Empty Nest

I had made the decision to move on. Crushing on Vance wasn’t getting me anywhere and at age fifteen, I still had a lot more to life than sulking over him. "If you won't go out with me now, then just tell me 'no' so I can move on to other things in life." I was thinking of telling him that all day. It was my goal. It was all I imagined that would happen at the end of today.

I had my dad drive me to the Golf Land in Milpitas, and from there I walked to the restaurant Vance worked at. Got there around six, said hey to Vance and some of the workers who recognized me from a few earlier visits. One of Vance’s co-workers thought that I was his boyfriend... I wished. Anyways, after chatting for a few minutes, I sat down at the bar and ordered some food, and periodically Vance walked by to talk a bit. During one of these quick visits, he told me that he was excited about going to some party with Joanna and Hillary, two of his co-workers, right after work. Shit. Okay, whatever, I'll go along with them to the party and have my talk with him after. Vance used his cell phone to call his mom to ask her, and he had some trouble getting her permission. He said that Joanna was taking him out to eat, and he and his mom eventually agreed on a curfew: 12 AM.

I had to figure out a way to get home. Joanna didn't want to drive me all the way back to San Jose, so I just told her to drop me off with Vance after the party because my parents knew where his house was. That was a lie—they didn't know where he lived at all. I just wanted to be with Vance alone so I could give him the talk. What I was going to do once I needed my parents to pick me up was something else that I had to figure out later.

For some reason, I thought that party was going to be a pleasant party at a community center, with soda and rice dishes and what not. That was a party as I understood it at age fifteen. However, I noticed that we weren't driving to some community center. In fact, we were driving away from general public areas. We drove up into the hills, went by a church, and up to a lonely house. It was dark out and sprinkling and the gravel under our feet was slippery. Joanna had to drive around a bunch of random crap lying on the gravel to get to the other side of the house, where there were several other cars already parked. Through the car window, I saw people in scatter groups standing outside smoking cigarettes and holding beer bottles. I was just like, "Oh my fucking god." It was that kind of party. My first college house party.
---

After finishing my shopping trip with Ranier, I came back home around 10 to spend the rest of the night before Thanksgiving helping my mom prepare the turkey. I hadn’t done this since Freshmen year in high school (incidentally, the last year I got straight A’s in school), yet with all that had changed in the last six years, my turkey responsibilities remained the same: crush the bread crumbs and make sure that my mom applied the ratios correctly from the turkey stuffing recipe. I sat at the kitchen table working, while my mom stood at the kitchen counter yanking organs from the turkey and slicing them up.

“...and,” she went on, “I just love the new grocery department at Target, don’t you?”

I smiled. A whole five pound chicken for five dollars? Yes, I did too. “Yeah, it’s really cheap.”

“They have bananas for—”

“Nineteen cents each!” we both chimed together.

My brother never cooked in college or shopped beyond the frozen food aisle; he would just come home from Davis every weekend and my mom would cook up a week’s worth of food and send it with him back up to school in Tupperware. Even though my dad cooked, he still didn’t like talking about it because admitting to doing kitchen work threatened his perceived notions of masculinity.

As a result, the most mundane things my mom and I talked about were probably the most special things we talked about: SoCal grocery stores (Ralph’s) versus NorCal grocery stores (Lucky); the exceptional or exceptionally bad quality of meats sold at food markets in Westminster’s Little Saigon versus that of San Jose’s Saigon Business District; the different ways we cooked our pork chops or the different ways our salmon tasted; and our own techniques for figuring out how much water in the rice cooker was just enough.

My dad walked into the kitchen to find me helping my mom measure out chicken broth for the turkey stuffing. After noting the fact that this was the first time in forever that I had helped with the turkey, he asked me if I was going to be home for the summer. I said maybe, and he proposed that he teach me Vietnamese if I did come home. I agreed.

My dad settled on the couch in front of the TV, and as my mom and I prepared to load the stuffing into the turkey, my brother swung through the kitchen to ask me a question. Did I absolutely need a phone with a full keyboard? I told him not really, why? He planned on getting me an Android phone for Christmas, finally an upgrade from my teenybopper texting phone.

---
Around 11:10, after being awkward and talking to no one and sipping on a water bottle for a few hours, I got a call on my cell and went outside to answer it. I picked up, and it was some woman. She asked me who it was, and I answered Brian. It was Vance's mom, and she asked for Vance and complained that he should've been home by 11. I went back in and gave the phone to Vance. He yelled at her over the phone a bit and abruptly hung up after a few seconds. He said that we should probably leave around 11:30.

We went upstairs and waited for Joanna to use the bathroom. While waiting, Vance and I lied down together on a waterbed. He jumped on top of me and squeezed me tightly; basically he glomped me. I reached around him and hugged him back tightly, putting my head over his shoulder. I savored the moment and did not want to let go, ever.

I enjoyed my four seconds of the hug. Vance pushed himself up and was giggling merrily. Yes, it was just playful. Just playful. Here it was again: the hurt. He knew that I had feelings for him, so I wondered if he knew what that hug really did to me.

On the way back in the car, Vance rambled on and on about how much his parents were so strict about him going out. He said that before his parents found out that he was gay two years ago, they were okay with letting him go out whenever, but now they had become strict because they worried about him going out and having sex with boys. Vance continued to ramble on about how close he and his parents used to be, but ever since they found out that he was gay, they had only tried to be close to him to turn him straight.

It bothered me. It worried me. Two years, and Vance's parents still couldn't accept that he was gay. That he was not a failure. That being gay was not a choice or decision. I wondered out loud, "I wonder what my parents will do when I come out." Vance immediately turned around and sternly told me, "DON'T! You'll regret it!"

As Joanna drove Vance and me into his neighborhood, I thought, Imma have our talk once we got out of the car. We slowly drove up to Vance's house, which was dark, and we stopped. Vance got his stuff and stepped out the door, and right as I was about to open my door, Vance's mom walked out from behind the bushes. She glared at us. Holy. fucking. shit.

Vance tried to say something, but she walked right past him and went up to the car. She looked in, and Joanna and I nervously glanced at each other. Joanna apologized for bringing him home late, but the over-apologetic girl wasn't what Vance's mom cared about. She turned to me and asked, "You're Brian, right?" I nodded yes. And then she asked me if I was the same guy that hung over at Vance's house three weeks ago. I wasn't sure if I should've lied and said no. I looked outside to Vance hoping to find an answer, but he had his head bitterly turned to the side. Very cautiously, I nodded yes again.

It was deathly silent for a few seconds, but then she finally addressed both of us. She said she was worried sick, and that she didn't like Vance going out late, and that this whole thing was not a good way to start off the New Year. And she made it clear that she wanted Vance to never hang out with me again. Joanna apologized for her and me again, and Vance's mom gave us a gesture to tell us to leave. Neither of us even got to say goodbye to Vance.

I had Joanna drop me off at the Great Mall, where I called my parents and told them that my friends had driven me back up to the Great Mall to watch a few movies after the DCM was over. I asked my dad to come pick me up, and after I hung up, I wandered around for a little bit. It was midnight, and the Great Mall was pretty lonely. However, CyberHunt, an Internet Café, was still open, and there were a bunch of wanksters playing CS and stuff. They had a DDR Extreme machine, so I played a game. I AA'd Legend of Max on Extra Stage, got the Encore Extra Stage, and I passed it. Finally. After I was done with that game, I remembered, "What do I smell like right now?" Smoke, yes, cigarette smoke. I grabbed my bottle of Axe and sprayed it all over me.

- from “Lunar New Year”
Written January 29th, 2006
---

At 7 PM, I finished off all the remnants of gravy and turkey on my plate and, forcing the most polite demeanor possible, I stayed downstairs in the living room congregating with my relatives and their little kids. But around eight, it was time to load up my car. I needed to be back down in SoCal because I had a seven hour shift at Promod the next day, Black Friday. I excused myself from the Thanksgiving party to retreat to my room to pack.

Every time I headed back down to SoCal, I somehow always had more things to bring back down than I did coming back up. I rummaged through my closet and reached up toward a shelf to grab a cardboard box. I pulled it down and spilled it to the floor, unleashing wave after wave of papers. Among the key chains, several Lego pieces, and the single condom that showered out, something shiny tumbled down and bounced off my foot. I leaned over and picked it up. It was a key to my mom’s Toyota. What was it doing in there? Upon further inspection, I realized the key didn’t sport the Toyota logo. It wasn’t one of the spares that came with the car—no, it was a copy, a copy made at some kiosk in the mall. Ah yes, the spare key.

I had it made in case the war I had waged against my parents years ago got really bad. Despite all the shit I had given them, they would never retaliate, but I worried that if they ever did, one of the consequences would be taking away the key to my car. I figured the household living atmosphere would have to be completely unbearable if it ever got to that, so I prepared myself by making a copy of my mom’s car key just in case I ever needed to run away from home in the middle of the night.

I guess I didn’t need it anymore.

I brought the key downstairs and left it on top of the TV with the other car keys. After I loaded everything into the car and did a last minute check for anything I might had forgotten, I was ready to go. Standing at the door, I waved at my relatives and they all looked up from their plates to wave back at me. I headed outside to the driveway where my parents waited for me by my car. We exchanged our hugs and kisses and I-love-you’s, and once again, I departed from home in the middle of the night.