Porno theater or no porno theater, that is quality time there.
I appreciate your efforts at provoking thought. Which is the real value of humor generally. . . .
Since you mentioned "porno theater" to remind me that some folks don't exactly move in my routine. . . . I guess that my case is a proof of what considered choices made consistently across many years can do to the inner nature a man can have.
I really don't remember some things in my experience very well, but your comment brought up one time. In Manila, there was one porno theater. . . . the movie was "Candy" or something like that. Mostly out-of-focus stuff. Some people I knew saw me there, even talked to me later about seeing me there. Their kid was one of the girls in those "Bomba" movies, and they wanted me to marry their kid. I remember going with my missionary companion around to all the hot massage parlors in Manila's swankest district, around Luneta Park, and passing the time sitting on the veranda looking out on the street. From later times, I remember having young girls rush out of their squatter shack homes in see-through undies to take a bath at the street pump just because a 'Cano was wandering around there trying to talk to people, and they hoped I'd just fall in love and take them to the States or somewhere else. Lots of women on public transit, buses, jeepneys just unashamedly nursing their babes in the tropic heat with no inclination to cover things up. Masses of people living in bamboo huts on stilts in insufferable heat that just made clothes a nuisance. Somehow, I was just became past being very much affected by all this.
I was nineteen with fairly adequate male hormones, but I had a lot of other stuff on my mind. I had been on a spree before I went on that LDS mission. Between a pair of parents that somehow managed to present a paradox of worldviews, I was free and unsupervised and out on my own. I didn't want to go on that mission. I fought it. One night I went to a summer party up at Alta with my girlfriend and two of her friends. On the way down the canyon my brakes failed. . . . I went off the road, into the mountain, and actually right up it about thirty feet and then flipped over and fell back onto the road, on the wheels, and bounced around for a few seconds. Nobody got hurt, some poor insurance man paid for the car which was all bent out of shape. The cops hauled us all home, except I went to my girlfriends' place. The next day she took me home, where I found a letter from my dad telling me I was a wildass idiot without sense enough to check my brakes. He told me to count my fingers, my toes, and look at my face in a mirror and just thank God I was still in one piece. Well, he was an atheist. With some good sense.
By the time the incredible event actually made contact with my thinking, I froze up as a "driver" and really could not get behind a wheel again. My dad told me I owed God and Society at least a a few good years, and besides if I didn't get off on a mission I would continue to be a threat to decent drivers on the public roads, and if I could not see the justness of their cause, the government was obligated to otherwise regard their safety and grant them relief by sending me to Viet Nam. But the Army rejected me for the cumulative effects of running cross country in bad gym shoes, the Air Force rejected me for having absolutely no depth perception, and even my girlfriend got religious and started believing in God and telling me just to go away. . . . specifically, "on a mission".
The poor Mission President who interviewed me when I arrived was just dealing with excommunicating some of his Elders and sending them home when I arrived, and for whatever reason my interview did not go well. I could see the horror in in his face as he saw plainly what I was. For a while he put me under the boot of his most dedicated zealot with instructions to break me down to conforming to the rules, but it didn't work. The breaking point was when we were giving a lesson to a single young man, maybe thirty or something like that, who was clearly "unusual" in that he proudly showed us his wings, complete with arm-straps, and told us he could fly. They were beautiful wings, perfectly shaped and made of bamboo and tightly wrapped in plastic sheeting. And he was a scarecrow sort of physique, I figured any breeze would float him even without his wings. But, unfortunately, his English wasn't good enough for him to get through his lesson, so my valiant companion insisted on making him pray a Mormon prayer, I think his reasoning was that if we could just teach him to pray "right" the English and the Gospel would soon follow. But the poor fellow didn't even understand those instructions, and he stood up and said the "Lord's Prayer" perfectly from memory, in English.
My Zealot companion jumped to his feet shouting "That's NOT RIGHT!!! YOU DID IT WRONG!!!!!" and began again to instruct him how to do it. I just couldn't take it any more. The poor fellow was completely dismayed that his guests were not pleased with the best he. . . and Jesus. . . . could do. . . . . So I spoke up, and thanked him for the prayer and said he did it perfect, and smiled. My companion, my overlord senior, was furious, but he gave up the lesson. On the way home he lectured me on how Juniors should never contradict Seniors, and I again erred in saying it's not about his leadership, it's about being decent. He went to the President and bawled that I was incorrigible.
So the Pres gave up on me, and made me the companion of his other rebellious Elders, which is how I ended up seeing a lot of the very worst there was going on. Which is how I followed my "Senior" into that porno theater, and encountered the parents of that kid who was a porno actress who wanted a way to the States. All I really remember of those days was sitting on that veranda overlooking the Park while my companion got a nice massage from girls who were owned by the local mob, and reading Section One of the D&C, "Mormon Scripture" about how God viewed the human condition and why somebody needed to try to get us to change for the better.
I considered, with all I'd been through, I was in no positon to say we don't need to make that change. And started to pursue life, hour by hour, day by day, month by month and year by year, to just do differently. . . . and you know what, I really have no inclination to repeat those wild times.
And you know what, there's really no place I want to go where I can't take my kids.