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.
Showing posts with label repost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label repost. Show all posts
Brian and Trung
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
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.
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.
The Truth
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
“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.
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.
Tags:
fall 2010,
flashback,
guestwriter,
norcal,
relationships,
repost,
socal,
trung,
ucla
Runaway: Part 1
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
“Murrieta really is in the middle of nowhere.” I stared out the window and couldn’t see anything but black silhouettes of passing scenery and the road in the car’s headlights. I turned around to glance at Ron and his girlfriend Renee in the backseat, completely knocked out in each other’s arms. I sighed. “Still hot.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
“Neeeext.” Walden’s voice wobbled and wavered. Save for a few fingers clingly onto the bottom of his steering wheel, his arms rested dead in his lap. His eyes looked glazed, and I could tell when he did and didn’t focus on the road. If I didn’t want us all to crash and die, I had to keep him awake.
“The end of your guys’ first hell week and your guys’ first performance—you guys really killed it today.”
“Thanks.” Walden’s voice remained just as flat.
“Okay, you guys are tired. Yet here we all are, going straight to the Halloween party right now.”
“Alcohol wakes us up. Are you going to drink?”
I shrugged. “Depends on the person who invited me.”
Walden scoffed. “Neeeext. I still can’t see it—you and Linh.”
I turned around to double-check that Ron and Renee really were asleep. “Linh and me. Why can’t you see it?”
Walden lifted his hands and shook them with each word he spoke. “Because it’s Linh. I know you pretty well now Brian, and I can tell you, Linh is not your type of guy.” Looked like Walden was fully awake now.
“He is my type of guy. He’s got that hard-ish, hypebeast-ish, ghetto-ish manly—”
“What? Are we even talking about the same Linh?”
“You don’t think he’s—”
“Of course I don’t! Lemme tell you this: Last week, during a team bonding picnic at the park, all the guys were playing basketball. Linh, who was totally uninterested, sat on the side, and he was all, ‘I’m over basketball. Let’s go shopping.’ I don’t have any problem with Linh—I like him—but I know that you get picky about certain things in a guy. Choosing shopping over basketball, is that manly enough for you?”
I bit my lip. I had to admit to my shallow-ass self that my heart sank a little when I heard that he opted for shopping. “Well, Linh and I spent a whole night together, and I didn’t sense a single ounce of gayness on him.”
“Fine Brian. You haven’t been around him long enough, but you’ll eventually see. And when you see it, I’ll be there to tell you, ‘I told ya so.’”
“We’ll see. But I’m sure that he is a keeper.”
We got to Linh’s place in Murrieta half an hour later. We parked outside his house and I retrieved my costume from the trunk: a giant, homemade cardboard pizza to be hung in front of me around my neck. I had brought a yellow shirt to wear underneath it, but I figured, hell, it was Halloween, so I went shirtless underneath my cardboard pizza. With the four of us dressed up, Walden, Ron, Renee, and I marched up Linh’s doorstep and rang his doorbell. We waited.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and we were greeted by some Asian chick I had never seen before. I was slightly taken aback—with her heels on this girl must have been standing at six feet three inches. Her long, wavy black hair, curled eye lashes and dark eye shadow at least made her face pretty, but her breasts, which were incased by a bra probably no larger than an A-cup, nevertheless popped out unusually at me. Her small sweater revealed a flat stomach, and her short black skirt revealed long, toned legs; they even kinda had some muscle to them. My eyes twitched as I scrutinized every unusual detail of her body.
“Oh my god!” Renee spoke up. “Linh, is that you?”
I froze.
“Shit!” Ron stepped up to get a closer look. “Oh shit man I thought you actually were a girl for a minute. You outdid yourself.”
The chick—well, fuck, Linh—grabbed his bra and readjusted it. “Thanks guys.” No doubt about it, that was Linh’s voice. “Here, lemme show you where you guys can put your sleeping bags and stuff.” I watched, my feet locked in place outside on the doorstep, my mouth gaped and my eyes wide open as Linh strutted down the hall with his four-inch heels. Ron and Renee followed him inside.
Still unable to lift my feet, I turned to Walden, my face frozen with the same shocked look. He pretended to not notice, stepped one foot inside the doorway, stopped, turned his head over his shoulder to look at me, smirked, and winked. “I told ya so.”
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009
[[Continued from where this last left off in “Promises Are Just Restraints.”]]
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
A week later, on May 8th, the day of our 17-month anniversary, I felt ready to talk about it. Actually, I wasn’t, but Trung convinced me. 3 AM, we had just settled into bed, and Trung was lying in my arms. He brought up the argument, and soon, he got me talking. I was very hesitant.
“Remember the gay party we went to two weeks ago in Murrieta? We met a lot of people. Remember that one guy? The gay one—well, they were all gay. It was a gay party after all. Anyway, that one guy, he told us about his relationship. His two-year-relationship, which ended months prior. He made it two years. Two whole years. It must be terrible to have a relationship that long just end on you, y’know? You’d think that like, after a while, you spend a lot of months, maybe a year, working out all the kinks in the relationship, and then it’s smooth sailing from there. But this guy, he broke up after two years. I can’t believe that something that is capable of going on for two years is also capable of breaking up.
“And then, a few days later, I was looking up some dance choreography videos on YouTube to get some ideas for Breakthrough this summer. I remembered seeing a piece to Ne-Yo’s Closer that I really liked a while ago, and so I found it and went through the user’s profile. I found a link to his blog, and I read it. ...[H]e blogs a lot about his day to day life with his boyfriend. They’re in their mid-20s, and they’ve been together for seven years. I think they actually got together around eighteen, our age. Anyway, they live together, Trung. They work together for the same company, and, yeah, they live together. They travel together. They even have a dog. And, well, seven years. That’s amazing. Their relationship just seems so unbreakable.
“So all that just left me thinking. On one hand, there’s the guy who broke off a two-year relationship, and on the other hand, there’s the couple who’s maintaining a wonderful seven-year relationship. It made me think about our relationship in a way that I never thought about before. I felt disillusioned: what if we don’t last? I felt hopeful: what if we do last? And that’s when I freaked out. I was thinking about our future. You know how that freaks me out right? I never even liked it when you would plan road trips for us that’d only be like four weeks into the future. Yet, here I was questioning where we’d be in two years, in seven years. The thought of such long-term commitment freaked me out, so I tried to not think about it. But then that just freaked me out some more. You know me Trung. I need control, I need direction, I need to know where I am heading. It’s only when I know where I’m heading toward in the future, I can feel fine moving through the present. So, I thought about our future, but, BAM! Vicious cycle. My fear of commitment came out and freaked me out, so I stopped thinking about the future, but lacking a clear vision of the future freaked me out, so I thought about the future again, and yeah yeah yeah.
“And now, well, I’m less freaked out about it. I learned to half think about the future and to half ignore it. I don’t know what I mean by that, but it’s what I do to keep myself going.”
I paused to wait for Trung’s reaction. He ventured a few comments, telling me that there is no such thing as smooth sailing, but it’s the way I live day to day that determines my future, a future no farther than the next day. Live my life, basically. Cliché advice, but he managed to put it in a different way that made me feel somewhat comforted. I shifted a little bit in bed and realized that I had been shifting quite a bit actually. I was the one lying in Trung’s arms now.
“Sometimes, uh, um, well, you know the game we play, Trung? The hypothetical one. You ask hypothetical questions about...about kids. How I would raise them. Like, you ask me what I would do if my daughter became an anime-loving emo kid or came home knocked up or brought home a boyfriend who was clearly an abusive asshole. Or if my son demanded to take ballet and quit breakdancing. We’ve always played this game since we started going out, and we’ve always had this unwritten and unspoken rule: In these hypothetical situations, I act alone. Single Parent. It was a good rule; I would’ve insisted on keeping it if that rule was every brought up. Every once in a while, you’d throw in black John, who is living on my sofa, and Peter, who I borrow money from, and Miranda, who still keeps on missing out on dinners at my house—er, apartment. But still, I am stuck handling these child-raising hypothetical situations without help. And well, I was thinking, maybe, every once in a while, you...”
A part of me told me to not finish the sentence, but I was already at the point of no return. I had to say it. Tears were pushing against the back of my eyes.
“Maybe you could be with me in the situations every once in a while. Help me out a bit, y’know?”
As I uttered the question, I felt Trung’s embrace tighten. He nodded. It was a slow nod. And I buried my face in his chest, soaking in every little second I was there with him. I felt so warm, and so... and, I let out a sniffle, and some heavy breaths, and soon, I was sobbing. Crying. Soaking Trung’s wife beater. He was concerned, but no, I reassured him, “Trung, don’t worry, no, no. I’m not crying out of, out of sadness. No, I’m not sad.
“Trung, I’m happy. That’s all Trung. That’s it. I’m just happy.”
My Testimony: Part 2
Saturday, October 16, 2010
“God Loves You” (continued)
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
My Testimony: Part 1
Friday, October 15, 2010
Back at this again: bright lights right in my face, cheering people crowding the sidelines, and a table of judges, all with stern blank faces and glaring eyes, staring at me or staring past me. Which audition was this? My ninth one? Yeah, my ninth one. Sounded about right.
All the dancing I had done this past week, all the effort—it was going to climax tonight. Time to kill it. The music started, and all the noise and cheers for me from the crowd faded away. Taking in a deep breath, I counted myself into the music. 5... 6... 7... 8...
(I'm on the very left in the front.)
As soon as the judges dismissed us from the floor, I marched through the crowd and immediately sought out Sang and Leland (my roommates). I saw some high-five hands reach out toward me and heard some congratulations, but I paid no attention because to me, all that mattered was the iPod camera that Leland held in his hand. I had asked him to record my audition, and from the video I’d be making my own judgments. I didn’t want to have to believe anyone else, having previously learned one of the most important life lessons in my last year and a half of dancing and twenty years of living: Cameras tell the truth; people don’t.
I fiddled with my iPod and squinted at the tiny screen. I could barely make myself out or distinguish any moves, and worse was that I noticed that I had pretty much no battery left. I knew I didn’t have enough for a possible callback round and then my group audition round. I panicked a little.
As I fiddled with my iPod, more and more people came up to me to pat me on the back and congratulate me. I didn’t really notice until I realized that some were dancers who were already on the team, and they said I did really good. And they held eye contact. Something I noticed in the past about half-assed fake congratulatory comments was that no one ever added an adverb, and no one ever locked eyes. Maybe I could start trusting the people here tonight for their opinions on my callback and group audition.
Or not.
---
“God Loves You”
Written June 4th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[Setting: 8:15 PM, at Pippin, the dining hall on campus that I used to work at.]
As I was scrubbing down my area, a random girl approached me and asked very hesitantly, “Are you...are you Brian? What time are you getting off work?”
I looked at her and tilted my head a bit. I had never met this girl before or even seen her around. She was cute though, probably even cuter than she normally would be because she just seemed so in awe of me.
“Yes, I am. I’m off in forty-five minutes.” I answered. “Do I know you?”
She said she didn’t, and we quickly established that we had never met each other and that we had no friends in common. But she had just heard of me earlier tonight. I asked how that was possible.
“God told me,” she answered.
I tilted my head again at her, skeptically this time. Not because she was cute.
“God told me,” she continued, “that your family needs to be healed.”
I was a little fascinated now, but still skeptical and barely able to refrain from uttering, What kind of fucking joke is this?
“I know this is really crazy,” she went on, “and I can’t believe I’m even acting on this. But does this make sense at all to you? Does your family need to be healed?”
I didn’t need to think about her question for more than a second to know that...it did. My family did need to be healed. How could she have known about this? My skepticism slowly subsided.
“This does make kinda sense to me, I guess.”
She beamed at me and clasped her hands together. “Can my friends and I pray for you and your family?!” She motioned back to her three friends who were watching from the back of the room.
Pray for me. I wanted to scoff and tell this girl and her friends off, but I couldn’t. This was really trippy; the timing of it was almost too crazy to just be coincidental. I brewed with curiosity, a kind that I tried to rationalize away yet a kind that continued to grow as my emotions started to take over. I had to find out if her offer of prayer was something that could really help me, and I also had to find out if this girl really did come to me through divine intervention, or rather, a more realistic series of coincidences. At this point though, I think the whole prayer offer was appealing to my emotional side more.
“Yes, thanks, please,” I said it like I meant it. Because I did.
“Alright, cool!” she exclaimed. “You get off at nine right? My friends and I will be chilling around outside. Find us when you’re done!”
I nodded and thanked her again, and I watched as she and her friends left.
This is weird, I thought to myself. I still could not believe that God talked to that girl. When you talk to God, that’s fine; that’s prayer. But they say that when God talks to you, that’s schizophrenia. After a few minutes of scrubbing, I was able to push aside my emotions, and I spent the next forty minutes rationalizing as I cleaned.
---
My cell phone’s ringer went off. I swore, six hours of sleep felt shorter and shorter each night. I opened my eyes, or at least I thought I did. It was still dark. But then my eyes started to make out the lines of the orange street light shining through my blinds against the wall. I looked at the clock. It was only 4 AM.
My phone was still ringing. It wasn’t the alarm clock. It was a call.
I leapt out of my bed and grabbed the phone. This had to have been it; I took a deep breath as I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hi,” it was a girl’s voice. “Is this Brian?”
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“I think so!” I played along. “Does this have anything to do with an audition I had tonight?”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. Congratulations Brian, you got yourself an interview with us in two days, this Tuesday on October 12 at 7 PM!”
This was not a dream. This was not a dream. It was really happening, wasn’t it?
“You’ve made it past the first cut!” she went on. “Be proud of yourself. You did a really good job.”
All the dancing I had done this past week, all the effort—it was going to climax tonight. Time to kill it. The music started, and all the noise and cheers for me from the crowd faded away. Taking in a deep breath, I counted myself into the music. 5... 6... 7... 8...
(I'm on the very left in the front.)
As soon as the judges dismissed us from the floor, I marched through the crowd and immediately sought out Sang and Leland (my roommates). I saw some high-five hands reach out toward me and heard some congratulations, but I paid no attention because to me, all that mattered was the iPod camera that Leland held in his hand. I had asked him to record my audition, and from the video I’d be making my own judgments. I didn’t want to have to believe anyone else, having previously learned one of the most important life lessons in my last year and a half of dancing and twenty years of living: Cameras tell the truth; people don’t.
I fiddled with my iPod and squinted at the tiny screen. I could barely make myself out or distinguish any moves, and worse was that I noticed that I had pretty much no battery left. I knew I didn’t have enough for a possible callback round and then my group audition round. I panicked a little.
As I fiddled with my iPod, more and more people came up to me to pat me on the back and congratulate me. I didn’t really notice until I realized that some were dancers who were already on the team, and they said I did really good. And they held eye contact. Something I noticed in the past about half-assed fake congratulatory comments was that no one ever added an adverb, and no one ever locked eyes. Maybe I could start trusting the people here tonight for their opinions on my callback and group audition.
Or not.
---
“God Loves You”
Written June 4th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[Setting: 8:15 PM, at Pippin, the dining hall on campus that I used to work at.]
As I was scrubbing down my area, a random girl approached me and asked very hesitantly, “Are you...are you Brian? What time are you getting off work?”
I looked at her and tilted my head a bit. I had never met this girl before or even seen her around. She was cute though, probably even cuter than she normally would be because she just seemed so in awe of me.
“Yes, I am. I’m off in forty-five minutes.” I answered. “Do I know you?”
She said she didn’t, and we quickly established that we had never met each other and that we had no friends in common. But she had just heard of me earlier tonight. I asked how that was possible.
“God told me,” she answered.
I tilted my head again at her, skeptically this time. Not because she was cute.
“God told me,” she continued, “that your family needs to be healed.”
I was a little fascinated now, but still skeptical and barely able to refrain from uttering, What kind of fucking joke is this?
“I know this is really crazy,” she went on, “and I can’t believe I’m even acting on this. But does this make sense at all to you? Does your family need to be healed?”
I didn’t need to think about her question for more than a second to know that...it did. My family did need to be healed. How could she have known about this? My skepticism slowly subsided.
“This does make kinda sense to me, I guess.”
She beamed at me and clasped her hands together. “Can my friends and I pray for you and your family?!” She motioned back to her three friends who were watching from the back of the room.
Pray for me. I wanted to scoff and tell this girl and her friends off, but I couldn’t. This was really trippy; the timing of it was almost too crazy to just be coincidental. I brewed with curiosity, a kind that I tried to rationalize away yet a kind that continued to grow as my emotions started to take over. I had to find out if her offer of prayer was something that could really help me, and I also had to find out if this girl really did come to me through divine intervention, or rather, a more realistic series of coincidences. At this point though, I think the whole prayer offer was appealing to my emotional side more.
“Yes, thanks, please,” I said it like I meant it. Because I did.
“Alright, cool!” she exclaimed. “You get off at nine right? My friends and I will be chilling around outside. Find us when you’re done!”
I nodded and thanked her again, and I watched as she and her friends left.
This is weird, I thought to myself. I still could not believe that God talked to that girl. When you talk to God, that’s fine; that’s prayer. But they say that when God talks to you, that’s schizophrenia. After a few minutes of scrubbing, I was able to push aside my emotions, and I spent the next forty minutes rationalizing as I cleaned.
---
My cell phone’s ringer went off. I swore, six hours of sleep felt shorter and shorter each night. I opened my eyes, or at least I thought I did. It was still dark. But then my eyes started to make out the lines of the orange street light shining through my blinds against the wall. I looked at the clock. It was only 4 AM.
My phone was still ringing. It wasn’t the alarm clock. It was a call.
I leapt out of my bed and grabbed the phone. This had to have been it; I took a deep breath as I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hi,” it was a girl’s voice. “Is this Brian?”
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“I think so!” I played along. “Does this have anything to do with an audition I had tonight?”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. Congratulations Brian, you got yourself an interview with us in two days, this Tuesday on October 12 at 7 PM!”
This was not a dream. This was not a dream. It was really happening, wasn’t it?
“You’ve made it past the first cut!” she went on. “Be proud of yourself. You did a really good job.”
Promod
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
October 2nd, Saturday night. First day on the job at the ever so hip and preppy clothing retailer, Promod, and I was already thrust onto the busy sales floor with nothing more than a key to the fitting rooms and a flat transparent board to aid me in folding graphic t-shirts into a perfect square, as though a lifesaver were supposed to keep me safe in an ocean infested by sharks. Customers needed fitting rooms, customers needed different colors, customers needed larger sizes, customers needed to be greeted with the sales pitch of the day (“Welcome to Pro-Mawwd! Just to let you know, all of our jeans are twenty bucks or less today”—being the trendy retailer of a clothing store that I worked at, it was important to use “bucks” instead of “dollars” to convey our hipness).
In one of my very first lessons, I discovered that while it took me twenty minutes to recover an entire table of tackily branded t-shirts (“recover” is the retail term for refolding all the clothes), it only took one short minute for one single customer to transform the entire table into a morbid scene out of a nuclear holocaust.
Caught up with cleaning the messes left in the wake of the tornadoes that stormed through the store, I did not even sense the presence of my rather gay manager looming over my shoulder, who silently scrutinized every wrinkle I failed to straighten as I folded my shirts. I turned around and jumped in surprise, not expecting to come face to face with him. Sporting his blue patterned flannel and dark wash bootcut jeans, he greeted me with a smile so enthusiastic that each tooth glimmered under the light. He offered his hand for a handshake, and I reached to accept, glad that of all the sanity in this teen haven dystopia, this handshake was one thing that was the same, and it was one thing I was good at.
He retracted his hand. Swiftly and sharply before I could even close the gaps between my fingers, as though he thought he spotted an ebola-laced pin protruding from the palm of my hand.
“Your shoes are in violation of our dress code.”
I glanced down at my feet to be greeted by the site of my mid-top Nike SB Dunks, adorned by its maroon suede swoosh and its fat maroon laces.
“Here at Promod, we ask that our employees stick to the classics, such as Converse Chuck Taylors or Vans Slip-ons.”
At the very utterance of “Chuh—,” every hair on my body shot straight up as my face turned cold and pale and my heart sank into my stomach, where I could feel it streaming down every inch of my intestines as he went on to say “slip-ons.” Fuck, my Nikes were too cool for Pro-Mawwd.
“And just so you know, Brian, it’s pronounced ‘Pro-Mode’—the ‘o’ sounds are the same. It’s French. Now there’s a lesson on French pronunciation for you.”
---
“Yummy!”
Written May 18th, 2007 (Excerpted)
I’ve basically had this huge (sexual) fetish for Nike SB dunks or any other Nike shoes similar to those. Like, any average looking person looks plain and boring with their Vans Shit-Ons and Converse Fuck Taylors. But if they slip on Nike SB dunks for a day, they’re suddenly hot. One time, when I was browsing photos on downelink, I stumbled upon a picture of two guys making out with Nike basketball shoes on both of them. I was like, “Dayum look at that!” referring to the shoes, not the kiss. The shoes were hotter than their kiss.
One day I will own my very own pair of sexy Nike SB dunks, and until then, you will never see a pair of Vans Shit-ons or Converse Fuck Taylors clamped onto my feet.
---
Twenty bucks at a thrift store. I created a compromise, one in which I figured I could still buy a “classic” type of shoe without ever having to curse the delicate cells of my fingers with the abomination that is a pair of Chuck Taylors or slip-ons, but still, I would probably only wear this pair of non-self-sexually arousing shoes at Promod, for Promod, and no where else.
In one of my very first lessons, I discovered that while it took me twenty minutes to recover an entire table of tackily branded t-shirts (“recover” is the retail term for refolding all the clothes), it only took one short minute for one single customer to transform the entire table into a morbid scene out of a nuclear holocaust.
Caught up with cleaning the messes left in the wake of the tornadoes that stormed through the store, I did not even sense the presence of my rather gay manager looming over my shoulder, who silently scrutinized every wrinkle I failed to straighten as I folded my shirts. I turned around and jumped in surprise, not expecting to come face to face with him. Sporting his blue patterned flannel and dark wash bootcut jeans, he greeted me with a smile so enthusiastic that each tooth glimmered under the light. He offered his hand for a handshake, and I reached to accept, glad that of all the sanity in this teen haven dystopia, this handshake was one thing that was the same, and it was one thing I was good at.
He retracted his hand. Swiftly and sharply before I could even close the gaps between my fingers, as though he thought he spotted an ebola-laced pin protruding from the palm of my hand.
“Your shoes are in violation of our dress code.”
I glanced down at my feet to be greeted by the site of my mid-top Nike SB Dunks, adorned by its maroon suede swoosh and its fat maroon laces.
“Here at Promod, we ask that our employees stick to the classics, such as Converse Chuck Taylors or Vans Slip-ons.”
At the very utterance of “Chuh—,” every hair on my body shot straight up as my face turned cold and pale and my heart sank into my stomach, where I could feel it streaming down every inch of my intestines as he went on to say “slip-ons.” Fuck, my Nikes were too cool for Pro-Mawwd.
“And just so you know, Brian, it’s pronounced ‘Pro-Mode’—the ‘o’ sounds are the same. It’s French. Now there’s a lesson on French pronunciation for you.”
---
“Yummy!”
Written May 18th, 2007 (Excerpted)
I’ve basically had this huge (sexual) fetish for Nike SB dunks or any other Nike shoes similar to those. Like, any average looking person looks plain and boring with their Vans Shit-Ons and Converse Fuck Taylors. But if they slip on Nike SB dunks for a day, they’re suddenly hot. One time, when I was browsing photos on downelink, I stumbled upon a picture of two guys making out with Nike basketball shoes on both of them. I was like, “Dayum look at that!” referring to the shoes, not the kiss. The shoes were hotter than their kiss.
One day I will own my very own pair of sexy Nike SB dunks, and until then, you will never see a pair of Vans Shit-ons or Converse Fuck Taylors clamped onto my feet.
---
Twenty bucks at a thrift store. I created a compromise, one in which I figured I could still buy a “classic” type of shoe without ever having to curse the delicate cells of my fingers with the abomination that is a pair of Chuck Taylors or slip-ons, but still, I would probably only wear this pair of non-self-sexually arousing shoes at Promod, for Promod, and no where else.
What Matters
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
149 pounds.
I sighed and stepped off my scale. It was Friday of Week 10, and it looked like I wasn’t going to hit my goal of 160 pounds by the end of the quarter. In fact, what I worried about happened instead, that would I would drop under 150 again.
I sat on my apartment couch to figure out what I wanted to do on a Friday early evening before finals week. Working out struck me as the most obvious choice because I knew I wouldn’t have any time during finals week. I decided on it, but as I finished up some of my internet business, I came across a flyer for Kreative Movement Audition workshops. Kreative Movement is Kaba Modern’s junior dance team, so of course I was too old to audition, but the workshop was free. It was going to start in thirty minutes.
Free dance workshop or work out. This was a familiar decision I’ve made before.
---
“Id & Ego”
Written March 12th, 2007 (Excerpted)
I get this incredible urge to blast through my front door and sprint down the street while wearing as little clothing as possible (basketball shorts, tank, shoes). My skin, soaking up the blue evening hues and breathing in the gentle twilight aura. [[I tried a little too hard my junior year.]] What it would feel like to be so carefree again, like a child with no inhibitions.
But just bursting out of my house with hardly anything on me, that just sounds pretty absurd, y’know? If I go outside, I gotta at least have on my favorite pair of jeans and some kind of jacket, and I’d also feel too naked if I didn’t have any arm jewelry. And what if people think I’m weird? And honestly, there are so many other things I can do that are a lot more productive. I’ve got that calculus homework assignment to start on, or a room to clean, or clothes to stow. My parents would also think I’m out do deal drugs again if I left unexpected and quickly, and they’d be constantly calling me on my cell to see what I was up to. There’s just so much to do: Standing up from my chair, digging around my floor for some jeans, searching for socks, shoving my cell into my pocket, fixing up my hair; when I’m “blasting” through my front door, I’m really walking through it and to my dad’s car for a ride to school or Oakridge instead.
---
“Brian, I haven’t seen you in forever!”
“Yeah.”
Don ran up to me with opens arms for a hug. He was a Kreative Movement Dancer that I saw from time to time at dance workshops, back when I used to frequent them. I put my backpack down in the front, found a place among the dancers, and I looked around as I got on the floor to stretch. We were on the fifth floor of the Social Science Parking Structure, where the steps and voices of all the dancers echoed back and forth. I missed being here.
After stretching, the instructors introduced themselves and talked a little bit about the piece they were going to teach. I felt a little knot in my stomach, one that I always got at the beginning of every class. Feelings of, Shit I can’t do this. Shit I’m so rusty. Shit I’m going to die in the first eight-count. Shit I have finals.
All such feelings however were alleviated once I realized I was dancing to the big beat sounds of CALIFORNIA GUURLS WE’RE SO INCREDIBLE. DAAIISY DUKES BIKINI...
---
“A Dance in Berkeley”
Written March 18th, 2007 (Excerpted)
After the dance, I waved goodbye to all the ST kids as they got on the bus. It was a cool evening, so I didn’t bother to put back on my shirt yet. I chose to walk through the Berkeley campus as opposed to walking on the streets because I was afraid of getting mobbed by hobos, but then I realized that my choice was actually pretty stupid because the Berkeley campus was secluded from public eyes and very dimly lit. It was pretty eerie, and a little chilling. But still, I tried to enjoy the cool crisp air, and still dressed in only my wifebeater, shorts, and flip-flops, I let what little Asian body hair I have stand up. And then, I decided, why the hell not? I sprinted as fast as my flip-flops would let me across campus, feeling each thud in my heart as my feet fell on the ground. What it felt like to be so carefree again; it was the most liberated I’ve felt in a while. Once I finally reached the streets, I ceased to a walk, but I felt like I still could’ve run or kicked a hobo’s ass.
My mind was cleansed of the drama and pressure that have been looming on my heart since the beginning of last December, and for the first time since then, I felt like I was thinking clearly again.
---
149 pounds.
I haven’t stepped on a scale sense then. I either don’t care anymore or I’m too afraid to check how much more weight I might’ve lost. What matters though is I’m finally dancing again.
I sighed and stepped off my scale. It was Friday of Week 10, and it looked like I wasn’t going to hit my goal of 160 pounds by the end of the quarter. In fact, what I worried about happened instead, that would I would drop under 150 again.
I sat on my apartment couch to figure out what I wanted to do on a Friday early evening before finals week. Working out struck me as the most obvious choice because I knew I wouldn’t have any time during finals week. I decided on it, but as I finished up some of my internet business, I came across a flyer for Kreative Movement Audition workshops. Kreative Movement is Kaba Modern’s junior dance team, so of course I was too old to audition, but the workshop was free. It was going to start in thirty minutes.
Free dance workshop or work out. This was a familiar decision I’ve made before.
---
“Id & Ego”
Written March 12th, 2007 (Excerpted)
I get this incredible urge to blast through my front door and sprint down the street while wearing as little clothing as possible (basketball shorts, tank, shoes). My skin, soaking up the blue evening hues and breathing in the gentle twilight aura. [[I tried a little too hard my junior year.]] What it would feel like to be so carefree again, like a child with no inhibitions.
But just bursting out of my house with hardly anything on me, that just sounds pretty absurd, y’know? If I go outside, I gotta at least have on my favorite pair of jeans and some kind of jacket, and I’d also feel too naked if I didn’t have any arm jewelry. And what if people think I’m weird? And honestly, there are so many other things I can do that are a lot more productive. I’ve got that calculus homework assignment to start on, or a room to clean, or clothes to stow. My parents would also think I’m out do deal drugs again if I left unexpected and quickly, and they’d be constantly calling me on my cell to see what I was up to. There’s just so much to do: Standing up from my chair, digging around my floor for some jeans, searching for socks, shoving my cell into my pocket, fixing up my hair; when I’m “blasting” through my front door, I’m really walking through it and to my dad’s car for a ride to school or Oakridge instead.
---
“Brian, I haven’t seen you in forever!”
“Yeah.”
Don ran up to me with opens arms for a hug. He was a Kreative Movement Dancer that I saw from time to time at dance workshops, back when I used to frequent them. I put my backpack down in the front, found a place among the dancers, and I looked around as I got on the floor to stretch. We were on the fifth floor of the Social Science Parking Structure, where the steps and voices of all the dancers echoed back and forth. I missed being here.
After stretching, the instructors introduced themselves and talked a little bit about the piece they were going to teach. I felt a little knot in my stomach, one that I always got at the beginning of every class. Feelings of, Shit I can’t do this. Shit I’m so rusty. Shit I’m going to die in the first eight-count. Shit I have finals.
All such feelings however were alleviated once I realized I was dancing to the big beat sounds of CALIFORNIA GUURLS WE’RE SO INCREDIBLE. DAAIISY DUKES BIKINI...
---
“A Dance in Berkeley”
Written March 18th, 2007 (Excerpted)
After the dance, I waved goodbye to all the ST kids as they got on the bus. It was a cool evening, so I didn’t bother to put back on my shirt yet. I chose to walk through the Berkeley campus as opposed to walking on the streets because I was afraid of getting mobbed by hobos, but then I realized that my choice was actually pretty stupid because the Berkeley campus was secluded from public eyes and very dimly lit. It was pretty eerie, and a little chilling. But still, I tried to enjoy the cool crisp air, and still dressed in only my wifebeater, shorts, and flip-flops, I let what little Asian body hair I have stand up. And then, I decided, why the hell not? I sprinted as fast as my flip-flops would let me across campus, feeling each thud in my heart as my feet fell on the ground. What it felt like to be so carefree again; it was the most liberated I’ve felt in a while. Once I finally reached the streets, I ceased to a walk, but I felt like I still could’ve run or kicked a hobo’s ass.
My mind was cleansed of the drama and pressure that have been looming on my heart since the beginning of last December, and for the first time since then, I felt like I was thinking clearly again.
---
149 pounds.
I haven’t stepped on a scale sense then. I either don’t care anymore or I’m too afraid to check how much more weight I might’ve lost. What matters though is I’m finally dancing again.
XY Attraction
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
I stared. A built, athletic thirty-year-old in-shape man, one of experience, unloaded his baby batter all over a young straight twink’s begging wet lips. And then they made out. That was when Cameron’s instant message window appeared over their faces. He asked me what I was doing. Sunday night of Memorial Day Weekend—“Nothing,” I typed with one hand.
“Wanna come to my place? I’m having a small kickback.”
Obviously I had some better, more fun plans, but I agreed to come over anyway. I told him I’d leave in forty minutes.
---
“Funky Relationship”
Written April 22nd, 2004 (Excerpted)
Yesterday, I held hands with Emma. My friends kept on bothering me about holding hands, so I did it. But it’ll be the last time I’ll do it randomly. I’m waiting for the special moment to hold hands and even kiss. Why should I hold hands with her out of the blue? Or maybe I’m not good with girls, and I’m really supposed to always hold their hands for no good reason, no reason except that I’m the boyfriend and she’s my girlfriend. It didn’t feel right because it was not the “magical” moment, so I was constantly letting go and holding back on, remembering all the advice from all my friends. Emma says she doesn’t care about holding hands yet, but then others tell me that she is waiting for me to make the first move. However, since when did I let believe such crap? Hopefully never. …But what is the crap? Emma telling me she doesn’t really care, or that she wants me to make the first move?
---
Besides Cameron and me, there were only five other guys at his kickback. As expected, Cameron delved into a discussion of queer issues (“gay shit”) after a few shots, but unlike last time, I didn’t have any where to escape to unless I wanted to sit outside in the cold alone. The discussion involved him shoving his massive cock of queer logorrhea down everyone’s throats, and it ultimately came down to his one question: “If the person is attractive, good-looking, and has a great personality, why does it matter what’s in between their legs?” (Cameron being on the side of “IT DOESN’T MATTER AND IT SHOULDN’T TO EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD.”)
---
“Standing Somewhere Lost”
Written May 6th, 2004 (Excerpted)
Me and Emma have been kissing on the lips. Great. I’m not in a relationship I should be in; someone else should be in it. But my biggest problem is trying to tell her. I can’t stand to hurt the girl’s feelings, but by letting all this time pass by, I know I’m just making it worst. However, each time I’m ‘bout ready to break it out, we share a moment of glee. Damn it.
---
I sat in the corner as Trent and Cameron argued, trying to not pay attention when Ranier texted me. I was a little surprised. He and the rest of his teammates were back at the hotel in San Diego, and they were celebratin’ it up. It was a little too much for Ranier so he went outside to text me. I still felt bitter about the Sockhop ticket, but this was at least better than having to listen to Cameron. Funksters didn’t place, but they made good friends with the other teams from SoCal and had fun at the beaches down here. Overall a great experience, he said.
I started to think about what it would’ve been like if we were still together and I went to see Ranier at his competition, and the best I came up was that I wouldn’t be sitting here in the room with Cameron, who then suddenly directed his question to me: “Why does it matter what’s between their legs, huh Brian?!” Even though I was sitting on the other side of the room, I swear I could feel his spit splatter all over my face.
---
“As a Friend”
Written May 7th, 2004 (Excerpted)
Tomorrow I’m going to the mall to see a movie with my friend Vanessa and her friends for her birthday party. We were all planning to see Van Helsing, until Emma got invited. She wants to see Mean Girls. Emma is pretty stubborn, and she’s determined to go see that movie, despite all six other people, including me, are planning to see Van Helsing. Well, I hate when I get stuck with a decision like this. I’m her boyfriend, but I don’t wanna see Mean Girls. But I can’t stand thinking of her sitting alone in the dark movie theatre; then I think of her with tears slowly streaming down her face, all alone. So I think I’m going to watch it with her. It won’t be that bad. I’m easily absorbed into movies. Plus, Mean Girls won’t be a big waste of my life; it’s only an hour and a half. [[I would end up watching Van Helsing with my guy friends while Olivia watched Mean Girls with Vanessa. WIN.]]
---
I thought about Cameron’s question for thirty seconds. And that was when I realized that there was a difference between being gay and being queer. Being gay was, as I had always known it to be, nothing more than some social implications and history all based around a dictionary definition: “Being attracted to members of the same sex.” Sex, not gender. Same sex meant to me other people with the X and Y chromosome. On the other hand, the definition of being queer, as I understood it, meant absolute bullshit.
Peter, black John, Miranda, and I sat down at a lunch table to take a break from playing DDR and ITG. It was the middle of the summer before the start of my sophomore year in high school. We were at the Golf Land in Milpitas for their Thursday arcade special: unlimited free arcade game play all day for ten bucks. I dug out a bottle of Gatorade and a box of Ritz crackers from my backpack and devoured my crackers and drink.
“Hey Brian,” Peter said.
“Mhm?” My mouth was full.
“Miranda, John, and I have all been talking, and we agree that you’re gay.”
I looked up from my food. “What?”
“You’re gay, aren’t you?”
“What the hell? No I’m not!”
“Are you sure Brian?” Miranda asked. “We’re totally fine with it.”
“I’m not gay! I had a girlfriend in the eighth grade.”
“Yeah,” John said. “‘Had’—past tense. In the eighth grade.”
Peter held a stack of Ritz crackers to my face. “Does this turn you on?”
“Look,” I snapped, “I am not gay. I have never been gay. And I never will be gay. Got it?”
They all nodded, but they didn’t believe me, or at least Peter didn’t.
As much as this queer discussion with Cameron made me wanna cut my dick off, it benefited me. To stay sane, I had to reaffirm something about my identity that had been tearing away at my sanity for a while: I’m gay. I like men. With dicks. I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay. I was not Cameron, I assured myself. He was...something else. Not gay. Not bi. Probably one of those other letters in LGBTABCDEQQQ. A question that probably would require a little more thinking on my part probably would’ve been, “If the person has a dick, why does their personality/ looks/ other shit matter so much?” (The answer being I’m a proud shallow motherfucker.)
Thanks Cameron.
I shrugged off Cameron’s question, and Chris and I watched Are You Afraid of the Dark on Youtube with Cameron’s laptop as he and Trent continued to argue.
“Wanna come to my place? I’m having a small kickback.”
Obviously I had some better, more fun plans, but I agreed to come over anyway. I told him I’d leave in forty minutes.
---
“Funky Relationship”
Written April 22nd, 2004 (Excerpted)
Yesterday, I held hands with Emma. My friends kept on bothering me about holding hands, so I did it. But it’ll be the last time I’ll do it randomly. I’m waiting for the special moment to hold hands and even kiss. Why should I hold hands with her out of the blue? Or maybe I’m not good with girls, and I’m really supposed to always hold their hands for no good reason, no reason except that I’m the boyfriend and she’s my girlfriend. It didn’t feel right because it was not the “magical” moment, so I was constantly letting go and holding back on, remembering all the advice from all my friends. Emma says she doesn’t care about holding hands yet, but then others tell me that she is waiting for me to make the first move. However, since when did I let believe such crap? Hopefully never. …But what is the crap? Emma telling me she doesn’t really care, or that she wants me to make the first move?
---
Besides Cameron and me, there were only five other guys at his kickback. As expected, Cameron delved into a discussion of queer issues (“gay shit”) after a few shots, but unlike last time, I didn’t have any where to escape to unless I wanted to sit outside in the cold alone. The discussion involved him shoving his massive cock of queer logorrhea down everyone’s throats, and it ultimately came down to his one question: “If the person is attractive, good-looking, and has a great personality, why does it matter what’s in between their legs?” (Cameron being on the side of “IT DOESN’T MATTER AND IT SHOULDN’T TO EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD.”)
---
“Standing Somewhere Lost”
Written May 6th, 2004 (Excerpted)
Me and Emma have been kissing on the lips. Great. I’m not in a relationship I should be in; someone else should be in it. But my biggest problem is trying to tell her. I can’t stand to hurt the girl’s feelings, but by letting all this time pass by, I know I’m just making it worst. However, each time I’m ‘bout ready to break it out, we share a moment of glee. Damn it.
---
I sat in the corner as Trent and Cameron argued, trying to not pay attention when Ranier texted me. I was a little surprised. He and the rest of his teammates were back at the hotel in San Diego, and they were celebratin’ it up. It was a little too much for Ranier so he went outside to text me. I still felt bitter about the Sockhop ticket, but this was at least better than having to listen to Cameron. Funksters didn’t place, but they made good friends with the other teams from SoCal and had fun at the beaches down here. Overall a great experience, he said.
I started to think about what it would’ve been like if we were still together and I went to see Ranier at his competition, and the best I came up was that I wouldn’t be sitting here in the room with Cameron, who then suddenly directed his question to me: “Why does it matter what’s between their legs, huh Brian?!” Even though I was sitting on the other side of the room, I swear I could feel his spit splatter all over my face.
---
“As a Friend”
Written May 7th, 2004 (Excerpted)
Tomorrow I’m going to the mall to see a movie with my friend Vanessa and her friends for her birthday party. We were all planning to see Van Helsing, until Emma got invited. She wants to see Mean Girls. Emma is pretty stubborn, and she’s determined to go see that movie, despite all six other people, including me, are planning to see Van Helsing. Well, I hate when I get stuck with a decision like this. I’m her boyfriend, but I don’t wanna see Mean Girls. But I can’t stand thinking of her sitting alone in the dark movie theatre; then I think of her with tears slowly streaming down her face, all alone. So I think I’m going to watch it with her. It won’t be that bad. I’m easily absorbed into movies. Plus, Mean Girls won’t be a big waste of my life; it’s only an hour and a half. [[I would end up watching Van Helsing with my guy friends while Olivia watched Mean Girls with Vanessa. WIN.]]
---
I thought about Cameron’s question for thirty seconds. And that was when I realized that there was a difference between being gay and being queer. Being gay was, as I had always known it to be, nothing more than some social implications and history all based around a dictionary definition: “Being attracted to members of the same sex.” Sex, not gender. Same sex meant to me other people with the X and Y chromosome. On the other hand, the definition of being queer, as I understood it, meant absolute bullshit.
Peter, black John, Miranda, and I sat down at a lunch table to take a break from playing DDR and ITG. It was the middle of the summer before the start of my sophomore year in high school. We were at the Golf Land in Milpitas for their Thursday arcade special: unlimited free arcade game play all day for ten bucks. I dug out a bottle of Gatorade and a box of Ritz crackers from my backpack and devoured my crackers and drink.
“Hey Brian,” Peter said.
“Mhm?” My mouth was full.
“Miranda, John, and I have all been talking, and we agree that you’re gay.”
I looked up from my food. “What?”
“You’re gay, aren’t you?”
“What the hell? No I’m not!”
“Are you sure Brian?” Miranda asked. “We’re totally fine with it.”
“I’m not gay! I had a girlfriend in the eighth grade.”
“Yeah,” John said. “‘Had’—past tense. In the eighth grade.”
Peter held a stack of Ritz crackers to my face. “Does this turn you on?”
“Look,” I snapped, “I am not gay. I have never been gay. And I never will be gay. Got it?”
They all nodded, but they didn’t believe me, or at least Peter didn’t.
As much as this queer discussion with Cameron made me wanna cut my dick off, it benefited me. To stay sane, I had to reaffirm something about my identity that had been tearing away at my sanity for a while: I’m gay. I like men. With dicks. I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay. I was not Cameron, I assured myself. He was...something else. Not gay. Not bi. Probably one of those other letters in LGBTABCDEQQQ. A question that probably would require a little more thinking on my part probably would’ve been, “If the person has a dick, why does their personality/ looks/ other shit matter so much?” (The answer being I’m a proud shallow motherfucker.)
Thanks Cameron.
I shrugged off Cameron’s question, and Chris and I watched Are You Afraid of the Dark on Youtube with Cameron’s laptop as he and Trent continued to argue.
Tags:
black john,
cameron,
flashback,
gay,
miranda,
norcal,
oakridge,
peter,
ranier,
relationships,
repost,
socal,
winter spring 2010
Brian Goes to Korea
Sunday, June 6, 2010
“Teachers Facing Weakest Market in Years”
Written May 19th, 2010 by Winnie Hu, from the New York Times (Excerpted)
PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which once hired thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help-wanted signs.
In New York, where the Success Charter Network is hiring 135 teachers for its seven schools in Harlem and the Bronx, some of the 8,453 applicants have called the office three times a day to check on their status. Veteran teachers have also offered to work as assistant teachers.
“It’s heartbreaking — there’s much more desperation out there,” said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former councilwoman who is the network’s founder and chief executive.
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of the 90 aspiring teachers who graduated last weekend are jobless. Many had counted on offers from the Philadelphia public schools but had their interviews canceled this month after the district announced a hiring freeze.
“People will come in here begging for anything,” said Dennis R. Lauro Jr., the superintendent [of Pelham Union Free School District], who started closing his office door this year because out-of-work teachers would drop in unannounced to hand him résumés. “We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers before.”
Along with five other former teachers, Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall, after three years of looking for an elementary school job. She sent out hundreds of résumés, only to land one interview a year. She settled for working as a substitute teacher, earning $85 a day with no benefits.
“Spending $50,000 for an education you can’t use is really frustrating,” Ms. Stier said. “I definitely miss teaching, but I felt like I had no other choice.”
---
We had a guest speaker talk to us teachers during my first summer at Breakthrough Collaborative in 2008. She was some chick from the district office or from the government—I don’t remember—and she told us, “In light of the failing education market, the fact that you young students are still working toward your dreams of becoming teachers shows how you are all courageous.”
Now I just think we’re fucking stupid.
All I heard throughout Breakthrough was how, don’t worry, the market sucks now but in four years, all the oldies are going to retire and the market will open up again. I was able to convince myself of this, and what also helped was the fact that I tried to avoid looking too far into the future. I’ve always had the habit of sitting back and thinking, “Things will get better later, and I won’t have to do anything.”
Now I feel like this whole idea of old teachers retiring all at once and the market blossoming like vagina lips was some false encouragement trying to keep us aspiring teachers from losing hope. I don’t see the market opening up any time soon. I got two more years in college, and I’ll probably do a one-year credentialing program of some sort. Teaching jobs opening up by Fall 2013? I don’t think so. Not like this.
The biggest question facing me is, what the fuck am I going to do? I’m still going to pursue teaching, but I now need a backup plan, which will probably be more like the only plan.
My education professor, a young guy in his late twenties, told us about what he did after he graduated from college. While his friends tried to stay around their hometown to find teaching jobs, he went out to teach in England and Asia, and years later, once he came back to America to find a more stable teaching job, teachers hired him because he had built up a very solid resumé.
I think that’s going to be my plan: grab at any kind of teaching job, no matter where it is. There are always ads in the school newspaper to Teach English in Korea for a year and earn like $1500 a month (plus living expenses, too). Bitch pay, but it’d look good on my resumé. Hopefully this offer will still be around when I graduate. I don’t think I’ll hesitate to take it.
Plus, hot Koreanzz oh NOM NOM NOM.
Written May 19th, 2010 by Winnie Hu, from the New York Times (Excerpted)
PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof. Superintendents, education professors and people seeking work say teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which once hired thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help-wanted signs.
In New York, where the Success Charter Network is hiring 135 teachers for its seven schools in Harlem and the Bronx, some of the 8,453 applicants have called the office three times a day to check on their status. Veteran teachers have also offered to work as assistant teachers.
“It’s heartbreaking — there’s much more desperation out there,” said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former councilwoman who is the network’s founder and chief executive.
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of the 90 aspiring teachers who graduated last weekend are jobless. Many had counted on offers from the Philadelphia public schools but had their interviews canceled this month after the district announced a hiring freeze.
“People will come in here begging for anything,” said Dennis R. Lauro Jr., the superintendent [of Pelham Union Free School District], who started closing his office door this year because out-of-work teachers would drop in unannounced to hand him résumés. “We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers before.”
Along with five other former teachers, Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall, after three years of looking for an elementary school job. She sent out hundreds of résumés, only to land one interview a year. She settled for working as a substitute teacher, earning $85 a day with no benefits.
“Spending $50,000 for an education you can’t use is really frustrating,” Ms. Stier said. “I definitely miss teaching, but I felt like I had no other choice.”
---
We had a guest speaker talk to us teachers during my first summer at Breakthrough Collaborative in 2008. She was some chick from the district office or from the government—I don’t remember—and she told us, “In light of the failing education market, the fact that you young students are still working toward your dreams of becoming teachers shows how you are all courageous.”
Now I just think we’re fucking stupid.
All I heard throughout Breakthrough was how, don’t worry, the market sucks now but in four years, all the oldies are going to retire and the market will open up again. I was able to convince myself of this, and what also helped was the fact that I tried to avoid looking too far into the future. I’ve always had the habit of sitting back and thinking, “Things will get better later, and I won’t have to do anything.”
Now I feel like this whole idea of old teachers retiring all at once and the market blossoming like vagina lips was some false encouragement trying to keep us aspiring teachers from losing hope. I don’t see the market opening up any time soon. I got two more years in college, and I’ll probably do a one-year credentialing program of some sort. Teaching jobs opening up by Fall 2013? I don’t think so. Not like this.
The biggest question facing me is, what the fuck am I going to do? I’m still going to pursue teaching, but I now need a backup plan, which will probably be more like the only plan.
My education professor, a young guy in his late twenties, told us about what he did after he graduated from college. While his friends tried to stay around their hometown to find teaching jobs, he went out to teach in England and Asia, and years later, once he came back to America to find a more stable teaching job, teachers hired him because he had built up a very solid resumé.
I think that’s going to be my plan: grab at any kind of teaching job, no matter where it is. There are always ads in the school newspaper to Teach English in Korea for a year and earn like $1500 a month (plus living expenses, too). Bitch pay, but it’d look good on my resumé. Hopefully this offer will still be around when I graduate. I don’t think I’ll hesitate to take it.
Plus, hot Koreanzz oh NOM NOM NOM.
Tags:
breakthrough,
future,
guestwriter,
repost,
socal,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
20
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
This is a two week late entry about my birthday. I turned 20 on May 12th, but nothing too special happened that day since it fell on an otherwise normal Wednesday in the middle of the week.
In the afternoon, Sang, Lawrence, and I got some sushi at Sushilicious. I didn’t even like sushi that much, but this place had a special for birthdays, a free $20 gift card for the birthday diner. Twenty bucks is a fucking lot.
At lunch, we discovered that I had no manners, but else was new?
We discussed our housing situation for next year, but we reached the same conclusion that we had reached many times before: “Let’s figure it out later.” It was going to be the three of us, plus Leland (who I auditioned with for MCIA auditions) living in the same place. I was pretty damn excited. I’d be doubling up with Sang, and Lawrence with Leland—Vietnamese vs. Filipinos! I thought wouldn’t it be awesome if each of us represented a different team? Sang would have CADC, Leland would have BBoys Anonymous (or possibly MCIA?), and Lawrence and I would have something else. Rivalries? Freestyle sessions in the living room Monday nights? We weren’t going to need furniture; that’d only take up space.
After getting sushi, Lawrence, Sang, and I drove down to Tapioca Express to get some Boba Tea, something that I only recently started to enjoy. I tried ordering a grass jelly milk tea with boba, and to my surprise, the drink had actual chunks of grass jelly in addition to the Boba.
“I thought it would be flavored by some grass jelly extract or whatever. I didn’t think there’d be actual chunks of grass jelly in the drink.”
Sang sighed. “HAHA, you’re a dumbass.”
Later in the evening, I drove up to UCLA to do homework with Trung. I had a really huge paper due the next day that I was no where close to finishing, and I knew that if I tried to work on it at UCI, I would’ve been too distracted because I had wireless Internet at UCI. So the most logical option was to drive 50 miles up north to escape the reach of UCI’s wifi. But I guess you could say I mainly went up so I could get some free food off of Trung and annoy him all night long.
I got there around 8, Trung and I had dinner and some ice cream, and I started my paper at 11. I wouldn’t get back to Irvine until 6 AM, where I would continue finishing up my paper until it was time to go to the class that it was due in. The hard work paid off though, because I got a B+, which was my goal. What sucked though was that I had to spend my birthday working on this paper, and the all nighter made a cold I had even worse.
My persistent cold didn’t stop me from going back up to Norcal on the 20th though! On the following Friday night, Trung and I went clubbing at Fuz. It was established (again) that I could not club (freak) dance (or in general). This one gay guy thought my dancing so “SO ADORABLE!!!” Adorable, not sexy. Ugh.
On Saturday, I went out to a family dinner, and then we had some cake afterwards. No relatives this time because they were “busy,” as in they were too cheap (or poor) to feed my greedy ass their money this year, and probably for the rest of my life. Oh well.
Ok, that’s my overview of all the things I did for my birthday. Time for some reflection! Cue the swoosh sound from Lost! SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
---
“A Dramatic Post about Turning 16”
Written May 23rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I started this LiveJournal when I was 13, and back then, when I was 13, I was straight... Well, mostly, but besides that, I looked at life rather simply because to me, life just seemed like keeping up my A’s in junior high. On the side of school, I had DDR, which I played all day every day at home and then went out to the arcade once a month to tone up my DDR skills. All that mattered to me was that AA, and I remained shy and aloof to the other DDR players. And getting with girls (or getting into a relationship) was one of the things that I least thought about, and I was that kind of guy (weirdass) that was like, “Virgin until marriage!” The future seemed simple, probably because it was the future that my parents had planned for me: Go to a University of California, get a good job, raise a family, and live happily ever after.
Now here I am, three years later, at age 16... School is still important to me, but now I have started to juggle other things in my life that have become as equally as important in my life, such as dealing with my parents, dealing with boys, dealing with friends, and dealing with living a life that is fulfilling enough. (Though I guess some would say that I tend to drop the balls when I “juggle.”)
And now, with DDR/ITG, the only thing that is stopping me from quitting is the awesome community. It sounds pretty pathetic, but I’ve changed and have become more sociable and friendly because of a four-paneled stomping video game. Making out with another ITG player in front of a bunch of other ITG players at a busy arcade also says a lot about how I’m not as shy as I was three years ago.
And yeah, all that crap about staying a virgin until marriage...? I’ve slept with a guy on a first “date.” I’m still a virgin now, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be by the time I’m age 17. Don’t get the wrong impression though, because I’m not trying to lose it as quickly as possible, unlike a lot of people who seem to be in a hurry to mindlessly lose their virginities, probably influenced by brainwashing media and movies like “Friends” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (but I loved watching both of these). I’m saving it for someone “special,” even if that means I die a virgin, but with the way that I tend to rush into things so quickly, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost my virginity by the time I turn 17. I’d hate to regret losing it.
And gah, the future. It’s still all the same stuff that my parents have hoped for from me, but while they make everything seem easy, I’m realizing, “Wow, this shit is hard.” Because, well, getting into a UC? That means keeping up good grades at school; fuck, that’s hard. Getting a good job? That means spending more of my life at school to get a better education, learning to do taxes, spending endless days going through newspaper ads, going through job interviews... fuck, that’s all hard. And god, raising a family? That means finding a lover (preferably), going through adoption agencies, waiting, dealing with bitchy bigots, and actually raising the kids right so that they grow up to be happy; that’s all very hard and will even be heart-wrecking at times. And living happily ever after? Well, I have the basic outline of my future planned out, but now that I’m older and I actually have my own desires, I’m going to need to fit a lot more stuff into my life to live happily ever.
But now I’m just playing with the boundaries of age limits again and concerning with myself with things too far off in the future. This is one the reasons why I still have to remind myself, “I’m 16.”
I’m 16, bitches.
This Wednesday, my Dad’s finally going to let me get behind the wheel and drive around the block, and all this week, I’m anxiously waiting by my phone for American Eagle Outfitters to contact me to set up a date for a job interview.
---
Get into a UC? Check.
Get a job? Check. (Not at American Eagle, thank god.)
Lose virginity? Check.
To someone special? Blank.
Only having sex with someone special? Blank.
Fulfilling life? Blank.
In the afternoon, Sang, Lawrence, and I got some sushi at Sushilicious. I didn’t even like sushi that much, but this place had a special for birthdays, a free $20 gift card for the birthday diner. Twenty bucks is a fucking lot.
At lunch, we discovered that I had no manners, but else was new?
We discussed our housing situation for next year, but we reached the same conclusion that we had reached many times before: “Let’s figure it out later.” It was going to be the three of us, plus Leland (who I auditioned with for MCIA auditions) living in the same place. I was pretty damn excited. I’d be doubling up with Sang, and Lawrence with Leland—Vietnamese vs. Filipinos! I thought wouldn’t it be awesome if each of us represented a different team? Sang would have CADC, Leland would have BBoys Anonymous (or possibly MCIA?), and Lawrence and I would have something else. Rivalries? Freestyle sessions in the living room Monday nights? We weren’t going to need furniture; that’d only take up space.
After getting sushi, Lawrence, Sang, and I drove down to Tapioca Express to get some Boba Tea, something that I only recently started to enjoy. I tried ordering a grass jelly milk tea with boba, and to my surprise, the drink had actual chunks of grass jelly in addition to the Boba.
“I thought it would be flavored by some grass jelly extract or whatever. I didn’t think there’d be actual chunks of grass jelly in the drink.”
Sang sighed. “HAHA, you’re a dumbass.”
Later in the evening, I drove up to UCLA to do homework with Trung. I had a really huge paper due the next day that I was no where close to finishing, and I knew that if I tried to work on it at UCI, I would’ve been too distracted because I had wireless Internet at UCI. So the most logical option was to drive 50 miles up north to escape the reach of UCI’s wifi. But I guess you could say I mainly went up so I could get some free food off of Trung and annoy him all night long.
I got there around 8, Trung and I had dinner and some ice cream, and I started my paper at 11. I wouldn’t get back to Irvine until 6 AM, where I would continue finishing up my paper until it was time to go to the class that it was due in. The hard work paid off though, because I got a B+, which was my goal. What sucked though was that I had to spend my birthday working on this paper, and the all nighter made a cold I had even worse.
My persistent cold didn’t stop me from going back up to Norcal on the 20th though! On the following Friday night, Trung and I went clubbing at Fuz. It was established (again) that I could not club (freak) dance (or in general). This one gay guy thought my dancing so “SO ADORABLE!!!” Adorable, not sexy. Ugh.
On Saturday, I went out to a family dinner, and then we had some cake afterwards. No relatives this time because they were “busy,” as in they were too cheap (or poor) to feed my greedy ass their money this year, and probably for the rest of my life. Oh well.
Ok, that’s my overview of all the things I did for my birthday. Time for some reflection! Cue the swoosh sound from Lost! SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
---
“A Dramatic Post about Turning 16”
Written May 23rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I started this LiveJournal when I was 13, and back then, when I was 13, I was straight... Well, mostly, but besides that, I looked at life rather simply because to me, life just seemed like keeping up my A’s in junior high. On the side of school, I had DDR, which I played all day every day at home and then went out to the arcade once a month to tone up my DDR skills. All that mattered to me was that AA, and I remained shy and aloof to the other DDR players. And getting with girls (or getting into a relationship) was one of the things that I least thought about, and I was that kind of guy (weirdass) that was like, “Virgin until marriage!” The future seemed simple, probably because it was the future that my parents had planned for me: Go to a University of California, get a good job, raise a family, and live happily ever after.
Now here I am, three years later, at age 16... School is still important to me, but now I have started to juggle other things in my life that have become as equally as important in my life, such as dealing with my parents, dealing with boys, dealing with friends, and dealing with living a life that is fulfilling enough. (Though I guess some would say that I tend to drop the balls when I “juggle.”)
And now, with DDR/ITG, the only thing that is stopping me from quitting is the awesome community. It sounds pretty pathetic, but I’ve changed and have become more sociable and friendly because of a four-paneled stomping video game. Making out with another ITG player in front of a bunch of other ITG players at a busy arcade also says a lot about how I’m not as shy as I was three years ago.
And yeah, all that crap about staying a virgin until marriage...? I’ve slept with a guy on a first “date.” I’m still a virgin now, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be by the time I’m age 17. Don’t get the wrong impression though, because I’m not trying to lose it as quickly as possible, unlike a lot of people who seem to be in a hurry to mindlessly lose their virginities, probably influenced by brainwashing media and movies like “Friends” or “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (but I loved watching both of these). I’m saving it for someone “special,” even if that means I die a virgin, but with the way that I tend to rush into things so quickly, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost my virginity by the time I turn 17. I’d hate to regret losing it.
And gah, the future. It’s still all the same stuff that my parents have hoped for from me, but while they make everything seem easy, I’m realizing, “Wow, this shit is hard.” Because, well, getting into a UC? That means keeping up good grades at school; fuck, that’s hard. Getting a good job? That means spending more of my life at school to get a better education, learning to do taxes, spending endless days going through newspaper ads, going through job interviews... fuck, that’s all hard. And god, raising a family? That means finding a lover (preferably), going through adoption agencies, waiting, dealing with bitchy bigots, and actually raising the kids right so that they grow up to be happy; that’s all very hard and will even be heart-wrecking at times. And living happily ever after? Well, I have the basic outline of my future planned out, but now that I’m older and I actually have my own desires, I’m going to need to fit a lot more stuff into my life to live happily ever.
But now I’m just playing with the boundaries of age limits again and concerning with myself with things too far off in the future. This is one the reasons why I still have to remind myself, “I’m 16.”
I’m 16, bitches.
This Wednesday, my Dad’s finally going to let me get behind the wheel and drive around the block, and all this week, I’m anxiously waiting by my phone for American Eagle Outfitters to contact me to set up a date for a job interview.
---
Get into a UC? Check.
Get a job? Check. (Not at American Eagle, thank god.)
Lose virginity? Check.
To someone special? Blank.
Only having sex with someone special? Blank.
Fulfilling life? Blank.
Tags:
family,
flashback,
future,
gay,
norcal,
oakridge,
relationships,
repost,
sang,
schoolwork,
socal,
trung,
ucla,
winter spring 2010,
work
Just Smile and Nod
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
I sat up straight in my seat while twiddling my thumbs in my lap, and I glanced around the bagel café as I waited for the manager to finish jotting down notes. She was a nice, middle-aged white lady; perhaps a little too nice, because this interview was going too well. So far, I only had to answer, “What were your duties at Pippin,” and “What are your hobbies?”
“Can you tell me about a time that you really impressed a customer?” she asked next.
“Sure,” I said. “One time while working at Pippin, I was cleaning tables, there was this one mom with her five year old son, because, sometimes, parents just like to bring their kids to the school’s dining cafeteria. Anyway, I overheard her struggling with her math homework, and her mom didn’t know what to do. So, while still cleaning the table, I offered the child tips that helped her understand and get to the solution. The mom was very happy.”
“Wow, that’s very impressive!”
I smiled and nodded.
“Now, as you might’ve noticed, our bagel café’s hours run from 5 A.M. in the morning until 4 P.M. Do you think you can perform at your best when you’re coming in at 4 A.M. to open up the store?”
“Yeah, of course! Back in high school, I was on the swim team all four years, and we had practices every day in the cold winter at 5 A.M. And every now and then, I still wake up really early to go swimming once my school gym opens. I’m really used to sleeping early and waking up early.”
“Wow, high school swim team—very impressive!”
I smiled and nodded.
“Alright, well, your hair is combed, and you look clean and neat. I think we can schedule you for an eight-hour training shift some time this week.”
Seventy-two dollars. New shoes. Fuck yes.
“I need to go check up on something in the back, so I’m going to have my assistant come out here to finish up your interview, ok?”
I smiled and nodded.
The manager got up and headed back into the kitchen, and after a minute, out came this gruff looking Mexican (non-racist) guy. He sat down in front of me.
“You Brian? I’m Ray.” He flipped through the manager’s notes for a few seconds, and then he asked me, “So what motivated you to apply for our bagel café?”
Shit, I thought I was done with this interview? Why is he asking me new questions? “Well, I really like working with food service,” I answered.
“So why not McDonald’s or Burger King?”
“Because...I like working with healthy and fresh food.”
“So why not the Cornerstore Bakery on the other side of the plaza?”
My scalp started to itch a little. “Because...The hours of your store fit into my schedule really well.”
“The Cornerstore Bakery opens around the same time and closes later than our store. I’m sure you could’ve gotten the same hours over there, plus more.”
“Well, I just really like bagels.”
“So you’re trying to get a job here for the free bagels?”
My scalp was really itchy now. “I just...will be a great asset to your team here. I believe my qualities...” I started to trail off, “...are really valuable, and uh, strong work ethic, and integral—integrity, charisma...”
I smiled and nodded. I WOKE UP AT 3 AM EVERY DAY DURING HIGH SCHOOL FOR SWIM PRACTICE, I wanted to tell him, but I was probably too far downhill by now.
---
“WAKE UP!”
Written March 2nd, 2006
So it took me five hours of sleep total within the last two days and over ten consecutive D's and F's on my history tests to finally realize that I've been at academic nadir for the last two months.
Something I used to do is sleeping early at night and waking up early to do homework. That worked all of first semester—I went to bed by ten and was up at five finishing my homework that I was too lazy to do the night before. But something just went wrong the second semester. I would plan to go to sleep by ten but end up in bed some time after midnight, and the next morning, when my cell phone would wake me up at 4:30, I would decide to add just another half hour. When it rang again at 5, I figured it wouldn't be too bad if I just added another half hour. And then 15 minutes. And then another 15 minutes. Ten minutes. Five minutes. Aw damn it, gotta shower, eat, pack my stuff and go off to school.
I don't get homework done anymore. The last chapter we did in math, I did not turn in six of the assignments; I had planned on waking up at four the day they were all due, and well, the whole process I described above happened. When I don't get my history and chemistry homework done, I go to my brother's old sophomore year folder and dig out the necessary assignments from there. I haven't even read the last fucking ten chapters in History, which pretty much explains all my low scores.
And my sleeping habits. K, I lied about getting a total of five hours of sleep within the last two days. Change that to seven hours, because I know I've slept for entire classes during the last two days.
As much I would love staying in San Jose and going to Oakridge every other day after I graduate high school, I still want to get into a UC. I need to totally revamp my habits and get the fuck back on track before I kill my grades and before my mom kills me.
---
I’ve never been in such better health than I was these past two years in college because of all the sleep I got. (Yes, for lazy humanities majors with barely any classes, college equals more sleep than high school.) I was sick all the time in high school, but this past winter quarter, I went the entire quarter without getting sick (well, the eight weeks of diarrhea probably made up for not getting sick, but that’s for another flashback).
I still haven’t gotten a call back from the bagel store, but after much consideration, I realized that even if I was offered the job, I wouldn’t take it. There’d be no way that I could handle the hours. If I got this job, I’d probably end up living my high school days again, and I’d probably die. Ok, that concludes my defense mechanism.
I really would’ve liked a new pair of shoes. Damn it.
“Can you tell me about a time that you really impressed a customer?” she asked next.
“Sure,” I said. “One time while working at Pippin, I was cleaning tables, there was this one mom with her five year old son, because, sometimes, parents just like to bring their kids to the school’s dining cafeteria. Anyway, I overheard her struggling with her math homework, and her mom didn’t know what to do. So, while still cleaning the table, I offered the child tips that helped her understand and get to the solution. The mom was very happy.”
“Wow, that’s very impressive!”
I smiled and nodded.
“Now, as you might’ve noticed, our bagel café’s hours run from 5 A.M. in the morning until 4 P.M. Do you think you can perform at your best when you’re coming in at 4 A.M. to open up the store?”
“Yeah, of course! Back in high school, I was on the swim team all four years, and we had practices every day in the cold winter at 5 A.M. And every now and then, I still wake up really early to go swimming once my school gym opens. I’m really used to sleeping early and waking up early.”
“Wow, high school swim team—very impressive!”
I smiled and nodded.
“Alright, well, your hair is combed, and you look clean and neat. I think we can schedule you for an eight-hour training shift some time this week.”
Seventy-two dollars. New shoes. Fuck yes.
“I need to go check up on something in the back, so I’m going to have my assistant come out here to finish up your interview, ok?”
I smiled and nodded.
The manager got up and headed back into the kitchen, and after a minute, out came this gruff looking Mexican (non-racist) guy. He sat down in front of me.
“You Brian? I’m Ray.” He flipped through the manager’s notes for a few seconds, and then he asked me, “So what motivated you to apply for our bagel café?”
Shit, I thought I was done with this interview? Why is he asking me new questions? “Well, I really like working with food service,” I answered.
“So why not McDonald’s or Burger King?”
“Because...I like working with healthy and fresh food.”
“So why not the Cornerstore Bakery on the other side of the plaza?”
My scalp started to itch a little. “Because...The hours of your store fit into my schedule really well.”
“The Cornerstore Bakery opens around the same time and closes later than our store. I’m sure you could’ve gotten the same hours over there, plus more.”
“Well, I just really like bagels.”
“So you’re trying to get a job here for the free bagels?”
My scalp was really itchy now. “I just...will be a great asset to your team here. I believe my qualities...” I started to trail off, “...are really valuable, and uh, strong work ethic, and integral—integrity, charisma...”
I smiled and nodded. I WOKE UP AT 3 AM EVERY DAY DURING HIGH SCHOOL FOR SWIM PRACTICE, I wanted to tell him, but I was probably too far downhill by now.
---
“WAKE UP!”
Written March 2nd, 2006
So it took me five hours of sleep total within the last two days and over ten consecutive D's and F's on my history tests to finally realize that I've been at academic nadir for the last two months.
Something I used to do is sleeping early at night and waking up early to do homework. That worked all of first semester—I went to bed by ten and was up at five finishing my homework that I was too lazy to do the night before. But something just went wrong the second semester. I would plan to go to sleep by ten but end up in bed some time after midnight, and the next morning, when my cell phone would wake me up at 4:30, I would decide to add just another half hour. When it rang again at 5, I figured it wouldn't be too bad if I just added another half hour. And then 15 minutes. And then another 15 minutes. Ten minutes. Five minutes. Aw damn it, gotta shower, eat, pack my stuff and go off to school.
I don't get homework done anymore. The last chapter we did in math, I did not turn in six of the assignments; I had planned on waking up at four the day they were all due, and well, the whole process I described above happened. When I don't get my history and chemistry homework done, I go to my brother's old sophomore year folder and dig out the necessary assignments from there. I haven't even read the last fucking ten chapters in History, which pretty much explains all my low scores.
And my sleeping habits. K, I lied about getting a total of five hours of sleep within the last two days. Change that to seven hours, because I know I've slept for entire classes during the last two days.
As much I would love staying in San Jose and going to Oakridge every other day after I graduate high school, I still want to get into a UC. I need to totally revamp my habits and get the fuck back on track before I kill my grades and before my mom kills me.
---
I’ve never been in such better health than I was these past two years in college because of all the sleep I got. (Yes, for lazy humanities majors with barely any classes, college equals more sleep than high school.) I was sick all the time in high school, but this past winter quarter, I went the entire quarter without getting sick (well, the eight weeks of diarrhea probably made up for not getting sick, but that’s for another flashback).
I still haven’t gotten a call back from the bagel store, but after much consideration, I realized that even if I was offered the job, I wouldn’t take it. There’d be no way that I could handle the hours. If I got this job, I’d probably end up living my high school days again, and I’d probably die. Ok, that concludes my defense mechanism.
I really would’ve liked a new pair of shoes. Damn it.
Tags:
flashback,
norcal,
repost,
schoolwork,
socal,
winter spring 2010,
work
Sunshine Days
Saturday, May 8, 2010
“Dude, that waiter’s hella cute.”
Sang and Lawrence looked over their shoulders and saw a bunch of waiters, but they knew my type of guy and easily locked in on the waiter I was talking about. Toned arms, worked out but not too muscular, medium-tall height, had a full but short and modest fohawk, Korean. Well, pretty much all the workers were Korean, because Sang, Lawrence, and I were eating at Mr. Lee’s Korean Barbeque House (last Thursday in April). But this Korean guy was exceptionally good looking.
Sang scoffed. “You would, Brian.” Sang glanced back at him. “He’s coming this way. Why don’t you ask him for his number? Here, I’ll do it for yo—”
“NO!”
The cute waiter walked past our table, and our heads slowly followed him until he disappeared into the back. Just then, I realized something about the way I was eating my Korean barbeque.
“Am I supposed to use utensils?”
Holding onto their chopsticks, Sang and Lawrence nodded. This was the fourth time I had been here, and all times, I had been wrapping the beef in the three-inch-by-three-inch pieces of rice paper and popping them into my mouth like mini tacos.
“Shit, what if the waiter thinks I’m hella unattractive because I eat with my hands?” I started using chopsticks. I ended up dropping a piece of beef in my cup of water, and when I tried to pick up my mini rice-paper wrapped beef taco with chopsticks, the whole thing fell apart.
“Brian, you’re really sad,” Sang said. “The waiter’s not gonna care that you’re eating with your hands. Just ask him for his number!”
“No!” I suddenly realized that this was like high school again, back in my old days when I was super gay x10 and my gruh-friends and I would go boy hunting, and everyone would encourage me to simply go up to a random guy and ask him for his number. Of course, I would always come up with a convoluted plan instead, and of course, the plan would always fail or make me look stupid. Although being straightforward didn’t always make me look good either.
---
“Key Club Crap”
Written April 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
[T]he first hour of the dance [semi-formal Key Club ball] was a little bit dull. I was bummed due to guy problems, and Peter and [his girlfriend at the time] were dancing with each other, so I had no one else to talk to. [After some encouragement from Peter,] I tried mingling and talking to other guys, but somehow that just didn't work out...
Me: "Hey."
Random Cute Asian Guy: "Hey."
Me: "ARE YOU GAY?"
Random Cute Asian Guy: "What the fuck?"
Peter: "Brian, you're a dumbass."
---
“I have a plan.”
“This should be good,” Sang said.
The cute waiter stopped at our table and asked if we needed anything. I jumped in at the opportunity, and, trying to combine flirty with sexy, I asked, “Yeah, um, uh, could I get a, uh, a new, y’know”—stuttering, I held up my cup of water to him for him to peer inside—“There’s meat in my water.”
“Oh yeah sure,” and he rushed away.
I put my cup down.
Sang shook his head.
---
“Confessions of One Sad and Pathetic Stalker”
Written June 3rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
Today was the last school day for the seniors. (All other classes get out [next] Thursday.) That meant I had only one more day left to have any kind of contact with Hot Emo Kid in anyway.
Basically, Hot Emo Kid, just like his name, is a really hot emo kid [[actually, his style was hardly emo; I was just really bad at labels in high school]]. He's Filipino, his skin is very nice and dark, he BREAKDANCES, and he's straight...I hardly ever called him by his real name; he was simply just Hot Emo Kid to me.
I remember this once incident back in March when Hot Emo Kid might’ve realized that I was stalking him. Me and my friend Trang were following him rather closely from behind, and then he stopped, turned around and looked towards our direction. Not knowing what to do at all, I freaked out, shoved Trang off the sidewalk, turned around quickly, and stood there “casually.” I did not do this while he was turning around; I did this as soon as he was looking right in our direction. I don’t think what I did there made me invisible at all. And Trang wasn’t too happy that I pushed her either.
So anyways, back to the final day of school for the seniors. Kathleen gave me a crazy idea: Take a picture with Hot Emo Kid. I was so upset that he was leaving and that I never got a chance to say anything to him except, “Here’s your book,” so I figured I might as well just try something now since it was possible that I would never see him that often again. The plan was that I would just go up to him and tell him that I had admired his style for a while and that I would just like to take a picture with him before he went off to college. But as the moment approached closer and closer, that idea just started saying, “Hi, I’m your stalker and now I want a picture of you.”
When we—me, Kathleen, Maggie, Thuy, Loppy, Le...it’s like I had an audience… Anyway, when we walked in, Hot Emo Kid and his other senior friends were in there partying it up or whatever. We didn’t know what to do, so we got Amanda [a mutual friend] to help us. And I owe Amanda like hella sex [[she probably wouldn’t want it]] for what she did.
She went over to him and whispered some stuff to him, and before I knew it, the both of us were smiling for a camera (btw, thanks for letting me borrow your camera, Sean). I was actually able to contain my giddiness to look half-decent too. Take a look (on the left).
So after the photo was taken, I don’t really remember what happened because everything happened in a flash. I like, got up quickly, grabbed the camera, and got the fuck out of there. I yelled back over my shoulder, “And you’re hot!” to Hot Emo Kid and was out the door. My heart must’ve been oozing out of my anus. So me and my friends celebrated, and for the rest of the day, I felt like I was in a dreamworld living a fantasy. And all I did was take a picture with him.
Me and Maggie later asked Amanda about what she whispered to Hot Emo Kid earlier, but she only told us, “Oh, he said he already knew.” I was going crazy because that was so vague; what did he already know? That I hella thought he was hot? That I stalked him a lot? That I hella had a superficial crush on him?
---
After finishing Korean BBQ, Sang went off to CADC practice and Lawrence and I went to the ARC. In on of the dance rooms, he taught me a Korean Boy Band piece he learned when he took class at the Team Millenia Dance Studio earlier in the week. The song was Love Like Oxygen, by SHINee. I never felt like such a gay Korean pop star fanboy until now.
Afterwards, I went back home to my apartment, and out of whim, I decided to look up Hot Emo Kid—Raymund—on Facebook. The one thing that made stalking him really frustrating during high school was that he had no social networking websites—no Myspace, no Facebook. Maybe he finally got a Facebook. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see that he did, so I dug through it a little bit.
He got his Facebook account during summer 2009, so it was no wonder I still couldn’t find him after I graduated from highschool. I looked through his photos, and I thought he was...only okay looking. Back in high school, I didn’t know what a Filipino was until I learned of him, and that started my Filipino fever. But after I broke up with Ray—oh shit, the names (well, his whole name was Ranier but I called him Ray)—I guess I was done with Filipinos.
NOW IT’S TIME FOR CUTE KOREAN BOYS. MMMM KBBQ.
Sang and Lawrence looked over their shoulders and saw a bunch of waiters, but they knew my type of guy and easily locked in on the waiter I was talking about. Toned arms, worked out but not too muscular, medium-tall height, had a full but short and modest fohawk, Korean. Well, pretty much all the workers were Korean, because Sang, Lawrence, and I were eating at Mr. Lee’s Korean Barbeque House (last Thursday in April). But this Korean guy was exceptionally good looking.
Sang scoffed. “You would, Brian.” Sang glanced back at him. “He’s coming this way. Why don’t you ask him for his number? Here, I’ll do it for yo—”
“NO!”
The cute waiter walked past our table, and our heads slowly followed him until he disappeared into the back. Just then, I realized something about the way I was eating my Korean barbeque.
“Am I supposed to use utensils?”
Holding onto their chopsticks, Sang and Lawrence nodded. This was the fourth time I had been here, and all times, I had been wrapping the beef in the three-inch-by-three-inch pieces of rice paper and popping them into my mouth like mini tacos.
“Shit, what if the waiter thinks I’m hella unattractive because I eat with my hands?” I started using chopsticks. I ended up dropping a piece of beef in my cup of water, and when I tried to pick up my mini rice-paper wrapped beef taco with chopsticks, the whole thing fell apart.
“Brian, you’re really sad,” Sang said. “The waiter’s not gonna care that you’re eating with your hands. Just ask him for his number!”
“No!” I suddenly realized that this was like high school again, back in my old days when I was super gay x10 and my gruh-friends and I would go boy hunting, and everyone would encourage me to simply go up to a random guy and ask him for his number. Of course, I would always come up with a convoluted plan instead, and of course, the plan would always fail or make me look stupid. Although being straightforward didn’t always make me look good either.
---
 A picture of me at the Key Club ball. Look at me. I’d go “WTF” if I were anyone else too. |
Written April 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
[T]he first hour of the dance [semi-formal Key Club ball] was a little bit dull. I was bummed due to guy problems, and Peter and [his girlfriend at the time] were dancing with each other, so I had no one else to talk to. [After some encouragement from Peter,] I tried mingling and talking to other guys, but somehow that just didn't work out...
Me: "Hey."
Random Cute Asian Guy: "Hey."
Me: "ARE YOU GAY?"
Random Cute Asian Guy: "What the fuck?"
Peter: "Brian, you're a dumbass."
---
“I have a plan.”
“This should be good,” Sang said.
The cute waiter stopped at our table and asked if we needed anything. I jumped in at the opportunity, and, trying to combine flirty with sexy, I asked, “Yeah, um, uh, could I get a, uh, a new, y’know”—stuttering, I held up my cup of water to him for him to peer inside—“There’s meat in my water.”
“Oh yeah sure,” and he rushed away.
I put my cup down.
Sang shook his head.
---
“Confessions of One Sad and Pathetic Stalker”
Written June 3rd, 2006 (Excerpted)
Today was the last school day for the seniors. (All other classes get out [next] Thursday.) That meant I had only one more day left to have any kind of contact with Hot Emo Kid in anyway.
Basically, Hot Emo Kid, just like his name, is a really hot emo kid [[actually, his style was hardly emo; I was just really bad at labels in high school]]. He's Filipino, his skin is very nice and dark, he BREAKDANCES, and he's straight...I hardly ever called him by his real name; he was simply just Hot Emo Kid to me.
I remember this once incident back in March when Hot Emo Kid might’ve realized that I was stalking him. Me and my friend Trang were following him rather closely from behind, and then he stopped, turned around and looked towards our direction. Not knowing what to do at all, I freaked out, shoved Trang off the sidewalk, turned around quickly, and stood there “casually.” I did not do this while he was turning around; I did this as soon as he was looking right in our direction. I don’t think what I did there made me invisible at all. And Trang wasn’t too happy that I pushed her either.
So anyways, back to the final day of school for the seniors. Kathleen gave me a crazy idea: Take a picture with Hot Emo Kid. I was so upset that he was leaving and that I never got a chance to say anything to him except, “Here’s your book,” so I figured I might as well just try something now since it was possible that I would never see him that often again. The plan was that I would just go up to him and tell him that I had admired his style for a while and that I would just like to take a picture with him before he went off to college. But as the moment approached closer and closer, that idea just started saying, “Hi, I’m your stalker and now I want a picture of you.”
When we—me, Kathleen, Maggie, Thuy, Loppy, Le...it’s like I had an audience… Anyway, when we walked in, Hot Emo Kid and his other senior friends were in there partying it up or whatever. We didn’t know what to do, so we got Amanda [a mutual friend] to help us. And I owe Amanda like hella sex [[she probably wouldn’t want it]] for what she did.
 Seriously, why the fuck is there a giant tarantula on my head. |
So after the photo was taken, I don’t really remember what happened because everything happened in a flash. I like, got up quickly, grabbed the camera, and got the fuck out of there. I yelled back over my shoulder, “And you’re hot!” to Hot Emo Kid and was out the door. My heart must’ve been oozing out of my anus. So me and my friends celebrated, and for the rest of the day, I felt like I was in a dreamworld living a fantasy. And all I did was take a picture with him.
Me and Maggie later asked Amanda about what she whispered to Hot Emo Kid earlier, but she only told us, “Oh, he said he already knew.” I was going crazy because that was so vague; what did he already know? That I hella thought he was hot? That I stalked him a lot? That I hella had a superficial crush on him?
---
After finishing Korean BBQ, Sang went off to CADC practice and Lawrence and I went to the ARC. In on of the dance rooms, he taught me a Korean Boy Band piece he learned when he took class at the Team Millenia Dance Studio earlier in the week. The song was Love Like Oxygen, by SHINee. I never felt like such a gay Korean pop star fanboy until now.
Afterwards, I went back home to my apartment, and out of whim, I decided to look up Hot Emo Kid—Raymund—on Facebook. The one thing that made stalking him really frustrating during high school was that he had no social networking websites—no Myspace, no Facebook. Maybe he finally got a Facebook. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see that he did, so I dug through it a little bit.
He got his Facebook account during summer 2009, so it was no wonder I still couldn’t find him after I graduated from highschool. I looked through his photos, and I thought he was...only okay looking. Back in high school, I didn’t know what a Filipino was until I learned of him, and that started my Filipino fever. But after I broke up with Ray—oh shit, the names (well, his whole name was Ranier but I called him Ray)—I guess I was done with Filipinos.
NOW IT’S TIME FOR CUTE KOREAN BOYS. MMMM KBBQ.
Tags:
dancing,
flashback,
norcal,
peter,
ranier,
relationships,
repost,
sang,
socal,
winter spring 2010
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