Search Over: Sex and Love

SEARCH OVER

Sex and Love

A Novel

ELIOT GEORGE

Published by Eliot George at smashwords

First Published in Great Britain 2010

Copyright O 2009 by Eliot George

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Public figures are described under their real names whether or not David meets them. Private people remain so. All the non-public characters in the book are fictional and any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental. The genuine views, attitudes and opinions expressed are those of people in the real world. They are not the platitudes of brainwashed robots from the planet Naivo in the Orwellian nightmare of surveillance, hysteria and single-ideology conformity that is engulfing us.

A C.I.P. catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

~~~

For Clive

Clive Edmonson (1944-1994)

My oldest friend, who caused change

~~~

CHAPTER 1- FURTHER AFIELD

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English lexicographer and author

~~~

David looked away from the little map with its tiny, jiggling red aeroplane and glanced out of the Airbus Window. He could see only clouds because it was night but he knew that the sixteen and a half-hour direct flight from London to Manila would soon be over.

As the flight passed the coast of mainland Asia and headed out across the South China Sea, a fellow passenger who was stretching his legs came past and engaged David in conversation.

Shame about the four-hour delay at Heathrow. We shan’t land now until about ten thirty p.m.

Yes. I was hoping a six thirty landing would give me time to find a hotel without any bother, before I carry on tomorrow.

Is this your first visit to the Philippines?

The friendly fellow-passenger was obviously English, lacking (as he did) a nasal whine. David was always pleased to get to know strangers on trips, whether pre-flight or in the air, because he had gained useful information this way before and had even made lasting friendships on previous first-time journeys, to Bogotá, Lima and Bangkok.

Yes, I have a ticket already to fly on tomorrow to Cebu. It’s in the afternoon, so there’s no great problem.

Well, when we land, you must share the taxi with me. My Filipina wife is meeting me. We live in Makati, not far from the airport, so I can drop you off at a suitable hotel for the night.

Thanks very much.

There it was again, the lovely way that Englishmen help one another when they are abroad.

The conversation continued, and David explained how he had been corresponding as a pen pal with some girls in different provinces of the Philippines, for about six months. It had proved to be a wonderful method of finding his feet quickly on arrival in a strange country, when he had first travelled to South America. In Colombia and Peru a prospective ‘girlfriend’ had even been there to greet him on first arrival at the airport of the respective capital cities.

This time, the three girls on his list did not live in Manila. The ones who had taken his fancy were scattered further south, in their provinces on the islands of Cebu, Leyte and Mindanao. Although he had visited Asia for the first time on a two-week package holiday to Thailand the previous summer, going to the Philippines carried more promise because it was a Christian country and was more westernized.

Thai girls had certainly been to his liking physically, similar to the Spanish and Latina women whom he had enjoyed so much in his life up to now, but they lacked the personal warmth that he sought. During that holiday, David had enjoyed the Thai culture of temples and elephants in addition to ten delightful girls. The scene was all too cold and businesslike for him, though, so the Philippines had him anticipating a more rewarding time.

David’s new friend continued,

Have you heard about Angeles City?

Only as the place where Clark Air Force Base was located. I assume that when the American bases in Clark and Subic Bay closed down the towns went back to normal.

Not quite. Angeles is still operating, although at a much-reduced level, of course. You should go and pay a visit. Angeles rose from the ashes of Pinatubo’s eruption and the hotels are good value.

Okay, if I have time I will.

David already knew a great deal about the history of the Philippines as part of his all-absorbing studies as an amateur historian, especially in the field of Military History. The voyage of Magellan’s fleet from 1519 to 1522, the first to circumnavigate the globe, when one ship limped back from the fleet of five, was particularly fascinating. Magellan himself did not make it home, being killed on Mactan Island near Cebu City, where David would be arriving the next day to meet the first of the pen pals.

Following a three-week tour of the Philippines, he would fly to Hong Kong for a week to research contacts for a language school, then retrace his steps for a further two weeks before going back to London to see out his last semester as a part-time lecturer. This would be the forerunner to leaving the United Kingdom altogether to live in more congenial climes. It only remained to find a place that he liked enough.

David had not left England immediately after taking the absolutely not-to-be-refused premature retirement offer from the University two years earlier, but that further time (not entirely unhappy) had led him to think that what he had done so often as travel should now be permanent. He could see which way ‘broken Britain’ was going, over the long hard time of Thatcher and Major, and it was definitely not towards broad Churchillian sunlit uplands.

David should actually have been in Cuba for three days already, having had a ticket for a flight to Havana that landed ten minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve. It seemed an obvious choice, to use his fluent Spanish in the same way that he had in South America. Although his marriage to Maria Luisa had been over for eighteen years and many adventures in Spain and South America (and England) had followed, the ‘Lonely Planet’ book on Cuba portrayed it as a country in which it was difficult to travel around.

By contrast, the Philippines seemed to be more broadly interesting and there were (in these early days of the Internet) pen pals waiting, so he had changed his ticket just a week prior to departure date. The paid-for trip to Hong Kong, only a few months before it was due to be handed back to China, was too good to miss and provided the icing on the cake.

~~~

As the PAL (Philippine Airlines) Airbus banked over Manila Bay, there below David could see what must be Corregidor, a dark splodge against the water, guarding the entrance to the bay. This was one of the most interesting places in the Philippines from more recent, Second World War history. General Douglas MacArthur had escaped from Corregidor to Australia, in a PT boat and then a submarine, before vowing famously,

I shall return!

He duly did so in October 1944 at the Red Beach landings at Palo, Leyte, where David intended to go from Cebu, combining the history of the island of Leyte with meeting another pen pal. He believed strongly in mixing one type of pleasure with another.

The Airbus swung over the city and descended for its landing. David could see some of the ‘squatter areas’ [shantytowns] scattered around the NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport). The airport was named after the political exile Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino who had returned in 1983 only to be tragically assassinated there, as he walked down the steps of the aeroplane.

The reputation of the country then was that of a typical United States puppet, the ‘he’s a bastard but he’s our bastard’ at that time being President Ferdinand Marcos, well described in the book ‘America’s Boy’ by James Hamilton-Patterson. In 1986 the refusal by Marcos to give way after the election won by Ninoy’s widow Cory [Corazon Aquino] led to the ‘People Power’ coup and the ouster of Marcos.

The myth was fostered that the people had effectively seized power, in a demonstration one million people strong, by peacefully blocking the wide road named EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos) between two army headquarters. Meanwhile in the presidential palace of Malacañang, Ferdinand Marcos haggled with his ‘best friend’ Ronnie ‘I was not in the loop’ Reagan who was reluctant to lose him.

The reality was that the USA felt Marcos to be a poor longer-term proposition and did their usual dumping of a foreign client leader, one of their many puppets who wanted to pull his own strings. He was flown off to Clark Base and then out of the country. A popular, pro-Cory and anti-American sentiment ensued. The leases for the bases at Clark and Subic Bay were not renewed five years later despite the offer by the USA of large renewal fees.

The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 (the greatest in the world of the twentieth century) hastened the Americans on their way. Once installed, President Cory governed initially on a tide of goodwill, at home and around the world, and she tried hard. Good intentions often fail however, in many countries, in the face of well-entrenched vested interests.

This was true in the United Kingdom because of the centuries-old, undisturbed, institutionalized corruption of control built into the class structure. In the Philippines it was due to a more feudal set-up of ownership and franchise concessions, or so David’s new friend told him as they queued for Immigration.

There is a certain number, sixty or what ever it may be, of rich and powerful families who own everywhere and have the rights to everything.

Well, I suppose there are a relatively few very rich and a vast majority of poor, the definition of an under-developed country as in so many others.

We, ‘the foreigners’, as they call us, think that Cory Aquino’s successor President Fidel Ramos has been quite successful and that there is more hope for the future.

Let’s hope so.

They passed through Immigration with no trouble, David getting the regular twenty-one day visa that he needed until going to Hong Kong, while his friend travelled on his balikbayan, a one-year, ‘married to a Filipina’ visa. The climate as they emerged to the waiting taxi was a welcome improvement on the snow and ice through which David had crunched when he left his house about twenty-four hours before.

At 11.30 p.m., David’s helpful friend dropped him off at a hotel in Makati, the business district of Manila. They shook hands.

Thanks very much. I appreciate your help.

My pleasure. This hotel will be fine for one night, not too expensive. Good luck

He leaned forward with a smile and a conspiratorial whisper to add,

The entertainment district in Burgos Street is just around the corner, and don’t forget to check out Angeles City when you have seen the pen pals.

He winked. David never saw him again, although his help had been invaluable.

The hotel was indeed fine for that night. After a shower, David decided to have a little wander and explore the locality. The exchange rate was 39 pesos to the pound, identical to the rate he had exchanged for the Thai baht six months earlier. He was an experienced traveller now and was perfectly comfortable in a foreign country amongst small brown people, whether in a village in the Colombian Andes or the floating reed huts on Lake Titicaca in Peru, a dangerous city such as Quito or a chaotic city such as Manila.

~~~

David was no longer twenty-eight, the age when he had experienced his first foreign adventure as a single-again man, which had led to learning another language and marriage to Maria Luisa. He was now fifty-two, already a grandfather for ten years. The eyes were still blue, of course, standing him in good stead with the dusky maidens, and he was still a boyish-looking chap, with a full head of tousled blonde hair. That hereditary trait was one thing for which he was grateful to his father, a widower for four years, but still fit at seventy-eight.

The funeral of David’s mother’s had been the last time that he had seen and spoken to Maria Luisa. She too had moved on in her life and had married again, with two young sons after losing a week-old daughter in great sadness. It had to be said that in her forties she had put on a lot of weight. David was very fit from the serious amateur tennis that he had been playing for eight years since taking the game up.

The brilliant film ‘Filipina Dreamgirls’ (directed by Andrew Davies of the definitive ‘Pride and Prejudice’ fame in 1995) had been shown on television in 1991, although it had not unduly influenced David’s choice of this trip. Being met by a pen pal was one thing, getting married was quite another. His third (Polish) wife and his fourth (Colombian) wife had been far less pleasant experiences than the first two. Marriage was not a current option, and he had not fallen in love for a long time . . .

‘Filipina Dreamgirls’ is outstanding because the writing is well crafted and the issues handled are sensitive ones not usually discussed in the UK; in particular, relationships and marriage across the divides of age, race and culture. The woman-centred society of marriage and divorce in the ageist, repressed and puritan sexual desert of Britain had roughly handled many British men and left them scarred.

In the film, a group of Welshmen from Cardiff travel out to the Philippines, seriously seeking partners in a country that had the reputation for women who were far more feminine and also had a better idea of what the complementary roles of the two sexes were. Ten years earlier, David had even explored the possibilities thrown up in that way through a local club. It was well run, by a Filipina married in Essex who had a sister in Manila but despite making some contacts he did not follow it through at that time.

These clubs were disparagingly known in the media as providing a service of ‘Mail Order Brides’, a typical bias. Why not ‘Mail Order Husbands’? Both the men and the women were corresponding for mutual benefit, and there were numerous dating agencies and marriage bureaux in the UK, whether formal clubs or the disco ‘Grab-a-Granny’ nights for over-twenty-fives that catered to the growing divorced and separated population. Both methods of finding a partner, formal and informal, cost large amounts of money, time and effort, mostly to the man.

The biggest practical problem for the men was that the available women at home came with baggage of children and emotional problems. An unspoken but powerful social pressure against age gaps of more than ten years further limited the chances of a fresh start. It was all a mess and David wanted none of it any longer. The outcomes for the Welshmen in ‘Filipina Dreamgirls’ were realistically varied. Some of the detail, both amusing and serious, would mean more to him now that he was here himself.

David did not speak any Tagalog, known officially as Filipino. This was made up largely of the Tagalog spoken around Manila [taga ilog = ‘from the river’, the River Pasig in Manila] and was imposed, upon independence, as the national language against other possible candidates such as Cebuano and Ilocano. Two-thirds of Filipinos spoke languages other than Tagalog as their first language, revealing one way in which the Spanish had held the archipelago in a time warp for a very long time.

Spanish had not become the main language as it had in Latin America and Tagalog was taught as a second language at school to the non-native-speaking majority. The importance of English was possibly going to decline, although most Filipinos spoke some English. There was a tourist advertisement on television that claimed,

The Philippines has more English speakers than England.

This extremely spurious claim was based on a population larger than that of England’s, growing very rapidly through eighty or so million. It had been only eight million a century earlier. Words of English certainly came out of their mouths, but even in those who appeared quite good their understanding of native English when spoken to them was another matter entirely. Out in the provinces English was very limited, as David would soon discover.

The Philippines had gained full independence from the USA in 1946 after liberation from the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, so as an independent country it was two years younger than David. The saying went, using round numbers for the joke, that,

‘The Philippines spent 300 years in a Catholic convent and fifty years in Hollywood.’

This referred to the removal of the Spanish by the USA in 1898 as a by-product of the Spanish-American War. To save face for the Spanish a mock battle was organized around Manila and twenty million dollars paid to them to go away. The Filipino independence fighters under Emilio Aguinaldo were of course not let in on this.

In the usual style ’liberation’ became a fresh occupation, and a brutal three-year war against ‘insurgents’ followed, causing the deaths of 4,000 American troops and 200,000 Filipinos. Against the normal pattern, the USA won that one and stayed for a while, not knowing what to do with the country sometimes described as their ‘only colony’. An early road to independence was offered as a Commonwealth in 1936 and the full promise was kept ten years later, with the bases retained.

~~~

David’s wander took him to a bar in Burgos Street that had a wide sloping ramp to the entrance. In common with all the establishments known as ‘bars’ in the Philippines (and also in Colombia, for example) it was not a place having much in common with the ‘Rover’s Return’ or any other bar or pub in England.

The word ‘bar’ was simply a misnomer, because it was far more akin to what in the West was called a disco or nightclub. There were great similarities, ignored by the ignorant and denied by those people in denial with agendas. There were also important differences.

Hello Sir, take a seat.

A smartly uniformed waitress showed him to a seat by the raised dancing stage.

Filipinos could not easily distinguish nationalities between the various white Anglo-Saxon foreigners who came to their country, even when they spoke in the lingua franca of English. This included the non-native speakers of English from Europe, and was not really surprising. The drawl and nasal whine (and slang and gratuitous foul language) of Aussies and Yanks made no concession to Filipinos’ understanding and was difficult for them to follow.

Rarely did they let on, however, as the Asian concept of ‘face’ operated here, and was known as mahiya. The literal translation is ‘shame’ or ‘embarrassment’ but that is unfair to Filipinos. It is more accurate to consider it as a wish not to appear wrong, or ignorant of the answer. It led often to the confusion, in foreigners, of the ‘Filipino Yes’. This could mean ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or more often the state of ‘I don’t know but I am not going to admit it’.

David replied with a smile, in his best gentlemanly Englishman manner,

Thank you. I’ll have a beer please.

The more experienced or thoughtful waitresses could tell an educated man (or ‘professional’ as they called him), particularly an Englishman, in the same and only way as the Yanks (who could not generally distinguish other native-speaker accents).

What is your country? Are you British?

Yes, I am from England. How can you tell?

Because you are soft-spoken.

This was a big advantage against the braggarts from the Failed State and the roughs from the Penal Colony. Respect towards the locals went a very long way.

As the waitress fetched the drink, David looked around the bar, a layout familiar to him from his holiday in Thailand. On the stage was a group of dancers, all in costume of top and skirt, and all between eighteen and about twenty-five. Some of the young women were very attractive and others were fairly ordinary, with only youth as an asset.

This was the prospect seen back in the cold and puritan West as dreadful exploitation and prostitution of females, who were fondly imagined, quite stupidly and because it seemed more sensational, to be twelve-year-olds. It was more accurate to see it as a sensible, well-run and organized place for the sexes to meet, as well as being, nonetheless, yet another exploitation of men, particularly their weakness and their kindness.

Thank you.

David smiled at the waitress and felt good despite the long trip, which had lasted close to twenty-four hours in all, with little sleep. What a wonderful place this was in which to relax.

You’re welcome.

There was the American influence in speech.

The positive vibes of his relaxed body language and glances around was quickly picked up and attracted interest. Several girls gave equally positive eye contact. He allowed one that he fancied to start a more personal conversation, as she leaned forward across the stage. The usual routine was,

What is your name?

What is your country?

How old are you?

Where do you stay?

Do you have wife?

They were simply more open than the women back home, and were willing to approach a man who looked mabait [kind]. Men of a less attractive countenance, presentation and behaviour had to take the initiative. That was not as easy as might be imagined since most of the ‘first-timers’ in Asia (and many men had very limited worthwhile experience of women back home) found a stage full of nubiles intimidating, even overwhelming.

Ever since his experiences with the Monica Vitti look-a-like Lisa, who had been the first ‘other woman’, and with Maria Luisa, David’s attitude was simple. Since those two very attractive women had fancied him (not to mention some of the scrumptious colombianas who had followed), why should any woman in the world be ‘too nice [looking] to talk to’, as the pop song had expressed it?

Would you like to buy her a drink, sir?

How much is that?

One hundred eighty pesos lang.

They loved their word lang, which meant ‘only’. The drink for the girl was about four pounds fifty pence, not exactly cheap but then, this was the capital.

Okay, fine.

The girl’s English was quite passable. Her name was Daisy, a name possessed by no woman in England less than eighty years old. Here it was common, and some of the sexiest creatures with whom David was ever to have excellent sex were named Ethel, Gladys, Mabel or similar. He would discover that very often the girls used an assumed ‘stage’ name; that was simply one of their affectations, but confusing to men who did not know. He would also discover later the famous five questions to ask the girls in return.

What is your name?

"Are you are a cherry girl [a virgin]?

Do you have a baby?

"Do you have mens [the commonly-used short form for menstruation]?

If you like to go out, do you stay?

That all seemed to David at first to be rather too blunt, particularly the second one without the addition, as in ‘The Life of Brian’, of ‘ . . . if it’s not a rude question’, but it did save an awful lot of time and misunderstanding. They did not mind being asked these things and some (looking for drinks only) would not reveal them unless asked.

Daisy was in fact the name of his beloved grandmother, whom he still missed badly, more