Well, there was still one more aspect of my identity I had to think about before going back to studying for my midterm. That Peggy McIntosh quote was just too thought-provoking. (“[W]hites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’”)
I dug through the archives of my old blog and found two entries, one I wrote in January 2006 and the other in February 2008. Reading them, I felt both embarrassed and accomplished, embarrassed because I was so fucking stupid back then, and accomplished because I had come such a long way since the last three years.
These were a few lines from my February 2008 entry that made me roll my eyes, “Chuck What?”:
“My goal is not to be ‘whiter’ or ‘less Asian;’ I’d just like to live my life without having to be associated with any kind of racial label that automatically defines my character and likes and dislikes.”
“Today was Tet, or the Lunar New Year, which Vietnamese and Chinese people happen to celebrate for some reason...Of course, to celebrate tet, I wore my special tet outfit: jeans, white shirt, white hoodie, and white shoes. I also emptied out the trash in my car.” [According to Vietnamese lore, wearing white and doing housekeeping on the day of Tet brings bad luck for the rest of the year.]
“I came home from work today to find rice and some wrapped shit (in other words: dinner) spread out on the living room table. There were six places set up, each for my dead ancestors. They got to eat first, and they spent a really long time eating. Hell, I think they were just chatting it up, making racist jokes. The food just sat there accumulating bacteria and digestive juices from flies. As though my parents’ unhygienic cooking methods aren’t enough.”
“I had McDonald’s tonight by the way. 2 cheeseburgers, both with Mac sauce and lettuce added = 1 Big Mac for $1.50 cheaper.”
“Well, I made sure that I was disrespectful as possible today, so does that mean bad luck for the next entire year? No. Because superstitions are just fucking superstitions (and Karma is crap). My only wish is that I could somehow top what I pulled off on tet two years ago (coming out lol). Maybe next tet.”
And these few lines were a few lines from my January 2006 entry about a formal engagement party that I went to for a cousin, “Out of Place”:
“This morning, my parents dragged me along to some kind of wedding. Wait, no, it wasn't a wedding; it was a formal engagement. There's still a wedding that I'll to go to in the future, [fuck]. But anyways, I tend to not like weddings, especially Asian orthodox. Well, it's really just Asian orthodox that pisses me off.”
“They [people conducting the wedding] only spoke Vietnamese. To me, it seriously just sounded like, ‘blarfgh jakllia adfdafdass smakcldkf crackerad dwidge garagh,’ and I spent my time watching the clock.”
“When all that crap was done, people sat down around the kitchen and started eating. I wasn't going to eat because the food was all boring Asian shit, but my mom handed me a plate with rice piled over fried crap piled over more rice.”
“I just can't stand it. My wedding will not be Asian Orthodox (but then again, nothing can really be orthodox if it's homosexual). And at my wedding, I will serve elegant French food. And nobody at my wedding will be wearing those tight shiny Asian dresses.”
“I'm not ashamed to be Asian, and I don't wish to be any other race.”
I used to hate that I was Vietnamese. I was ashamed of it. I didn’t admit it back then, but looking back in retrospect, I could say that I was lying to myself. Shit, I didn’t understand how I could possibly rationalize that I wasn’t ashamed to be Vietnamese back then. I attributed a lot of problems between me and my parents, mainly (what I perceived to be) their disapproval of me having a black friend and a Mexican friend, to some aspect of Vietnamese culture. I didn’t want to be Vietnamese. I just wanted to be “regular,” another human being whose ethnicity didn’t matter.
I was too culturally assimilated, back when I didn’t understand what that even meant. I thought rejecting my Vietnamese culture, language, and history meant making myself racially neutral, but I was really replacing it all with the “regular” culture, language and history. I was glad I came to realize that “regular” meant “white.” When I said I didn’t want an “Asian orthodox” wedding, just a regular wedding, I now knew that I meant a white wedding.
Tuxedos at a wedding? White. Elegant French food? White. Cheeseburgers from McDonald’s? White. Understanding English, not Vietnamese? White.
I’m going to get married, not because I’m a gay guy trying to be straighter in this heteronormative Western society, but because I’m a Vietnamese guy trying to maintain my Vietnamese heritage in this oppressive, white-dominated Western society. And it’s not just for my heritage; it’s for my parents too.
The wedding will thus be a Vietnamese wedding. And I don’t care if I’m marrying someone Filipino. He’s gonna wear that “tight shiny Asian dress” (áo dài), no exceptions, bitch.
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future. Show all posts
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
“Brian, do you know about the discount you get at Pro-mode? You can get fifty percent off an entire wardrobe! That’s two tops, two jackets...”
Yes, I knew, thank you. You and any of the other three managers had been reminding me of my awesome totally cool discount every week, but I knew it was your passive way of telling me that the white V-neck I wore to work every other day was getting old. Unfortunately, that white V-neck and like two other shirts were my only non-branded shirts I had, and unfortunately, everything at Promod was shit I would’ve worn as a high school student, and I looked like this in high school:
“Brian, here’s a [from-your-crotch-to-your-face-high] stack of clothes that people left in the fitting room. Put them back plz thank you.”
Well, I couldn’t complain about that. Folding clothes was why I was hired. Like a trooper I took the stack to a worn down folding cart unaesthetically located in the front of the store. That was when I saw... (the tone of this entry will now abruptly change to my more usual melodramatic tone)...her: this crazy little brown Mexican girl swooping in between the legs of the cart.
She was adorable. She looked up at me and I looked down at her past the pile of clothes in my arms. She smiled and I smiled back, which made her giggle, if she weren’t so god damn brown, blush. She took off and ran somewhere else in the store, which I didn’t realize doubled as a daycare center, but it was ok. She made an otherwise unexciting day at work a little more special, and that was when I realized:
November 2010? It’s been five years. I thought of the public sex porn I had waiting for me at home so that I wouldn’t cry. Parks, mall bathrooms, stairwells, bridges—oh yes.
Working out didn’t make me straight. Having a girlfriend didn’t make me straight. I was at a dead end. On a rainy night in November 2005, I found myself lying in bed, lights off, staring at the wall through misty eyes. One thing held me back from finally accepting myself. Was I finally going to get over it? No, I couldn’t. I figured I could marry a girl anyway, fuck her while replaying scenes of hot muscle men in my mind, get her pregnant, and boom, a baby nine months later. Because that, a baby, was what I wanted. It was what I always wanted. My own kid. Didn’t matter if I loved my wife or not as long as I could have a happy son, Matt, or a happy daughter, Janelle, or both, Matt and Janelle. (Yeah, of course the wife I wouldn’t love wouldn’t have a choice in baby names.)
Usually when I read stories about guys realizing when they were horny for other guys, they always said they knew from a very early age. I only started to suspect it from myself at the start of the eighth grade, summer 2003. Before I never really understood what attraction meant, and what was associated with it. Boners? I for sure didn’t get them thinking about girls—I didn’t know I was supposed to. I didn’t know I was supposed to want to have sex with them. I didn’t even know what sex was or that dicks were for sex. I always thought that you got a girl pregnant by kissing her and swapping saliva, which was why I always critically judged eighth graders I caught making out in the locker banks. Bitch is throwing her whole life away before high school, I’d think to myself.
You know in the movies, at the happy ending after the guy and the girl get together and marry, they share a kiss and bam, the movie cuts to nine months later with the girl holding the baby. I didn’t know more happened after the kiss that led to the girl getting preggo.
Thus, I didn’t really understand attraction. I just figured I was attracted to girls because guys were supposed to be. But then I stumbled upon homo porn that summer, did some reading, and was like, HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Now here I was two years later, lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. Marry a wife just so I could have my own kid and pretend to be in a happy marriage for him. Could I really live such a lie? My answer was tentatively yes throughout the two years, but I really knew I couldn’t do it. I was still looking at dick-in-male-butthole porn. I was still checking out guys in the locker room. And worst of all, I was alone.
I proposed a solution to myself: don’t be lonely now, figure out the kid problem later.
When crazy little brown Mexican girl’s parents made their purchase, I made sure, first of all, that my boner was gone, then I went to wave bye to her, and she returned the wave. I saw their whole family off. “Thank you for shopping at Pro-mawwwd!”
The girl turned around to wave and smile at me one last time. I sighed. One day.
Yes, I knew, thank you. You and any of the other three managers had been reminding me of my awesome totally cool discount every week, but I knew it was your passive way of telling me that the white V-neck I wore to work every other day was getting old. Unfortunately, that white V-neck and like two other shirts were my only non-branded shirts I had, and unfortunately, everything at Promod was shit I would’ve worn as a high school student, and I looked like this in high school:
“Brian, here’s a [from-your-crotch-to-your-face-high] stack of clothes that people left in the fitting room. Put them back plz thank you.”Well, I couldn’t complain about that. Folding clothes was why I was hired. Like a trooper I took the stack to a worn down folding cart unaesthetically located in the front of the store. That was when I saw... (the tone of this entry will now abruptly change to my more usual melodramatic tone)...her: this crazy little brown Mexican girl swooping in between the legs of the cart.
She was adorable. She looked up at me and I looked down at her past the pile of clothes in my arms. She smiled and I smiled back, which made her giggle, if she weren’t so god damn brown, blush. She took off and ran somewhere else in the store, which I didn’t realize doubled as a daycare center, but it was ok. She made an otherwise unexciting day at work a little more special, and that was when I realized:
November 2010? It’s been five years. I thought of the public sex porn I had waiting for me at home so that I wouldn’t cry. Parks, mall bathrooms, stairwells, bridges—oh yes.
Working out didn’t make me straight. Having a girlfriend didn’t make me straight. I was at a dead end. On a rainy night in November 2005, I found myself lying in bed, lights off, staring at the wall through misty eyes. One thing held me back from finally accepting myself. Was I finally going to get over it? No, I couldn’t. I figured I could marry a girl anyway, fuck her while replaying scenes of hot muscle men in my mind, get her pregnant, and boom, a baby nine months later. Because that, a baby, was what I wanted. It was what I always wanted. My own kid. Didn’t matter if I loved my wife or not as long as I could have a happy son, Matt, or a happy daughter, Janelle, or both, Matt and Janelle. (Yeah, of course the wife I wouldn’t love wouldn’t have a choice in baby names.)
Usually when I read stories about guys realizing when they were horny for other guys, they always said they knew from a very early age. I only started to suspect it from myself at the start of the eighth grade, summer 2003. Before I never really understood what attraction meant, and what was associated with it. Boners? I for sure didn’t get them thinking about girls—I didn’t know I was supposed to. I didn’t know I was supposed to want to have sex with them. I didn’t even know what sex was or that dicks were for sex. I always thought that you got a girl pregnant by kissing her and swapping saliva, which was why I always critically judged eighth graders I caught making out in the locker banks. Bitch is throwing her whole life away before high school, I’d think to myself.
You know in the movies, at the happy ending after the guy and the girl get together and marry, they share a kiss and bam, the movie cuts to nine months later with the girl holding the baby. I didn’t know more happened after the kiss that led to the girl getting preggo.
Thus, I didn’t really understand attraction. I just figured I was attracted to girls because guys were supposed to be. But then I stumbled upon homo porn that summer, did some reading, and was like, HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Now here I was two years later, lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. Marry a wife just so I could have my own kid and pretend to be in a happy marriage for him. Could I really live such a lie? My answer was tentatively yes throughout the two years, but I really knew I couldn’t do it. I was still looking at dick-in-male-butthole porn. I was still checking out guys in the locker room. And worst of all, I was alone.
I proposed a solution to myself: don’t be lonely now, figure out the kid problem later.
When crazy little brown Mexican girl’s parents made their purchase, I made sure, first of all, that my boner was gone, then I went to wave bye to her, and she returned the wave. I saw their whole family off. “Thank you for shopping at Pro-mawwwd!”
The girl turned around to wave and smile at me one last time. I sighed. One day.
Runaway: Part 3
Saturday, November 27, 2010
(Continued from “Runaway: Part 2” and “Part 1”)
I was still sitting up against the wall, rolling the back of my head against it when Walden found me upstairs. “I just wanna have a talk outside, Brian. But yes, that does include having to walk past a bunch of people, including Linh, who all knew that you were messin’ around with two other guys in the bathroom for the last hour. You guys couldn’t have been any more obvious.”
Walden had already taken off his tranny/cowboy/stripper Halloween costume, so it was easier to take him more seriously. I followed him downstairs and tried to stay as close behind him as I could. Once I entered the kitchen where the party was, I narrowed my focus to the backyard door, but someone, who obviously hadn’t sobered up yet, called me out—or congratulated me.
“Whaddup Brian!” He stumbled up to me and jabbed my shoulder. “Shit man, you da shit! Homie you been having a good Halloween? You been enjoying yourself? I know you been!” Getting this kind of reaction actually lifted a little weight off my shoulder; not everyone thought I was a skank for hooking up in the bathroom with two other guys, but then again, not everyone on the team really knew that I had been talking to Linh. I scanned the kitchen for him and easily spotted him. Standing on his however-many-inch heels he stood out above the sea of heads, but as soon as we made eye contact, he whipped his head away, as if to bitchslap my face with the long curls of his wig. I felt the weight on my shoulders again.
The backyard was empty. Walden and I sat down in lawn chairs, and Walden lit up a cigarette and spoke to me while he smoked.
“So, you and Shaun. And Tyrone. A threesome. Wow. How much did you drink before?”
“Two shots.”
“Two shots! It only takes two shots to get you in a cramped bathroom with two other guys? One shot per guy!”
I shrugged.
“I think you need more shots. That’s what you need right now because you look bummed.”
“I am.”
Walden tilted his head at me. “Why? There’s nothing to worry about. Yeah, everyone knows but no one cares. Trust me. No one is judging you.”
“I’m not worried about what everyone thinks about me. I’m worried about Linh.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Walden leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Okay, well Brian, let me remind you: you and Linh aren’t even together. You guys have been talking for a week.”
“That doesn’t mean I can still mess around with other guys.”
“Well, yeah, but I mean that at least it’s not much of a loss.”
“Yeah I know, but I’m still disappointed in myself.”
“Why?”
“You know what’s been on my mind this whole time since I got out of that bathroom?”
“What?”
“Trung.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him what I wanted to say next, so I paused and deeply inhaled the second-hand smoke from Walden’s cigarette. It relaxed me enough to initiate the conversation. “Did I ever tell you why we broke up, Walden?”
“Something about issues, your own or his. You were never really clear.”
“Do you wanna know the real reason why we broke up? You’d be the first person to ever know, ‘cause hell, Trung doesn’t even know.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
I needed to calm my nerves before continuing, so I breathed in and filled my lungs with a few more breaths of smoke. Bad habit—whatever.
“I cheated on Trung. Five times.”
“Wow.” Walden raised his eyes brow as he took another puff on his cigarette. “And he found out?”
“No, I uh, managed to keep them all a secret. Well, he sorta found out about one, but I lied to him and told him I only made out with the guy. I mean, I guess you could say I did, but with his dick in addition to his lips. But yeah, for the most part, they were all a secret.”
“So you guys didn’t break up because he found out? Who broke up with who again?”
“I broke up with him. I had to. I thought that I could keep all five of my slip-ups a secret forever because I learned a long time ago to separate sex and emotion. Walden, I loved Trung, and to this day I still love him, but somehow back then, each time at the moment before I cheated, I figured what I was about to do was okay. I thought that if I played it safe and didn’t contract any STDs—and I didn’t—then I could put my sex scandals all behind me. But, I dunno, my guilt eventually caught up to me. I was surprised. As much as I tried to shut out the guilt, I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine us together celebrating our anniversary in ten years with him still not knowing about something I did nine years prior. I knew I couldn’t go on in our relationship for as long as I kept the secret to myself, but at the same time, I knew that if I admitted to him about all the times I’ve cheated on him, he’d break up with me anyway. It was a lose-lose situation, but I couldn’t face that. I had to find a way out, a way to still win.”
“What’d you do Brian? What’d you tell him?”
Trung sat still in the passenger seat and stared out into the dark street through the front window. I unfolded my letter and struggled with it until I could hold it up against some of the dim light that shined through from the street light above my car. The paper fluttered in my shaky hands, and my voice cracked as I began reading it out to Trung.
“‘Even though we’ve talked about it before, I never forgave you for the whole Anh drama back in May 2008. You made me choose between keeping our relationship and ending my friendship with Anh, or breaking up and keeping my friendship with him. You even gave me a day to think about it. And do you remember what I chose? I chose to break up and keep my friendship with Anh. But you forced me to choose our relationship. I insisted on breaking up, but you managed to manipulate me into choosing otherwise. I think you (specifically you) could make anyone do anything if you forced them to converse with you for a million hours too. Because like two hours after I said, ‘I want to break up,’ you were still trying to convince me otherwise and wouldn’t get the fuck out of my car. I just wanted you to shut up, so I finally agreed. And then came the grueling process of deleting Anh’s phone number from my phone, etc. whatever.
“‘Like I said, I never forgave you for that.
“‘So maybe, I never address my problems with you as they come up because I want things to build up and become unbearable for you. Maybe I’ve always secretly wanted you to break up with me since I wasn’t allowed to break up with you the first time I tried. I feel like the option to break up isn’t even available in this relationship. Honestly, every time we do fight, I secretly hope, ‘Please let this be the one. Break up with me already.’ We were never supposed to make it past that Anh argument.
“‘I’ve fallen out of love many times in this relationship. The reason is usually different every time, but because I’m feeling moody and depressed, I end up focusing on all this stuff from May. And then that becomes the main problem.
“‘But you still probably want to know the reason I fell out of love this time around.
“‘I feel like the reasons why I fell in love with you in the first place no longer apply to you. You’re no longer the committed, driven person that you once were when I met you.
“‘When I met you, you were on your way to being a valedictorian. You had a big interest in history and foreign policy on politics and all that junk. You were really committed to education and so much more.
“‘But college really changed things. You no longer really cared about school, and you’re not the passion-drive history/politic nerd that you used to be. I can’t think of anything that you’re driven toward now. What are you dedicated to right now? I don’t fucking know. Celebrity gossip?
“‘I realized this once Breakthrough ended. Without Breakthrough, I couldn’t see anything in you that kept you going. If you need an example of what I mean by driven, I had dance, a workout plan, and writing to keep me going. You were just the same inside jokes that we’ve had for the last year and a half.
“‘And what’s annoying is that you get irritated by people who are driven. To you, Cameron’s just ‘way too unrealistically excited’ about helping his step mom start a frozen yogurt business. To you, it’s ‘great that these young teenagers [Funksters] want to dance, but why bother ‘cause it’s not like dance is going to get them anywhere in the future.’
“‘Well, at least they’re all passionate about something.
“‘So you can try to start trying more. You can try to stop being lazy and find something to do. All that would be good for your future, but it won’t help this relationship. Nothing that you’ve done has ever really fixed the main problem. You’ve only fixed the reasons I fell out of love each time, but nothing ever fixed the main problem. The main problem, to remind you, is the whole wanting-to-break-up-but-couldn’t thing back in May 2008. As I said before, that—this main problem—is unfixable. It’s unforgivable.
“‘It doesn’t matter if you try to do anything to get me to forgive you for forcing me to stay in the relationship back in 2008. I wanna wake up tomorrow and live as though I never let you convince me to stay with you back in May 2008. You gave me the choice to stay or break up, and I wanted to break up. There wasn’t anything unfair about that until you forced me to stay. I want things to be the way they should’ve been if you hadn’t forced me to stay. There shouldn’t even be any hypothetical statement. When you gave me the choice and when I made the decision to break up, that was it. I broke up with you in May 2008. That was the end.’
There was no more to read. “So, in conclusion, uhh,” I folded the letter and set it in my lap, “ever since that one incident, our almost-breakup five months into our relationship, it was never meant to be.” ...
I was still sitting up against the wall, rolling the back of my head against it when Walden found me upstairs. “I just wanna have a talk outside, Brian. But yes, that does include having to walk past a bunch of people, including Linh, who all knew that you were messin’ around with two other guys in the bathroom for the last hour. You guys couldn’t have been any more obvious.”
Walden had already taken off his tranny/cowboy/stripper Halloween costume, so it was easier to take him more seriously. I followed him downstairs and tried to stay as close behind him as I could. Once I entered the kitchen where the party was, I narrowed my focus to the backyard door, but someone, who obviously hadn’t sobered up yet, called me out—or congratulated me.
“Whaddup Brian!” He stumbled up to me and jabbed my shoulder. “Shit man, you da shit! Homie you been having a good Halloween? You been enjoying yourself? I know you been!” Getting this kind of reaction actually lifted a little weight off my shoulder; not everyone thought I was a skank for hooking up in the bathroom with two other guys, but then again, not everyone on the team really knew that I had been talking to Linh. I scanned the kitchen for him and easily spotted him. Standing on his however-many-inch heels he stood out above the sea of heads, but as soon as we made eye contact, he whipped his head away, as if to bitchslap my face with the long curls of his wig. I felt the weight on my shoulders again.
The backyard was empty. Walden and I sat down in lawn chairs, and Walden lit up a cigarette and spoke to me while he smoked.
“So, you and Shaun. And Tyrone. A threesome. Wow. How much did you drink before?”
“Two shots.”
“Two shots! It only takes two shots to get you in a cramped bathroom with two other guys? One shot per guy!”
I shrugged.
“I think you need more shots. That’s what you need right now because you look bummed.”
“I am.”
Walden tilted his head at me. “Why? There’s nothing to worry about. Yeah, everyone knows but no one cares. Trust me. No one is judging you.”
“I’m not worried about what everyone thinks about me. I’m worried about Linh.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Walden leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his cigarette. “Okay, well Brian, let me remind you: you and Linh aren’t even together. You guys have been talking for a week.”
“That doesn’t mean I can still mess around with other guys.”
“Well, yeah, but I mean that at least it’s not much of a loss.”
“Yeah I know, but I’m still disappointed in myself.”
“Why?”
“You know what’s been on my mind this whole time since I got out of that bathroom?”
“What?”
“Trung.”
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell him what I wanted to say next, so I paused and deeply inhaled the second-hand smoke from Walden’s cigarette. It relaxed me enough to initiate the conversation. “Did I ever tell you why we broke up, Walden?”
“Something about issues, your own or his. You were never really clear.”
“Do you wanna know the real reason why we broke up? You’d be the first person to ever know, ‘cause hell, Trung doesn’t even know.”
“Yeah, what is it?”
I needed to calm my nerves before continuing, so I breathed in and filled my lungs with a few more breaths of smoke. Bad habit—whatever.
“I cheated on Trung. Five times.”
“Wow.” Walden raised his eyes brow as he took another puff on his cigarette. “And he found out?”
“No, I uh, managed to keep them all a secret. Well, he sorta found out about one, but I lied to him and told him I only made out with the guy. I mean, I guess you could say I did, but with his dick in addition to his lips. But yeah, for the most part, they were all a secret.”
“So you guys didn’t break up because he found out? Who broke up with who again?”
“I broke up with him. I had to. I thought that I could keep all five of my slip-ups a secret forever because I learned a long time ago to separate sex and emotion. Walden, I loved Trung, and to this day I still love him, but somehow back then, each time at the moment before I cheated, I figured what I was about to do was okay. I thought that if I played it safe and didn’t contract any STDs—and I didn’t—then I could put my sex scandals all behind me. But, I dunno, my guilt eventually caught up to me. I was surprised. As much as I tried to shut out the guilt, I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine us together celebrating our anniversary in ten years with him still not knowing about something I did nine years prior. I knew I couldn’t go on in our relationship for as long as I kept the secret to myself, but at the same time, I knew that if I admitted to him about all the times I’ve cheated on him, he’d break up with me anyway. It was a lose-lose situation, but I couldn’t face that. I had to find a way out, a way to still win.”
“What’d you do Brian? What’d you tell him?”
Trung sat still in the passenger seat and stared out into the dark street through the front window. I unfolded my letter and struggled with it until I could hold it up against some of the dim light that shined through from the street light above my car. The paper fluttered in my shaky hands, and my voice cracked as I began reading it out to Trung.
“‘Even though we’ve talked about it before, I never forgave you for the whole Anh drama back in May 2008. You made me choose between keeping our relationship and ending my friendship with Anh, or breaking up and keeping my friendship with him. You even gave me a day to think about it. And do you remember what I chose? I chose to break up and keep my friendship with Anh. But you forced me to choose our relationship. I insisted on breaking up, but you managed to manipulate me into choosing otherwise. I think you (specifically you) could make anyone do anything if you forced them to converse with you for a million hours too. Because like two hours after I said, ‘I want to break up,’ you were still trying to convince me otherwise and wouldn’t get the fuck out of my car. I just wanted you to shut up, so I finally agreed. And then came the grueling process of deleting Anh’s phone number from my phone, etc. whatever.
“‘Like I said, I never forgave you for that.
“‘So maybe, I never address my problems with you as they come up because I want things to build up and become unbearable for you. Maybe I’ve always secretly wanted you to break up with me since I wasn’t allowed to break up with you the first time I tried. I feel like the option to break up isn’t even available in this relationship. Honestly, every time we do fight, I secretly hope, ‘Please let this be the one. Break up with me already.’ We were never supposed to make it past that Anh argument.
“‘I’ve fallen out of love many times in this relationship. The reason is usually different every time, but because I’m feeling moody and depressed, I end up focusing on all this stuff from May. And then that becomes the main problem.
“‘But you still probably want to know the reason I fell out of love this time around.
“‘I feel like the reasons why I fell in love with you in the first place no longer apply to you. You’re no longer the committed, driven person that you once were when I met you.
“‘When I met you, you were on your way to being a valedictorian. You had a big interest in history and foreign policy on politics and all that junk. You were really committed to education and so much more.
“‘But college really changed things. You no longer really cared about school, and you’re not the passion-drive history/politic nerd that you used to be. I can’t think of anything that you’re driven toward now. What are you dedicated to right now? I don’t fucking know. Celebrity gossip?
“‘I realized this once Breakthrough ended. Without Breakthrough, I couldn’t see anything in you that kept you going. If you need an example of what I mean by driven, I had dance, a workout plan, and writing to keep me going. You were just the same inside jokes that we’ve had for the last year and a half.
“‘And what’s annoying is that you get irritated by people who are driven. To you, Cameron’s just ‘way too unrealistically excited’ about helping his step mom start a frozen yogurt business. To you, it’s ‘great that these young teenagers [Funksters] want to dance, but why bother ‘cause it’s not like dance is going to get them anywhere in the future.’
“‘Well, at least they’re all passionate about something.
“‘So you can try to start trying more. You can try to stop being lazy and find something to do. All that would be good for your future, but it won’t help this relationship. Nothing that you’ve done has ever really fixed the main problem. You’ve only fixed the reasons I fell out of love each time, but nothing ever fixed the main problem. The main problem, to remind you, is the whole wanting-to-break-up-but-couldn’t thing back in May 2008. As I said before, that—this main problem—is unfixable. It’s unforgivable.
“‘It doesn’t matter if you try to do anything to get me to forgive you for forcing me to stay in the relationship back in 2008. I wanna wake up tomorrow and live as though I never let you convince me to stay with you back in May 2008. You gave me the choice to stay or break up, and I wanted to break up. There wasn’t anything unfair about that until you forced me to stay. I want things to be the way they should’ve been if you hadn’t forced me to stay. There shouldn’t even be any hypothetical statement. When you gave me the choice and when I made the decision to break up, that was it. I broke up with you in May 2008. That was the end.’
There was no more to read. “So, in conclusion, uhh,” I folded the letter and set it in my lap, “ever since that one incident, our almost-breakup five months into our relationship, it was never meant to be.” ...
Runaway: Part 2
Sunday, November 21, 2010
(Continued from “Runaway: Part 1”)
I slid into my jeans and sat on the toilet, waiting in the dark while he finished putting on all his clothes.
“What do we do about the towel rack?” I whispered.
“Just leave it in the shower stall.”
“So what’s the plan?” the third voice spoke. I listened as the two of them discussed the plan to each other.
“You’re going to pretend you’ve been vomiting in toilet. We’re going to tell everyone that we’ve been helping you.”
“Okay, I guess I did drink a lot.”
Like anyone’s really going to believe he’s been vomiting for the last hour while the two of us were tending to him. In a locked bathroom.
“Alright, got my clothes on. You ready?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
He opened the door and walked out first, while I stayed behind at the sink. Someone who had probably been waiting to use the bathroom for the last hour walked in and saw the “drunk mess” hunched over the toilet.
“Is he alright?”
I nodded. “Yeah, kid’s just been vomiting. Had a little too much to drink.”
He tilted his head and raised his eye brow at me.
I looked down. “Yeah, I know.”
I left the bathroom and found my pizza costume sitting next to the door. I didn’t bother wrapping it back around my neck. After putting on a shirt, I sat up against a wall, wondering what to do. I felt too nervous to go back downstairs to the party, nervous that everyone knew where I had been the last hour. Remembering that my phone’s ringer went off thirty minutes ago in the bathroom, I pulled it out and saw that I had one text message from Walden. I read it: Wow neexxxt!
Shit. With no one to turn to, I wrote a text to Trung: Just had a threesome with two other guys at the Halloween party. Linh wasn't one of them. And everyone knows, oops. What do I do now?
Trung lay next to me on my bed, tugging at my shirt and trying to look me in the eye, but I continue to stare straight through his pleading eyes at the ceiling. Both our sweat began running down onto my pillow and blankets; it was a warm summer evening.
“Brian, talk to me. Talk about our relationship. What’s bothering you?”
I grunted and turned away from him to look at the wall. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.” I’m fine—I don’t know how many times I uttered this phrase in the last hour. But we both knew that everything was far from fine.
Trung pulled my shoulder and rolled me back onto my back. “Brian, I sat in my car for two hours outside your house waiting for you to come home. Why didn’t you tell me before I left home that you were going out to the mall? And when I called you to tell you I got to your place, why did it take you two more hours to come back?”
I motioned at the shopping bags on the floor. “I stopped by Oakridge.”
“I know that, but I’m asking you why did you feel like you could make a two-hour detour when you already knew I was at your place?”
I didn’t answer; I just stared at the ceiling again. Somewhere in my mind I pieced together the answers to his questions, but I didn’t know the right words to speak them. I just wanted to be alone, Trung. I needed to think because I couldn’t think with you around all the fucking time.
“Brian, please. What’s wrong?”
I’ve been pushing you away more and more every day because every morning when I wake up, I can see our end coming closer and closer. I’ve been growing so disillusioned; you know that picture we had of ourselves in the far distant future? How we’d just finish watching X-Files at 3 AM, and I’d be washing the dishes at the sink as you come up from behind to wrap your arms around me? Just as we normally would do now? That picture’s long since dissolved.
“Brian, say something!”
I’m guilty of keeping secrets from you Trung, secrets that I thought I could bury deep in the back of my mind. And for the longest time I did a good damn job of suppressing them, never letting them reach my conscience, but somehow, they eventually did. That pretty picture I had of us two huddled over a crib, making funny faces insides—gone. Now I just see me living alone in a beaten down apartment and getting a rejection letter from the adoption agency.
“Brian, we’ve been together for twenty months now. Every time we’ve fought, it’s always been like this Brian, you being angry about something me trying to figure out what’s wrong. I can’t always do this. You have to grow up and change some time.”
I finally turned toward Trung and met with his pleading eyes. I gazed into them, and I knew that this argument would be the one argument that I couldn’t get out of, the one argument in which I actually had to say something. “How about I write you a letter?”
I slid into my jeans and sat on the toilet, waiting in the dark while he finished putting on all his clothes.
“What do we do about the towel rack?” I whispered.
“Just leave it in the shower stall.”
“So what’s the plan?” the third voice spoke. I listened as the two of them discussed the plan to each other.
“You’re going to pretend you’ve been vomiting in toilet. We’re going to tell everyone that we’ve been helping you.”
“Okay, I guess I did drink a lot.”
Like anyone’s really going to believe he’s been vomiting for the last hour while the two of us were tending to him. In a locked bathroom.
“Alright, got my clothes on. You ready?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
He opened the door and walked out first, while I stayed behind at the sink. Someone who had probably been waiting to use the bathroom for the last hour walked in and saw the “drunk mess” hunched over the toilet.
“Is he alright?”
I nodded. “Yeah, kid’s just been vomiting. Had a little too much to drink.”
He tilted his head and raised his eye brow at me.
I looked down. “Yeah, I know.”
I left the bathroom and found my pizza costume sitting next to the door. I didn’t bother wrapping it back around my neck. After putting on a shirt, I sat up against a wall, wondering what to do. I felt too nervous to go back downstairs to the party, nervous that everyone knew where I had been the last hour. Remembering that my phone’s ringer went off thirty minutes ago in the bathroom, I pulled it out and saw that I had one text message from Walden. I read it: Wow neexxxt!
Shit. With no one to turn to, I wrote a text to Trung: Just had a threesome with two other guys at the Halloween party. Linh wasn't one of them. And everyone knows, oops. What do I do now?
Trung lay next to me on my bed, tugging at my shirt and trying to look me in the eye, but I continue to stare straight through his pleading eyes at the ceiling. Both our sweat began running down onto my pillow and blankets; it was a warm summer evening.
“Brian, talk to me. Talk about our relationship. What’s bothering you?”
I grunted and turned away from him to look at the wall. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.” I’m fine—I don’t know how many times I uttered this phrase in the last hour. But we both knew that everything was far from fine.
Trung pulled my shoulder and rolled me back onto my back. “Brian, I sat in my car for two hours outside your house waiting for you to come home. Why didn’t you tell me before I left home that you were going out to the mall? And when I called you to tell you I got to your place, why did it take you two more hours to come back?”
I motioned at the shopping bags on the floor. “I stopped by Oakridge.”
“I know that, but I’m asking you why did you feel like you could make a two-hour detour when you already knew I was at your place?”
I didn’t answer; I just stared at the ceiling again. Somewhere in my mind I pieced together the answers to his questions, but I didn’t know the right words to speak them. I just wanted to be alone, Trung. I needed to think because I couldn’t think with you around all the fucking time.
“Brian, please. What’s wrong?”
I’ve been pushing you away more and more every day because every morning when I wake up, I can see our end coming closer and closer. I’ve been growing so disillusioned; you know that picture we had of ourselves in the far distant future? How we’d just finish watching X-Files at 3 AM, and I’d be washing the dishes at the sink as you come up from behind to wrap your arms around me? Just as we normally would do now? That picture’s long since dissolved.
“Brian, say something!”
I’m guilty of keeping secrets from you Trung, secrets that I thought I could bury deep in the back of my mind. And for the longest time I did a good damn job of suppressing them, never letting them reach my conscience, but somehow, they eventually did. That pretty picture I had of us two huddled over a crib, making funny faces insides—gone. Now I just see me living alone in a beaten down apartment and getting a rejection letter from the adoption agency.
“Brian, we’ve been together for twenty months now. Every time we’ve fought, it’s always been like this Brian, you being angry about something me trying to figure out what’s wrong. I can’t always do this. You have to grow up and change some time.”
I finally turned toward Trung and met with his pleading eyes. I gazed into them, and I knew that this argument would be the one argument that I couldn’t get out of, the one argument in which I actually had to say something. “How about I write you a letter?”
Runaway: Part 1
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
“Murrieta really is in the middle of nowhere.” I stared out the window and couldn’t see anything but black silhouettes of passing scenery and the road in the car’s headlights. I turned around to glance at Ron and his girlfriend Renee in the backseat, completely knocked out in each other’s arms. I sighed. “Still hot.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
Brian Goes to Korea
Sunday, June 6, 2010
“Teachers Facing Weakest Market in Years”
Written May 19th, 2010 by Winnie Hu, from the New York Times (Excerpted)
PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which once hired thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help-wanted signs.
In New York, where the Success Charter Network is hiring 135 teachers for its seven schools in Harlem and the Bronx, some of the 8,453 applicants have called the office three times a day to check on their status. Veteran teachers have also offered to work as assistant teachers.
“It’s heartbreaking — there’s much more desperation out there,” said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former councilwoman who is the network’s founder and chief executive.
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of the 90 aspiring teachers who graduated last weekend are jobless. Many had counted on offers from the Philadelphia public schools but had their interviews canceled this month after the district announced a hiring freeze.
“People will come in here begging for anything,” said Dennis R. Lauro Jr., the superintendent [of Pelham Union Free School District], who started closing his office door this year because out-of-work teachers would drop in unannounced to hand him résumés. “We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers before.”
Along with five other former teachers, Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall, after three years of looking for an elementary school job. She sent out hundreds of résumés, only to land one interview a year. She settled for working as a substitute teacher, earning $85 a day with no benefits.
“Spending $50,000 for an education you can’t use is really frustrating,” Ms. Stier said. “I definitely miss teaching, but I felt like I had no other choice.”
---
We had a guest speaker talk to us teachers during my first summer at Breakthrough Collaborative in 2008. She was some chick from the district office or from the government—I don’t remember—and she told us, “In light of the failing education market, the fact that you young students are still working toward your dreams of becoming teachers shows how you are all courageous.”
Now I just think we’re fucking stupid.
All I heard throughout Breakthrough was how, don’t worry, the market sucks now but in four years, all the oldies are going to retire and the market will open up again. I was able to convince myself of this, and what also helped was the fact that I tried to avoid looking too far into the future. I’ve always had the habit of sitting back and thinking, “Things will get better later, and I won’t have to do anything.”
Now I feel like this whole idea of old teachers retiring all at once and the market blossoming like vagina lips was some false encouragement trying to keep us aspiring teachers from losing hope. I don’t see the market opening up any time soon. I got two more years in college, and I’ll probably do a one-year credentialing program of some sort. Teaching jobs opening up by Fall 2013? I don’t think so. Not like this.
The biggest question facing me is, what the fuck am I going to do? I’m still going to pursue teaching, but I now need a backup plan, which will probably be more like the only plan.
My education professor, a young guy in his late twenties, told us about what he did after he graduated from college. While his friends tried to stay around their hometown to find teaching jobs, he went out to teach in England and Asia, and years later, once he came back to America to find a more stable teaching job, teachers hired him because he had built up a very solid resumé.
I think that’s going to be my plan: grab at any kind of teaching job, no matter where it is. There are always ads in the school newspaper to Teach English in Korea for a year and earn like $1500 a month (plus living expenses, too). Bitch pay, but it’d look good on my resumé. Hopefully this offer will still be around when I graduate. I don’t think I’ll hesitate to take it.
Plus, hot Koreanzz oh NOM NOM NOM.
Written May 19th, 2010 by Winnie Hu, from the New York Times (Excerpted)
PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which once hired thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help-wanted signs.
In New York, where the Success Charter Network is hiring 135 teachers for its seven schools in Harlem and the Bronx, some of the 8,453 applicants have called the office three times a day to check on their status. Veteran teachers have also offered to work as assistant teachers.
“It’s heartbreaking — there’s much more desperation out there,” said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former councilwoman who is the network’s founder and chief executive.
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of the 90 aspiring teachers who graduated last weekend are jobless. Many had counted on offers from the Philadelphia public schools but had their interviews canceled this month after the district announced a hiring freeze.
“People will come in here begging for anything,” said Dennis R. Lauro Jr., the superintendent [of Pelham Union Free School District], who started closing his office door this year because out-of-work teachers would drop in unannounced to hand him résumés. “We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers before.”
Along with five other former teachers, Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall, after three years of looking for an elementary school job. She sent out hundreds of résumés, only to land one interview a year. She settled for working as a substitute teacher, earning $85 a day with no benefits.
“Spending $50,000 for an education you can’t use is really frustrating,” Ms. Stier said. “I definitely miss teaching, but I felt like I had no other choice.”
---
We had a guest speaker talk to us teachers during my first summer at Breakthrough Collaborative in 2008. She was some chick from the district office or from the government—I don’t remember—and she told us, “In light of the failing education market, the fact that you young students are still working toward your dreams of becoming teachers shows how you are all courageous.”
Now I just think we’re fucking stupid.
All I heard throughout Breakthrough was how, don’t worry, the market sucks now but in four years, all the oldies are going to retire and the market will open up again. I was able to convince myself of this, and what also helped was the fact that I tried to avoid looking too far into the future. I’ve always had the habit of sitting back and thinking, “Things will get better later, and I won’t have to do anything.”
Now I feel like this whole idea of old teachers retiring all at once and the market blossoming like vagina lips was some false encouragement trying to keep us aspiring teachers from losing hope. I don’t see the market opening up any time soon. I got two more years in college, and I’ll probably do a one-year credentialing program of some sort. Teaching jobs opening up by Fall 2013? I don’t think so. Not like this.
The biggest question facing me is, what the fuck am I going to do? I’m still going to pursue teaching, but I now need a backup plan, which will probably be more like the only plan.
My education professor, a young guy in his late twenties, told us about what he did after he graduated from college. While his friends tried to stay around their hometown to find teaching jobs, he went out to teach in England and Asia, and years later, once he came back to America to find a more stable teaching job, teachers hired him because he had built up a very solid resumé.
I think that’s going to be my plan: grab at any kind of teaching job, no matter where it is. There are always ads in the school newspaper to Teach English in Korea for a year and earn like $1500 a month (plus living expenses, too). Bitch pay, but it’d look good on my resumé. Hopefully this offer will still be around when I graduate. I don’t think I’ll hesitate to take it.
Plus, hot Koreanzz oh NOM NOM NOM.
Tags:
breakthrough,
future,
guestwriter,
repost,
socal,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
20
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
This is a two week late entry about my birthday. I turned 20 on May 12th, but nothing too special happened that day since it fell on an otherwise normal Wednesday in the middle of the week.
In the afternoon, Sang, Lawrence, and I got some sushi at Sushilicious. I didn’t even like sushi that much, but this place had a special for birthdays, a free $20 gift card for the birthday diner. Twenty bucks is a fucking lot.
At lunch, we discovered that I had no manners, but else was new?
We discussed our housing situation for next year, but we reached the same conclusion that we had reached many times before: “Let’s figure it out later.” It was going to be the three of us, plus Leland (who I auditioned with for MCIA auditions) living in the same place. I was pretty damn excited. I’d be doubling up with Sang, and Lawrence with Leland—Vietnamese vs. Filipinos! I thought wouldn’t it be awesome if each of us represented a different team? Sang would have CADC, Leland would have BBoys Anonymous (or possibly MCIA?), and Lawrence and I would have something else. Rivalries? Freestyle sessions in the living room Monday nights? We weren’t going to need furniture; that’d only take up space.
After getting sushi, Lawrence, Sang, and I drove down to Tapioca Express to get some Boba Tea, something that I only recently started to enjoy. I tried ordering a grass jelly milk tea with boba, and to my surprise, the drink had actual chunks of grass jelly in addition to the Boba.
“I thought it would be flavored by some grass jelly extract or whatever. I didn’t think there’d be actual chunks of grass jelly in the drink.”
Sang sighed. “HAHA, you’re a dumbass.”
Later in the evening, I drove up to UCLA to do homework with Trung. I had a really huge paper due the next day that I was no where close to finishing, and I knew that if I tried to work on it at UCI, I would’ve been too distracted because I had wireless Internet at UCI. So the most logical option was to drive 50 miles up north to escape the reach of UCI’s wifi. But I guess you could say I mainly went up so I could get some free food off of Trung and annoy him all night long.
I got there around 8, Trung and I had dinner and some ice cream, and I started my paper at 11. I wouldn’t get back to Irvine until 6 AM, where I would continue finishing up my paper until it was time to go to the class that it was due in. The hard work paid off though, because I got a B+, which was my goal. What sucked though was that I had to spend my birthday working on this paper, and the all nighter made a cold I had even worse.
My persistent cold didn’t stop me from going back up to Norcal on the 20th though! On the following Friday night, Trung and I went clubbing at Fuz. It was established (again) that I could not club (freak) dance (or in general). This one gay guy thought my dancing so “SO ADORABLE!!!” Adorable, not sexy. Ugh.
On Saturday, I went out to a family dinner, and then we had some cake afterwards. No relatives this time because they were “busy,” as in they were too cheap (or poor) to feed my greedy ass their money this year, and probably for the rest of my life. Oh well.
Ok, that’s my overview of all the things I did for my birthday. Time for some reflection! Cue the swoosh sound from Lost! SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
---
“A Dramatic Post about Turning 16”
Written May 23rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I started this LiveJournal when I was 13, and back then, when I was 13, I was straight... Well, mostly, but besides that, I looked at life rather simply because to me, life just seemed like keeping up my A’s in junior high. On the side of school, I had DDR, which I played all day every day at home and then went out to the arcade once a month to tone up my DDR skills. All that mattered to me was that AA, and I remained shy and aloof to the other DDR players. And getting with girls (or getting into a relationship) was one of the things that I least thought about, and I was that kind of guy (weirdass) that was like, “Virgin until marriage!” The future seemed simple, probably because it was the future that my parents had planned for me: Go to a University of California, get a good job, raise a family, and live happily ever after.
Now here I am, three years later, at age 16... School is still important to me, but now I have started to juggle other things in my life that have become as equally as important in my life, such as dealing with my parents, dealing with boys, dealing with friends, and dealing with living a life that is fulfilling enough. (Though I guess some would say that I tend to drop the balls when I “juggle.”)
And now, with DDR/ITG, the only thing that is stopping me from quitting is the awesome community. It sounds pretty pathetic, but I’ve changed and have become more sociable and friendly because of a four-paneled stomping video game. Making out with another ITG player in front of a bunch of other ITG players at a busy arcade also says a lot about how I’m not as shy as I was three years ago.
And yeah, all that crap about staying a virgin until marriage...? I’ve slept with a guy on a first “date.” I’m still a virgin now, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be by the time I’m age 17. Don’t get the wrong impression though, because I’m not trying to lose it as quickly as possible, unlike a lot of people who seem to be in a hurry to mindlessly lose their virginities, probably influenced by brainwashing media and movies like “Friends” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (but I loved watching both of these). I’m saving it for someone “special,” even if that means I die a virgin, but with the way that I tend to rush into things so quickly, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost my virginity by the time I turn 17. I’d hate to regret losing it.
And gah, the future. It’s still all the same stuff that my parents have hoped for from me, but while they make everything seem easy, I’m realizing, “Wow, this shit is hard.” Because, well, getting into a UC? That means keeping up good grades at school; fuck, that’s hard. Getting a good job? That means spending more of my life at school to get a better education, learning to do taxes, spending endless days going through newspaper ads, going through job interviews... fuck, that’s all hard. And god, raising a family? That means finding a lover (preferably), going through adoption agencies, waiting, dealing with bitchy bigots, and actually raising the kids right so that they grow up to be happy; that’s all very hard and will even be heart-wrecking at times. And living happily ever after? Well, I have the basic outline of my future planned out, but now that I’m older and I actually have my own desires, I’m going to need to fit a lot more stuff into my life to live happily ever.
But now I’m just playing with the boundaries of age limits again and concerning with myself with things too far off in the future. This is one the reasons why I still have to remind myself, “I’m 16.”
I’m 16, bitches.
This Wednesday, my Dad’s finally going to let me get behind the wheel and drive around the block, and all this week, I’m anxiously waiting by my phone for American Eagle Outfitters to contact me to set up a date for a job interview.
---
Get into a UC? Check.
Get a job? Check. (Not at American Eagle, thank god.)
Lose virginity? Check.
To someone special? Blank.
Only having sex with someone special? Blank.
Fulfilling life? Blank.
In the afternoon, Sang, Lawrence, and I got some sushi at Sushilicious. I didn’t even like sushi that much, but this place had a special for birthdays, a free $20 gift card for the birthday diner. Twenty bucks is a fucking lot.
At lunch, we discovered that I had no manners, but else was new?
We discussed our housing situation for next year, but we reached the same conclusion that we had reached many times before: “Let’s figure it out later.” It was going to be the three of us, plus Leland (who I auditioned with for MCIA auditions) living in the same place. I was pretty damn excited. I’d be doubling up with Sang, and Lawrence with Leland—Vietnamese vs. Filipinos! I thought wouldn’t it be awesome if each of us represented a different team? Sang would have CADC, Leland would have BBoys Anonymous (or possibly MCIA?), and Lawrence and I would have something else. Rivalries? Freestyle sessions in the living room Monday nights? We weren’t going to need furniture; that’d only take up space.
After getting sushi, Lawrence, Sang, and I drove down to Tapioca Express to get some Boba Tea, something that I only recently started to enjoy. I tried ordering a grass jelly milk tea with boba, and to my surprise, the drink had actual chunks of grass jelly in addition to the Boba.
“I thought it would be flavored by some grass jelly extract or whatever. I didn’t think there’d be actual chunks of grass jelly in the drink.”
Sang sighed. “HAHA, you’re a dumbass.”
Later in the evening, I drove up to UCLA to do homework with Trung. I had a really huge paper due the next day that I was no where close to finishing, and I knew that if I tried to work on it at UCI, I would’ve been too distracted because I had wireless Internet at UCI. So the most logical option was to drive 50 miles up north to escape the reach of UCI’s wifi. But I guess you could say I mainly went up so I could get some free food off of Trung and annoy him all night long.
I got there around 8, Trung and I had dinner and some ice cream, and I started my paper at 11. I wouldn’t get back to Irvine until 6 AM, where I would continue finishing up my paper until it was time to go to the class that it was due in. The hard work paid off though, because I got a B+, which was my goal. What sucked though was that I had to spend my birthday working on this paper, and the all nighter made a cold I had even worse.
My persistent cold didn’t stop me from going back up to Norcal on the 20th though! On the following Friday night, Trung and I went clubbing at Fuz. It was established (again) that I could not club (freak) dance (or in general). This one gay guy thought my dancing so “SO ADORABLE!!!” Adorable, not sexy. Ugh.
On Saturday, I went out to a family dinner, and then we had some cake afterwards. No relatives this time because they were “busy,” as in they were too cheap (or poor) to feed my greedy ass their money this year, and probably for the rest of my life. Oh well.
Ok, that’s my overview of all the things I did for my birthday. Time for some reflection! Cue the swoosh sound from Lost! SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
---
“A Dramatic Post about Turning 16”
Written May 23rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I started this LiveJournal when I was 13, and back then, when I was 13, I was straight... Well, mostly, but besides that, I looked at life rather simply because to me, life just seemed like keeping up my A’s in junior high. On the side of school, I had DDR, which I played all day every day at home and then went out to the arcade once a month to tone up my DDR skills. All that mattered to me was that AA, and I remained shy and aloof to the other DDR players. And getting with girls (or getting into a relationship) was one of the things that I least thought about, and I was that kind of guy (weirdass) that was like, “Virgin until marriage!” The future seemed simple, probably because it was the future that my parents had planned for me: Go to a University of California, get a good job, raise a family, and live happily ever after.
Now here I am, three years later, at age 16... School is still important to me, but now I have started to juggle other things in my life that have become as equally as important in my life, such as dealing with my parents, dealing with boys, dealing with friends, and dealing with living a life that is fulfilling enough. (Though I guess some would say that I tend to drop the balls when I “juggle.”)
And now, with DDR/ITG, the only thing that is stopping me from quitting is the awesome community. It sounds pretty pathetic, but I’ve changed and have become more sociable and friendly because of a four-paneled stomping video game. Making out with another ITG player in front of a bunch of other ITG players at a busy arcade also says a lot about how I’m not as shy as I was three years ago.
And yeah, all that crap about staying a virgin until marriage...? I’ve slept with a guy on a first “date.” I’m still a virgin now, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be by the time I’m age 17. Don’t get the wrong impression though, because I’m not trying to lose it as quickly as possible, unlike a lot of people who seem to be in a hurry to mindlessly lose their virginities, probably influenced by brainwashing media and movies like “Friends” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (but I loved watching both of these). I’m saving it for someone “special,” even if that means I die a virgin, but with the way that I tend to rush into things so quickly, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost my virginity by the time I turn 17. I’d hate to regret losing it.
And gah, the future. It’s still all the same stuff that my parents have hoped for from me, but while they make everything seem easy, I’m realizing, “Wow, this shit is hard.” Because, well, getting into a UC? That means keeping up good grades at school; fuck, that’s hard. Getting a good job? That means spending more of my life at school to get a better education, learning to do taxes, spending endless days going through newspaper ads, going through job interviews... fuck, that’s all hard. And god, raising a family? That means finding a lover (preferably), going through adoption agencies, waiting, dealing with bitchy bigots, and actually raising the kids right so that they grow up to be happy; that’s all very hard and will even be heart-wrecking at times. And living happily ever after? Well, I have the basic outline of my future planned out, but now that I’m older and I actually have my own desires, I’m going to need to fit a lot more stuff into my life to live happily ever.
But now I’m just playing with the boundaries of age limits again and concerning with myself with things too far off in the future. This is one the reasons why I still have to remind myself, “I’m 16.”
I’m 16, bitches.
This Wednesday, my Dad’s finally going to let me get behind the wheel and drive around the block, and all this week, I’m anxiously waiting by my phone for American Eagle Outfitters to contact me to set up a date for a job interview.
---
Get into a UC? Check.
Get a job? Check. (Not at American Eagle, thank god.)
Lose virginity? Check.
To someone special? Blank.
Only having sex with someone special? Blank.
Fulfilling life? Blank.
Tags:
family,
flashback,
future,
gay,
norcal,
oakridge,
relationships,
repost,
sang,
schoolwork,
socal,
trung,
ucla,
winter spring 2010,
work
Meaning
Thursday, December 31, 2009
I have no doubt that within my lifetime, science will learn to fully explain with 100% confidence how a person becomes gay—or straight even. Whether it is that way from the start or the result of complex environmental factors, science will explain it down to every last detail: how overexposure to a certain chemical effects shifts in chemical reactions in the brain, how the subtle mutation of one allele affects an entire gene. The answers will be another accomplishment for science, another one for the textbooks, but what those who trust their textbooks without question do not realize is that, science, at its best, only explains how. Its one and only pitfall, the only one thing missing, is that it can never have answers to what is most significant: It can never explain why.
A male is made to deliver his sperm to a female, who is made to receive and likewise made to bear a child. Science wires the brain so that the male feels sexual arousal and the desire to, in blunt terms, insert his dick in the female’s pussy and pump it full of jizz, and nine months later, the mom gives birth to a baby. The purpose of life, at its most basic science, is reproduction.
Many people do not regard this as their purpose or as only a small part of their lives, but I, in cruel irony, have long since taken this up as “one of the only firm decisions that I’ve already made for my future.” It’s the only constant longing I have had since middle school, and it will remain constant through the future.
I am left to question the science that has made me the way I am. To put it in blunt terms again, my sperm are pretty damn healthy as far as I know, and I have the need, whether it is biological or purely emotional, to have my own blood-related kid. Yet, I have not the innate desire to engage in actions that make use of them (once again, out of diction: I don’t wanna fuck vajayjays because they scare me). Why is it that I want this but cannot have it, while there are even others out there who can but do not want to?
Whether the answers I want are in myself, in other people, in my past and future experiences, or out there and beyond, and whether or not I was meant for something different, I know—and I’ve known for a while—that the answer is not in the science that I’ve held close to the foundations of my reality.
---
“At the Kitchen Table”
Written January 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I want kids (when I'm an adult). I've had it decided since 7th grade, and it was one of the only firm decisions that I've already made for my future. I can't see what kind of job I will have, or who I will be sharing my life with, or where I will be living, but I can see myself coming home everyday to kids—two children, a boy and a girl. Unless my partner really opposes, their names would be Matt and Janelle.
I have imagined that I would always be the one that cooked for the family (watched too much Food Network back then). I sorta had this plan. There are four weeks in each month, plus a few extra days. The first week of the month, the dinner menu would be all Asian. The second week would be all French; third Mexican; fourth Italian. And the last remaining days would be open for new recipes. (Obviously I'm rich in this little dream of mine.) The kids would love it (or else I would force it down their throats), and they would actually come to the dinner table excited.
---
December 31st, 2009, New Years Eve, less than one hour to midnight. Exactly four years ago, I came out. Yet I still haven’t come to turns that I suck dick, and as a result I’ve been bitter. Many things throughout the four years have masked the bitterness or made me forget, but eventually, I always return to this feeling.
A male is made to deliver his sperm to a female, who is made to receive and likewise made to bear a child. Science wires the brain so that the male feels sexual arousal and the desire to, in blunt terms, insert his dick in the female’s pussy and pump it full of jizz, and nine months later, the mom gives birth to a baby. The purpose of life, at its most basic science, is reproduction.
Many people do not regard this as their purpose or as only a small part of their lives, but I, in cruel irony, have long since taken this up as “one of the only firm decisions that I’ve already made for my future.” It’s the only constant longing I have had since middle school, and it will remain constant through the future.
I am left to question the science that has made me the way I am. To put it in blunt terms again, my sperm are pretty damn healthy as far as I know, and I have the need, whether it is biological or purely emotional, to have my own blood-related kid. Yet, I have not the innate desire to engage in actions that make use of them (once again, out of diction: I don’t wanna fuck vajayjays because they scare me). Why is it that I want this but cannot have it, while there are even others out there who can but do not want to?
Whether the answers I want are in myself, in other people, in my past and future experiences, or out there and beyond, and whether or not I was meant for something different, I know—and I’ve known for a while—that the answer is not in the science that I’ve held close to the foundations of my reality.
---
“At the Kitchen Table”
Written January 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I want kids (when I'm an adult). I've had it decided since 7th grade, and it was one of the only firm decisions that I've already made for my future. I can't see what kind of job I will have, or who I will be sharing my life with, or where I will be living, but I can see myself coming home everyday to kids—two children, a boy and a girl. Unless my partner really opposes, their names would be Matt and Janelle.
I have imagined that I would always be the one that cooked for the family (watched too much Food Network back then). I sorta had this plan. There are four weeks in each month, plus a few extra days. The first week of the month, the dinner menu would be all Asian. The second week would be all French; third Mexican; fourth Italian. And the last remaining days would be open for new recipes. (Obviously I'm rich in this little dream of mine.) The kids would love it (or else I would force it down their throats), and they would actually come to the dinner table excited.
---
December 31st, 2009, New Years Eve, less than one hour to midnight. Exactly four years ago, I came out. Yet I still haven’t come to turns that I suck dick, and as a result I’ve been bitter. Many things throughout the four years have masked the bitterness or made me forget, but eventually, I always return to this feeling.
Tags:
flashback,
future,
gay,
norcal,
repost,
spirituality,
winter spring 2010
Photo Album 2000
Monday, December 28, 2009
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.
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.
Transcendence
Sunday, December 20, 2009
I just wanna punch all the cocksucking faggots in this world, right now. Life to them is nothing more than an excuse to be loud and obnoxious.
Does it ever hurt to strive to be a little politically correct?
I don’t need to be politically correct. Fuck the gooks. Fuck the wetbacks. Fuck the niggers. Fuck the bible-banging redneck white trash.
Stop being immature. Don’t take your anger out on the whole world.
Do you want me to be politically correct then? When I refer to cocksuckers, should I rather just say the LGBTIQQAP2S community?
2S?
Yeah, exactly: who gives a fuck? Honestly, nothing matters past the B. I’d rather not be grouped with the rest.
Why not?
The first three describe only the gender I’d like to do, while the rest is too different. What’s so similar between a guy who likes to fuck guys and a guy who wishes he had a vagina and boobies? Just because we’re all a sexual minority doesn’t mean we should all be grouped together. Asians, Mexicans, and blacks are racial minorities, but it’s not like we’re all considered the same. And, much in the same way that those three races seem to hate each other, it shouldn’t be expected that I automatically be welcoming to everything past the B. I’m not, and people seem to be so surprised.
You’re giving legitimacy to racism to justify your reasons to hate another group of people; you realize that, right?
I don’t really give a fuck. I’m just saying, there is also hostility among all the LGBblahblahblahwhatever community; we’re not the one big happy family that pride parades depict us as.
That’s for sure, coming from the person who wants to punch every “cock sucking faggot in the world right now.”
Yeah.
You say you hate people past the B, but you also sound like you spite everyone within the first three letters too. Why badmouth them?
I wanna leave, separate myself from them.
Why?
Because, within each gay person I see, I see a part of me that I don’t want to be.
So saying the worst things possible about them somehow makes you transcend beyond them? I feel like you’re only descending into that dark lonely place where no one could find you. I thought you were glad to be out of there?
I’d like to go back.
What happened to your gay friends?
I’ve barely seen Cameron all quarter.
Well, not just Cameron. You’ve got the Funksters, downelink friends, Trung, and etc.
Well...ok, I’ve still got them.
Do you wanna leave them?
No.
Then who are you trying to escape from?
I don’t know. I guess...myself.
Yourself?
I’m trying to escape from myself.
Why?
When I think of being gay, I only think of it in terms of all that I’ve lost, or will lose.
I thought that, to you, “gay” only described the gender you liked to do?
That’s the biology part of it. I used to think that that was all there was to being gay, but then I realized that there’s some sociology involved too.
Do you often find yourself discriminated against?
No, that’s not it at all. I’ve learned that there are such things as uniquely gay experiences, but, they’re not brought on by a heteronormative society, they’re brought on by the male dicksucking community itself. That’s also where I see the parts of me that I don’t want to be.
What are the things that you think you’ve lost
A bright sunny happy future with a loving wife and kid. My parents—as accepting as they are, I still know there’s some loss. My relationship.
Your gay relationship with Trung?
Well, if I was a straight guy with a girl in a relationship that had the same characteristics as my one with Trung, I don’t think it would’ve failed the same way, if at all.
But I still don’t get it. I don’t see the connections between the things you’ve supposedly lost and your problems stemming from the gay community.
Well, some are because of heteronormativity; some, of discrimination; some, of the biology behind being gay; and some, of, yeah, those fucking cocksuckers.
Are you going to elaborate?
No, I don’t think so. Sorry, but I’m going to go now.
Wait, where are you going? Don’t go yet! You’ve only given me scraps, and I don’t know if it’s enough to make the connections. I still have more questions.
That’s good. Question everything.
1 AM. The packing was pretty much done an hour ago, and I was ready for the big drive back to school the next morning and the move-in to my apartment. However, I had stayed up rummaging around my room for my iPod mini, which Cameron gave to me for my birthday. I never recovered the iPod, but it was somewhat beneficial that I had lost it. Feeling the end creeping so near, I didn’t want summer to end, despite it being so lengthy with Breakthrough, Funksters, and the breakup, and despite my excitement to start dancing in Irvine again. The iPod search gave me a reason to stay awake and milk out the last few moments of my summer vacation, and it gave Trung a reason to stay for a little longer.
During the last thirty minutes of our search, however, our conversations died and we eventually both fell silent. Both of us could sense our imminent goodbye as my Space Jam bedroom clock continued to tick away the seconds that separated us from the end.
Around 2, I called it quits. Trung solemnly nodded his head. We shared a moment of awkward silence before Trung lunged at me for a full embrace. Caught off guard, my arms wavered in the air before I eventually decided to also wrap my arms around him and to rest my cheek against his hair. It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of his weeps, and it was then that the ticks ceased and time seemed to freeze.
Muffled by the sobbing, the tears, and the chest against which he buried his face, Trung’s voice emerged, remarking, “Brian, by the time we see each other again, we’re going to be totally different people.”
Trying to reassure him, I disagreed, but in my head, I wondered how true it would turn out.
Does it ever hurt to strive to be a little politically correct?
I don’t need to be politically correct. Fuck the gooks. Fuck the wetbacks. Fuck the niggers. Fuck the bible-banging redneck white trash.
Stop being immature. Don’t take your anger out on the whole world.
Do you want me to be politically correct then? When I refer to cocksuckers, should I rather just say the LGBTIQQAP2S community?
2S?
Yeah, exactly: who gives a fuck? Honestly, nothing matters past the B. I’d rather not be grouped with the rest.
Why not?
The first three describe only the gender I’d like to do, while the rest is too different. What’s so similar between a guy who likes to fuck guys and a guy who wishes he had a vagina and boobies? Just because we’re all a sexual minority doesn’t mean we should all be grouped together. Asians, Mexicans, and blacks are racial minorities, but it’s not like we’re all considered the same. And, much in the same way that those three races seem to hate each other, it shouldn’t be expected that I automatically be welcoming to everything past the B. I’m not, and people seem to be so surprised.
You’re giving legitimacy to racism to justify your reasons to hate another group of people; you realize that, right?
I don’t really give a fuck. I’m just saying, there is also hostility among all the LGBblahblahblahwhatever community; we’re not the one big happy family that pride parades depict us as.
That’s for sure, coming from the person who wants to punch every “cock sucking faggot in the world right now.”
Yeah.
You say you hate people past the B, but you also sound like you spite everyone within the first three letters too. Why badmouth them?
I wanna leave, separate myself from them.
Why?
Because, within each gay person I see, I see a part of me that I don’t want to be.
So saying the worst things possible about them somehow makes you transcend beyond them? I feel like you’re only descending into that dark lonely place where no one could find you. I thought you were glad to be out of there?
I’d like to go back.
What happened to your gay friends?
I’ve barely seen Cameron all quarter.
Well, not just Cameron. You’ve got the Funksters, downelink friends, Trung, and etc.
Well...ok, I’ve still got them.
Do you wanna leave them?
No.
Then who are you trying to escape from?
I don’t know. I guess...myself.
Yourself?
I’m trying to escape from myself.
Why?
When I think of being gay, I only think of it in terms of all that I’ve lost, or will lose.
I thought that, to you, “gay” only described the gender you liked to do?
That’s the biology part of it. I used to think that that was all there was to being gay, but then I realized that there’s some sociology involved too.
Do you often find yourself discriminated against?
No, that’s not it at all. I’ve learned that there are such things as uniquely gay experiences, but, they’re not brought on by a heteronormative society, they’re brought on by the male dicksucking community itself. That’s also where I see the parts of me that I don’t want to be.
What are the things that you think you’ve lost
A bright sunny happy future with a loving wife and kid. My parents—as accepting as they are, I still know there’s some loss. My relationship.
Your gay relationship with Trung?
Well, if I was a straight guy with a girl in a relationship that had the same characteristics as my one with Trung, I don’t think it would’ve failed the same way, if at all.
But I still don’t get it. I don’t see the connections between the things you’ve supposedly lost and your problems stemming from the gay community.
Well, some are because of heteronormativity; some, of discrimination; some, of the biology behind being gay; and some, of, yeah, those fucking cocksuckers.
Are you going to elaborate?
No, I don’t think so. Sorry, but I’m going to go now.
Wait, where are you going? Don’t go yet! You’ve only given me scraps, and I don’t know if it’s enough to make the connections. I still have more questions.
That’s good. Question everything.
1 AM. The packing was pretty much done an hour ago, and I was ready for the big drive back to school the next morning and the move-in to my apartment. However, I had stayed up rummaging around my room for my iPod mini, which Cameron gave to me for my birthday. I never recovered the iPod, but it was somewhat beneficial that I had lost it. Feeling the end creeping so near, I didn’t want summer to end, despite it being so lengthy with Breakthrough, Funksters, and the breakup, and despite my excitement to start dancing in Irvine again. The iPod search gave me a reason to stay awake and milk out the last few moments of my summer vacation, and it gave Trung a reason to stay for a little longer.
During the last thirty minutes of our search, however, our conversations died and we eventually both fell silent. Both of us could sense our imminent goodbye as my Space Jam bedroom clock continued to tick away the seconds that separated us from the end.
Around 2, I called it quits. Trung solemnly nodded his head. We shared a moment of awkward silence before Trung lunged at me for a full embrace. Caught off guard, my arms wavered in the air before I eventually decided to also wrap my arms around him and to rest my cheek against his hair. It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of his weeps, and it was then that the ticks ceased and time seemed to freeze.
Muffled by the sobbing, the tears, and the chest against which he buried his face, Trung’s voice emerged, remarking, “Brian, by the time we see each other again, we’re going to be totally different people.”
Trying to reassure him, I disagreed, but in my head, I wondered how true it would turn out.
Mais le Sort a Voulu
Saturday, December 5, 2009
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.
Tags:
breakthrough,
fall 2009,
flashback,
french,
future,
norcal,
photo change,
repost,
socal,
teaching
Not Me
Thursday, October 15, 2009
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.
“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.
Paradox
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
I should be doing homework right now, and if I didn’t have homework, I should be dancing. But fuck, there’s so much going through my head right now that I just had to get some of it out.
Common Ground auditions started last week. I didn’t get in, but that was pretty much the plan. The main goal was to get over stage fright so that I wouldn’t blank out for CADC auditions.
The CADC audition process started yesterday, and I’m already feeling overwhelmed. Alfonso was helping me clean up the piece we learned yesterday, and he pointed out so many problems in my performance that I had to take notes. They made sense when I was writing them, but reading them now, they make no sense: “Straight leg, brush past face, left shoulder up. Make hard part bigger. Push off right foot for the van. Blades!” Etfc. (That stands for et fucking cetera.)
I’ve been a bad student, fuck. I already missed two homework assignments, one in my natural disasters class and the other in my sociology class. I have done zero reading for natural disasters and probably at this point, 3% of the reading for sociology. I admit, it’s been harder to get schoolwork done myself because you’ve been keeping me in check since the beginning of senior year in high school. That’s one of the reasons why my parents loved you so much.
Shit, since the beginning of senior year in high school. I can’t believe it’s been two years.
Oops, this entry wasn’t supposed to suddenly become about you.
Alfonso has been trying to keep me in check. He asks me have I done my homework yet, how much reading I need to get caught up on, etfc, but I always skirt around an actual answer.
I don’t want to blame it on dance, but I will say I have made a lot of sacrifices for dance. Money, time, money, friends, money, and emotions. Yes, emotions.
I don’t want to admit to myself how badly I want CADC, because if I do but then end up not getting it, I’ll be crushed and I’ll probably hate life for a day or two. Don’t get me wrong; I can accept defeat perfectly fine. But the only thing I can’t accept is how I react to defeat. In case I fail, I put up these mental blocks that help cushion the impact. I refuse to let myself react with anything more dramatic than a simple “oh” and shrug. No tears, no desire to confide in another person. That’s all for the weak. For the gays.
The main goal of the Common Ground audition was to see my performance on video so that I could cite that as evidence to myself that I was getting better enough for CADC auditions. But the evidence is lacking in quantity, and I need to start drawing from outside of my rationalizations.
The same mental blocks soften my emotions, my esteem, and my will, and so I refuse to feel like anything bigger than “good.” To do well for CADC, however, I think I might have to make myself susceptible to emotions at both end of the spectrum. Only when I really admit how much I fucking want CADC will I do one hundred times better. And confidence: I need it. In my dancing and in general I need to give off a vibe that says, “Fuck you bitch, I’m taking your spot in CADC.” I need to draw from confidence that I never had and from a burning will that I never allowed myself to feel. I need to ride high off my desires and confidence, so high that when it comes to Monday, the CADC audition day, there will only be two directions to go: further up (if I get in), or straight fucking down (if I don’t get in).
Normally, I’d only take the middle, in-between direction because that’s the direction I’ve always been going in. But not this time. I need to accept to expect the unacceptable and proceed—as in, I need to be willing to be crushed if I don’t get into CADC so that I will gain enough confidence to assure myself that I will get in. Confidence is ultimately anticipating failure.
---
“salut.”
From: Brian Dinner (on myspace)
Date: Sep 15, 2007 3:36 AM
hi Trung.
I found your xanga and started leafing through it the last few days. thought i'd leave you a myspace message since unidentified footprints scare you. :P
alors, comment-vas tu?
From: trung n.
Date: Sep 15, 2007 12:41 PM
hey brian!
i'm glad another reader has contacted me! it always makes me feel good when they do that. it's good to know that somebody likes my stuff. i've just checked out my footprints and LEAFING YOU HAVE CERTAINLY DONE. haha. thanks though, im very flattered.
eh, ça va, tu sais. c'est samedi. je devrais avoir quelque chose à faire, mais jsuis fatigué. j'avais une semaine longe, mais en pensant au reste de l'année, je meurs un peu. je n'ai rien m' éxciter SAUF la fin de lycée.
j'espère que tu aies plus pour t'éxciter. et toi, ça va?
[several messages later]
From: trung n.
Date: Sep 16, 2007 12:51 AM
im going to major in int'l relations, to which w.history is like essential. intl relations:world history::algebra:calculus. i ultimately want to become a diplomat/ambassador/foreign service officer/CIA agent. that or working with an NGO in a third world country. i've told some of my friends that and they call me depressing because i'm never going to live a settled life. i'm never going to meet anyone and ill be lonely for the rest of my life. lmao. it is kinda sad, but im okay with that thought. i think. i just have to live it up while i can.
anyway, you're free to im me if msging is too slow.
Common Ground auditions started last week. I didn’t get in, but that was pretty much the plan. The main goal was to get over stage fright so that I wouldn’t blank out for CADC auditions.
The CADC audition process started yesterday, and I’m already feeling overwhelmed. Alfonso was helping me clean up the piece we learned yesterday, and he pointed out so many problems in my performance that I had to take notes. They made sense when I was writing them, but reading them now, they make no sense: “Straight leg, brush past face, left shoulder up. Make hard part bigger. Push off right foot for the van. Blades!” Etfc. (That stands for et fucking cetera.)
I’ve been a bad student, fuck. I already missed two homework assignments, one in my natural disasters class and the other in my sociology class. I have done zero reading for natural disasters and probably at this point, 3% of the reading for sociology. I admit, it’s been harder to get schoolwork done myself because you’ve been keeping me in check since the beginning of senior year in high school. That’s one of the reasons why my parents loved you so much.
Shit, since the beginning of senior year in high school. I can’t believe it’s been two years.
Oops, this entry wasn’t supposed to suddenly become about you.
Alfonso has been trying to keep me in check. He asks me have I done my homework yet, how much reading I need to get caught up on, etfc, but I always skirt around an actual answer.
I don’t want to blame it on dance, but I will say I have made a lot of sacrifices for dance. Money, time, money, friends, money, and emotions. Yes, emotions.
I don’t want to admit to myself how badly I want CADC, because if I do but then end up not getting it, I’ll be crushed and I’ll probably hate life for a day or two. Don’t get me wrong; I can accept defeat perfectly fine. But the only thing I can’t accept is how I react to defeat. In case I fail, I put up these mental blocks that help cushion the impact. I refuse to let myself react with anything more dramatic than a simple “oh” and shrug. No tears, no desire to confide in another person. That’s all for the weak. For the gays.
The main goal of the Common Ground audition was to see my performance on video so that I could cite that as evidence to myself that I was getting better enough for CADC auditions. But the evidence is lacking in quantity, and I need to start drawing from outside of my rationalizations.
The same mental blocks soften my emotions, my esteem, and my will, and so I refuse to feel like anything bigger than “good.” To do well for CADC, however, I think I might have to make myself susceptible to emotions at both end of the spectrum. Only when I really admit how much I fucking want CADC will I do one hundred times better. And confidence: I need it. In my dancing and in general I need to give off a vibe that says, “Fuck you bitch, I’m taking your spot in CADC.” I need to draw from confidence that I never had and from a burning will that I never allowed myself to feel. I need to ride high off my desires and confidence, so high that when it comes to Monday, the CADC audition day, there will only be two directions to go: further up (if I get in), or straight fucking down (if I don’t get in).
Normally, I’d only take the middle, in-between direction because that’s the direction I’ve always been going in. But not this time. I need to accept to expect the unacceptable and proceed—as in, I need to be willing to be crushed if I don’t get into CADC so that I will gain enough confidence to assure myself that I will get in. Confidence is ultimately anticipating failure.
---
“salut.”
From: Brian Dinner (on myspace)
Date: Sep 15, 2007 3:36 AM
hi Trung.
I found your xanga and started leafing through it the last few days. thought i'd leave you a myspace message since unidentified footprints scare you. :P
alors, comment-vas tu?
From: trung n.
Date: Sep 15, 2007 12:41 PM
hey brian!
i'm glad another reader has contacted me! it always makes me feel good when they do that. it's good to know that somebody likes my stuff. i've just checked out my footprints and LEAFING YOU HAVE CERTAINLY DONE. haha. thanks though, im very flattered.
eh, ça va, tu sais. c'est samedi. je devrais avoir quelque chose à faire, mais jsuis fatigué. j'avais une semaine longe, mais en pensant au reste de l'année, je meurs un peu. je n'ai rien m' éxciter SAUF la fin de lycée.
j'espère que tu aies plus pour t'éxciter. et toi, ça va?
[several messages later]
From: trung n.
Date: Sep 16, 2007 12:51 AM
im going to major in int'l relations, to which w.history is like essential. intl relations:world history::algebra:calculus. i ultimately want to become a diplomat/ambassador/foreign service officer/CIA agent. that or working with an NGO in a third world country. i've told some of my friends that and they call me depressing because i'm never going to live a settled life. i'm never going to meet anyone and ill be lonely for the rest of my life. lmao. it is kinda sad, but im okay with that thought. i think. i just have to live it up while i can.
anyway, you're free to im me if msging is too slow.
Embers
Thursday, September 24, 2009
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
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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.
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.
Tags:
dancing,
dream,
family,
french,
future,
oakridge,
relationships,
spirituality,
summer 2009,
teaching
My Lie
Friday, September 18, 2009
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.”
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.”
Tags:
dream,
family,
french,
future,
norcal,
relationships,
summer 2009,
teaching
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