She can't die without knowing sexual ecstasy, but her husband can't cope with her disease. She finds a lover who will give her every experience he can, if there is only time.
To keep his mother, Tala, and himself going, fourteen-year-old Filipino-American boy Angelo takes up with American sailors near the 1973 Subic Bay, Philippines, naval complex when his B-girl mother is too ill to turn tricks. They have had a hardscrabble existence in the Olongapo City slums since Angelo's sailor father shipped out thirteen years earlier. Angelo is ready to service sailors, but being handed around proves to be a rough, loveless life.
a Paul & Paula 21 story
When you're eight years old, having a sweetie isn't something you boast of. When you're eight years old, having a sweetie can lead to vicious teasing. And when you're eight years old, that's hard to deal with. -- I'm numbering them so that they will be listed in chronological order. Every now and then I might stick something in that happened before something else.
He wasn't supposed to be here-not in this bar, not on this night, and definitely not drowning in memories he swore he'd buried. But something pulled him in, past the neon glow and the scent of aged whiskey, into a place that felt both familiar and foreign. He only wanted a drink. To disappear into the hum of conversation, to be just another nameless soul lost in the crowd. But then he hears it-a raw, broken voice spilling a confession of love slipping through trembling fingers.