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Friday, September 19, 2003
Obenieta: Manhood test
By MYKE U. OBENIETA
SOUND OF MOSAIC
It happened that you caught tidbits of a tall tale from someone in a drinking session while you waited for your turn at the neighborhood sari-sari store.
So recounted the soused-up raconteur: In a village of cannibals, the interloper who’d fail to pass the tribe’s annual trial of manhood will end up stewed in a boiling cauldron. The tribe’s chieftain is implacable. So that the interloper won’t end up getting himself heaved straight into the pot, he must overcome the manhood test that entails him to get into three huts, each with a task he must pull off: in the first, he must swallow at an eight-gallon barrel of the tribe’s homebrew beer; in the second, he must remove a thorn in the paw of a full grown lion; in the third, he must satisfy the appetite of a sexually ravenous young woman.
Tough, you thought.
And you realized that the neighborhood drunks were raising a challenge that writers and philosophers have long been restless about. How to be a man, Malraux once wondered. Obviously, he knew that Disraeli’s insight several years back left a lot to be desired after muttering, “Manhood is a struggle…”
Tougher still, you knew, to ascertain if government officials and law enforcers would ever bother to mull over Malraux’s question or a piece of Disraeli’s troubled mind in the comfort of their own bedrooms.
This is far easier to ascertain: the wives and children of our authorities would have the lip-smacking longing to become cannibals and make supper of their husbands and fathers if the enticements of nightspots prove harder to surmount than the trials in the chieftain’s three huts.
From Malacañang comes yet another manhood test. This time, it intrudes into the secret but scrumptious lives of the high and the mighty, in line with its crusade for a “lifestyle check.” Can our officials in the local government units and the law enforcement agencies come out of Malacañang’s killjoy ordeal?
So far, some of the big boys are squirming at the cold-water dousing of their desires to burn the night away. It’s pretentious, some frowned. “I’ve been visiting nightspots since I was young, why should I stop now that I’m a congressman,” laughed a lawmaker during a television interview. “Where will we bring our guests?” wondered a city mayor. Others claimed it’s impractical, short of tinkering with human nature. ““I don’t know if we have enough manpower to watch all public officials,” worried another legislator. It’s wishing for the moon, agreed another city mayor who scowled, “Our Congress passes 500 bills a year. How come we’re still miserable?’
Hearing all these, you’d wonder if they’d stand a chance with a cannibal chieftain’s manhood test. Then again, they should join and ask the neighborhood drunks, instead.
(Michael U. Obenieta welcomes your comments at his e-mail address: yomyko@yahoo.com)
(September 19, 2003 issue)
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