Right Field

I tilted my head at the text message on my phone: I’m going to be in Irvine today if you want to talk. Sent by Linh, Saturday, November 6. He wanted to make up, yet it only had been a week since I—what’d I do again? Yeah, since I had a threesome with two other guys at his place in his bathroom and broke his towel rack. I thought we’d both move on, but seeing that he wanted to make up, I figured that I couldn’t at least leave his offer go ignored. I texted him back telling that I’d see him later at night, but first, I had to go to an audition workshops for PD, a team in Fullerton.

Originally, I had no intent to try out for PD. I was set on doing the February midyear auditions for the team I got extremely close to getting into back in October, and, assuming that I did make it in during the midyear auditions, and if I was on PD, I’d have to leave PD after only having been on it for three months. To me, there were some serious ethical issues with that.

However, at the workshops, a few friends, some who were on the team currently and some who were alumni from the team, knowing my situation, pushed me to try out anyway. My friends from UCI, Angela and Mimi (who was now at UCI for college), also needed a third group audition partner, so, I figured, fuck it. Tenth audition was a charm?



I could see myself playing baseball, maybe even for the junior varsity team when I got to high school. Ever since the first grade, when my dad bought a plastic hollow bat and ball toy set, we walked to the park together and I’d swing at the ball with so much force from my tiny Asian arms that I’d eventually dent the ball and bend the bat. Now, with our baseball unit coming up in my eighth grade P.E. class, I was excited to finally grasp a real metal bat and hit a real stitched baseball.

“Brian’s up at the bat—everyone move up!”

I glared at Seth as he inched closer from his position at first base. Well, screw you Seth. Just yesterday when my team played a different team, I hit the ball so hard and far that I managed to run all the way to second base. Prepare to get your ass shown up.

I struck out, our team’s third out.

I ran to my place in the outfield and felt a tap on my shoulder. “Take right field,” the team captain told me. Yeah, I was already heading there. I turned around only to see Seth running up to me. I took a deep breath and stuck out my chest, ready for another snide comment from Seth.

“Just stick to DDR, Brian.”

Screw you Seth.



I woke up and found myself grasping nothing but a lonely lifeless pillow in my arms. Fuck that shit. I rolled over and found Linh sound asleep on his side, facing away from me. I smiled. I snuggled closer and slid my arm underneath him even though I knew it would wake him up. It did. He turned around and smiled back.

“Y’know,” I said, “I’ve missed you all this week and last week too.” We kissed.

“Liar.” We kissed again.

“What? I am not a liar.”

It had been a long week. The group performance that Angela, Mimi, and I had been working on for PD auditions was probably the most amount of effort that I had ever put into a group audition. We spent entire evenings at the gym, going from 4 PM all the way to 1 AM with nothing more than some packed PB&J’s to keep me going. By the time I got home, Linh would already be getting ready for bed. Even though we didn’t get to webcam or talk that long, it was those brief two-minute gnight conversations that had me looking forward to the end of the day.

I had to cut short my stay at Linh’s place, unfortunately, because I had to get back to UCI and practice at 1. I got to see him later at night again though during my group’s dinner break when I drove half an hour up to his team’s studio to drop off a PB&J with sliced bananas for him, bananas because I knew he liked them in his cereal, so I figured they’d work in a sandwich.

I kept on thinking back to the Saturday night that we made up—or rather, made out. For the first time. It was as though we continued where we last left off. I didn’t understand how it happened. Linh didn’t want to talk about the threesome, or the towel rack, or why he changed his mind. He only asked to hold me, and so I let him. Everything that happened since then, I forced myself not to question, realizing how happier it made me to not live my day to day life scrutinizing and not believing.



I’m losing a love. I thought French was totally for me, but I guess it was really never meant to be. I read over my blog entry and thought about a title. Something Frenchy. “Mais le Sort a Voulu”—as fate would have it—sounded pretty good. Trung and I had an AIM discussion about the entry, but it quickly went to shit.

Trung:
You can substitute "French" in your entry for anything. Dance shall come in four years. The entry will be like, "I packed the last of my Kallusive shirts into a box. The still glittering Gingerbread Man no longer looked angry at what it was smashing, but it was instead angry at me. Returning his sneer with one of my own, I closed up the box, sent it to the nearest Goodwill, and bought a new dress shirt and tie with the money. Goodbye college. It's time to grow up." Hee. THAT'S A GOOD ENTRY. Save that.

bbq dinner:
well i could reuse it in like two days [our would've-been two-year anniversary mark] and replace "french" with "trung".

Trung:
you could...that was pretty bitchy of you to say.

bbq dinner:
i know.

Trung:
(4:05:32 AM) do you feel better now?
(4:07:05 AM) i really didnt appreciate that
(4:12:47 AM) fine. don't answer. whatever.




I found a text message from Linh sitting in my inbox. Good luck with auditions. You can do it. Sent Sunday, November 14th.

I replied to it, Thanks. I won’t really need it though because I’m just doing the audition for fun.

I was going to ask to not be considered. I had it decided since I woke up the day of auditions. I didn’t want to tell Angela or Mimi because I didn’t want them to convince me out of it. I had the application in my hand, and I was ready to write it down, “Auditioning for fun only,” but then I stopped myself.

I thought, maybe I should tell the director about my plans to try out for another team in February. I still wanted to make it onto PD because I knew it’d provide me with training that I would otherwise not be able to afford, but I knew telling the director my plans would send my application straight into the shredder. No team would take someone they knew would be leaving (or planning to) in three months.

Well, either way, I wouldn’t be getting into PD, so I figured I might as well talk to the director. He told me to write down “planning to try out for another team in February” on my application and that he and the other board members would take it into consideration when discussing my audition. He didn’t sound at all pleased.

Looked like I shot myself in the foot. Shit.

After turning in my application, I checked my phone for Linh’s response to my last text message. Oh. I see. So I couldn’t talk to you because you weren’t being serious about something? Messed up. Lol...

I ignored him for the entire following week.



“I don’t know what Ranier’s going to do while you and I are at Super Saturday.” I took my eyes off the road for a second to check out my backseat. “I guess he’ll just be chilling in my car cleaning stuff and walking around the neighborhood. Remind to hide his Valentine’s Day present.”

“Sounds good. Speaking of Super Saturday and Breakthrough, you know what Priscilla told me a few months ago? She was surprised that you came back to teach at Breakthrough for a second summer.”

I slid both my hands from the bottom of the steering wheel to the top. 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions. The sound of Priscilla’s name always made me sweat. “What? Why?”

“Because during your guys’ first summer, she got the impression that you weren’t really serious about teaching. You didn’t seem mature enough for the job, and she didn’t believe you whenever you talked about wanting to teach French in high school as a career. She thought you were one of the least likely of the teachers to return. I understood her points. Sometimes Brian, I really do question the things you do, why you do them, and if you can actually be serious about them. Look at what happened to French, for example.”

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and narrowed my eyebrows, forcing myself to concentrate on the road. Fuck you Priscilla.



One week passed since the audition before I was ready to talk to Linh (online) about what made me mad to the point of ignoring him for an entire week: him thinking that I wasn’t serious about an audition that I was doing “for fun.” The talk eventually boiled down to a sloppy argument over semantics, about what I meant by “for fun” and what he meant by “not serious.”

Linh:
When you use ["for fun"] for an audition, it means you don't care.

My response to him, I could imagine myself shouting and throwing a fist at the wall for every syllable as I pounded each letter of each word on my keyboard.

bbq dinner:
I don't know who “you” is supposed to be, but I always care. It seems like I'm getting pissed off over something trivial, but it really means a lot. All throughout my life, whenever I tried to do something I really cared about, people would look at me and think of me as a joke.

Linh said he understood why I got mad, and we agreed to call the whole “for fun” / “not serious” thing a misunderstanding. I was happy that he at least understood where I was coming from on wanting to be taken seriously. After all that was settled, I finally told him the good news: In case you haven’t noticed all the congratulatory posts on my Facebook wall, I made it into PD.

The celebration was cut short. Surprisingly, he didn’t notice, and that was because there was something frequently on my wall that made him too uneasy to ever click on my page: He brought up Trung.

You Are My Best Friend

I bit my lips as I felt my face soften, and, copying the students, my lips curled to a smile, a humble one. I nodded slowly as I spoke in a lower voice. “Bonjour classe,” I breathed. “Bonjour.” I took Trung’s place at the whiteboard in front of his ten students and asked, “Ça va?”

“Oui, ça va,” they all answered in unison.

I scanned the faces of his students. Many of them were familiar, but there was on particular one that I had to stop at. I locked eyes with Matty, and we gave each other a subtle wassup nod.

“Alors,” I clasped my hands together, “Allons-y!”



After the students left for the lightrail station at 3 PM, I retreated back to the staffroom to rest a little before what would probably be a really long staff meeting. With Breakthrough ‘09 commencing in less than a week, we teachers would be finalizing every huge and every minute detail of our celebration night’s in-school practices, transportation, songs, displays, and the event itself. I looked over the student song, which my co-crew leader and I would have to review with our crew of 10 students the next day. In honor of Michael Jackson’s death five weeks ago, the students had voted to sing a Breakthrough-fied version of “Beat It.”

“Hey,” Nicky, my co-crew leader, said as she sat down next to me. “Guess what came up at lunch at our crew table while you were away working with your dance students?”

“Oh my god, what large animal did Matty liken Gabrielle to this time?”

Nicky laughed. “No, ‘pig’ was just that one and only time. But anyway, we were all sitting close together playing Egyptian War when Gloria sat down and was all like, with this shady look and shady tone, ‘Yo guys, I heard Brian is gay.’ And she said it like she was all disgusted too.”

“Oooh, yeah, Gloria doesn’t like me too much because I make her do her work in my writing class. For example, today I told her to pick up her pencil. So what’d you say to her?”

“Nothing. Matty jumped right in, and he pretty much jumped down her throat. He was all, ‘If he’s gay, why does it even matter? Brian’s still Brian. He’s a great crew leader, a great teacher, and a great friend!’ All the other students agreed. He put Gloria in her place.”

“Wow” was all I could manage. I leaned back and rocked in my chair. “Wow.” Matty was only 12 years old.



All the students giggled as their heads followed me around the room. I pranced from corner to corner like a giant leaping leprechaun, waving my hands in the air and awkwardly doing dance moves. I kicked over one of my speakers trying to jerk.

“Alors!” I yelled. “Tout le monde, une fois ! Jeeeeeeeeeeee—”

They all joined in as we sang the last line of the song together. “Jeeeeeeeee suizzz uune piiiizza, tombée en ruine!”

I applauded the students. “Bravo, vous êtes toutes les pizzas! You are all pizzas.”

After class ended, I walked out with Matty to Breakthrough’s brunch time. He was excited to see me, as I was to see him. But we only got to catch up really briefly because once the picnic area came into view, I heard another familiar voice that made my heart leap.

“IS THAT BRI—”

“OH MY GOSH IT’S BRIAN!”

I was suddenly ambushed by three or four girls, particularly ones that liked to be touchy with me when I was a teacher last year. I shook them off of me and tried to individually give side hugs to each one, and then I noticed some guys lining up, including Timmy.

“Where you’ve been man?” “Brian’s back!” “Are you swimming for pool day?” “Are you teaching today?” “Stay the whole day Brian!” “Brian’s not wearing glasses any more!” “You still have your funny walk!”

I side-hugged a few more students and then decided that this would take forever if I let it continue, and I actually had to go to the copy room to copy some worksheets for Trung. They were getting wrinkled in my hand. I shrugged and ducked my way out of the crowd of students and turned around to wave at them as I ran off. “I’ll be back in a bit!” I shouted to them.

You should’ve come back, Trung had told me. It was something that he told me every night over the phone when he’d tell me about his day at Breakthrough. The kids miss you. My second French class got distracted for ten minutes talking about you. You should’ve come back. I didn’t know whether to believe I really should’ve, but the moment when all those kids ambushed me outside the picnic area—that was when I realized it was true.

Throughout the rest of my visit at Breakthrough, I caught up with several students. Timmy wants to go to a military college. Lilly and Belinda don’t like their dance teacher at their school and wish I were theirs instead (lol). Patty is going through that teenage girl phase where she feels like she’s the only sane person left on the planet. Lorenzo is crushing on Lan, one of six returning ninth graders and one who I taught in my seventh grade writing class in 2008, my first year, and in my eighth grade writing class in 2009. I remember thinking in 2008 that I would teach all the way until the end of 2010 so that I could see how much the seventh graders I started out with would grow through middle school.

The one thing that every student who I talked to told me was, of course, “You should’ve come back.” I had to watch over Trung’s English class while he went to the bathroom to poop, and they all wanted to know, “Why didn’t you come back?” I wish I could tell them. To myself, the reason was understandable: I ran my class to be extra “fun” at the expense of discipline, and some students suffered, socially and academically, and I didn’t want to subject more students to the same suffering. But I felt like all the students would just think I was too much of a coward to come back to try to improve myself. Well, I didn’t know if that was what they would’ve thought, but it was what I started to believe.

The school day ended at 4 PM. The students lined up in front of the buses, and I waved them off. Before leaving, Matty asked me if I was going to come back the next week. Or the week after the next. I was sad to tell him that I’d be back down in Irvine, but I assured him that I’d come back up in four weeks for Breakthrough 2010’s celebration night.

“You definitely should,” he said. He smiled, and I was glad to see that my assurance was enough to make him happy. There was no way I’d miss celebration night.



Matty and I sat down next to each other on the lightrail. I had chaperon duty during the last week of Breakthrough, so I was riding it back with the students to make sure that they got home safely. Matty and I chatted, and he revealed to me that the directors were helping the student make a special surprise for the teachers on the last day of teaching. Matty could not keep any kind of secret, but fortunately I already knew because this was my second summer teaching at Breakthrough, and the students had done something similar during my first in 2008.

“Sorry, I just had to tell you,” Matty said, “because I wrote you something really good and I couldn’t keep it inside.” He exaggerated a shiver.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a rap.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny white note. “Can I read it to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, here’s the rap,” Matty took a long, deep breath. “Brian’s so Asian, he likes to eat rice with beef on the side. You love salmon, which can get a little smelly, but at least it fills your belly. You are my best friend of all of breakthrough; our friendship will always be true...ya!”

I was speechless. Matty could probably tell by the look on my face that I approved, sincerely. He handed me the note, and I reread the rap carefully. Then I flipped to the backside, where there was one last message: I will never forget you, my best friend.

The French Teacher

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

“Aujourd’hui, vous allez présenter vos présentations. Vous avez cinq minutes pour lire et étudier vos phrases, d’accord? Alors, allez-y.”

The middle school students understood hardly half of the French, but they still nodded at their teacher. They poured over their notes on how to introduce themselves and how to talk about their birthdays and the things they liked to do, and their lips quivered as they silently repeated to themselves their French sentences over and over again.

“Hey,” one girl whispered to a boy next to her. “I hear he’s going to be here today.”

His face lit up. “Really?”

“Qui parle?! Est-ce que tu voudrais présenter premièrement?”

The students ducked their head down.

“Well, the five minutes I gave you guys to study your sentences are up anyway. Are you guys ready to present?”

Everyone looked away, trying to avoid locking eye contact with their teacher. They knew that whenever their teacher used English, something serious was going to go down.

“Well, before I call on someone, I’d actually like to introduce another person first. A special guest, and some of you may already know him. He’ll be here to listen to your introductions because he wants to get to know you, and after you guys introduce yourselves, he’s going to teach the class.”

The students shot nervous glances to each other. Guests usually meant older adults in business suits, the kinds of people that made them nervous.

“Alright, can our special guest please come out?”

A crash, and then a sudden slam startled the students in their seats. All heads shot to the back corner of the room to investigate the intrusion.

“BONJOUR CLASSE!”

The students stared in awe.

I closed the doors to the closet behind me and marched forward. I stood there, my face beaming, my hands placed on my hips, and the morning sun shining through the blinds against my face. I glanced at Trung, who stood at the front grinning, and then I looked at the students. Their lips slowly curled to a meek, but happy smile.

I bit my lips as I felt my face soften, and, copying the students, my lips curled to a smile, a humble one. I nodded slowly as I spoke in a lower voice. “Bonjour classe,” I breathed. “Bonjour.”



One Week Earlier

2 in the afternoon. Trung stood at the white board readjusting the class agenda while his students slowly trickled through the door and sat at their desks. When he finished, he turned around to see Lilly raising her hand.

“Que voudrais-tu, Lilly?”

“Wasn’t Brian a French major?”

The eighth graders looked up from their notes at the sound of the name. A few seventh graders new to Breakthrough this summer glanced around confused.

“Who’s Brian?”

“He taught at Breakthrough last year!” Lilly answered. “And he taught the year before last one’s too. He was my dance teacher and my crew leader.”

“Yeah, he was my dance teacher too,” another student added. “He was pretty much one of my favorite teachers.”

Trung saw the excited looks on his students’ faces, and he tried to cut them off before this conversation went any farther. “Alright, classe, sortez vos—”

“Remember when he sang Boom Boom Pow at celebration night last year? He said the ‘s’ word!”

Murmurs erupted into excited chatter as students recounted their favorite memories of one of the “coolest” and the least teacher-like teacher from the past two summers. Trung sighed as he dropped his shoulders and leaned up against the whiteboard. He smiled. Damn it Brian, you still somehow manage to cause disruptions even when you don’t teach at Breakthrough anymore.

“Trung, why isn’t Brian back?”

“Yeah, what’s he doing right now?”

“Well...” Trung paused to think up of an excuse. “Brian really wishes that he could’ve been back. Trust me, I talk to him every day, and he’s sad that he couldn’t be here for his third summer. He’s just...he’s really, really busy this summer with...important stuff.”



2:10 in the afternoon. I dragged my shirtless self out of my bed and into my desk chair. I felt like browsing porn on Xtube, so I did. Guy jacks off in the library? ...ew, he’s fat and hairy. Next. Asian man gets it in both holes? ...is that a bald spot on the back of his head? Next. Then I did my thing, wiped up my mess, and crawled back into bed. I needed twenty more minutes.



After all the students departed on school buses at 4 PM, Trung retreated to the staff room to wait for the staff meeting to start. One of this summer’s new teachers approached him to ask a question.

“Hey Trung, who’s Brian?”

“Brian?”

“Yeah, my student Timmy says I remind him of one of last year’s teachers, Brian. Is that a good or bad thing?”

Trung chuckled. “It could be good, it could be bad, it could be both.”

“Speaking of Brian,” Doug, a veteran Breakthrough teacher of three previous years joined in, “Why isn’t he back this year, Trung? I really thought he was going to come back. He should’ve. What’s his sad excuse?”

“Well...” Trung didn’t want to divulge all the reasons in front of a new teacher, so he tried to think of a temporary one to use until he could discuss the actual reasons with Doug later in private.

“He’s just really busy with his studies.”



4:15 PM. I was sitting at my kitchen table with a bowl of stale Honey Nut Cheerios and my laptop when I couldn’t believe what I found online: two hundred pages of philosophy. The best philosophy ever, the kind that I could spend all night reading and commit to memory. I read the title of the book to myself out loud, “The Philosophy of...The X-Files. Fuck yes.” I began to read in my head. I would like to say—and, dare I say, want to believe—that the divergent approaches embodied in the characters of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder are a bit analogous to those of two giants from the history of philosophy: Plato and Aristotle... This was fucking amazing.

What All Guys Want

It was 3 AM in the morning on a Saturday night (May 15), which was apparently a really busy time for this particular restaurant in Garden Grove. Alex, Khoa, Daniel, Angela, and I—we were three single guys, a taken guy, and a taken girl, all crowded around a table over warm bowls of Pho. We were discussing one of our favorite subjects.

“It’s only the fat creeper girls that holler at me when I’m drunk. Why me?”

“Angela, tell me how to get girls! I want anything—hook up, one night stand, dating, or a relationship. Just help me get a girl!”

“Man Brian, you’re lucky. You can get sex any time you want because guys are always horny all the time, right?”

“Yeah,” I said as I tried to chopstick pho noodles into my spoon. “All the time, any time.”

“Man, I’m so envious of you.”

I smiled, nodded, and slurped on my Pho.



Chauncer Hien. New friend on downelink. I thought this was going to be another “whatever-I’ll-probably-never-talk-to-you” add until he actually asked to hang out with me. I figured, ok sure. It was only the third week of the quarter, so I had enough free time.

He came by my apartment on a Wednesday afternoon. I had thought he was only going to pick me up, but he actually insisted on coming inside. He had to spray paint a small wooden house for one of his classes, so I let him used my bathtub. While waiting for the house to dry, he lay down on my bed, and that was when I first suspected that he wanted some bang bang:

“Do you want a massage? I give really good massages.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Nah, no thanks.”

After hanging out for a little bit, I left to go to the library to watch Le Retour de Martin Guerre for French class. I didn’t talk to Chauncer again until later that night when I was standing outside the Mesa Parking structure waiting for Sang, ten minutes before the start of the make-up workshops for Common Ground auditions.

Chauncer texted me, and we started texting back and forth. Eventually, he made a corny joke, saying, “Wanna come over? I can show you something special. ;)”

His dick. I rolled my eyes and decided to play along. “What? Hahah lol.”

“You know what. LOLOL JK.”

I knew very well that, in the male dicksucker’s dictionary, “jk” meant “I wanna sit on your dick.” But I brushed it off and pretended to laugh along.

After getting back to my apartment, I chatted with Chauncer over AIM. At this point it was getting pretty late and I really had to do a write-up for the French movie I watched earlier, but Chauncer didn’t hesitate to extend one last poorly masked invitation for sex.

Chauncer:
I’m still working on my art project. Come over and help me!

bbq dinner:
I still need to do my French homework. D:

Chauncer:
Come do your homework here!

I sighed and glanced at the time. 2 AM. Did I want some? Was I that horny? Was I that bored? Was I that lonely?

One out of four questions, I answered yes, but it was the only question that ever mattered.



After finishing our Pho and dropping Angela off back at her place, the rest of us four guys headed back to the apartments. While walking back inside from the parking lot, I offered some helpful girlfriend advice: “It’s usually the upper half that’s the best. Concentrate there. Upper half, bottom side. Make sure she knows in advance to stay away from your piss slit once you’ve jizzed.”

“Aiight thanks Brian!”

Once we settled inside, we watched Daniel play Devil May Cry 3 and fashioned an apple bong so that some of us could go to space (not me).

In our conversations about girls, sex, and guys, basically things that all guys wanted, everyone would love to bring up my poor choices in the past. Tonight, we brought up—

“Chauncer Hien.” I said.

Alex looked up at me confused. “Who?”

“You know, Chauncer. French Homework!”

“Oh WAIT! CHAUNCER IS FRENCH HOMEWORK?”

“Wait, you didn’t know that?”

“No, you guys always referred to him as French Homework and I figured it was better that I didn’t know who it was. OH MY GOD YOU SLEPT WITH CHAUNCER HIEN.”



“You slept with Chauncer Hien last night. Wow.” Kevin sat back trying to get the images out of his head, and Alfonso was too busy laughing. I continued eating my steak. We were at the dining commons.

“Yeah, kinda literally,” I said. I was too eager to spill all the fun details. “I think at one point I fell asleep on top of him. My dick was pretty limp the whole night. Seriously, it was 5 AM. I had spent the last two hours writing up a French essay, putting it through an English-to-French translator and correcting the French.”

“Haha well damn Brian. Even at 5 AM in the morning, you can get sex any time whenever you want. I’m envious of you.”

I smiled, nodded, and worked on cutting my steak. This was too much of a fun dinner, so I didn’t wanna bring myself down by saying something that I really wanted to say: Don’t be.

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?

---
“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.

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.

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 Education Academy. 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.

Not Me

In my French Grammar class, there was a guy named Marc who sat on the other side of the room. When the teacher would call his name during role, I would always instinctively look up with the word “présent” already on the tip of my tongue.

“No wait—that’s not me.” I always managed to stop myself each time until finally, I no longer responded to the name “Marc.” I no longer turned my head toward the sound of it. No longer shook myself awake from my snooze to meet the teacher’s stern face.

I know it’s only been three and a half weeks, but I already knew after the first week that I was just kidding myself by thinking that there was still a chance to respark my interest in French.

---
“Dénouement”
Written June 1st, 2009 (Excerpted)

I was very worried that I had lost interest in French, as trivial as it may sound. French is my major, and for two to three years I’ve said it’d be what I’d do. I had already envisioned the way my French class would work, the lesson plans I would create, and the things I would have my students do. So the loss of French to me would mean the loss of a chunk of my future that I had already planned out.

I sulked over this conflict for a while, but a few weeks into Spring Quarter, I got over it after having a good talk with my friend Cameron during a late night walk around campus. He suggested that maybe my interest in French got pushed back because I more recently got into hip hop dancing. I have more interest in dancing right now because it’s so new and exciting to me that I want to devote more time to it to explore all that it has to offer me. Once I get to the level that I want to be at, I can tone down my focus on dance and split my attention evenly among all my other interests.

Still, I’m still itching for an immediate solution that says either I AM or am NOT interested in French, but probably no such solution exists. I’ll have to wait it out, and I’m fine with that, for now anyway.
---

After four months, I finally got my answer, but I can’t say whether or not it was the answer I had wanted.

Embers

I walked in late—well, no—the teacher started early. Either way, it felt like I had aimlessly wandered into a political rally for some trite issue I never bothered to understand, such as animal rights. But no, I was at the right place: Humanities Hall, Room 118, French100A Grammar and Composition.

I took a seat next to a wall to rest my head on while the teacher’s French vomit flew way past my head. Actually, I tried to understand, but nonetheless I could barely pick up any words. Every once in a while I heard a number, or maybe an English phrase pronounced with a French accent (but I guess those don’t count). No—I understood more than that; I am exaggerating a little bit, but am I at least getting the point across to you that I am hating this? The fact that I’m not taking one, but two French classes? That I’ve already spent close to $150 on a bunch of French books?

No—again—I need to stop myself and breathe. It’s only been one day. I’ve only had to sit through French for one hour and twenty minutes. I need to give this a chance. Even though I haven’t uttered more than one sentence of French for more than half a year (except for maybe, “My name is Brian”), I may still have a few embers within me struggling for air, and maybe this daily exposure to French will rekindle them. Yes, there’s still a chance that I won’t switch my major. There’s still a chance that I won’t stay in college for an extra year. There’s still a chance that I won’t give up my pride.

---
“Qui Je Suis” [“Who I Am”]
Written September 15th, 2007 (Excerpted)

A few days before the start of my senior year, I was eating dinner with my family when my mom asked me, “So Brian, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

I immediately answered, “I don’t know;” those three words shot from my mouth like a reflex. I continued to fire out curt no’s in response to all of my mom’s suggestions: “A dentist? An ophthalmologist? A pharmacist? How about an engineer? A computer scientist? Maybe a financial manager? Well, then what could you possibly become? Those are all the popular money makers. You can’t just be nothing.”

“I don’t know,” I repeated again. The truth was I actually knew what I wanted to be: a French teacher. My future career had been a definite and clear desire since the beginning of my junior year in high school. I had never been so passionate about a school subject except for French. Sciences made me sick, computers confused me, and math drove me mad. French was one of the only few subjects I still cared about. Unlike the money-hungry students and parents who only see the pots of gold at the end of education, I was more concerned with waking up every morning to a fulfilling job.

While I did know that this kind of career was one that I was passionate about, I was still nervous about pursuing it because I would be going against the norms of not just my immediately family, but also all of my relatives. My mom, dad, older cousins, uncles, and aunts all followed the same pattern to get to their current careers. The pattern began with all of their parents preaching and drilling in their heads with broken English, “America have many opportunity; find good job; make lotta money.” Being no different, my brother was currently on the same path as a managerial economics major in UC Davis. Their American dream was locked onto a high-paying job preceding retirement as soon as possible, but I was set on detouring from the $100-bill-lined road straight to “happiness.” (Ironically however, three of my cousins all majored in big money-making fields, but they wound up running their own separate Bagel shops after finishing college. More funnily enough, my brother had a part-time job working for one of them.)

I was planning to keep my career goals a complete secret to my entire family, even if that meant a lot of lying. I hadn’t started my college applications yet, but if there was a way I could hide the check marks under the section for choosing majors or a way that allowed me to keep my parents from seeing my college applications, I would take it. If I could, I would finally tell them about my hopes for the future when I turned twenty-three and had just returned home after my first day teaching class.

[...]

Hopefully though, the shock wouldn’t be as bad as I had thought. I was trying to soften the blow by giving my parents what I had hoped were some clear hints as to what I wanted to be. They knew that I dropped Physics AP, the more academically savvy class, because it conflicted with French 4. A pile of French study guides greeted them every time they entered my room. I was taking an optional semiweekly French class at San Jose City College purely for my enrichment, while my friend Kathleen was taking it because she did choose Physics AP over French 4. As for indicating that I wanted to be a teacher, I turned down a job at my cousin’s bagel job for a job at SCORE! Educational Centers. Working for my cousin would’ve paid more, and it would’ve required no effort getting hired, but I opted to teach children instead.

Whether or not my parents catch the hints or ever accept that I was out to pursue my own dreams, not theirs, nothing could ever change my goal to become a French teacher. I had tried to never think too far ahead into the future, but I couldn’t help but realize that there were two definite outcomes: I would teach French in high school, and I would raise my own child. (I don’t even picture having my own guy.) A gay French teacher—compared to the rest of my family and relatives, it looked like I would be the one cynically raising my middle finger in a professional family portrait.

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.”

Paramasturbatory Illusions

When I tell the story of how I got into hip hop choreo, there’s the short version, and then there’s the long version. When I don’t want to bore the hell out of everyone and lose my audience, I tell the short version: “Through a friend.”

That’s not an exciting story at all, and the long version isn’t that boring. It’s an intricate, seemingly disconnected series of cause-and-effect, a long chain reaction affected by other chain reactions. It doesn’t seem to be going in any direction at first, but bear with it.

- During my junior year in high school, 2006, DDR was dying, so black John got me into breakdancing. I quit permanently at the beginning of 2007 due to lol-drama between me and John.

- In 2007, a guy named Jon randomly messaged me on Downelink (the gay Myspace) and told me that I looked like his friend QA. I humored Jon and agreed to start talking to QA.

- Somewhere in my conversations with QA, he briefly mentioned a summer teaching internship called Breakthrough. I saw it as an opportunity to teach my very own French class, but the deadline had long since passed. I forgot about it after a while.

- In March 2008, I randomly recalled that one conversation with QA about the teaching internship. I couldn’t remember the name of the internship, and I figured that the deadline would’ve already passed. However, I decided to dig through my AIM logs anyway to find the name of that internship. I found it and discovered that I had two days left to do the Breakthrough application. I worked till the early mornings on it.

- I got the job, but then I found out that I couldn’t teach French for an elective. So, I had to think about something else. I looked back into my past and decided that it was time to revive my interest in breakdancing so I could teach it.

- After the summer, I decided to continue pursue breakdancing into college, and I vowed not to do any other form of dancing because breakdancing was probably the least gay of them. Admittedly though, I wasn’t too into it.

- When signing up for my winter quarter classes back in Fall 2008, I wanted this one Hum Core class for this one time, but that wasn’t available so I had to get another. I was kinda satisfied, but one random day a month later, I decided to check class schedules again and found that a another class for the original time I wanted opened up. Of course, I switched to that one.

- Winter Quarter started in January 2009, and there was no one really noteworthy in my class. I will mention that there was a tall Asian guy named Sam; he became important later.

- UCI held Vibe 14, one of the big SoCal dance competitions. I went because I still had a slight interest in breakdancing and wanted to see the breakdancing club perform.

- I had planned on going to Vibe early but ended up oversleeping, so I got stuck in the back of the line.

- Competing teams were practicing in area close to the back of the line, and that was where I spotted Sam practicing with CADC.

- CADC won, and I congratulated Sam in class the next day. We bonded over dance.

- He told me about Kaba Modern audition workshops.

- I didn’t want to go without Cameron, but Cameron didn’t really wanna go.

- While Cameron and I were walking back from the student center the day of the first workshop, he ran into his friend who convinced him to go. Since he was going, I was going too.

And those audition workshops were how I got into dancing.

All of the above was a summary of a really long entry that lead up to this entry:

---
“all things”
Written May 30th, 2009 (Excerpted)
The path of my life that has led to the person I am today is so delicate and fragile. One different tiny detour in that path could’ve led somewhere totally different. I ponder, what would’ve happened if Cameron and I left the arcade five minutes earlier or five minutes later. At the moment, leaving a little earlier or a little later didn’t seem like it mattered at all. But then we wouldn’t have run into the girl that had convinced Cameron to accompany me to the Kaba Modern audition workshops. If I had never accidentally fallen asleep before [Vibe 14], I would’ve gotten in line close to the front and would’ve not seen Sam. If I had never decided to randomly check the schedule of Hum Core classes, I would’ve not known Sam in the first place.

And going all the way further back to two years ago, if I never bothered to reply to the weird message from Jon on Downelink, I never would’ve met QA, never would’ve heard about Breakthrough, never would’ve forced myself to [relearn] breakdancing as a last minute resort, never would’ve actually gotten interested in breakdancing. It’s possible that I might’ve taken the same Hum Core discussion class in Winter Quarter, but I definitely would not have gone to Vibe 14 without my interest in breakdancing. And yeah, my whole path of becoming a hip hop dancer would’ve fallen apart with one detour that I did not make very early on. And it could’ve still easily fallen apart if I did not make any one of like, eight other detours.

Look at where I am. I’m a (beginning) hip hop dancer now. I once told my dancer friend Kevin, “I just realized that I really love dancing. This is the most fun hobby I’ve had since I quit DDR.” As nerdy as it sounds, to say that I love something as much as I used to love DDR—that’s really huge for me. DDR was six or seven years of my life, and I’ve won competitions and made some great friends through it.
---

I’m beginning to rethink that theory, that one tiny change in the past could’ve led to me never getting into hip hop dancing.

What if it was actually bound to happen? As in, meant to be? As in, fated?

Sam wasn’t the only one who told me about the Kaba Modern auditions. Alfonso told me about them too. So all that stuff about choosing my Hum Core class and sleeping in for Vibe might have not mattered.

Would I have gone to Kaba Modern auditions if Cameron didn’t go? Possibly. I was always prone to making last minute decisions due to getting really bored at night in Irvine.

And what was my reason for doing breakdancing and nothing else? Because breakdancing was the least gay. Cameron changed my attitude about all gay things toward the end of the year, and with my views changed, could I have been more open to giving choreo a try?

And let’s not ignore the obvious: I was going to UC Irvine, the “dancer” school. All of our three competing teams, Kaba Modern, CADC, and Common Ground placed in the top five at Hip Hop Internationals at Las Vegas. It would be hard to avoid going to any kind of dance workshop throughout all four years of college. Everything that happened before me going to Irvine might as well have not mattered.

I never asked for this. To start dancing. To fall in love with it. I feel like I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for dancing, and those sacrifices included bits and pieces that made up part of what I had envisioned as my future. I had a plan, a grand master plan, my own self-made destiny that didn’t include dancing at all. But unexpectedly, dancing did come along, and I guess it just threw things in total different directions. It’s a concept that I still have trouble fully understanding: fate coming in and throwing off the destiny that I had made for myself, as though I really am supposed to not have a choice in creating my own destiny.

---
“all things” (Continued)
There are some choices that I make because I can see the consequences, but then there are some choices that I make that lead to consequences that I could have never dreamed of. And it just happens that the latter type of choices happen to be big life ones. And, since they’re such big life choices that lead to consequences that I don’t see and understand at the time I make them, can I really say that I’m in control of my life?

I want some sense of control and assurance that my life is not just a random and hectic path leading down to my destruction, so I think it’s plausible to say that other people have some control over my own life. That’s reasonable. After all, it’s a well known fact that our lives are shaped by the way other people come into our lives. But really, when Jon messaged me to tell me that I looked like a friend of his, did he really intend to give me the choice of becoming a dancer? Nope.

So who’s in control of my life?
---

Gotta love fate.

Luh Moar Jwayuh

Hot mess.

Alarm clock went way the fuck off. It got me completely conscious…but I zoned it out and refused to open my eyes. I stretched out in bed for a bit, yawning, my body still half asleep and that weird racing feeling running through my chest. I collapsed back down and opened my eyes. Greeted by the white ceiling. I tilted my head to the right and gazed around my room. Sunlight slipped through the cracks in my window blinds and striped the mounds of unpacked boxes that were spilling all over my carpet. I stretched out my right arm to turn the alarm off, and I rolled out of my bed, feet first. I stepped on something that wasn’t carpet. It was smooth, slick. I sat up and glanced down at it. Les fleurs du mal—it was a collection of poems written by Charles Baudelaire. I bent down and picked it up, flipped to a random page in the middle, and began to read.

“Le Mort Joyeux”
Charles Baudelaire

Dans une terre grasse et pleine d’escargots
Je veux creuser moi-même une fosse profonde,
Où je puisse à loisir étaler mes vieux os
Et dormir dans l’oubli comme un requin dans l’onde.

Je hais les testaments et je hais les tombeaux ;
Plutôt que d’implorer une larme du monde,
Vivant, j’aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux
A saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.

Ô vers ! noirs compagnons sans oreille et sans yeux,
Voyez venir à vous un mort libre et joyeux ;
Philosophes viveurs, fils de la pourriture,

A travers ma ruine allez donc sans remords,
Et dites-moi s’il est encor quelque torture
Pour ce vieux corps sans âme et mort parmi les morts !

Wow, I breathed. My arms dropped onto my lap. Overwhelming. Way overwhelming. What was the poem saying? I had no fucking idea. Juh nuh sahveh pah.

I picked the book back up and flipped to the front cover. I chuckled. Printed so proudly in the corner was, “Brian ‘Marc’ Dinh.” “Marc” was the French name that I chose for myself my first year in high school, and it stuck through all four years. Stuck so much that if “Brian” was ever mentioned out in class, someone would have to ask, “Kee eh Brian?”

I guess, to this day, that is still a good question.

---
“The Computer-Engineer-to-Bagel-Shop-Owner Complex”
Written May 14th, 2007 (Excerpted)

Tonight, before I left Borders, where I was studying AP Psych review books, I made the mistake of buying a rather advanced French language practice book. Now, I’ve been sitting in front of my lap top with several Wikipedia pages on psychology open, but my hand has hardly touched the mouse during the last hour. I’ve been flipping through the practice book, skimming over old and new info, immediately finding stuff far more useful found in the school French book or Madame’s classroom.

When senior year starts, I plan to take the French Language SATII (in addition to the other SATII’s) and I’m going to have to branch off from Madame’s regular lesson plans if I want to pass. Hell, I might even sign up to take the French Language AP test next year; the AP class isn’t offered at my school, but hopefully with enough of my individual studies and passion, I’ll be prepared for it. This summer, since it looks like I’ll be rather alone, I’m going to cram in all the French movies, French music, French novels, and French practice that I can get. I’ll come back senior year speaking more nasally than ever.

So, where am I going with my “passion for French?” I’ve been thinking about my college major more often recently, and I’ve come to realize that when the time comes, I will definitely be marking the checkbox for “French” under college majors.

Years later, after enduring four wild years of college partying, I see myself settling down in a still suburban town somewhere along the California coast and working a steady job as a French teacher.

While I do know that this kind of career is something I’m passionate about, it still seems pretty scary and exciting, especially since, once again, I’m going to be going against the norms of not just my immediate family, but all my relatives too. And, the norm in our whole family is already pretty weird. This same pattern has been played out by three of my grown adult cousins and one of my uncles, and my brother and father are already on the same path. The pattern started with all their parents preaching to them starting at an early age “America have many opportunity; find good job; make lot o’ money,” AKA, become a doctor, whether or not they hated their job.

The next part of the pattern would come when they decided on their majors for college, which, were all related to computer engineering somehow. They completed four years of college and got their degree. Shortly after, guess what they all became.

[Me holding bagels. Taken at a late night Thanksgiving get-together with John, Peter, and Miranda in 2005.]

Bagel shop owners. Each of my three cousins and one uncle own their own bagel shop (which explains why my freezer is often overstocked with bagels).

I don’t know that much else about them and their bagel shop businesses. Maybe they love their job; maybe they secretly desired to make civilians smile with each giant dough cheerio served.

My brother, who I think is currently doing computer-related engineering shit in UC Davis, already joked about running a bagel shop when he grows up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. And right now, my dad’s out of a job. With all the obscure technology companies that would hire him moving overseas to revel in the sweatshop joys of Asia, my dad might break and open his own bagel shop too (if he doesn’t die soon).

[More fucking bagels. I was unattractive. No wonder my first crush didn’t wanna dodate me.]

So within the next year, when I’m sitting down with my parents at a cousin’s bagel shop, I don’t really know how to tell them that I am not going to major in shit like medicine, law, Molecular Biochemistry Engineering Aquatics; that once again, I’m making life-devastating choices by not aiming to walk the clear and obvious $100-bill-lined path straight to happiness. Well, those who see that path only for the $100 bills littered in the streets might never get to the end if they spend all their time picking up every single bill that blows up to their feet.

(It should be noted that I am not criticizing people who do choose to practice medicine or something really fancy as careers that they are really passionate about. I am criticizing those who choose a job solely for extrinsic gain and/or conformity.)

Maybe my parents will actually understand. Ironically enough, they were both high school teachers when they lived in Vietnam. But they probably didn’t think so highly of their old jobs because the commies sure did make things bitchy for them or whatever whatever. But, whether or not I’ll be hunted down if our country is overtaken by communism, the Computer-Engineer-to-Bagel-Shop-Owner Complex won’t apply to me.