DESERT PATROL II: MANILA
BY GUIDO FRANCO
Presented here is the second part of Desert Patrol (une aventure sous les tropiques), a travel memoir by French Swiss photographer Guido Franco published in 1980 and introduced here. It concerns what Franco saw of the pederastic scene involving local boys and foreigners when he visited Manila in early 1979. The illustrations are all from the original book.
II. Manila
AFTER the war, the red-light district of Manila was a barrio in Makati named Culi-Culi. Masses of girls could be found there, those who had survived the Japanese occupation, new recruits, starving after the war, and even transvestites who attracted sailors too drunk to see clearly. Taxi drivers got a commission for each client. The prices were low, and between each ship the students of Manila took over. Above the door of each establishment was a sign saying: “Don’t be vague.”
Unfortunately, that is all in the past.
* * *
As I had been told, the Hotel San Carlos[1] is in an obscure and badly paved alley, a few steps from the Hilton. It cuts across the United Nations Avenue, near Rizal Park.
Modern, but not all that elegant. Black plastic in the rooms, purple lamps. There’s a garage opposite, and they have difficulty getting into and out of the cars over the quagmires and drains that must have been released.
The guards are there, flopped in a chair, or polishing their revolver. On a beam set between two cans, opposite the hotel, are the “white elephants” and local people. Americans, in their fifties or older, arrive alone or in groups, guided or not. Sometimes the boys sitting on the beam try to come in with them.
“Three boys your companion?” asks the armed guard.
If the Yank says yes, the boys go in. The others remain on the bench, waiting for their turn, or for the return of their pals.
Everything is orderly, and should always remain so.
On the wall, in the rooms, next to the telephone, a sign states: It is forbidden to use the apartments for activities contrary to the Law.
What the Law might be I have no idea, and no one appears to care.[2] The Lord be thanked, we are not in Europe.
* * *
Passing along Pilar Street by taxi during a power cut. All the girls, and all the boys, have come down into the street. All things considered, since I arrived in Manila I’ve seen no activity but debauchery.
And yet, a little further away, near the hotel Ramada, there’s a shanty town hidden behind one of those long white fences of which malicious gossip says that they are part of Madame Marcos’s special programme of improving the quality of life for the residents of Metro-Manila.[3] Here and there a door. Otherwise, nothing…. To-morrow, I promise myself, I’ll go and see the alternative reality.
For the moment, the two or three million inhabitants of Manila appear all to be under twenty years old. The others died in the war, or perhaps they never existed. The Philippines give the impression of having a relative history, by which I mean that it is reckoned relatively. If need be, it began yesterday.
Even yesterday seems already distant, and to-morrow improbable, only potential. To-day is here in all its fervour. Right now, now, now!
* * *
Harrison Plaza.[4] Met Edwin, or Erwin, he asks me to be his daddy. He wants to be “adapted”. My God, what does that mean? Adopted, I understood later. To go to Europe, to France? No, that’s not it. To have fixed appointments. Habits. He’s lovely, I took him to the Sheraton and gave him a little cash. After that he was anxious to leave. To buy milk for his little sister, he told me. You bet.
Yesterday (when was it? no, the day before yesterday) I picked up a girl at the Fishnet. But in the morning she had a rental problem to attend to urgently. Ditched her.
The problem with sexuality is that there is either too little or too much. At the moment there is indubitably: too much. Too many tarts in Manila and so on. I need to resist it, but I don’t know how I am going to. I make appointments, I turn up, and in between I find new opportunities that I should not let slip. I’m like a fly in the middle of chocolate cream, completely bogged down, no longer knowing what to do.
This evening at seven I have to see the little one from yesterday evening, he wants to spend the night at San Carlos. If I put him off, what will he think? And if I pay him for nothing, he will take me for an idiot.
* * *
What astonishes me is the number of grandpas I meet in the San Carlos lift, old Americans, Dutchmen, like retired officials, white-headed, just a little slovenly, old enough to be grandfathers, what on earth are they doing on my track? I have nothing in common with them. The other day there was one with four “white elephants”, or then there were three going to share one, very small, who looked like he needed to be sent back to school. I tell myself that they have probably run away from their wives, their bags of grease, their 1914 war tanks ... and that their ladies, if there are such, are in Honolulu ... paying a twenty-year-old surfer with their divorce income ... or installed in Stockholm in a retirement home, with good reasons to complain about their neighbours, running from doctor to doctor, forging ahead towards Death….
The business with Erwin ended badly. Yesterday he turned up again, wanting me to buy things at Harrison Plaza, and in the evening he wanted to go to the Disco. He proposed that he bring his girlfriend, wanted to screw her at the Sheraton, while I watched, he suggested with a wink, in voyeur style. Could we screw her together, I venture. No, that wasn’t his plan, it was his girlfriend I suppose, even though he mentioned her. “Look,” he said, “yes you may do that, you can screw her first and then I’ll try later, yes, that can perhaps be arranged,” but around midday a delegation of Japanese together with Tahitian dancers and a Congress for Bosch Vacuums with garlands of flowers around their necks, two hundred of them, were standing around waiting for the lifts, with their cases, the dancers, the Sheraton Public-Relations, that’s it, I understood, we’re buggering off back to the San Carlos, never mind the pool; we cram everything into the taxi, but Edwin wanted to drop into Harrison Plaza again so I could buy him a T-shirt; he wanted something shiny black with a bulb on it, and it couldn’t be found, we had to go round all the boutiques in Harrison Plaza, and in the end we found one with Disco-Flash written on it, and he was not happy, he still wanted some boots, and now here were Jimmy, Joey and the Chinese; we took some photos next to the slot machines, Edwin sulked because I took the photos instead of buying the boots for him, he didn’t want me to go back to San Carlos, according to him we needed to go to Dakota Mansions, where there was a pool on the roof, he said, so our whole team went there, Joey, the Chinese, and a character who was following us but said nothing; the pool cost more, it went without saying, so I said we were going back to San Carlos, especially since the taxi driver was starting to have enough of carting our luggage around in forty-degree heat; I understood that Edwin wanted to put me up at the Dakota because he already had one client at the San Carlos and didn’t want to see him with me in the lift.
They all came back to the room with me, the two Chinese, Edwin, and a fellow who was always following us and went straight to sleep on one of the beds; there was no longer any way to wake him, no matter what we did. We shook him, then dragged him into the kitchen, put on his shoes, and pushed him out into the corridor. Edwin sulked because I’d brought Jimmy and Joey, he said it was him or them, but while we were eating at a Mabini Street bistro, I asked a mate to take all his stuff and chuck him out. At first he made a scene of the “but why, you know that I love you” variety, but afterwards he changed his opinion, went to his other client, and got dressed to go to the disco.
In the evening I was alone (which doesn’t happen often in Manila). There were only two kids (one big and one small) who came “on behalf of Joseph” (apparently this wasn’t the Chinese who had just left, but another) to ask whether I needed anything. They spent the evening telephoning, I know neither to whom nor why.
At midnight I go out to take some air, and at Mabini I meet the Chinese with a little fellow, who looked scarcely fourteen, slanting eyes, white skin, and a black T-shirt with a bulb on it. He looked well-dressed, clean, and so on.
“He’s not a true Philippino,” the Chinese tells me. “He’s a mestizo. His father was French, but he’s dead now.”
The newcomer shows me the skin on his stomach, as white as a Paris schoolgirl.
“What’s your name” I ask politely.
“Noel Lavalle,” he responds.
“Speak French?”
“Nothing,” says the little one, sullenly. “Oh-la-la.”
That’s all the French he knows, “Oh-la-la,” and he doesn’t seem to want to learn more. He has a brand-new Swiss watch (in plastic) and twenty dollars that a group of compatriots have given him in thanks for services rendered. He shows me the photo of their farewell dinner at the Aristocrat, the gents and their boys.
The moment he arrives at the San Carlos, the French boy demonstrates, as might be expected, his above-average intelligence. Taking possession of my radio, he tries to distinguish the short from the medium waves, but leaves it in the end on a local “rock ’n’ roll”. Then he starts to dismantle my mosquito repelling device.
After all I prefer him to turn up the radio and the cassettes. I’m sick and tired of it all, and I want to finish with the boys, the coming and going, the chaos, the lot.
But that doesn’t go down well.
There was a moment when a disgusting old man at the Sheraton was sniffing around him. He had a shaven skull, and leopard briefs. A type from Polanski’s film “Cul de Sac”, without a doubt; I spotted him when he arrived at the pool.
“Shit, look at that queer,” I said to myself. “We’re going to be annoyed.”
No mistake there. He comes over, as though by chance, to sit right next to us, and ogles Noel shamelessly.
“He’s not going to stay there and leer at Noel like that,” I hope. Well yes, he’s staying.
“You’re French?” he ventures in the language of Racine.
“Right.”
I have no wish to chat with a character of his type, and all I want is for him to stop staring at Noel while licking his lips.
“He’s Filipino, isn’t he?”
“Right.”
“An extraordinary country, the Philippines.”
“Right.”
“Bombay isn’t bad. But the Philippines, there is nothing comparable.”
If only he would get lost.
“Bad man,” I explain to Noel, while for a moment the fellow is showing us the rear of his leopard briefs.
“Why?”
I have no time to explain, the ancient has come back to the charge.
“No, I’m not French,” he tells me. “Swedish.” (That fixes nothing.)
“But Sweden is a very tiresome country,” he adds.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“I am very fond of la culture française….”
(My God what did we do to deserve that?)
In the end I sit down in front of Noel and give the fellow a funny look. Hey, it looks as though he’s understood. He still hesitates for a moment, and then reluctantly decides to put on his shorts. High time. The old pig. Can’t he go and cruise at Harrison Plaza like everyone else? No need to sprawl around the Sheraton pool and try to pick up my boy!
Since yesterday the Chinese has not seemed well. Yesterday evening he collapsed and we had to put him to bed, half conscious, then he was coughing the whole night because of the air-con; this evening he was in the same way, I couldn’t send him away, he collapsed on a bed, and he had to be watched, I couldn’t chuck this boy onto the street, even though I found him there.
This morning, we found Jimmy in the lift, he wanted to sleep in the room, having just escaped from the police (the policemen pinch their money); yesterday Joseph had to give them ten pesos to be set free, and Noel is worried about his finances, as he told me (“if they catch me, they’ll take my money and my watch . . .”) but Jimmy was left outside, in front of the San Carlos entrance, waiting for a possible client. It won’t work, it cannot go on like that.
* * *
I met him at Harrison Plaza.
He planted himself in front of me:
“Do you like me Sir?” and he uncovered his shoulders, exposing them to view, and twisting in front of me.
“Do you like me?”
Yes, indeed. I have already met those eyes somewhere, they were those of Babu, the child of Marrakech and Ibiza; yes indeed I liked him.
Around me are gathered the others, the boys of Harrison, the one without teeth, the others.
“And me? and me?” they all call out together.
Ah no, it’s starting again.
“Come on,” I say to him, the one who looks like Babu, and I pull him away, followed by the others, but where? Where to go?
I go into a book-shop, because there’s a guard in front of the door and so we can be alone. But the other has probably never seen a book in his life. He waits, it’s my move.
“All right,” I say, “let’s go to San Carlos. . . .”
And now, I am with him, incapable of parting from him, following him everywhere, hoping for his return at every moment, not sleeping through the night so I can see him, closing my eyes at his bad moods, enduring his reproaches!
“Why do you think I’m with you? Did I ever ask you for anything? Do you think I’m with you for money? Did I ever ask you for any?
No, what Lapu-Lapu asks for is something else. He wants to be the only one, the first, and to do as he pleases.
He is installed in my room, and we have put Noel’s things elsewhere, in the antechamber. Besides, Noel generally sleeps outside, in front of the Cultural Centre, with Belle, his girlfriend who gets high on Rugby.[5]
I rarely see him. He spends his day at Harrison Plaza, and in the evening he comes back and Dany-boy or Noel have to go and get him a Spicy Chicken with rice which can be purchased around here. Then he goes off to the Velvet-Slum, the disco for drag queens and drug addicts, and doesn’t reappear until midnight.
“May I come with you,” I asked him.
“No, it would annoy me to be with you,” he told me. “God knows what people might think.”
It is becoming hotter and hotter in Manila. If I still have the strength, I shall hire a car and go to Pagsanjan….
* * *
This morning I dragged myself along to the Hilton, opposite which there is an Avis agency. I hired a red Ford Cortina with aircon. It has done less than two hundred kilometres, quite new, that’s something, but now the heat is frightful, I have to hug the walls; at the Hilton they are busy rolling up the carpet in the lobby, it smells of dust, and in the centre, under a fountain, they’ve installed an Easter rabbit, with little dwarfs and snow.
When I come back from Avis, Noel and Lapu are arguing about who will sit in front.
En route, the two boys want to hold the wheel, and spend the time bickering. It takes an hour to get out of Manila, and then we’re on the way.
Continue to Desert Patrol III: Pagsanjan I
[1] The San Carlos Apartment Hotel was listed in the Spartacus International Gay Guide, 1979 edition (the leading homosexual travel publication of the day, emphatically written for boysexuals as well as gays) as one of the large majority of hotels in Manila which “allow you to take boys to your room without problems or extra charges”, as “777 San Carlos Street, off United Nations Ave, Ermita (408301). (Large apartments fitted with ‘fridge, hotplates, cooking utensils, crockery, etc. Room service restricted to room cleaning. Low prices).” [Website note]
[2] Between 1848 and 1985, there was in fact full legal toleration of sex between men and willing boys of any age, even though there was an age of consent of twelve for girls. [Website note]
[3] Imelda Marcos, wife of the President, was Governor of Metro Manila. [Website note]
[4] Harrison Plaza was Manila’s first shopping-mall. Opened in 1976, it quickly became a popular place for city kids to hang out and a popular place for foreign boysexuals to meet interested local boys, so much so that the French writer Gabriel Matzneff made it the title of one of his novels. [Website note]
[5] Glue for furniture. [Author’s note]
Édouard's translation of "se défonce" as "works at" has been corrected to "gets high on". Still today [2026], glue-sniffing street children are known in the Philippines as "Rugby boys". [Website note]
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