Open frontier or open kimono

Apr 01, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths…

Kaieteur News – A couple of years ago I wrote that Guyana became an open frontier with the discovery of oil.  Raw and boisterous, lawless and dangerous, it has been.  The sheriff and deputy in charge are so excuse plagued that they must have attracted a special strain of a special virus.  No bulls, no backbone.  No introduction should be required.  Now all the badmen are coming to Guyana from the distant badlands.

The newest is Slick Willie Clinton.  Remember him, and his blues blowing sax on Saturday Night Live?  Well, he is here, and mothers are rushing to put away their youngsters.  Before the man from Arkansas came riding into town, there was his transatlantic poodle Sweet Tony, fresh from his knighthood, and scouring the local coast to latch on to whatever he could lay his hands on for Britannia.  Or himself.  Some Frenchman is making plans to travel to Timehri, and this is the Guyana season of American, British and European Invasions.  It is a good thing that all those ancient local places were not renamed.  While other Guyanese are likely to be deeply delirious at all these luminous Caucasians gracing Demerara with their refining presences, I am not.  Count me out, and cast me out of the parade.  Now I warn readers to brace themselves: the ride gets rougher from here.

I made a mistake, what in the scintillating brilliance of hindsight qualifies to be a matchless understatement.  Guyana is more than an open frontier since oil.  Guyana has transformed into an open-air whorehouse, a national one.  Johns and Joes (and Willie and Tony) come here panting in furious breath to ogle this richly glistening new oil damsel christened Guyana.  O beautiful Guyana, oh Guyana….  They don’t just come to ogle; they want to sample some pleasures of the flesh.  And there is none sweeter and richer than this dear land of Guyana.  Her waterways have become the passageways for the new breed of privateers and freebooters.  Guyana is the modern-day Port Royal and Buccaneers’ Cove.  Enter Slick Willie and Sweet Tony, and a bunch of other beautiful people. These old geezers can think of no better way to enjoy their retirement years than to paddle down to Georgetown and check out the delicacies.  It is Land ahoy! And they walked with their own toys.  They don’t need a hand from a former cabinet minister.

In radical feminist chic, Guyana is like a slab of quivering flesh, which galvanizes all the male chauvinist pigs to come out in the open and strut and rut their stuff.  All of them are running here with tongues hanging out, and what does Guyana gal get?  I shall be reserved and leave that to the imagination.  The incoming start with those at the top of the political pile, and quickly and smoothly work their way down the line.  Why quickly and smoothly?  To ask and answer: it is because the men and women in charge of Guyana’s house of oil harlotry are easy.  So easy that they don’t even place a value on their most prized possession.  It is not their virtue.  Nor can it be either their courage, or intellect, or ethics, for all those are as scarce as raindrops in today’s Guyana.  This has led to Guyana earning a mouthwatering reputation as easy to get and cheaper to get to keep house.  It is no longer a surprise that this country of mine is the talk of the world, especially those who Tom Wolfe called masters of the universe and BSDs in the Bonfire of the Vanities.  BSD is abbreviated to thwart the morals police and keep things on the up and up.  BSD is not to be mistaken for BVD, though the geography is more of Playboy than National Geographic attraction.

So, they journey from all over to see firsthand and savor the delectables that are now part of the global phenomenon in the drooling over Guyana’s charms.  A commodity as sticky and treacly as crude oil may not be sexy.  But it is overpoweringly seductive.  What an underwater nymph and siren we have with Miss Universe statistics and voluptuousness, plus irresistible smile and beckon of a languid fingernail.  The world now knows her as Stabroek.  Not Stabroek Market or Stabroek News.  C’mon people, it is the Stabroek Block.  We owned her, until we didn’t.  We held her close, until we couldn’t anymore.  We thought we had something going, before the world came racing here and said get going.

The cast of pirates is long and glittering, worthy of an MGM showcase.  Pompeo and Lynch.  Blinken to meet with winking and nodding.  Now the latest in the line of suitors is William Jefferson and Tony B.  Both are in a Matt Munro frame of mind; they dream of days of wine and roses.  They and their teams of adventurers have come to the right place for a good time.  Thanks to the PPP Government, Guyana is now the best little whorehouse in Texas.  Or is it, compliments of Texas.  All and sundry-old lechers, new hustlers, dirty tricksters-run here to grab their piece of the luscious Guyana action.  Wouldn’t you line up for your turn too?

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• .  Pompeo and Lynch, Buccaneers, Demerara, Guyana, Stabroek, Sweet Tony

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