually seen in his company and the boy was already seriously learning from his father the profession of photographer that he was to pursue for life. [Website note]
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