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12.6.05 Candidate Ramirez Regrets (Fragments of Abandoned Novels, Part III)

Candidate Romeo Ramirez looked up wearily at the four teenage virgins giggling in the corner and poured himself another drink. The fat one made goo-goo eyes at him and crumpled the antimacassar of the overstuffed chair with her stubby hands. Her chewed fingernails bore the remains of purple nail varnish. It was going to be a long night.

The junior men in the party, the ones for whom he was a giant striding down the sidewalk of life, assumed the dark circles under his eyes each morning were due to nightly feats of sexual athleticism. But they were actually from the litre of whisky required to achieve sleep in the same room as four excited and unsatiated fifteen-year-olds. Women revolted him.

His advance man, Pico, found it easy to round up seven or eight girls in each town who were secretly not virgins and thus would otherwise bring great shame on their family on their wedding night, when their non-wholeness was discovered by their new husband. In this way, he was performing a service to the people of the Philippines - probably the most tangible service he would ever provide. But he got no peace. Although the stories that he devoured four virgins a night made him a hero of the man on the street from Aparri to Zamboanga, the priests - those corrupt, flapping crows - criticised him at every turn. The Cardinal Suarez (who had at last count eight illegitimate children, two by nuns) even dared to call him "a moral disgrace and unfit to run for president".

Later, Suarez brought it down to "the leader of our country should ideally have strong morals and a sincere concern for the people, but if a man cannot be found with both, then the latter is of greater importance." But it cost Ramirez and his supporters the million pesos they had embezzled from the Cocofund shares, that the previous president had nationalised from that Chinese tycoon, who had appropriated them from the farmers, who had gotten them as a pre-election bribe. Ramirez was still sore about losing that money. He was going to buy a house in California with it.

His ex-wife, who bleached her dark Asian hair hair platinum blonde and lived in a comfortable ranch house in West Palm Beach (that middle-class carbuncle growing off the playground for the sun-addled American rich) was continually hounded by political enemies of Ramirez to return to Manila and denounce him. Suarez had been to see her twice in the last month. But the house, and her allowance, were all still in Ramirez' name, so until the church was willing to subsidise her $10,000-a-month handbag and cocaine habit, Ramirez was safe from her stories about the problems with "little Romeo".

The fat girl, egged on by her little buck-toothed friend, clambered onto his lap and began to nuzzle his ear. She smelled like grape jam. Ramirez gagged, and pushed her off. So forward! What were girls coming to these days? He stuck his nose in his whisky and cursed Suarez as he inhaled. This is the Catholic Church's fault, Ramirez thought, spending all its time politicking and thus letting the country's morals slip so precariously...

( 5:43 PM )

1 Comments:

So wait, this never happened to you either?!? (he types with a bemused smile)

By The Hammer, at 11:42 PM