I am...
...made in America, where the extent of our culture is backyard barbeque burgers on the Fourth of July, and the paint-coated picket fence shines so white underneath the blue sky;
...made in America, where history as it is written suffers splashes and spills of white-out, but no worries as all that is still readable is beyond doubt;
...made in America, where politicians always act in the best interest of the people, where police uphold laws to the protect the people, and where government hears the voices of the people;
...made in America, where “the people” means “some people,” “no people,” or “themselves”;
...made in America, a post-racial society so proudly represented by a giant melting pot—just make sure you use white pepper, white onions, and no variety, because keeping the porridge white is our number one priority;
...made in America, born and raised, proud and ignorant, patriotic and silent.
Trung and I were on our way back up to NorCal. I drove as always, while he sat in the passenger seat, and Sang slept in the backseat. Trung and I casually talked about the last few months of our second year in college.
“Nothing new is really going on with UCI,” I said. “I think the biggest thing that happened was stuff with the Irvine 11 that happened like four months ago in February. Have you heard about them?”
“No, what’s that?”
“The Irvine 11 are these people from our school’s Muslim Student Union, and they got busted for speaking out during this one speech from some Israeli ambassador, who was invited to speak at UCI by the law school and political science department and some other sponsors. While he was talking, one person would stand up in the audience, shout out some shit, and when that person was escorted out, another one would stand up and yell out some more shit. That continued in succession, eleven times, so that the ambassador guy wouldn’t get to speak. Now there’s controversy because the Irvine 11 are getting arrested. What’s stupid though is there are actually people standing up for the Irvine 11.”
“You don’t support what the Irvine 11 did?”
“No, why would I?”
Trung raised his eyebrow at me. “Brian, do you understand anything about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?”
“I thought I was talking about Israel and Muslims.”
Trung grunted. “Brian, Israelis practice Judaism, making them Jewish in case you didn’t know, and Palestinians practice Islam, making them Muslim. And that’s just a general blanket statement, but I’m telling you this because you’ll probably hear stuff about Jews versus Muslims too when talking about the conflict.”
“Okay, this is too many names, and either way, my understanding of the Israelian-Palestinny Conflict doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“It’s clear who’s at fault here, isn’t it, Trung? The First Amendment, the right that the Irvine 11 and their supporters are claiming to be violated, doesn’t allow you to go into a meeting at a ballroom, sit in the audience, and shout over the speaker at the front. The First Amendment has regulations so shit like this wouldn’t happen, so that no one can yell ‘fire’ for kicks in a crowded room or walk into a lecture hall and start yelling obscenities over the professor. Even though the Irvine 11 disagreed with the ambassador, they could’ve voiced their opinions in a less annoying and less unlawful way. Hell, what happen to common courtesy and respect?”
“See Brian, this is where knowing something about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict comes into use. Do you know about the Gaza Massacre? No, I know you don’t. There were close to one thousand Palestinian civilian casualties, and well over one thousand total if you include those who fought, all thanks to Israel, who suffered around ten casualties total. If I was in their situation, the students of the Muslim Student Union, I’d protest too because I’d be outraged to hear that my own school would be sponsoring a visit from the Israeli ambassador, a representative of terrible war crimes against my homeland. That would be a huge inconsiderate ‘fuck you’ to me.”
“Well, we’re not talking about emotions here.”
“And that’s exactly the problem, because the rules and laws, Brian, don’t understand emotions. The Irvine 11, I can agree that they weren’t justified by the law, but they were justified by their emotions. It’s too bad that our fucked up system prefers only to look at the law, which is in and of itself imperfect.”
At this point, I was checking my rearview mirror to see if Sang was awake to watch me, for the millionth time, get owned by Trung in a car ride between NorCal and SoCal. Fortunately, he was sleeping, or at least he was pretending to be sleeping.
The first to-do item on the agenda after arriving back in NorCal was always to go downtown and get authentic Mexican food, specifically for me, a Super Burrito with chorizo. Trung and I picked up our orders along with a bottle of sauce and sat down at a table inside, watching the line stretch out the door with sobering students just getting back from the club. We ate in silence for our first few bites, but then I brought up something that had been on my mind for a while.
2010 was ending explosively with protests over fee increases and budget cuts, which erupted all over California in the last few months of November and December, and one of the controversies that stemmed from the protests was an incident where an officer, Jared Kemper, pulled out and aimed a gun at unarmed protesters at UCSF. When this story initially spread, I naturally reacted by thinking, whatever the protestors did, it must have been deserving enough to provoke Kemper’s response.
I discussed with Trung, over burritos and quesadillas, what the rebuttal for my reaction would be, because I wanted to instead be able to believe the rebuttal. He reminded me, first of all, that police officers weren’t robots that operated one hundred percent by the law; they were human too, capable of making mistakes, and that’s what Kemper did. It was something human within Kemper, a kind of fear or frustration, exacerbated by a realization that he had no training in handling the type of situation he was in, that made him desperately reach for his gun. In this case, however, his reaction was still inappropriate and inexcusable, Trung concluded, because it unnecessarily endangered lives, and under no circumstances would a police officer have a lawful reason to draw his gun on unarmed student protestors. Simple as that.
I nodded. Trung remarked that it was nice to see me trying to see things in a different light, because even if it was just half a year ago, I still would’ve been rolling my eyes at students playing victim and whining about having a gun pulled on them. And if it had been high school, he added, I still would’ve been parading racial colorblindness.
“Remember in high school when all your friends were taking that Asian American summer leadership program at DeAnza? You’d very openly accuse them of wasting their time because all they did was, and I quote you, ‘get together with other fob Asians and whine about racism.’ ‘Maybe if they integrated better and got over their race and other people’s races they could actually accomplish something blah blah blah only one race—the human race!—blah blah blah and I’m insensitive to race and ethnic issues.’ You’ve come a long way since then, Brian, and I know I don’t deserve all the credit, I’m sure, but I still like to say you changed all thanks to me.”
I shrugged. Trung might’ve been right. Something that I didn’t wanna tell him but had also been on my mind was the DREAM act, a bill that would’ve provided illegal “aliens” an opportunity for permanent residence if they satisfied certain conditions, one of which was getting into a four-year college and finishing at least two years. The bill was defeated in Senate one day prior, and how I felt about the news shocked me—I actually felt angry, upset. I don’t know if it was because I knew that Trung, who had been posting a bunch of stuff about the DREAM act on his Facebook and Tumblr, really hoped it would pass; or because throughout my last three years of teaching and tutoring, I’ve taught one or two outstanding students who weren’t legal residents in the United States. Whether or not I changed because of Trung or something else, however, there was at least the one important thing I learned to fully understand: Fuck the system.
Showing posts with label sang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sang. Show all posts
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.”
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
What All Guys Want
Sunday, May 23, 2010
It was 3 AM in the morning on a Saturday night (May 15), which was apparently a really busy time for this particular restaurant in Garden Grove. Alex, Khoa, Daniel, Angela, and I—we were three single guys, a taken guy, and a taken girl, all crowded around a table over warm bowls of Pho. We were discussing one of our favorite subjects.
“It’s only the fat creeper girls that holler at me when I’m drunk. Why me?”
“Angela, tell me how to get girls! I want anything—hook up, one night stand, dating, or a relationship. Just help me get a girl!”
“Man Brian, you’re lucky. You can get sex any time you want because guys are always horny all the time, right?”
“Yeah,” I said as I tried to chopstick pho noodles into my spoon. “All the time, any time.”
“Man, I’m so envious of you.”
I smiled, nodded, and slurped on my Pho.
Chauncer Hien. New friend on downelink. I thought this was going to be another “whatever-I’ll-probably-never-talk-to-you” add until he actually asked to hang out with me. I figured, ok sure. It was only the third week of the quarter, so I had enough free time.
He came by my apartment on a Wednesday afternoon. I had thought he was only going to pick me up, but he actually insisted on coming inside. He had to spray paint a small wooden house for one of his classes, so I let him used my bathtub. While waiting for the house to dry, he lay down on my bed, and that was when I first suspected that he wanted some bang bang:
“Do you want a massage? I give really good massages.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Nah, no thanks.”
After hanging out for a little bit, I left to go to the library to watch Le Retour de Martin Guerre for French class. I didn’t talk to Chauncer again until later that night when I was standing outside the Mesa Parking structure waiting for Sang, ten minutes before the start of the make-up workshops for Common Ground auditions.
Chauncer texted me, and we started texting back and forth. Eventually, he made a corny joke, saying, “Wanna come over? I can show you something special. ;)”
His dick. I rolled my eyes and decided to play along. “What? Hahah lol.”
“You know what. LOLOL JK.”
I knew very well that, in the male dicksucker’s dictionary, “jk” meant “I wanna sit on your dick.” But I brushed it off and pretended to laugh along.
After getting back to my apartment, I chatted with Chauncer over AIM. At this point it was getting pretty late and I really had to do a write-up for the French movie I watched earlier, but Chauncer didn’t hesitate to extend one last poorly masked invitation for sex.
Chauncer:
I’m still working on my art project. Come over and help me!
bbq dinner:
I still need to do my French homework. D:
Chauncer:
Come do your homework here!
I sighed and glanced at the time. 2 AM. Did I want some? Was I that horny? Was I that bored? Was I that lonely?
One out of four questions, I answered yes, but it was the only question that ever mattered.
After finishing our Pho and dropping Angela off back at her place, the rest of us four guys headed back to the apartments. While walking back inside from the parking lot, I offered some helpful girlfriend advice: “It’s usually the upper half that’s the best. Concentrate there. Upper half, bottom side. Make sure she knows in advance to stay away from your piss slit once you’ve jizzed.”
“Aiight thanks Brian!”
Once we settled inside, we watched Daniel play Devil May Cry 3 and fashioned an apple bong so that some of us could go to space (not me).
In our conversations about girls, sex, and guys, basically things that all guys wanted, everyone would love to bring up my poor choices in the past. Tonight, we brought up—
“Chauncer Hien.” I said.
Alex looked up at me confused. “Who?”
“You know, Chauncer. French Homework!”
“Oh WAIT! CHAUNCER IS FRENCH HOMEWORK?”
“Wait, you didn’t know that?”
“No, you guys always referred to him as French Homework and I figured it was better that I didn’t know who it was. OH MY GOD YOU SLEPT WITH CHAUNCER HIEN.”
“You slept with Chauncer Hien last night. Wow.” Kevin sat back trying to get the images out of his head, and Alfonso was too busy laughing. I continued eating my steak. We were at the dining commons.
“Yeah, kinda literally,” I said. I was too eager to spill all the fun details. “I think at one point I fell asleep on top of him. My dick was pretty limp the whole night. Seriously, it was 5 AM. I had spent the last two hours writing up a French essay, putting it through an English-to-French translator and correcting the French.”
“Haha well damn Brian. Even at 5 AM in the morning, you can get sex any time whenever you want. I’m envious of you.”
I smiled, nodded, and worked on cutting my steak. This was too much of a fun dinner, so I didn’t wanna bring myself down by saying something that I really wanted to say: Don’t be.
“It’s only the fat creeper girls that holler at me when I’m drunk. Why me?”
“Angela, tell me how to get girls! I want anything—hook up, one night stand, dating, or a relationship. Just help me get a girl!”
“Man Brian, you’re lucky. You can get sex any time you want because guys are always horny all the time, right?”
“Yeah,” I said as I tried to chopstick pho noodles into my spoon. “All the time, any time.”
“Man, I’m so envious of you.”
I smiled, nodded, and slurped on my Pho.
Chauncer Hien. New friend on downelink. I thought this was going to be another “whatever-I’ll-probably-never-talk-to-you” add until he actually asked to hang out with me. I figured, ok sure. It was only the third week of the quarter, so I had enough free time.
He came by my apartment on a Wednesday afternoon. I had thought he was only going to pick me up, but he actually insisted on coming inside. He had to spray paint a small wooden house for one of his classes, so I let him used my bathtub. While waiting for the house to dry, he lay down on my bed, and that was when I first suspected that he wanted some bang bang:
“Do you want a massage? I give really good massages.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Nah, no thanks.”
After hanging out for a little bit, I left to go to the library to watch Le Retour de Martin Guerre for French class. I didn’t talk to Chauncer again until later that night when I was standing outside the Mesa Parking structure waiting for Sang, ten minutes before the start of the make-up workshops for Common Ground auditions.
Chauncer texted me, and we started texting back and forth. Eventually, he made a corny joke, saying, “Wanna come over? I can show you something special. ;)”
His dick. I rolled my eyes and decided to play along. “What? Hahah lol.”
“You know what. LOLOL JK.”
I knew very well that, in the male dicksucker’s dictionary, “jk” meant “I wanna sit on your dick.” But I brushed it off and pretended to laugh along.
After getting back to my apartment, I chatted with Chauncer over AIM. At this point it was getting pretty late and I really had to do a write-up for the French movie I watched earlier, but Chauncer didn’t hesitate to extend one last poorly masked invitation for sex.
Chauncer:
I’m still working on my art project. Come over and help me!
bbq dinner:
I still need to do my French homework. D:
Chauncer:
Come do your homework here!
I sighed and glanced at the time. 2 AM. Did I want some? Was I that horny? Was I that bored? Was I that lonely?
One out of four questions, I answered yes, but it was the only question that ever mattered.
After finishing our Pho and dropping Angela off back at her place, the rest of us four guys headed back to the apartments. While walking back inside from the parking lot, I offered some helpful girlfriend advice: “It’s usually the upper half that’s the best. Concentrate there. Upper half, bottom side. Make sure she knows in advance to stay away from your piss slit once you’ve jizzed.”
“Aiight thanks Brian!”
Once we settled inside, we watched Daniel play Devil May Cry 3 and fashioned an apple bong so that some of us could go to space (not me).
In our conversations about girls, sex, and guys, basically things that all guys wanted, everyone would love to bring up my poor choices in the past. Tonight, we brought up—
“Chauncer Hien.” I said.
Alex looked up at me confused. “Who?”
“You know, Chauncer. French Homework!”
“Oh WAIT! CHAUNCER IS FRENCH HOMEWORK?”
“Wait, you didn’t know that?”
“No, you guys always referred to him as French Homework and I figured it was better that I didn’t know who it was. OH MY GOD YOU SLEPT WITH CHAUNCER HIEN.”
“You slept with Chauncer Hien last night. Wow.” Kevin sat back trying to get the images out of his head, and Alfonso was too busy laughing. I continued eating my steak. We were at the dining commons.
“Yeah, kinda literally,” I said. I was too eager to spill all the fun details. “I think at one point I fell asleep on top of him. My dick was pretty limp the whole night. Seriously, it was 5 AM. I had spent the last two hours writing up a French essay, putting it through an English-to-French translator and correcting the French.”
“Haha well damn Brian. Even at 5 AM in the morning, you can get sex any time whenever you want. I’m envious of you.”
I smiled, nodded, and worked on cutting my steak. This was too much of a fun dinner, so I didn’t wanna bring myself down by saying something that I really wanted to say: Don’t be.
Tags:
alfonso,
dancing,
flashback,
french,
gay,
kevin,
relationships,
sang,
schoolwork,
socal,
winter spring 2010
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
Reciprocals and Rewrites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
“‘Gregory, the reciprocal of two over five is five over two. Can you TELL me what the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE is?’
‘Ummm... Two?’
‘No...’
‘Is it five...?’
‘Again, the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE is FIVE OVER TWO. What is the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE?’
‘Do you want me to multiply two over five by five?’
‘No...’
‘I don’t get what you’re asking me! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’
It went like that. I really wanted to punch him in the face.”
“Aw, Brian, it’s like SCORE! all over again.”
I leaned over a railing outside of Sang’s room in his dorm, cell phone pressed against my ear, 1 AM, December 8th, 2009, talking to Trung and telling him about the crazy kids at work, just as I would have two years ago.
I had called him earlier that night to offer a meager apology, but the purpose of the phone call was more than that. Awkwardly, I asked for his permission to wish him a happy two-year anniversary. He approved, so I said it, and then he repeated it. How bittersweet it felt utter the words “Happy Two-Year Anniversary,” knowing that it was all pretend, yet, at the same time, still slightly true. Lie or truth, one bothered me more than the other, but I couldn’t tell which one.
---
“Rollercoasters and Ferris Wheels”
Written December 9th, 2007 (Excerpted)
Trung continued trying to pull his hands free as I glared at him. The rollercoaster car returned to the docking station.
The riders were boarding, and now, the other two friends with us tugged at me, telling me to let go. It was time to get on. We couldn’t let everyone else wait any longer. Ignoring them, I pulled Trung closer to me and spoke to him under my breath, giving one last attempt. His stare finally met mine, and our eyes locked. His lighthearted face hardened as his stare began to fight back defiantly. Time seemed to freeze.
And then I gradually loosened my grip.
Trung backed up slowly, still not dropping eye contact. I saw his hardened face break into a solemn and grim countenance, but he immediately turned around ashamed and climbed over the railing.
I watched him exit down the flight of stairs.
Yesterday evening, Trung and I rode the light rail downtown to explore Christmas in the Park.
“I hope you realize that I still hate amusement rides and that you cannot get me to go on any,” Trung told me while we were sitting in the light rail. “Nothing has changed.”
“I disagree,” I remarked.
The whole event was like a chaotic utopia, in that the dazzling Christmas lights, the myriads of Christmas trees, the jolly holiday tunes, and the cool temperature created a fantasy-like “Winter Wonderland,” while the rude attendees, the congestion, and the Jesus preachers created a hellish dystopia.
I sought a place of silence far above the sea of park goers.
“Briiiiiiiian!” Trung whined. We were second in the line for the Ferris wheel.
“Don’t worry Trung,” I reassured him. “There will be no Final Destination incident, and there will definitely be no Discovery Kingdom rollercoaster reenactment.”
I managed to get Trung on the Ferris wheel with hardly any kind of struggle this time, but a small part of Trung still probably hated me for getting him on it. That part didn’t matter though, because what came next was far more important.
Surprisingly, I was as scared as Trung. The Ferris wheel made abrupt stops and would continue either forward or backward during the passenger loading process. Ferris wheels lacked the predictability that all rollercoasters had. Once I was sure the Ferris wheel was done loading and ready to make uninterrupted revolutions, I reassured myself that I didn’t need to word what I wanted to say fancily and movie-like. It just had to be simple, and I didn’t have to be afraid again.
Trung clung onto my arms tightly, gawking at the concrete below us. He was shaking, he was scared, his voice was quivering.
I looked at him longingly and then felt ready to speak. “Trung,” I began steadily, “let’s make it official—,”
“K sure!” Trung interrupted, still concerned with the possibility of falling face flat onto the concrete.
“…and so, uh,” I continued, now feeling a little awkward, “official as in, together: let’s be togeth—”
“Okay!”
“…I’m sorry I took so long. I guess I was, like, I was afraid, but well, I’m not anymo—”
“That’s good!”
“…so, yeah, as of this day, December 8th, 2007, we are, um, in a—”
“Uh huh!”
“…in a relationship…”
“Definitely!”
“…I should’ve waited until we got off the Ferris wheel, shouldn’t I’ve?”
“Yep!” Trung shrieked.
About five minutes later, the ride operator began the slow process of unloading the Ferris wheel. The lesbians got off hand in hand with eyes following them. If that wasn’t enough for the spectators, the next two that the gondola brought down to the platform were the same, but now in male form.
Trung was resting his head on my shoulder, and I rested my head on top of his head. Our hands were clasped together and resting on my thigh. Our breaths were calm and collected. The look on our faces, blissful.
Mon petit ami, [My boyfriend]
Depuis le huit décembre, deux mille sept. [Since December 8th, 2007]
FINALEMENT!
---
While tutoring Todd, I instead found myself slouching and gazing into space as he spent three minutes writing, erasing, and rewriting barely any less sloppily his name and date in the blanks at the top of his workbook page. Because at the Education Academy, penmanship matters. I hadn’t been enjoying this job as much as I thought I would’ve, and I wondered why. Replaying the last few days, I reflected on my anniversary call to Trung the other night, and I realized that this was the first time I ever had to work a job while my so called “love life” was in turmoil.
‘Ummm... Two?’
‘No...’
‘Is it five...?’
‘Again, the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE is FIVE OVER TWO. What is the reciprocal of TWO OVER FIVE?’
‘Do you want me to multiply two over five by five?’
‘No...’
‘I don’t get what you’re asking me! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’
It went like that. I really wanted to punch him in the face.”
“Aw, Brian, it’s like SCORE! all over again.”
I leaned over a railing outside of Sang’s room in his dorm, cell phone pressed against my ear, 1 AM, December 8th, 2009, talking to Trung and telling him about the crazy kids at work, just as I would have two years ago.
I had called him earlier that night to offer a meager apology, but the purpose of the phone call was more than that. Awkwardly, I asked for his permission to wish him a happy two-year anniversary. He approved, so I said it, and then he repeated it. How bittersweet it felt utter the words “Happy Two-Year Anniversary,” knowing that it was all pretend, yet, at the same time, still slightly true. Lie or truth, one bothered me more than the other, but I couldn’t tell which one.
---
“Rollercoasters and Ferris Wheels”
Written December 9th, 2007 (Excerpted)
Trung continued trying to pull his hands free as I glared at him. The rollercoaster car returned to the docking station.
The riders were boarding, and now, the other two friends with us tugged at me, telling me to let go. It was time to get on. We couldn’t let everyone else wait any longer. Ignoring them, I pulled Trung closer to me and spoke to him under my breath, giving one last attempt. His stare finally met mine, and our eyes locked. His lighthearted face hardened as his stare began to fight back defiantly. Time seemed to freeze.
And then I gradually loosened my grip.
Trung backed up slowly, still not dropping eye contact. I saw his hardened face break into a solemn and grim countenance, but he immediately turned around ashamed and climbed over the railing.
I watched him exit down the flight of stairs.
Yesterday evening, Trung and I rode the light rail downtown to explore Christmas in the Park.
“I hope you realize that I still hate amusement rides and that you cannot get me to go on any,” Trung told me while we were sitting in the light rail. “Nothing has changed.”
“I disagree,” I remarked.
The whole event was like a chaotic utopia, in that the dazzling Christmas lights, the myriads of Christmas trees, the jolly holiday tunes, and the cool temperature created a fantasy-like “Winter Wonderland,” while the rude attendees, the congestion, and the Jesus preachers created a hellish dystopia.
I sought a place of silence far above the sea of park goers.
“Briiiiiiiian!” Trung whined. We were second in the line for the Ferris wheel.
“Don’t worry Trung,” I reassured him. “There will be no Final Destination incident, and there will definitely be no Discovery Kingdom rollercoaster reenactment.”
I managed to get Trung on the Ferris wheel with hardly any kind of struggle this time, but a small part of Trung still probably hated me for getting him on it. That part didn’t matter though, because what came next was far more important.
Surprisingly, I was as scared as Trung. The Ferris wheel made abrupt stops and would continue either forward or backward during the passenger loading process. Ferris wheels lacked the predictability that all rollercoasters had. Once I was sure the Ferris wheel was done loading and ready to make uninterrupted revolutions, I reassured myself that I didn’t need to word what I wanted to say fancily and movie-like. It just had to be simple, and I didn’t have to be afraid again.
Trung clung onto my arms tightly, gawking at the concrete below us. He was shaking, he was scared, his voice was quivering.
I looked at him longingly and then felt ready to speak. “Trung,” I began steadily, “let’s make it official—,”
“K sure!” Trung interrupted, still concerned with the possibility of falling face flat onto the concrete.
“…and so, uh,” I continued, now feeling a little awkward, “official as in, together: let’s be togeth—”
“Okay!”
“…I’m sorry I took so long. I guess I was, like, I was afraid, but well, I’m not anymo—”
“That’s good!”
“…so, yeah, as of this day, December 8th, 2007, we are, um, in a—”
“Uh huh!”
“…in a relationship…”
“Definitely!”
“…I should’ve waited until we got off the Ferris wheel, shouldn’t I’ve?”
“Yep!” Trung shrieked.
About five minutes later, the ride operator began the slow process of unloading the Ferris wheel. The lesbians got off hand in hand with eyes following them. If that wasn’t enough for the spectators, the next two that the gondola brought down to the platform were the same, but now in male form.
Trung was resting his head on my shoulder, and I rested my head on top of his head. Our hands were clasped together and resting on my thigh. Our breaths were calm and collected. The look on our faces, blissful.
Mon petit ami, [My boyfriend]
Depuis le huit décembre, deux mille sept. [Since December 8th, 2007]
FINALEMENT!
---
While tutoring Todd, I instead found myself slouching and gazing into space as he spent three minutes writing, erasing, and rewriting barely any less sloppily his name and date in the blanks at the top of his workbook page. Because at the Education Academy, penmanship matters. I hadn’t been enjoying this job as much as I thought I would’ve, and I wondered why. Replaying the last few days, I reflected on my anniversary call to Trung the other night, and I realized that this was the first time I ever had to work a job while my so called “love life” was in turmoil.
Crossfire
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Saturday night—well, more like Sunday at 2 AM—nonetheless, nothing interesting was really happening. Facebook’s Bejeweled application kept Sang’s mind occupied all night long; he was trying to get those combos while mindlessly arranging three of the same color in a row and he was also chatting here and there with this person and that person, all at the same time. Just chillin’, everything’s aiight. And out of nowhere the ringtone of his iPhone shook him out of his game mode. God damn, it was a call from me, and I was sounding desperate to come over. I told him that, in fact, I was already parked outside by his dorm. Sure, I guess, whatever, he thought.
Sang got another call from me when I was standing outside in front of his dorm, and he trudged down to let me in and lead me back upstairs into his room.
“So, it’s 2 AM; what’s up, Brian?” Sang asked as he sat down on his bed to play more Bejeweled.
“Well, after my observation this morning at the Education Academy—oh, the manager offered me the job by the way.”
“Yay.” Sang saw that coming.
“Anyway, after the observation, I drove to LA, where...where I spent all day hanging out with Trung.”
“Oh.” Aww, looks like Brian’s having more ex drama.
“Yeah.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, we just spent the day shopping and everything was fine. But, then, we were at H&M when Trung mentioned this one guy named John who’s his mentor in some kind of internship.”
“Mhm.” Shit yeah, Sang managed to match four whole diamonds in a row.
“And, well, you know the movie Precious?”
“Nope.”
“Well it’s this movie about a fat black girl who’s life just keeps getting worse and worse. And Trung saw it. And it made him cry. And guess who he saw it with?”
“Jo—”
“He saw it with John. Just John,” I repeated. “No one else. Just them two.”
“Mhm.” Damn, my bad, I knew the answer—oh yay high score.
“You know what that means, Sang?”
That you’re jealous? Should I even bother answering? Whatever. Sang shrugged as he reached over to his desk to retrieve a huge Costco-tube of Gardetto mix.
“Trung cried, so whose chest was there for him to cry into? John’s chest, that’s whose.”
“Ha, Brian, you’re jealous aren’t you? And bitch, you ate all the garlic chips last week didn’t you?”
“Well, those are the only good ones. And, sure, I guess I’m jealous, but, you know what’s even worse?”
Sang finally managed to dig one garlic chip from the very bottom of the tube and popped it in his mouth. Bliss.
“We’re giving him a ride to and back from NorCal for Thanksgiving break.”
“Oh, wow. Is it going to be awkward?”
“Only if I make it awkward.”
Trung, Sang, John, and I were at a gas station about halfway back up to NorCal. Sang bought some more yummy snacks and headed back outside to the car, where only John was sitting inside. He was awake, but he didn’t look so good. His hand was up against his forehead and he was leaning against the door. The car was locked, so Sang knocked on the window to get John’s attention. John reached over to pull the door handle when suddenly, aw fuck, the car alarm blasted out of nowhere. John jumped up, startled, and Sang stepped back, glancing around awkwardly. He looked at John and shrugged.
After a minute, I casually stepped out of the gas station convenience store, lifted my car key, pointed at the car, clicked—the alarm silenced itself—and I disappeared back inside again.
When we were all on the road again in the car, I didn’t speak a word about the car alarm. John still didn’t look like he was doing so well, and what probably didn’t help was that my driving seemed unusually jerky that night. I had driven Sang in the past, and I usually drove a lot smoother. My music was really loud too; Sang had thought that I liked the volume low. He noticed that Trung would try to lower the volume, but I would just gradually raise it again over time. For the rest of the trip, John said nothing, and I barely said anything as Trung tried to strike up a conversation.
Whatever, nothing was awkward when Sang was happily asleep.
I told Sang that I would pick him up for the return trip to UCI Sunday morning at 8:30, but he already knew that I would at least be half an hour late. And he was right, which was fine because that gave him more time to chill with his friend at home while waiting.
I showed up at 9:15, and, surprisingly enough, the guy sitting in the backseat wasn’t John Duong. It was a guy named Chris Duong, someone I worked with in the past. Not like it really mattered, because Sang planned on sleeping the entire trip anyway.
Once I dropped Trung back off at UCLA, Sang eagerly took the front seat.
“I’m not jealous anymore,” I said as I started driving.
“Really?”
“Trung and I had a talk, and he reassured me that John actually has a boyfriend who he complains about to Trung a lot. And I guess if you have a guy that you complain about a lot, it means that you care about him enough.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“But, I’m still kinda glad I didn’t drive John today. I think the drive to NorCal deterred him.”
“How so?”
“Well, I noticed that John kinda looked like he had a headache once he stepped in the car, so I figured, let’s help the headache...succeed in making John miserable. I drove really shittily, took sharp turns, braked and accelerated weirdly, and blasted my music. And remember the car alarm?”
“Yeah.”
“I rigged it so it would go off on John. When I lock my door from the outside using my key, the car alarm will go off if someone tries to open it from the inside ‘cause I guess the car thinks someone’s trying breaking in through the window. When we all got out of the car at the gas station, I noticed John stayed inside, so I figured, let’s subtly lock the door.”
“Oh dude, you’re a bitch! I was there when the car alarm went off!”
“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. But everything’s okay now.”
“Really?” Sang raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, things are good between Trung and me again. We had a good car ride. I’m fine.”
“Okay Brian.” Sang knew to not fully trust that and lower his guard, because, if what I had told him about a few weeks prior would continue to be true, then I’d be coming to him a lot more in the middle of the night throughout December.
How did I even end up meeting Brian? Oh, it was the day of the Funksters summer intensive showcase. Man, I wish I got to do that this year, but it was cool anyway to come support and see the old Funksters, but what the fuck was up with some of those new kids, like Brian. Mimi introduced him to me as another guy going to UCI. Like I really cared, but he still seemed chill.
Then I got a friend request from him on Facebook that same night, and bam, he flooded my wall with five or ten hella long messages with UCI tips. Damn, seriously, who was this guy? But most of his advice proved to be true or helpful anyway, so I’ll give him credit for that.
Then I kinda forgot about him until I saw him at the Funksters audition, and when he went up to reintroduce himself to me, I was like, who the hell is this guy? Oh yeah, Brian. He was kinda awkward, and not that great of a dancer.
And once again, he sorta popped out of no where for Common Ground auditions once UCI started, but I kinda needed to practice the whole audition process to get ready for CADC, and I kinda needed a partner. We were still kinda awkward with each other, but then we eventually broke the ice over the topic of Funksters and, Brian’s favorite topic that he could never stop talking about, sex. That was one long talk we had at the parking garage the night before CG auditions.
Now, I might be rooming with him and Lawrence next year. That should be pretty crazy. Whatever.
“Hey Sang.” As I was merging, I looked over my blind spot at the last minute to see a car. I swerved back into my lane. “CHRIS I’m wide awake so don’t hit with me the Axe can again. But, hey Sang.”
“Yeah?”
“Am I irritating sometimes? Like just a little bit?”
“Nah dude.”
“Really? The random visits at 3 AM in the morning?”
“Nah, it’s fine. They’re actually kinda fun.”
“Ha, cool. Thanks man.”
Sang got another call from me when I was standing outside in front of his dorm, and he trudged down to let me in and lead me back upstairs into his room.
“So, it’s 2 AM; what’s up, Brian?” Sang asked as he sat down on his bed to play more Bejeweled.
“Well, after my observation this morning at the Education Academy—oh, the manager offered me the job by the way.”
“Yay.” Sang saw that coming.
“Anyway, after the observation, I drove to LA, where...where I spent all day hanging out with Trung.”
“Oh.” Aww, looks like Brian’s having more ex drama.
“Yeah.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, we just spent the day shopping and everything was fine. But, then, we were at H&M when Trung mentioned this one guy named John who’s his mentor in some kind of internship.”
“Mhm.” Shit yeah, Sang managed to match four whole diamonds in a row.
“And, well, you know the movie Precious?”
“Nope.”
“Well it’s this movie about a fat black girl who’s life just keeps getting worse and worse. And Trung saw it. And it made him cry. And guess who he saw it with?”
“Jo—”
“He saw it with John. Just John,” I repeated. “No one else. Just them two.”
“Mhm.” Damn, my bad, I knew the answer—oh yay high score.
“You know what that means, Sang?”
That you’re jealous? Should I even bother answering? Whatever. Sang shrugged as he reached over to his desk to retrieve a huge Costco-tube of Gardetto mix.
“Trung cried, so whose chest was there for him to cry into? John’s chest, that’s whose.”
“Ha, Brian, you’re jealous aren’t you? And bitch, you ate all the garlic chips last week didn’t you?”
“Well, those are the only good ones. And, sure, I guess I’m jealous, but, you know what’s even worse?”
Sang finally managed to dig one garlic chip from the very bottom of the tube and popped it in his mouth. Bliss.
“We’re giving him a ride to and back from NorCal for Thanksgiving break.”
“Oh, wow. Is it going to be awkward?”
“Only if I make it awkward.”
Trung, Sang, John, and I were at a gas station about halfway back up to NorCal. Sang bought some more yummy snacks and headed back outside to the car, where only John was sitting inside. He was awake, but he didn’t look so good. His hand was up against his forehead and he was leaning against the door. The car was locked, so Sang knocked on the window to get John’s attention. John reached over to pull the door handle when suddenly, aw fuck, the car alarm blasted out of nowhere. John jumped up, startled, and Sang stepped back, glancing around awkwardly. He looked at John and shrugged.
After a minute, I casually stepped out of the gas station convenience store, lifted my car key, pointed at the car, clicked—the alarm silenced itself—and I disappeared back inside again.
When we were all on the road again in the car, I didn’t speak a word about the car alarm. John still didn’t look like he was doing so well, and what probably didn’t help was that my driving seemed unusually jerky that night. I had driven Sang in the past, and I usually drove a lot smoother. My music was really loud too; Sang had thought that I liked the volume low. He noticed that Trung would try to lower the volume, but I would just gradually raise it again over time. For the rest of the trip, John said nothing, and I barely said anything as Trung tried to strike up a conversation.
Whatever, nothing was awkward when Sang was happily asleep.
I told Sang that I would pick him up for the return trip to UCI Sunday morning at 8:30, but he already knew that I would at least be half an hour late. And he was right, which was fine because that gave him more time to chill with his friend at home while waiting.
I showed up at 9:15, and, surprisingly enough, the guy sitting in the backseat wasn’t John Duong. It was a guy named Chris Duong, someone I worked with in the past. Not like it really mattered, because Sang planned on sleeping the entire trip anyway.
Once I dropped Trung back off at UCLA, Sang eagerly took the front seat.
“I’m not jealous anymore,” I said as I started driving.
“Really?”
“Trung and I had a talk, and he reassured me that John actually has a boyfriend who he complains about to Trung a lot. And I guess if you have a guy that you complain about a lot, it means that you care about him enough.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“But, I’m still kinda glad I didn’t drive John today. I think the drive to NorCal deterred him.”
“How so?”
“Well, I noticed that John kinda looked like he had a headache once he stepped in the car, so I figured, let’s help the headache...succeed in making John miserable. I drove really shittily, took sharp turns, braked and accelerated weirdly, and blasted my music. And remember the car alarm?”
“Yeah.”
“I rigged it so it would go off on John. When I lock my door from the outside using my key, the car alarm will go off if someone tries to open it from the inside ‘cause I guess the car thinks someone’s trying breaking in through the window. When we all got out of the car at the gas station, I noticed John stayed inside, so I figured, let’s subtly lock the door.”
“Oh dude, you’re a bitch! I was there when the car alarm went off!”
“Yeah, I know, I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire. But everything’s okay now.”
“Really?” Sang raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, things are good between Trung and me again. We had a good car ride. I’m fine.”
“Okay Brian.” Sang knew to not fully trust that and lower his guard, because, if what I had told him about a few weeks prior would continue to be true, then I’d be coming to him a lot more in the middle of the night throughout December.
How did I even end up meeting Brian? Oh, it was the day of the Funksters summer intensive showcase. Man, I wish I got to do that this year, but it was cool anyway to come support and see the old Funksters, but what the fuck was up with some of those new kids, like Brian. Mimi introduced him to me as another guy going to UCI. Like I really cared, but he still seemed chill.
Then I got a friend request from him on Facebook that same night, and bam, he flooded my wall with five or ten hella long messages with UCI tips. Damn, seriously, who was this guy? But most of his advice proved to be true or helpful anyway, so I’ll give him credit for that.
Then I kinda forgot about him until I saw him at the Funksters audition, and when he went up to reintroduce himself to me, I was like, who the hell is this guy? Oh yeah, Brian. He was kinda awkward, and not that great of a dancer.
And once again, he sorta popped out of no where for Common Ground auditions once UCI started, but I kinda needed to practice the whole audition process to get ready for CADC, and I kinda needed a partner. We were still kinda awkward with each other, but then we eventually broke the ice over the topic of Funksters and, Brian’s favorite topic that he could never stop talking about, sex. That was one long talk we had at the parking garage the night before CG auditions.
Now, I might be rooming with him and Lawrence next year. That should be pretty crazy. Whatever.
“Hey Sang.” As I was merging, I looked over my blind spot at the last minute to see a car. I swerved back into my lane. “CHRIS I’m wide awake so don’t hit with me the Axe can again. But, hey Sang.”
“Yeah?”
“Am I irritating sometimes? Like just a little bit?”
“Nah dude.”
“Really? The random visits at 3 AM in the morning?”
“Nah, it’s fine. They’re actually kinda fun.”
“Ha, cool. Thanks man.”
Home-cooked
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thanksgiving break was okay—nothing too blogworthy, just a lot of relaxing back at home in NorCal. I drove back Wednesday night with Sang, Trung, and his friend John Duong, and we got back home around 3 or 4 AM. On Thursday evening, my relatives once again gathered at my house to feast on my mom’s cooking. I wish the responsibilities of holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas wouldn’t always fall on my mom, but I think she’s the only versatile cook in the family who can make something not Vietnamese, so my relatives look to her for adventures into American dinners. The Thanksgiving menu this year included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, egg salad, and deviled eggs, all made from scratch.
I’m actually very proud of my mom when it comes to her cooking because I think she’s the only one in the entire family that cooks for get-togethers. Even for events that call for Asian cuisine, my mom will make the fried rice, eggrolls, won ton soup, and even fish sauce all by herself, while everyone else normally just buys unauthentic crap from their nearest rundown King Eggroll. As for desserts, everyone takes a last-minute on-the-way-there trip to the grocery store to buy two-day-old banana cream pies while my mom spends all morning baking almond cakes, cheesecakes, or apple pies, up to four to make sure that there’s enough for everyone.
But she seriously needs a break. I don’t mind eating generic foods that taste more like the sweatshop kitchens they were made in if it means that for once, my mom can relax for one entire holiday.
---
“Bile in a Bowl”
Written November 5th, 2006 (Excerpted)
Tonight, for dinner, my mom made something that looked like somebody vomited shrimp into a sauce pan and boiled it. Smelled a lot like it too. I pushed myself to eat at least half of it to be nice because my mom spent half the day making it. However, I knew that if I had one more bite, I would’ve thrown up tomorrow’s dinner.
Before going upstairs, I told my parents that I’d be back down later tonight to make something else to eat. I know that research says that eating dinner with the family at least five times a week is healthy, but lately, I haven’t been doing that. For the past month, I’ve been eating lunch around 6, so when my mom or dad finishes cooking dinner at 7, I’m not hungry yet. I usually later come down an hour after they’ve already gone to bed. It’s not like I’m actually missing much though because I hardly ever say anything to them when we do have dinner together, although it still feels weird because it’s like we hardly even live in the same house anymore. The only time I ever really see my parents now is when they’re sitting in the passenger seat watching over me as a drive us to Oakridge. Once I finally get my driver’s license, they’ll just be the people who sign my permission slips and give me food and money.
The joys of the holiday season.
---
On Saturday, my mom made the same “bile in a bowl,” canh chua đồ biển (sour soup with a bunch of seafood in it), and, as far as I can recall, this is something I’ve always enjoyed. I was just too angsty of a teenager to admit it back then.
In other news, there’s now another kid in the family who’s old enough to walk/run/somewhat talk/annoy me. And, we had an autistic four-year-old at dinner, too! My aunt’s son’s girlfriend brought her little niece along. I didn’t actually confirm that the girl was autistic, but it was implied.
This Thanksgiving marked Trung’s third Thanksgiving with my relatives. I think they all know him pretty well by now, but do they know him as the guy I am dating (dated)?
After I fed an essay I wrote in English into a French translator for French class and submitted it to my teacher, Trung and I went to the Great Mall at midnight. Parking and people were terrible, and I only managed to buy myself a plain red hoodie for $20. Ran into Sang and then another friend I met through Funksters Summer Intensive. I’m gonna do my best to visit Funksters some time during winter break.
Friday and Saturday, nothing really remarkable happened. I mainly hung out with Trung, went shopping at various places, bought some more nothing, and ate food. Friday night, I went gay clubbing at Fuz without Trung but with my high school friends Maggie, Thuy, Autumn, Elora, and Loppy. It was my first time gay clubbing without Trung, and, it was nothing special, just I had discovered with being a single college student for the first time. I did do a lot of catching up, so the night was still fun.
On Sunday, I drove back down to SoCal with Sang, Trung, and Chris Duong, a friend who I first met working at SCORE! The ride was trafficky, but I was glad I made it. Thank you to Chris for hitting me across the head with a can of Axe to keep me awake behind the wheel.
I was wiped out when I got back, but my energy and all remains of a good mood died when I checked some two- or one-day old voicemails. On Saturday morning, I had received one from my manager at the Education Academy. She was asking me where I was--I was apparently running late for my shift according to her. Yes, the one I thought I cleared up a week ago. Fuck-up number six actually looks like a really big one, and now I’m pretty damn worried. I’m currently waiting for my manager to reply back to my really really extremely apologetic email.
Only two more weeks left before winter break; I can do this.
I’m actually very proud of my mom when it comes to her cooking because I think she’s the only one in the entire family that cooks for get-togethers. Even for events that call for Asian cuisine, my mom will make the fried rice, eggrolls, won ton soup, and even fish sauce all by herself, while everyone else normally just buys unauthentic crap from their nearest rundown King Eggroll. As for desserts, everyone takes a last-minute on-the-way-there trip to the grocery store to buy two-day-old banana cream pies while my mom spends all morning baking almond cakes, cheesecakes, or apple pies, up to four to make sure that there’s enough for everyone.
But she seriously needs a break. I don’t mind eating generic foods that taste more like the sweatshop kitchens they were made in if it means that for once, my mom can relax for one entire holiday.
---
“Bile in a Bowl”
Written November 5th, 2006 (Excerpted)
Tonight, for dinner, my mom made something that looked like somebody vomited shrimp into a sauce pan and boiled it. Smelled a lot like it too. I pushed myself to eat at least half of it to be nice because my mom spent half the day making it. However, I knew that if I had one more bite, I would’ve thrown up tomorrow’s dinner.
Before going upstairs, I told my parents that I’d be back down later tonight to make something else to eat. I know that research says that eating dinner with the family at least five times a week is healthy, but lately, I haven’t been doing that. For the past month, I’ve been eating lunch around 6, so when my mom or dad finishes cooking dinner at 7, I’m not hungry yet. I usually later come down an hour after they’ve already gone to bed. It’s not like I’m actually missing much though because I hardly ever say anything to them when we do have dinner together, although it still feels weird because it’s like we hardly even live in the same house anymore. The only time I ever really see my parents now is when they’re sitting in the passenger seat watching over me as a drive us to Oakridge. Once I finally get my driver’s license, they’ll just be the people who sign my permission slips and give me food and money.
The joys of the holiday season.
---
On Saturday, my mom made the same “bile in a bowl,” canh chua đồ biển (sour soup with a bunch of seafood in it), and, as far as I can recall, this is something I’ve always enjoyed. I was just too angsty of a teenager to admit it back then.
In other news, there’s now another kid in the family who’s old enough to walk/run/somewhat talk/annoy me. And, we had an autistic four-year-old at dinner, too! My aunt’s son’s girlfriend brought her little niece along. I didn’t actually confirm that the girl was autistic, but it was implied.
This Thanksgiving marked Trung’s third Thanksgiving with my relatives. I think they all know him pretty well by now, but do they know him as the guy I am dating (dated)?
After I fed an essay I wrote in English into a French translator for French class and submitted it to my teacher, Trung and I went to the Great Mall at midnight. Parking and people were terrible, and I only managed to buy myself a plain red hoodie for $20. Ran into Sang and then another friend I met through Funksters Summer Intensive. I’m gonna do my best to visit Funksters some time during winter break.
Friday and Saturday, nothing really remarkable happened. I mainly hung out with Trung, went shopping at various places, bought some more nothing, and ate food. Friday night, I went gay clubbing at Fuz without Trung but with my high school friends Maggie, Thuy, Autumn, Elora, and Loppy. It was my first time gay clubbing without Trung, and, it was nothing special, just I had discovered with being a single college student for the first time. I did do a lot of catching up, so the night was still fun.
On Sunday, I drove back down to SoCal with Sang, Trung, and Chris Duong, a friend who I first met working at SCORE! The ride was trafficky, but I was glad I made it. Thank you to Chris for hitting me across the head with a can of Axe to keep me awake behind the wheel.
I was wiped out when I got back, but my energy and all remains of a good mood died when I checked some two- or one-day old voicemails. On Saturday morning, I had received one from my manager at the Education Academy. She was asking me where I was--I was apparently running late for my shift according to her. Yes, the one I thought I cleared up a week ago. Fuck-up number six actually looks like a really big one, and now I’m pretty damn worried. I’m currently waiting for my manager to reply back to my really really extremely apologetic email.
Only two more weeks left before winter break; I can do this.
Reminiscent
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Trung. The two of us spent all day in LA, driving from destination A to B to C to D all across town in the name of “shopping,” with the offer that you’d buy me something reasonably priced, possibly half the price of a pair of Nikes. We drove around, got lost, got back on track, and wandered on foot down long cold beachside streets going nowhere, but destinations didn’t mattered because we spent time together, whether it was eating a large cup of Chocolate Therapy from Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s or discussing the next movie we’d watch together—you opting for the Oscar-award-winning ones while me, for the ones with blood, gore, and utter destruction. We tried on ridiculous clothes that we knew we wouldn’t buy, but practicality didn’t matter because you reveled in the sight of me wearing cutesy things like a cupcake beanie or a furry trench coat, all of which in the end I would dismiss with a mere “no.” Just like almost always, we ended the day with nothing more than a single ten-dollar shirt that I for once afforded myself.
My backpack hit the floor as I trudged into Sang’s dorm room and slumped down in his desk chair.
“So, it’s 2 AM; what’s up, Brian?” he asked.
“Well, after my observation this morning at the Education Academy—oh, the manager offered me the job by the way.”
“Yay.”
“Anyway, after the observation, I drove to LA, where,” I hesitated a little, “where I spent all day hanging out with Trung.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
My backpack hit the floor as I trudged into Sang’s dorm room and slumped down in his desk chair.
“So, it’s 2 AM; what’s up, Brian?” he asked.
“Well, after my observation this morning at the Education Academy—oh, the manager offered me the job by the way.”
“Yay.”
“Anyway, after the observation, I drove to LA, where,” I hesitated a little, “where I spent all day hanging out with Trung.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Cơm Gà
Sunday, November 8, 2009
I cooked dinner, as I said I would a few entries ago (except I cooked Friday, not Wednesday). Chicken and chicken rice; it was pretty good, and the best part was no one got salmonella. Back at home, my mom cooked chicken, congee, and chicken rice every two weeks, and I thought it was one of her best dishes. Well, the chicken and congee were okay, nothing super special, but it was the chicken rice that was really fucking amazing. She prepped the rice by cooking it a little in some vegetable oil and garlic, and then she’d pour it into the rice cooker and, instead of using water, she’d add the broth that came from the pot that the chicken was boiling in. Simple, but delicious. I’d eat several bowls of chicken rice for dinner and then eat it with eggs the next day for breakfast, and I’d gulp it down so quickly that I’d start choking.
For the longest time, I had been craving my mom’s chicken rice. I called her for the recipe the first week of school, partially because I wanted the recipe, but also because I hoped that showing interesting in cooking it would make her happy (in preparation for the request that I had next on my agenda: Asking for $300 for books). And it did.
She emailed me the recipe, and I was on the verge of cooking it, but then, auditions came. Common Ground, CADC, and then MCIA. During those four weeks of intense dancing, my mom would call me and always ask, “Did you make cơm gà yet?” I’d tell her no and that I had been busy, and she’d always sound disappointed. Especially by the third week, my mom no longer really believed the “I’ve been busy” excuse and probably thought I was never going to make it. By the fourth week of auditions, she stopped asking. Really though, I was pretty damn busy.
Cooking again was one of the main things I was looking forward to after all auditions. Friday night around 9, I dragged Sang over to help. I had hoped that I’d finish cooking by 10:30, but I soon discovered that the chicken, which I left to defrost in the fridge over night, was still frozen solid. The microwave defroster took forty minutes. And even after that, the chicken was still pretty frozen on the inside (unless the chicken’s pancreas and other internal organs were supposed to be rock hard).
Handling the chicken itself with my bare hands was an odd new experience. Never had I ever dug my fingers inside a chicken through its ass (first time my finger’s been any kind of ass, actually). I got a kick out of defrosting its insides by filling it up with hot water, clamping its ass shut, and shaking it violently. Pressing my ear up against the chicken, I could hear the water swishing around inside, and its legs just kinda dangled in the air. Sang didn’t approve of my cooking methods and wanted to eat Cheerios for dinner instead.
Once the chicken was clean, I dropped it in a pot of boiling water and let it stew with some onions and ginger for another hour.
At several points through the night, I had visits from random dancers, one after another. First from Daniel, Shane, and Erica Lee, and then Alfonso and Kevin, and then Sam Shih.
Eventually, it was just Sang, Sam, and me. After the chicken finished boiling, they helped me prep and cook the rice since I had never made rice before in my entire 19 years of being Vietnamese. Around 12:30, two hours after my goal time, we finished.
We spent about twenty minutes eating, and then packed up everything to head to a parking garage where everyone else was dancing. Alfonso’s face lit up when he saw what I brought along. 
He, Kevin, and I (again) sat down on the floor to eat, and periodically we’d get up to freestyle a bit. While eating, Kevin informed me that I had been admitted into YPC (Young Papa’s Crew). YPC was this unofficial crew that a small group of three or four friends started last year and eventually pulled Kevin, Alfonso, and all the aforementioned dancers (except for Sang) in. When it was just starting up, I remember Edge, one of the founders, going around asking people at BBA (Bboy club) to join. He approached one of my friends that I was talking to and asked him but didn’t ask me. I was just a little sad because my friend and I sucked on the same level, but, at that point, I didn’t really know Edge yet.
At the beginning of this school year, I found myself hanging out with Kevin and Alfonso plus a lot of other YPC people, and they’d always mention YPC things. But I knew it was probably taboo to bluntly ask, “Can I join?” So I waited. Patiently.
Last week, while Alfonso was drunk (and high?) Friday night at a Halloween party with several other YPC members, he nominated me for membership. And everyone approved.
I was happy to finally be in. As I sat there inhaling my rice, I danced a little bit in my head and swayed with the music. I smiled as I ate. When I was done eating, I sat back and watched everyone dance. Shane walked over and sat down next to me.
“I hear Alfonso is going to audition next week,” she began. “Are you?”
The word spread quickly. “Yeah, I am,” I answered. Of course I was. How could I let an opportunity pass? “It shouldn’t be too bad.”
“What if you get in?”
“Dancing isn’t something I’m going to stress about anymore,” I declared. “Whatever happens is supposed to happen.” That was a phrase that Alfonso liked to use a lot, especially during the wait for the CADC roster. It was like a way of saying I don’t give a fuck (but really, I do).
Shane left to go chat with Daniel. I knew I’d be getting back up in a bit too to dance, so, carefully scooping up those last four or five grains of rice in my bowl, the ones that made up such an insignificant amount that I wouldn’t have to chew, I savored the last few minutes of my break.
Those Fucking Persimmons
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
When I drove back down from NorCal a little less than two weeks ago, my mom gave me a few things to deliver to my aunt: a bunch of persimmons, a bunch of apples, and an apple pie, all homegrown and homemade. The thing about the this aunt, however, was that I had never really liked her at all, so I didn’t find it worthwhile to push aside MCIA practice time to drive all the way to her place. Even if I didn’t have to practice for anything, I still probably wouldn’t have done it. The bag of fruits and the pie had been sitting in the same spot on my kitchen floor for a week and a half. But, a few days ago, I got an email from my mom telling me that I’d get one hundred bucks if I dropped off all the shit. Sounded good to me.
Until yesterday, when I realized that leaving the fruits and apple pie out on the kitchen floor for a week and a half was a bad idea. As I lifted up the paperbag of persimmons, a bunch of smushed, black furry persimmons fell out through the bottom. There was a lot of stuff in the bag of fruits that wasn’t there when my mom gave it to me.
And it seemed that the bag with the apple pie had a little accident. No thank you.
FUCK was the first thing I thought, closely followed by, I NEED THOSE ONE HUNDRED BUCKS. I couldn’t show up to my aunt’s empty-handed asking for money, so I had to bring them something. The apples and apple pie were fucked no doubt, but I knew that somewhere in the bag of persimmons, there still had to be some good ones.
I wasn’t going to pick them out though. Oh hell no. I drove over to Pippin (dining commons) to pick Sang up and, before he even got a chance to sit his ass in the passenger seat, I blurted out, “We have a fucking situation.”
I brought him back to my place and showed him the mess on the kitchen floor, exactly as I left it twenty minutes earlier (my roommates probably fucking hate me at this point). I pointed at the persimmons and commanded, “Find the good ones.”
I have a fear of mold and rotting food in general. There’s just something really frightening about the site of it. To eagerly and hungrily open up the lid of some Tupperware or untie a bag and look inside, only to find furry, bumpy, spiky, speckled, black, white, green fungal invaders that got to your food before you did—it’s unexpected and disappointing. Sometimes, when I already know something’s molding inside some Tupperware, I won’t even touch it. I’ll leave it in the fridge to continue to mold, and eventually, I’ll just toss the entire thing out without looking inside or bothering to clean out the Tupperware. When my days are shitty from start to end, eating is supposed to be that one moment of guaranteed salvation, but mold fucking ruins it by hitting me when I’m most vulnerable and unsuspecting. Not to mention that one episode of the X-Files with all that fungus.
After Sang bagged the survivors and threw away the ruined persimmons, he left me and sat at the counter, where he dug his hand into my box of Cheerios. I had to clean up the floor, and having lived the life of a slightly spoiled child who never did any chores, I had to improvise.
The toughest part was probably trashing the moldy bags. As I was using one of my hands to simultaneously stretch out the mouth of the trash bag and shove one of the moldy bags inside, I felt the sticky/furry part rest ever so gently across my opposite forearm. It’s fine. I just need to wait a few more seconds for this bag to float its way down. It’s fine. The mold isn’t going to spread to my skin and dig its way to my bloodstream and sprout out of my urethr—“FUCK THIS SHIT!” I threw the bags down and leaped to my sink, where I furiously scrubbed my forearm under hot running water. Sang casually poured himself another three or four Cheerios into his hand.
After thirty minutes of cleaning and using safer precautions to avoid skin contact with the killer fungus, Sang and I were ready to go. My aunt was at my cousin’s house babysitting some grandsons. It took about forty minutes to get there with all the evening traffic. After parking my car, Sang opted to wait in the car.
My aunt was happy to open the door and see me holding two bags of the bright orange fucking persimmons. She let me inside where she offered to warm up some pizza for me and invited me to play with the toddlers. K, sure, whatever gets me the hundred bucks.
The oldest child, who I’ll call Barney, was in pre-school, which meant he was perfectly capable of walking and talking, which meant he was perfectly capable of destruction. Based on my past experiences with my little cousins from NorCal, I was hesitant, but this one really wanted to show me his trains. He jumped up and down in front of me, screaming “I GOT NEW TRAINS! COME LOOK AT MY TRAINS!” Grabbing me by my shorts, he eagerly led me across the kitchen. A kid that wasn’t interested in kicking my ass—I liked this already.
When he brought me to the living room, I was expecting to see tracks laid out all over the room and a battery-powered train choo-chooing its way under coffee tables and around couches. However, I was surprised to be standing over a wide, vast, empty carpet. Noticing that the kid wasn’t by my side anymore, I turned around to see him at a desk, pointing at a laptop monitor.
He was on youtube, watching videos of children playing with their train sets. Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends riding tracks through a bunch of scenery, from carpets to dirt to grass—all manipulated by hands belonging to an unseen face. Barney has his eyes glued on the screen, extending his arms out and moving them like he was the one moving the trains.
It broke my heart a little, but I tried to make due with it. I’d point at a bunch of things in the video and asked him, “What color is that?” “How many carts is that train carrying?” “These tracks go on for a long time, don’t they?” “Wow, how rich is this spoiled brat’s parents?”
Barney was really into it. He clicked a bunch of related videos on the sidebar and we went through the same questions over and over again for several different videos. But then things got questionable when he stumbled across a video titled “Thomas Blows His Stack.” I think the basic plot was that Thomas got fueled up with some different type of gasoline that turned him from the friendly train with a “I think I can” mentality to a rampaging killer train with a “I know I can FUCK YOU UP” mentality. That didn’t matter to Barney; he still had fun pointing out that the capsized train had four wheels and that Thomas had only one eye. He continued to impress me by naming objects that I didn’t think he could identify, such as “a bomb!” and “loud gun sounds!” I wasn’t really too sure if I should’ve directed him to another video, because my aunt, being the old confused Vietnamese lady she was, stood alongside us and laughed at how adorable Barney was.
After “Thomas Blows His Stack” finished with a cinematic nuclear explosion, my aunt gave me my pizza on a plate and, at last, what I had come for: a crisp one-hundred dollar bill, plus twenty dollars worth of quarters for the laundry machine (it’s been more than a year and I still haven’t had the heart to tell her that the laundry machines are card-automated). After saying goodbye to her and leaving Barney to his playtime on youtube, I headed out.
I found Sang contortedly spread out in my car, his lower body in the passenger seat and his upper body in the backseat, his head resting on my Kirby plushie and Op in his arms.
He sat up and asked, “How was it?”
“Got my one hundred dollars,” I replied. I showed Sang the money in my wallet. As I put away my wallet, I decided to have one last look at Mr. Franklin, who stared back at me critically.
Persimmons—sweet and juicy—gone sour and moldy. Thomas the Tank Engine—friendly and joyful—gone murderous and rated-R. Playtime and those who partake in it—creative and fun—gone unimaginative and limited to a chair in front of a computer screen. What times we live in, Mr. Franklin would say if he magically came back to life.
---
“Birthday Fun”
Written August 9th, 2004 (Excerpted)
The Beginning
Well for most of yesterday, I did nothing. However, around seven in the evening, me and my family drove up to Sunnyvale for a double birthday party of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old...When me and my family arrived there, I was formally greeted by the bratty five-year-old, but they swarmed only over a person I know that wishes to remain unnamed [my brother]. While eating, I watched him/her get tortured and wrestled to the ground by the mighty strength combined by all three little kids.
The Torture
After I finished eating, I was sure the little toddlers would come wrestle me down. Luckily, they were mesmerized by the Cat in the Hat. However, I could only get a five-minute break, 'cause soon they came to their senses and started bothering...the unnamed person! :D I sat back and waited for the party to end, while occasionally having to shoo a little kid clinging on to my feet. Eventually, they approached me innocently, climbed up by my side, and screamed loudly in my ear. As I'd stooped down in enormous pain, they'd let out their devilish high-pitched "tee-hee" giggles. THE PAIN. ;-; The parents did little to calm them; they had fallen under the little kid's curse causing them to think my torture is cute. I'd shoved them away, but they'd come back yelling nonsense they heard on TV at me. Such nonsense included: "You put a painful punishment on us!" and "You're icky. JUST KIDDING!@!/1 teeheeheehee."
The Serenity
After lots of pain, the kids quieted down a bit and broke up to roam alone. The five-year old lied down on my lap dreamily, reciting some magical fairy tale script. Then she wandered off after the three-year-old decided to visit me. He played wonderful music for from those cheap wooden pipe recorders. Amazingly, he didn't hit any high-pitched notes, but he just played the same note over and over. Then he wanted to be Robin Hood. He took his recorder, mouthpiece down, and stuffed it down his pants, probably also down his underpants if he had any. Giddily, he squealed, "I'm Robin Hood! I'm Robin Hood!" And with that, he ran off on his magical adventures, pretending to be the fairytale hero of the medieval times.
Then the five-year-old came back. D: She put up quite a show for me. It was circus time, and she mastered half-somersaults. She rolled back on her upper-shoulder, stretched her legs over her head, and stalled. Nothing really spectacular except she was wearing a skirt. The skirt rolled down to her head, giving a perfectly clear view of her undies. After trying to perform her somersaults, she ran off again to play with the three-year-old.
The Crisis
I had a few minutes of peace before the steady chatter of adults and low volume of the TV were interrupted by an ear-shattering screech, followed by deafening cries of woe. The three-year-old knocked the five-year-old's Little Mermaid balloon out of her hand and up to the top of a very high ceiling with no ledges near by. It was stuck. Little daughter came crying to her mother's arms, and Mother tried unsuccessfully to console her. Meanwhile, Father plotted the retrieval of the balloon.
The house waited in tension as the Father paced up and down the house. An idea finally hit! The father attached rolled up tape to a very long pole, and grabbed the balloon with it! Yes! He pulled it in to the second story ledge, where another person grabbed it. Little tikes were happy yet again! And we celebrated with a chocolate cake!
The Cake
The simple chocolate cake turned out to be yet another dilemma. The five-year-old wanted the all of Jasmine and Aladdin. Her father wouldn't let her cause it'd be too much of a big slice for her. She whined and she whined and whined. Finally, Father came up with another idea. He sliced the cake horizontally, serving her only the top layer with the Aladdin and Jasmine. Great! She had what she wanted!
However, her piece was barely touched. She prodded the frosting with her spoon, but absolutely refused to take a bite out of Aladdin's empty head. This pissed of her dad. He tried pressuring her with, "You wanted that cake, didn't you? Didn't you? Huh? You wanted it, so why aren't you eating it? Huh? HUHH? You wanted it!!11"
Finally, looking like the five-year-old was about to burst under parental pressure, she spoon off Aladdin's and Jasmine's heads and stuff them into her mouth. The relatives cheered and clapped! "Didn't it taste gooood?" the dad asks.
The little toddler shook her head in disapproval. "No. No!" she retorted. She ended up not finishing it, like that was a surprise.
The Closing
After me and my brother watched the house's bootlegged Shrek 2 for ten minutes while the adults were talking about my awaiting braces, my parents finally decided to drive us home. It was getting pretty late. All the little tikes came up and clung to me and the unnamed person, begging us not to go, or at least take them with us. Hell no. We shook them off, and me and my family waved goodbye, spending about a minute giving our relatives farewells and pecking the little kids' cheeks (parent only thing of course :O). Finally, me and my family all escaped into our car, and we drove off.
---
I miss getting ass-kickings from my little cousins up in NorCal.
Until yesterday, when I realized that leaving the fruits and apple pie out on the kitchen floor for a week and a half was a bad idea. As I lifted up the paperbag of persimmons, a bunch of smushed, black furry persimmons fell out through the bottom. There was a lot of stuff in the bag of fruits that wasn’t there when my mom gave it to me.
And it seemed that the bag with the apple pie had a little accident. No thank you.
FUCK was the first thing I thought, closely followed by, I NEED THOSE ONE HUNDRED BUCKS. I couldn’t show up to my aunt’s empty-handed asking for money, so I had to bring them something. The apples and apple pie were fucked no doubt, but I knew that somewhere in the bag of persimmons, there still had to be some good ones.
I wasn’t going to pick them out though. Oh hell no. I drove over to Pippin (dining commons) to pick Sang up and, before he even got a chance to sit his ass in the passenger seat, I blurted out, “We have a fucking situation.”
I brought him back to my place and showed him the mess on the kitchen floor, exactly as I left it twenty minutes earlier (my roommates probably fucking hate me at this point). I pointed at the persimmons and commanded, “Find the good ones.”
I have a fear of mold and rotting food in general. There’s just something really frightening about the site of it. To eagerly and hungrily open up the lid of some Tupperware or untie a bag and look inside, only to find furry, bumpy, spiky, speckled, black, white, green fungal invaders that got to your food before you did—it’s unexpected and disappointing. Sometimes, when I already know something’s molding inside some Tupperware, I won’t even touch it. I’ll leave it in the fridge to continue to mold, and eventually, I’ll just toss the entire thing out without looking inside or bothering to clean out the Tupperware. When my days are shitty from start to end, eating is supposed to be that one moment of guaranteed salvation, but mold fucking ruins it by hitting me when I’m most vulnerable and unsuspecting. Not to mention that one episode of the X-Files with all that fungus.
After Sang bagged the survivors and threw away the ruined persimmons, he left me and sat at the counter, where he dug his hand into my box of Cheerios. I had to clean up the floor, and having lived the life of a slightly spoiled child who never did any chores, I had to improvise.The toughest part was probably trashing the moldy bags. As I was using one of my hands to simultaneously stretch out the mouth of the trash bag and shove one of the moldy bags inside, I felt the sticky/furry part rest ever so gently across my opposite forearm. It’s fine. I just need to wait a few more seconds for this bag to float its way down. It’s fine. The mold isn’t going to spread to my skin and dig its way to my bloodstream and sprout out of my urethr—“FUCK THIS SHIT!” I threw the bags down and leaped to my sink, where I furiously scrubbed my forearm under hot running water. Sang casually poured himself another three or four Cheerios into his hand.
After thirty minutes of cleaning and using safer precautions to avoid skin contact with the killer fungus, Sang and I were ready to go. My aunt was at my cousin’s house babysitting some grandsons. It took about forty minutes to get there with all the evening traffic. After parking my car, Sang opted to wait in the car.
My aunt was happy to open the door and see me holding two bags of the bright orange fucking persimmons. She let me inside where she offered to warm up some pizza for me and invited me to play with the toddlers. K, sure, whatever gets me the hundred bucks.
The oldest child, who I’ll call Barney, was in pre-school, which meant he was perfectly capable of walking and talking, which meant he was perfectly capable of destruction. Based on my past experiences with my little cousins from NorCal, I was hesitant, but this one really wanted to show me his trains. He jumped up and down in front of me, screaming “I GOT NEW TRAINS! COME LOOK AT MY TRAINS!” Grabbing me by my shorts, he eagerly led me across the kitchen. A kid that wasn’t interested in kicking my ass—I liked this already.
When he brought me to the living room, I was expecting to see tracks laid out all over the room and a battery-powered train choo-chooing its way under coffee tables and around couches. However, I was surprised to be standing over a wide, vast, empty carpet. Noticing that the kid wasn’t by my side anymore, I turned around to see him at a desk, pointing at a laptop monitor.
He was on youtube, watching videos of children playing with their train sets. Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends riding tracks through a bunch of scenery, from carpets to dirt to grass—all manipulated by hands belonging to an unseen face. Barney has his eyes glued on the screen, extending his arms out and moving them like he was the one moving the trains.
It broke my heart a little, but I tried to make due with it. I’d point at a bunch of things in the video and asked him, “What color is that?” “How many carts is that train carrying?” “These tracks go on for a long time, don’t they?” “Wow, how rich is this spoiled brat’s parents?”
Barney was really into it. He clicked a bunch of related videos on the sidebar and we went through the same questions over and over again for several different videos. But then things got questionable when he stumbled across a video titled “Thomas Blows His Stack.” I think the basic plot was that Thomas got fueled up with some different type of gasoline that turned him from the friendly train with a “I think I can” mentality to a rampaging killer train with a “I know I can FUCK YOU UP” mentality. That didn’t matter to Barney; he still had fun pointing out that the capsized train had four wheels and that Thomas had only one eye. He continued to impress me by naming objects that I didn’t think he could identify, such as “a bomb!” and “loud gun sounds!” I wasn’t really too sure if I should’ve directed him to another video, because my aunt, being the old confused Vietnamese lady she was, stood alongside us and laughed at how adorable Barney was.
After “Thomas Blows His Stack” finished with a cinematic nuclear explosion, my aunt gave me my pizza on a plate and, at last, what I had come for: a crisp one-hundred dollar bill, plus twenty dollars worth of quarters for the laundry machine (it’s been more than a year and I still haven’t had the heart to tell her that the laundry machines are card-automated). After saying goodbye to her and leaving Barney to his playtime on youtube, I headed out.
I found Sang contortedly spread out in my car, his lower body in the passenger seat and his upper body in the backseat, his head resting on my Kirby plushie and Op in his arms.
He sat up and asked, “How was it?”
“Got my one hundred dollars,” I replied. I showed Sang the money in my wallet. As I put away my wallet, I decided to have one last look at Mr. Franklin, who stared back at me critically.
Persimmons—sweet and juicy—gone sour and moldy. Thomas the Tank Engine—friendly and joyful—gone murderous and rated-R. Playtime and those who partake in it—creative and fun—gone unimaginative and limited to a chair in front of a computer screen. What times we live in, Mr. Franklin would say if he magically came back to life.
---
“Birthday Fun”
Written August 9th, 2004 (Excerpted)
The Beginning
Well for most of yesterday, I did nothing. However, around seven in the evening, me and my family drove up to Sunnyvale for a double birthday party of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old...When me and my family arrived there, I was formally greeted by the bratty five-year-old, but they swarmed only over a person I know that wishes to remain unnamed [my brother]. While eating, I watched him/her get tortured and wrestled to the ground by the mighty strength combined by all three little kids.
The Torture
After I finished eating, I was sure the little toddlers would come wrestle me down. Luckily, they were mesmerized by the Cat in the Hat. However, I could only get a five-minute break, 'cause soon they came to their senses and started bothering...the unnamed person! :D I sat back and waited for the party to end, while occasionally having to shoo a little kid clinging on to my feet. Eventually, they approached me innocently, climbed up by my side, and screamed loudly in my ear. As I'd stooped down in enormous pain, they'd let out their devilish high-pitched "tee-hee" giggles. THE PAIN. ;-; The parents did little to calm them; they had fallen under the little kid's curse causing them to think my torture is cute. I'd shoved them away, but they'd come back yelling nonsense they heard on TV at me. Such nonsense included: "You put a painful punishment on us!" and "You're icky. JUST KIDDING!@!/1 teeheeheehee."
The Serenity
After lots of pain, the kids quieted down a bit and broke up to roam alone. The five-year old lied down on my lap dreamily, reciting some magical fairy tale script. Then she wandered off after the three-year-old decided to visit me. He played wonderful music for from those cheap wooden pipe recorders. Amazingly, he didn't hit any high-pitched notes, but he just played the same note over and over. Then he wanted to be Robin Hood. He took his recorder, mouthpiece down, and stuffed it down his pants, probably also down his underpants if he had any. Giddily, he squealed, "I'm Robin Hood! I'm Robin Hood!" And with that, he ran off on his magical adventures, pretending to be the fairytale hero of the medieval times.
Then the five-year-old came back. D: She put up quite a show for me. It was circus time, and she mastered half-somersaults. She rolled back on her upper-shoulder, stretched her legs over her head, and stalled. Nothing really spectacular except she was wearing a skirt. The skirt rolled down to her head, giving a perfectly clear view of her undies. After trying to perform her somersaults, she ran off again to play with the three-year-old.
The Crisis
I had a few minutes of peace before the steady chatter of adults and low volume of the TV were interrupted by an ear-shattering screech, followed by deafening cries of woe. The three-year-old knocked the five-year-old's Little Mermaid balloon out of her hand and up to the top of a very high ceiling with no ledges near by. It was stuck. Little daughter came crying to her mother's arms, and Mother tried unsuccessfully to console her. Meanwhile, Father plotted the retrieval of the balloon.
The house waited in tension as the Father paced up and down the house. An idea finally hit! The father attached rolled up tape to a very long pole, and grabbed the balloon with it! Yes! He pulled it in to the second story ledge, where another person grabbed it. Little tikes were happy yet again! And we celebrated with a chocolate cake!
The Cake
The simple chocolate cake turned out to be yet another dilemma. The five-year-old wanted the all of Jasmine and Aladdin. Her father wouldn't let her cause it'd be too much of a big slice for her. She whined and she whined and whined. Finally, Father came up with another idea. He sliced the cake horizontally, serving her only the top layer with the Aladdin and Jasmine. Great! She had what she wanted!However, her piece was barely touched. She prodded the frosting with her spoon, but absolutely refused to take a bite out of Aladdin's empty head. This pissed of her dad. He tried pressuring her with, "You wanted that cake, didn't you? Didn't you? Huh? You wanted it, so why aren't you eating it? Huh? HUHH? You wanted it!!11"
Finally, looking like the five-year-old was about to burst under parental pressure, she spoon off Aladdin's and Jasmine's heads and stuff them into her mouth. The relatives cheered and clapped! "Didn't it taste gooood?" the dad asks.
The little toddler shook her head in disapproval. "No. No!" she retorted. She ended up not finishing it, like that was a surprise.
The Closing
After me and my brother watched the house's bootlegged Shrek 2 for ten minutes while the adults were talking about my awaiting braces, my parents finally decided to drive us home. It was getting pretty late. All the little tikes came up and clung to me and the unnamed person, begging us not to go, or at least take them with us. Hell no. We shook them off, and me and my family waved goodbye, spending about a minute giving our relatives farewells and pecking the little kids' cheeks (parent only thing of course :O). Finally, me and my family all escaped into our car, and we drove off.
---
I miss getting ass-kickings from my little cousins up in NorCal.
Promises Are Just Restraints
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The second one slid down my throat more smoothly than the first. I was getting better at it. But that didn’t change the fact that I hated what I was doing.
I gulped down the can of Sprite that I had ready in my other hand. When I finished, I looked at Sang and Lawrence and realized that I was already a little nauseated.
“So much for getting anything done,” laughed Lawrence.
Lawrence, Sang, and I were at Sang’s dorm room earlier tending to each of our own business. Lawrence was studying for a midterm, I was choreographing for the upcoming MCIA auditions on Monday, and Sang was making his costume for a CADC Halloween Party. When we all got bored of everything, Sang led us downstairs to a little get-together in one of his friend’s dorm room.
I got myself comfortable, made some new friends, got myself comfortable some more, danced even more sloppily than usual, and basked in all the fun and all the attention. I especially enjoyed lifting up my shorts to show and laugh at how I matched, from my scalp to my legs, the color of the bed sheets.
The fun was short-lived, however. I didn’t take long to start feeling tired and as though I would vomit if I had to do one more rond de jambe. At 4, I asked Sang to take me back to his dorm room to crash, and after an exchange that had me screaming with my last bit of energy, “OH MY GOD YOU BETTER COME VISIT ME AT MY WORK TOMORROW!” and the girls going, “OKAY WE WILL [BECAUSE YOU’RE SUCH A HOTTIE]!” (which, by the way, they didn’t, Sang), the two of us and Lawrence went back up.
Once we were back at Sang’s place, I could finally express how I was really feeling: shitty. Like I had to go Daemonicus right there all over Sang (from that one really terrible X-Files episode from Season 9). Well, not that much, as I managed not to vomit at all that night by instantly collapsing on Sang’s bed and knocking out.
I didn’t know how much time passed, but I woke up again in a dark, quiet room. Sang had startled me awake by sitting down next to me on the bed to use his laptop. Lying there silently and trying to further repress the vomit feelings, I wondered what you were doing, and I wondered what I was doing.
I woke up in the morning with a massive headache. I rolled out of bed and tried not to step on Sang, who was sleeping on the floor, and I stumbled to the bathroom. To pee, not vomit. I got back into bed and my headache kept me awake for another hour, and I would continue to feel it while dreaming. I knew this headache would become the third one that I would never forget, the second one being the random one I got in December 2006, and the first one being the first time I ever got drunk (accidentally) earlier that same year in February. I woke up again about two hours later feeling slightly better (only after taking some Tylenol), and I got breakfast with Sang. The day that ensued was very, very long.
You could say I did it because of peer pressure again, but, aside from one other additional reason, I also thought of it as of a contest against you. Did I win this contest?
---
October 31st, 2009, 6:52 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen
well shit
i woke up in a pool of my own vomit.
but im alive.
---
Nope.
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[[This excerpt is the first half of an entry that was slated to be my old blog’s final entry, but at the last minute, I decided not to publish it and write another nine entries before eventually moving to this current blog. The entry has been collecting dust for a while, and now I’ve brought back and slightly revised the first half. I still, however, can’t find the strength to even lay my eyes on the second half, so it’s not included.]]
The last time I got drunk to the point of vomiting was three years ago during my sophomore year [in high school]. I took a drink (a full Starbucks cup of jungle juice) because Vance, the guy I was trying to get over, offered it to me. It wasn’t until after I got trashed that I finally forced myself to move on. Since then, I’ve only had small drinks on two different occasions; I never got drunk again.
Until one Thursday night three weeks ago at a get-together at the apartment of Charles, one of Cameron’s friends. Trung was not present.
I later told Trung about the get-together, and as expected, he was angry. We fought. At the beginning of the year, I had expressly forbade him to do any form of drug abuse, and likewise, I had vowed the same. Trung demanded to know why I broke my vow and made a hypocrite of myself; he wanted to know why I finally succumbed to peer pressure. Peer pressure. He automatically assumed it was peer pressure.
“It was one just one shot!” I insisted. “Just one, and I didn’t vomit.”
He continued to shove the words “peer pressure” down my throat, throwing out question after question, all revolving around peer pressure.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
I gulped down the can of Sprite that I had ready in my other hand. When I finished, I looked at Sang and Lawrence and realized that I was already a little nauseated.
“So much for getting anything done,” laughed Lawrence.
Lawrence, Sang, and I were at Sang’s dorm room earlier tending to each of our own business. Lawrence was studying for a midterm, I was choreographing for the upcoming MCIA auditions on Monday, and Sang was making his costume for a CADC Halloween Party. When we all got bored of everything, Sang led us downstairs to a little get-together in one of his friend’s dorm room.
I got myself comfortable, made some new friends, got myself comfortable some more, danced even more sloppily than usual, and basked in all the fun and all the attention. I especially enjoyed lifting up my shorts to show and laugh at how I matched, from my scalp to my legs, the color of the bed sheets.
The fun was short-lived, however. I didn’t take long to start feeling tired and as though I would vomit if I had to do one more rond de jambe. At 4, I asked Sang to take me back to his dorm room to crash, and after an exchange that had me screaming with my last bit of energy, “OH MY GOD YOU BETTER COME VISIT ME AT MY WORK TOMORROW!” and the girls going, “OKAY WE WILL [BECAUSE YOU’RE SUCH A HOTTIE]!” (which, by the way, they didn’t, Sang), the two of us and Lawrence went back up.
Once we were back at Sang’s place, I could finally express how I was really feeling: shitty. Like I had to go Daemonicus right there all over Sang (from that one really terrible X-Files episode from Season 9). Well, not that much, as I managed not to vomit at all that night by instantly collapsing on Sang’s bed and knocking out.
I didn’t know how much time passed, but I woke up again in a dark, quiet room. Sang had startled me awake by sitting down next to me on the bed to use his laptop. Lying there silently and trying to further repress the vomit feelings, I wondered what you were doing, and I wondered what I was doing.
I woke up in the morning with a massive headache. I rolled out of bed and tried not to step on Sang, who was sleeping on the floor, and I stumbled to the bathroom. To pee, not vomit. I got back into bed and my headache kept me awake for another hour, and I would continue to feel it while dreaming. I knew this headache would become the third one that I would never forget, the second one being the random one I got in December 2006, and the first one being the first time I ever got drunk (accidentally) earlier that same year in February. I woke up again about two hours later feeling slightly better (only after taking some Tylenol), and I got breakfast with Sang. The day that ensued was very, very long.
You could say I did it because of peer pressure again, but, aside from one other additional reason, I also thought of it as of a contest against you. Did I win this contest?
---
October 31st, 2009, 6:52 AM
Written by Trung P. Nguyen
well shit
i woke up in a pool of my own vomit.
but im alive.
---
Nope.
---
“The Final Entry”
Written May 24th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[[This excerpt is the first half of an entry that was slated to be my old blog’s final entry, but at the last minute, I decided not to publish it and write another nine entries before eventually moving to this current blog. The entry has been collecting dust for a while, and now I’ve brought back and slightly revised the first half. I still, however, can’t find the strength to even lay my eyes on the second half, so it’s not included.]]
The last time I got drunk to the point of vomiting was three years ago during my sophomore year [in high school]. I took a drink (a full Starbucks cup of jungle juice) because Vance, the guy I was trying to get over, offered it to me. It wasn’t until after I got trashed that I finally forced myself to move on. Since then, I’ve only had small drinks on two different occasions; I never got drunk again.
Until one Thursday night three weeks ago at a get-together at the apartment of Charles, one of Cameron’s friends. Trung was not present.
I later told Trung about the get-together, and as expected, he was angry. We fought. At the beginning of the year, I had expressly forbade him to do any form of drug abuse, and likewise, I had vowed the same. Trung demanded to know why I broke my vow and made a hypocrite of myself; he wanted to know why I finally succumbed to peer pressure. Peer pressure. He automatically assumed it was peer pressure.
“It was one just one shot!” I insisted. “Just one, and I didn’t vomit.”
He continued to shove the words “peer pressure” down my throat, throwing out question after question, all revolving around peer pressure.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP TRUNG. You’re not the all-knowing smart person you think you are. This has nothing to do with peer pressure, so again, shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit.”
That silenced Trung for a few minutes, but then, he began prying again.
I wasn’t in the mood to dive into the reason. “Things have changed,” I stated. Trung further tried to get me to elaborate, but no, I left it at that.
Tags:
dancing,
fall 2009,
flashback,
guestwriter,
relationships,
repost,
sang,
socal,
trung
Stoic
Friday, October 23, 2009
“The Ides of March”
Written March 16th, 2008 (Excerpted)
I parked in Trung’s driveway and shot out of my car. Trung greeted me at his door, but we didn’t waste any time for anything else. I rushed up the stairs to Trung’s computer and found that the Internet was still logged onto Trung’s UCSD application account. There was a huge “Congratulations!” plastered on the page.
I sat down in the chair, logged out of Trung’s account, and logged onto mine, being extra careful to not make any typos that would further delay when I would find out the results.
While the page was loading, I turned to Trung, who was beside me now, and pulled him in closely. Ivan stood silently in the doorway, watching.
The page loaded. Trung and I immediately glued our eyes to the screen and began reading.
I didn’t have to spend a lot of time reading. The key words were already jumping out at me. I fell back into the chair. Trung was still reading the page.
“Trung,” I began, “You can stop reading. I didn’t get in. We’re not going to the same college.”
---
Six hours remained until the CADC roster would appear on the website. I still hadn’t received a call, and it was driving me crazy. I didn’t want to do anything all day; fortunately I didn’t have to really until I had my only class of the day from 6 to 7:20, social dance. I was thinking of telling the teacher that I was sick and highly contagious (which I really was) and sitting out, but I decided that it would be better to try to get my mind off the auditions at the cost of several other girls’ health.
When my turn came to dance with Hillary, one of the CADC captains, I knew that CADC wasn’t the subject to bring up. We chatted and bantered as we normally would, but there was still that sense of awkwardness that came from something that both of us tried to not bring up even though it was at the top of our minds.
I thought maybe, since three CADC auditionees shared the same class with one of the captains, if any one of us made it then maybe after class, that captain and the rest of the cabinet would come and congratulate us in person. But that didn’t happen. No one popped out from around the corner and Kevin, Alfonso, and I walked out of that class solemnly, still waiting for our calls.
At 7:30, we sat down at dinner and ate in silence. The anticipation was killing us; I could see it in Kevin and Alfonso’s faces and I could feel it in mine. Alfonso explained to us that he heard Hillary telling Jojo in class that she felt “bad for them,” and we debated what that possibly could have meant. Alfonso convinced that she was referring to us, and that she felt bad because the judges had chosen none of us.
“Fuck!” he yelled out. “What did we do wrong? The next time I see Hillary, I just want to ask her what we did wrong.”
Alfonso was normally a chill guy, and I really hated seeing him like this. I had always been really terrible at cheering people up, but I tried something. ““CADC likes to screw around with the people they accept,” I said. “Maybe Hillary wanted you to hear to mess with your mind. Or maybe you heard her wrong.”
Alfonso didn’t respond.
“Plus, you know David Lee? The really really good short Asian guy with the mohawk who’s definitely going to get in?” I asked. “I’ve been regularly checking his Facebook—stalkerish, I know, but whatever—he still hasn’t gotten a call yet either. So CADC is still in the process of making their calls. Don’t lose hope.”
Don’t lose hope. That sounded weird coming from me. I knew that out of the three of us, I was the least likely to get in, but at the same time, I needed as much comfort as Kevin and Alfonso did.
After dinner, Kevin left us to go study, and Alfonso and I met up with Asian John to attend the MCIA workshop at the Mesa Parking Garage. I also called up Sang to come join us. At the workshops, however, I could barely concentrate or put in any energy. Every five minutes or so I’d pull out my cell phone to make sure that I had reception and that I didn’t miss any calls. It was like I could only put my energy into that. I looked over at Alfonso and he looked back, and we both shared an understanding that this was not the night to learn a piece. He went over to the corner by the staircase, and I joined him. Asian John and Sang followed.
After the workshop finished around 9:30, we stood around outside in front of the garage discussing what to do. Alfonso was going to meet up with Kevin and some others at Panyia’s place at CV since our apartments at VDC and VDC Norte were going through a schedule power outage. Earlier during the day I had asked Sang to come wait with all of us and other CADC people for our phone calls, and he sounded excited about that. However, when I later met up with Kevin and Alfonso for class, Kevin expressed that he would rather not see any of the newly accepted dancers. I understood, but I didn’t want to abandon Sang, especially after dragging him out to the MCIA workshops. And plus, for the sake of my sanity, I had to be around someone happy and someone who wasn’t freaking the fuck out about CADC. Maybe it would make time pass by less slowly and less agonizingly.
Once the plans were settled, Alfonso and I shook hands and nodded at each other.
“Good luck, Alfonso.” I still had hope for Alfonso, so I thought of this moment as shaking hands and saying goodbye to the old, non-CADC Alfonso. Tomorrow when I would see him, he’d already be a new person.
Asian John followed Alfonso, and Sang and I went back to his dorm to chill. I sat on his bed as he checked his email at his desk. Being the curious hound I was, I tried to milk out every little detail about Sang’s acceptance phone call from CADC. I wanted to understand it enough so that I could live the experience like he did, but Sang fed me scraps. He only shrugged and smiled modestly.
“Fuck Sang! You made it into FUCKING CADC! You’re all going to have a formal dinner Thursday tomorrow and meet your family for the rest of the entire school year and possibly your entire college life! Why aren’t you more excited?” I demanded.
“I got a midterm Friday morning,” he responded coolly.
I sighed and shook my head. If I were him, I’d still be jumping off the walls and shitting in the showers like I was the shit. But instead, here I was. And here Sang was.
Around 10:15, I asked to use his computer to check David Lee’s facebook, and my heart raced as I read posts on his walls. There were congratulatory posts from his friends. Recent. Within the last fifteen minutes. I immediately texted Alfonso to tell him that David Lee just got in, and then I waited. If there was a call coming for me, it’d be coming within an hour.
11:15 came, and I was losing hope. Sang had gone from telling me, “Don’t worry, there’s still time. You’ll get a call!” to “Auditions for MCIA are coming up!”
I lied across his bed and he handed me a TV remote. I flipped through some channels and was temporarily excited to see Scully in big circular lens glasses and holding one of those big bulky 1990 cordless phones. It was the episode with the cockroaches. I watched as Sang recounted details about the drama that Funksters had last year. I don’t know how that came up; maybe he was telling me all that as a way cheering me up. I wouldn’t have to deal with the drama associated with dance crews. Big woohoo.
Around 11:40, I checked my email once again, not expecting much. But a certain email caught my eye. I read the title out loud to Sang: “To CADC Auditionee.”
That was it. I knew I wasn’t in. It definitely wasn’t an acceptance email, because they would only accept dancers by phone. And plus, there was something about the sound of “auditionee.” That eeeeeee sound. It sounded to calm and unexciting. I didn’t hesitate to open the email and read it, as I already knew what was inside. Yep, one fat paragraph of a rejection masked by apologies and cheap comfort words.
Sang waited for my response, but I only shrugged and forced a meek smile.
Examining the email again, I noticed that I could see a list of all of the people who received the email. I skimmed through looking for Kevin and Alfonso’s emails, and I was dismayed to see both of them in the list. I called Alfonso to tell him the news, and I kept it short because I didn’t know how to comfort him. The truth was the truth, and I had always been bad at masking it.
After I hung up, I leaned back and continued watching X-Files.
“Brian, how are you feeling?”
I thought about Sang’s question for a bit. Then I thought about it hard. I looked deep inside myself for an answer, for some soul. In my mind I flashed through three separate times that I should have cried this summer but refused to. That was when I made a stunning revelation that struck me harder than the actual rejection from CADC.
I furrowed my eyebrows and shook my head.
“I don’t feel sad,” I began. “I don’t feel anything at all. Nothing.” I scoffed in disbelief. Nothing.
I had stifled my emotions for so long that I couldn’t even recognize them anymore. Something was wrong with me.
Written March 16th, 2008 (Excerpted)
I parked in Trung’s driveway and shot out of my car. Trung greeted me at his door, but we didn’t waste any time for anything else. I rushed up the stairs to Trung’s computer and found that the Internet was still logged onto Trung’s UCSD application account. There was a huge “Congratulations!” plastered on the page.
I sat down in the chair, logged out of Trung’s account, and logged onto mine, being extra careful to not make any typos that would further delay when I would find out the results.
While the page was loading, I turned to Trung, who was beside me now, and pulled him in closely. Ivan stood silently in the doorway, watching.
The page loaded. Trung and I immediately glued our eyes to the screen and began reading.
I didn’t have to spend a lot of time reading. The key words were already jumping out at me. I fell back into the chair. Trung was still reading the page.
“Trung,” I began, “You can stop reading. I didn’t get in. We’re not going to the same college.”
---
Six hours remained until the CADC roster would appear on the website. I still hadn’t received a call, and it was driving me crazy. I didn’t want to do anything all day; fortunately I didn’t have to really until I had my only class of the day from 6 to 7:20, social dance. I was thinking of telling the teacher that I was sick and highly contagious (which I really was) and sitting out, but I decided that it would be better to try to get my mind off the auditions at the cost of several other girls’ health.
When my turn came to dance with Hillary, one of the CADC captains, I knew that CADC wasn’t the subject to bring up. We chatted and bantered as we normally would, but there was still that sense of awkwardness that came from something that both of us tried to not bring up even though it was at the top of our minds.
I thought maybe, since three CADC auditionees shared the same class with one of the captains, if any one of us made it then maybe after class, that captain and the rest of the cabinet would come and congratulate us in person. But that didn’t happen. No one popped out from around the corner and Kevin, Alfonso, and I walked out of that class solemnly, still waiting for our calls.
At 7:30, we sat down at dinner and ate in silence. The anticipation was killing us; I could see it in Kevin and Alfonso’s faces and I could feel it in mine. Alfonso explained to us that he heard Hillary telling Jojo in class that she felt “bad for them,” and we debated what that possibly could have meant. Alfonso convinced that she was referring to us, and that she felt bad because the judges had chosen none of us.
“Fuck!” he yelled out. “What did we do wrong? The next time I see Hillary, I just want to ask her what we did wrong.”
Alfonso was normally a chill guy, and I really hated seeing him like this. I had always been really terrible at cheering people up, but I tried something. ““CADC likes to screw around with the people they accept,” I said. “Maybe Hillary wanted you to hear to mess with your mind. Or maybe you heard her wrong.”
Alfonso didn’t respond.
“Plus, you know David Lee? The really really good short Asian guy with the mohawk who’s definitely going to get in?” I asked. “I’ve been regularly checking his Facebook—stalkerish, I know, but whatever—he still hasn’t gotten a call yet either. So CADC is still in the process of making their calls. Don’t lose hope.”
Don’t lose hope. That sounded weird coming from me. I knew that out of the three of us, I was the least likely to get in, but at the same time, I needed as much comfort as Kevin and Alfonso did.
After dinner, Kevin left us to go study, and Alfonso and I met up with Asian John to attend the MCIA workshop at the Mesa Parking Garage. I also called up Sang to come join us. At the workshops, however, I could barely concentrate or put in any energy. Every five minutes or so I’d pull out my cell phone to make sure that I had reception and that I didn’t miss any calls. It was like I could only put my energy into that. I looked over at Alfonso and he looked back, and we both shared an understanding that this was not the night to learn a piece. He went over to the corner by the staircase, and I joined him. Asian John and Sang followed.
After the workshop finished around 9:30, we stood around outside in front of the garage discussing what to do. Alfonso was going to meet up with Kevin and some others at Panyia’s place at CV since our apartments at VDC and VDC Norte were going through a schedule power outage. Earlier during the day I had asked Sang to come wait with all of us and other CADC people for our phone calls, and he sounded excited about that. However, when I later met up with Kevin and Alfonso for class, Kevin expressed that he would rather not see any of the newly accepted dancers. I understood, but I didn’t want to abandon Sang, especially after dragging him out to the MCIA workshops. And plus, for the sake of my sanity, I had to be around someone happy and someone who wasn’t freaking the fuck out about CADC. Maybe it would make time pass by less slowly and less agonizingly.
Once the plans were settled, Alfonso and I shook hands and nodded at each other.
“Good luck, Alfonso.” I still had hope for Alfonso, so I thought of this moment as shaking hands and saying goodbye to the old, non-CADC Alfonso. Tomorrow when I would see him, he’d already be a new person.
Asian John followed Alfonso, and Sang and I went back to his dorm to chill. I sat on his bed as he checked his email at his desk. Being the curious hound I was, I tried to milk out every little detail about Sang’s acceptance phone call from CADC. I wanted to understand it enough so that I could live the experience like he did, but Sang fed me scraps. He only shrugged and smiled modestly.
“Fuck Sang! You made it into FUCKING CADC! You’re all going to have a formal dinner Thursday tomorrow and meet your family for the rest of the entire school year and possibly your entire college life! Why aren’t you more excited?” I demanded.
“I got a midterm Friday morning,” he responded coolly.
I sighed and shook my head. If I were him, I’d still be jumping off the walls and shitting in the showers like I was the shit. But instead, here I was. And here Sang was.
Around 10:15, I asked to use his computer to check David Lee’s facebook, and my heart raced as I read posts on his walls. There were congratulatory posts from his friends. Recent. Within the last fifteen minutes. I immediately texted Alfonso to tell him that David Lee just got in, and then I waited. If there was a call coming for me, it’d be coming within an hour.
11:15 came, and I was losing hope. Sang had gone from telling me, “Don’t worry, there’s still time. You’ll get a call!” to “Auditions for MCIA are coming up!”
I lied across his bed and he handed me a TV remote. I flipped through some channels and was temporarily excited to see Scully in big circular lens glasses and holding one of those big bulky 1990 cordless phones. It was the episode with the cockroaches. I watched as Sang recounted details about the drama that Funksters had last year. I don’t know how that came up; maybe he was telling me all that as a way cheering me up. I wouldn’t have to deal with the drama associated with dance crews. Big woohoo.
Around 11:40, I checked my email once again, not expecting much. But a certain email caught my eye. I read the title out loud to Sang: “To CADC Auditionee.”
That was it. I knew I wasn’t in. It definitely wasn’t an acceptance email, because they would only accept dancers by phone. And plus, there was something about the sound of “auditionee.” That eeeeeee sound. It sounded to calm and unexciting. I didn’t hesitate to open the email and read it, as I already knew what was inside. Yep, one fat paragraph of a rejection masked by apologies and cheap comfort words.
Sang waited for my response, but I only shrugged and forced a meek smile.
Examining the email again, I noticed that I could see a list of all of the people who received the email. I skimmed through looking for Kevin and Alfonso’s emails, and I was dismayed to see both of them in the list. I called Alfonso to tell him the news, and I kept it short because I didn’t know how to comfort him. The truth was the truth, and I had always been bad at masking it.
After I hung up, I leaned back and continued watching X-Files.
“Brian, how are you feeling?”
I thought about Sang’s question for a bit. Then I thought about it hard. I looked deep inside myself for an answer, for some soul. In my mind I flashed through three separate times that I should have cried this summer but refused to. That was when I made a stunning revelation that struck me harder than the actual rejection from CADC.
I furrowed my eyebrows and shook my head.
“I don’t feel sad,” I began. “I don’t feel anything at all. Nothing.” I scoffed in disbelief. Nothing.
I had stifled my emotions for so long that I couldn’t even recognize them anymore. Something was wrong with me.
Empathy
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Six hours remained until the CADC roster would appear on the website. He still hadn’t received a call, and it was driving him crazy. All he wanted to do was to sit down and wait for it, but now here he was in his Social Dance class, a class that he shared with his Kevin, me, Jojo, a girl who was already in CADC, and Hillary, one of CADC’s team captains.
As he stood next to Hillary waiting for instructions from the teacher, he tried so hard to get into Hillary’s mind and probe it with questions. Is the cabinet still deciding on who to choose? Do you already know the roster? Am I on the roster?
Standing next to her, he instead thought that he might’ve accidentally overheard her telling Jojo how she felt “bad for them.”
His heart sank, and he felt his head run hot as it filled with more questions. Did I hear her right? Who’s she referring to? Kevin, Brian, and me?
The teacher introduced a few news spins, and so, trying to concentrate, he shoved the questions as far back into his mind as he could.
Some time during that class though, he came to accept that the possibility of not getting into CADC was very, very real. As he, Kevin, and I ate in the dining commons after class around 7:30, he explained what he thought he overheard and yelled out, “Fuck! What did we do wrong? The next time I see Hillary, I just want to ask her what we did wrong.”
He waited on us for an answer. There was silence, and then a meek proposition. “CADC likes to screw around with the people they accept,” I said. “Maybe Hillary wanted you to hear to mess with your mind. Or maybe you heard her wrong.”
No, he knew he heard her right.
“Plus, you know David Lee? The really really good short Asian guy with the mohawk who’s definitely going to get in? I’ve been regularly checking his Facebook—stalkerish, I know, but whatever—he still hasn’t gotten a call yet either. So CADC is still in the process of making their calls. Don’t lose hope.”
He looked at me like it was one of the very few things I had ever said that made sense. How strange it was, he thought, to hear “don’t lose hope” from me when that was what he was telling me two weeks ago. So maybe there was still a reason to believe.
After dinner, he and I left Kevin and met up with Asian John to attend a free dance workshop from MCIA, another one of UCI’s dance teams. The main goal was to distract himself, to pass another hour feeling as little pain as possible.
But he couldn’t get into the choreo. It required too much energy and swagger, something that he didn’t have this night. He looked over at me, and we caught each other’s stares. Seeing my empty face and lack of energy, he could tell that I wasn’t in the mood either. He went to the corner and sat down by the staircase, and Asian John and I followed. My friend Sang came over to joined us.
He looked up at Sang and wasn’t too sure what to feel about him. Sang already got a call from CADC while he didn’t. Should he be envious of Sang? Jealous? Angry? Happy? At the very least, he shook Sang’s hand and told him, “Congratulations, man.”
When the workshop finished around 9:30, he, Asian John, Sang, and I stood around outside in the cold discussing what to do. There was a scheduled blackout from 9 to 6 AM at VDC and VDC Norte, the apartments. He had planned on going to Panyia’s place, where there was power and where he was going to meet back up with Kevin and several other friends waiting for their calls from CADC. I, however, seemed intent on going back to Sang’s dorm, so he extended his hand out to me, ready to bid farewell. As I reached out and shook his hand, he nodded at me, and I nodded back.
“Good luck, Alfonso,” I told him.
He and Asian John turned away from Sang and me, and we walked our separate ways.
Shortly after getting to Panyia’s place, he got a text from me saying that David Lee just got an acceptance phone call from CADC. This gave him and Kevin yet more reason to hope, to get excited, and to get nervous. Any one of them could be getting a phone call too in the next few minutes. He prayed for it.
When more minutes passed without hearing his phone ring, he further tried to rationalize why he hadn’t gotten a phone call yet. It could be one of CADC’s pranks: to make two or three more calls five minutes right before putting up the roster. But as the hour hand crawled closer toward 12, the prayers and the rationalizations grew weaker, making more room now for heartacheand self-criticism.
Around 11:45, he had already nearly finished the process of mourning and reached acceptance when his phone rang. With one last shred of hope remaining, he leaped up and reached for his phone, his heart racing. However, it wasn’t the phone call he was hoping for, and it wasn’t the phone call that he would want to hear. As he picked up his phone, he was disappointed to see that the phone call wasn’t coming from anyone on CADC.
“Hey Brian, what’s up?”
“Did you check your email?” I asked him.
“No, why?”
“I got the email,” I sighed. “The rejection email.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“And, well, you know how when the sender sends out a mass email and you can see a list of all the emails he sent it to?”
Fuck, fuck no. He wish he didn’t know what I was talking about, but he saw where this was going. “Yeah,” he answered.
“Your email is on that list. And so is Kevin’s.”
I said it like I was saying something as typical as, “I bought some milk from Albertsons.” I delivered the information so nonchalantly that he didn’t know how to react with anything more than just, “Oh, alright. Thanks for telling me.”
“Sorry man, so I’ll see ya tomorrow or at the next dance workshop?”
“Yeah, sure,” he answered. I hung up, and Alfonso knew that was it. No CADC this year.
At the beginning of the last school year, Alfonso heard that KASA, the Korean American Student Association, was in search of freshmen to join their club and compete in a freshmen dance-off of several Korean clubs from different schools around SoCal. KASA had to put together a dance team comprised only of first-years, and they had to perform a six-minute set. This was just like any other dance competition, except anyone could dance in the team as long as they auditioned for their part and got casted. Alfonso was just getting into breakdancing, but he thought he might give choreo a try. And he was glad he did.
Through KASA, Alfonso got a sense of what being on an actual dance team was like. He met new friends, he learned and cleaned pieces, and he auditioned and got casted for them. As the competition came closer, the directors scheduled “hell week” practices, and that was when he really bonded with his KASA teammates. They practically lived in a parking garage as they practiced through the night until the sun came up. They barely got any sleep, and together they shared their pains and miseries and questioned why the hell they were putting themselves through all this. But in the end, it was worth it when their team won second place.
That sense of family. Seeing all your effort go somewhere. That feeling of performing on stage. The sense of victory (and slight disappointment) when hearing his team name called out. That only came in small doses with KASA, as the KASA dance team existed solely for this once-a-year dance-off competition. Alfonso knew he wanted more. And he was going to do whatever it took to get it.
“I always thought that those who succeeded were the ones who worked hard...I guess it’s still not my turn to shine.”
“The beginning of a whole new year to improve...now where do I start?”
As he stood next to Hillary waiting for instructions from the teacher, he tried so hard to get into Hillary’s mind and probe it with questions. Is the cabinet still deciding on who to choose? Do you already know the roster? Am I on the roster?
Standing next to her, he instead thought that he might’ve accidentally overheard her telling Jojo how she felt “bad for them.”
His heart sank, and he felt his head run hot as it filled with more questions. Did I hear her right? Who’s she referring to? Kevin, Brian, and me?
The teacher introduced a few news spins, and so, trying to concentrate, he shoved the questions as far back into his mind as he could.
Some time during that class though, he came to accept that the possibility of not getting into CADC was very, very real. As he, Kevin, and I ate in the dining commons after class around 7:30, he explained what he thought he overheard and yelled out, “Fuck! What did we do wrong? The next time I see Hillary, I just want to ask her what we did wrong.”
He waited on us for an answer. There was silence, and then a meek proposition. “CADC likes to screw around with the people they accept,” I said. “Maybe Hillary wanted you to hear to mess with your mind. Or maybe you heard her wrong.”
No, he knew he heard her right.
“Plus, you know David Lee? The really really good short Asian guy with the mohawk who’s definitely going to get in? I’ve been regularly checking his Facebook—stalkerish, I know, but whatever—he still hasn’t gotten a call yet either. So CADC is still in the process of making their calls. Don’t lose hope.”
He looked at me like it was one of the very few things I had ever said that made sense. How strange it was, he thought, to hear “don’t lose hope” from me when that was what he was telling me two weeks ago. So maybe there was still a reason to believe.
After dinner, he and I left Kevin and met up with Asian John to attend a free dance workshop from MCIA, another one of UCI’s dance teams. The main goal was to distract himself, to pass another hour feeling as little pain as possible.
But he couldn’t get into the choreo. It required too much energy and swagger, something that he didn’t have this night. He looked over at me, and we caught each other’s stares. Seeing my empty face and lack of energy, he could tell that I wasn’t in the mood either. He went to the corner and sat down by the staircase, and Asian John and I followed. My friend Sang came over to joined us.
He looked up at Sang and wasn’t too sure what to feel about him. Sang already got a call from CADC while he didn’t. Should he be envious of Sang? Jealous? Angry? Happy? At the very least, he shook Sang’s hand and told him, “Congratulations, man.”
When the workshop finished around 9:30, he, Asian John, Sang, and I stood around outside in the cold discussing what to do. There was a scheduled blackout from 9 to 6 AM at VDC and VDC Norte, the apartments. He had planned on going to Panyia’s place, where there was power and where he was going to meet back up with Kevin and several other friends waiting for their calls from CADC. I, however, seemed intent on going back to Sang’s dorm, so he extended his hand out to me, ready to bid farewell. As I reached out and shook his hand, he nodded at me, and I nodded back.
“Good luck, Alfonso,” I told him.
He and Asian John turned away from Sang and me, and we walked our separate ways.
Shortly after getting to Panyia’s place, he got a text from me saying that David Lee just got an acceptance phone call from CADC. This gave him and Kevin yet more reason to hope, to get excited, and to get nervous. Any one of them could be getting a phone call too in the next few minutes. He prayed for it.
When more minutes passed without hearing his phone ring, he further tried to rationalize why he hadn’t gotten a phone call yet. It could be one of CADC’s pranks: to make two or three more calls five minutes right before putting up the roster. But as the hour hand crawled closer toward 12, the prayers and the rationalizations grew weaker, making more room now for heartacheand self-criticism.
Around 11:45, he had already nearly finished the process of mourning and reached acceptance when his phone rang. With one last shred of hope remaining, he leaped up and reached for his phone, his heart racing. However, it wasn’t the phone call he was hoping for, and it wasn’t the phone call that he would want to hear. As he picked up his phone, he was disappointed to see that the phone call wasn’t coming from anyone on CADC.
“Hey Brian, what’s up?”
“Did you check your email?” I asked him.
“No, why?”
“I got the email,” I sighed. “The rejection email.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
“And, well, you know how when the sender sends out a mass email and you can see a list of all the emails he sent it to?”
Fuck, fuck no. He wish he didn’t know what I was talking about, but he saw where this was going. “Yeah,” he answered.
“Your email is on that list. And so is Kevin’s.”
I said it like I was saying something as typical as, “I bought some milk from Albertsons.” I delivered the information so nonchalantly that he didn’t know how to react with anything more than just, “Oh, alright. Thanks for telling me.”
“Sorry man, so I’ll see ya tomorrow or at the next dance workshop?”
“Yeah, sure,” he answered. I hung up, and Alfonso knew that was it. No CADC this year.
At the beginning of the last school year, Alfonso heard that KASA, the Korean American Student Association, was in search of freshmen to join their club and compete in a freshmen dance-off of several Korean clubs from different schools around SoCal. KASA had to put together a dance team comprised only of first-years, and they had to perform a six-minute set. This was just like any other dance competition, except anyone could dance in the team as long as they auditioned for their part and got casted. Alfonso was just getting into breakdancing, but he thought he might give choreo a try. And he was glad he did.
Through KASA, Alfonso got a sense of what being on an actual dance team was like. He met new friends, he learned and cleaned pieces, and he auditioned and got casted for them. As the competition came closer, the directors scheduled “hell week” practices, and that was when he really bonded with his KASA teammates. They practically lived in a parking garage as they practiced through the night until the sun came up. They barely got any sleep, and together they shared their pains and miseries and questioned why the hell they were putting themselves through all this. But in the end, it was worth it when their team won second place.
That sense of family. Seeing all your effort go somewhere. That feeling of performing on stage. The sense of victory (and slight disappointment) when hearing his team name called out. That only came in small doses with KASA, as the KASA dance team existed solely for this once-a-year dance-off competition. Alfonso knew he wanted more. And he was going to do whatever it took to get it.
“I always thought that those who succeeded were the ones who worked hard...I guess it’s still not my turn to shine.”
“The beginning of a whole new year to improve...now where do I start?”
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