Empty Nest

I had made the decision to move on. Crushing on Vance wasn’t getting me anywhere and at age fifteen, I still had a lot more to life than sulking over him. "If you won't go out with me now, then just tell me 'no' so I can move on to other things in life." I was thinking of telling him that all day. It was my goal. It was all I imagined that would happen at the end of today.

I had my dad drive me to the Golf Land in Milpitas, and from there I walked to the restaurant Vance worked at. Got there around six, said hey to Vance and some of the workers who recognized me from a few earlier visits. One of Vance’s co-workers thought that I was his boyfriend... I wished. Anyways, after chatting for a few minutes, I sat down at the bar and ordered some food, and periodically Vance walked by to talk a bit. During one of these quick visits, he told me that he was excited about going to some party with Joanna and Hillary, two of his co-workers, right after work. Shit. Okay, whatever, I'll go along with them to the party and have my talk with him after. Vance used his cell phone to call his mom to ask her, and he had some trouble getting her permission. He said that Joanna was taking him out to eat, and he and his mom eventually agreed on a curfew: 12 AM.

I had to figure out a way to get home. Joanna didn't want to drive me all the way back to San Jose, so I just told her to drop me off with Vance after the party because my parents knew where his house was. That was a lie—they didn't know where he lived at all. I just wanted to be with Vance alone so I could give him the talk. What I was going to do once I needed my parents to pick me up was something else that I had to figure out later.

For some reason, I thought that party was going to be a pleasant party at a community center, with soda and rice dishes and what not. That was a party as I understood it at age fifteen. However, I noticed that we weren't driving to some community center. In fact, we were driving away from general public areas. We drove up into the hills, went by a church, and up to a lonely house. It was dark out and sprinkling and the gravel under our feet was slippery. Joanna had to drive around a bunch of random crap lying on the gravel to get to the other side of the house, where there were several other cars already parked. Through the car window, I saw people in scatter groups standing outside smoking cigarettes and holding beer bottles. I was just like, "Oh my fucking god." It was that kind of party. My first college house party.
---

After finishing my shopping trip with Ranier, I came back home around 10 to spend the rest of the night before Thanksgiving helping my mom prepare the turkey. I hadn’t done this since Freshmen year in high school (incidentally, the last year I got straight A’s in school), yet with all that had changed in the last six years, my turkey responsibilities remained the same: crush the bread crumbs and make sure that my mom applied the ratios correctly from the turkey stuffing recipe. I sat at the kitchen table working, while my mom stood at the kitchen counter yanking organs from the turkey and slicing them up.

“...and,” she went on, “I just love the new grocery department at Target, don’t you?”

I smiled. A whole five pound chicken for five dollars? Yes, I did too. “Yeah, it’s really cheap.”

“They have bananas for—”

“Nineteen cents each!” we both chimed together.

My brother never cooked in college or shopped beyond the frozen food aisle; he would just come home from Davis every weekend and my mom would cook up a week’s worth of food and send it with him back up to school in Tupperware. Even though my dad cooked, he still didn’t like talking about it because admitting to doing kitchen work threatened his perceived notions of masculinity.

As a result, the most mundane things my mom and I talked about were probably the most special things we talked about: SoCal grocery stores (Ralph’s) versus NorCal grocery stores (Lucky); the exceptional or exceptionally bad quality of meats sold at food markets in Westminster’s Little Saigon versus that of San Jose’s Saigon Business District; the different ways we cooked our pork chops or the different ways our salmon tasted; and our own techniques for figuring out how much water in the rice cooker was just enough.

My dad walked into the kitchen to find me helping my mom measure out chicken broth for the turkey stuffing. After noting the fact that this was the first time in forever that I had helped with the turkey, he asked me if I was going to be home for the summer. I said maybe, and he proposed that he teach me Vietnamese if I did come home. I agreed.

My dad settled on the couch in front of the TV, and as my mom and I prepared to load the stuffing into the turkey, my brother swung through the kitchen to ask me a question. Did I absolutely need a phone with a full keyboard? I told him not really, why? He planned on getting me an Android phone for Christmas, finally an upgrade from my teenybopper texting phone.

---
Around 11:10, after being awkward and talking to no one and sipping on a water bottle for a few hours, I got a call on my cell and went outside to answer it. I picked up, and it was some woman. She asked me who it was, and I answered Brian. It was Vance's mom, and she asked for Vance and complained that he should've been home by 11. I went back in and gave the phone to Vance. He yelled at her over the phone a bit and abruptly hung up after a few seconds. He said that we should probably leave around 11:30.

We went upstairs and waited for Joanna to use the bathroom. While waiting, Vance and I lied down together on a waterbed. He jumped on top of me and squeezed me tightly; basically he glomped me. I reached around him and hugged him back tightly, putting my head over his shoulder. I savored the moment and did not want to let go, ever.

I enjoyed my four seconds of the hug. Vance pushed himself up and was giggling merrily. Yes, it was just playful. Just playful. Here it was again: the hurt. He knew that I had feelings for him, so I wondered if he knew what that hug really did to me.

On the way back in the car, Vance rambled on and on about how much his parents were so strict about him going out. He said that before his parents found out that he was gay two years ago, they were okay with letting him go out whenever, but now they had become strict because they worried about him going out and having sex with boys. Vance continued to ramble on about how close he and his parents used to be, but ever since they found out that he was gay, they had only tried to be close to him to turn him straight.

It bothered me. It worried me. Two years, and Vance's parents still couldn't accept that he was gay. That he was not a failure. That being gay was not a choice or decision. I wondered out loud, "I wonder what my parents will do when I come out." Vance immediately turned around and sternly told me, "DON'T! You'll regret it!"

As Joanna drove Vance and me into his neighborhood, I thought, Imma have our talk once we got out of the car. We slowly drove up to Vance's house, which was dark, and we stopped. Vance got his stuff and stepped out the door, and right as I was about to open my door, Vance's mom walked out from behind the bushes. She glared at us. Holy. fucking. shit.

Vance tried to say something, but she walked right past him and went up to the car. She looked in, and Joanna and I nervously glanced at each other. Joanna apologized for bringing him home late, but the over-apologetic girl wasn't what Vance's mom cared about. She turned to me and asked, "You're Brian, right?" I nodded yes. And then she asked me if I was the same guy that hung over at Vance's house three weeks ago. I wasn't sure if I should've lied and said no. I looked outside to Vance hoping to find an answer, but he had his head bitterly turned to the side. Very cautiously, I nodded yes again.

It was deathly silent for a few seconds, but then she finally addressed both of us. She said she was worried sick, and that she didn't like Vance going out late, and that this whole thing was not a good way to start off the New Year. And she made it clear that she wanted Vance to never hang out with me again. Joanna apologized for her and me again, and Vance's mom gave us a gesture to tell us to leave. Neither of us even got to say goodbye to Vance.

I had Joanna drop me off at the Great Mall, where I called my parents and told them that my friends had driven me back up to the Great Mall to watch a few movies after the DCM was over. I asked my dad to come pick me up, and after I hung up, I wandered around for a little bit. It was midnight, and the Great Mall was pretty lonely. However, CyberHunt, an Internet Café, was still open, and there were a bunch of wanksters playing CS and stuff. They had a DDR Extreme machine, so I played a game. I AA'd Legend of Max on Extra Stage, got the Encore Extra Stage, and I passed it. Finally. After I was done with that game, I remembered, "What do I smell like right now?" Smoke, yes, cigarette smoke. I grabbed my bottle of Axe and sprayed it all over me.

- from “Lunar New Year”
Written January 29th, 2006
---

At 7 PM, I finished off all the remnants of gravy and turkey on my plate and, forcing the most polite demeanor possible, I stayed downstairs in the living room congregating with my relatives and their little kids. But around eight, it was time to load up my car. I needed to be back down in SoCal because I had a seven hour shift at Promod the next day, Black Friday. I excused myself from the Thanksgiving party to retreat to my room to pack.

Every time I headed back down to SoCal, I somehow always had more things to bring back down than I did coming back up. I rummaged through my closet and reached up toward a shelf to grab a cardboard box. I pulled it down and spilled it to the floor, unleashing wave after wave of papers. Among the key chains, several Lego pieces, and the single condom that showered out, something shiny tumbled down and bounced off my foot. I leaned over and picked it up. It was a key to my mom’s Toyota. What was it doing in there? Upon further inspection, I realized the key didn’t sport the Toyota logo. It wasn’t one of the spares that came with the car—no, it was a copy, a copy made at some kiosk in the mall. Ah yes, the spare key.

I had it made in case the war I had waged against my parents years ago got really bad. Despite all the shit I had given them, they would never retaliate, but I worried that if they ever did, one of the consequences would be taking away the key to my car. I figured the household living atmosphere would have to be completely unbearable if it ever got to that, so I prepared myself by making a copy of my mom’s car key just in case I ever needed to run away from home in the middle of the night.

I guess I didn’t need it anymore.

I brought the key downstairs and left it on top of the TV with the other car keys. After I loaded everything into the car and did a last minute check for anything I might had forgotten, I was ready to go. Standing at the door, I waved at my relatives and they all looked up from their plates to wave back at me. I headed outside to the driveway where my parents waited for me by my car. We exchanged our hugs and kisses and I-love-you’s, and once again, I departed from home in the middle of the night.

Brian and Trung

Back up in San Jose for Thanksgiving break, I met up with Ranier to help him shop for a present for a friend of his, the same one he hung out with the last time he came down to Irvine to visit. The plan was for me to take that gift back down to SoCal and give it to his friend the following week at a dance show as an early Christmas present.

At first, we were hoping to find his friend a Tae Yang poster, but for some reason we didn’t see the faulty reasoning in thinking that we could find a Korean pop star poster inside Grand Century, a Vietnamese mall. While wandering around, I couldn’t help but mentally note the irony about walking around this mall with Ranier. The last time I was here was eleven months ago, New Years day, and I was also with Ranier. It was our first date/hang out.

Yeah, okay, mentally noted. Moving on.

As expected, we did not find a shirtless Korean kid with a gay fohawk hiding among the green waffle stands, pho restaurants, pirated music shops, diamond jewelers, and bamboo stores, so we brainstormed other gift ideas.

“Shakeweight,” I suggested.

“No.”

“Snuggie.”

“No! Why are you suggesting such shitty ideas?”

I shrugged. “Why are you thinking too hard?”

“Oh, I know, I’ll get him tapers, and I wanna get him a good gift because we are good friends. Don’t you do that Brian? Got any good friends?”

I shrugged again. Admittedly, I sucked at friendships.

---
“Brian and Seth”
Written December 23rd, 2005 (Excerpted)

[Quick recap: Seth was my “best friend” from the second grade to the eighth grade, making our friendship my longest friendship. “Friendship” with Seth, however, had a pretty loose definition. Various incidents and causes, some being petty, others being emotionally or physically harmful, eventually led me to ending the friendship at the end of middle school. However, I ended things in sort of a cowardly way: by posting an angry entry on my blog. But a year and a half later, during the 2005 Christmas season, I decided to contact him through another guy that went to his fancy private high school, Vance. After getting a few messages to Seth and finding out the date of his Christmas/birthday party, December 22, I showed up at his house that evening.]

Seth’s mom let me in, but he and his friends were at Nickel City. That gave me time to reminisce and think of what to say to Seth. His house hadn't changed much, and it still had the weird bitter smell of walnuts. Hell, Seth hasn't even gotten a new Gamecube game since I left him. Super Smashed Brothers Melee was his most recent game. It felt like I had just walked to his house to rest for the millionth time after another school day at Bernal Intermediate.

I ended up waiting like forty-five minutes for him and his friends to come back. When I walked out to greet them, I was surprised that I already knew a lot of them. Seth only had like four friends from Bellarmine at the party, and the rest I remembered from Bernal Intermediate (and they remembered me too, but they suspected nothing).

The entire time, we tried to minimize contact with each other, but any time we had to talk, he tried to be nice. It was awkward nice. With all his friends around, I didn't find the time to talk to Seth alone until 10:30. He had to go ask his sister, who was in her room, for some TV cables. Before he went, I got ahead of him and hid in the bathroom. When Seth passed by, I quickly led him into his room, saying that we needed to talk. I did it all without very much thought so that I wouldn't let myself be stopped by my doubts and end up staying until like 12.

So we were in his room alone, and he closed and locked the door. The light from the lamp was as dim as ever. I sat on his bed, but he opted to stand up. I felt like I started to sweat as soon as I asked him, "So what did Vance tell you?" Whatever Vance told him, Seth had gotten the impression that I still wanted to be friends. At that point, I decided to pour everything out of my mouth, with my voice cracking more and more at the end of each sentence.

"Seth, I can't be your friend. After those six years, I don't want to be your friend anymore. It's just that… One and a half years ago, you remember what I said about you on my blog? That wasn't how I wanted to end it. Back then, I couldn't face you so I used the cowardly way out. I felt so guilty that I couldn't face you, and I just left you confused and lost with a blog entry that rambles on about nothing. So I just came here to say what I couldn't one and a half years ago, and what I should've said sooner: You treated me like shit all throughout elementary school and middle school. I hate you. Our friendship is done, and let's just leave it at that."

His countenance was blank. And I almost cried. My face was fucking red-hot. He sighed and told me, "Okay." We agreed that we were now simply "strangers". Following a tense silence, we shook hands like we had just met, and I called my dad and left without saying another word.

So it's over now. I can finally move on. I feel like going out and making some new friends; it should be easier now without all the weight of the memories and regrets associated with my very first close friendship.

But for now, fuck the whole "making new friends" thing. Because you know what I really feel like doing? Masturbating the shit out of my penis. It’s been 14 days. [Yeah, the way I blogged back in high school is very different from the way I blog now.]
---

I handed Trung a wrapped box. He held it on his forearms and raised his eyebrow at it.

“It’s your Christmas present,” I told him. “I’m giving it to you now, a week before Christmas before we head back up to San Jose so that you can actually get me something just as good this year.”

Trung pressed his ear to the box and shook it. He didn’t hear anything. “Silly DinoBrian. I don’t have to worry about getting you anything good because I know there’s probably nothing in this box. At the very least, there are probably more eggrolls in this box, one for every time you cheated on me.”

“No, I swear! I got you something good!”

“You haven’t gotten me anything good since DinoBlanket two years ago! One Valentine’s day, two birthdays, and one Christmas—the most I got out of those was a break up. Remember my nineteenth birthday Brian? You couldn’t even wait more than a week after before breaking up with me. Hmph!”

“Just open the box already.” A fresh New Era cap for his collection. Satisfied Trungy.

Right Field

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

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

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



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

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

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

I struck out, our team’s third out.

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

“Just stick to DDR, Brian.”

Screw you Seth.



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

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

“Liar.” We kissed again.

“What? I am not a liar.”

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

bbq dinner:
i know.

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




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

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

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

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

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

Looked like I shot myself in the foot. Shit.

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

I ignored him for the entire following week.



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

The Liar

He led me to his room, where he sat down on his bed and I sat on his desk chair. I leaned back in it, just to keep more of a comfortable distance from him. We shot glances at each other, feeling awkward, wondering what to say or what to do.

His name was Gabe. I hooked up with him at the beginning of September, and we sorta had a “thing” going on for a while. By “thing,” I guess I could say it was a little romantic. I went to his place to cook with him, and we’d watch DVD’s together. I lent him an entire season of The X-Files, season six. He’d watch it and tell me about it as we chatted on AIM every few nights. Shortly after Team Millennia auditions, however, we stopped talking, and I knew I deliberately ignored his IM’s, texts, and phone calls. I felt like I had to go see him one more time and possibly give him some kind of explanation as to why I disappeared.

“How’ve you been?” he asked me.

“I’ve been good,” I said. “I started my first day at Promod last night. That went all right. And overall I’ve been having a pretty okay start to my junior year in college. How have you been?”

“Busy, really busy. Planning a bunch of club stuff and studying.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, Mr. Nurse.”

He chuckled. “So you’ve been having fun? Going to any parties or anything?”

“Yeah I went to one just this past week. I went to one two weeks ago and vomited my guts out and missed the very first day of class the next day, so I didn’t want to drink at this one. But my friend did try to make me drink though. Funny story I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Supposedly I took three shots. But really, the only one I took was my second one, which was of something a lot weaker than what would’ve been the first and third ones. For the first one, I switched my cup with my chaser cup and drank that, and when everyone went for their chasers, I put my chaser cup down next to the cup with the actual shot, switch them around a bit, and drank out of my chaser cup again. I dumped the shot cup in the sink. No one noticed.

“For my third shot that I got away with,” I continued, “my friend had already shoved a shot cup into my one hand and a chaser cup into my other. He was holding his own cups, and as he was trying to convince me to drink my shot, he was getting all in my face, literally. Our eyes were pretty much locked, and I used that opportunity to dump my shot into his shot cup. Then I pretended to give in and downed my empty shot right away and ‘chased’ it before he could peak inside my cup. For that one though, some of his friends saw what I did.”

“Really? Did they say anything?” Gabe asked.

“I hope so. That’s kinda the point isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can lie and get away with it, thus accomplishing nothing, or you can lie and later confess about it, or find some way to make sure that the truth is revealed. That way, you’ll get your point across. Everyone lies for a reason, but that reason only matters if the lie gets exposed. Since my saying ‘no’ is not good enough for my friend, he needs to know that I’m willing to lie to get my way, and then he won’t try so hard anymore. If no one ever tells him about what I did, I’ll have to do it myself next time.”

Gabe nodded solemnly.

“By the way,” I said, “I’ve been eyeing your desk and your DVD collection. I don’t see my X-Files. You didn’t lose it did you?” I forced an awkward laugh.

“Nah, it’s right here.” He went to his desk and lifted my X-Files up from under a neat pile of papers. “Here.”

I grabbed it and glanced over it. Still in good condition. I held it under my arm and smiled at him. “Thanks.”

We continued to chat until there nothing else to talk about. Following a minute of silence and fleeting eye contact, he beckoned me to come to him. I asked him why, and he said to just come up to him. So I did, and he wrapped his arms around my waist and pushed up against me. We faced each other with a few mere inches separating us. He looked at my lips occasionally and I looked at his, only to turn away. But the longer he had his arms wrapped around my waist, the more I wanted to give in.

“I can’t,” I whimpered. “No...”



Horny at 1 AM. What was a college freshman like me to do? Booty call.

I set out onto the street in my sweats and a sweater, keys in hand. It was cold and wet outside, and my legs were still shaking. They felt weak, and my heart pounded in my chest. I tried to keep myself warm, but I knew it wasn’t the cold. It was the anxiety. What I was doing, and why I was doing it, the reasons scared me.

My phone started vibrating in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a private number calling me. I figured it was him. I answered the call, and the voice on the other line struck me as familiar, but not in a way that I had expected.

“Hi Brian,” the voice said. “Where are you?”

“Hi, uh...”

“You’re not inside your dorm sleeping, are you? I know because I asked one of your hallmates if you were in room, and she said she saw you leaving somewhere. You know who this is?”

I stopped breathing. The voice, it couldn’t be. But it was.

“It’s me Brian. It’s Trung.”

I had no response.

“Brian, why have you been lying to me? You were about to go cheat on me again, weren’t you?”



“I might be getting back with my ex!” I blurted out to Gabe. The lock of his arms around my waist immediately released and I pulled away. Taking a moment to breathe, I sat back down in my chair and rocked back.

“You are?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s great. Which ex? And how did it happen?”

“It’s not Trung; it’s my most recent one, Ranier,” I answered, “and well, two weekends ago, during the same weekend as Team Millennia auditions, he came down to visit. But it was a little unexpected. Originally he had planned on hanging out with some other guy in San Diego, but they had some kind of problem at the last minute. Since it was the night before Ranier’s flight, he couldn’t really refund it, so he planned on going anyway and asked me to come pick him up from San Diego. I drove him back up to Irvine, and we hung out whenever I wasn’t practicing with my group audition mates. The very first night he stayed over, we tried to split the bed, but somehow—oops! We ended up making out. And then we spent the next day like how we spent our days together when we were together, cuddling and watching TV, kissing, all that stuff, y’know.

“Now we’ve been chatting on webcam every night and talking on the phone. Just like how it was when we were together; it was a long distance relationship after all. So yeah, Ranier and I are pretty much together again.”

I stood up and shrugged. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you that my ex and I have been talking again for the last two weeks, and that’s why I’ve been ignoring you.”

He sighed. “Alright, it’s cool.”



I found a table outside near some vending machines to sit down on as I pressed my cellphone into my ear.

“Brian, please,” Trung begged, “can you explain to me why you did it?”

“Look, you caught me. Again. I lied to you, and I was about to go cheat, again. Again. Don’t you think you should break up with me?”

“No, Brian, can you just explain why you did it?”

“Maybe so we can fucking break up already, Trung!”

“We can work this out as long as you’re willing to talk to me!”

“How the fuck are we going to work it out? I’ve cheated, I’m still cheating. Once a cheater, always a cheater, right? Don’t you see Trung? We can’t last, not like this. If you had any amount of logic in you, you could see that the best option is to just break up with me and move on. Again, I lied, and you caught me.”

“Brian, please. There’s a still a chance with us. If there’s any part of you, any part that still believes in us, we can make this work Brian, please. I believe, and I need you to believe too. Can you just do that? Even a little bit?”

“You’re not giving up, are you?” I sighed and rested my head on the table. “This is going to be one long phone call, isn’t it? I don’t know why bother. I doubt we’ll even last until our one-year anniversary or Christmas.”



Gabe and I made more small talk as he walked me out to my car, but before I had to go, I knew there was one more thing I had to tell him.

“I’m sorry Gabe. But you know what, we wouldn’t have worked out together anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a liar. I’m not afraid to lie, and I’ll make sure that I lie in a way that hurts. Whoever goes out with me would probably be one of the unluckiest guys in the world.”

“That can’t be true.”

“The story about my ex, and our getting back together. Did you believe any of it?”

“Am I supposed to?”

“No, don’t. I made it up.”

Gabe stuttered. “Wait, so, uh, what? What does that make us?”

“Figure it out.”

We shared one last gaze before I unlocked my car and got inside. As I turned on my engine, he started walking away back inside, and I pulled out of my parking space. Once I was back onto the streets, I reached inside my jacket and pulled out my X-Files. I went through each DVD to make sure that they were all in working condition. No scratches. Good. I got what I came for.

Three Points

Dim flickering streetlights lit our way through the park as we trod through wet grass, unsure of where to go but up the gently sloping hill. The end of our path greeted us with steep concrete stairs shrouded in darkness. We stopped and looked at each other.

“Brian, we’re not going any farther.”

“What?! Why not? Trung, we’ve been driving around trying to find this hill for the last hour and now here it possibly is in front of us. We just have to go up these stairs.”

“Unlit stairs with a bunch of dark low-hanging trees tunneling over them. Do you not see the sign, Brian? I’ll read it again for you. ‘You are entering a natural area characterized by certain inherent dangers. These dangers include rattlesnakes, poison oak, BOBCATS, COYOTES, AND MOUNTAIN LIONS.’”

“I think if people have actually gotten eaten climbing up this hill, these stairs wouldn’t be here anymore.”

“No one’s gotten eaten before because no one goes hill-climbing at 1 AM in the morning.”

“Come on, we’re so close. We have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”

“Can’t you just appreciate the fact that you made it here? That you made it this far? Now is not the time to continue on, but later, you will be back here, preferably during the day or sunset. And that’s when you can go all the way.”

“No. How about we go all the way now?”

“Alright, but I’m going to make you hold my hand.”

Trung held out his hand, and I grasped it with both of mine. He placed his other hand on top, and step by step, we ascended the stairs. I didn’t want to mention it, but my heart beat as fast as Trung’s, and as much as I tried to suppress it, I couldn’t help but jerk my head toward every little snap of a twig or rustle of a bush that I thought I heard.

“So...”

“So what?”

“What were we talking about earlier?” Trung asked.

“Changing.”

“Oh yeah. So, if you don’t like the way your life is going, why can’t you change it?”

I shrugged. “I can’t just decide to change.”

“Why not?”

“Because I just can’t. Change has to happen subconsciously. If I’m consciously forcing myself to change, I’m not going to change. A huge part of me won’t allow it.”

“Knowing this though, can’t you prevent yourself from not allowing it?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that.”

“But a part of fixing a problem is acknowledging the problem, and you’re already acknowledging it.”

“Acknowledging the problem and trying to change it from there won’t work. That kind of change is artificial change. Deep down inside, I will still be the same person that I’ve always been. Something unplanned has to instigate the change.”

“Well, Brian, you have to do something eventually. You just can’t sit around all your life waiting for an epiphany, or to get hit by a truck.”

At the top of the stair case, our hands parted and we fell silent after realizing that we had to continue excavating the hill by climbing on rocks. Trung wasn’t happy, and I wished that I had dressed a little more appropriately. Nikes, skinny jeans and a white tank from The Hundreds didn’t make suitable outdoor adventure gear. We could see people roaming around the top of the hill, but from where we stood, they looked as tiny as the stars in the sky. Trung, once again, refused to continue on, but he finally gave in after I persisted. Trung fumed as we silently worked our way up the steep rocks.

“All right, we made it. We’re on top and we can see all of Orange County. Can you remind me why we did this Brian?”

I didn’t have to glance around for more than a few seconds to realize, “We’re not on the right hill.”

“What?”

“The one I wanted has a little bench on top. This one doesn’t have it. We need to go find it.”

“Wait, Brian! Look! Look all over there at the lights. We already have a nice view, so why do you need a fucking bench to sit down?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh, I know why,” Trung said. “The one with the bench, the one you saw in those photos, that was the mountain you wanted to take Ranier to, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And why didn’t you take him?”

“Well, I was going to take him. When he first told me two months ago he was going to come to Irvine, I tried to find out where the hill was, but then he said he wasn’t going to come anymore and just stay in San Diego, so I gave up on finding the hill. Then, last weekend, the very night before he left for San Diego, he told me there was a change of plans and he wanted to come to Irvine again. I didn’t have time to go find the hill, and since I had to worry about Team Millenia auditions last weekend, I didn’t have time to go exploring with him. I wanted to take him to the hill, but when I was practicing with my groupmates in Fullerton, Ranier stayed in Irvine and hung out with another friend who beat me to it.”

“Well, since someone already beat you to it, and Ranier left like last Sunday night, why are we even here now a week later?”

“I wanted to find it so I could go on top of it and convince myself it was nothing more than a giant pile of dirt that happened to be higher than the rest of the city.”

“Oh. I see. You wanted to rationalize away every bit of emotion associated with it. Brian, I’m sure you didn’t even need me to tell you that and how unhealthy it is, so why are you still trying to do it?”

“Because it’s what I do.”

“Ok Brian, can you at least look out at the city and admit, it’s a nice view?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, great. Let’s enjoy it for a few more minutes and then head back to your place, and I’ll stick around there for like half an hour and drive back up to UCLA. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“And I’d suggest watching season six of The X-Files, but...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll get it back.”

Semper Eadem

Fuck, I feel like shit. I think I’m lying on my bed—no, no I’m not. Open your eyes. There’s the ceiling. The light’s on. Oh, I’m lying on a sofa, and I’m still wearing my jeans, and I can kinda hear the victory result screen from Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Yeah, that track’s been going on loop for a while now.

I played forward in high school. Now I’m point guard.

You playin’ for a league now?

Voices. They’ve been chatting for a while now. Their voices have been soft, almost kinda jazzy and soothing. Or am I just saying jazzy because one of them is black?

Okay, there we go. I forgot for a second; I’m in Fullerton, at a friend’s apartment. Thursday night. Walden called me and invited me over to come drink and chill, and well, fuck, I can still taste that god awful burning Brandy in my throat. Man I can taste it every time I swallow my own saliva, as if Brandy is all my glands are producing right now. Shit, I’m going to vomit if I keep on thinking about it. Think—cold crisp Crystal Geyser water, or chocolate protein shakes. Yum. Ugh, well, not the latter. Just think about the former.

Shit, did I forget to take out my contacts? Sit up. Whoa, I got up too fast. Nausea’s hitting me pretty bad. I can feel something brewing in my chest, or esophagus, or diaphragm—shit I don’t know my human anatomy, and I don’t need to be thinking about it. Just needa calm down and focus. The contacts—taking them out was the last thing I managed to do before I passed out. From all that Brandy. From the whole two god damn shots.

Fuck okay, think about the Crystal Geyser water now. Sparkling, delicious water.

I gotta burp. Fuck. Just let it be a burp. Fuck. This can be one crazy big burp, or I’m just going to explode with vomit, but I hope it’s just a burp because fuck I haven’t vomited in forever and I really hate the feeling and shit I’m in front of other people right now—better dancers than I am, way better and I am not going to fucking vomit in front of them. It’s just a burp.

Esophagus. Definitely brewing in the esophagus. Definitely not going to be a burp. POWER WALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE EVERYTHING’S COOL. Close the door behind yourself, lift toilet seat, take a deep breath aaaaand—What the fuck that’s the spinach I had for dinner. And some more of it. And some more of it. Now I can’t breathe, and fuck why is my vomit reddish orange—oh, that’s probably the spaghetti sauce. Okay and there goes most of my vomit. I have the option of trying to force out the last of it and suffocate some more, or try to swallow it down and breathe a little more easily. Swallow. Breathe. Kinda tastes like the Brandy, or just simply alcohol because it all tastes the same to me. Head back out and plant your ass on the sofa.

I vomited, I announce. I’m not really talking to anyone but to myself, but the two guys discussing basketball are around to hear.

Dang, how many shots did you have?

Just two. Yeah, I know, I’m a one shot wonder but our friend Walden, who looks great passed out on the couch over there, made me take a second one.

I think they’re going back into their discussion about basketball now, so I’m just going to lie down and close my eyes again. I still feel like shit, but I just wanna sleep it off. Shut your eyes. Now fall asleep, damn it. Alright, that’s not going to work. I’m just too miserable. Instead I’ll try to piece together everything that happened this week that led up to this.

I remember a conversation I had with Walden, about a week ago. Sunday, past midnight. Earlier that night I auditioned for Team Millennia in Fullerton, and as always, I had doubts leading up to and after the audition. Auditions always got emotionally stressful, but what won this particular audition the award for the most emotionally overwhelming one ever by far was an impromptu visit from Ranier over the weekend.

And now Ranier had left, and auditions had finished, and I was back at home in Irvine. Walden called me because he also happened to be in Irvine practicing for a performance he was going to dance in with a project team. I met with him at the parking structure where he was practicing, and we found a corner where we could chat. I had told him that I had a lot that I wanted to get off my mind. We talked about ex’s, both mine and his, and we talked about dancing, and some more about ex’s, and some more about dancing.

Walden, I know I’ve improved, but sometimes, I watch recent videos of my own dancing and I feel like the dancing I do now hasn’t really changed from the dancing I did a year ago.

Walden regurgitated the same thing I hear from everyone, about how I really did improve. I felt a little better though, because sometimes I just needed someone to remind me of that, but my dancing wasn’t even really the main issue. My feeling like I hadn’t changed went a lot deeper than dancing.

Walden, remember the night at the kickback when I ended up taking a hit from the bong? You know why I did it? It wasn’t because you or because anyone else at that kickback convinced me. It was because I was, and still am, tired of being the person that would choose calling special ed kids stupid over keeping a relationship with his boyfriend. I’m tried of being the person who has such a strong grip on reality and logic that it’s more like a desperate grasp for dear life, and I drop emotion and anything weighing me down in order to keep holding on. Trust me when I say that I am over my last ex, and trust me when I say that I no longer believe it’s ok to call special ed kids stupid, but despite these little things, I am still the same person. What if I get into a similar situation in the future, where I find that I have to choose between my own convoluted idea of logic and reality, versus an emotion I feel, like love, or regret, or plain happiness? I know I’m going to choose the former.

Something had to change, I concluded. If I can’t change my dancing, or the choices I make, I figured I should drink.

I wanna get fucked up, I told Walden. I think if I work at it, I can really start enjoying myself, so hit me up next time you’re partying.

Brandy.

No, fuck that. Crystal Geyser water. So purifying and refreshing. Open wide for...Brandy. Fuck.

I need to burp again. It’s just a burp. There’s no way that I’ll need to vomit again. Open your eyes, sit up. Get ready to push yourself from the sofa. No, I don’t need to do this because all I really need to do is just lie back down and close my eyes and it will all go away. Then I will wake up the next morning feeling great, and then I’ll go to class and then I’ll go to my friend’s birthday party later at night and drink some more there because drinking has to be the one thing I can change, so... I. Can’t. Fucking. Vomit. Now.

Now POWERWALK TO THE BATHROOM LIKE A BOSS.

Okay, looks like I still had some spinach sitting in my stomach. I’m sure at this point it’s like I never even had dinner at all.

Weeds

I slouched back on a couch and watch an inebriated Alfonso play Marvel vs. Capcom against another inebriated guy. It was 3:30 AM, just an hour and a half after we all got some Mexican food and celebrated the end of our dance camp’s July session. The impromptu kickback at an apartment of a dancer we hardly ever talked to already started to die. At least, it was dying until a few others came through the door with a fresh bag of greens.

No one wasted any time. In less than a minute, people were already lighting up a bong.

After taking a few hits, one particular dancer named Walden planted himself next to me on the couch. “Since you refused to drink,” he said to me, “you have to get high.”

I rolled my eyes. “No,” I told him.

“Com’n, just one hit!”

I folded my arms. “No, and don’t bother trying. You’re not going to convince me.”

“Look, I don’t want to convince anyone to try anything that they haven’t ever done before, which is why I’m leaving your friend Kelvin alone over there, but you said you’ve tried it once before. Why not do it again?”

“Because I didn’t like it my first time.”

“Why didn’t you like it?”

“It’s complicated and it’ll take forever to explain. So just know, I didn’t like it before, and I’m not going to like it now.”

“Maybe you didn’t smoke with the right people. Maybe you need to smoke it with uuuh-uh-uh-us.” He motioned at some people standing in the kitchen chatting amongst themselves. I looked at Jacob, who was sitting on another couch taking a hit. He looked up at me and shook his head, cautioning me not to give in.

“It’s not about the people,” I said. “It’s about smoking itself. It’s the effects that I don’t like.”

“What’s wrong with the effects?”

“Look, my full reason is long and convoluted, so I’ll just tell you this: I like reality the way it already is, and I hold my perception of it really dearly to me. I don’t let anything or anyone come and change my reality and the way I perceive it. Okay?”

“So you won’t even take just one hit?” Walden asked.

“No, I won’t.”

Walden dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Ok, fine.” He lifted himself off the couch and left somewhere outside.

I sat there quiet, still slumped in my seat and twiddling my thumbs. With Walden out of my face, I buried myself deep into my thoughts, deep enough to seriously consider whether or not I wanted to do this.



“Realize what?” Trung asked.

My eyes followed a bright green sign until it disappeared over the roof of my car. Two miles until the Bay Bridge, a four-mile menace that hung some several hundred feet over a deep dark boundless body of treacherous waters. I took several deep breaths and grasped my steering wheel with both hands.

“Maybe I was wrong,” I paused to take a breath and noticed that my emotions were starting to overwhelm me. “And maybe I’ve been wrong the last entire two years.”

“Well hell yeah you’ve been wrong!” Trung chastised me. “Rainy was pretty much all you could ask for in a guy. Dancer, singer, Filipino, not a douchebag, yet you broke up with him! And for what, Brian. For what?”

“Well it was because—”

“It was so you could continue calling special ed kids stupid! So that you could make fun of students with mental disabilities for not being as smart as other kids their age.”

I kept my hands glued to the steering wheel. The last exit before the Bay Bridge was approaching in less than half a mile. Should I use this chance to escape? “It’s more than that,” I tried to rationalize. “It was about the way I think, the way I see things, which was what Ranier tried to change. And you know that I can’t let go of the way I see things. It makes me who I am, and who I’ve been for a really long time. I made a sacrifice and...”

“And what?”

There was no use rationalizing, especially since I already admitted the truth to myself. “Like I said, I—I’m wrong. I...I made the wrong choice.” My throat throbbed.

“Look Brian, I know this whole thing with you calling special ed kids stupid and your rationale for doing it—I know that this is you, that this is something you can’t and won’t change for a really long time, but...” Trung looked at me and noticed my lips quivering. “...Are you okay?” he asked.

I barely uttered the “f” in “I’m fine” when I felt every little bit of anguish pent inside of me come bursting out in an embarrassingly high-pitched wail. Tears immediately streamed down my face.

“Brian!” Trung lifted both his hands as if to do something, but his seatbelt restrained him.

“I’m...” A pant accompanied each syllable, and each syllable came out distorted by my struggle to fight back more sobbing. “I’m. Fucking. Fine. God fucking damn it!” I pried one hand off the steering wheel so I could wipe off my tears, and shielding my face from Trung, I wept under my breath and panted through my nose.

“Brian...” Trung sighed. He placed his hand on the back of my head and rubbed it gently. “It’s okay, Brian. Let it all out...and maybe you should get off the freeway before we get onto the Bay Bridge.”

I looked through the rearview mirror to see the last exit disappear behind me. It was too late to get off. But that didn’t matter. I opened my mouth and breathed out, letting the cries stagger out.



I leaned forward on the couch and scratched my head. “Alfonso,” I said. “I wanna take a hit.”

Alfonso, bong in hand, exchanged a glance with Kelvin. “Wait, what?” Kelvin said. “Did Walden change your mind?”

“No, he didn’t. Just pass me the bong.” Alfonso sat down next to me with the bong, and Jacob came over to ask me if I really wanted to do this. “Yeah,” I told him. “Don’t question my reasons. Just light it up.”

Drive

There’s something about driving alone late at night, something so relaxing and so illuminating. It’s the only time when I can (and have to) force myself to stay awake while doing nothing for a really long time, nothing except, of course, resting my foot on the gas, keeping my left hand at the bottom of the steering wheel, and staring out into a road. No distractions.

Even though I know my destination, I feel like I’m driving nowhere because I’m not getting there in half an hour, in the next hour, or the next five hours, and the only thing I can see before me is more road heading into a black abyss. This is when I find the time to think and to reflect deeply, real deeply, far more deeply than the amount of reflection I do when I write.

I left my home in NorCal for UCI on the evening of July 4th, of all days. I figured, y’know, traffic would be a bitch the day before when everyone traveled to visit their families, and a bitch the day after when everyone drove back home—with hangovers. But it wouldn’t take much for anyone to figure that this was some lame excuse, some kind of ulterior motive because really, why the hell would I leave friends and family on an iconic American holiday?

While driving through the deserts of Central Valley, I glanced into my rearview mirror every now and then to soak up the last few moments of the sun as it set over the horizon behind me. I mused about the symbolism of my situation: I was driving farther and farther away from the light as I headed down an endless shadowy road. The dark sky through my front window stood in stark contrast to the image in my mirrors.

I tried to keep myself somewhat active by sipping on two pearl milk tea drinks, one of which was Trung’s. Just before I left, Trung and I got drinks from Tapioca Express. We actually did this the day before, too, and in fact, I had originally planned on leaving the day before, July 3rd. We went to Tapioca Express, and as we wandered around the plaza with our drinks, Trung urged me to stay an extra night and hang out with Peter and black John. I was supposed to hang out with them on Friday for an early July 4th barbeque, but after I got home from Breakthrough, I passed out on my bed for five hours. Trung convinced me, so the two of us chilled at Peter’s house with him and John. We played Super Smash Bros Brawl and I learned how to play beer pong, but knowing how destructive a single beer was to me, we used water so that I wouldn’t wake up the next day feeling too shitty for my solo drive back down to Irvine.

10 PM. The sun had been long gone now. Black skies through my front window, black skies in my mirrors, black skies everywhere. Trying to hold onto any glimmer of light, I found myself staring into a circuit of city lights far away in the east. Maybe it was Fresno, or Visalia. I doubled back between watching the road and watching the cities, but eventually, something completely stole my attention: a burst of red, white, and blue sparkles over the island of yellow lights. I had an entire firework show in the left corner of my eye.

I turned to the passenger seat with my mouth already halfway open and words ready to come out, foolishly thinking that for a second, I had someone to tell, “Oh my god, did you see that?” But no, there was no one, no one but my stuff animal whale, Op, and his mate, Mop. So, I resolved to enjoying the fireworks with only these two and the quiet company that they kept.

The fireworks, they made me think about a lot of things. Like the time my family and I took a vacation to Hawaii and watched fireworks from the shores of Honolulu, and my old brother and I skipped rocks over the warm ocean water—that was 1998. I thought about the time my high school friends and I watched fireworks from the hillside of a rich country club neighborhood, and I tried to flirt with a friend’s friend from her taekwondo class—that was nearly ten years later, in 2007. And the following year, Doug, a fellow Breakthrough teacher, Trung, and I drove around Cupertino tracking down a decent place to park and watch fireworks. We gave up and tried to catch glimpses of fireworks from a school parking lot, but we could only see so much shrouded by the dark silhouettes of redwood trees. We had better luck in 2009, fortunately. Doug directed us atop a mountain in a small town where street lights were a scarce luxury. We stood in the outskirts of the entire Silicon Valley where we spectated the firework shows of several cities across the south bay. I held Trung close in my arms, and occasionally we both reached and grasped the air, pretending to catch the fireworks in our hands as if they were confetti strewn about the night sky.

After seeing a third city’s firework show, I realized the reason I left on July 4th: I didn’t have anyone to enjoy it with. I stopped talking to almost all of my high school friends right after graduation, I broke up with Trung, I broke up with Ranier, I didn’t come back to Breakthrough, I left my family for college three hundred miles away from home, and I just sorta popped back into Peter and Black John’s lives after inexcusably missing out on scheduled hangouts over the last ten months.

But maybe there was more to my reason; the more I reflected on the people I abandoned, the more I realized that maybe I left because, well, I didn’t think that I deserved to enjoy it with anyone. This lonely six-hour trip on the night of July 4th was my punishment.

I got my last firework show around 11 PM, and, trying to keep the last images of light ingrained in my brain, I drove my trip’s last two hours in darkness back to Irvine.

Beautiful Sinners

Quiet and as still as the woods around us, we made no sound but the dirt and leaves rustling underneath our feet as we moved across the ground. We tried to be quiet anyway, but occasionally we couldn’t help but let escape from our mouths that suckling, sloppy smack sound as a head bobbed up down, back and forth and all around. We were cautious, turning our heads to every blow of the wind or every crackle of a leaf; out here in nature we couldn’t be too careful of what we had dared to do.

Now having arrived at the end, we felt shivers run down our spines and lift every hair on our cold, bare skin, but it was a feeling as strong and as pleasurable as the feelings of guilt that immediately followed. It was finished, our sin, and now silently the clothes came back on—underwear and wifebeater, shorts and shirts. Feeling hollow, I found no words to speak, nothing more than a nod, a shy smile, a shrug of the shoulders, all meant to say one thing: Thanks stranger.



I couldn’t quite tell the difference—the paneled stained glass windows depicted ocean waves under purple and white skies that were either apocalyptic or heaven. These smaller windows were spread out across the walls, while a bigger stained glass window over the altar depicted white birds flying over green rolling fields, across a deep blue sky, and toward a fiery ball of orange and red flames, presumably the sun. The walls themselves were simply plastered, beige walls. The ceiling hung low, with wooden support beans running across it. It was as if someone turned a daycare center to a church...Church.

First time here.

I wanted to be able to call out or turn to Ranier because I couldn’t keep up with everyone saying in near-perfect unison “Amen” or “Praise the lord” or some really long sentence, but I refrained from moving too much in my seat. Following everyone, I sat back down, and I tried to maintain my posture and kept my hands in my lap. I listened attentively as the priest, who dawned a vibrant green robe, began to speak.



No one would want to buy these jeans if they knew what the two of us accidentally got on them. I poked my head outside my dressing room and peered around the corner. “All Clear,” I whispered. He tipped-toed our from behind me, carrying the pair of jeans to put back in the rack.

As I drove him back to our place, the car was filled with an awkward silence that we occasionally tried to mask with a question. “What are you doing after this?” he asked.

“I got a paper to write for English class, and some studying for a psychology final. You?” I answered.

“Studying, homework.”

“Yeah, same here!” I said. Silence. Finally, we arrived at his place and I dropped him off.

As I drove home, I thought briefly to myself, what the fuck was I doing? I let go of someone I really cared about. I couldn’t have him back, so now, this was me, hooking up like a skank.



The songs were festive and uplifting, and I found myself clapping along to assurances that the Lord loved me no matter what and that all sins, past, present, and future, could be atoned for. I actually liked this priest too. He was eccentric. The green robe probably already said it. Everyone laughed, including me, at his subtle jokes, and his sermons had a relatable, universal message, even underneath all the God talk.

“We can’t blame others for our misfortunes,” the priest said as he began to conclude one of his sermons. “We can’t blame the weather, we can’t blame the frikkin’ traffic that always seems to be there at 7 AM every morning. Take responsibility...Responsibility goes to the bone! God gave us minds so we could think, evaluate our past and present and plan our future, and God gave us limbs so we could take action!”

At the end, he pulled out the wine and the communion bread. I was hungry. But no, Ranier said no, I never went through communion. I didn’t even practice in any shape or form. But I continued to stare at that flat disk of bread that the priest waved in the air underneath the feet of a hanging crucifix. It’s like he was taunting me with it.



This time, we sat on a log overlooking the creek. He zipped his jeans back up and I did the same with mine. As we walked back to my car, I felt something different this time, something so much worse. I could hardly look at him, and most of all I could not look at myself. I felt shame, something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Once I dropped him off, once he was gone, I knew, there’d be no more of this.

I had been going through a few rough months, but this was no excuse to hook up with random guys. I am never doing this again, I declared to myself. I was done, and now it was time to take some responsibility. I let go of someone I really cared about, and now it was time to get him back.

I went home, logged onto Myspace, and sent this message to him: “This is probably old news, but did you get into UC Davis yet? If so, CONGRATULAAAASHUNS.”

I got this reply: “What happened? Almost 6 months ago at the end of 2006 you were avoiding my calls and trying as hard as you could to avoid contact with me. I was completely willing to talk to you and find out what the problem was. Unfortunately you didn’t want to talk to me at all so I just gave up and stopped caring. I found it hella random that you commented me the other day. I am still completely willing to rebuild the friendship so call me sometime and let’s talk or whatever.

Black John wasn’t as oblivious as I thought he was. I messaged him back, saying no more than a location and time: “Wednesday, 3:00 PM. Oakridge.”

John would be graduating from the high school in less than three weeks, leaving me behind next year to finish my senior year in high school without the support I had from him, Peter, and Miranda, the latter two having already gone off to college. I had to make my last few moments with John last.



“God loves us all, so even if you have not gone through communion,” the priest said, “or if you share different beliefs or don’t even practice anything at all, I invite you to come up here anyway and take a piece of our brea—”

I was sold. Time to get me a taste of that communion bread.

I got up, stood in line, got my tiny paper-thin wafer of communion bread, and skipped on the wine—everyone was drinking from the same cup, but maybe God had some kind of anti-mono force field over the church. I didn’t wanna check. As I walked back to my seat, I let the little chip of bread soak around in my mouth. It tasted kinda like an unsweetened ice cream cone; this was something I could see myself snacking on if I was really, really hungry.

When I was back in my seat, I noticed in the corner of my eye someone shuffling down my row. She was coming toward me. I turned and looked at her, and I was surprised to see a familiar face.

“Oh wow, Brandy, it’s good to see you again!” I said. Brandy was a black girl in my French class back in high school. She used to have a crush on me when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore.

“It’s good to see you too, Brian! How are you doing? What are you doing here? What school are you going to now?”

“I’m going to UC Irvine. I just finished my second year, so I’m back up here in San Jose for the summer.”

“Did you come alone?”

“Yeah, I did.” I shrugged, because I still didn’t fully understand why I came. Brandy and I continued to catch up, but the question of why I came lingered in my mind all throughout our conversation and all throughout my drive home. I came up with a partial answer:

I wanted to take responsibility, but I couldn’t find within me the strength that I needed.

Metablogging

Spring Quarter 2010, Week 1 (March 29 - April 3)

Next week I’m going to start writing in my blog again, so now’s the time to map out how the first few entries are going to go. Since I hardly wrote in the winter quarter, I need to use flashbacks to tell the story of what happened during all that time. How can I make these flashbacks relevant to the present timeline? Not that that really matters, because if anything, I can just forcefully tack a totally unrelated flashback to some entry like I did with Photo Album 2000. God, what a shitty entry.

What I should really think about now, though, is how the final entry of the spring season will look like. I admit, me complaining to an imaginary person about how much I hate gay “cocksucking faggots” followed by yet another depressing flashback of Trung and me isn’t the best way to end a season; that is what happens when I don’t plan ahead. By the end of spring, Ray and I will still be together, and I imagine that I’ll finally have a new, paying job by then, most likely at Urban Outfitters, and that I’ll hit my goal of weighing at least 160 pounds. I want my weight to be a big motif this season by constantly updating the blog with the progress toward my goal. However, I’ll probably realize that, once I hit 160 pounds, I’m still not going to be happy with myself because that won’t change me being gay, and that can make yet another, “WAAAH WHY AM I GAY” post since everyone seems to love those. What I learn in the end will be that my happiness won’t come from my weight and self-image, but rather, my amazing boyfriend. We’ll be celebrating our five month anniversary by the end. Aw ok, looks like my spring quarter will have a happy ending.

Week 2 (April 4 - 10)

Damn it, looks like no job from Urban Outfitters for sure now. I really wanna develop the job storyline and I need the experiences of starting at a new work place to drive it like how starting at the Education Academy drove it in the fall. I’m going to bore what little readers I have if I constantly update with, “I really wanna get that new longboard/ Nikes/ jeans but I have no job!—INSERT IRRELEVANT FLASHBACK.” I’m really lazy though, but I think I’ll continue my job hunt for the sake of this blog.

Week 3 (April 11 - 17)

Ray and I broke up last week. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I’m here in the back of English class, tapping my notebook with my pen and wondering what I’m going to do. I need to completely remap my entries and the final entry for this season. My teacher’s lecturing about something boring right now, so I’m going to jot down some ideas.

“When reading Hamlet, I want you guys to examine the play from the perspective of narratology,” my teacher rambles. “Narratology is the study of how narrative structure affects our perspective on the world. Life is difficult to grasp because, in reality, it’s so chaotic and random...”

I figure that I’ll be sad for the next few weeks and a bunch of my entries will focus on me being emo, so emo that I will reject guys interested in me because I’m not ready to “move on” yet. But, in the last entry of this season, I will realize how much I like whoever’s trying to get at me at that time and finally find the strength to move on. Cliffhanger onto the summer season with a kiss! Ok, this sounds like a good final entry. Alright, Plan B! I’ll go hit on some cuties in my psychology class.

“...Things happen for no reason, and we do things for no reason or reasons that we don’t understand,” my teacher continues. “We have a subconscious desire to fit our lives into a sort of narrative structure, into a story in order to make sense of things and find meaning and symbolism in otherwise meaningless events. We’re always looking for progress, a tidy ending, or ‘closure.’ We get so many influences from TV, film, and fiction so we seek the same narrative coherence to our lives that the characters in these works have. This is something that everybody does every day. Everybody, every day. It might not be in written form; it might be spoken or simply in the way we think and make decisions.”

Man, my teacher is such a lesbian. I can’t stop staring at her short lesbian hair.

Week 5 (April 25 - May 1)

I think I made out with enough random guys the past two weeks to completely void the meaning and impact behind what would’ve been my Plan B for a final entry. I could still keep quiet and not write about my hook up adventures so readers will still buy the final entry, but for me it goes just a little bit outside my tolerance for breaking journalistic ethics.

Our Souvenirs was a good entry, but I know that I definitely need to include what happened after I said “Maybe I’ve been wrong for the last entire two years” in a flashback later on. Maybe as the flashback for this season’s final entry? There we go, that will be my new final entry. Plan C! Since this flashback is about me making the wrong sacrifice, in the entry’s present timeline I’ll be making the right sacrifice! Giving up my stubbornness for friendship? For Trung? For a kid at work? Oh, hopefully I’ll run into one of my students outside of work and get involved in his personal life somehow. Great plot device. I can rely only on so few of them.

Week 6 (May 2 - 8)

Ok, my dance storyline hasn’t been going anywhere, probably because I haven’t been dancing as much as I had hoped. I’ve been working out a lot instead, haven’t I? Oh, maybe that can become the new plot for the dance storyline: I choose working out over dance even though dance makes me a lot happier. Sounds good; hopefully my readers will automatically forget the original plot I opened up for the dance storyline at the beginning of this season.

Week 9 (May 23 - 29)

I need a Plan D for this season’s final entry. I know how it will go. It will present my life in shambles, because that’s how my fucking life is going right now. I’m no where near 160 pounds, I still have no job and make fifteen bucks a week from my tutoring job, nothing’s going on in the dance world, I’m pissed off at Ranier about Sockhop tickets, I still hate all gays, I’m still such an effing skank when I thought I finally stopped, and I haven’t gotten into any extraordinary situations that will end in three weeks with me making a decision so difficult that it will be accompanied by a dramatic orchestral sound track in my head. Nothing’s really changed at all. But the final entry will be so dark that I’m sure the readers will be left thinking, “Oh shiiiit, what’s going to happen next?”

Finals Week (June 6 - 12)

I need a Plan E. Because, I guess my life has been making a complete 180 lately. Well, not 180, maybe 110. I’m probably not going to have the epic ending that I hoped for, but it’s something at least. I didn’t see any of this coming. Some long time conflicts will be resolved, but not all. I still have no idea how the final entry will turn out, however. I’ll leave it up to fate. Hopefully everything will be fine.

Look Back, Let Go, and Move On

“Thank you God for blessing us with...”

And the list went on and on. Every once in a while, the pastor would pause and all the churchgoers would say “Amen!” I tried to catch up and not look out of place at church, but I failed pretty miserably. And just when I anticipated another “Amen,” everybody said, “Lord have mercy,” instead. God damn it.

Everybody took their seat, and I followed suit. I reached under my seat to grab the three hella giant blades of grass that we were given earlier when we arrived. Today was Palm Sunday, which meant—well, I didn’t know really. One notable difference between this visit and my first visit the Sunday prior was that today, the pastor read an even longer story, all while we were standing. My mind drifted away at the first mention of a two-syllable name.

To pass time, I checked out the cute Filipino choirboys (just the ones that looked like they were at least a high school junior) and scoped for other guys around, and I tried guessing the number of sins under the belts of each decent looking guy. Maybe I was fantasizing too much because I counted a lot of sins.

After a while, everyone stood up again holding up their giant blades of grass. The pastor walked up and down the aisles, watering us with his watering can. I thought that was kinda cool.

Sitting down and bored once again, I started bumping my knee with the one beside me, and I felt the knee bumped back. Our two knees playfully bumped for a little while, and it made me smile. I looked up at Ranier, who was facing toward the front but with his eyes darting back and forth toward me. I wanted to put my hand on his leg, but I refrained. He smiled slightly, and I tried sitting up again and paying attention to the pastor. Didn’t happen.

Snack time came. Everyone went up to get a cracker except for me, because apparently I hadn’t gone through some kind of confirmation process or whatever, Ranier told me. I watched him and his mother and little brother get up and find their place in line. The line was moving slowly, so I decided to mimic what some other people were doing earlier and tied my three giant blades of grass into a cross. It was pretty challenging, like a Rubik’s cube, but I got it after my third try. Soon after, it was time to head back to Ranier’s place.

What I got out of my second church experience was that I’d never go to church again unless it was for Ranier.



I sat on the couch in my apartment, doing anything but studying, when I got an instant message from Ranier. He told me that he could still get me Sockhop tickets for twenty five dollars. Even though I was still a little bitter, I agreed to it. Looked like I was going to Sockhop after all. I resumed stalking acquaintances on Facebook afterward, but then Ranier brought up something else.

Ranier:
How come ever since we broke up, when we talk on aim, our conversation always gets cut short because you never respond back, but when we did go out, we would finish our convos. Just a random thought, ain’t trippin’.

bbq dinner:
I didn’t think we had much to talk about. Just business, like figuring out Sockhop tickets, or whatever.

Ranier:
Haha ok maybe it’s just an OCD of mine, to always finish a convo by sayin’ bye.

bbq dinner:
I dunno. Do you have more you wanna talk about?

Ranier:
Well there was one more thing... I just wanted to see how you were, to see if everything was alright with you.

bbq dinner:
I’m doing fine. It’s Sunday night of finals week so I’m supposed to be busy. How are you doing?

Ranier:
I’m doing splendid haha jk. I’m doin’ good. It’s a nice relief. Everything is going well...ok buh you’re being honest right? Nothing wrong or anything bothering you that pertains to anything I can help with?

bbq dinner:
No I’m fine, but I guess I’ve been meaning to tell you something.

Ranier:
Oo ok, go ahead.

bbq dinner:
On the night we broke up, you told me something like, “A few years from now you’re going to realize what an ignorant asshole you were," or something like that, regarding me calling special ed kids stupid.

Ranier:
Lol omg I said that?

bbq dinner:
I might’ve added the "asshole" part. But the main point is, it didn’t take a few years to realize what an ignorant asshole I was.

Ranier:
Aww, what made you think this?

bbq dinner:
I was looking up vids of Jawn Ha on Youtube, and I found a vid of him teaching at a high school. I spotted this one kid who really sucked, more than I would’ve, and I laughed at him. Then I read through the comments and saw the other people also pointed out the kid, to which Jawn Ha responded, “That Kid is deaf.” And I was like, “Oh.” And I couldn’t bring my self to still think that the kid sucked. Do you see the parallels?

Ranier:
Sorta, so you’re sayin’ when you laughed at the kid you didn’t know he was deaf, and when you found out, it made you realize how fucked up it is to laugh at someone who tries no matter what disabilities they have in their lives.

bbq dinner:
Yeah that’s pretty much it.

Ranier:
Well I'm proud to see you type this, even though you still might be an ass or not (I wouldn’t know anymore). I’m glad that you realized that.



10 PM on a rainy Friday night. I waited outside the auditorium as Ray ran around making sure everything was getting put cleaned up and put away. He had just successfully directed a dance showcase at his high school for charity, and now he looked too adorable yelling into his walkie-talkie as he ran around frantically. When I thought he was done, he came up to me and told me that he forgot something in the dance studio.

He led me to the his school’s dance studio, and when I walked inside, there was some slow romancey music playing, and there was a bunch of candy and lit candles littered all over the floor. “Ranye’s B-Day Wish” was written across the whiteboard, and underneath it hung a banner that read, in big red painted block letters: “Valentine?”

I scratched my head and looked at Ray. “Did you guys have some kind of party earlier today?” I knew it was Ranier’s birthday today, but it wasn’t that close to Valentine’s Day.

“It’s for you,” he said.

“Oooooooh.” It hit me. This was a surprise for me. “OH MY.” I hugged and squeezed him tight, and of course, I said “Yes” to his Valentine question.

Later that weekend, we made our relationship official: What’s my favorite type of music? R&B! 01.24.10. (It was originally, what’s my favorite html tag?—BR! But I decided to go with the less nerdy option.)



Ranier and the Funksters had a dance competition in San Jose at the downtown Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th. Seeing how I got back home just in time at the end of finals week and how it was in my hometown, I went to visit him. I didn’t actually see the competition because I had already spent twenty-five bucks on the Sockhop ticket, but I came to see him outside of the convention center after the competition ended. We met up and walked to my car so I could give him the black jersey that he had asked me to buy for him about a month ago.

“Notice anything different?” I asked Ranier.

“You got contact lenses,” he answered.

“Yep, I also got a haircut.” I lifted my hat to show him. “I’m wearing a hat though because it’s kinda ba—”

“What the hell did you do? It’s terrible.” He ran his hand through my poorly shaved mohawk to feel every little mistake. “Wow, who cut your hair?”

“I did.”

“Oh, well, you should’ve asked me! There’s not much you can do now buh shave it all off.”

I shrugged. We got back to my car and Ranier got his jersey. I drove him back to the convention center so he could wait with another Funkster for her dad to pick them up. Before going, I got one last hug from him and told him I’d see him at Sock Hop. I watched him walk a few feet after he left my car, and then I turned to the rear-view mirror to gaze at myself in my new contact lenses, no glasses, and my ugly hair. I bit my lips, slowly nodded, and put my car into drive and drove home.

By All Standards

I was on Youtube browsing through videos of Jawn Ha, a dancer from GRV, when I found a video of him teaching at Alhambra High School for their all male dance team. What really, really stuck out to me was the kid in the middle. He picked up barely any of the choreo, and what he did pick up he performed with no energy and no feeling. A lot of the times he just stood around looking lost as the rest of the dancers rolled back, rolled forward, swung their arms, slid on the floor, and kicked. In other words, he sucked.

After watching the video, I read through the comments and found that I wasn’t the only one who noticed the kid. “Ahah the kid in the middle,” someone pointed out. I chuckled, but the response to this person’s comment wiped the smirk right off my face. From Jawn Ha himself: “Not hating, because you didn’t know in the first place, but that kid’s deaf. Glad he still dances as a passion despite his disabilities.”

I grimaced at the comment and bit down on my lips. I forced myself to ask, So fucking what? Because, I tried to convince myself, there’s right and there’s wrong, and then there’s just reality. There’s no such thing as right or wrong in reality, there is only is. Whether or not it’s wrong for me to say it doesn’t change the fact that, by all standards, this kid...

I couldn’t complete the sentence. I couldn’t bring myself to think the way I used to. That wasn’t me anymore, and it should have never been.

I shuffled through some papers on my desk and found a sticky note with bold, red sharpie writing: “I was insensitive about the situation. I know how you feel about the matter and I respect that. I won’t bring it up anymore.” This was my apology to Ranier when I pissed him off again by insisting that I could call special ed kids stupid irregardless of their disability. I had written it down to read to him over the phone in case I forgot any words, and to prevent me from stopping mid-sentence and giving into my impulses of saying, “Nah, they’re still stupid.”

The sticky note was attached to the back of a photo. I turned it around, and smiled. It was a picture of me and Paulo Alvarez, one of my seventh grade writing students from my first summer teaching at Breakthrough.



Five feet, three inches, and one hundred eighty pounds. He wore swim shorts but he still kept his baggy white t-shirt on. I noticed him as he stood at the very edge, shoulders together, eyes darting back and forth over the water. Occasionally he tested the surface of the water with the tip of his toe but found it inept each time.

“Com’n Paulo, jump in!” I shouted from the water.

He scrutinized every inch of the pool. Kids and teachers playing splash wars, kids and teachers throwing sponge balls at each other, kids and teachers in circles clapping and chanting “Oooh big booty big booty big booty!”

I swam up to the edge next to Paulo and shook the water off my face. “Com’n Paulo, just jump right in. Don’t worry, I gotcha.” I watched his eyes close and his chest rise and fall as he took a long, deep breath. Suddenly he took a step back and propelled himself forward, arms glued down his sides and legs together. He hit the water with a great, loud thud and a giant splash.

“Great job Paulo!” I wiped the water from my face, and not wasting any time, I grabbed his hand and dragged him out into the middle of the pool. “Let’s make a whirlpool!” I shouted to him. We recruited six other students and formed a circle connected by our hands. “Alright, everyone, let’s spin clockwise! Go left!” We pushed against the water and span in our circle until we built enough momentum to carry ourselves on a mini merry-go-round. I looked over at Paulo, who was shouting and laughing, not caring that water splashed all over his face.

“Brian, let’s get grab some more people!” he shouted. He freed one of his hands and held it out to a nearby student, telling him, “We’re making a whirlpool—join us!”

I was stunned. I could hardly ever get him to do anything in class or talk to anyone at lunch, but now, not only was Paulo actually taking part and having fun in a group activity, but also, he was taking initiative to get other kids to join in. To see his face beaming with so much joy—I learned this day that this was what it meant to make a breakthrough.



I couldn’t complete the sentence. I couldn’t bring myself to think the way I used to. That wasn’t me anymore, and it should have never been. Damn it Ranier.



“Paulo Alvarez will be not joining us for the rest of the summer,” Erin, one of our directors, announced.

It was only the second week into my second summer teaching at Breakthrough.

“We and his parents had a long talk, and we felt that Breakthrough was too advanced for him.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Breakthrough was going through some changes my second summer; during my first summer, there was no such thing as “too advanced.” Sure, Paulo might’ve had an auditory processing disorder that made it hard for him to learn and to socialize with others, but by the end of the first summer, he showed improvement, academically and socially. He already impressed me during the first week by volunteering to read from “The Scarlet Ibis” and expressing to the class about how he felt about the story’s tragic ending. By the end of the week, there was no reason for him to leave.

I sat fuming in my seat. I knew what this was. Breakthrough was becoming all about the standards. Not just meeting the standards of the students’ respective grade levels, but meeting the standards of one or two grade levels higher. Personal improvement didn’t matter anymore if it didn’t meet the standards. By all standards, he was probably unsuitable (too stupid) for Breakthrough.

Well, fuck the standards.