Striptease

That Cesar Mancao wrote an affidavit and confessed its contents to Ms. Carina Dacer was first revealed by her lawyer a day before I was to leave for a long-scheduled four-day trip. And so, I watched with interest whatever the net and text served me about the return of my friend Boy, whom I last saw on April 2, 2006, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Mancao’s cousin has a department store in our adopted city, and I even filed a case against Boy’s cousin in FVR’s time, on a property dispute which we eventually settled out of court.

After listening to the unfolding of “revelations”, what came to mind was a show I watched in the summer of 1978, on my first visit to lovely Paris. On the way to Montmartre and the Quartier Pigalle, I took the metro and stopped at Abbesses. What greeted me was the monumental Sacre Coeur atop the hill, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. Oh my God, I thought. Why did the French put up a grand cathedral so close to the Quartier where sexy shows were shown. I asked myself. How irreverent.

I walked down the narrow streets to the Place Pigalle, and had such a delightfully sinful spectacle of painted ladies of the night beckoning so openly. The street “promoters” were inviting, “Le strip-teez!”, they whispered, along with a tawdry pamphlet of wares they purveyed. And so I entered one club, not the Crazy Horse where reservations were required.

There was a front act. There were some comedians even, whose humour I hardly appreciated, my “baon” of French words being so limited. And then there was not-so-wild applause when a woman’s name was announced. She was the star of the show ---“L’etoille de Marseilles” they billed her. But I was sorely disappointed when I saw l’etoille (star). She was probably in her early thirties, more than twice as young of course as Raul Gonzales, but hey, in Manila by night, you saw them in their early twenties, at the very oldest. But her “le strip-teez” was pure art form. Despite her age, and her sagging front, the act was enchanting. It told a story in lyrical cadence.

Why do I remember that now? Because Raul Gonzales is doing a striptease, but such a lousy one. He probably never watched a Montmartre show, what with wife Pacita lovingly around all the time. (Ikaw gid, Doctora Pacita, ihaboy na ang mga Marzotto, nag-tigulang na sobra si Manong Raul ka sina nga bayo.)

First Raul tries to give hints, as if peeling the shoulder straps of his cheap gown. “Someone ordered the crime but Mancao did not take part in the operation”, or words to that effect. Asked “who” by inquisitive Jucra reporters, Raul rolls his eyes as if to say, “search me”. The Jucra reporters recoil. Ano? Hihipuan natin si Gonzales?

Meanwhile, the audience is fidgety. Is it Ping? Is it Erap? Is it Erap ordering Ping to order Aquino? Or is it Erap ordering Aquino without a by-your-leave to Ping, then the PNP Chief?

And Ping, who sat in the audience, recounts that Mancao called him late last year, before he was apprehended by American law enforcers because of an extradition request of Raul’s DOJ. A certain General Prestoza of the ISAFP (formerly Dona Gloria’s presidential guard, just like Delfin Bangit, the next CS-AFP) called Mancao, and inveigled him to pin down Ping on the Dacer-Corbito crime, in exchange for cushy benefits. So what else is new, the audience asks? You’ve been accused of every crime in the book, but hey, you’re still around. You were accused of drug-dealing, of money laundering, of kidnapping, of murder, even a helicopter rub-out, everything except stealing the people’s money, you pork-less Ping, and nothing has been proven beyond slapdash accusation.

Erap spent “sleepless nights”, reports Mon Tulfo in his column at the Inquirer. Is Mon suggesting it was Erap who ordered Dacer rubbed out?

Back to Manong Raul’s striptease act. Soon after, Ping and the crowd was yelling “take it all off”’. Raul shies off to backstage. “Ilabas mo na ang affidavit”, Ping dares the “casa” de justicia. But Raul of the “casa” plays “jele-jele”. I have kept my undies in the safe, and I will show them only when the “proper time” comes, Raul swears.. What proper time, the crowd yells? When Cesar gets back from Florida, he says. “Bitin naman”, the audience roars.

Then Raul of the “casa” de justicia is called by his little lady boss y su esposo. “Ano ka ba naman? What’s this about your refusing to strip? Unti-untiin mo, so the audience will be titillated. Hala, balik ka sa stage, at mag strip-tease ka ulit”, the dona ordered. “Pero boss, nasabi ko nang itinago ko ang bikini ko sa “caja”, Raul of the “casa” protested.

“Basta ya! Gusto mong palitan ka namin? Dami yata d’yang bata!” So Raul had to eat his “intact in a safe” pronouncements. “Jele-jele” becomes “quiere”.

Then someone hissed, “Pwede akong supporting cast, para umanghang naman ang striptease”, he volunteers. “Oo nga pala, isali mo na ito sa script, tutal wala naman siyang ginagawa, Asec for nothing --- sinuswelduhan ko pa rin”. Raul is hesitant. The lawyer in him knows Berro is useless. He has an axe to grind against Lacson, because the latter had him jailed in FVR’s time for the kidnapping of a Taiwanese businessman named Jack Chou. And Raul also knew that Berroya was the head of PNP-IG (that’s intelligence group, which is rather oxymoronic in this case), who “investigated” Glenn Dumlao on Dacer-Corbito. Now, eight years late, Berro wants to join the act, and be another “stripteaser”. But nobody says no to the Dona, so Raul allows “Berro” into the act, while Stephen Joshua Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” (A Little Night Music) plays in the background.

“Isn’t it rich? Are we a pair?”, as both re-enter the stage, an aging stripteaser with the pot belly, and an aged primadonna with measured steps. Well, Send in the Clowns is as hauntingly melodic as the Sonata Pathetique.

“Making my entrance again with my usual flair, Sure of my lines, No one is there…Don’t you love farce?”

The pathetic Raul was groping throughout the latest act. Pilit na sinasama ang alalay na si Berro sa picture. Berro says Raul asked him to enter the picture. Raul flatly says Berro volunteered. And alalay Berro suddenly pirouettes on stage, “remembering” scenes nine years after Bubby and Emmanuel disappeared. He was the “IG” when they apprehended Dumlao, reinstated into the PNP by Dona Gloria, misma, after he was sacked for being AWOL in Lacson’s time. To make his act more “maanghang”, Berro now warbles that he was the prime target. He, he, he… “Losing my timing this late, in my career”, Sondheim laments.

“Puro panis na kayo! Style n’yo bulok!”, the audience hoots.

Meanwhile, with the ersatz waterfalls of Dodong Alegrado’s Inland Resort Hotel in Butuan City as backdrop, Erap, designer sunglasses covering his eyes, says, “Dacer is my compadre, twice over. This is all demolition think-tanks” (sic), he snickers.
“Estrada said he and Berroya are still friends and “little misunderstanding” caused what had transpired between them. “He is also my kumpare. Well, I know, although I have not talked to General Berroya, I thank him for the good words that he has for me. Although I have not seen him yet,” Estrada said. (But Erap has been drinking since last year with Berro. Umiinom na rin ng Chateau Petrus si Berro? Wow!)
The boss woman’s street “promoter, a guy named Cerge, cautions ---“Ma’am, nasuko na ra ba ang audience. Bitin kayo”. But the boss thunders, “A basta ya! Just tell Raul and Berro to keep the audience panting in anticipation. If need be, and just to stretch the torture further, send in more clowns. Hanapin mo si Rosebud, si Corpuz, si Ador, maski si Udong, baka mabigyan ng papel”. And Cerge wonders, “unsa may akong buhaton?” “Yawa, kagamay ra sa akong kumisyon kada customer”.

And so the agonizing striptease of Raul of the “casa” de justicia grinds, exceedingly slow, waiting for the return of the comeback. He keeps whetting the crowd’s prurience, saying, “It will all hang out” --- soon, a la Dolly Parton this time. He even gets a forgotten crime reporter once fired from the Journal because of you-know-what, through his Atty. Alex Tan (ask DOJ insiders, even Usec Exconde, whose family mausoleum in San Pablo City is beside ours, who Tan is), to intercalate a 2007 affidavit executed by Mancao in Broward County, Florida, with Berro’s “insertion” of himself as a potential “victim”. Ha, ha, ha, and a broadsheet gives Tan and Tony Calvento’s concoction, banner treatment, citing “reliable” sources. (Read Philippine Star, Sunday and Monday, 15 and 16 March) Who are the reliable sources, Tan and Calvento?

But what happens when the promised “star of the show” arrives --- Boy Mancao? What secrets will he reveal? Hintayin na lang natin. Meantime, tiisin na lang muna si Raul, si Berro, si Cerge, si Calvento, at kung minsan, si Ed Ermita, atbp. Or, close your eyes, cover your ears, and wait for the real thing.

But what if Cesar, or Glenn, or even Michael Rey strips? E mga macho dancers pala! Ha, ha, ha.

Back to Place Pigalle, circa 1978. After consoling myself with “art” in le strip-teez, and forcibly ejecting from mind less than standing boobs, I walked back to the Metro. Then, when I was about to board the train, a well-dressed man and his equally haute couture-dressed companion shouted. Pickpockets had robbed them!

Oh well, they probably enjoyed Le Saloon Crazy Horse, and I my strip-teez joint. Meanwhile, they get robbed, just as we in these benighted lands get ripped-off, day-in and day-out, night-in and night-out, by boss woman and her ilk, by Celso’s and Jocjoc’s and Garci’s and Pidal’s, while we enjoy the spectacles of Raul’s lousy striptease. Ripped off our tax money, ripped off our quotidian amenities, ripped off our future.

While we focus on who ordered the killing of FVR’s publicist and Joe Almonte’s best friend Bubby Dacer, we forget all about Legacy and Jocjoc, Mercy’s merciful cover-ups, Abalos’ borjer joints, Jun Lozada’s calvary for truth, journalists and activists getting killed, jobs by the thousands getting lost each day, because Circus, Circus re-runs the Dacer-Corbito case. Ang galing talaga ng mga evil geniuses sa palacio!

And meanwhile, the money bags are being filled up in Malacanang for charter change. They’ve already re-invented lawyer Manny Gaite, the fabulously wealthy Usec in Malacanang who thought nothing of giving half a million smackeroos to Jun Lozada (remember?) into the newest SEC Commissioner, there to oversee, along with Fe Barin and Raul Palabrica, the mind-boggling and fantabulously powerful (therefore resource-full) nest-egg that regulates corporate malpractice.

What a country!

* * *

A school chum from way back, friend of Noel Onate, the new kid on the Pacific Plans bloc, asked me to be fair. Reacting to our Friday column “Tenacity” about Philip Piccio and the PEP, he hastened to assure me that Noel already has a business plan to offer full buy-back of all the problematic educational plans sold by Pacific at the time when tuition fees were yet regulated.

“No plan holder will lose a dime of their investment”, the new owners of Pacific promise. In 2010, they claim, Pacific Plans’ dollar-denominated Napocor bonds covered by sovereign guarantee will mature, and they will have the wherewithal to redeem their pledge.