The Truth

“my lie”
Written by Trung, September 20th, 2009

7:45 p.m. [After driving back down to LA from NorCal] Everything is packed away in my dorm room. Number 360. The night is still young, though, so DinoBrian and I decide to venture off to a mall that we haven’t been to: Koreatown Galleria.

“Asian shit?” Dino complains.

“But it’s the only one that’ll be open past 9! Besides, the ITG machine is broken here and—“

“Okay we’ll go. But not because of the ITG machine being broken. I don’t care about that.”

I quickly scribble down directions. We were off in minutes. Not before Dino checked his hair, and made a few faces in the mirror, though.

8:30 p.m. The cute Korean gift shop caught my eye as I ran toward it.
“Dino, look!” I pointed. “It’s a donut! It's as big as my head! It's for you! Let’s go in.” I went inside, looking for other fun things to point out.
“Why are they selling pills in here?” I pick one up and show it to Dino. “Teaching kids how to abuse medication. Typical LA.”
“I think you need a new steering wheel cover.” Of course he doesn’t. I just thought they looked ridiculous.
“Mmmmmhmmm. You know she got junk in her trunk!”
And of course, no visit to a shop would be complete without a dino reference. I just pick it up and show it to Dino in awe.

“Dino, can we buy it?!”

“Trungy, no! What is it anyway? You won’t even use it.”

“But there are dinos on it.”

“Silly Trungy. Put it back!”

I put it back. We leave the gift shop empty-handed but with new inside jokes. The next stop, of course, is the food court.

We order dumplings and steak fried rice. As soon as we get the order, Dino starts to calculate.

“Trungy, I can finish each one of these in one bite. How many are you going to have? There should be enough for five dumplings each.”

“Hungry Dino. I think I’ll have three.”

“Okay, good.”

Of course, I end up eating four but I give Dino the rest of the rice to compensate.

11:24 p.m. “Dino! Let’s watch a myth arc. We can finish it when we move everything into your apartment tomorrow.”

I pop in X-Files into my laptop. I insist on watching a myth arc, even though I know I never stay awake during them. That was okay, though. I can rewatch anything I missed tomorrow night. Or the night after. Or the night after that. I have a few days in Irvine to look forward to after this.

As the credits play and Mulder and Scully embarked on their adventure, I wrapped my arm around Dino’s middle and rest my head against his side, kissing the fabric of his shirt. Snuggling close, I mutter a quick “I love you, Dino.”

“Love you too, Trungy,” the warm response.

I close my eyes.

I wake up. The first thing I see is my laundry basket heaped full of disheveled clothing. I grasp around me. My curtains. My comforter. My room.

Oh god. I shoot up. I’m in my room and I’m alone. Alone. I look at the clock. It’s 6:45 a.m. I’m supposed to leave for LA in half an hour.

Reality is a painful slap across the face.

What really happened?

I tried to distract myself herbally throughout the car ride but the good feelings lasted only two minutes before a reminder of everything I lost hit me.

My sister, her friend, and I went to Melrose. I left empty-handed. We went to my dorms. I threw everything in the room and shut the door. We went to Koreatown. I left the store every ten minutes because I saw something that would trigger tears.

But mostly, I slept throughout most of my trip back down because I couldn’t take being awake. I dreamt and relived the last night I saw you, the embrace, the tears. The last time I told you I loved you. The last time I saw my Dino.
---

Honestly, I already knew.

From the very moment I asked you, “Did you ever cheat on me?” I knew.

You answered no, so I figured it was only a matter of waiting for you to grow and stop running.

The night before Halloween, I got that text from you, the one that read, “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?”

Typical. I was still waiting for you to admit to me that you cheated.

The next day, we talked online. You fed me live news updates as you and Linh exchanged angry Facebook messages. When you guys were officially over, you told me that you had something important to tell me. You abruptly planned a visit for Wednesday.

Trung:
what are you gonna tell me? tell me noww. pleasee. :[

bbqdinner:
nononononono

Trung:
hint? it has to do with you wanting to come clean about something. confronting, instead of running.

bbqdinner:
ooohhh. trung understands themes in brian's life

Trung:
ok. you had sex with someone during our relationship! i told you i already assumed that.

bbqdinner:
i'm not saying anything else >:|

Trung:
you should be more sad about that, that I assumed than you actually having done that. =]

bbqdinner:
sad dino :(

Trung:
sad dino = predictable dino

Wednesday night came. I had a board meeting for UCLA’s Coalition of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, but I left early to meet up with you. You brought me eggrolls, which you made yourself for the first time ever earlier in the day. You brought five of them in a zip-lock bag.

We sat down on the outdoor stage on Bruin Walk. You insisted that I eat the eggrolls before you tell me what you wanted to tell me. I denied. You persisted. I denied again, and I decided to make it easier on you.

“Just admit it Brian. You plan to tell me that you cheated on me. Just admit it, damn it. I already tell all my friends that we broke up because you cheated on me.”

“What?!”

“Yeah.”

You bit your lip, shot a few glances between different ends of Bruin walk, and got lost in thought for a minute. I imagined that you saw yourself going across the bridge again. When you came back, you admitted to me the truth, and you did it rather bluntly.

“Ok, I cheated—once for every eggroll I brought you so can you eat one already?”

Okay, I was a little surprised. The number surprised me slightly, but nonetheless, I was glad you finally admitted it. We each took an eggroll from the bag and munched on it.

“Trung, it was the reason why I broke up with you, y’know? I couldn’t keep on going in our relationship knowing what I did, but at the same time, I knew you’d break up with me anyway if I told you the truth, so I wrote that letter to cover everything up.”

“We both knew that letter was total bullshit.”

I chewed on my eggroll as you stopped and stared at me.

“Aren’t you going to yell at me now or something? I’m okay with getting slapped too.”

“I’m not going to yell at you, and I’m not going to slap you. I’m not angry because, well, all the anger and sadness that you imagined I would feel, I already experienced them, both during our relationship when I suspected that you were cheating, and after our relationship when I suspected that you cheated. Brian, I’m done being angry. I’m done being sad. My main question is, are you done?”

“You don’t think I’ve been done?”

“Brian, pretend you’re wearing some underwear, and then you sharted in it. It’s a mess. You’re groaning and cursing. You’re mortified. You can feel the liquidy shit running down your legs. You know you’ve forever ruined your underwear. So what now? Are you going to keep on wearing it for everyone to see? Are you going to keep all that brown shit on your ass and feel it smear all around when you walk and press up against your butt when you sit down? The answer to all that Brian is no. No, you aren’t. You are going toss that shit out and run your ass to Target and buy yourself a fresh new pair of underwear! Got it?”

“...what?”

“To answer your question about whether or not I think you’ve been done: I can still smell all that shit when I’m around you.”

You understood. We chatted a little more and finished the eggrolls together.

Brian Goes to Korea

“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.

Just Like Summer Again

[This entry is co-written with Trung. You can guess which one he is.]

On the nineteenth, with most of the Breakthrough teachers back home in the bay, Breakthrough held a winter reunion at some library downtown. A few differences from last year’s winter reunion: last year was ice skating and open to all students, while this year was a formal dance that was only open to students with a 3.0 or higher. So of course, I knew there would be a good amount of my students that I wouldn’t be seeing.

LOOK BRIAN IS RACIST. HE MEANS: MEXICAN KIDS ARE ALL DUMB AND LIKE TACOS.

It’s ‘cause they wrote really terrible essays.

BECAUSE ENGLISH IS NOT THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE.

This was written by a white student: “Ralph is a leader in the beganing then at the end he is not. Well in the Lord of the Flies, it says that Ralph had rules and was a strong leader, but then Jack mess it all up because he wanted to become the leader.”

FINE ITS BCAUSE SHE WAS POOR. YOU MEANIE.

At the formal, we had a VIP section for students who had a 4.0. The only student in there was Mickey, and he stayed there, alone. Not too surprising. I felt bad, but then he eventually found his place outside playing cards with the teachers at the poker table.

Belinda probably still had the hots for me and was grabbing my arms trying to get me to dance with her. I awkwardly shook her off.

SHE IS 11 YEARS OLD. STOP BEING A PERVERT. AND SO EGOTISTICAL. LIKE THAT ONE TIME THAT GIRL SAID “WOW THAT SANDWICH IS BIG” SHE ACTUALLY JUST MEANT THE DAMN SANDWICH.

Belinda and her friends, who took my dance class during the summer, told me that they still knew the set I taught them. I didn’t believe them, but they had the mix on their phone, so they started playing it and doing the set. I didn’t even remember what I taught them, but they still did. It made me feel good.

NOT AS GOOD AS HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU FLEX IN THE MIRROR AND MAKE YOUR WEIRD THRUSTY PELVIS THING WHEN YOU THINK YOU LOOK SEXY. DON’T THINK I DON’T KNOW. I DO KNOW. AND I THROW UP A LITTLE.

The whole formal dance concept was pretty awkward. It was basically like a middle school dance with the teachers mixed in with the students. Even with the lights off, no one could really get into it (not that anyone would wanna freakdance, which I wasn’t implying in the first place).

THE BOY TO GIRL RATIO WAS VERY OFF. THAT WAS A GOOD THING.

The seventh grade boys tried to drag me out to the middle of the dance floor for a jerking competition. Not my scene. But I eventually found my comfort place when I sat down with Pauline, one of my eighth grade writing students, in the VIP zone and taught her how to lock. I knew very little about locking and probably had nothing close to the right form, but she, not knowing any better, thought I was godly.

YOU JUST DIDN’T WANT TO SHOW THEM THAT YOU COULDN’T JERK. THE DANCE TYPE. YOUD GET ARRESTED FOR THE OTHER TYPE. EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU ENJOY DOING THAT STUFF IN PUBLIC. SKANK!

I also got to catch up Thanh, an alumni student who finished Breakthrough my first summer teaching in 2008. I taught her a small tutting piece, also not from my area of expertise (as though I really have one). I really missed teaching dance.

THANH LIKES ME BETER THAN YOU. ITS TRUE. YOU FORGOT TO MENTION THAT WHITE GIRL.

I drove up to San Francisco with Mimi three times (and once with Kevin) this winter break to take classes at City Dance. It felt good to be back in those hallways. Surprisingly enough, Emerson remembered my face and approached me for a hug. I didn’t think he’d remember me, but I also heard that he just likes to hug any cute guy he sees.

DID YOU GUYS FUCK? OR MAYBE HE’S JUST A NICE PERSON WHO ENJOYS HIS OLD STUDENTS. NOT CUZ YOU’RE CUTE. OMG. EGOTISTICAL AGAIN. STROKING YOUR OWN DAMN EGO. YOU’RE AN EGO-MASTURBATOR.

The last visit for the break was yesterday for workshops taught by the Lost Kids. I went with Mimi and we got to kick it with some Funksters I missed from Summer Intensive, like Isaiah, Joerelle, Nicole, Tin, and JC, and I met Ranier (pronounced rainier than yesterday) during my second visit.

AKA MORE KIDS. YOU ONLY LIKE BEFRIENDING PEOPLE IN HIGH SCHOOL. OMG. BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO TALK ABOUT VULGAR THINGS LIKE BOOBIES AND HOW IF YOU MASSAGE THEM THEY GROW. AND PENISES. WIL YOU B SAD WHEN THEY FORGET ABOUT YOU WHEN THEY GO TO COLLEGE?

They didn’t forget about me when I went to college.

AGAIN JUST THINKING IN YOUR OWN PERSPECTIVE. WHAT ABOUT THEIRS WHEN THEY GO TO COLLEGE?! HM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. YOU ALSO FART TOO MUCH.

Caught up with Isaiah a bit. He’s now back with his boyfriend (codenamed Max and CJ in this entry), and he sounded happy. That’s good. I’m happy for him.

DID YOU GUYS HAVE A THREESOME? AND I BET YOU WEREN’T HAPPY. YOU WERE A LLAMA.

No to the threesome question. And I was happy!

I don’t have a conclusion that’s different from the ones I wrote during the summer about how I would miss Breakthrough and Funksters, so instead, Trung typed this up to finish the entry:

I like to look at myself in the mirrors. I only like to flex in the mirror and dance dance dance because I’m egotistical. I like to masturbate looking at myself. And then I flex some more. Because I think I’m really hot. And then I dance.

I like to do fifteen push ups and then go to the bathroom to check my progress. And then I run out and get a chopstick and go back in the bathroom to try to hold it between my boobies because I’m a show off. SORRY, I PARTTY.

I think the “I” might be referring to me.

IT’S REFERRING TO YOUR INNER THOUGHTS AND FEARS. Jk im not that mean to brian. I am nice because he lets me eat his chocolates and hide them. :)

No Reason

December 4th, 2009, 2:31 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen

quatre jours jusqu'à mon coeur cassera.
je n'avais pas oublié. pas encore. jamais encore.

qu'est-ce qu'on aurait fait?
quelque chose. toutes les choses.
tous qui à moi
sont les memoires
les possibilitiés
les espoirs
les rêves.

dis-moi,
avais-tu oublié?
oublierais-tu?
oublieras-tu?

dis-moi, dis-moi.
---

Of course I haven’t forgotten. How could I forget? An irrevocable guilt that I can barely even begin to explain tears away at my heart each morning when I wake up because I know I’m one day closer. But closer to what? A day that probably doesn’t mean anything anymore, a day where I’m going to wake up at three in the afternoon again and head out when the sun is setting under the horizon, which is just the way I want it, yet at the same time I do want it to mean something and it kills me that I know it won’t.

What I said last night to you, I knew it would hurt, badly, and I knew the pain would sting you even harder by ignoring you completely for the rest of the night. I had phrased my wording carefully in my head for five minutes and debated whether or not to use it as a weapon with which I could strike you down. Why wouldn’t I? As always, you were discouraging me and my dancing endeavors, but, even though I knew it was just more of your playful banter, I was already on the edge, my soul having been long dissolved.

Both you and I know that there was no real justification to what I said, however. I didn’t say what I said to get you back; I said it just to piss you off, to shut you out. Even if you weren’t ragging on my dancing, I still would’ve found a similar way to take a huge shit all over the twenty months of our relationship. I’m back to my old tactics. You know, and I know, that that’s the way I am.

The question is why, why am I like this? I don’t know, and because of that I really hate myself sometimes.



When I was three or four, my parents took my brother and me to Disneyland. It was an extremely bright and sunny day, but the blazing heat couldn’t stop me as I ran around in shorts living every toddler’s dream. We stopped at a nice shady food court by a lake, and my mom and brother left my dad and me behind at a table while they ordered food. Along with the two of us she left us her sunglasses.

I deliberately dropped them in the lake.

My dad admonished me and cursed as he dipped his arm over the side into the murky water, and sensing that the lake was actually a lot deeper, he sat up and plunged his entire leg under the surface. As he fished for the sunglasses, he demanded to know why I did what I did, but I only stood there brooding, legs shoulder-width apart, arms folded, eyebrows narrowed.

Miraculously enough, he managed to retrieve them. When my mom came back with pizza, her warm smile soon turned to a frown when my dad told her what I did. She kneeled down to my level, and she asked, “Honey, why did you do that? You know I need my sunglasses because the sun is so bright today.” I glanced at the sunglasses sitting on top of the table.

I lunged for them and tossed them into the center of the lake with all my might. My parents and brother gaped in horror. I had won.

With the sunglasses gone, my mom bought an overpriced shitty little plastic orange visor from the gift shop and wore it for the rest of the day. In the family photo album, the change in accessory on my mom’s face is just as obvious as the change in her facial emotions before and after the visor.

When I flip through the photo album, all I see is the orange visor. When I try to remember the Disney Land trip, all I hear is my mom mumbling under her breath as she handed over the money for it. This has become my only memory of that Disneyland trip, and it is probably one of the earliest memories I have. It haunts me because I don’t know why. Why did I do what I did? I don’t recall being angry. In fact, I remember being excited about the pizza because I loved pizza. This incident is one of the many that makes me want to run into my parents’ room in the middle of the night and apologize when I wake up in a cold sweat, but my parents would probably have no idea what the hell I’d be talking about.



Actually, I do know why I’m like this (in regards to Trung), but I wish I didn’t because the reason is far worse than anyone could’ve ever imagined, so bad that it makes me hate myself even more. Sometimes I just wanna quit—not suicide, but rather, quit being me and live someone else’s life for a day or two. I’ve been trying to do that, but by the end of the day, I always return to this.

Promises Are Just Restraints

The second one slid down my throat more smoothly than the first. I was getting better at it. But that didn’t change the fact that I hated what I was doing.

I gulped down the can of Sprite that I had ready in my other hand. When I finished, I looked at Sang and Lawrence and realized that I was already a little nauseated.

“So much for getting anything done,” laughed Lawrence.

Lawrence, Sang, and I were at Sang’s dorm room earlier tending to each of our own business. Lawrence was studying for a midterm, I was choreographing for the upcoming MCIA auditions on Monday, and Sang was making his costume for a CADC Halloween Party. When we all got bored of everything, Sang led us downstairs to a little get-together in one of his friend’s dorm room.

I got myself comfortable, made some new friends, got myself comfortable some more, danced even more sloppily than usual, and basked in all the fun and all the attention. I especially enjoyed lifting up my shorts to show and laugh at how I matched, from my scalp to my legs, the color of the bed sheets.

The fun was short-lived, however. I didn’t take long to start feeling tired and as though I would vomit if I had to do one more rond de jambe. At 4, I asked Sang to take me back to his dorm room to crash, and after an exchange that had me screaming with my last bit of energy, “OH MY GOD YOU BETTER COME VISIT ME AT MY WORK TOMORROW!” and the girls going, “OKAY WE WILL [BECAUSE YOU’RE SUCH A HOTTIE]!” (which, by the way, they didn’t, Sang), the two of us and Lawrence went back up.

Once we were back at Sang’s place, I could finally express how I was really feeling: shitty. Like I had to go Daemonicus right there all over Sang (from that one really terrible X-Files episode from Season 9). Well, not that much, as I managed not to vomit at all that night by instantly collapsing on Sang’s bed and knocking out.

I didn’t know how much time passed, but I woke up again in a dark, quiet room. Sang had startled me awake by sitting down next to me on the bed to use his laptop. Lying there silently and trying to further repress the vomit feelings, I wondered what you were doing, and I wondered what I was doing.

I woke up in the morning with a massive headache. I rolled out of bed and tried not to step on Sang, who was sleeping on the floor, and I stumbled to the bathroom. To pee, not vomit. I got back into bed and my headache kept me awake for another hour, and I would continue to feel it while dreaming. I knew this headache would become the third one that I would never forget, the second one being the random one I got in December 2006, and the first one being the first time I ever got drunk (accidentally) earlier that same year in February. I woke up again about two hours later feeling slightly better (only after taking some Tylenol), and I got breakfast with Sang. The day that ensued was very, very long.

You could say I did it because of peer pressure again, but, aside from one other additional reason, I also thought of it as of a contest against you. Did I win this contest?

---
October 31st, 2009, 6:52 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen

well shit

i woke up in a pool of my own vomit.

but im alive.
---

Nope.

---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[[This excerpt is the first half of an entry that was slated to be my old blog’s final entry, but at the last minute, I decided not to publish it and write another nine entries before eventually moving to this current blog. The entry has been collecting dust for a while, and now I’ve brought back and slightly revised the first half. I still, however, can’t find the strength to even lay my eyes on the second half, so it’s not included.]]

The last time I got drunk to the point of vomiting was three years ago during my sophomore year [in high school]. I took a drink (a full Starbucks cup of jungle juice) because Vance, the guy I was trying to get over, offered it to me. It wasn’t until after I got trashed that I finally forced myself to move on. Since then, I’ve only had small drinks on two different occasions; I never got drunk again.

Until one Thursday night three weeks ago at a get-together at the apartment of Charles, one of Cameron’s friends. Trung was not present.

I later told Trung about the get-together, and as expected, he was angry. We fought. At the beginning of the year, I had expressly forbade him to do any form of drug abuse, and likewise, I had vowed the same. Trung demanded to know why I broke my vow and made a hypocrite of myself; he wanted to know why I finally succumbed to peer pressure. Peer pressure. He automatically assumed it was peer pressure.

“It was one just one shot!” I insisted. “Just one, and I didn’t vomit.”

He continued to shove the words “peer pressure” down my throat, throwing out question after question, all revolving around peer pressure.

“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.

Paradox

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.

Alighting

Bright white runs up the walls and over the countertops, slithering around the mahogany cupboards and cabinets. The smothering warmth and the equally smothering aroma of garlic and onion fill the kitchen. Not smothering like unbearable, but more like welcoming, as when a mother embraces her long lost son. The kitchen as their theatre, my parents work furiously to conduct the kitchen orchestra: The stove fan hums, the chicken in the frying pan beatboxes, the rice cooker sings falsetto.

I sit down at the dinner table and watch as my parents gradually cover every inch of it with plates and bowls filled to their edges. Chicken, rice, and congee tonight. When the last scoop rests in a bowl, and when the last bowl rests on the table, we all sit down and huddle together over the food. The rule of the dinner table: You get one bowl and you get one pair of chopsticks; grab whatever and fill your bowl to the top.

Suddenly, my mom voices a concern: “I haven’t seen Trung in a while, Brian.”

I cringe. This is the second time she is bringing this up.

“Is everything going okay between you two?”

“Everything’s fine,” I lie.

“Did you guys break up?”

“No,” I lie again. “I’ve just been going out.”

“With someone else?”

“No!” I snap back. “I mean, I’ve been going out to hang at his house more often.” Yet another lie. I sense that my mom can see right through me. “Trung’s going to come over for dinner in a bit.” That, at least, is the truth.

Not a moment too soon, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I don’t even have to check it to know: It’s a text message from Trung telling me that he is standing at my front door. I go let him inside from the cold.

My parents welcome him and make a spot for him at the dinner table. My dad reaches up and grabs a bowl and a pair of chopsticks from the cupboards. He places them in front of Trung, and Trung eagerly fills his bowl with a home cooked family meal.

My mom asks Trung how he’s doing. He’s doing fine. Maternal intuition—she sees through him too.

---
“flightbirds”
Written by Trung, July 9th, 2008

The cracks where the tiles meet the cabinet creep with mold. Stray ants lead a reconnaissance around balls of old cellophane left from last Sunday's dinner that didn't quite make it into the trashcan. Three weeks worth of coupons are the tablecloth of the dinner table, and glasses of still water propagate a stew of larvae, dust, and fine nasal mist. Whatever was white is grimy; whatever was grimy sits idle. Unclean is the clearest adjective to describe the wheezing house I live in.

By the time my dad gets home from earning a wage that will be spent on things too ambitious to pay for, he is exhausted. He collapses, and dependents understand that it's another day to vulture to find a suitable meal. Styrofoam white clam shells, iconic red temples, colorful plastic wrappers are fun substitutes for hot dishes; monosodium glutamate, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup is my bread and butter. My mom is brittle from the chemicals she is surrounded by, but she can only dream of a day without work; she dreams when she looks at me.

Everything built in this home was grounded with weak anchors. And now, I'm barely here.

Middle School Rumors

There’s a rumor floating among some of the Breakthrough students that I’m going out with one of the other teachers—no other teacher than Trung. And of course, it’s not really a rumor because they used to have undeniable confirmation (before I deleted an old Myspace comment from Trung that I had overlooked). I had hoped that this other extremely blatantly gay teacher would be the red herring that would draw away attention from the suspicions about me, suspicions which only barely began to develop toward the end of last summer. But no, middle school students are relentless as well as, as I’ve said earlier, smart.

So the secret’s out.

It has come up in pretty interesting ways the last week and a half or so, and fortunately, they all know that it’s not something to brag about out loud to their parents or the directors. But all those who know have dropped hints to Trung and me that they know.

Trung recounted to me how in his summerbook elective class, they had some guess speaker who thought that it would be a relevant activity to have the students generate drama for a person. The students all chose me, and the speaker asked, “What are some bad things we can say about Brian?”

Trung said they didn’t have answers for that question. (I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not surprised at all.)

Then the speaker asked, “Does Brian have a girlfriend?”

And a few of the summerbook girls, the more sassy ones, one who is my current student and one who was my student last summer, turned to Trung, locked eyes, and asked nudgingly, “I don’t know! Ask Trung! Trung, DOES he? DOES he?”

The speaker, totally oblivious, just as he probably is to middle school life today, moved on.

I don’t know how Trung deals with these situations, but when students bring it up to me, I like to acknowledge with a few nudges or winks, and it becomes our little inside joke.

As much as I hate coming out, and as much as I try to keep it a secret, I just can’t seem to avoid the truth anymore. But as much I still hate the truth, the truth is also relieving, I guess.

---
“A Return to Normalcy” (Excerpted)
Written on June 13th, 2009, featuring guest writer Trung (in italics).

On my last Wednesday [of my entire first year in college], I tried to milk as many good moments as possible out of the day.

During a quick dinner with Khoa and dancer Kevin, dancer Kevin found out I was gay. Whoops, how did it take that long?

BECAUSE DINO REFUSES TO CALL ME HIS BOYFRIEND OR HOLD MY HAND IN PUBLIC :’( He wants to attract girls.

I admit, I don’t like saying, “I’m jee-aay-why.” But it’s not a big secret; it’s just that I would prefer that people find out it any other kind of way that doesn’t require me to personally utter the words. It’s not that hard to find out. It takes like two clicks on my facebook. Kevin just isn’t very good with facebook.

Also, Brian’s ashamed because I’m fat.

During my first week at school, none of my hallmates really knew until Trung visited that weekend and introduced himself as my boyfriend. They all suck at facebook too.

See? I had to introduce MYSELF. Because Brian is ashamed.

Anyway, Kevin asked me because he saw Trung holding my arm the previous weekend. The conversation that ensued was fun.

[[Here’s a more thorough explanation of that dinner. When I got my food and sat down next to Kevin and Khoa, Kevin turned to me, and making weird dancer hand/arm motions for every syllable he uttered, he turned a perfect ninety degrees toward me (an angle as right as his tuts) and demanded, “BRIAN! I. Need. To. Know. SOMETHING! ARE. YOU. GAY?”

[[Secrets out. I laughed a little bit, and after collecting myself, I mocked surprise and asked with wide eyes, “YOU DIDN’T KNOW?”

[[“NO I DIDN’T!” And from there, we joked about it a little bit more and then went on to chat about other things.]]

It was all about Kallusive and other superficial things.

Later that night, after a Mike Song dance class, I had one last Pho run with my Kevin, Alfonso, and non-black John. During dinner, the cat completely got out of the bag. I had never told any of my dancer friends. Alfonso already kinda knew though (and I knew that he kinda knew), but he never bothered to say anything about it.

[[John and I are from the same part of San Jose, but we met just this year in college (and something like this is always funny to me because I like to think oh how many times I might’ve passed by him while walking around Oakridge Mall the last four or five years). I had close connections from his school, black John and Mexican Peter, Leland High School, and those close connections led me to knowing other people at Leland.

[[Non-black John, who is straight—we think—and completely oblivious to my gayness, asked if I knew a certain guy from Leland, and I did. We started talking about how he was hot and looked good in any style he tried to pull off.

[[While John and I were totally absorbed in our admiration, Kevin and Alfonso were off to the side snickering. And either Kevin or Alfonso made a joke: “Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to tell which one of you guys was the gay one and which one wasn’t.” (It went something like that.)

[[I laughed. John laughed, but not as hard, probably because he fully didn’t get the joke. For the next few minutes, Kevin, Alfonso, and I all joked about my gayness while John sat there confused as hell. I felt like he wanted a few times to jump in and ask, “WAIT BRIAN ARE YOU GAY?” but that question was probably answered several times as he sat there in shock and listened to the conversation.

[[When John finally felt ready to talk, he didn’t bother asking for confirmation. He just jumped straight to the questions that everybody asks when they find out that a person is a homo, such as, “How did you first know?” “Do your parents know?” “You know I’m absolutely cool with it, right?” etc.]]

John was fascinated. Very fascinated.

TOO FASCINATED, IF YOU ASK ME. A little too much like those guys that Brian works out with who say “DAMN BRIAN” and grab his pecs and arms.
---

I hate admitting it, but when my gayness comes into play, I usually have some of the more memorable moments in my life.