Free Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn

that his natural curls tumbled carelessly down his forehead. Like Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause. Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock- Or that daredevil Nestor Noralez in Tormented.
    They sat down in the crowded café, next to a booth jammed with giggling schoolgirls in plaid uniforms. Trinidad could feel their curious eyes on Romeo Rosales, and sat proud and erect in her booth. Look, but don’t touch —she thought.
    “By the way,” she said to Romeo, “I’ll treat.”
    Romeo made a feeble show of protest: “No, no, I insist, Trini—”
    He had called her Trini. Blushing, Trinidad waved her hand in a grand, dismissive gesture. “No, no, Romeo. I’ll treat. You can help me celebrate my birthday,” she lied, surprised by her own boldness.
    Romeo gave her a puzzled look, then brightened considerably. This girl might be crazy, he said to himself, but what do I have to lose. He wondered how old she was, guessing she was in her late twenties or early thirties. He wondered if she would lie to him when he felt comfortable enough to ask her. He figured she probably would. He relaxed in his seat, and let her persuade him to try Chinese food. She ordered noodles stir-fried with shrimp and pork. Not bad , Romeo admitted to himself, eating with gusto. The noodles tasted just like his mother’s pancit. Trinidad giggled. “Of course! Who do you think invented pancit ? The Chinese!” She informed him, merrily. Romeo wolfed down the food Trinidad served him, while she ate demurely, picking at her food and professing a lack of appetite. Actually Trinidad was quite hungry herself, but she remembered her mother saying that truly feminine women hardly ate at all, at least not in public.
    Romeo watched the coy and smiling cashier with a great deal of amusement. When the meal was over he confessed to feeling dizzy with “fascination” for Trinidad—an English word which he confused with “infatuation.” Trinidad didn’t bother to correct him. Without too much effort, he convinced her to go home with him to his one-room apartment. Trinidad Gamboa paid for the expensive taxi ride to Pasay City. She was devirginated at exactly 11:47 P.M. on a Thursday evening, on Romeo’s creaking cot. The anxious, sweating couple was separated from Romeo’s sleeping cousin Tomas by a flimsy curtain draped over a wire strung from both ends of the room. For Romeo, it was a surprising experience. He had never been with a virgin, and he found it rather bewildering. For Trinidad, it was bloody, painful, and a profound relief. She had been waiting for this exact moment all her life.
    The thought of Romeo with another woman was enough to drive Trinidad Gamboa insane. She wrote her parents in Cebu, hinting at a possible engagement to her nineteen-year-old lover. Her mother wrote back: “What about your studies? Why haven’t you enrolled at the university? WHO IS ROMEO ROSALES? What town is he from? How old is he? Does he have a job? Make sure your Aunt Teresing writes me…”
    Her father, a retired tax collector, was not impressed with his daughter’s romantic illusions. He wrote tersely: “COME HOME. I did not give you permission to go to Manila to live a life of sin. WHO IS ROMEO ROSALES? You have disappointed us greatly by postponing your enrollment at the university. Your mother is sick with worry, and I will not tolerate any of your escapades! Come home soon, or I will cut off your monthly allowance. Romeo Rosales is not worthy of you…” Trinidad Gamboa’s father signed his letter with a forbidding, emphatic flourish.
    Trinidad was twenty-eight years old, and the thought of life as a spinster back in her home town terrified her. She would be subject to shame and humiliation, considered a failure in her parents’ unforgiving eyes. It looked as if enrolling at the university in Manila really would be her last chance to make something of her uneventful life, if she didn’t quickly find a husband. She had been grasping at straws when she