Family Matters

During my interview for Promod, one of the determining questions the gay manager asked me was, “You’re from up north, but will you be able to stay down here and work during the holidays?” I told him yes without even thinking about the question for more than a second, but then I added, “My parents are going to come down to Irvine on the holidays,” because I still wanted to seem family oriented. A tiny lie—my parents of course had no intent on visiting during Christmas time. I thought I was willing to make the sacrifice, and well, at that point and the two months that followed, I was. Money was more important after all. I figured I could just see my family later because they’d always be around.

But then something changed. I can’t say exactly what. Maybe while destroying relationships and burning bridges between myself and new potential (boy)friends, I effectively learned to better cherish my more stable relationships and not take them for granted just because the people in them would “always be around.” (This is probably the most revealing of an answer I’ll ever spoon feed to you regarding my blog’s themes.)

I was on the brink of getting promoted to some kind of position that actually would’ve doubled my usual hours when I handed in my letter of resignation, effective immediately, a week and a half before Christmas. (But as it turned out, my gay manager was going to “let go” of me anyway due to my repeated requests for the entire week of Christmas off in the online calendar system. Apparently he kept on denying me behind his computer but I thought it was some kind of system error that wouldn’t save my requests.)

I would’ve left for home in NorCal immediately after I finished my last final, but even without Promod to worry about, I continued to stay the entire week before the week of Christmas because of not just PD’s Monday and Wednesday night rehearsals, but because PD had a team photoshoot in Irvine Saturday afternoon. I don’t know what possessed me, but I offered to open my house up to the team and cook chicken pho for twenty-five dancers afterward.

And so Saturday evening came. Still dressed in my photoshoot outfit and a little damp from the light drizzle, I arrived home and rushed straight to the kitchen and turned on the burners to heat up the three pots of pho broth sitting on the stove. My teammates squeezed in through the front door and, commenting on my house’s roominess, cleanliness, dirtiness, and weird decorations on the fire place mantel (grocery store novels that I found sitting by the dumpster one day), they dispersed themselves and found various places to take off their coats and settle down: a handful at the kitchen table, the coordinators suspiciously in my room, and the rest sprawled over my living room couch and carpet.

Fifteen pounds of chicken spread across three plates, three pots of boiling pho broth, strainers refilling with another batch of noodles every five minutes, four limes cut into twenty-four slices and a plate of mixed greens later, we all crowded into the living room and huddled around a laptop to review the photos from the photoshoot earlier. One of my poses, which I had provided while our photographers were still conducting test shots, garnered some praise:I had to leave at 8 PM for NorCal, and as that time approached, talk of going to another Irvine home to drink and chill started up. Before anyone could head out, the coords emerged from with a small gift for everyone: homemade Christmas tree ornaments, a square cut-out bearing the PD logo and lined by paint-coated Popsicle sticks and glittery holiday icons.

Once the ornaments were distributed, my teammates put on their coats and trickled out the door, bidding me a safe drive home. With everyone gone, Trung emerged from my room, and we packed for the ride home.