Blessings: Part 1

It was only the second day into 2010 and I was already packing and getting ready to drive back down to Irvine. The whole day I had been feeling heavy-hearted, uncertain, and even remorseful: Why did I wait to hang out? Why didn’t we hang out earlier? I still haven’t even hung out with him enough to have a clear mental image of his face in my mind. Or, why didn’t I wait to do what I did last night? What’s going to happen?

I was sitting at my laptop in the living room using my mom’s credit card to buy another meal plan for the quarter when my mom came to retrieve her card. As she left, she stopped and turned back toward me. “Dad said he saw you with another guy here last night. Who was he?”

“A friend from San Francisco.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“From dancing there.”

She nodded and looked ready to leave, but as she was turning, she stopped herself to ask me one more question: “But what about Trung?”

Why was she even asking that? I didn’t even say anything about sleeping with my friend. My dad only saw us eating Pho at the dinner table. But...maybe my mom knew me better than I thought she did? And I was sure that sometimes she knew me better than I knew myself, and maybe this was one of those times. I figured this was the appropriate moment to tell my mom the truth: “Trung and I broke up four months ago.”

As if I had just told her I accidentally killed a family relative, shock overcame my mom’s face. “But he’s been coming over still!”

“We’re still friends.”

Perplexed, my mom backed out of the room without saying another word.

Shit. I suddenly felt bad. Really bad. A bunch of doubts washed over me and I started to question everything I had done last night and four months ago. It wasn’t until now that I realized how much my parents’ blessings really mattered to me; I could really pursue anything without them?

I tried to shrug the feelings off. An hour later, I sat down in the kitchen to eat my last bowl of Pho before heading off to pick up Trung and drive down to SoCal. My dad was sitting at the sofa watching TV, and my mom took the chair next to me with her own bowl. Unlike earlier, she didn’t seem confused.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

Knowing that my mom wouldn’t get it anyway if I articulated every syllable for her, I muttered the answer. Because of her pride, she didn’t ask me to repeat myself. Besides, his name was beside the point. She had something more important to address:

“Brian, I just want you to remember to wear protection, ok?”

OHMYGOD MOM.

“...always wear a condom when you have sex.”

I ducked my head away in horror, only to face my dad, who nodded his head in agreement.

SURE IF I NEED CONDOMS I’LL GO TO YOUR ROOM AND ASK DAD TO GET SOME FROM HIS CLOSET. YES I KNOW ABOUT THOSE. THE BOX WAS SITTING ON TOP OF THE FRIDGE DURING THE SUMMER BEFORE HE MOVED THEM. HAPPY 65TH BIRTHDAY TO DAD BTW.

There are some words that a son should never hear his mom say to him, and two of those words are “condom” and “sex.” “Wear protection” is also up there because you can’t deny what your mom is picturing in her head when she says “wear protection.” Hint: It’s a dick with a condom on. Might be your dick, might not be.

As awkward as the last dinner conversation of winter break was, I left the table with a smile feeling good about myself. My mom had continuously reassured me that I could trust her and tell her anything and she would always be supportive, and I guess that was actually pretty true.

I still hadn’t told Trung about last night, and I was nervous about that. But, I was at least still content and a little confident because now I knew that I had my parents’ blessings.

---
“I came out to my parents today, my 18th birthday.” [Yes, this was originally a very long entry.]
Written May 12th, 2008 (Excerpted)

[At dumpster in the late cold night.] I was holding a bag with a tennis racket handle sticking out of it.

“Why are we here?” Trung asked.

I grabbed the racket handle and pulled the bag out from under it. It was the broken tennis racket.



My parents have known for a little while now that Trung is officially my boyfriend. [But still] when I drove Trung over to my house, or when I drove him home, I always had him use the front door, not the door to the garage, because the garage is next to the kitchen and family room, where my parents spent most of their day cooking or watching TV. We tried to avoid as much awkward time with my parents as possible. However, I knew my parents could hear the front door open every time, and I was sure they had figured out quickly that I was opening that door for Trung. They had yet to say anything, however.

On the morning of my school’s Senior Ball, my mom caught me leaving dressed up. [Escaping her questions] I opened the garage door and Trung entered, dressed up and ready to go. Just as he was getting inside my car, my mom came out into the garage with a basket of clothing.

“Oh, hi Trung,” she said to him. Trung and I froze. She examined him, and then me. “I like your outfits. Blue and purple, very nice,” she complimented. She continued to the washing machine in the corner casually. Trung and I didn’t say a word as we quickly got into the car and drove off.

Yesterday, Trung and I woke up to knocking on my door. We looked at each other, panicking.

“What should I do?” Trung whispered.

“Uh,” I shrugged. “Hide under the covers?” Trung ducked beneath my blankets, and I shouted to the door, “Yes?”

My dad opened it and came in to plead me to make breakfast-in-bed for my mom for Mother’s Day. As my dad spoke, I responded with curt, multiple uh-huhs and sures and okays. He left, and it seemed like he totally didn’t notice the big lump next to me under my blanket.

[I made eggs, orange juice, and toast and brought it upstairs.] I knocked on her door. She opened it. I presented her the scrambled eggs and forced myself to say with a meek smile, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

My mom’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh!” she exclaimed. “Oh my gosh!” Again. “Thank you so much, Brian! I love you so much!” She excitedly took the plate and reached up to me to give me a kiss on the cheek. I was still forcing my lips to smile. “It looks so good, Brian. Listen, don’t go anywhere in the evening today because we’re going to go out to eat at 6:30…”

Gah, I have an AP test I need to study, I thought to myself.

“…would Trung like to go? He can come if he wants to,” she asked, quite eagerly.

It was my turn for my eyes to widen. I looked at her, surprised, and then I managed, “No, uh… He has to go home and do things with his mother too.” It actually wasn’t a lie.

“Oh, too bad,” my mom sighed. And she returned to her room, closing the door behind her. I immediately heard her sit down on her bed, followed by the clanking of the fork and plate.

Later at 6:30 [and with Trung back at his home], I got into the car with my parents, and my dad drove us off to my mom’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant downtown. During dinner, Trung came up. My mom asked me the typical kind of stuff that she asked about all of my friends: “How are Trung’s grades?” “What schools accepted him?” “Which one is he going to?”

These were the kinds of questions that I had been hoping my parents would ask, because I knew for once that the truth would impress them. “4.0, valedictorian.” “UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and UCLA.” “He’s going to UCLA.”

My mom chuckled. “UCLA over Berkeley? He’s going there to be close to you, Brian.”

Again, I was surprised.

Just then, our food came out, and we ate. The topic shifted from school to my career, also an awkward topic for me.

“Do you want to be an engineer?” my mom asked. ...

[The next day] around three, I went home [and Trung] came over an hour later bearing food. We sat down in the family room eating crackers and brie, chicken noodle soup, and ice cream. My dad was doing garden work in the backyard, and he passed by inside once. He waved hi to Trung and smiled. My parents’ hospitality to Trung was getting less weird now.

Around 8:30, Trung and I came down for dinner. My mom served each of us a small bowl of Pho and she made some small talk with Trung, asking him where he lived and what high school he was currently going to.

Trung ate quickly and finished before me. He thanked my parents. “Thanks for the food. The Pho was great! I gotta go now, so g’night!” My parents bid him good night, and I walked Trung out. I returned to the dinner table and worked on finishing my bowl of Pho. When I finished, I decided that it was time to make the announcement.

I turned to them, and smiled. “Mom, dad, I’m majoring in French, and I plan to become a French teacher.” ...

[After dinner] I returned my room, grabbed my keys, and headed out. But I froze at my door. I contemplated. I went to my closet and dug the broken tennis racket out of it. I bagged it and met up with Trung outside my house, where he had been patiently waiting for me. I gave him a thumbs up.



“I didn’t know you still kept the broken tennis racket,” Trung said.

“Yeah, I found it hard to throw it away. I know I sound crazy for this, but…” I showed him the sharp and jagged edges from where the frame was smashed. “There used to be a time where I thought I would need to use this as a weapon against my parents.”

Trung gasp.

“I know, I know. That’s very overdramatic. It was very irrational of me to have thought that...Ever since that incident, it’s been so hard to let go of my grudge, to let myself get close to my parents again.” As I spoke, I could feel my lips slowly curving up to form a grin. “But, now, I can see that rebuilding our relationship isn’t going to end in hurt again.”

I ran my fingers down the edge of the racket’s frame one more time, avoiding the sharp points. Trung looked at the racket, and then he fixed his gaze on the dumpster. I followed his gaze to the dumpster, lifted the lid, and tossed the broken racket in there. I dropped the lid. It slammed, letting out a loud boom that faded out into the quiet night.

Blessings: Part 2

“...so, he stayed till one in the morning. What happened next?”

“He slept over.”

“...and?”

“In my bed. Which I shared with him. Yeah, we cuddled, and etc. Good way to start 2010.”

“Brian!”

“Well, we kept it very G. Our shorts were on the whole time. No one whipped out their dicks.”

“Wow, I’m impressed.”

“I’m not usually the one that whips it out first anyway.”

“Oh yeah, I forget that sometimes. So, how do you feel about him now?”

“I think there’s actually something there. It’s not a lost cause.”

“Are you guys going to be together now?”

“He decided that we should have a few weeks to think about things. If my feelings don’t fade, which I don’t think they won’t, then we’ll probably make it official.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. How long has it been since the breakup?”

“Four months.”

“What happened to waiting for a really long time? You just couldn’t stand being single? Does it feel good to be back? Does this thing right now have a future?”

“I’m not thinking about the future. I think my new life philosophy is, if I have a chance to make my present better than it could be, I’m going to take that chance. This has nothing to do with me not wanting to be single. This has to do with me being happier than I had thought I’d be.”

“Ok. Sounds good.”

“...Trung, is that it?”

“What do you mean, Brian?”

“You’re okay with this?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure? We’ve already established that I’m not worried about me and you, but rather, just you. You’re fine?”

“Yeah, Brian, don’t worry. Like I said before, I just want to be your really good close friend now. You can talk to me about this stuff. You can come to me when you need advice. You can come to me if you need to complain about other guys. It won’t bother me.”

“Ok. I believe you. We’re friends.”

-

“Brian, I was doing fine. I was doing great. I was moving on and everything. But then, you told me about how you were jealous of John. At first, I thought it was cute, but then, I started to think about it more. Why? Why were you jealous about John? Were you hung up on me? Hearing that you were jealous resurfaced so many emotions. I need you to explain why; what’s going through your head?”

“I’m not going to lie; I still thought there was some sense of us, and I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t move on.”

“And what about now?”

“Remember the night when I exploded on you? Two days before our two-year anniversary mark? That was when I realized I had to let go. I knew that the way I kept on clinging onto you wasn’t emotionally healthy for either of us. I was still hurting you and myself.”

“Ok, there we go. That’s all I wanted to know. See how much better it is when you open up to me?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Alright, now tell me how your date went last night.”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Sure. Did you guys fuck?”

Meaning

I have no doubt that within my lifetime, science will learn to fully explain with 100% confidence how a person becomes gay—or straight even. Whether it is that way from the start or the result of complex environmental factors, science will explain it down to every last detail: how overexposure to a certain chemical effects shifts in chemical reactions in the brain, how the subtle mutation of one allele affects an entire gene. The answers will be another accomplishment for science, another one for the textbooks, but what those who trust their textbooks without question do not realize is that, science, at its best, only explains how. Its one and only pitfall, the only one thing missing, is that it can never have answers to what is most significant: It can never explain why.

A male is made to deliver his sperm to a female, who is made to receive and likewise made to bear a child. Science wires the brain so that the male feels sexual arousal and the desire to, in blunt terms, insert his dick in the female’s pussy and pump it full of jizz, and nine months later, the mom gives birth to a baby. The purpose of life, at its most basic science, is reproduction.

Many people do not regard this as their purpose or as only a small part of their lives, but I, in cruel irony, have long since taken this up as “one of the only firm decisions that I’ve already made for my future.” It’s the only constant longing I have had since middle school, and it will remain constant through the future.

I am left to question the science that has made me the way I am. To put it in blunt terms again, my sperm are pretty damn healthy as far as I know, and I have the need, whether it is biological or purely emotional, to have my own blood-related kid. Yet, I have not the innate desire to engage in actions that make use of them (once again, out of diction: I don’t wanna fuck vajayjays because they scare me). Why is it that I want this but cannot have it, while there are even others out there who can but do not want to?

Whether the answers I want are in myself, in other people, in my past and future experiences, or out there and beyond, and whether or not I was meant for something different, I know—and I’ve known for a while—that the answer is not in the science that I’ve held close to the foundations of my reality.

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“At the Kitchen Table”
Written January 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I want kids (when I'm an adult). I've had it decided since 7th grade, and it was one of the only firm decisions that I've already made for my future. I can't see what kind of job I will have, or who I will be sharing my life with, or where I will be living, but I can see myself coming home everyday to kids—two children, a boy and a girl. Unless my partner really opposes, their names would be Matt and Janelle.

I have imagined that I would always be the one that cooked for the family (watched too much Food Network back then). I sorta had this plan. There are four weeks in each month, plus a few extra days. The first week of the month, the dinner menu would be all Asian. The second week would be all French; third Mexican; fourth Italian. And the last remaining days would be open for new recipes. (Obviously I'm rich in this little dream of mine.) The kids would love it (or else I would force it down their throats), and they would actually come to the dinner table excited.
---

December 31st, 2009, New Years Eve, less than one hour to midnight. Exactly four years ago, I came out. Yet I still haven’t come to turns that I suck dick, and as a result I’ve been bitter. Many things throughout the four years have masked the bitterness or made me forget, but eventually, I always return to this feeling.

Just Like Summer Again

[This entry is co-written with Trung. You can guess which one he is.]

On the nineteenth, with most of the Breakthrough teachers back home in the bay, Breakthrough held a winter reunion at some library downtown. A few differences from last year’s winter reunion: last year was ice skating and open to all students, while this year was a formal dance that was only open to students with a 3.0 or higher. So of course, I knew there would be a good amount of my students that I wouldn’t be seeing.

LOOK BRIAN IS RACIST. HE MEANS: MEXICAN KIDS ARE ALL DUMB AND LIKE TACOS.

It’s ‘cause they wrote really terrible essays.

BECAUSE ENGLISH IS NOT THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE.

This was written by a white student: “Ralph is a leader in the beganing then at the end he is not. Well in the Lord of the Flies, it says that Ralph had rules and was a strong leader, but then Jack mess it all up because he wanted to become the leader.”

FINE ITS BCAUSE SHE WAS POOR. YOU MEANIE.

At the formal, we had a VIP section for students who had a 4.0. The only student in there was Mickey, and he stayed there, alone. Not too surprising. I felt bad, but then he eventually found his place outside playing cards with the teachers at the poker table.

Belinda probably still had the hots for me and was grabbing my arms trying to get me to dance with her. I awkwardly shook her off.

SHE IS 11 YEARS OLD. STOP BEING A PERVERT. AND SO EGOTISTICAL. LIKE THAT ONE TIME THAT GIRL SAID “WOW THAT SANDWICH IS BIG” SHE ACTUALLY JUST MEANT THE DAMN SANDWICH.

Belinda and her friends, who took my dance class during the summer, told me that they still knew the set I taught them. I didn’t believe them, but they had the mix on their phone, so they started playing it and doing the set. I didn’t even remember what I taught them, but they still did. It made me feel good.

NOT AS GOOD AS HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU FLEX IN THE MIRROR AND MAKE YOUR WEIRD THRUSTY PELVIS THING WHEN YOU THINK YOU LOOK SEXY. DON’T THINK I DON’T KNOW. I DO KNOW. AND I THROW UP A LITTLE.

The whole formal dance concept was pretty awkward. It was basically like a middle school dance with the teachers mixed in with the students. Even with the lights off, no one could really get into it (not that anyone would wanna freakdance, which I wasn’t implying in the first place).

THE BOY TO GIRL RATIO WAS VERY OFF. THAT WAS A GOOD THING.

The seventh grade boys tried to drag me out to the middle of the dance floor for a jerking competition. Not my scene. But I eventually found my comfort place when I sat down with Pauline, one of my eighth grade writing students, in the VIP zone and taught her how to lock. I knew very little about locking and probably had nothing close to the right form, but she, not knowing any better, thought I was godly.

YOU JUST DIDN’T WANT TO SHOW THEM THAT YOU COULDN’T JERK. THE DANCE TYPE. YOUD GET ARRESTED FOR THE OTHER TYPE. EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU ENJOY DOING THAT STUFF IN PUBLIC. SKANK!

I also got to catch up Thanh, an alumni student who finished Breakthrough my first summer teaching in 2008. I taught her a small tutting piece, also not from my area of expertise (as though I really have one). I really missed teaching dance.

THANH LIKES ME BETER THAN YOU. ITS TRUE. YOU FORGOT TO MENTION THAT WHITE GIRL.

I drove up to San Francisco with Mimi three times (and once with Kevin) this winter break to take classes at City Dance. It felt good to be back in those hallways. Surprisingly enough, Emerson remembered my face and approached me for a hug. I didn’t think he’d remember me, but I also heard that he just likes to hug any cute guy he sees.

DID YOU GUYS FUCK? OR MAYBE HE’S JUST A NICE PERSON WHO ENJOYS HIS OLD STUDENTS. NOT CUZ YOU’RE CUTE. OMG. EGOTISTICAL AGAIN. STROKING YOUR OWN DAMN EGO. YOU’RE AN EGO-MASTURBATOR.

The last visit for the break was yesterday for workshops taught by the Lost Kids. I went with Mimi and we got to kick it with some Funksters I missed from Summer Intensive, like Isaiah, Joerelle, Nicole, Tin, and JC, and I met Ranier (pronounced rainier than yesterday) during my second visit.

AKA MORE KIDS. YOU ONLY LIKE BEFRIENDING PEOPLE IN HIGH SCHOOL. OMG. BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT VULGAR THINGS LIKE BOOBIES AND HOW IF YOU MASSAGE THEM THEY GROW. AND PENISES. WIL YOU B SAD WHEN THEY FORGET ABOUT YOU WHEN THEY GO TO COLLEGE?

They didn’t forget about me when I went to college.

AGAIN JUST THINKING IN YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVE. WHAT ABOUT THEIRS WHEN THEY GO TO COLLEGE?! HM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. YOU ALSO FART TOO MUCH.

Caught up with Isaiah a bit. He’s now back with his boyfriend (codenamed Max and CJ in this entry), and he sounded happy. That’s good. I’m happy for him.

DID YOU GUYS HAVE A THREESOME? AND I BET YOU WEREN’T HAPPY. YOU WERE A LLAMA.

No to the threesome question. And I was happy!

I don’t have a conclusion that’s different from the ones I wrote during the summer about how I would miss Breakthrough and Funksters, so instead, Trung typed this up to finish the entry:

I like to look at myself in the mirrors. I only like to flex in the mirror and dance dance dance because I’m egotistical. I like to masturbate looking at myself. And then I flex some more. Because I think I’m really hot. And then I dance.

I like to do fifteen push ups and then go to the bathroom to check my progress. And then I run out and get a chopstick and go back in the bathroom to try to hold it between my boobies because I’m a show off. SORRY, I PARTTY.

I think the “I” might be referring to me.

IT’S REFERRING TO YOUR INNER THOUGHTS AND FEARS. Jk im not that mean to brian. I am nice because he lets me eat his chocolates and hide them. :)

Photo Album 2000

The last entry was supposed to have a part two that would end with a happy conclusion, buuuuuut...

Yesterday afternoon, I finally told my mom that I was switching my major from French to Literary Journalism. She seemed to get a kick out of it, and she asked me, “So are you going to be like one of those news reporters on TV?” My parents only watched ShowBiz tonight. I didn’t know what my mom was picturing in her head, but I definitely didn’t see myself delving into Jon and Kate and the whole eight’s dramatically stupid public lives. (I already have my own.) The conversation overall ended well, and this was where this entry was supposed to finish.

However, I didn’t see either of my parents for the rest of the night, so I didn’t know what they might’ve discussed at dinner.

Today, we had a crowded dinner table: Salmon and rice, cauliflower stock, my mom and dad, my brother, Trung, and me. I had eaten two hours earlier so I wasn’t really feeling the food, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to eat as a full family.

My dad brought up my major and wanted to confirm that I was changing mine to journalism, to which I corrected him (in English) by adding “literary.” My dad, frustrated, responded by ordering (in Vietnamese), “Just change it to math already and become a math teacher!”

I was little shocked to hear that because I thought my parents would fine with my personal career choices, but at the same time I was also not too surprised. I felt that my parents had been waiting for me to change my major, the family disappointment number two, and that they had thought I would eventually come to my senses and change it to math or some kind of science. I did end up changing it, but it wasn’t the change they wanted. Now they were getting impatient.

To satiate my dad, I told him that I would take the credentialing program to teach math along with the one for English, but I said that math would just be a backup and that English would be my main focus.

He then argued back, bringing the issue of race into the discussion: “They won’t hire you because only white people can teach English!”

Race was an entirely different issue to me, and one which I had always been sensitive about, especially given my past two summers teaching Breakthrough. I wanted to raise my voice to my dad, detailing how incredibly wrong he was and how he understood nothing about race or anything, just as I would’ve done two and a half years ago, but with Trung and my brother sitting at the table, I didn’t want to start a scene.

Plus, I couldn’t argue as fervently as I had with my aunt a long time ago over French because, just as my parents were, I was currently confused about where I was going with my college career and my goal to become a teacher. Literary Journalism major. Not an English major because I would rather write more than read. But I’d probably end up being an English teacher with an LJ major anyway. Raise students to become the best writers but at the same time teach books that bore me to death?

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“I came out to my parents today, my 18th birthday.” [Not the gay kind of coming out.]
Written May 12th, 2008 (Excerpted)

[At a restaurant for mother’s day.] “Do you want to be an engineer?” my mom asked. No. “Doctor?” No. “Pharmacist?” No. “Engineers can make good money too.” No. “Teacher?”

I looked down at my food and stirred the rice a bit. I looked back up at her and said more timidly, “No.” Right at that moment, I felt something drop down my back, and I turned around to see a baby girl standing on the seat behind me, smiling at me, her right arm extended out and her hand grasped the air. I looked down at my seat and saw a balled up napkin. I smiled at her, and turned back to my seat, still smiling. I thought to myself, What a cute kid—

“Ah! You’re smiling Brian! I can see it! So, that’s it right? You want to be a teacher!” my mom beamed victoriously.

I froze. The smile immediately fell off my face. I slowly looked up at her, and this time, I could only manage, “I don’t know.” The conversation was done. For the rest of the night, we did not speak of Trung or my future career. However, I was deep in thought as I went to bed. The dinner left me feeling optimistic.

The next day, today, I woke up feeling unusual, rejuvenated. I was 18 now. For the last several years of my life, I would wake up on my birthday hardly feeling any different...but today was not the same. I knew that today was the day that I would finally do it—something that I told myself that I would not do until the end of college, for fear that it would be the last bit of shame that I could bring to my parents. It was a secret that tormented the relationship between me and my parents, what put up the iron wall separating us. I was going to...finally confess to them that I did not intend to become the big money-making engineer or doctor or businessman that they hoped I would become, but instead, I intended to major in French and become a French teacher. Live a simple life. Nothing extravagant. Probably in an apartment. Simple and fulfilling.

[At dinner that night] I turned to [my parents], and smiled. “Mom, dad, I’m majoring in French, and I plan to become a French teacher.”

And there was no shock. No screaming. No crying. In their voices, there was only the satisfaction that I finally admitted it to them.

“That’s good Brian,” my mom said. “Being a teacher is a noble job. And I’m glad you’re going into something that you like doing.”

“Are you going to study abroad in France?” my dad added. “You can always stay with one of my sisters. She’s married to a French man. They live together in Luçon.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about doing a year in France. Not too sure about Luçon though,” I replied.

They nodded. And then House M.D. came on TV, and they focused on that. I quickly finished my Pho and left to go upstairs. I didn’t immediately retreat to my room, however. I lingered at the top of the staircase, eavesdropping on my parents to see how they really felt.

My mom was telling my dad how much it made sense. “He took that one French class at San Jose City College for fun. He has all those French novels in his room and he took the AP French test even though he wasn’t in the class. I hear French music in his room every day. It makes sense.”

My dad agreed, and they chattered about it for a little more, but eventually, they both concluded, “Brian is happy when he does French.”
---

As I’m sitting here typing this entry, I can hear my parents in their room muttering about something, and they don’t sound pleased. I imagine that they’re talking shit about me. My parents and I didn’t have a good relationship until the events of my eighteenth birthday, and I don’t want to wreck what we currently have. So I’m going to do what I resort to a lot nowadays: Ignore everything. But that can only work for so long.

And as for what I plan on doing with myself in college and in the future, I dunno—I’m just going to go dance now.

Photo Album

“Tennis Ace”
Written January 10th, 2007
Well, it’s been about three weeks since I found out that my dad was 62, but I still have a hard time believing it. I had always known that my dad wouldn’t live for very long because classic Vietnamese tradition and culture had taught him shit about health and medicine, but now that I know his real age, I’m worried that his death may come sooner than expected.

For the last few years, I’ve treated him like shit and didn’t really care at all. As I’ve described to some of my friends, “The distance between me and my dad is so palpable that you can take bites out of it... Hell, no you can’t! The distance is so palpable that it’s actually solid iron.” I don’t actually know what my dad really thinks of me ever since I came out to him and my mom. I just like to think that he’s always on board with how my mom feels, but a part of me also thinks that he feels that I’m throwing my life away. He could die thinking that I’m on the road to misery, and I would never have the courage to ask him what he actually feels or too reassure him that I’ll be okay.

In the past, we did a lot more stuff together, and it was for leisure. From as early as first grade to junior high, we used to go to the park by my house to play tennis for 2-3 hours every Saturday or Sunday morning. [Between junior high and high school] I lost a lot of respect for him. The way he treated my mom and his bigoted views of females and other races made me hate him even more. Just so I could spite him, I vowed to never touch another tennis racket ever again. Early in the summer before the start of sophomore year, the morning wake up calls to go play tennis completely ceased altogether.

So today, when I told everybody that I was going to join tennis this year, nobody believed me at first. But believe me, I’m hella going to do it. It may be the last thing that I’ll do that’ll make my dad happy, and the only way that we’ll ever get close again.
---

No stockings hung above the fire place this year, and no tree ornamented with colorful globes and lights took center stage in the living room. The days leading up to Christmas were just as any other day in the winter.

My parents, having become old and tired, did not decorate the house this year. This was not a sudden decision, as during the previous years, the motivation to dig up the boxes of ornaments and lights and get out the ladder had been diminishing. A son, having grown up and learned to prioritize “better things,” was no longer around to help.

I sat back in the couch in the computer room with a photo album in my arm. Photos of me and my family from the 1990s—was flipping through them the only way I could ever be close to my family again?

Christmas in the Park, 1991:


In the first game and the longest game that parents ever play with their baby, the parents play God. With a perfect strategy, they shape their child’s destiny and establish his purpose in life, but the game occupies their minds so much that they never realize, in the end, it is all pretend. Fate, like the roll of a dice, gives the parents no real control.

The little child in a knit sweater and a knit beanie waddling along concrete, confused as to why water is erupting from the ground before him—who would’ve ever seen him as one who would, in years to come, come home drunk and vomit in the toilet, shove six-gauge tapers through his earlobes, lie to get money, lie to get sex, and ultimately betray his parents?

---
“Not Good Enough”
Written April 23rd, 2007 (Excerpted)

[I told my parents about Junior Prom.] It had gone well at first. I opened by asking my parents if I could get my $100 birthday present by the end of this week. When my mom asked what it was for, I told her very bluntly that I needed it for junior prom.

My mom took it very lightly while my dad sat there with his attention divided between the Sharks game on TV and his food. She asked me where it was, when it was, which of my friends were going, and she laughed when I told her that we were taking a limo there. She agreed to give me the $100, and then she continued eating.

Funny. Neither of them asked me about whether or not I had a date.

Finally, my dad spoke up. “This stew is so spicy! I think I bit onto a pepper!”

My mom added, “Yeah, so hot; what’d you put in here, honey? My face is on fire!” As their annoying charade continued, I got more annoyed, so I contemplated a way to get them back on topic.

“So I’m taking a guy from Monta Vista High School!” I blurted out. I immediately focused on my dad’s facial expression, which turned out to be as stoical as ever.

My mom did all the talking, which I had expected. She asked rather normal questions about what his name was (“James... Cutler, not Silva”), how old he was (“16”), how’d I meet him (through Jack), where he lived (“Cupertino”), how he did in school (“Well”), and whether or not he was actually my boyfriend (“No, he’s my friend”). I answered all questions honestly, and everything went calmly.

Of course, that was not the result that I wanted. As my dad was sitting there, completely “focused” on the TV, he was definitely thinking something about the topic but wouldn’t say it. I sensed that a topic change was about to come up again, so I intercepted with the first thing that popped up in my head, “Dad, I need you to come with me to pick him up and drive him down here this weekend.” (Not actually necessary, but all I really cared about at that point was saying something to pull him into the conversation.)

“Hold on,” he muttered as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He got up, dropped his dishes off in the sink, and walked over to and sat down on the sofa facing the TV, leaving me and my mom alone at the dinner table. I asked him again, to which he snapped back why James couldn’t just find his own way over here. “He can take the bus or taxi, can’t he?” my dad suggested.

“Or bike over here?” my mom added in more calmly. “That Jack guy used to bike over from Cupertino when he stayed here overnight... those several times...” The look on her face suddenly twisted as she leaped to a completely irrelevant and false realization. “Brian, was Jack really Kathleen’s boyfriend—”

“Yes!” I shouted over her. I knew all those times I housed Jack for Kathleen was going to come back and bite me in the ass. (I’m not blaming anyone for my mom’s misunderstanding.)

My mom got up from the table and joined my dad on the sofa, leaving me alone on an island in our kitchen. At this point, I knew that my mom was already driving miles away from my original intentions of this dinner conversation, and she was trying to drag me along with her. “Brian, I need you to always tell me the truth!”

“I’m not lying! Jack was Kathleen’s boyfriend! Only thing he ever did was introduce me to guys!” I defended myself.

She reiterated herself again. “Brian, why can you hardly ever be truthful with us? Where’s your respect? Do you think we’re just easy? That you can beg us to drive you down to cities three hours away, not clean up your room, and then yell at us? Normal kids aren’t like this, and me and your dad are even more lenient then their parents! Why can’t you treat us like how those kids treat their parents?”

Reluctantly, I argued with her briefly. “You don’t even have any idea of what ‘normal kids’ are like! I have friends who, when they do talk to their parents, yell all the time! You give me permission to do things, and I do thank you for them. These friends of mine don’t get permission for some of the things they do, but they do them anyway, and they make sure that they can piss off their parents as much as possible in the process.”

“Brian, you don’t compare yourself to others!” she retorted.

“What?! I can’t compare myself to others, but you can?”

“Well, those kids are just bad kids anyways.”

When my mom judges the quality of my friends, I know that the first thing she looks at is how they do in school. Who were the friends that I was thinking of when I made that argument? Maggie, who’s doing a hell lot better than me at, and cares more about, school; Jack, Mr. 2200-something SAT score; and Vance, future UCSD student.

Arguing with her was just going to lead to dead ends, so I tried to get back on track. “Look, I don’t care. I wanna know what dad thinks about me going to prom with a guy.”

My mom fell quiet, and our eyes fell on him. My dad was silent, and his face was stern. He didn’t turn his head to me; his eyes still laid glued to the TV. Finally, he began droning on with the same dribble he gave me last year when I came out. “Make school your first priority. Nothing else is important right now. Once you’re done getting your education, you can go ahead and do whatever you want with your life.”

I sat still at the dinner table, gaping at him in disbelief. It was like nothing had changed; he was still dancing around the main issue and could not open up to me. My attempts to get closer to him within the last four months started to look futile.

“Not good enough,” I declared. I abruptly left the dinner table without another word and trampled off to my room, where I found myself toying with my tennis racket.



As I stood there at the entrance to the tennis court at the park by my house, I replayed the events of the past hour in my head. 8:45, there was still a slight hint of blue in the sky, but it was dead silent. I squinted through the darkness to completely make sure that no one was still at the park; looked like everybody had already settled into their homes. The air was chilly, but that still couldn’t cool down my rage. What I did for the next five minutes was as hazy and as unclear as the dark blue shadows that the night sky cast over the earth.

I clutched my racket handle tightly, letting the racket frame absorb my anger. And then the anger was transferred into the cement as my racket frame made contact. Over and over again.

Transcendence

I just wanna punch all the cocksucking faggots in this world, right now. Life to them is nothing more than an excuse to be loud and obnoxious.

Does it ever hurt to strive to be a little politically correct?

I don’t need to be politically correct. Fuck the gooks. Fuck the wetbacks. Fuck the niggers. Fuck the bible-banging redneck white trash.

Stop being immature. Don’t take your anger out on the whole world.

Do you want me to be politically correct then? When I refer to cocksuckers, should I rather just say the LGBTIQQAP2S community?

2S?

Yeah, exactly: who gives a fuck? Honestly, nothing matters past the B. I’d rather not be grouped with the rest.

Why not?

The first three describe only the gender I’d like to do, while the rest is too different. What’s so similar between a guy who likes to fuck guys and a guy who wishes he had a vagina and boobies? Just because we’re all a sexual minority doesn’t mean we should all be grouped together. Asians, Mexicans, and blacks are racial minorities, but it’s not like we’re all considered the same. And, much in the same way that those three races seem to hate each other, it shouldn’t be expected that I automatically be welcoming to everything past the B. I’m not, and people seem to be so surprised.

You’re giving legitimacy to racism to justify your reasons to hate another group of people; you realize that, right?

I don’t really give a fuck. I’m just saying, there is also hostility among all the LGBblahblahblahwhatever community; we’re not the one big happy family that pride parades depict us as.

That’s for sure, coming from the person who wants to punch every “cock sucking faggot in the world right now.”

Yeah.

You say you hate people past the B, but you also sound like you spite everyone within the first three letters too. Why badmouth them?

I wanna leave, separate myself from them.

Why?

Because, within each gay person I see, I see a part of me that I don’t want to be.

So saying the worst things possible about them somehow makes you transcend beyond them? I feel like you’re only descending into that dark lonely place where no one could find you. I thought you were glad to be out of there?

I’d like to go back.

What happened to your gay friends?

I’ve barely seen Cameron all quarter.

Well, not just Cameron. You’ve got the Funksters, downelink friends, Trung, and etc.

Well...ok, I’ve still got them.

Do you wanna leave them?

No.

Then who are you trying to escape from?

I don’t know. I guess...myself.

Yourself?

I’m trying to escape from myself.

Why?

When I think of being gay, I only think of it in terms of all that I’ve lost, or will lose.

I thought that, to you, “gay” only described the gender you liked to do?

That’s the biology part of it. I used to think that that was all there was to being gay, but then I realized that there’s some sociology involved too.

Do you often find yourself discriminated against?

No, that’s not it at all. I’ve learned that there are such things as uniquely gay experiences, but, they’re not brought on by a heteronormative society, they’re brought on by the male dicksucking community itself. That’s also where I see the parts of me that I don’t want to be.

What are the things that you think you’ve lost

A bright sunny happy future with a loving wife and kid. My parents—as accepting as they are, I still know there’s some loss. My relationship.

Your gay relationship with Trung?

Well, if I was a straight guy with a girl in a relationship that had the same characteristics as my one with Trung, I don’t think it would’ve failed the same way, if at all.

But I still don’t get it. I don’t see the connections between the things you’ve supposedly lost and your problems stemming from the gay community.

Well, some are because of heteronormativity; some, of discrimination; some, of the biology behind being gay; and some, of, yeah, those fucking cocksuckers.

Are you going to elaborate?

No, I don’t think so. Sorry, but I’m going to go now.

Wait, where are you going? Don’t go yet! You’ve only given me scraps, and I don’t know if it’s enough to make the connections. I still have more questions.

That’s good. Question everything.



1 AM. The packing was pretty much done an hour ago, and I was ready for the big drive back to school the next morning and the move-in to my apartment. However, I had stayed up rummaging around my room for my iPod mini, which Cameron gave to me for my birthday. I never recovered the iPod, but it was somewhat beneficial that I had lost it. Feeling the end creeping so near, I didn’t want summer to end, despite it being so lengthy with Breakthrough, Funksters, and the breakup, and despite my excitement to start dancing in Irvine again. The iPod search gave me a reason to stay awake and milk out the last few moments of my summer vacation, and it gave Trung a reason to stay for a little longer.

During the last thirty minutes of our search, however, our conversations died and we eventually both fell silent. Both of us could sense our imminent goodbye as my Space Jam bedroom clock continued to tick away the seconds that separated us from the end.

Around 2, I called it quits. Trung solemnly nodded his head. We shared a moment of awkward silence before Trung lunged at me for a full embrace. Caught off guard, my arms wavered in the air before I eventually decided to also wrap my arms around him and to rest my cheek against his hair. It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of his weeps, and it was then that the ticks ceased and time seemed to freeze.

Muffled by the sobbing, the tears, and the chest against which he buried his face, Trung’s voice emerged, remarking, “Brian, by the time we see each other again, we’re going to be totally different people.”

Trying to reassure him, I disagreed, but in my head, I wondered how true it would turn out.

Fall Quarter ‘09

My grades went down the drain this past quarter. Two B’s and a C-. Though I guess those grades aren’t too bad for the amount of effort I put in:

French (B+): Wrote all six compositions in English and then put them through a translator. Stayed in the back of the class, on facebook or sleeping, never participated despite there being a “participation grade.”

Natural Disasters (B): It was a 9:30 AM class, twice a week. For the final, I had to look up the lecture hall where I normally had this class because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was. That’s how rarely I went to lecture; in fact, I can only recall going four times, all of which I fell asleep during. But with questions on the midterm and final like, “What should you do during an earthquake? A) Duck under a desk and cover yourself. B) Run around screaming outside until someone hears you. C) Other answers as obviously wrong as B,” how could I not get an ok grade?

Sociology (C-): Okay, this class was a little harder to wing, I admit. The lack of effort I put in this class is the only lack I regret out of my three classes because I really could’ve gotten a C or C+. I averaged a 75% on my midterm and final, which, combined, made up 70% of my grade. The other 30% came from simply sitting in discussion sections and signing the attendance sheet. Once a week 1 PM discussions sections; they weren’t even early in the morning. I guess I showed up only 65% of the time, because that was my discussion grade. Oh well.

Academic goal for next quarter: Do better in school, obviously. Even though this quarter was packed and I found myself devoting a lot more time to friends and dancing than I did last year, I still had a lot of down time, hours of which I wasted on facebook or other random internet browsing. I stayed up until 6 AM on the Internet, and that was how I ended up not being able to wake up for a 1 PM class. My problem isn’t my priorities; I just need to stop being so damn lazy.

Reciprocals and Rewrites

“‘Gregory, the reciprocal of two over five is five over two. Can you TELL me what the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE is?’

‘Ummm... Two?’

‘No...’

‘Is it five...?’

‘Again, the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE is FIVE OVER TWO. What is the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE?’

‘Do you want me to multiply two over five by five?’

‘No...’

‘I don’t get what you’re asking me! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’

It went like that. I really wanted to punch him in the face.”

“Aw, Brian, it’s like SCORE! all over again.”

I leaned over a railing outside of Sang’s room in his dorm, cell phone pressed against my ear, 1 AM, December 8th, 2009, talking to Trung and telling him about the crazy kids at work, just as I would have two years ago.

I had called him earlier that night to offer a meager apology, but the purpose of the phone call was more than that. Awkwardly, I asked for his permission to wish him a happy two-year anniversary. He approved, so I said it, and then he repeated it. How bittersweet it felt utter the words “Happy Two-Year Anniversary,” knowing that it was all pretend, yet, at the same time, still slightly true. Lie or truth, one bothered me more than the other, but I couldn’t tell which one.

---
“Rollercoasters and Ferris Wheels”
Written December 9th, 2007 (Excerpted)

Trung continued trying to pull his hands free as I glared at him. The rollercoaster car returned to the docking station.

The riders were boarding, and now, the other two friends with us tugged at me, telling me to let go. It was time to get on. We couldn’t let everyone else wait any longer. Ignoring them, I pulled Trung closer to me and spoke to him under my breath, giving one last attempt. His stare finally met mine, and our eyes locked. His lighthearted face hardened as his stare began to fight back defiantly. Time seemed to freeze.

And then I gradually loosened my grip.

Trung backed up slowly, still not dropping eye contact. I saw his hardened face break into a solemn and grim countenance, but he immediately turned around ashamed and climbed over the railing.

I watched him exit down the flight of stairs.



Yesterday evening, Trung and I rode the light rail downtown to explore Christmas in the Park.

“I hope you realize that I still hate amusement rides and that you cannot get me to go on any,” Trung told me while we were sitting in the light rail. “Nothing has changed.”

“I disagree,” I remarked.

The whole event was like a chaotic utopia, in that the dazzling Christmas lights, the myriads of Christmas trees, the jolly holiday tunes, and the cool temperature created a fantasy-like “Winter Wonderland,” while the rude attendees, the congestion, and the Jesus preachers created a hellish dystopia.

I sought a place of silence far above the sea of park goers.

“Briiiiiiiian!” Trung whined. We were second in the line for the Ferris wheel.

“Don’t worry Trung,” I reassured him. “There will be no Final Destination incident, and there will definitely be no Discovery Kingdom rollercoaster reenactment.”

I managed to get Trung on the Ferris wheel with hardly any kind of struggle this time, but a small part of Trung still probably hated me for getting him on it. That part didn’t matter though, because what came next was far more important.

Surprisingly, I was as scared as Trung. The Ferris wheel made abrupt stops and would continue either forward or backward during the passenger loading process. Ferris wheels lacked the predictability that all rollercoasters had. Once I was sure the Ferris wheel was done loading and ready to make uninterrupted revolutions, I reassured myself that I didn’t need to word what I wanted to say fancily and movie-like. It just had to be simple, and I didn’t have to be afraid again.

Trung clung onto my arms tightly, gawking at the concrete below us. He was shaking, he was scared, his voice was quivering.

I looked at him longingly and then felt ready to speak. “Trung,” I began steadily, “let’s make it official—,”

“K sure!” Trung interrupted, still concerned with the possibility of falling face flat onto the concrete.

“…and so, uh,” I continued, now feeling a little awkward, “official as in, together: let’s be togeth—”

“Okay!”

“…I’m sorry I took so long. I guess I was, like, I was afraid, but well, I’m not anymo—”

“That’s good!”

“…so, yeah, as of this day, December 8th, 2007, we are, um, in a—”

“Uh huh!”

“…in a relationship…”

“Definitely!”

“…I should’ve waited until we got off the Ferris wheel, shouldn’t I’ve?”

“Yep!” Trung shrieked.

About five minutes later, the ride operator began the slow process of unloading the Ferris wheel. The lesbians got off hand in hand with eyes following them. If that wasn’t enough for the spectators, the next two that the gondola brought down to the platform were the same, but now in male form.

Trung was resting his head on my shoulder, and I rested my head on top of his head. Our hands were clasped together and resting on my thigh. Our breaths were calm and collected. The look on our faces, blissful.

Mon petit ami, [My boyfriend]
Depuis le huit décembre, deux mille sept. [Since December 8th, 2007]

FINALEMENT!
---

While tutoring Todd, I instead found myself slouching and gazing into space as he spent three minutes writing, erasing, and rewriting barely any less sloppily his name and date in the blanks at the top of his workbook page. Because at The Tutoring Center, penmanship matters. I hadn’t been enjoying this job as much as I thought I would’ve, and I wondered why. Replaying the last few days, I reflected on my anniversary call to Trung the other night, and I realized that this was the first time I ever had to work a job while my so called “love life” was in turmoil.

No Reason

December 4th, 2009, 2:31 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen

quatre jours jusqu'à mon coeur cassera.
je n'avais pas oublié. pas encore. jamais encore.

qu'est-ce qu'on aurait fait?
quelque chose. toutes les choses.
tous qui à moi
sont les memoires
les possibilitiés
les espoirs
les rêves.

dis-moi,
avais-tu oublié?
oublierais-tu?
oublieras-tu?

dis-moi, dis-moi.
---

Of course I haven’t forgotten. How could I forget? An irrevocable guilt that I can barely even begin to explain tears away at my heart each morning when I wake up because I know I’m one day closer. But closer to what? A day that probably doesn’t mean anything anymore, a day where I’m going to wake up at three in the afternoon again and head out when the sun is setting under the horizon, which is just the way I want it, yet at the same time I do want it to mean something and it kills me that I know it won’t.

What I said last night to you, I knew it would hurt, badly, and I knew the pain would sting you even harder by ignoring you completely for the rest of the night. I had phrased my wording carefully in my head for five minutes and debated whether or not to use it as a weapon with which I could strike you down. Why wouldn’t I? As always, you were discouraging me and my dancing endeavors, but, even though I knew it was just more of your playful banter, I was already on the edge, my soul having been long dissolved.

Both you and I know that there was no real justification to what I said, however. I didn’t say what I said to get you back; I said it just to piss you off, to shut you out. Even if you weren’t ragging on my dancing, I still would’ve found a similar way to take a huge shit all over the twenty months of our relationship. I’m back to my old tactics. You know, and I know, that that’s the way I am.

The question is why, why am I like this? I don’t know, and because of that I really hate myself sometimes.



When I was three or four, my parents took my brother and me to Disneyland. It was an extremely bright and sunny day, but the blazing heat couldn’t stop me as I ran around in shorts living every toddler’s dream. We stopped at a nice shady food court by a lake, and my mom and brother left my dad and me behind at a table while they ordered food. Along with the two of us she left us her sunglasses.

I deliberately dropped them in the lake.

My dad admonished me and cursed as he dipped his arm over the side into the murky water, and sensing that the lake was actually a lot deeper, he sat up and plunged his entire leg under the surface. As he fished for the sunglasses, he demanded to know why I did what I did, but I only stood there brooding, legs shoulder-width apart, arms folded, eyebrows narrowed.

Miraculously enough, he managed to retrieve them. When my mom came back with pizza, her warm smile soon turned to a frown when my dad told her what I did. She kneeled down to my level, and she asked, “Honey, why did you do that? You know I need my sunglasses because the sun is so bright today.” I glanced at the sunglasses sitting on top of the table.

I lunged for them and tossed them into the center of the lake with all my might. My parents and brother gaped in horror. I had won.

With the sunglasses gone, my mom bought an overpriced shitty little plastic orange visor from the gift shop and wore it for the rest of the day. In the family photo album, the change in accessory on my mom’s face is just as obvious as the change in her facial emotions before and after the visor.

When I flip through the photo album, all I see is the orange visor. When I try to remember the Disney Land trip, all I hear is my mom mumbling under her breath as she handed over the money for it. This has become my only memory of that Disneyland trip, and it is probably one of the earliest memories I have. It haunts me because I don’t know why. Why did I do what I did? I don’t recall being angry. In fact, I remember being excited about the pizza because I loved pizza. This incident is one of the many that makes me want to run into my parents’ room in the middle of the night and apologize when I wake up in a cold sweat, but my parents would probably have no idea what the hell I’d be talking about.



Actually, I do know why I’m like this (in regards to Trung), but I wish I didn’t because the reason is far worse than anyone could’ve ever imagined, so bad that it makes me hate myself even more. Sometimes I just wanna quit—not suicide, but rather, quit being me and live someone else’s life for a day or two. I’ve been trying to do that, but by the end of the day, I always return to this.

Mais le Sort a Voulu

As I sat at my desk typing up the final composition for French class (in English, to be put through an English-to-French translator later), it struck me that this was most likely the last French-related work I would ever do. Once I would finish this paper and submit it, I’d be done with my French class for this quarter, my last French class ever, thus making me forever done with French.

I hated French so much this quarter. The grammar assignments were tedious, the readings unstimulating, and every minute of class so long and overwhelming, the teacher seeming to never take a breath between her long sentences, which were loaded with prepositions after prepositions. But now that it’s all coming crashing to an end—this class plus a part of the last four years of my life—I can’t help but feel some kind of woe, dually characterized by regret and a sense of loss.

The regret comes from me beating myself over the head and repeatedly asking, “Why didn’t I fucking take Spanish instead?” French is useless. Well, it can be useful for some, but for me? A guy who plans on teaching in California, specifically in San Jose, which has many areas where Mexicans/Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos/Spanish speakers here make up more than half the population?

Teaching two summers at Breakthrough has especially reinforced my remorse, as I feel like there were some students who I could not break the language barrier with. Hell, even Vietnamese would’ve been more useful than French. I think like ten percent of Breakthrough students were Vietnamese. Guess the percentage of French speakers? Zero. Guess the percentage of French speakers in a normal high school in San Jose? Probably so insignificant that my resume would get tossed in the shredder for listing only French as my other “fluent” foreign language.

However, no matter how much I try to convince myself that French was a waste of time, I still can’t help but lament this language. As I’ve probably mentioned earlier, I’m losing more than just a language.

I’m losing a sense of direction. I may know what I’m switching my major to at the end of this year, but it doesn’t really smoothly translate into a subject that I can teach in high school. So what am I going to teach? I can’t spend hours in the shower coming up with lesson plans in my head like I did with French.

I’m losing a love. I thought French was totally for me, but I guess it was really never meant to be (pfft, as if anything’s really meant to be).

I’m losing a sense of individualism. I felt so cool to be that one Asian guy who went around proclaiming to be a French major instead of Bio Science like all the other losers. (Well, this sense of individualism died a long time ago.)

And, I’m losing a sense of pride.

---
“Five Minutes”
Written May 30th, 2008 (Excerpted)

As for French, I and the rest of French 4 have to create a video of this novel that we read, D’Artagnan (a shorter 100-something-paged version, not the actual 500-paged brick). This video is to be at least forty minutes long. French 3 is going to watch it, and then they’re going to take a quiz on it. How well French 4 communicated the message of the novel and how well French 3 does on the quiz is all going to factor into our grade. I hate this fucking project. It is bullshit.

Now, normally, I enjoy all things French. I enjoyed the AP French test, for example. However, I do NOT enjoy this project, and in fact, I do NOT enjoy this class. Why? All year long in French 4, we had to do projects and present them to French 3 so that they would understand it. In case you don’t understand how “levels” in a subject area work, 3 is less than 4, so therefore, French 3 knows less shit than French 4. In all of our French 4 projects, we have to throw away everything we learn in French 4 and use French 3 structures and vocabulary. And hell, as for D’Artagnan, my group is assuming that French 3 is not as smart as they’re supposed to be (and I actually think they might not be sometimes) and we’re dropping down our vocab and structures to a French 2 level. I don’t get to use ANYTHING I have spent so much time on learning and mastering in the last year, including shit that Madame even taught us. Simple shit like, “I want you to tell me what you now” (“Je veux que vous me disiez ce que vous savez”), becomes even simpler shit like, “What do you know? I want to know. Tell me. (“Que savez-vous? Je veux savoir. Dites-moi.”) What’s the point of learning all this shit from Madame if we’re not actually going to practice with it?

Ironically enough though, at Honor Night last night, I was rewarded “Most Outstanding” in the “language other than English” department. I thought that I might have annoyed Madame too much by arguing with her whenever she’s wrong about French grammar, but I guess she still liked me enough to single-handedly beat down four or five other Spanish teachers to have her one French student win the award.
---

I think I might be acting a little overdramatic because in reality, on Thursday, the last day of French, I walked out the door screaming, “FUCK YEAH!” But that was because all these realizations hadn’t struck me yet.

Although I’ll probably wake up some time next week and think to myself once again, “FUCK YEAH!”

Well, it’s not quite over yet. There’s one more thing on the list that I need to do, and it’s probably the hardest part: Tell my parents.

Crossfire

Saturday night—well, more like Sunday at 2 AM—nonetheless, nothing interesting was really happening. Facebook’s Bejeweled application kept Sang’s mind occupied all night long; he was trying to get those combos while mindlessly arranging three of the same color in a row and he was also chatting here and there with this person and that person, all at the same time. Just chillin’, everything’s aiight. And out of nowhere the ringtone of his iPhone shook him out of his game mode. God damn, it was a call from me, and I was sounding desperate to come over. I told him that, in fact, I was already parked outside by his dorm. Sure, I guess, whatever, he thought.

Sang got another call from me when I was standing outside in front of his dorm, and he trudged down to let me in and lead me back upstairs into his room.

“So, it’s 2 AM; what’s up, Brian?” Sang asked as he sat down on his bed to play more Bejeweled.

“Well, after my observation this morning at The Tutoring Center—oh, the manager offered me the job by the way.”

“Yay.” Sang saw that coming.

“Anyway, after the observation, I drove to LA, where...where I spent all day hanging out with Trung.”

“Oh.” Aww, looks like Brian’s having more ex drama.

“Yeah.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, we just spent the day shopping and everything was fine. But, then, we were at H&M when Trung mentioned this one guy named John who’s his mentor in some kind of internship.”

“Mhm.” Shit yeah, Sang managed to match four whole diamonds in a row.

“And, well, you know the movie Precious?”

“Nope.”

“Well it’s this movie about a fat black girl who’s life just keeps getting worse and worse. And Trung saw it. And it made him cry. And guess who he saw it with?”

“Jo—”

“He saw it with John. Just John,” I repeated. “No one else. Just them two.”

“Mhm.” Damn, my bad, I knew the answer—oh yay high score.

“You know what that means, Sang?”

That you’re jealous? Should I even bother answering? Whatever. Sang shrugged as he reached over to his desk to retrieve a huge Costco-tube of Gardetto mix.

“Trung cried, so whose chest was there for him to cry into? John’s chest, that’s whose.”

“Ha, Brian, you’re jealous aren’t you? And bitch, you ate all the garlic chips last week didn’t you?”

“Well, those are the only good ones. And, sure, I guess I’m jealous, but, you know what’s even worse?”

Sang finally managed to dig one garlic chip from the very bottom of the tube and popped it in his mouth. Bliss.

“We’re giving him a ride to and back from NorCal for Thanksgiving break.”

“Oh, wow. Is it going to be awkward?”

“Only if I make it awkward.”



Trung, Sang, John, and I were at a gas station about halfway back up to NorCal. Sang bought some more yummy snacks and headed back outside to the car, where only John was sitting inside. He was awake, but he didn’t look so good. His hand was up against his forehead and he was leaning against the door. The car was locked, so Sang knocked on the window to get John’s attention. John reached over to pull the door handle when suddenly, aw fuck, the car alarm blasted out of nowhere. John jumped up, startled, and Sang stepped back, glancing around awkwardly. He looked at John and shrugged.

After a minute, I casually stepped out of the gas station convenience store, lifted my car key, pointed at the car, clicked—the alarm silenced itself—and I disappeared back inside again.

When we were all on the road again in the car, I didn’t speak a word about the car alarm. John still didn’t look like he was doing so well, and what probably didn’t help was that my driving seemed unusually jerky that night. I had driven Sang in the past, and I usually drove a lot smoother. My music was really loud too; Sang had thought that I liked the volume low. He noticed that Trung would try to lower the volume, but I would just gradually raise it again over time. For the rest of the trip, John said nothing, and I barely said anything as Trung tried to strike up a conversation.

Whatever, nothing was awkward when Sang was happily asleep.



I told Sang that I would pick him up for the return trip to UCI Sunday morning at 8:30, but he already knew that I would at least be half an hour late. And he was right, which was fine because that gave him more time to chill with his friend at home while waiting.

I showed up at 9:15, and, surprisingly enough, the guy sitting in the backseat wasn’t John Duong. It was a guy named Chris Duong, someone I worked with in the past. Not like it really mattered, because Sang planned on sleeping the entire trip anyway.

Once I dropped Trung back off at UCLA, Sang eagerly took the front seat.

“I’m not jealous anymore,” I said as I started driving.

“Really?”

“Trung and I had a talk, and he reassured me that John actually has a boyfriend who he complains about to Trung a lot. And I guess if you have a guy that you complain about a lot, it means that you care about him enough.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“But, I’m still kinda glad I didn’t drive John today. I think the drive to NorCal deterred him.”

“How so?”

“Well, I noticed that John kinda looked like he had a headache once he stepped in the car, so I figured, let’s help the headache...succeed in making John miserable. I drove really shittily, took sharp turns, braked and accelerated weirdly, and blasted my music. And remember the car alarm?”

“Yeah.”

“I rigged it so it would go off on John. When I lock my door from the outside using my key, the car alarm will go off if someone tries to open it from the inside ‘cause I guess the car thinks someone’s trying breaking in through the window. When we all got out of the car at the gas station, I noticed John stayed inside, so I figured, let’s subtly lock the door.”

“Oh dude, you’re a bitch! I was there when the car alarm went off!”

“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. But everything’s okay now.”

“Really?” Sang raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, things are good between Trung and me again. We had a good car ride. I’m fine.”

“Okay Brian.” Sang knew to not fully trust that and lower his guard, because, if what I had told him about a few weeks prior would continue to be true, then I’d be coming to him a lot more in the middle of the night throughout December.

How did I even end up meeting Brian? Oh, it was the day of the Funksters summer intensive showcase. Man, I wish I got to do that this year, but it was cool anyway to come support and see the old Funksters, but what the fuck was up with some of those new kids, like Brian. Mimi introduced him to me as another guy going to UCI. Like I really cared, but he still seemed chill.

Then I got a friend request from him on Facebook that same night, and bam, he flooded my wall with five or ten hella long messages with UCI tips. Damn, seriously, who was this guy? But most of his advice proved to be true or helpful anyway, so I’ll give him credit for that.

Then I kinda forgot about him until I saw him at the Funksters audition, and when he went up to reintroduce himself to me, I was like, who the hell is this guy? Oh yeah, Brian. He was kinda awkward, and not that great of a dancer.

And once again, he sorta popped out of no where for Common Ground auditions once UCI started, but I kinda needed to practice the whole audition process to get ready for CADC, and I kinda needed a partner. We were still kinda awkward with each other, but then we eventually broke the ice over the topic of Funksters and, Brian’s favorite topic that he could never stop talking about, sex. That was one long talk we had at the parking garage the night before CG auditions.

Now, I might be rooming with him and Lawrence next year. That should be pretty crazy. Whatever.

“Hey Sang.” As I was merging, I looked over my blind spot at the last minute to see a car. I swerved back into my lane. “CHRIS I’m wide awake so don’t hit with me the Axe can again. But, hey Sang.”

“Yeah?”

“Am I irritating sometimes? Like just a little bit?”

“Nah dude.”

“Really? The random visits at 3 AM in the morning?”

“Nah, it’s fine. They’re actually kinda fun.”

“Ha, cool. Thanks man.”

Home-cooked

Thanksgiving break was okay—nothing too blogworthy, just a lot of relaxing back at home in NorCal. I drove back Wednesday night with Sang, Trung, and his friend John Duong, and we got back home around 3 or 4 AM. On Thursday evening, my relatives once again gathered at my house to feast on my mom’s cooking. I wish the responsibilities of holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas wouldn’t always fall on my mom, but I think she’s the only versatile cook in the family who can make something not Vietnamese, so my relatives look to her for adventures into American dinners. The Thanksgiving menu this year included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, egg salad, and deviled eggs, all made from scratch.

I’m actually very proud of my mom when it comes to her cooking because I think she’s the only one in the entire family that cooks for get-togethers. Even for events that call for Asian cuisine, my mom will make the fried rice, eggrolls, won ton soup, and even fish sauce all by herself, while everyone else normally just buys unauthentic crap from their nearest rundown King Eggroll. As for desserts, everyone takes a last-minute on-the-way-there trip to the grocery store to buy two-day-old banana cream pies while my mom spends all morning baking almond cakes, cheesecakes, or apple pies, up to four to make sure that there’s enough for everyone.

But she seriously needs a break. I don’t mind eating generic foods that taste more like the sweatshop kitchens they were made in if it means that for once, my mom can relax for one entire holiday.

---
“Bile in a Bowl”
Written November 5th, 2006 (Excerpted)

Tonight, for dinner, my mom made something that looked like somebody vomited shrimp into a sauce pan and boiled it. Smelled a lot like it too. I pushed myself to eat at least half of it to be nice because my mom spent half the day making it. However, I knew that if I had one more bite, I would’ve thrown up tomorrow’s dinner.

Before going upstairs, I told my parents that I’d be back down later tonight to make something else to eat. I know that research says that eating dinner with the family at least five times a week is healthy, but lately, I haven’t been doing that. For the past month, I’ve been eating lunch around 6, so when my mom or dad finishes cooking dinner at 7, I’m not hungry yet. I usually later come down an hour after they’ve already gone to bed. It’s not like I’m actually missing much though because I hardly ever say anything to them when we do have dinner together, although it still feels weird because it’s like we hardly even live in the same house anymore. The only time I ever really see my parents now is when they’re sitting in the passenger seat watching over me as a drive us to Oakridge. Once I finally get my driver’s license, they’ll just be the people who sign my permission slips and give me food and money.

The joys of the holiday season.
---

On Saturday, my mom made the same “bile in a bowl,” canh chua đồ biển (sour soup with a bunch of seafood in it), and, as far as I can recall, this is something I’ve always enjoyed. I was just too angsty of a teenager to admit it back then.



In other news, there’s now another kid in the family who’s old enough to walk/run/somewhat talk/annoy me. And, we had an autistic four-year-old at dinner, too! My aunt’s son’s girlfriend brought her little niece along. I didn’t actually confirm that the girl was autistic, but it was implied.



This Thanksgiving marked Trung’s third Thanksgiving with my relatives. I think they all know him pretty well by now, but do they know him as the guy I am dating (dated)?



After I fed an essay I wrote in English into a French translator for French class and submitted it to my teacher, Trung and I went to the Great Mall at midnight. Parking and people were terrible, and I only managed to buy myself a plain red hoodie for $20. Ran into Sang and then another friend I met through Funksters Summer Intensive. I’m gonna do my best to visit Funksters some time during winter break.



Friday and Saturday, nothing really remarkable happened. I mainly hung out with Trung, went shopping at various places, bought some more nothing, and ate food. Friday night, I went gay clubbing at Fuz without Trung but with my high school friends Maggie, Thuy, Autumn, Elora, and Loppy. It was my first time gay clubbing without Trung, and, it was nothing special, just I had discovered with being a single college student for the first time. I did do a lot of catching up, so the night was still fun.



On Sunday, I drove back down to SoCal with Sang, Trung, and Chris Duong, a friend who I first met working at SCORE! The ride was trafficky, but I was glad I made it. Thank you to Chris for hitting me across the head with a can of Axe to keep me awake behind the wheel.

I was wiped out when I got back, but my energy and all remains of a good mood died when I checked some two- or one-day old voicemails. On Saturday morning, I had received one from my manager at The Tutoring Center. She was asking me where I was--I was apparently running late for my shift according to her. Yes, the one I thought I cleared up a week ago. Fuck-up number six actually looks like a really big one, and now I’m pretty damn worried. I’m currently waiting for my manager to reply back to my really really extremely apologetic email.



Only two more weeks left before winter break; I can do this.

Fifteen Minutes

Yesterday was my first official day of work at The Tutoring Center.

Probably the first thing I said to my manager after saying “hi” was, “I forgot my nametag at home; what do I do?”

Yes, way to fuck up five times in a row.

Other than that, the first day and the second day (today) were fun, despite the fact that I am still obviously not fully in my professional teacher mode.

Here’s a basic rundown of the way The Tutoring Center works: each tutor gets one or two kids at a time for a one hour session. In that one hour session, there are multiple tutors and multiple kids sitting in the same room at different tables. The Tutoring Center uses this method called the “Rotational Approach” in which the kids get up and rotate to a different table, possibly a different tutor, and a different subject generally every fifteen minutes.

For at the end of the first fifteen minutes of the one-hour session, I know some kids change to a different subject and some don’t and I think some do move too while others don’t; I’m not really too sure, but after the first fifteen minutes, the remaining time follows the formula. The goal is that this helps increase concentration and helps kids absorb material better since it’s overwhelming for a lot of students to stay focused on the same subject for more than fifteen minutes (not a sarcastic comment).

Honestly, I really have no idea what the hell goes on every fifteen minutes. All the students know the system better than I do, so I just let them get up and do their thing. I can close my eyes for the entire minute-long transition and open them again to see one or two new students in front of me already getting started on their next subject, and I continue tutoring them from there.

Generally, the kids are a lot more behaved than the kids I’ve had at SCORE! and Breakthrough. Breaking everything down into fifteen minute chunks in which each chunk there’s a different subject and a different tutor actually does pretty well in keeping the kids focused and not itching to slide on cardboard across carpet or shit on toilet seats (things that I’ve encountered at Breakthrough and SCORE!, respectively). The environment is very controlled, things operate smoothly, and oh fucking god, the hour passes by so quickly.

Students will sit down with me at the start of each fifteen minutes, I’ll give them a problem to do, and by the time they finish it, it’s already time for them to switch. It makes me feel like a shitty tutor sometimes because I’m actually not exaggerating; sometimes kids do spend an entire fifteen minutes on one problem. This makes me wonder if I’m paying too much attention to one kid and not the other or maybe the fact that I just can’t seem to leave a kid alone also slows them down. That’s one of my weaknesses as a teacher: I don’t let kids think for themselves enough. I’m afraid that I don’t make sense so I sometimes overelaborate to the point where I just verbally solve the entire assignment for my students. I know I’m supposed to be patient and give them time to think, but the fact that I only have fifteen minutes with each of them at The Tutoring Center makes it even harder for me to shut my mouth and not panic.

And the other weakness of mine is that I sometimes really do expect too much from my students. This past summer at Breakthrough I asked my eighth grade students to explain how Phillip Zimbardo of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment would explain the actions of the narrator in “The Scarlet Ibis.” Those introduction paragraphs they wrote were an amazing fail.

My manager at The Tutoring Center reassures me that it’s not actually my fault that kids spend an entire fifteen minutes to answer one question and that me expecting them to do two or even finish one is too much. According to her, the thinking process and the process of making a mistake and starting over and over again on the same thing is more important than quantity.

During a fifteen-minute chunk today, I gave a kid named Yin three words to write one sentence each for: troupe, attain, and slapstick. He had previously read them in context and wrote down their definitions last week, so I figured that this assignment would be a brief warm-up. I didn’t bug him from there because I had to tend to another kid named Jonas. For five minutes I reviewed some math with Jonas, and—I think this was one of the few things I did right—I gave him four numbers to round to the nearest ten and turned back to Yin to check up on him. Yin had spent the five minutes pouring over the passage the words came from; this was where I wanted to stop him and yell in his ear, “THE CIRCUS TROUPE ATTAINED GREAT FAME THROUGH THEIR HILARIOUS SLAPSTICK STUNTS GODDAMMIT,” but I stopped myself. Instead, I asked him to talk to me a little bit about what he had read so far, and by the time I turned back to Jonas, he was just finishing up rounding the last number.

I believe out of the two hours I’ve worked, one hour yesterday and one hour today, those eight minutes were the only minutes where I was correctly using The Tutoring Center’s tutoring strategy. Beyond those eight minutes...by the end of the fifteen-minute chunk with Yin, he only finished one and a half sentences and didn’t have time to review the other twelve vocab words he had. Quality, not quanity, I continuously beat myself over the head with.

Other than the actual academics, I was worried that due to the strict controlled setting of The Tutoring Center, there’d be less room for non-academic fun. So far, I’ve only had a few small incidents of fun:

Yesterday, a kid named Salazar redeemed some Tutoring Center money for starbursts, and he complained to me that there wasn’t anything else good. I said I thought I saw some chocolates, to which he snapped back, “Well, I hate chocolates!” I responded with, “Really? I don’t eat any other kind of candy except chocolate,” and he retorted with, “Then you must have a sad and pathetic life.” This was coming from a kid who omitted verbs and employed happy/sad faces in his writing.

Today, a kid named Todd came in wearing drawstring shorts. The two strings at the front were tied in a knot and he kept on trying to untangle them the whole time. It was one of those really easy knots and I just wanted to lean in, reach forward, grab the strings on his drawstring shorts and...undo them, but I figured that would’ve looked really bad. He even asked me to untangle it for him, to which I refused, and so he only got more frustrated and distracted. I tried verbally walking him through the knot and then I stuck a pencil through it. It remained tangled, and by the end of our fifteen minutes, he—well, he managed to read an entire passage while trying to untangle the knot at the same time. There were four questions though on the next page that he didn’t get to answer. But he still managed to read an entire one and a half pages about the ocean floor, so I gave myself some credit for that.

Then I realized that he had already read the same passage last week.



This job is already fucking amazing. :) See how it’s affecting me? I’m pulling a Salazar.

Not to Dance

Today, I was supposed to audition for another dance team, but last night I decided not to instead.

The team was Paradime, a collegiate crew based half an hour away at CSU Fullerton. Alfonso, Kevin, and another two of our friends Jamie and Angela checked out the audition workshops last week. They all decided that they wouldn’t audition after the second day of workshops, but I was still wavering. I liked the audition pieces, but I didn’t really “feel” the people themselves.

Yesterday, the day before auditions, I finally decided that I wouldn’t audition. I hadn’t thought the family aspect would be as important to me as the dancing in a dance team, but, I gradually realized it was. Without (publicly) passing judgment on the team itself, I’ll just say that I couldn’t picture myself in the Paradime family. I explained this to Alfonso and he accepted, saying, “If you’re not feeling it then it was never meant to be.”

In other dance-related news, it looks like I’m actually going to have to cut back on taking dance classes because of money. I had told myself that I could sacrifice shoes, clothes, and chocolates but that dance would be the ONE thing that would remain unaffected, but, with the start of a new quarter coming up, I need a replacement parking permit, $225. I plan on paying for it myself, and I have $250 in my account.

I’m going to need the remaining $15 and my last paycheck from Pippin to support myself until I get a refill on cash from my relatives for Christmas, and honestly, the hours at The Tutoring Center aren’t too great right now. My shifts so far are either one or two hours long each; I hope my manager’s just giving me a little at a time to ease me in.

Well, I hear picking up choreo from watching youtube videos is a helpful skill. Time to work on that.

One other thing I need to worry about once I buy my parking permit is what I’m going to tell my mom. My account is connected to hers so she’ll be able to see the $225 missing from it. If I tell her that I used it to buy my parking permit, I won’t be able to convince her to not pay me back with the money she scavenges in coins from water fountains. Maybe I’ll just learn hella dope choreo pieces on YouTube and show her and tell her I spent $225 on a week of endless dance workshops. She’ll talk shit about me with my dad when I’m in bed, but whatever, she’ll be $225 richer in the sense that she will not have lost $225 by her maternal instincts.

---
“For My Parents”
Written March 16th, 2007 (Excerpted)

I remember a year ago when I was going through my gay teenage angst rebellion phase, I didn’t give two shits about my mom or dad. [I wrote on the night of 3/28/06,] “I think if I still had any respect left for them as my parents, I would've been quick to apologize. But sadly, I hardly even care anymore.”

That [same] night, my brother came into my room to lecture me again, basically telling me, “Look, I used to be where you are now. But one day, you’ll realize how important it is to you that you make them as happy as possible. I know that you get annoyed when I play along with mom and dad’s corny humor—I think it’s dumb too, but I do it for a reason. So, just go downstairs and apologize to Mom already, whether or not it hurts you.”

I called his policy absolutely bullshit and retorted with some shit like, “Fuck no. If they can’t make me happy, how can I even begin to reciprocate?”

God, did I really mention that when I look back at sophomore year, I really hated every thing about me? Well, fortunately, within one year, I’ve gone a long way, along with my parents.

My original plans didn’t happen today, so I wounded up dining out in Milpitas with my family and relatives. Normally, I would skip out on these kinds of dinners and just go to Oakridge, but it was my mom’s 50th birthday today, so I figured that I should be nice for once. I’ve learned from the past year that even though me and my parents hardly ever interact together during family gatherings, my presence is still important to them.

Towards the end of the dinner, I stood up to stretch, and my little cousins asked me to flex my muscles again. I heeded, and this ended up catching the attention of all my relatives at the dinner table. Vy, Hannah’s mom, singled me out.

“Wow, Brian, do you work out?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I answered timidly with a bit of pride just beginning to sprout out of its seedpod (yeah, I’m a lot more modest around my relatives than I am around my friends).

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she inquired.

Upon hearing that question, I tensed a little bit, so I looked at my parents for any kind of visual cues. They were leaning over their plates and staring down, forcing themselves to keep up their smiles.

I let out a deep breath and then regained my posture. “Nah, I don’t.”

“Oh, no, why?”

“Oh, well, I just keep on rejecting them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, rejection after rejection, they finally figured out the real me, so they stopped trying altogether.” I smirked. At this point, I was actually kinda amusing myself by seeing how long I could dance along the crater of the volcano.

“Oh, is it your mom? Does she say ‘No girlfriends’?”

“Nah, trust me, she doesn’t say ‘No girlfriends’.” With a quirky smile, I sat down, and as I prodded the grains of rice on my plate with my spoon, my grin relented back to a timid smile.

I glanced over my parents, and they were sitting back in their chairs, breathing a small sigh of relief.

Whenever you guys are ready.