Bad Person

As my friend Lisa and I wandered down hallways at the UCI student center, we peaked our heads inside study rooms to try to find anyone we might had known. During finals week at 2 AM, it wasn’t hard to find anyone and everyone pulling all nighters on campus and wishing they hadn’t spent their last week recovering from Thanksgiving turkey instead of studying in advance. Lisa eventually found a few friends of hers, and one of her guy friends in particular I thought was cute—typical dark skin Filipino with a buzz cut and line-up and a fresh white v-neck, my type—so I didn’t hesitate to share the table with him. He introduced himself, but there was something about his name that immediately stopped my train of thought.

One night, after Linh and I made up and before our inevitable “break up,” he told me about some of the guys that had hurt him in the past. One such guy was a Filipino kid who went to UCI and went by the name of KR.

“I’m Brian.”

“I’m KR. Nice to meet you.”

He sat back down, and I set myself up at the opposite end of the table next to Lisa. I spoke into her ear, “That was one of the guys that Linh got all butthurt about a long time ago.” She’d already known he sucked dick, but she didn’t know he dated Linh. While KR had his head buried in his books, I eyed him from time to time.

About an hour later, fed up with studying for my history final and failing at memorizing Asian names that all sounded the same, I struck up a conversation about Lisa. I made no attempt to keep my voice down.

“Lisa, look at Linh’s performance with his dance team.” I turned my laptop toward her to show her a youtube video. “Damn I love this piece. Linh kills it too. Linh was supposed to teach it to me but then, y’know, drama happened with Linh and me.”

Lisa shot a glance at KR and turned back to me. “KR’s right there,” she whispered. I pretended not to hear her.

“Linh was a good dancer, but beside that we didn’t really match. I don’t know how I thought things could’ve worked out between me and Linh.” Among the several times I mentioned Linh’s name, I managed to catch KR looking up two or three times. I had him.

Around 5 AM, both Lisa and KR started dosing off. KR asked her if she wanted to go nap out in the hallway on the couches with him, and she agreed. She asked me if I wanted to come, but no, I wanted them to have their alone time. I knew they wouldn’t be sleeping at all.

An hour passed, and Lisa came back. “KR finally went to sleep but I still felt wide awake. So I’m back here I guess.”

I nodded. “So did you guys talk about me?”

“What?” She laughed. “Maybe. You should talk to him! Try getting to know him a little better.”

“Really? Because I think I’m in a hook up mood.”

“No! Don’t do that. I meant actually date him!”

“I’ll consider it. So, what’d he say about Linh?”

“Um, he did bring him up. How’d you know?”

I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair. I shrugged. “I just figured.”



The bed sheets were cold as I sat on them, and the white walls, a slight tint of blue as I stared into them at 1 PM on a cloudy day in March. Trung crept into the room with a cup of water and closed the door behind him.

“Here,” he placed the cup in my hand. I put it on his dresser without drinking it. My throat throbbed and my voice quivered and cracked as I opened my mouth to once again, summarize the developing situation. “Trung, we’re not going to the same college.”

He sat closer to me and placed his hand on top of mine. “I know, but we can work things out Brian. We don’t need to go to UCSD together. Hell, I think I might just go to UCLA. You got accepted into UCI last week, so if you go there you won’t be far away! Brian, we will work.”

“Trung, I—” I stuttered. I fought for a few breaths just so I could try to say a few more words, but I couldn’t. Instead, I burst with streams of tears and that terrible screechy wailing sound I would always make when I cried. Trung threw his arms around me, and I fell back onto the bed with him on top of me. He kissed the side of my face and tried to caress it dry with his fingers.

“Brian, I love you.”

We had started talking in September. We had begun our relationship in December. It had been three and a half months since then. We never wanted to say it, but we had already known we loved each other somewhere in those earlier months.

I swallowed enough tears to say it back to him, “I love you too, Trung.”



Two weeks had passed since Linh and I split over the issue of Trung. A day prior to the split I asked Trung to write some more obscene messages on my FaceBook wall in hopes that Linh would read them (Trung’s “btw brian can i have more underwear when i come over,” to which I responded, “what happened to all of mine that you already have”). As if that wasn’t fun enough, I wondered what kind of reaction I could get out of Linh if I hooked up with one of his ex’s and sent him an obnoxious message bragging about it. Maybe I could finally get him to stop ignoring me. All this was what I was thinking four hours ago when I hatched a plan to find out more about the history of KR and Linh.

Everything in the plan was working out. Lisa heard all about the history during the last hour. She had it in her head, and I knew I could have convinced her to reveal all I wanted to know.

But then I didn’t. I stopped myself. I could’ve gone farther, but I didn’t. Fuck, I am not a bad person.