And the Weiner is…

Rep. Anthony Weiner of NYC’s Brooklyn and the Queens was literally caught with his pants off. Or, more precisely, he had a nasty habit of taking cellphone shots of his physicality and twittering it to cyber-playmates.

Focus on physicality is a strong undercurrent of our communal jitters. Sharing a picture of a boner inside one’s briefs is deemed a yukky exercise in many sectors, at best left to an exhibitionist flasher. The “F” word remains a no-no in print media, though it has started slipping through censors’ bleeps on TV lately as more celebs casually use a word liberally used and nonchalantly familiar in urban centers and rap sheets!

I was once written up in one of the schools where I taught because I used the f-word three times in class in the course of a year, duly warned the first time that three strikes would entail a supervisory note of reprobation. A co-teacher down the hall encouraged our students to report to her of events in my class, and sure enough, 30 minutes after this third incident, the principal’s office heard of it and immediately called for a pow-wow.

“I know you had pedagogical reasons for the two occurrences, and we did ask that you refrain from using the word a third time, but it looks like you slipped again,” my supervisor said. “Just for the record,” I said, “I used the word on a boy who verbally bullies his peers all the time if he is not within the teacher’s hearing, only this time, he used it while he had his back to me, oblivious of my presence, so I used the word on him in return, and immediately asked what he felt when someone called him the f-word.” But rules are rules, I was graciously informed, thus the record of reproach.

The f-word is hardly used to mean the physical activity it once referred to but no matter. The issue is not the word but the power play that it entails. Allowing it in print, I was told, would result in the domino effect of the collapse of the social order. Ah, the old domino effect rationale, we first encountered during the Vietnam War, and still prevalent in Philippine family planning debates! The teacher concerned about my vocabulary has a repertoire of words saltier than a regular salt, but to her credit, she refrains using the f-word audibly on the children, though she does so under her breath.

In the late ’60s, novelist Philip Roth published Portnoy’s Complaint, which opened the floodgates to psychoanalysis, liberating many from the shackles of Puritan injunction on the practice and mention of masturbation. The sexual revolution was in full flowering then and life in the flesh even invaded the then “spiritualized” altar of the Eucharist.

I had male cousins a year or so older than I was, and each time we shared a shower, I would notice how behind I was in the development of my physique. Though intellectually enlightened about this matter, I must have subconsciously retained an inferiority complex that I was accused of perennially trying to overcome, being predatory to the female of the specie, on hindsight not an altogether inaccurate accusation.

While on Saipan, I was involved in protecting turtle nests and downloaded a screen saver of a baby turtle flapping underwater. In my limited Putunghua, I called it my xiao wu gui, the amiable little turtle, not knowing that the term is also a euphemism for an amusing (sometimes delightful) small wiener! The risqué connotation has gained me not a few giggles from my students who happen to hear me call the image on my laptop’s screen saver.

What consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms is a protected right, and perhaps, the congressman thought that the social network “privacy” provision protected him from doing what little children do when they engage in “i’ll-show-you-mine-if-you’ll-show-me-yours” games under the dining table. Nope.

A few years back, I sent my family’s YahooGroup.com website a reflective letter on my birthday, sharing it for the immediate family’s consumption. A year later, a dear friend found her name mentioned in my refection, which she accessed with a few strokes on Google. The letter was in the public domain. Happily, she was mentioned in an acceptable light so the adverse repercussion was minimal. She advised that she would appreciate a word of alert the next time I mention her.

The irony is that Anthony Weiner is known as an accomplished techie in Congress, famously so that he is even being considered as the Dem’s standard bearer to replace Bloomberg at City Hall, not unlike IMF’s ex-manager Strauss-Kahn (who himself was allegedly running around without his pants chasing the chamber maid at an expensive NYC Time Square hotel) and French President Sarkozy.

“Penis” (pronounced ‘pee-nush’ rather than the U.S. coin in ESL classes) is suddenly an acceptable word in news headlines, its mention no longer “punishable” among respectable circles, and we have Weiner’s wienie to thank for. Lends a new meaning to hollering for a “hot dog” at the next BBQ. I’ll stick to my xiao wu gui (pronounced ‘shiao ug ghoey’) and expect the newly liberated Li Na’s giggles (from the constraints of the puritanical revolution on the tail end of the Helmsman’s watch) at SAU of the Middle Realm.