Memores Acti Prudentes Futuri

I tried to focus my eyes, but I could only see white at first. I blinked a few times and squinted, and I could start to make out some objects. They started out gray and fuzzy, but they slowly took color and form. Computer monitors, filing cabinets, desks that hardly reached above my knees. Beige walls, a ceiling, and a floor appeared, enclosing me within and blocking out the white bright light. Rays of white light shone through until the very last crevices in the walls were filled in with missing details.

A huge office desk sat at the north wall. A white board spanned the west. Filing cabinets and bookshelves huddled by the south. At the east—why the hell did I even know these cardinal directions—two manila folders hung stapled to the walls. They peered over a row of computers. Each manila folder was labeled with red sharpie, but the text was still blurry. I approached the manila folders, trying to read the text, but it still remained blurry even with my nose an inch away. Giving up, I turned around, only to see islands of desks and their seats filled with little kids. I recognized them.

I was in the fourth grade. We were all nine years old.

Kirsten. Dirty blonde curly hair tired back, tiny circular metal framed glasses. She wore a plaid skirt with a white polo. Her name was pronounced keer-sten, like cure-sten. Not Kersten or Kristan.

Franklin. Dark skin, plump body. White polo and black pants. Some of the guys, including me, made jokes about him behind his back, calling him gay and not really considering what that meant in the fourth grade. But he actually did turn out gay. I had seen him at Fuz a couple of times.

Darina. She wore a navy blue skirt and a white polo. Clean face, no make-up. Flat-chested. This was before she became a big ho in high school.

I looked back at the manila folders, and the red text was now clear: “Golden Rule” read one folder, and “Respect” read the other. Any time a student got out of line, the teacher would make him copy a poem out of one of the folders during recess. I never had to do this.

I held my hand to my face, and I was a little confused. My hands were huge, blottered with permanent calluses from working out all throughout high school and college. My arms were long, and built, and I stood two feet taller than every one else. I was wearing black basketball shorts and my black Old Navy zip-up hoodie—all things I bought in college. This made no sense. Where were my white polo and khaki short shorts? I was in my fourth grade class; everyone was nine, and I should’ve been too. But no, I was twenty.

Then it hit me. I was dreaming.

“Hello Brian.”

I turned around. There in front of me stood my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Roberts. He maintained a formidable, but respectable demeanor. He stood tall, with a sturdy build. He was wearing what he always wore: some kind of striped fleece sweater and dress pants. His hair was graying, but it still shined with youthful radiance. He kinda looked like a gruffer version of Elvis, and in fact, he was known for his Elvis impressions.

I didn’t know what to say to him, so I said the first thing that came to mind: “You’re dead.”

“Yes, I am,” he said. Mr. Roberts died at age fifty during my first year in high school.

“Then...” I ran my hand through my hair and stopped halfway down the side of my face, “then why are you here?”

“You’re dreaming aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I paused to collect myself. “Then why am I dreaming about this? The fourth grade? Why am I dreaming so vividly?”

“You tell me Brian. I know that in the fourth grade, you had a lot of memories, memories that you’ve repressed, long forgotten.”

“I think I remember everything I need to remember from the fourth grade,” I snapped back.

“Do you? Tell me, why do you know what’s north, south, west, and east in this room?”

I glanced around the room. Office desk, north; whiteboard, west; bookshelves, south; poems, east. I opened my mouth to talk, but the force of the memory pushed me back against the side of a desk.

“I uh... We were going over cardinal directions as a part of a history unit. We played a game where we all stood up—” All the kids, who had been sitting silently in their seats this whole time, pushed back in their chairs. I watched as they stood up and waited. “—You’d give us a direction, such as south—” Most kids jumped in their spots to face the bookshelves. Some ended up facing the poems, or the whiteboard, or the desk. “—And we’d all have to race to face that direction. Those who were too slow or faced the wrong direction—” The kids who weren’t turned toward the bookshelves returned to their seats. “—They were eliminated. We practiced this game all week until we had a ‘final tournament’ for some extra credit on Friday. It was pretty intense, and the last two remaining were—” One by one, the kids sat down in their seats. I tried to look for the nine-year-old me, but I couldn’t find him. Then I realized I was standing at his seat. There was only one other person standing in the room, a nine-year-old Seth. “—The final two were me and my best friend Seth.”

“And who won, Brian?”

“You named off the directions really fast, like south! -north! -north! -east! -south! -west! -west! until...” Dejected, I took my place in my seat as Seth remained standing. Everybody put their hands together to clap and opened their mouths to cheer, but I couldn’t hear any of the sounds. I sat in my seat, brooding and watching Seth bow. But gradually, they all disappeared.

“What else do you remember Brian?”

“Nothing.”

“Why don’t you spell ‘yield’ for me?”

I sighed. I knew what Mr. Roberts was getting at. “Do you want me to spell it the way I did at the spelling bee, or the correct way?”

“Whichever way you want.”

“Y, a stupid I, a stupid E, L, and D. You know what, I had never heard of that word before in the fourth grade. My older brother always sat in the front seat so it’s not like I ever saw the word on traffic signs.”

“So who won that spelling bee?”

“Not Seth thank god. What a dumbass though. It was just him and some sixth grade chick, and he couldn’t spell ‘announcement.’ He lost track of his n’s. I fucking knew how to spell it. I could’ve won. But whatever. He didn’t win. I was happy with that.”

“Were you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what happened when you and Seth came back to class.”

I sighed again. Mr. Roberts couldn’t stop prying. “As Seth walked through the door and to his desk, all the students were pounding the tables and chanting, ‘Seth! Seth! Seth! Seth! I trailed in silently behind him.”

Mr. Roberts nodded.

“Are we done yet? Can I wake the fuck up already?”

“Excuse me? Do you want to copy your first ‘Golden Rule’ poem?”

“Sorry. Can I wake up already?”

“Not yet, let’s go outside, shall we?”

“No—” I blinked once and suddenly found myself outside on the black top. My eyes didn’t even have time to adjust to the sunlight when I felt something smash against my shin. I fell to the asphalt. A bunch of kids stepped over me as they ran past me, and looking up, I saw a red rubber ball bouncing away.

I stood up, brushed the dirt off myself, and turned my head to see my classmates crowding around Seth, high-fiving his hands, patting his back, grabbing his shoulder, rubbing his head.

I retreated to the playground without looking back. I nearly hit my head against the monkey bars before settling on sitting at the end of a slide. Mr. Roberts appeared.

“Do you know what just happened?” he asked.

“Dodgeball. Seth, the last one remaining on his team, versus me, the last one remaining on my team.”

Mr. Roberts nodded. “Go on.”

“We tossed the ball back and forth for a bit. I always had pretty weak throws; I was better at dodging, but all the adrenaline had me throwing as hard as Seth did. After like, five minutes, I underestimated one of his throws, and the ball slipped right under my hands and hit me in the shin. Everybody cheered again for Seth, and I escaped to the playground. A few friends followed me to make sure I was okay, and I said I was, but, uh...I started crying a little.” I rubbed my face and was shocked to find it wet. “My friends asked me what was wrong, and I told them that my ‘torso’ was sore from catching the ball there so much. We had just done a unit on human skeletons and muscles in your class, so I thought it’d be appropriate to use some of the vocab. For some reason, my friends believed me, but of course, I was lying.”

Mr. Roberts didn’t say anything. He just looked at me apologetically, still nodding.

“Why? Why am I dreaming this? Can I enjoy the start of my Memorial Day weekend without having to think about all this?”

“Like I said earlier, you’ve had a lot of memories that you’ve repressed. This dream has helped them resurface. Maybe because you’re at a time when you need to look back, look back and let go in order to move on because right now Brian, you know that you’ve got a lot of baggage on you.”

“No I don’t.”

“Don’t try to hide the truth from yourself Brian. Truth—” he deepened his voice. Here came one of his classic Elvis impressions. “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.”

I rolled my eyes. “Alright, thank you Mr. Roberts. I’m going to go wake up now.”

I blinked my eyes a few times until I opened them to the sight of a white ceiling. I sat up on my bed and faced the light coming in through my apartment window. It was a sunny day in Irvine.

My Life

I’ve always wanted to be the French teacher—the one with kickass lesson plans and students who only wanted to speak French in class. This was my dream. I had spent my high school years shaping and obsessing over this dream that I had convinced myself that this was my destiny. But French has all gone to hell now, hasn’t it?

I still want to be a teacher; I just don’t know what subject.

About three weeks ago, I sent an email to one of my Breakthrough students. She still hasn’t responded. I’m not too surprised. I feel like I’ve let my students down; promises of continued contact and updates on my life through blogging have all failed.

What if I can’t even be the teacher I want to be? The classroom, the students, the knowledge to impart—I want that all because all that comes with being a teacher by default. Beyond the default, I hope to be the teacher that students look up to, get advice from, and laugh with, and the teacher whose class they look forward to every day. But what if I can’t do that? What if I suck at teaching? What if I come off as arrogant, as that teacher who tries too hard to be everyone’s friend?

Shaping my own destiny is hard enough when fate long ago decided to make me one of the fucking lucky 4% of the population that is gay. There are so many aspects of my life that I wish could be predetermined, but the sole thing that is predetermined, ironically, is the last thing that I would ever want to be predetermined: the fact that I am gay and will continue to be gay for the rest of my life. Gotta love fate.

Fuck fate.

I am my own fucking god, and there is no greater deity than my mind. My future and aspirations—I may give them the fancy name of “destiny,” and the coincidences that happen to have big effects—“fate.” But life is so ridiculously random that I can barely give any meaning to it sometimes. It feels nice to think of my hopes for the future as destiny and to attribute everything else to fate, to say that some force has this idea for where my life is going because I certainly don’t. That’s more comforting than saying that my life is aimlessly tumbling along as I live it.

But fuck comfort too. I don’t let myself get comfortable.

Maybe I could become the best French teacher in the world and maybe all my dreams could come true. Maybe I’ll become one sad pathetic shell of a person who never grows up. There’s the best outcome, and then there’s the worst outcome; I hope for something in between, but it’s hard to not expect the worst, especially when it’s what I see less hazily in the horizon right now.

---

3:10. The sound of the bell’s loud droning cut me off mid-sentence, and my students didn’t waste any time to reach for their backpacks and shoot to their feet.

“Hold up!” I shouted over the shuffling.

Their blank expressions gazed back at me.

“I’m not done yet,” I said, rather meekly. I glanced over at all of their long, bored faces, clear indicators that they wanted to be out of here. It had been a long class. A long day. “Alright,” I sighed, “we’ll continue tomorrow. You guys can head out. Don’t forget about your essays.”

I watched over my thirty-four students as they scuffled out the door. When the last one was gone, I sat back down at my desk, from where I tossed down my tie and surveyed my empty classroom.

An occasional motivational poster or a few crinkled essays from past years blotted the pale white walls. A ceiling light in the corner flickered until it finally died.

I brought my attention back to my desk when I noticed a folded post-it note staring at me from atop a pile of one-month old ungraded essays. Picking it up, I unfolded it and read the message scribbled inside: do you ever check ratemyteachers.com mr dinh? your not really the shit as much as you think you are.

I knew the handwriting.

I knew what ratemyteachers.com said about me.

I didn’t give a shit.



Around 4, I headed over to the school’s dance studio to choreograph for my weekly night class. I had to come up with something really amazing because my boss was coming in to observe my class this week. He had informed me that my work needed “validation,” based on some bullshit complaints that I had been using extremely similar choreo only set to different songs for the last three weeks.

5 o’clock came, and I had only accomplished getting my dress shirt soaked with sweat. I had wasted an hour figuring out how to move to music—as in, I was only moving parts of my body while music played in the background. I wasn’t actually dancing, so I gave up and took the bus home.

On the bus, I questioned myself. Why was I still doing this? Still dancing? My inspiration had run dry a long time ago. Maybe it was time to move on. This was a dream that I chased way too far, literally, and I had gotten nothing out of it. I only got losses. I had to stop wasting my life away; I wasn’t going to become any famous celebrity’s backup dancer anytime soon. It was time to grow up.



Around 5:30, I got back to my apartment, mail in hand. I trudged through the hypebeast graveyard that was my one-and-a-half bedroom apartment. LRG, Stussy, Johnny Cupcakes, Kid Robot, Upper Playground, Freshjive, Insight, New Era, Nike SB, Supra—they all lay on the carpet faded and dead, only to be brought back to life as zombies when I would shed my business attire and went out at night.

I let a voice message play from my message recorder as I sat down at the kitchen counter and sorted through the mail. The shrillness of my mom’s voice raided my apartment, but I promptly zone it out. We hadn’t talked since the day I left, but ever since my dad’s funeral, which I did not attend, she had been trying to reach me. If only I knew how to block her number on my home phone too.

I flipped through the mail some more, finding nothing but Penny Saver coupons, credit card ads, clothing newsletters—I froze. My mail slipped through my fingers and onto the floor, leaving one envelope behind.

This was the letter.

I clasped it with my hands at its edges. I stared at it so intensely that the envelope might’ve burst into flames right there. My heart was racing. I had to calm down.

I cautiously laid the envelope down on the counter, went to my fridge, and came back with vodka and expired orange juice. Took a shot and chased it.

I gently scooped up the envelope and held it before me. As though I was caressing it, I ran my fingertips down its side, careful not to bend it, not to bruise it, and gradually, I brought it up to my face and kissed it lightly. I let the smell of it linger under my nose, and then I lowered it back down and pressed it firmly against my heart. I slowly closed my eyes and began moving my lips. I prayed.



6:30. I had downed another shot, peed, taken a dump, organized all my dunks into their respective shoeboxes, wandered around my apartment a dozen times, and now here I was sitting by the window, vodka and orange juice on the lamp table next to me, and the envelope in my lap, unopened. I couldn’t open it. I figured that maybe I should just burn the envelope, but no, there was one thing left that I hadn’t tried yet.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I hit speed dial, and I immediately got his voicemail.

“Hey, don’t delete this message—” I hesitated. “Please...just listen to what I have to say first. Um, I know we’re not on talking terms right now, I don’t blame you, but...it’s here.”

I held up the letter in front of me to make sure, for the hundredth time, that it really was here. “It’s here, the letter from the adoption agency, about whether or not I’ve been approved. Whether or not I can get my kid. And I uh,” I paused to swallow my tears. I couldn’t let him know that I was and had been a mess.

“I-I can’t open it. This is too hard. I need you with me, just for this. I can’t open it without you.”

I said the words. The hard part was over. I breathed a small sigh of relief, and then I continued. “I’ll meet you at Oakridge, in our secret spot. I’m going to leave now, and if traffic isn’t too terrible on 101-South, I should be there in about an hour and a half.”

I hung up and sighed again. After pouring myself another shot of vodka, I gazed out the window. As I squinted, my eyes locked in on a glimmer far off into the distance. The night sky was settling in, and just beyond the horizon, the noble red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge fought resiliently to shine through the blue evening fog.

My Lie

You can’t spell “life” without “lie.”

This doesn’t mean that three-fourths of a life is all lies, but it does suggest that lies do somehow play a big part in a life. The lies in our lives are delusions; they come in the form of goals, dreams, wishes, and prayers. They give us direction and reassurance that we are accomplishing something or that we still have something to work toward. They keep us hopeful and positive in a time when all hell is breaking loose. Some goals, dreams, wishes, and prayers paint the perfect reflection of reality, but many reflect it only enough to fill the holes in our lies.

Live the lie. It feels comforting.

---

3:05. The sound of the bell sang through my classroom, but not a thing stirred. The entire class could not tear their eyes away from the two boys standing in the front. They both clenched their eyes shut as they racked their brains for an answer. Behind them, the white board displayed the current score: “Groupe A : 48. Groupe B : 48.” I sat at my desk, slowly rocking in my chair, waiting for one of them to speak up.

“Une réponse?” I asked, but my question didn’t seem to reach either of them.

Suddenly, one of their faces lit up, and feeling as though he had already won, he slammed his fist against the whiteboard and bellowed out, “Dormir dans l’oubli comme—”

“Oui.”

Half the class—that’s 18 students—burst into cheering and shouting as they shot out of their chairs and ambushed their teammate at the whiteboard. The other half sat in their chairs, sulking as they put away their books and packed their backpacks.

It took me another two minutes to calm down the screaming students and to get them back in their seats. After reminding them of their upcoming test, I let them go.

The students and noise now gone, I sat back down at my desk and surveyed my classroom. Festive Mardi Gras masks, colorful storybooks, and detailed posters about French artists plastered my classroom walls. Not a bit of the white walls was visible.

My eyes fell upon a desk in the corner. Sitting atop of it was an envelope, beckoning me to come open it. I retrieved the letter inside of it and sat down on the carpet to read it. My eyes watered and a smile formed on my face as I read the note. I look forward to your class every morning when I wake up. It gives me a reason to get out of bed. Thank you Mr. Dinh. Merci, merci beaucoup Monsieur. A demain.

I knew the handwriting.

“Juju,” I whispered as I wiped a teardrop on my tie.



After having a catch-up dinner with three of my past students from five years ago, I returned home to my quaint little house in the suburbs of Saratoga at 6. My mom greeted me at the door.

“How’s Janelle?” I asked her.

My mom hugged me and kissed my cheek. “She’s just waking up from her nap.”

I went into her room and found Janelle in her crib, reaching up at the stars scattered across her ceiling. I scooped her up and held her in my arms, bouncing her gently. She looked up at me and cooed merrily.

“You’re a sweet little girl, aren’t ya? Can you say hi to daddy yet? Can you say hi?” I ran my fingers through her soft baby hair and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

Sensing my mom’s presence, I turned around to see her leaning in the doorway, beaming at me, her eyes, shining brilliantly with tears.

“If only your dad were here to see this,” she finally said.

“I know.”



9:15. With all the French recordings graded, Janelle put to sleep, my mom driven home, my dress shirt off and basketball shorts on, I collapsed onto my couch and closed my eyes. A minute passed before I felt a warm body lie down next to me.

“Hi Cookie-cakes,” I mumbled. “Did you put in X-Files?”

“Yep, it’s starting.” I felt a light peck on my lips.

“Do you know if you’re staying home tomorrow? My mom doesn’t like being called last minute to baby-sit.”

“You know she loves to baby-sit no matter what. But yes, I’m staying home tomorrow. How’s work?”

“Good. Had my whole class screaming and yelling. Got a ‘secret’ fan letter. All the usual.”

I yawned and opened my eyes, only to see that before me on the coffee table sat a slice of chocolate cheesecake and a glass of wine. Grateful, I turned around and gave my beloved Cookie-cakes a kiss on the cheek.

The two of us sat up and chatted as we ate and watched Mulder and Scully chase monsters on TV. When was Mulder ever going to stop coming up with ridiculous theories? When was Scully ever going to actually listen to Mulder? The amazing thing about these fictional characters’ partnership, however, was that both of them were always important to the final outcome. Mulder came up with the really out there theories that were far crazier than the reality, and Scully always used hard science to come up with something more plausible and non-paranormal. They both found themselves at opposite ends of the spectrums, but neither of them was ever right at first. As the episode progressed, they learned to find the mean between the two extremes, and the solution ended up being something paranormal but still somewhat scientifically plausible.

As remarkable as their partnership was, halfway through the episode, I started to feel sleepy, so I rested my head on my Cookie-cakes’s stomach.

“Wow, way to be the man in the relationship.”

“Well, your stomach’s bigger,” I retorted.

“Really? Is it showing?”

“Just a little bit—” I winced as Mulder and Scully discovered yet another body. When the tension and dramatic music died down, I found it safe to relax turn my attention away from the X-Files again. Adjusting my head, I closed my eyes and pressed my ear against my Cookie-cakes’s stomach to listen for all the fun sounds. I smiled.

“It’s coming.”

Dinosaur Dreams

Dreams are kinda crazy. Not dreams like what you hope to be in the future, but dreams, the kind that you have when you go to sleep. My dreams generally have nothing to do with anything that I have thought about or encountered during the twenty-four hours leading up to my sleep. Sometimes I’ll just dream about something I haven’t thought about for years.

My dreams bring up stuff buried in the back of my subconscious maybe? Last week, I was making lesson plans for my 8th grade writing class at Breakthrough, and I couldn’t think of a good short story that I wanted to read for my students. I wanted to cover themes that dealt with the loss of childhood innocence. I slouched in front of my laptop browsing through the Internet, reading crappy short story after crappy short story. Nothing. I eventually got really bored and fell asleep briefly. And somewhere during that brief five-minute nap, the cover of Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye flashed in my mind. I woke up and, trying not to forget my dream, I made sure that the first word out of my mouth was, “Toni Morrison.” The Bluest Eye. It was perfect. I was so focused on finding a short story that I didn’t think of pulling excerpts from a novel instead. Tomorrow we are reading Toni Morrison in class.

That dream made me wonder, would I have eventually thought up of Toni Morrison if I didn’t dream about it? Maybe I was slowly pulling it out from my subconscious, but my dream rushed the process and threw it out into the open. Or maybe, if I had never napped, I would not have ever thought to use Toni Morrison. Weird.



But what’s weirder is that I’ve had some dreams this past year that actually kinda told the future. The future as in what would happen the following day after waking up.

A month or so ago, when I was six hours down south in college at UC Irvine, I had this dream that I found like five hundred dollars somewhere in Middle Earth (one of UCI’s freshmen residential communities). Most of the bills were counterfeit (I never have good luck in dreams), but some were real. I had around fifty real dollars.

The following day, Trung and I, sorta out of whim, decided to drive twenty minutes south down to a mall in Mission Viejo because I couldn’t find some shoes that I wanted around Irvine. Trung and I were walking around outside when I looked down and saw some green a few yards away. Is that money? I totally ceased my conversation with Trung and ran to it. I bent down and picked it up. It wasn’t five hundred dollars in counterfeit money, but it was actually a legit twenty dollar bill. I was over ecstatic. And I was also equally tripped out. My dream totally called it. I had told Trung about the dream too, and he flipped out also.



And there was one more incident. One week later, still down south for college, I had a dream that I was relocated to a new SCORE! location. (During my senior year in high school, I worked at tutoring center called SCORE! Educational Centers in my home town San Jose.) And for some reason, we were selling belts outside the store. And then I realized I missed some dance class. Whatever.

The following day, Trung and I drove twenty minutes north to Long Beach to go to a mall there, and during my car ride, I told him about the weird dream. We were still on a mission to buy me a new pair of shoes. However, before getting to the mall, I got super lost. I decided that I had to go get some money out of my ATM, so we were hoping to find my bank. We found it, and as I was pulling into it, Trung freaked out and started tugging at my shirt. He was pointing across the street at—guess what—a SCORE! center. Normally, I’d just be like, “Cool,” but no, I dreamt about this. I freaked out too. After getting money, Trung and I drove across and took pictures with the SCORE! center to document this strange occasion.

And we eventually found the mall thirty minutes later. We were that lost. And by chance, we ran into a SCORE! center that I didn’t know existed.

Isn’t that some CRAZY SHIT? I don’t know why I decided to write about this. Maybe I just want you all to think that I’m psychic? Well, one reason is that I’m starting a separate blog for my class. Writing about dreams isn’t any of their journal assignments, but I just want to throw this entry in there to show them that spare time writing can be fun! Obviously, I’m editing it for language. And I DO want my kids to think that I’m psychic so that they worry that I know whenever they’re not paying attention. PSYCHIC TEACHER!