The ‘Naked’ Truth

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By Raïssa Robles

I received an invitation this morning to watch some naked young men run.

It amused me no end. It’s the first time I recall seeing such an invitation extended to foreign news correspondents.

The invite said:

Hi all,

You are invited to witness and cover the UP Alpha Phi Omega Oblation Run tomorrow, Dec. 14, 11:30 am at the College of Arts and Sciences, Palma Hall, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

The fraternity obviously believes that the idea of seeing some men cavort inside a state university without any clothes on is something newsworthy for the foreign wires.

It is – if it’s a slow news day  and probably because Philippine society continues to frown on nudity and to sell Penthouse magazines surreptitiously.

The Oblation Run in UP started as a fraternity prank over 40 years ago at a time when streaking – or the act of disrobing while running – became a fad in the United States.

The thinking was – if UP could have the statue of a naked young man as an icon, then surely male students could follow suit (or without a suit).

I saw for myself an Oblation Run when I was a student in UP. All I could remember was a blur of naked butts zooming past me. I remember some of my male classmates were highly embarrassed by it.

The Oblation Run has been called “obscene” by at least one former Philippine senator. Aquilino Pimentel, Jr., who never went to UP, branded it a “blatant display of male genitals” and a “wanton disregard of the rules of decent society” that discriminated against women.

Probably in response to Pimentel’s criticisms, a handful of women have joined the run.

No one has yet gone to court to stop an Oblation Run.

I suggest that if anyone wants to do this, the easier route would be to approach Vice President Jejomar Binay who is now regarded as the Grand Panjandrum of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.

I highly doubt, though, that Binay can do anything about it nor would he want to do something about it.

You see, the Oblation Run is held inside UP’s Diliman Campus and UP is governed by its own charter and now has a long tradition of upholding free expression. The naked display of family jewels is one of the highest forms of free expression in the country today. Those who don’t agree with the Oblation Run don’t have to look. Period.

UP was not always this tolerant of free expression.

Sometime in the 1920s, UP kicked out a young man who had dared to publish an erotic poem. It was about coconuts. At least, this was what my fiction writing professor Francisco Arcellana said.

Judge for yourself if that student deserved to be forced out of the campus for writing this long before the UP Oblation was sculpted by Guillermo Tolentino:

The coconuts have ripened,
They are like nipples to the tree.
(A woman has only two nipples,
There are many women-lives in a coconut tree.)
Soon the coconuts will grow heavy and full:
I shall pick up one…many…
Like a child I shall suck their milk,
I shall suck out of coconuts little white songs:
I shall be reminded of many women.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I shall kiss a coconut because it is the nipple of a
woman.

That 17-year-old student who wrote this exuberant coconut poem was Jose Garcia Villa – probably the most internationally well-known Filipino poet in English today.

Villa dared to write about sex at a time when sex was a taboo subject. It still is, even now.

Here is another Villa poem that sings about procreation:

Now lies she quiet, quiet,
Like moonlight by him.
Quiet. Quiet. Knowing
His jewels are in her.
Quiet. Quiet. Knowing
He is quiet but will
Arise again. Quiet. Quiet.
But he will arise again.

Especially one that, in the words of the Reproductive Health Senate version, is “safe and satisfying”:

Curve of gold above her
In the golden night,
Seventeen times I rose
Creating our child.

Seventeen kisses she gave me
In that golden night,
Seventeen times I rose
Creating our child.

Seventeen times I sang her
In that golden night,
Seventeen times I rose
Creating our child.

Seventeenth lift of gold,
Seventeenth fall of love,
in her golden soil
Sown sweet our child.

Philippine society, however, was not prepared to appreciate Villa’s poetry. He was hauled to court on the charge of obscenity and made to pay ONE PESO.

Today, Villa’s poems would probably be published by glossies like the local editions of Cosmo,Playboy and FHM. Not that they’d pay him much but they would publish him.

What has changed?

Has Philippine society become decadent? More tolerant? Or more open to rebellion?

In 2008, the local edition of Playboy was launched in Manila. Senior Catholic clerics said they were “likely” to seek a ban of this magazine because it “could add to the degeneration of our sexual culture.” The threat was never carried out, though.

Villa’s erotic poetry was a kind of rebellion against those who regarded sex as dirty and a chore to be quickly done with. Much like planting rice is never fun.

I therefore found it truly significant that 11 senators recently voted to retain the phrase “safe and satisfying sex life” in the Reproductive Health Bill  over the objections of six other senators.

Villa was born in 1908 – over a hundred years ago.

Despite the vast gap between now and when he wrote his poetry, his poems continue to sing with the audacity and irreverence of youth. Consider his poem about saints:

All saints are naked (how
terribly true) they sit on

grass and play with mice
(how terribly, terribly nice)

All saints are naked (how
terrible wicked) they sit

on grass and play with mice.
Delight is such a little term

for such a lovely view!

Villa’s playfulness, however, masked a quite serious contemplation of God, and of man’s relationship with Him. Consider, for instance, this poem:

With every word, with every thought
With every act,
Besmirched I God;
But he, to counteract

Came down to calm the cruel mouth
And kiss the rebel brow,
And said not a word,
Nor loud, nor low!

And kissed once more the rebel brow,
In Godhood’s mystery.
But I, where God touched me,
O frantic! sought immediate cautery.

A Blessed Christmas to us all!