The House of Horus

The picture of the submarine USS Hampton docked at the Port of Saipan and the notation that they are here for their first R&R, properly welcomed at the 360 restaurant, reminded everyone again how crucial the visitors’ industry and hospitality commerce are to the island’s economy.

We are, of course, clear about why Saipan attracts the boys and girls in uniform: the mild tropical weather that makes the ocean water “bathtub” warm all year round, the rich historic sites and treasures of Spanish explorations and expeditions, residues of German administration and the hallmarks of Japanese economic development, the almost pristine condition of the dive sites and some of the sandy and coral beaches, the melodic cultural traditions of the Carolinians and Chamorros recently expanded to encompass the ways of the Pacific both of the taotao tano and the taotao tasi, and the new diversity that has come to be the rainbow mask of the current population, especially in the servicing sector.

With a frozen mangorita on one hand, if our uniformed personnel had not already been invited by a group that would make one captive to their witness of the wonders of their faith over a meal, our guests would be seen at a café, or bar and grill, gazing into the sunset hoping for the green flash that would earn them a free drink on the house, writing their postcards for home and the wonder-filled rest and recreation time they spent in the wonder-full company of the people of the Marianas.

Our gentle entrepreneurs of local commerce, trade and industry, of course, know a bit more than the standard and preferred public recounting of the time spent by overgrown boys and girls’ scouts basking in the healthy and hearty ambience of our R&R designated island. Rites and rituals before the altars of Venus in Caesar’s Palaces may provide more R&R memories than what our DoD personnel are willing to commit into narratives for home.

Given my age, I am more familiar and sympathetic to the picture of street denizen Ilya of the Greek port of Piraeus played by the sultry Melina Mercouri when she romped her 1960 Never-On-Sunday ethics as the hooker with a heart of gold (reprised later by the characters of Shirley MacLaine’s 1963 Irma La Douce, and Julia Roberts’ 1990 Pretty Woman).

Though the character of Mary of Magdala plays prominently in Christian iconography, it might have been the anti-paganism of English Christian missionaries who gave the pejorative meaning to the Ilyas of the world by giving an onomatopoeic name to the daughters of the House of Horus/Hors of Egypt.

The etymology of the words “whole” and “holy” derives from the cognate for “health.” Wholeness and holiness are cousins. “Whores” from the Houses of Horus/Hors were dedicated temple prostitutes, prominent in the Mediterranean, by Nile and in Mesopotamia, in whose sacred care in ancient civilization were given the roles of fecundity to promote nature’s fertility to fructify the earth!

An acerbic female friend contends these mistresses of the temple have since moved to the security of middle class dwellings in the suburbs, under the sanctity of marriage, and are no longer called by the same name, but their sisters who are often referred to as also streetwalkers (Garapan) or working women (clubs and bars), have taken a more practical commercial supply-and-demand approach to the function. Historically, this latter followed the forces of the Persian and Roman Empires, and became a permanent fixture to later occupying military forces in many lands. In our region, we had Susie Wong’s Wan Chai in HK, Walker Hill and its environs in Seoul, the Geishas of Shinjuku in Tokyo, Ermita in Manila, the coffee houses of Taipei, little Saigon in Ho Chi Minh city, Joo Chiat Rd. in Singapore, Tumon in Guam, and Garapan on Saipan.

GWB in 2003 signed a zero tolerance memo on the implication of human trafficking on national security and a decree came in early 2004 from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stating that trafficking in persons “will not be facilitated in any way by the activities of our service members, civilian employees, indirect hires or DoD contract personnel.” What had been up to that point politely ignored and tolerated had become in the evangelical White House illicit and subject to criminal prosecution. Though human trafficking had a broader definition, it got narrowed down to what consenting adults did for monetary price.

The containment of adult entertainment, including gambling through neighborhood poker machines next to the laundromats and mom-and-pop stores, has been a concern among members of the Saipan Zoning Board, and much political mileage has been uttered in the rhetoric of making the Paseo de Marianas more family friendly and mainstream attractive. This is a bit more prohibitive than the wild imaginings of those who previously promoted Cowtown in Marpi, but the facticity of the availability of the commodity that titillates the flesh should be dealt with freshly sans reproach nor foreboding.

We begin with this introduction a series of articles this week on the universal phenomenon of paid sex, which Ruth Tighe suggested be decriminalized, as practiced on Saipan.

A civil acquaintance in the CNMI immigration office always asks me to join him for lunch, “so that I could pick your brain,” he claims. He thinks that I write about many things that he is interested in and would not mind picking up the bill if I shared insights on matters of labor and immigration.

Since the tandem legal minds of the Skinners introduced me to the plight of garment factory workers in Saipan in the late ’90s, and my work as the local clergy for the United Methodist Church at the century’s end and turn, and having briefly ran a “sanctuary” for needy transients with the Marianas Resource Center in Oleai, for which I still get occasional greetings from those who have passed through our service doors from the Ilocos in the Philippines’ Northern Luzon to Lin Zi Shen Ru Gao Si in Jiangsu, China, I have become very familiar with certain aspects of our island’s existence after sundown and of those who have chosen their profession, for the meantime, under the cover of the shadows.

The famous Catholic sociologist priest and writer Andrew Greeley was once asked how a celibate cleric could know so much and write so vividly about sex in his novels, and he allegedly replied: “I do applied research.”

This series of articles is grounded in experience for which this writer could genuinely say, “I know what I write about.” Nothing speculative here, but how exactly and how deeply one was engaged at the ground level, is not our primary subject to write about. For off the record info, invite me to lunch. You may pick my brain.