As we collectively reflect on events both locally and internationally from the past few weeks, I don’t think there’s one amongst us who hasn’t felt ginormously screwed.

And not in the good way.

Sure, it’s the most vulnerable in our midst — our neighbours in Haiti — who experienced the earthquake, but the aftershocks ricocheted out to us here in Jamaica making us contemplate on not just the unfairness and capriciousness of Fate, but also what would have happened if the earth had shifted that way beneath our feet. What if it had been us whose images were now being splashed across media outlets over the world? Us about whom the rest of the world shook its head and pitied, with a few loose cannons daring to speculate about the spiritual genesis of the fresh hell we brought upon ourselves? It could easily have happened to us, after all.

And yet, even though once again Jamaica dodged another bullet Mother Nature fired in her obdurate quest to thin the herd, it still feels, to me at least, that we still got reamed. I’m talking about the news of an $80-million budget for an inquiry looking into — can you say irony — the financial collapse of the 1990s, about which no one can do anything, just so that those same events not be repeated. Really? At a time when we’re being asked to make sacrifices for the greater collective good? At a time when public sector workers are being subjected to wage freezes and cuts? Really?

Living in this country, post-2007, increasingly feels like living out a bad porn flick. First, there was the 2007 election and resulting decision to go for a change of government, which can be likened to the excerpts announcing the upcoming scenes of the film. You know, that glossy montage of the sexy bits. Talk about your eternal sunshine of the not-so-spotless mind. Ooh, there’s going to be boredom alleviation and the promise of rising from a slump. There’s vital, virtually virgin flesh that had been untouched for at least 18 years. Ah, that’s the spot, a deviation from the routine: a tickle, a romp (basically some naughtiness involving a variety of positions, okay, oral sex (sadly, abundantly for him but not so much for her). And, ultimately, heady arrival. Only, the actual movie itself doesn’t quite pan out that way. The dialogue is loathsome, the actors are in desperate need of an acting coach, and both the romp and tickle, truth be told, do naught for anyone involved. Then, before you know it, the some of us are left nursing erections that have nowhere to end up but in messy money shots all across the screen, and orgasms that never quite turn up to the party and so have to be faked, all this even as the credits begin rolling.

Porn, unfortunately, seldom lives up to the promise of its potential.

This is how I would characterise living under this current administration: so much potential but the script is messy and unfocused, with what we imagine to be the end not promising much by way of gratification and fulfilment. In the same way that porn leaves you emotionally empty and ruing the waste of the past hour or so of your life, which really didn’t need to be fixed, when it came down to it, you can’t help looking backwards and wondering what was so wrong with the past administration. Why didn’t we all just leave well enough alone? How much worse off could we be?

First, am I alone in my personal shock and perhaps naiveté that there would be salaries involved, as against, say, nominal tokens of appreciation for selflessly heeding the call of duty in this latest, so-called fat cat salary fiasco?

What mystifies me even more than this, though, is the finance minister’s apparent perplexity about public outcry at the revelation about the salaries. Oh, well, when the PNP was in power they spent money recklessly, he seemed to suggest in his response. So this hue and cry, especially from them, is spurious. But that’s really not the point, is it? Yes, Omar Davies was caught on camera uttering the infamous line, “Run wid it”, which automatically disqualifies him from taking swipes about government stewardship as it relates to a breach of faith between government and populace. But these are different times. Perilous times. Times when the terrified public is awaiting information about how our lives will be thrown into disarray by the IMF freight train barrelling toward us. How can he not see that nurses and teachers and policemen, who do God’s work here every day for a pittance, will want to know why already well-paid people simply officiating the inquiry are making salaries they can only dream of? How can he not see the travesty this is? How can his government not understand the growing public disenchantment with them, not even three years into their regime?

This, I believe, is the point where, in the porno, the lead female character stares into the camera with a mouthful of the leading man’s, um, leading appendage, and the viewer feels a wave of embarrassment at our mutual concupiscence that has led us to this shameful fork in the road and the certain but uncomfortable knowledge that we’ve both recently devalued each other. From here on out, things can only go rapidly downhill.

Everybody talks about Jamaica being one of the most corrupt countries on earth. This is one of the reasons why corruption flourishes: the vast majority feels that regardless of what they do, they’ll be shafted. They work and work and work some more and can’t see the efforts of their labour. Then one night they’re watching the seven o’clock news and hear that there are people hauling down a mint of budgeted money simply to rehash crap that happened in the 1990s. How can they not feel that yet again they’ve been taken advantage of, without at least the Pyrrhic pleasure of first being handed a bunch of roses and taken to dinner and a movie?