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 Copyright 2004 Rachael Ross all right reserved.  Intended for adults only.
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   Definition of Salvage A True Story By Rachael
   Joker, believe it or not, is a common name here in the Philippines. 
They even have a senator named Joker Arroyo.  And my father always thought
Tricky Dick was a bad handle for a politician....How'd you like to see a
guy named Joker on your ballet?  The President is Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,
and she is Joker's niece, I think.
   But all that is beside the point, really, because the Joker I'm talking
about doesn't know anything about politics.  He doesn't know how to read or
write, either.  He's a lot older than I am, around 34 or 35 I guess, and
used to be in the Philippine Army, fighting the NPA here and Moslem
Seperationist down in Mindanao.  He has some great stories, if you're into
bloody war stories, I mean.
   He lives just up the hill from our house here on the beach.  I'd see him
once in awhile, smiling at me and saying hello.  My best friend here is a
tomboy named Nining and she's his niece, but she isn't a politician either.
She's a lesbian, which is what being a tomboy is around here.  She's also
pretty fucking crazy.  She's the one who always gets me in trouble with my
husband.  No, not that way...I know what you're thinking.
   She's taller than I am, like 5'5" or so and thin, and her head is
shaved. She has boobs even smaller than mine and she dresses like the guys
working the cane fields.  Loose cotton pants, a t-shirt, a bandana usually.
She's 28 and kind of adopted me when we moved in, since she sells tuba,
coconut wine, from a little bench in front of the house we rent.  She loves
to drink, all day every day, and she does get blitzed once in awhile, but
mostly she's mellow.  Pretty laid back.
   She gets me pretty drunk though, I have like zero tolerance for alcohol.
We go to this place called Rikers, which I have no idea how it's really
spelled or what it's supposed to mean, but that's how it's pronounced. 
It's the so-called bar district in this little town.  About 9 bars with
karaoke mostly, some girls work there, local prostitutes who aren't all
that attractive.  But Nining doesn't care, she drags me along and we drink
Red Horse beer and she'll grab one of the girls while I try to sing songs
from "Annie" ...Tomorrow, tomorrow, there's always...tomorrow...You get the
idea.  If I sing while I'm drunk it keeps me out of trouble.
   Although when I first met Nining she got me hammered and I vaguely
recall she was trying to go down on me.  It was like one of those bad
dreams where you don't know where you are, or what you're doing, and we
were outside and her hands were all over me...and...I swear to God I don't
remember anything after that.  But I did tell her a few days later that if
we were going to be friends, I wasn't going to be sleeping around with her.
It isn't my thing, honestly.  Once in awhile with another girl is okay, but
I am like 80% hetero.  The 20 percent that isn't lives in my hands, I
guess, because I've written a lot of lesbian stuff, mostly lately, in the
last 6 months since I got here.  I think it's because I do want to do some
things with some of the girls I've met, but if I can write it, I'll be
satisfied with that.
   I'm probably repressed.  My husband knows, he's told me its okay because
he thinks I sleep with Nining anyway, despite my constant reassurances that
I don't.  His thing is that he owns me anyway; we live a Ds relationship
most of the time now.  Whenever we're alone, and often in public, without
any dramatics of course, and I'm happy.  I'm even learning to control my
jealousy, which is actually a little rebellion on my part because he likes
it when I'm jealous.  It's the best way for him to really hurt me and I
hate it.  I swear, I hate it with every ounce of my being.  I don't
understand those feelings at all.
   I wasn't going to talk about all this!  Sorry!  Anyway, I asked Nining
one day what her Uncle Joker did for a living.  I mean he had money, not a
lot, but enough to buy whatever he needed.  He had a little motorcycle, a
Honda Dream 100cc, which are like everywhere here.  Nining crashed it one
night, by the way, and I had to pay 100 pesos to get her out of the
Barangay Hall, which is like the neighborhood police station.  The Barangay
Captain is an elected position.  There really isn't an equivalent in the
United States.  Anyway, the captain takes care of little problems, like
drunk tomboys crashing motorcycles into pedicabs, for example.
   Nining told me he worked for the Mayor.  But didn't want to tell me
anything more I guess.  So I let it go until a few days later when Joker
came by and Nining and I were sitting outside, smoking and selling her
coconut wine.  He sat down with us and I asked him then what he did for a
job.
   "Salvage." He said seriously and he poured a glass of tuba and drank it
down quick, which is the only way to do it.
   "Like a junkyard?  Vulcanizing?" I asked.  Vulcanizing is the word that
covers everything from junkyards, to backyard welding shops, to tire repair
places.  If it has to do with cars or trucks, it's called vulcanizing. 
Don't ask me why.
   "Hindi." He said, meaning no.  "Salvage." And he looked at me like that
was supposed to be significant.
   "Well, what is it?" I asked and I was feeling dumb because the way he
was acting, and Nining too, it seemed I should have either known, or
dropped the subject, probably both.
   "Salvage." He lifted his hands like he was holding a machine gun. 
"Brrrrr..." He rolled his tongue and jerked his hands.
   I got it then.  In the larger towns and cities, maybe even some of the
smaller ones, the Mayors had their own Salvage Teams.  Like hit men, who
would get rid of people that the Mayor didn't particularly like.  I'd heard
of it, but I'd never heard the term salvage before in that context.  It
wasn't a subject that a lot of people liked to bring up in casual
conversation, you know.
   So, we went inside the house, because I wanted to know about it.  Joker,
and his friends of which there were 4 or 5 on his little salvage squad, had
killed a lot of people.  Mostly criminals, people who dealt in Shabu, which
is basically the local crack trade and a huge problem for the Philippines
and all of Indonesia really.  It comes out of Taiwan mostly and really
messes people up.  So they salvaged drug dealers, and people who traded in
weapons, and some of the NPA old guard who were still running around
playing bandito.
   Yes, I was thinking about my friends at NB when I figured I'd see if
there was anything...erotic...in his salvage experience.  I kept buying the
tuba and he kept talking.  Once he started he didn't mind although it did
cross my mind that if he told me something I really should not know
then...yikes!  But I wasn't going to tell anyone, I reassured him of that a
few times as he talked, and he just waved it off.  Everyone knows anyway,
he told me, it's a public secret and really, it was good people knew
because it scared people from doing stupid things.  Which kind of made
sense, I don't know about the deterrence value of death squad justice, but
it would keep me from doing anything stupid!
   So, I asked Joker if he'd ever killed women, first of all.  He's not
gay, as far as I could tell.  He had a live-in girlfriend and about 8 kids
running around.  Joker nodded, yeah "Patay babae." meaning dead girl, and
didn't look any sadder or happier than when he'd tell me later about the
guys he'd killed.  I asked him how many, he thought probably 6 or 7 girls
over the last 10 years.
   "Do you guys ever like, rape them or anything?  Have sex with the women
before you killed them?" I asked him then.
   Now before anyone gets really upset with me...Yes, it is true that this
stuff is outside the realm of fantasy.  I was talking to a man about some
real people who were legally murdered, basically.  I know there are people
who have drawn a conservative line between fantasy and reality, meaning
things they read about, for example, must be fiction and not fact for it to
be enjoyable.  I have drawn a similar line for myself, probably a little
further along than a lot of people's, because I do not want to participate
or support anything that would hurt anyone without their consent.  I'd say
I don't want to do anything immoral, but I'm not entirely sure my morals
are an acceptable standard.  I'd say illegal as well, but I have no love
for the law and cannot say I would not do something simply because it is
illegal.  (I'd have sex with a dead man if I thought I could get away with
it, it's not going to hurt him.  But I wouldn't go with Joker to see an
execution, legal or not, because someone would be hurt...obviously) 
   At the same time I have to acknowledge that the fantasies I have, a lot
of what I prefer to read and write, has some basis in the truth.  In what
has happened, and is happening in the world around us.  I don't frig myself
to screaming climaxes looking at pictures of tortured people.  I also do
not look away from it, I find inspiration there; excitement and a
wellspring of emotions that range from anger and shock to sympathy and
love. And hopefully some of my writing expresses that. 
   So if this kind of more or less factual material will bother you, then I
suggest this is a good place to stop reading.
   ===end of my soapbox
   Joker told me that they had raped at least 4 of the women he'd helped
kill.  Once...the first time...he did it because that was what the Mayor
had wanted.  It was some kind of exercise in making an example of this
woman, or perhaps just a punishment.  She'd been a prostitute and also
lived with a man who was selling shabu.  The Mayor had known this woman for
a long time apparently, he was her "kuya" which means like...oh... "older
brother" both literally, and also figuratively.  For example an older boy,
if he is a friend, can be called kuya by younger boys and girls.  Once they
reach adulthood then generally the word "manoy" is used.  Like I was
calling Joker manoy, or just `noy' which is the short form.  He called me
`inday Rachael' it is nice, friendly, and informal.  It also conveys a lot
of respect for each other.
   So the Mayor, when he was young, had been this girl's friend, but when
they'd grown they'd become enemies.  "You're my best enemy" is a pretty
serious saying in the Philippines.  It means you've really done something
to offend me and I'll kill you for it.  Joker told me this woman was the
Mayor's best enemy.  He thought it was something deeper than her just
living with the criminal though, but he didn't know exactly what.  Maybe
that she'd become a prostitute, because the woman's mother was close to the
Mayor's family.  Being a prostitute is generally a very bad thing around
here, very embarrassing to the family.  Whatever the reasons, the Mayor had
given her a chance though, and possibly that's what had really angered him.
He had sent someone to tell her to leave the town, to go someplace else and
not come back.  By not leaving, she'd basically told the Mayor she didn't
respect him at all.
   So the Mayor told Joker and the other guys on his Salvage crew that he
wanted them both dead.  But he wanted the woman to suffer first, because
she had pissed him off.  She was a public toilet, Joker told me, so that
was how she was going to die.  And that sounded so cruel!  It is perhaps
one of the most loathsome terms I've ever heard, but that might be because
I'm a woman, or something.  I told it to my husband, that prostitutes are
known as public toilets, and he was like... "So?"
   Joker and 4 other men were armed with `Armalites' which is the word they
use for any kind of assault rifle, whether it's an American one, or a
Russian one, or whatever.  If it's a rifle, it's an armalite.  I saw
Joker's once; he showed it to me along with his other guns.  It's a Chinese
copy of a Russian AK-47.  He'd gotten it from some NPA guys that he'd
ambushed when he was in the army.  He said he liked it better than the
American guns.  He also had some pistols, and a mortar, believe it or not.
At least he told me it was a mortar; I wouldn't know one from a tire jack,
which is what it kind of looked like.  I guess it unfolded and screwed in
and I don't know what.  I didn't want to know, exploding isn't my
particular thing.
   The drug dealer and the prostitute lived in a small, stilted house in an
area called "Bay-Bay" pronounced like "bye bye" which was on the ocean and
basically a place for squatters.  The houses there were, and still are,
close together, made of bamboo and thatch and tin.  There is a pipe, a
small one, that brings clean water to a cement pool, and that's where
everyone gets drinking water first, and then it runs to another pool, where
they rinse off their bodies (they generally bathe in the ocean first, then
rinse in the clean water) and finally it goes to another pool where they do
laundry.  It is hot, muddy, smells bad, and I've been there a few times and
try to avoid it.
   One night, late when it was very dark, these 5 men went to bay-bay. 
They were largely unnoticed, since most people go to bed when the sun sets.
A few people were awake though, some fishermen getting their nets ready, a
few young men drinking and playing cards, or billiards on tiny little
homemade tables with marbles, maybe a woman or two, taking care of her
babies.  But those people didn't want to pay attention, because 5 men
carrying guns at night is always bad news for someone.  They'd find out who
in the morning.
   Joker and his companions encircled the drug dealer's little house, and
then one of them kicked in the door.  The house was very small, maybe 8
feet square, a single room with a little place outside for cooking, called
a dirty kitchen.  A pig was tied up underneath, a rooster or two maybe. 
The man who'd broken down the door pressed the muzzle of his rifle to the
drug dealer's chest, pinning him to the floor and telling him not to move.
He and the woman had been sleeping side by side on a thin mat on the floor,
and she'd started screaming when she saw the intruder.
   Another of the men came in, squeezing behind the first and he grabbed
the woman by the legs, dragging her out easily despite her kicking
protests. He brought her roughly out of the house on her back, so that she
fell painfully down the two short steps to the sandy ground and there
another of the salvage crew pressed his rifle to her face, so that the
muzzle pushed into her cheek, and he told her to be quiet.
   Inside the little house there was a quick staccato explosion as the drug
dealer's face was destroyed by a 3 round burst.  A flash of light through
the doorway, and the sudden barking of a dozen dogs as they woke up, and
that's all there was.  Nobody came running to help.  They left the man
laying there, blood now running freely across the floor and dripping
through the wide cracks in the bamboo slats.  The woman's eyes went wide at
the sound and she waited for them to kill her too, but they handcuffed her
and put a blindfold over her eyes, and led her quietly away from that
place.
   The men walked away from the squatter's area and across the small
highway that ran nearby, on the other side was a large sugar cane field,
and beyond that, along a dirt path was an old wooden structure for sabong,
the cockfights.  They lit a lantern there and led her through the field,
pushing her and watching her stumble as she blindly moved across the uneven
ground.  She had some small hope at least, because she wasn't already dead.
She tried talking to them, apologizing for real and imagined slights she
may have caused.  But the men only laughed at her, telling her to save her
breath because she was a bitch and a whore.
   When they reached the cockfight arena, they pushed her inside.  There
were elevated benches around a circular area, perhaps 20 feet in diameter,
of hard dirt.  It was stained from the blood of the roosters who fought and
died there on Sunday afternoons while the men gathered around, drinking and
gambling.  The place smelled of sweat and blood and dust.  They pushed her
into the ring and then harder again so that she lost her balance and
stumbling, fell to the ground.
   She was an ordinary looking woman, as Joker recalls, not ugly, not
pretty, just a woman.  Like everyone else her hair was long and black,
coarse from the hot dusty air and the laundry soap she used to wash it. 
Her eyes were almond shaped and brown, still blindfolded although wetness
could be seen running down her cheeks underneath it.  Her lips were full
and her skin chestnut brown and smooth but for some childhood scars on her
legs.  She'd been wearing a duster, a thin colorful cotton slip of a dress
that fell very nearly to her ankles, and underneath that only a pair of
panties.
   One of the men held her shoulders down painfully, with her handcuffed
arms trapped beneath her back.  Another one grabbed her duster at the
neckline and ripped it away, bruising her skin as the fabric resisted and
then finally tore.  He ripped her panties, tearing at the leg band so that
it covered her sex not at all.  By this time the woman knew what was going
to happen to her and she screamed in protest, trying to kick at the men. 
She couldn't see them however, and her resistance was worthless.  They
ignored her struggles, avoiding her kicks easily until the man holding her
shoulders down told her if she didn't stop fighting he was going to shoot
her in the face.
   One of the men, who was their leader, had been an officer in the
Philippine army.  He was the Mayor's cousin and he knew this woman very
well.  He opened his fatigues and removed his erect penis, kneeling between
the woman's legs and forcing her to yield with his body.  He slapped at her
thighs and laughed, calling her "Gow" which is a familiar term for a
cousin.
   "Be quiet gow, spread your legs.  You know you want it!" He told her,
and his compatriots laughed as the woman sobbed loudly.  She was begging
him not to do it.  She recognized his voice and called him by name, but he
ignored her, rubbing the head of his cock across her dry slit.  When he
pushed inside with a soft grunt, it was painful for the woman and she
screamed again, crying out for him to stop.  One of the men found a piece
of cut wood, or perhaps he'd picked it up as they'd walked, Joker wasn't
sure, and he tossed it to the man holding her down.  He wedged it in her
mouth painfully, trying to keep her quiet, but it wasn't very effective. 
She still made a lot of noise.
   The first man fucked her for a long time, complaining and laughing
because she was so dry.  He told his friends that it felt like he was
fucking the knot in a mahogany tree.  But she was tight, he said.  Hard to
believe this whore could feel so tight, like a virgin.  She soon loosened
for him though as the muscles between her legs grew tired and his own
leaking penis started providing some lubrication.  He raped her for 10 or
12 minutes and then ejaculated inside her.
   She had quieted down now and her mouth bled from the sharp edges of the
wood, because it had been pressed way back across her back teeth like a
horse's bit, tearing at the corners of her lips.  She didn't protest as the
second man entered her, much easier this time, fucking his cock inside her
and humping quickly.  "She kept her legs spread," I was told, "they never
had to beat her or force her to spread her legs." And Joker laughed at that
because he thought it meant she was enjoying it.
   "You think she liked being raped like that?" I looked at him and he
nodded.
   "She liked it.  She liked men hard, like this." He made a fist and
raised his forearm straight up in the air.
   Joker was the third man and he was a little nervous at first because
he'd never raped a woman before.  He had brief thoughts about whether or
not this was the right thing to be doing, but he also knew that she was a
criminal, that she'd used drugs and helped her boyfriend sell them.
   "But don't you think she could have just gone to jail?" I asked.
   "There are too many people in jail." Joker shook his head.  "The jails
don't do any good; the criminals just sit there and do drugs even more.  In
prison she would be raped probably, maybe killed too.  So what is the
difference?"
   I asked him if that's what he'd thought back then, when he'd raped that
woman and he told me it was.  He didn't care about her, he said, his only
concern was if his mother found out.
   "Does your mother know you do salvage?"
   "She knows, everybody knows.  But she doesn't talk about it.  Nobody
talks about it." Then he laughed at me.  "Except you now." I wasn't sure if
that was good or bad and I was trying to picture this relaxed, smiling man
pulling out his penis in some abandoned building, and raping a woman
because it was his job.
   Joker raped her quickly.  She was dirty, he said, and sweaty.  They were
all sweating, even on the coolest nights the temperature is maybe 78
degrees and humidity about 80 percent.  He pushed himself in and she just
laid there, like she'd already died except she would groan or sob once in
awhile, and her body would jerk if he thrust very hard into her.  He said
he fucked her as hard as he could because he wanted to cum quickly and be
done with it.
   The fourth man took her and then the fifth, all of them raping her and
laughing about it as they watched.  If she'd been more attractive, or if
she'd displayed more enthusiasm, or even more fighting spirit, Joker thinks
they would have done it again.  Some of them wanted to, one of the men in
particular was keen on raping girls and Joker didn't think much of him. 
He'd raped an innocent young woman some years later and her brothers had
killed him for it.  He was a sadist, as Joker put it, and nobody had liked
that man very much. 
   In the future there would be other women, and Joker and his team would
rape them for hours, one woman even for a whole day, before they'd finally
grown tired of her.  But on this night, once was enough for each of them.
As she lay there panting and spoiled, with the semen of five men running
from her tender abused cunt, the leader shot her in the head with a 3 round
burst from his M-16.
   "Right here." Joker pointed to his right temple.  They dragged her a few
yards away from the arena, leaving a trail of blood to soak in the dusty
ground, and threw her body into a little ditch.  Someone would find it and
they would tell the police who would tell her family.  She wasn't buried in
the cemetery; her family just dug a grave near the sugar cane field and
covered her up.  Nobody asked any questions, no one complained.
   "Did you enjoy raping her?" I asked him.
   "Yes, I enjoyed it." He shrugged.  "She had a hole, she liked it." I
wasn't sure if that was some kind of rationalization on his part, or if the
girl had indeed enjoyed it.  Somehow I doubted the latter.
   "How about now?" I looked at him.  "Do you want to rape someone?"
   "No." He laughed at me.  "I don't want to rape somebody until it's the
proper time." He was a little drunk.  "Like today, I see a pretty girl at
mercado I don't think I want to rape her because she's pretty.  But maybe
if she's a criminal and I'm going to kill her, okay, then I want to do it
because it will not hurt her so much.  It's okay.  I tell her patay ka ron
and then she does it because maybe she won't die then."
   Joker told me other stories, but that first one, the first time I ever
sat down with him talking across three languages (English, tagalong, and
visayan) and trying to understand what he was meaning, it was the best, the
most interesting because I had no experience with a person like that. 
Where I come from in the States...  I never want to go back.  I never knew
how big the world really is.
   end
  
Definition of Salvage