Thursday, August 09, 2007 Obenieta: On the sensational By Myke U. Obenieta So to speak
LIFE'S a beach, according to the drumbeaters of Cebu's allure as a vacation destination. Even their adjectives are exhibitionistic, turning on the tourists with come-hither chorus about everything exotic in this so-called Island of the Pacific.
It may be lulling to the senses to swing it out here this side of the cradle of Christianity. But even if our bells draw in droves of pilgrims and faith-healing followers, it's no louder than tourism's trumpets for an orgy in self-indulgence.
For their guests, geishas know respect is a matter of restraint. So much so that playing the shakuhachi flute, even if their lips would make Linda Lovelace blush, can be both cultural and charming.
About the art of being discreet, maybe geishas can tutor our tourism bigwigs. So that, hopefully, selling Cebu would be less a strain than buying some conservative notions about ourselves.
Utterly uninhibited at flaunting the island's plus factors, we might as well be cranking up the volume of siren songs for hedonists.
Which is why it's hardly jolting that Japanese tourists, four of them, were recently caught making love or allegedly making sex video in a beach near the bird sanctuary in Olango Island. Not too long ago, too, Korean tourists---two females and seven males---Korean nationals dropped their dress while visiting Fort San Pedro. Blame it on the heat?
Certainly those sensualists were not out to seek a Shinto temple hereabouts or to render their bodies light on the wings of meditation, on the way to bliss.
They should respect our culture, cries Cebu Provincial Board Member Agnes Magpale. Then again, maybe those Japanese have already read a bit of cultural studies culled from Pigafetta's account about the islanders' sexual maturity.
In his journal, Pigafetta noted that Cebu is no paradise for prudes: "The men of Cebu pierced their penises with gold or tin bolts that often had small spurs attached to either end. Females from the age of six upwards progressively had their vaginas opened and enlarged to accommodate these penis appendages."
Probably, too, those tourists thought that Cebuanos are no babes in the woods of the forbidden. Cebu—chockfull with x-rated websites flaunting our women---is not a greenhorn in the global industry of Internet porn.
That thing those tourists did is a slap in the face, groans a local tourism official who says their agency has been "promoting Cebu as a wholesome destination for tourists." Those devil-may-care beach bums are isolated cases, he avers in the face of Lapu-Lapu City's police chief who admits such torrid escapades are nothing new.
Though amatory exertions al fresco among tourists have been no less commonplace than dogs copulating in the streets, he says it's "difficult to catch the perpetrators." It's incriminating, after all, to suggest our law enforcers are a bunch of voyeurs.
Meanwhile, Cebu's vendors of bootlegged x-rated movies are having a holiday.
Beach Scandal would soon go mainstream, and that's for all the world—straight from this exotic island—to see.
