IN THESE the worsening economic times, I remember the wisdom of my dear departed Uncle Pununuk. He was an overseer in a casa in Angeles City’s infamous “Area.”
Said he: “When the prices of prime commodities go up, the cost of every pound of flesh stays, or even goes down.”
Why so?
The interplay of market forces. The Area caters mostly to the C, D and E socio-economic brackets. The slight price increase hits them first and hardest. For a market kargador, the hierarchy of needs puts primacy on food way over sex. Paid sex, that is.
Hence, the family table gets priority over the whore’s cot. Filling an empty stomach takes precedence over emptying bursting loins. So, who was it who said love flies out the window when the stomach is empty?
Imagination takes over too, with the wife – long reduced to an abrazador or extra pillow – suddenly looking every extra bulge like Rosanna Roces. Adding yet another dimension to the truism, “The rich get richer. The poor get more children.” But of course, this makes yet another thesis on the dynamics of population explosion.
Back to hard times.
The law of supply and demand – that which survived some idiot’s wish to have it repealed by Congress – naturally applies too to the sex-as-a-commodity price drop.
If you have recently passed by the streets around the old Rajah and Sultan motels at any time of the day, you could not have missed the proliferation of women of all range of age and (un)pulchritude thereabouts. With their ubiquitous bugaws flagging down every vehicle that passes by.
Says dwRW’s Deng Pangilinan, a keen-eyed observer of these comings and goings: “The girls come from all over, even from the resettlement sites. In ordinary times, the prevailing price ranges from P500 toP1,000 depending on the ‘freshness of the commodity.’”
In these times, Deng continues, the price is down to the P300-P700 range.
Massage parlors too are full of fresh faces. Not the usual bago-ito-kuya (she is new, sir) as in bagong paligo (newly bathed), bagong panganak (newly given birth to a child), bago galing Gapo (newly arrived from Olongapo). But farm fresh from the provinces.
A massage parlor habitué named Susing though complains that services have gone from hard-or-soft, Swedish-or-Shiatsu, to sensation, BJ or all-the-way. Hardly any rub-a-dub-dub, with the freshies wanting nothing but a wham-bam-here’s-your-P500-ma’am. And no freebies there. Hindi makukuha sa gandang lalaki (Can’t get free sex on the value of a handsome face), as the Adonis-faced Susing laments .
And long busted too is the line of the ever eligible Rizal Policarpio: “Sabi mo iniibig mo ako, bakit kita babayaran? (You said you love me, so why should I pay you?)”
Some notches higher than the overt sex traders are the GROs of the city’s ever mushrooming videoke or karaoke bars.
Researches in-aid-of-legislation are a nightly occurrence in the bars. Pursued most diligently not only by councilors of Angeles City but of practically all towns of Pampanga, and even Tarlac. And where the councilors are, can the mayors be far behind? Most, as a matter of course, are even way ahead of their councils to these joints.
As none of the hizzoners and aldermen can be relied on to speak and risk self-incrimination, so we defer anew to the eagle-eyed Deng. (Why not me? So sorry, my inborn allergy to alcohol has restricted me to a mile-limit distance from karaokes and kept me off the arms of GROs. Buwisit!)
The GRO trade is high-stakes, Deng says. It is way above the buy-and-sell enterprise, hence a virtual monopoly of the A and B brackets. Here, the fancied commodity has to be housed, given more than just cost-of-living allowances and other perks, even sent to school and taken on vacations here or abroad. At times, her family had to be extended financial support too.
Of all the commodities in the sex trade, the GRO suffers the most losses when hard times come, as they are the priciest and the most expensive to buy and keep. After all, no businessman is immune from the effects of the economic crisis.
But crisis or not, sex as an industry thrives. Most especially in this city whose very being was dictated by, nay, birthed from the loins of an occupying imperialist army. The Americans may have been gone. But their legacy of sex as a commodity stays. And even prospers.
WHOA! That was written in The Voice, August 23-29, 1998. Nearly 11 years hence, the siren song of Angeles City has remained the same.
Said he: “When the prices of prime commodities go up, the cost of every pound of flesh stays, or even goes down.”
Why so?
The interplay of market forces. The Area caters mostly to the C, D and E socio-economic brackets. The slight price increase hits them first and hardest. For a market kargador, the hierarchy of needs puts primacy on food way over sex. Paid sex, that is.
Hence, the family table gets priority over the whore’s cot. Filling an empty stomach takes precedence over emptying bursting loins. So, who was it who said love flies out the window when the stomach is empty?
Imagination takes over too, with the wife – long reduced to an abrazador or extra pillow – suddenly looking every extra bulge like Rosanna Roces. Adding yet another dimension to the truism, “The rich get richer. The poor get more children.” But of course, this makes yet another thesis on the dynamics of population explosion.
Back to hard times.
The law of supply and demand – that which survived some idiot’s wish to have it repealed by Congress – naturally applies too to the sex-as-a-commodity price drop.
If you have recently passed by the streets around the old Rajah and Sultan motels at any time of the day, you could not have missed the proliferation of women of all range of age and (un)pulchritude thereabouts. With their ubiquitous bugaws flagging down every vehicle that passes by.
Says dwRW’s Deng Pangilinan, a keen-eyed observer of these comings and goings: “The girls come from all over, even from the resettlement sites. In ordinary times, the prevailing price ranges from P500 toP1,000 depending on the ‘freshness of the commodity.’”
In these times, Deng continues, the price is down to the P300-P700 range.
Massage parlors too are full of fresh faces. Not the usual bago-ito-kuya (she is new, sir) as in bagong paligo (newly bathed), bagong panganak (newly given birth to a child), bago galing Gapo (newly arrived from Olongapo). But farm fresh from the provinces.
A massage parlor habitué named Susing though complains that services have gone from hard-or-soft, Swedish-or-Shiatsu, to sensation, BJ or all-the-way. Hardly any rub-a-dub-dub, with the freshies wanting nothing but a wham-bam-here’s-your-P500-ma’am. And no freebies there. Hindi makukuha sa gandang lalaki (Can’t get free sex on the value of a handsome face), as the Adonis-faced Susing laments .
And long busted too is the line of the ever eligible Rizal Policarpio: “Sabi mo iniibig mo ako, bakit kita babayaran? (You said you love me, so why should I pay you?)”
Some notches higher than the overt sex traders are the GROs of the city’s ever mushrooming videoke or karaoke bars.
Researches in-aid-of-legislation are a nightly occurrence in the bars. Pursued most diligently not only by councilors of Angeles City but of practically all towns of Pampanga, and even Tarlac. And where the councilors are, can the mayors be far behind? Most, as a matter of course, are even way ahead of their councils to these joints.
As none of the hizzoners and aldermen can be relied on to speak and risk self-incrimination, so we defer anew to the eagle-eyed Deng. (Why not me? So sorry, my inborn allergy to alcohol has restricted me to a mile-limit distance from karaokes and kept me off the arms of GROs. Buwisit!)
The GRO trade is high-stakes, Deng says. It is way above the buy-and-sell enterprise, hence a virtual monopoly of the A and B brackets. Here, the fancied commodity has to be housed, given more than just cost-of-living allowances and other perks, even sent to school and taken on vacations here or abroad. At times, her family had to be extended financial support too.
Of all the commodities in the sex trade, the GRO suffers the most losses when hard times come, as they are the priciest and the most expensive to buy and keep. After all, no businessman is immune from the effects of the economic crisis.
But crisis or not, sex as an industry thrives. Most especially in this city whose very being was dictated by, nay, birthed from the loins of an occupying imperialist army. The Americans may have been gone. But their legacy of sex as a commodity stays. And even prospers.
WHOA! That was written in The Voice, August 23-29, 1998. Nearly 11 years hence, the siren song of Angeles City has remained the same.
