Intro
When I was a little girl in the Philippines, I could have never imagined my life the way it is now.
There, I was nothing. The illegitimate daughter of a stationed Marine who impregnated an underage girl from Manilla.
I never knew my father, but I knew he was a black man.
This made my life in the Philippines hard. There, pale skin is a thing of beauty. To be dark was to be thought of as common, the product of peasants and farm workers.
I was constantly teased growing up. I did not think of myself as beautiful.
That all changed when I came to America.
I was in junior high school at the time. My mother met a man over the internet who wanted to marry her and move us out to Las Angeles.
That was the most exciting time of my life.
My mother’s new husband, Gerald, was also a black man like my father. He was far older than my mother. He was a retired truck driver who spent most of his golden years watching sports, hanging out in his garage working on cars, or spoiling us.
He was a good man. He had his own home. He restored classic cars as a hobby. When I turned sixteen he gave me a pretty red mustang. One that looked like it probably did the day it was made in 1966. He took care of everything we needed. I loved him.
In school, I quickly assimilated into my new life. It was wonderful. Everything was amazing to me, the clothes, the way people spoke, the music, the attitude; I wanted to be part of it all.
I went to a mixed inner city school at first. There were people of all nationalities there. America was so different from the Philippines where everyone basically came from the same place.
I found out quickly that I wasn’t “ugly” anymore. Instead, I was “exotic.” Exotic was a word I came to like. There were many American words that took on new meaning to me. I had always spoken English, we learned it in school at an early age in the Philipines, but this English felt totally new.
I loved all the slang and how cool it made me feel to use it. If I wore something that looked nice, it wasn’t cute, it was “tha bomb.” Boys didn’t say I was pretty, they said I was “fine” or a “top notch.” I wasn’t called fat anymore, instead, I was “thick”, and I found out that being “thick” was a good thing.
It was great! I became everything I always wanted to be. I went from being teased about my looks, to be thought of as the prettiest girl in school... at least by all the black boys.
The black boys loved me. And they were all so cute. It was overwhelming to have them all trying to get with me. It was too hard to choose... so I didn’t.
I took them all.
It was fun and exciting at first. I loved being able to make a boy do anything I wanted. I could have everything. Boys were always calling my house, showing up at the door, knocking on my window late at night. It felt so good that I couldn’t tell any of them no.
All they wanted in return was a piece of me, a piece of me that I actually enjoyed giving. I loved sex. Any kind... anywhere. The more dangerous and risky, the better. I loved to compare all the different boys. How big their cocks were, which boys knew how to “do it” and which didn’t. I felt like I had so much secret knowledge that other girls didn’t, something I had never had before.
The good feelings didn’t last long though. I didn’t know that everyone thought of me as “just a ho.” I didn’t even know how bad of a thing that was.
Was it wrong that I liked sex? Why did people care so much about what I liked to do?
Well... the boys didn’t care. The girls were a different story.
I had a rude awakening one day at school. My American dream came crashing down on me all at one moment.
It started off as a normal day. I had just finished my fourth-period class and was about to go to lunch.
My teacher pulled me aside, letting all the other kids go. He complimented me on my good work in his class, telling me he’d never had a student so advanced and I seemed like I should be in high school level classes already.
I thought about the differences in the school I came from and this one. My mother had put me into a private Catholic school. We went to school six days a week, ten hours a day. The things I was doing in American school I was doing two years ago in the Philippines.
While my teacher talked to me, I noticed him look at me. Even then I had already started to learn how to read men. I was already becoming aware of my power over them, no matter what the age. I could see him eyeing my curves. I could even see him become aware that he was doing it, and guiltily restraining himself. He was a cute man. Young for a teacher. I would fuck him too.
I thanked him. He told me if there was anything I ever needed to not hesitate to let him know. I thanked him again and walked out the class. Through a reflection in the window, I could see him eyeing my ass the whole way.
When I got outside the door I saw a group of girls standing across the quad eyeing me. Their faces were full of hate and jealousy. I didn’t know why the girls cared so much about what I do. I turned the corner and stepped into the girl’s bathroom.
I went into a stall and went pee. Squatting over the toilet making sure not to touch that nasty ass seat. When I was in the Philippines, and my mother and I would leave Manilla to visit family in the rice farms in the country, we had holes in the ground we would squat over to use the bathroom. I felt safer squatting over those holes than sitting on these seats.
As I thought about this I heard some people come in the bathroom.
“She’s in here, I know it.” I heard one of them say.
I wiped myself and came out of the stall.
Blocking the door was the group of girls that I had just seen giving me the hateful looks.
“You think you all that huh?” One of the girls started in on me. “This bitch think she cute. Bitch you ain’t nothin but a ho.”
I had no idea where any of this was coming from. There were so many of them, just standing around like they wanted to do something to me.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t want any trouble.” I pleaded.
Over just a few months in school, I had picked up their way of speaking and covered my accent well. But at that moment, when I got scared, my natural Filipino accent came out.
“All of the sudden this bitch sound like she straight outta China. You ain’t tryna be down no more? You don’t know what you are, are you Black or Chinese?”
“I’m Filipino.”
“Bitch, don’t get smart!” The biggest girl of them all shot as she got in my face. She was a tall, overweight black girl. I had seen her many times around the school and felt sorry for her. I knew at this school, she was the ugly one, the one I had felt like for a long time.
I tried to make sense of what was happening in my head. Why were they picking on me?
It couldn’t have been just because the ugly girl was jealous of me. Because behind her were half a dozen other girls, all pretty and popular. There was a representative of each group, black, white, Hispanic, even Asian. It was like all the different clicks of girls in the school had a meeting about me and decided to get this big black girl to beat me up. Was I that bad?
I tried to escape the situation and walk past the big girl. She pushed me back into a stall door.
At that point I got angry. I felt a fire rise in me that made me bold and unafraid.
“Look bitch... you just mad cuz you ugly and don’t nobody want you.”
For a split second, I felt so proud. I could hear myself speaking. I sounded just like one of the black girls off the TV. The ones I would literally stand in front of a mirror and try to imitate.
That moment of pride was short lived. By the end of that second, all I could think about was living.
The big girl punched me first. Then she grabbed my hair and flung me to the ground. It happened too fast to react. I had never gotten into a fight before.
Once I was on the ground, all of the other girls joined in. I curled into a ball as tight as I could, trying my best to shield my face with my arms. I prayed my last prayer thinking that I was going to die. I literally thought I was going to be beaten to death.
My eyes were squeezed shut so all I could see was darkness. Around me, all I heard was yelling “bitch this” and “ho that,” to where it all blended together into white noise. It was terrifying.
I felt my body being pounded on, punched and kicked from every angle, to where the pain became white noise too. It all became an enveloping darkness of shouts and torture.
In the middle of it all, I heard a banging. At first, I thought it was the sound of something breaking inside of me to the rhythm of their punching. But then their punching stopped, and the banging continued.
I heard the scuffling of footsteps and people running. The hitting had stopped but I was afraid to come out of my ball. I just stayed there, curled up in defense, eyes shut so tight that all the built up tears had no way of escaping.
The world around me became silent. My ears ventured out while the rest of me stayed held in and protected. I could hear nothing.
Suddenly I felt something on my arm. I prepared myself for more hitting.
“Sweetie it’s okay.” A soft voice said from out there, out there where all the danger was, where the people were who are going to kill me.
“Elizabeth right?... It’s okay. They’re gone.”
I heard the voice talking, but my body wouldn’t respond. I was stuck in the ball.
A walkie-talkie beeped in.
“Administration please call 911. We’re going to need medical assistance at the girl’s bathroom in the south quad. Security please lookout for any girls who look like they’ve been fighting.”
That day my mother threatened her new husband to get me into a new school in a better neighborhood or we were going back to the Philippines. He immediately did just that.
He spent all his savings and sold all his classic cars to get me into a private school on the other side of town.
It was a hassle leaving home two hours early every morning just to take the bus to school in Orange County. I didn’t talk much to the people in my neighborhood anymore because they all knew what happened to me. Instead, I spent most of my social time across town where my new school was.
It helped when Gerald gave me my first car when I turned sixteen. After that, I was never on my own side of town.
When I started at my new school, I didn’t do any of the things that I did at my old one. I found a nice, white boyfriend who didn’t cause me any trouble. Besides him, I stayed to myself.
I left behind that part of me that was so free, so uninhibited, and so happy. The new me was safer.
But it didn’t change the thoughts I had inside. It didn’t change the feeling I got between my legs every time a cute black boy winked at me. It didn’t stop me from convincing my boyfriend that I actually liked sports, so he’d take me to every school football and basketball game, just so I could see all the cute black boys in their in tight football pants outlining their butts, are loose basketball shorts outlining their dicks.
It didn’t stop me from fondly remembering how good it felt to be free, desired by many and able to share myself with them all. Something I’d have to suppress for years until I gained the confidence to let it out once again...
