After year-long purgatory as gawky American pre-teens, Johanna and I are ready to be sosyal. It's a short shelf life. We indulge: long phone calls, birthday blow outs, movies in Cubao. We make pasyal to the new Greenhills shopping center on Ortegas Ave, or take a bus to Divisoria for ethnic clothing adaptations. Like a Marawi malong knotted over a bare shoulder at the posh new Cultural Center of the Philippines, or a gown from cotton rice sacks at PhilAm Auditiorium.
When you are a Taglish-speaking missionary kid Manila girl, you are not tisoy or kana. You are not diplomat kid Americans, not Faith Academy evangelical mks who don’t get out much, nor American business kids confined to country club Makati. You are definitely not the part-timer Vietnam-surge military brats who live in the JUSMAG compound. You’re not a Fil-Am from the U.S. who can't tismis in Tagalog, or an unavailable gorgeous mestiza with an authoritarian father. Which means you can stay out longer at the dance parties, since everyone knows where you are anyway. You can say ‘yes’ when a boy ask you to slow dance, even if he’s high on qualudes. And everyone knows you won't take them.
Our sosyality is an exception to the rule. We don't have a storied past, or any extended family, or a clear class location. We're church girls with an attitude. We don't have syotas, any of us, which is both a concern and relief. But barkadas have syota-friends. I join Johanna's JASMS barkada which includes guys from la Salle. When Luna sails into town from Silliman U in D'guete, I make sabit. Or we get together with our SS Wright clan whose boys, Butch, Clyde, Leslie, Lyncir, Glenn, George, dismiss us as the uncoordinated kanas they've known since kindergarten.
So we're not real Manila girls, either.
When you are a Taglish-speaking missionary kid Manila girl, you are not tisoy or kana. You are not diplomat kid Americans, not Faith Academy evangelical mks who don’t get out much, nor American business kids confined to country club Makati. You are definitely not the part-timer Vietnam-surge military brats who live in the JUSMAG compound. You’re not a Fil-Am from the U.S. who can't tismis in Tagalog, or an unavailable gorgeous mestiza with an authoritarian father. Which means you can stay out longer at the dance parties, since everyone knows where you are anyway. You can say ‘yes’ when a boy ask you to slow dance, even if he’s high on qualudes. And everyone knows you won't take them.
Our sosyality is an exception to the rule. We don't have a storied past, or any extended family, or a clear class location. We're church girls with an attitude. We don't have syotas, any of us, which is both a concern and relief. But barkadas have syota-friends. I join Johanna's JASMS barkada which includes guys from la Salle. When Luna sails into town from Silliman U in D'guete, I make sabit. Or we get together with our SS Wright clan whose boys, Butch, Clyde, Leslie, Lyncir, Glenn, George, dismiss us as the uncoordinated kanas they've known since kindergarten.
So we're not real Manila girls, either.
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