One B, one C, and one C-. I don’t even wanna see what GPA that amounts too. Once again, I find myself questioning, why the hell do I attend UCI? I want to be a high school English teacher, something that I can go to a state college for. Okay, so maybe I study at a UC for the UC-standard quality of education. But who am I kidding? It may be a prestigious education, but at the same time it’s one that I’ve all too often slept through, not just this quarter but also all throughout my first and second year.
I tell myself and try to believe that I’m meant to go to UCI for a reason, the only one I can deduce so far being to dance. And this quarter was exactly about that. Dancing, yes, this was a quarter for dancing I tell myself. My mom dropped $3975.75 so I could spend the last eleven weeks dancing. Something tells me I could’ve gone to an actual dance school for a hell lot cheaper price, one that wasn’t subjected to quarterly percentage increases. I could’ve actually studied this quarter. I could’ve not gone to UCI. I could’ve...done something else.
As I sit in my chair and brood over my grades, I reflect on all I’ve done this past fall quarter, both all the good things and all the bad things. Everything about this quarter: the grades, the dancing, the guys, the hook-ups, the friendships, the parents, and yes, the lies—everything is coming together in a way that I can hardly understand, but the one thing I do understand is that everything is coming together over a common denominator, one that has been there for years but whose presence I’ve only recently realized: blogging.
Through blogging, I’ve learned how to detach myself from the person I am and the things I have done. That person becomes a character, and I become his Writer. I’ve come to realize that that kind of detachment is dangerous.
What was I thinking the whole time when I was in that bathroom, getting my dick sucked by Shaun and Tyrone? Yes, I was thinking about Trung, but I was thinking about something else too. I was thinking, Damn, this is going to be an epic blog entry. My mind seriously buzzed with all the potential storylines I could produce from this god damn threesome. I really could’ve walked out of that threesome a lot sooner, but I told myself, no, the direction that this and the falling out that I’d definitely have with Linh would take my blog in a direction more suited for this season’s main focus: Lying. And that paved the way for my confession to Trung that I cheated on him five times and the ultimate reveal of why we broke up, a question that had been repeatedly brought up but left unanswered on this blog ever since it started. Before this blog ended, I knew the question had to be answered if I wanted that “perfect story,” and I knew something in the present would have to force the answer to the surface. I just wasn’t aware of when and what that present event would be until the threesome.
Essentially, the threesome had to happen—fated, not by a divine power that maintains the natural order to the cosmos, but rather, by myself as the Writer, who maintains the narrative coherence to the universe contained within my life’s so-called “literary narrative,” one in which I, as the character, am nothing more than the Writer’s creation: my words, actions, and motivations written to serve a higher purpose of conveying some kind of theme.
Is it all worth it, fulling this fate? I ask myself. Are the sacrifices worth making just to extrapolate every point of a theme?
No. The story isn’t worth it anymore. It’s time to quit.
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
A Writer’s Creation
Monday, December 20, 2010
Tags:
dancing,
fall 2010,
norcal,
relationships,
schoolwork,
spirituality,
trung
My Testimony: Part 2
Saturday, October 16, 2010
“God Loves You” (continued)
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
9 o’clock came pretty quickly. I tossed my apron into the hamper, clocked out, said goodnight to the chefs and my coworkers, and I walked out the door. The girl and her three friends were in front sitting on a ledge. I smiled and greeted them, and they finally introduced themselves. The girl who God supposedly spoke to was Cindy.
They all talked a little bit about their backgrounds: They were third years, didn’t know any first-years really, weren’t part of any kind of on-campus religious club. And I talked a little bit about mine.
“Do you believe in God?” Cindy asked.
“I used to not to,” I answered. “But, you guys caught me in this period where I just don’t know anymore. You guys have come at a really strange time for me, not just because of that. You know how you said I needed to be healed? You’re right, and I don’t know how you’re right.”
They asked me to tell them about it, and, surprising myself, I confessed my family’s situation to them. “My dad’s nephew, who lived in Vietnam, died in a motorcycle accident. He was nineteen, my age. It happened last Tuesday. My mom told me through email. She wrote that the loss is really hard for my dad, and in all their years of marriage, she has never seen him cry until now.”
I paused to reflect, and then I continued, “I still haven’t talked to them on the phone about it. I owe them a call, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. Among all this stress about finals and a research paper and so many other things, calling them has been on the very back of my mind.”
“My condolences to you and your family. God will help you all through this,” Cindy reassured me. “Would you like us to pray for you now?”
“Alright, I’m almost ready,” I said, “but first, can you explain to me again how exactly God talked to you, Cindy?”
She was happy to. “We were sitting upstairs in the dining hall eating. And when we prayed, God just spoke to me. He said a guy in glasses who worked here needed to be healed, both him and his family. And he told me your name, Brian.”
Guy in glasses... Guy. In. Glasses. This phrase struck me somehow.
“Are you ready?” Cindy asked.
“I am.” Each of the four laid a hand on my shoulders, two on each side. I watched them close their eyes and slowly drop their heads down; I followed suite and listened to their prayers, but sometimes I couldn’t help but distract myself. Guy in glasses. Why couldn’t I get that phrase out of my mind?
A sentence of their prayer stuck out to me: “God loves you. He created you the way you are.”
Guy in glasses. I couldn’t get it out of my mind because it definitely rung a bell.
“You may be confused about where you are in your life now, and you may be afraid of the future. But remember that God is there for you, to see you through all this. Let him open your heart to new possibilities, new adventures. Do not be afraid of the future.”
Motherfucking guy in the motherfucking glasses. Where the hell did I know this phrase from?!
“God is waiting for you, and he will happily come to you when you are ready to open your heart to God.”
They stopped. I open my eyes. “Is that it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I couldn’t deny it, I felt somewhat calmer and at ease, except for the, well, you know, GUY IN GLASSES.
They then asked me if I wanted to convert, to which I said that I wasn’t ready. I was still skeptical. Cindy repeated the bit about how God would welcome me with open arms when I decided it was time to “receive Jesus.”
Before parting ways, I declined exchanging numbers, but we agreed to find each other on facebook. I shook each of their hands and thanked them again for the prayer, and we slowly broke our circle to head back to our homes.
---
Walden and I arrived back at the Fullerton apartment with a pound of “XXX spicy” shrimp (“porno spicy” shrimp, as Walden likes to call it) and a pint of gumbo from Boiling Crab. We spread it all out over the kitchen table and dug in with our fingers. The gumbo was delicious, but porno spicy shrimp was disappointingly not spicy. Still all good though.
“So,” I said, “ever since my dance interview yesterday, I’ve wanted to write a thank you note on Facebook to some of my friends who have really helped me with my dancing, but I’m not sure if I should do it.”
“Why not?” Walden asked.
“I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“What are you talking about? How’d the interview go yesterday?”
“I don’t know, Walden. I think it went pretty well, but I’d say that I’m still as likely as I am unlikely to get onto the team. Right now I’m just going crazy and hating life because the final roster won’t be posted until this Sunday, the 17th.”
“Why are you hating life? You should be happy and proud. You got an interview! Damn, you knocked like fifty other people out!”
“I don’t know, Walden. I’ve been trying to believe that the interview means something, but it’s hard for me. I’ve only been able to focus on the wait, which has been torture, and sometimes I feel like I would’ve been better off without ever getting that interview. At this point, I’m so close. I have to go all the way or else everything leading up to this will have been in vain.”
“Can’t you just appreciate that you’ve made it this far?”
“I don’t know. I just doubt myself. Full of doubts, like always.” I took a sip from my gumbo.
“Brian,” Walden said as he licked the spicy sauce off his fingers, “you are a great dancer. The fact that I’m saying it and the fact that you got an interview are enough to make it true. You can believe it. Believe me.”
“I guess...my problem is I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe others. I don’t believe, period.”
“It’s time to start believing Brian. You’ve grown so much since I first saw you in my summer intensive session. Why don’t you believe?”
“Because every time I believe,” I paused to wipe some gumbo off my hands, “I get fucked over. I get hurt.”
---
“God Loves You” (continued)
Finally understanding the significance of the “guy in glasses,” I retreated back into the dining common’s kitchen and strode straight to the conveyor belt where all the students dropped off their dirty dishes. On the wall next to the belt hung a bunch of feedback cards. Why were the feedback cards my main interest?
Last week, despaired over the little amount of hours I had been working each week, I asked my friend Mary to get a feedback card, write something nice about me and demand that I get more hours.
I searched the wall for that feedback card, and it didn’t take me long to locate it. And there it was in the first sentence of Mary’s comments: “The guy with glasses and earrings who was cleaning tables today was really good!” Okay...However, Mary didn’t write my name. How could’ve Cindy figured out my name?
The next section of the feedback card, under “Our [Manager’s] response,” had the answer. Again, the first sentence gave it away. “Brian is our dining room attendant...”
I gazed. I gazed long. And hard. At the card. This was it. This had to be the answer, no doubt about it. It was how they knew my name, and how they knew what I looked like. But then again, to go up to a stranger and start getting all God-crazy and extremely personal with them, that is pretty damn ballsy. Cindy was so forward, so unashamed. I saw it in her: She definitely believed in God. But did God really tell her about me? If I was her, and if God didn’t actually talk to me, I would not have the balls to pursue a name that I read in a dining hall’s feedback section. But maybe she was just fucking crazy.
And the whole thing about my family needing healing? Well, that was probably just her sales pitch. I mean, don’t like ninety-nine percent of college students have some kind of problem with their family? For me, it was probably more obvious that I did. I was after all working at my school’s dining common. My posture probably doesn’t convey positive messages about myself either. At the very least, Cindy probably thought that she could hit a poverty nerve in my family. (And hell, there is one. My dad’s been laid off and out of a job for a while, and I’m working at Pippin because my parents can’t afford to give me one hundred dollars a month for groceries anymore.) All this was like a horoscope, y’know? Horoscopes are made to be extremely broad and applicable to anyone, and anyone who wants to believe, believes too much.
[...]
When I got back to the hall, the first thing I did was I called my parents. They were happy to hear from me. We chatted a little bit about work, my schoolwork, my parents’ life at home, and probably drawing from his pain toward the motorcycle accident, my dad reminded me to always drive very carefully. I promised him I would.
Last but not least, I went on Facebook, and I looked up one of Cindy’s three friends, John. There he was. UCI class of ‘10. His profile was decked out with his love for God and a bunch of religious sayings. My mouse hovered over the friend request button, but my finger couldn’t make contact. I gazed long and hard again at his picture, his profile, and all the amazing things he had to say about God and what God had done for him.
Fuck this. I hauled my mouse off the friend request button and signed the hell off Facebook.
---
It was another typical morning in lecture, except this time I didn’t sleep straight through the entire thing. I booted up my laptop, and with a blank note open on Facebook, my fingers went to work on my keyboard:
This interview is the closest I’ve ever been, so close that I figured I had to get in, or else all I’ve done so far would’ve meant nothing. But after the interview, and after talking to a few friends, I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve already accomplished. And what I’ve accomplished, I think it’s enough to warrant a small thank you entry, something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never found the occasion to. Right now I just wanna thank a few people that I think had a really huge impact on my dancing, the ones who have been an inspiration and a great help. I might write thank you’s to some more later. But for now, I’d like to say thank you to...
The roster comes out Sunday.
My Testimony: Part 1
Friday, October 15, 2010
Back at this again: bright lights right in my face, cheering people crowding the sidelines, and a table of judges, all with stern blank faces and glaring eyes, staring at me or staring past me. Which audition was this? My ninth one? Yeah, my ninth one. Sounded about right.
All the dancing I had done this past week, all the effort—it was going to climax tonight. Time to kill it. The music started, and all the noise and cheers for me from the crowd faded away. Taking in a deep breath, I counted myself into the music. 5... 6... 7... 8...
(I'm on the very left in the front.)
As soon as the judges dismissed us from the floor, I marched through the crowd and immediately sought out Sang and Leland (my roommates). I saw some high-five hands reach out toward me and heard some congratulations, but I paid no attention because to me, all that mattered was the iPod camera that Leland held in his hand. I had asked him to record my audition, and from the video I’d be making my own judgments. I didn’t want to have to believe anyone else, having previously learned one of the most important life lessons in my last year and a half of dancing and twenty years of living: Cameras tell the truth; people don’t.
I fiddled with my iPod and squinted at the tiny screen. I could barely make myself out or distinguish any moves, and worse was that I noticed that I had pretty much no battery left. I knew I didn’t have enough for a possible callback round and then my group audition round. I panicked a little.
As I fiddled with my iPod, more and more people came up to me to pat me on the back and congratulate me. I didn’t really notice until I realized that some were dancers who were already on the team, and they said I did really good. And they held eye contact. Something I noticed in the past about half-assed fake congratulatory comments was that no one ever added an adverb, and no one ever locked eyes. Maybe I could start trusting the people here tonight for their opinions on my callback and group audition.
Or not.
---
“God Loves You”
Written June 4th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[Setting: 8:15 PM, at Pippin, the dining hall on campus that I used to work at.]
As I was scrubbing down my area, a random girl approached me and asked very hesitantly, “Are you...are you Brian? What time are you getting off work?”
I looked at her and tilted my head a bit. I had never met this girl before or even seen her around. She was cute though, probably even cuter than she normally would be because she just seemed so in awe of me.
“Yes, I am. I’m off in forty-five minutes.” I answered. “Do I know you?”
She said she didn’t, and we quickly established that we had never met each other and that we had no friends in common. But she had just heard of me earlier tonight. I asked how that was possible.
“God told me,” she answered.
I tilted my head again at her, skeptically this time. Not because she was cute.
“God told me,” she continued, “that your family needs to be healed.”
I was a little fascinated now, but still skeptical and barely able to refrain from uttering, What kind of fucking joke is this?
“I know this is really crazy,” she went on, “and I can’t believe I’m even acting on this. But does this make sense at all to you? Does your family need to be healed?”
I didn’t need to think about her question for more than a second to know that...it did. My family did need to be healed. How could she have known about this? My skepticism slowly subsided.
“This does make kinda sense to me, I guess.”
She beamed at me and clasped her hands together. “Can my friends and I pray for you and your family?!” She motioned back to her three friends who were watching from the back of the room.
Pray for me. I wanted to scoff and tell this girl and her friends off, but I couldn’t. This was really trippy; the timing of it was almost too crazy to just be coincidental. I brewed with curiosity, a kind that I tried to rationalize away yet a kind that continued to grow as my emotions started to take over. I had to find out if her offer of prayer was something that could really help me, and I also had to find out if this girl really did come to me through divine intervention, or rather, a more realistic series of coincidences. At this point though, I think the whole prayer offer was appealing to my emotional side more.
“Yes, thanks, please,” I said it like I meant it. Because I did.
“Alright, cool!” she exclaimed. “You get off at nine right? My friends and I will be chilling around outside. Find us when you’re done!”
I nodded and thanked her again, and I watched as she and her friends left.
This is weird, I thought to myself. I still could not believe that God talked to that girl. When you talk to God, that’s fine; that’s prayer. But they say that when God talks to you, that’s schizophrenia. After a few minutes of scrubbing, I was able to push aside my emotions, and I spent the next forty minutes rationalizing as I cleaned.
---
My cell phone’s ringer went off. I swore, six hours of sleep felt shorter and shorter each night. I opened my eyes, or at least I thought I did. It was still dark. But then my eyes started to make out the lines of the orange street light shining through my blinds against the wall. I looked at the clock. It was only 4 AM.
My phone was still ringing. It wasn’t the alarm clock. It was a call.
I leapt out of my bed and grabbed the phone. This had to have been it; I took a deep breath as I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hi,” it was a girl’s voice. “Is this Brian?”
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“I think so!” I played along. “Does this have anything to do with an audition I had tonight?”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. Congratulations Brian, you got yourself an interview with us in two days, this Tuesday on October 12 at 7 PM!”
This was not a dream. This was not a dream. It was really happening, wasn’t it?
“You’ve made it past the first cut!” she went on. “Be proud of yourself. You did a really good job.”
All the dancing I had done this past week, all the effort—it was going to climax tonight. Time to kill it. The music started, and all the noise and cheers for me from the crowd faded away. Taking in a deep breath, I counted myself into the music. 5... 6... 7... 8...
(I'm on the very left in the front.)
As soon as the judges dismissed us from the floor, I marched through the crowd and immediately sought out Sang and Leland (my roommates). I saw some high-five hands reach out toward me and heard some congratulations, but I paid no attention because to me, all that mattered was the iPod camera that Leland held in his hand. I had asked him to record my audition, and from the video I’d be making my own judgments. I didn’t want to have to believe anyone else, having previously learned one of the most important life lessons in my last year and a half of dancing and twenty years of living: Cameras tell the truth; people don’t.
I fiddled with my iPod and squinted at the tiny screen. I could barely make myself out or distinguish any moves, and worse was that I noticed that I had pretty much no battery left. I knew I didn’t have enough for a possible callback round and then my group audition round. I panicked a little.
As I fiddled with my iPod, more and more people came up to me to pat me on the back and congratulate me. I didn’t really notice until I realized that some were dancers who were already on the team, and they said I did really good. And they held eye contact. Something I noticed in the past about half-assed fake congratulatory comments was that no one ever added an adverb, and no one ever locked eyes. Maybe I could start trusting the people here tonight for their opinions on my callback and group audition.
Or not.
---
“God Loves You”
Written June 4th, 2009 (Excerpted)
[Setting: 8:15 PM, at Pippin, the dining hall on campus that I used to work at.]
As I was scrubbing down my area, a random girl approached me and asked very hesitantly, “Are you...are you Brian? What time are you getting off work?”
I looked at her and tilted my head a bit. I had never met this girl before or even seen her around. She was cute though, probably even cuter than she normally would be because she just seemed so in awe of me.
“Yes, I am. I’m off in forty-five minutes.” I answered. “Do I know you?”
She said she didn’t, and we quickly established that we had never met each other and that we had no friends in common. But she had just heard of me earlier tonight. I asked how that was possible.
“God told me,” she answered.
I tilted my head again at her, skeptically this time. Not because she was cute.
“God told me,” she continued, “that your family needs to be healed.”
I was a little fascinated now, but still skeptical and barely able to refrain from uttering, What kind of fucking joke is this?
“I know this is really crazy,” she went on, “and I can’t believe I’m even acting on this. But does this make sense at all to you? Does your family need to be healed?”
I didn’t need to think about her question for more than a second to know that...it did. My family did need to be healed. How could she have known about this? My skepticism slowly subsided.
“This does make kinda sense to me, I guess.”
She beamed at me and clasped her hands together. “Can my friends and I pray for you and your family?!” She motioned back to her three friends who were watching from the back of the room.
Pray for me. I wanted to scoff and tell this girl and her friends off, but I couldn’t. This was really trippy; the timing of it was almost too crazy to just be coincidental. I brewed with curiosity, a kind that I tried to rationalize away yet a kind that continued to grow as my emotions started to take over. I had to find out if her offer of prayer was something that could really help me, and I also had to find out if this girl really did come to me through divine intervention, or rather, a more realistic series of coincidences. At this point though, I think the whole prayer offer was appealing to my emotional side more.
“Yes, thanks, please,” I said it like I meant it. Because I did.
“Alright, cool!” she exclaimed. “You get off at nine right? My friends and I will be chilling around outside. Find us when you’re done!”
I nodded and thanked her again, and I watched as she and her friends left.
This is weird, I thought to myself. I still could not believe that God talked to that girl. When you talk to God, that’s fine; that’s prayer. But they say that when God talks to you, that’s schizophrenia. After a few minutes of scrubbing, I was able to push aside my emotions, and I spent the next forty minutes rationalizing as I cleaned.
---
My cell phone’s ringer went off. I swore, six hours of sleep felt shorter and shorter each night. I opened my eyes, or at least I thought I did. It was still dark. But then my eyes started to make out the lines of the orange street light shining through my blinds against the wall. I looked at the clock. It was only 4 AM.
My phone was still ringing. It wasn’t the alarm clock. It was a call.
I leapt out of my bed and grabbed the phone. This had to have been it; I took a deep breath as I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Hi,” it was a girl’s voice. “Is this Brian?”
“Yes.”
“You know who this is?”
“I think so!” I played along. “Does this have anything to do with an audition I had tonight?”
“Yes, I’m sure it does. Congratulations Brian, you got yourself an interview with us in two days, this Tuesday on October 12 at 7 PM!”
This was not a dream. This was not a dream. It was really happening, wasn’t it?
“You’ve made it past the first cut!” she went on. “Be proud of yourself. You did a really good job.”
Beautiful Sinners
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Quiet and as still as the woods around us, we made no sound but the dirt and leaves rustling underneath our feet as we moved across the ground. We tried to be quiet anyway, but occasionally we couldn’t help but let escape from our mouths that suckling, sloppy smack sound as a head bobbed up down, back and forth and all around. We were cautious, turning our heads to every blow of the wind or every crackle of a leaf; out here in nature we couldn’t be too careful of what we had dared to do.
Now having arrived at the end, we felt shivers run down our spines and lift every hair on our cold, bare skin, but it was a feeling as strong and as pleasurable as the feelings of guilt that immediately followed. It was finished, our sin, and now silently the clothes came back on—underwear and wifebeater, shorts and shirts. Feeling hollow, I found no words to speak, nothing more than a nod, a shy smile, a shrug of the shoulders, all meant to say one thing: Thanks stranger.
I couldn’t quite tell the difference—the paneled stained glass windows depicted ocean waves under purple and white skies that were either apocalyptic or heaven. These smaller windows were spread out across the walls, while a bigger stained glass window over the altar depicted white birds flying over green rolling fields, across a deep blue sky, and toward a fiery ball of orange and red flames, presumably the sun. The walls themselves were simply plastered, beige walls. The ceiling hung low, with wooden support beans running across it. It was as if someone turned a daycare center to a church...Church.
First time here.
I wanted to be able to call out or turn to Ranier because I couldn’t keep up with everyone saying in near-perfect unison “Amen” or “Praise the lord” or some really long sentence, but I refrained from moving too much in my seat. Following everyone, I sat back down, and I tried to maintain my posture and kept my hands in my lap. I listened attentively as the priest, who dawned a vibrant green robe, began to speak.
No one would want to buy these jeans if they knew what the two of us accidentally got on them. I poked my head outside my dressing room and peered around the corner. “All Clear,” I whispered. He tipped-toed our from behind me, carrying the pair of jeans to put back in the rack.
As I drove him back to our place, the car was filled with an awkward silence that we occasionally tried to mask with a question. “What are you doing after this?” he asked.
“I got a paper to write for English class, and some studying for a psychology final. You?” I answered.
“Studying, homework.”
“Yeah, same here!” I said. Silence. Finally, we arrived at his place and I dropped him off.
As I drove home, I thought briefly to myself, what the fuck was I doing? I let go of someone I really cared about. I couldn’t have him back, so now, this was me, hooking up like a skank.
The songs were festive and uplifting, and I found myself clapping along to assurances that the Lord loved me no matter what and that all sins, past, present, and future, could be atoned for. I actually liked this priest too. He was eccentric. The green robe probably already said it. Everyone laughed, including me, at his subtle jokes, and his sermons had a relatable, universal message, even underneath all the God talk.
“We can’t blame others for our misfortunes,” the priest said as he began to conclude one of his sermons. “We can’t blame the weather, we can’t blame the frikkin’ traffic that always seems to be there at 7 AM every morning. Take responsibility...Responsibility goes to the bone! God gave us minds so we could think, evaluate our past and present and plan our future, and God gave us limbs so we could take action!”
At the end, he pulled out the wine and the communion bread. I was hungry. But no, Ranier said no, I never went through communion. I didn’t even practice in any shape or form. But I continued to stare at that flat disk of bread that the priest waved in the air underneath the feet of a hanging crucifix. It’s like he was taunting me with it.
This time, we sat on a log overlooking the creek. He zipped his jeans back up and I did the same with mine. As we walked back to my car, I felt something different this time, something so much worse. I could hardly look at him, and most of all I could not look at myself. I felt shame, something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Once I dropped him off, once he was gone, I knew, there’d be no more of this.
I had been going through a few rough months, but this was no excuse to hook up with random guys. I am never doing this again, I declared to myself. I was done, and now it was time to take some responsibility. I let go of someone I really cared about, and now it was time to get him back.
I went home, logged onto Myspace, and sent this message to him: “This is probably old news, but did you get into UC Davis yet? If so, CONGRATULAAAASHUNS.”
I got this reply: “What happened? Almost 6 months ago at the end of 2006 you were avoiding my calls and trying as hard as you could to avoid contact with me. I was completely willing to talk to you and find out what the problem was. Unfortunately you didn’t want to talk to me at all so I just gave up and stopped caring. I found it hella random that you commented me the other day. I am still completely willing to rebuild the friendship so call me sometime and let’s talk or whatever.
Black John wasn’t as oblivious as I thought he was. I messaged him back, saying no more than a location and time: “Wednesday, 3:00 PM. Oakridge.”
John would be graduating from the high school in less than three weeks, leaving me behind next year to finish my senior year in high school without the support I had from him, Peter, and Miranda, the latter two having already gone off to college. I had to make my last few moments with John last.
“God loves us all, so even if you have not gone through communion,” the priest said, “or if you share different beliefs or don’t even practice anything at all, I invite you to come up here anyway and take a piece of our brea—”
I was sold. Time to get me a taste of that communion bread.
I got up, stood in line, got my tiny paper-thin wafer of communion bread, and skipped on the wine—everyone was drinking from the same cup, but maybe God had some kind of anti-mono force field over the church. I didn’t wanna check. As I walked back to my seat, I let the little chip of bread soak around in my mouth. It tasted kinda like an unsweetened ice cream cone; this was something I could see myself snacking on if I was really, really hungry.
When I was back in my seat, I noticed in the corner of my eye someone shuffling down my row. She was coming toward me. I turned and looked at her, and I was surprised to see a familiar face.
“Oh wow, Brandy, it’s good to see you again!” I said. Brandy was a black girl in my French class back in high school. She used to have a crush on me when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore.
“It’s good to see you too, Brian! How are you doing? What are you doing here? What school are you going to now?”
“I’m going to UC Irvine. I just finished my second year, so I’m back up here in San Jose for the summer.”
“Did you come alone?”
“Yeah, I did.” I shrugged, because I still didn’t fully understand why I came. Brandy and I continued to catch up, but the question of why I came lingered in my mind all throughout our conversation and all throughout my drive home. I came up with a partial answer:
I wanted to take responsibility, but I couldn’t find within me the strength that I needed.
Now having arrived at the end, we felt shivers run down our spines and lift every hair on our cold, bare skin, but it was a feeling as strong and as pleasurable as the feelings of guilt that immediately followed. It was finished, our sin, and now silently the clothes came back on—underwear and wifebeater, shorts and shirts. Feeling hollow, I found no words to speak, nothing more than a nod, a shy smile, a shrug of the shoulders, all meant to say one thing: Thanks stranger.
I couldn’t quite tell the difference—the paneled stained glass windows depicted ocean waves under purple and white skies that were either apocalyptic or heaven. These smaller windows were spread out across the walls, while a bigger stained glass window over the altar depicted white birds flying over green rolling fields, across a deep blue sky, and toward a fiery ball of orange and red flames, presumably the sun. The walls themselves were simply plastered, beige walls. The ceiling hung low, with wooden support beans running across it. It was as if someone turned a daycare center to a church...Church.
First time here.
I wanted to be able to call out or turn to Ranier because I couldn’t keep up with everyone saying in near-perfect unison “Amen” or “Praise the lord” or some really long sentence, but I refrained from moving too much in my seat. Following everyone, I sat back down, and I tried to maintain my posture and kept my hands in my lap. I listened attentively as the priest, who dawned a vibrant green robe, began to speak.
No one would want to buy these jeans if they knew what the two of us accidentally got on them. I poked my head outside my dressing room and peered around the corner. “All Clear,” I whispered. He tipped-toed our from behind me, carrying the pair of jeans to put back in the rack.
As I drove him back to our place, the car was filled with an awkward silence that we occasionally tried to mask with a question. “What are you doing after this?” he asked.
“I got a paper to write for English class, and some studying for a psychology final. You?” I answered.
“Studying, homework.”
“Yeah, same here!” I said. Silence. Finally, we arrived at his place and I dropped him off.
As I drove home, I thought briefly to myself, what the fuck was I doing? I let go of someone I really cared about. I couldn’t have him back, so now, this was me, hooking up like a skank.
The songs were festive and uplifting, and I found myself clapping along to assurances that the Lord loved me no matter what and that all sins, past, present, and future, could be atoned for. I actually liked this priest too. He was eccentric. The green robe probably already said it. Everyone laughed, including me, at his subtle jokes, and his sermons had a relatable, universal message, even underneath all the God talk.
“We can’t blame others for our misfortunes,” the priest said as he began to conclude one of his sermons. “We can’t blame the weather, we can’t blame the frikkin’ traffic that always seems to be there at 7 AM every morning. Take responsibility...Responsibility goes to the bone! God gave us minds so we could think, evaluate our past and present and plan our future, and God gave us limbs so we could take action!”
At the end, he pulled out the wine and the communion bread. I was hungry. But no, Ranier said no, I never went through communion. I didn’t even practice in any shape or form. But I continued to stare at that flat disk of bread that the priest waved in the air underneath the feet of a hanging crucifix. It’s like he was taunting me with it.
This time, we sat on a log overlooking the creek. He zipped his jeans back up and I did the same with mine. As we walked back to my car, I felt something different this time, something so much worse. I could hardly look at him, and most of all I could not look at myself. I felt shame, something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Once I dropped him off, once he was gone, I knew, there’d be no more of this.
I had been going through a few rough months, but this was no excuse to hook up with random guys. I am never doing this again, I declared to myself. I was done, and now it was time to take some responsibility. I let go of someone I really cared about, and now it was time to get him back.
I went home, logged onto Myspace, and sent this message to him: “This is probably old news, but did you get into UC Davis yet? If so, CONGRATULAAAASHUNS.”
I got this reply: “What happened? Almost 6 months ago at the end of 2006 you were avoiding my calls and trying as hard as you could to avoid contact with me. I was completely willing to talk to you and find out what the problem was. Unfortunately you didn’t want to talk to me at all so I just gave up and stopped caring. I found it hella random that you commented me the other day. I am still completely willing to rebuild the friendship so call me sometime and let’s talk or whatever.
Black John wasn’t as oblivious as I thought he was. I messaged him back, saying no more than a location and time: “Wednesday, 3:00 PM. Oakridge.”
John would be graduating from the high school in less than three weeks, leaving me behind next year to finish my senior year in high school without the support I had from him, Peter, and Miranda, the latter two having already gone off to college. I had to make my last few moments with John last.
“God loves us all, so even if you have not gone through communion,” the priest said, “or if you share different beliefs or don’t even practice anything at all, I invite you to come up here anyway and take a piece of our brea—”
I was sold. Time to get me a taste of that communion bread.
I got up, stood in line, got my tiny paper-thin wafer of communion bread, and skipped on the wine—everyone was drinking from the same cup, but maybe God had some kind of anti-mono force field over the church. I didn’t wanna check. As I walked back to my seat, I let the little chip of bread soak around in my mouth. It tasted kinda like an unsweetened ice cream cone; this was something I could see myself snacking on if I was really, really hungry.
When I was back in my seat, I noticed in the corner of my eye someone shuffling down my row. She was coming toward me. I turned and looked at her, and I was surprised to see a familiar face.
“Oh wow, Brandy, it’s good to see you again!” I said. Brandy was a black girl in my French class back in high school. She used to have a crush on me when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore.
“It’s good to see you too, Brian! How are you doing? What are you doing here? What school are you going to now?”
“I’m going to UC Irvine. I just finished my second year, so I’m back up here in San Jose for the summer.”
“Did you come alone?”
“Yeah, I did.” I shrugged, because I still didn’t fully understand why I came. Brandy and I continued to catch up, but the question of why I came lingered in my mind all throughout our conversation and all throughout my drive home. I came up with a partial answer:
I wanted to take responsibility, but I couldn’t find within me the strength that I needed.
Metablogging
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Spring Quarter 2010, Week 1 (March 29 - April 3)
Next week I’m going to start writing in my blog again, so now’s the time to map out how the first few entries are going to go. Since I hardly wrote in the winter quarter, I need to use flashbacks to tell the story of what happened during all that time. How can I make these flashbacks relevant to the present timeline? Not that that really matters, because if anything, I can just forcefully tack a totally unrelated flashback to some entry like I did with Photo Album 2000. God, what a shitty entry.
What I should really think about now, though, is how the final entry of the spring season will look like. I admit, me complaining to an imaginary person about how much I hate gay “cocksucking faggots” followed by yet another depressing flashback of Trung and me isn’t the best way to end a season; that is what happens when I don’t plan ahead. By the end of spring, Ray and I will still be together, and I imagine that I’ll finally have a new, paying job by then, most likely at Urban Outfitters, and that I’ll hit my goal of weighing at least 160 pounds. I want my weight to be a big motif this season by constantly updating the blog with the progress toward my goal. However, I’ll probably realize that, once I hit 160 pounds, I’m still not going to be happy with myself because that won’t change me being gay, and that can make yet another, “WAAAH WHY AM I GAY” post since everyone seems to love those. What I learn in the end will be that my happiness won’t come from my weight and self-image, but rather, my amazing boyfriend. We’ll be celebrating our five month anniversary by the end. Aw ok, looks like my spring quarter will have a happy ending.
Week 2 (April 4 - 10)
Damn it, looks like no job from Urban Outfitters for sure now. I really wanna develop the job storyline and I need the experiences of starting at a new work place to drive it like how starting at the Education Academy drove it in the fall. I’m going to bore what little readers I have if I constantly update with, “I really wanna get that new longboard/ Nikes/ jeans but I have no job!—INSERT IRRELEVANT FLASHBACK.” I’m really lazy though, but I think I’ll continue my job hunt for the sake of this blog.
Week 3 (April 11 - 17)
Ray and I broke up last week. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I’m here in the back of English class, tapping my notebook with my pen and wondering what I’m going to do. I need to completely remap my entries and the final entry for this season. My teacher’s lecturing about something boring right now, so I’m going to jot down some ideas.
“When reading Hamlet, I want you guys to examine the play from the perspective of narratology,” my teacher rambles. “Narratology is the study of how narrative structure affects our perspective on the world. Life is difficult to grasp because, in reality, it’s so chaotic and random...”
I figure that I’ll be sad for the next few weeks and a bunch of my entries will focus on me being emo, so emo that I will reject guys interested in me because I’m not ready to “move on” yet. But, in the last entry of this season, I will realize how much I like whoever’s trying to get at me at that time and finally find the strength to move on. Cliffhanger onto the summer season with a kiss! Ok, this sounds like a good final entry. Alright, Plan B! I’ll go hit on some cuties in my psychology class.
“...Things happen for no reason, and we do things for no reason or reasons that we don’t understand,” my teacher continues. “We have a subconscious desire to fit our lives into a sort of narrative structure, into a story in order to make sense of things and find meaning and symbolism in otherwise meaningless events. We’re always looking for progress, a tidy ending, or ‘closure.’ We get so many influences from TV, film, and fiction so we seek the same narrative coherence to our lives that the characters in these works have. This is something that everybody does every day. Everybody, every day. It might not be in written form; it might be spoken or simply in the way we think and make decisions.”
Man, my teacher is such a lesbian. I can’t stop staring at her short lesbian hair.
Week 5 (April 25 - May 1)
I think I made out with enough random guys the past two weeks to completely void the meaning and impact behind what would’ve been my Plan B for a final entry. I could still keep quiet and not write about my hook up adventures so readers will still buy the final entry, but for me it goes just a little bit outside my tolerance for breaking journalistic ethics.
Our Souvenirs was a good entry, but I know that I definitely need to include what happened after I said “Maybe I’ve been wrong for the last entire two years” in a flashback later on. Maybe as the flashback for this season’s final entry? There we go, that will be my new final entry. Plan C! Since this flashback is about me making the wrong sacrifice, in the entry’s present timeline I’ll be making the right sacrifice! Giving up my stubbornness for friendship? For Trung? For a kid at work? Oh, hopefully I’ll run into one of my students outside of work and get involved in his personal life somehow. Great plot device. I can rely only on so few of them.
Week 6 (May 2 - 8)
Ok, my dance storyline hasn’t been going anywhere, probably because I haven’t been dancing as much as I had hoped. I’ve been working out a lot instead, haven’t I? Oh, maybe that can become the new plot for the dance storyline: I choose working out over dance even though dance makes me a lot happier. Sounds good; hopefully my readers will automatically forget the original plot I opened up for the dance storyline at the beginning of this season.
Week 9 (May 23 - 29)
I need a Plan D for this season’s final entry. I know how it will go. It will present my life in shambles, because that’s how my fucking life is going right now. I’m no where near 160 pounds, I still have no job and make fifteen bucks a week from my tutoring job, nothing’s going on in the dance world, I’m pissed off at Ranier about Sockhop tickets, I still hate all gays, I’m still such an effing skank when I thought I finally stopped, and I haven’t gotten into any extraordinary situations that will end in three weeks with me making a decision so difficult that it will be accompanied by a dramatic orchestral sound track in my head. Nothing’s really changed at all. But the final entry will be so dark that I’m sure the readers will be left thinking, “Oh shiiiit, what’s going to happen next?”
Finals Week (June 6 - 12)
I need a Plan E. Because, I guess my life has been making a complete 180 lately. Well, not 180, maybe 110. I’m probably not going to have the epic ending that I hoped for, but it’s something at least. I didn’t see any of this coming. Some long time conflicts will be resolved, but not all. I still have no idea how the final entry will turn out, however. I’ll leave it up to fate. Hopefully everything will be fine.
Next week I’m going to start writing in my blog again, so now’s the time to map out how the first few entries are going to go. Since I hardly wrote in the winter quarter, I need to use flashbacks to tell the story of what happened during all that time. How can I make these flashbacks relevant to the present timeline? Not that that really matters, because if anything, I can just forcefully tack a totally unrelated flashback to some entry like I did with Photo Album 2000. God, what a shitty entry.
What I should really think about now, though, is how the final entry of the spring season will look like. I admit, me complaining to an imaginary person about how much I hate gay “cocksucking faggots” followed by yet another depressing flashback of Trung and me isn’t the best way to end a season; that is what happens when I don’t plan ahead. By the end of spring, Ray and I will still be together, and I imagine that I’ll finally have a new, paying job by then, most likely at Urban Outfitters, and that I’ll hit my goal of weighing at least 160 pounds. I want my weight to be a big motif this season by constantly updating the blog with the progress toward my goal. However, I’ll probably realize that, once I hit 160 pounds, I’m still not going to be happy with myself because that won’t change me being gay, and that can make yet another, “WAAAH WHY AM I GAY” post since everyone seems to love those. What I learn in the end will be that my happiness won’t come from my weight and self-image, but rather, my amazing boyfriend. We’ll be celebrating our five month anniversary by the end. Aw ok, looks like my spring quarter will have a happy ending.
Week 2 (April 4 - 10)
Damn it, looks like no job from Urban Outfitters for sure now. I really wanna develop the job storyline and I need the experiences of starting at a new work place to drive it like how starting at the Education Academy drove it in the fall. I’m going to bore what little readers I have if I constantly update with, “I really wanna get that new longboard/ Nikes/ jeans but I have no job!—INSERT IRRELEVANT FLASHBACK.” I’m really lazy though, but I think I’ll continue my job hunt for the sake of this blog.
Week 3 (April 11 - 17)
Ray and I broke up last week. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I’m here in the back of English class, tapping my notebook with my pen and wondering what I’m going to do. I need to completely remap my entries and the final entry for this season. My teacher’s lecturing about something boring right now, so I’m going to jot down some ideas.
“When reading Hamlet, I want you guys to examine the play from the perspective of narratology,” my teacher rambles. “Narratology is the study of how narrative structure affects our perspective on the world. Life is difficult to grasp because, in reality, it’s so chaotic and random...”
I figure that I’ll be sad for the next few weeks and a bunch of my entries will focus on me being emo, so emo that I will reject guys interested in me because I’m not ready to “move on” yet. But, in the last entry of this season, I will realize how much I like whoever’s trying to get at me at that time and finally find the strength to move on. Cliffhanger onto the summer season with a kiss! Ok, this sounds like a good final entry. Alright, Plan B! I’ll go hit on some cuties in my psychology class.
“...Things happen for no reason, and we do things for no reason or reasons that we don’t understand,” my teacher continues. “We have a subconscious desire to fit our lives into a sort of narrative structure, into a story in order to make sense of things and find meaning and symbolism in otherwise meaningless events. We’re always looking for progress, a tidy ending, or ‘closure.’ We get so many influences from TV, film, and fiction so we seek the same narrative coherence to our lives that the characters in these works have. This is something that everybody does every day. Everybody, every day. It might not be in written form; it might be spoken or simply in the way we think and make decisions.”
Man, my teacher is such a lesbian. I can’t stop staring at her short lesbian hair.
Week 5 (April 25 - May 1)
I think I made out with enough random guys the past two weeks to completely void the meaning and impact behind what would’ve been my Plan B for a final entry. I could still keep quiet and not write about my hook up adventures so readers will still buy the final entry, but for me it goes just a little bit outside my tolerance for breaking journalistic ethics.
Our Souvenirs was a good entry, but I know that I definitely need to include what happened after I said “Maybe I’ve been wrong for the last entire two years” in a flashback later on. Maybe as the flashback for this season’s final entry? There we go, that will be my new final entry. Plan C! Since this flashback is about me making the wrong sacrifice, in the entry’s present timeline I’ll be making the right sacrifice! Giving up my stubbornness for friendship? For Trung? For a kid at work? Oh, hopefully I’ll run into one of my students outside of work and get involved in his personal life somehow. Great plot device. I can rely only on so few of them.
Week 6 (May 2 - 8)
Ok, my dance storyline hasn’t been going anywhere, probably because I haven’t been dancing as much as I had hoped. I’ve been working out a lot instead, haven’t I? Oh, maybe that can become the new plot for the dance storyline: I choose working out over dance even though dance makes me a lot happier. Sounds good; hopefully my readers will automatically forget the original plot I opened up for the dance storyline at the beginning of this season.
Week 9 (May 23 - 29)
I need a Plan D for this season’s final entry. I know how it will go. It will present my life in shambles, because that’s how my fucking life is going right now. I’m no where near 160 pounds, I still have no job and make fifteen bucks a week from my tutoring job, nothing’s going on in the dance world, I’m pissed off at Ranier about Sockhop tickets, I still hate all gays, I’m still such an effing skank when I thought I finally stopped, and I haven’t gotten into any extraordinary situations that will end in three weeks with me making a decision so difficult that it will be accompanied by a dramatic orchestral sound track in my head. Nothing’s really changed at all. But the final entry will be so dark that I’m sure the readers will be left thinking, “Oh shiiiit, what’s going to happen next?”
Finals Week (June 6 - 12)
I need a Plan E. Because, I guess my life has been making a complete 180 lately. Well, not 180, maybe 110. I’m probably not going to have the epic ending that I hoped for, but it’s something at least. I didn’t see any of this coming. Some long time conflicts will be resolved, but not all. I still have no idea how the final entry will turn out, however. I’ll leave it up to fate. Hopefully everything will be fine.
Tags:
dancing,
gay,
ranier,
relationships,
socal,
spirituality,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
Look Back, Let Go, and Move On
Friday, June 18, 2010
“Thank you God for blessing us with...”
And the list went on and on. Every once in a while, the pastor would pause and all the churchgoers would say “Amen!” I tried to catch up and not look out of place at church, but I failed pretty miserably. And just when I anticipated another “Amen,” everybody said, “Lord have mercy,” instead. God damn it.
Everybody took their seat, and I followed suit. I reached under my seat to grab the three hella giant blades of grass that we were given earlier when we arrived. Today was Palm Sunday, which meant—well, I didn’t know really. One notable difference between this visit and my first visit the Sunday prior was that today, the pastor read an even longer story, all while we were standing. My mind drifted away at the first mention of a two-syllable name.
To pass time, I checked out the cute Filipino choirboys (just the ones that looked like they were at least a high school junior) and scoped for other guys around, and I tried guessing the number of sins under the belts of each decent looking guy. Maybe I was fantasizing too much because I counted a lot of sins.
After a while, everyone stood up again holding up their giant blades of grass. The pastor walked up and down the aisles, watering us with his watering can. I thought that was kinda cool.
Sitting down and bored once again, I started bumping my knee with the one beside me, and I felt the knee bumped back. Our two knees playfully bumped for a little while, and it made me smile. I looked up at Ranier, who was facing toward the front but with his eyes darting back and forth toward me. I wanted to put my hand on his leg, but I refrained. He smiled slightly, and I tried sitting up again and paying attention to the pastor. Didn’t happen.
Snack time came. Everyone went up to get a cracker except for me, because apparently I hadn’t gone through some kind of confirmation process or whatever, Ranier told me. I watched him and his mother and little brother get up and find their place in line. The line was moving slowly, so I decided to mimic what some other people were doing earlier and tied my three giant blades of grass into a cross. It was pretty challenging, like a Rubik’s cube, but I got it after my third try. Soon after, it was time to head back to Ranier’s place.
What I got out of my second church experience was that I’d never go to church again unless it was for Ranier.
I sat on the couch in my apartment, doing anything but studying, when I got an instant message from Ranier. He told me that he could still get me Sockhop tickets for twenty five dollars. Even though I was still a little bitter, I agreed to it. Looked like I was going to Sockhop after all. I resumed stalking acquaintances on Facebook afterward, but then Ranier brought up something else.
Ranier:
How come ever since we broke up, when we talk on aim, our conversation always gets cut short because you never respond back, but when we did go out, we would finish our convos. Just a random thought, ain’t trippin’.
bbq dinner:
I didn’t think we had much to talk about. Just business, like figuring out Sockhop tickets, or whatever.
Ranier:
Haha ok maybe it’s just an OCD of mine, to always finish a convo by sayin’ bye.
bbq dinner:
I dunno. Do you have more you wanna talk about?
Ranier:
Well there was one more thing... I just wanted to see how you were, to see if everything was alright with you.
bbq dinner:
I’m doing fine. It’s Sunday night of finals week so I’m supposed to be busy. How are you doing?
Ranier:
I’m doing splendid haha jk. I’m doin’ good. It’s a nice relief. Everything is going well...ok buh you’re being honest right? Nothing wrong or anything bothering you that pertains to anything I can help with?
bbq dinner:
No I’m fine, but I guess I’ve been meaning to tell you something.
Ranier:
Oo ok, go ahead.
bbq dinner:
On the night we broke up, you told me something like, “A few years from now you’re going to realize what an ignorant asshole you were," or something like that, regarding me calling special ed kids stupid.
Ranier:
Lol omg I said that?
bbq dinner:
I might’ve added the "asshole" part. But the main point is, it didn’t take a few years to realize what an ignorant asshole I was.
Ranier:
Aww, what made you think this?
bbq dinner:
I was looking up vids of Jawn Ha on Youtube, and I found a vid of him teaching at a high school. I spotted this one kid who really sucked, more than I would’ve, and I laughed at him. Then I read through the comments and saw the other people also pointed out the kid, to which Jawn Ha responded, “That Kid is deaf.” And I was like, “Oh.” And I couldn’t bring my self to still think that the kid sucked. Do you see the parallels?
Ranier:
Sorta, so you’re sayin’ when you laughed at the kid you didn’t know he was deaf, and when you found out, it made you realize how fucked up it is to laugh at someone who tries no matter what disabilities they have in their lives.
bbq dinner:
Yeah that’s pretty much it.
Ranier:
Well I'm proud to see you type this, even though you still might be an ass or not (I wouldn’t know anymore). I’m glad that you realized that.
10 PM on a rainy Friday night. I waited outside the auditorium as Ray ran around making sure everything was getting put cleaned up and put away. He had just successfully directed a dance showcase at his high school for charity, and now he looked too adorable yelling into his walkie-talkie as he ran around frantically. When I thought he was done, he came up to me and told me that he forgot something in the dance studio.
He led me to the his school’s dance studio, and when I walked inside, there was some slow romancey music playing, and there was a bunch of candy and lit candles littered all over the floor. “Ranye’s B-Day Wish” was written across the whiteboard, and underneath it hung a banner that read, in big red painted block letters: “Valentine?”
I scratched my head and looked at Ray. “Did you guys have some kind of party earlier today?” I knew it was Ranier’s birthday today, but it wasn’t that close to Valentine’s Day.
“It’s for you,” he said.
“Oooooooh.” It hit me. This was a surprise for me. “OH MY.” I hugged and squeezed him tight, and of course, I said “Yes” to his Valentine question.
Later that weekend, we made our relationship official: What’s my favorite type of music? R&B! 01.24.10. (It was originally, what’s my favorite html tag?—BR! But I decided to go with the less nerdy option.)
Ranier and the Funksters had a dance competition in San Jose at the downtown Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th. Seeing how I got back home just in time at the end of finals week and how it was in my hometown, I went to visit him. I didn’t actually see the competition because I had already spent twenty-five bucks on the Sockhop ticket, but I came to see him outside of the convention center after the competition ended. We met up and walked to my car so I could give him the black jersey that he had asked me to buy for him about a month ago.
“Notice anything different?” I asked Ranier.
“You got contact lenses,” he answered.
“Yep, I also got a haircut.” I lifted my hat to show him. “I’m wearing a hat though because it’s kinda ba—”
“What the hell did you do? It’s terrible.” He ran his hand through my poorly shaved mohawk to feel every little mistake. “Wow, who cut your hair?”
“I did.”
“Oh, well, you should’ve asked me! There’s not much you can do now buh shave it all off.”
I shrugged. We got back to my car and Ranier got his jersey. I drove him back to the convention center so he could wait with another Funkster for her dad to pick them up. Before going, I got one last hug from him and told him I’d see him at Sock Hop. I watched him walk a few feet after he left my car, and then I turned to the rear-view mirror to gaze at myself in my new contact lenses, no glasses, and my ugly hair. I bit my lips, slowly nodded, and put my car into drive and drove home.
And the list went on and on. Every once in a while, the pastor would pause and all the churchgoers would say “Amen!” I tried to catch up and not look out of place at church, but I failed pretty miserably. And just when I anticipated another “Amen,” everybody said, “Lord have mercy,” instead. God damn it.
Everybody took their seat, and I followed suit. I reached under my seat to grab the three hella giant blades of grass that we were given earlier when we arrived. Today was Palm Sunday, which meant—well, I didn’t know really. One notable difference between this visit and my first visit the Sunday prior was that today, the pastor read an even longer story, all while we were standing. My mind drifted away at the first mention of a two-syllable name.
To pass time, I checked out the cute Filipino choirboys (just the ones that looked like they were at least a high school junior) and scoped for other guys around, and I tried guessing the number of sins under the belts of each decent looking guy. Maybe I was fantasizing too much because I counted a lot of sins.
After a while, everyone stood up again holding up their giant blades of grass. The pastor walked up and down the aisles, watering us with his watering can. I thought that was kinda cool.
Sitting down and bored once again, I started bumping my knee with the one beside me, and I felt the knee bumped back. Our two knees playfully bumped for a little while, and it made me smile. I looked up at Ranier, who was facing toward the front but with his eyes darting back and forth toward me. I wanted to put my hand on his leg, but I refrained. He smiled slightly, and I tried sitting up again and paying attention to the pastor. Didn’t happen.
Snack time came. Everyone went up to get a cracker except for me, because apparently I hadn’t gone through some kind of confirmation process or whatever, Ranier told me. I watched him and his mother and little brother get up and find their place in line. The line was moving slowly, so I decided to mimic what some other people were doing earlier and tied my three giant blades of grass into a cross. It was pretty challenging, like a Rubik’s cube, but I got it after my third try. Soon after, it was time to head back to Ranier’s place.
What I got out of my second church experience was that I’d never go to church again unless it was for Ranier.
I sat on the couch in my apartment, doing anything but studying, when I got an instant message from Ranier. He told me that he could still get me Sockhop tickets for twenty five dollars. Even though I was still a little bitter, I agreed to it. Looked like I was going to Sockhop after all. I resumed stalking acquaintances on Facebook afterward, but then Ranier brought up something else.
Ranier:
How come ever since we broke up, when we talk on aim, our conversation always gets cut short because you never respond back, but when we did go out, we would finish our convos. Just a random thought, ain’t trippin’.
bbq dinner:
I didn’t think we had much to talk about. Just business, like figuring out Sockhop tickets, or whatever.
Ranier:
Haha ok maybe it’s just an OCD of mine, to always finish a convo by sayin’ bye.
bbq dinner:
I dunno. Do you have more you wanna talk about?
Ranier:
Well there was one more thing... I just wanted to see how you were, to see if everything was alright with you.
bbq dinner:
I’m doing fine. It’s Sunday night of finals week so I’m supposed to be busy. How are you doing?
Ranier:
I’m doing splendid haha jk. I’m doin’ good. It’s a nice relief. Everything is going well...ok buh you’re being honest right? Nothing wrong or anything bothering you that pertains to anything I can help with?
bbq dinner:
No I’m fine, but I guess I’ve been meaning to tell you something.
Ranier:
Oo ok, go ahead.
bbq dinner:
On the night we broke up, you told me something like, “A few years from now you’re going to realize what an ignorant asshole you were," or something like that, regarding me calling special ed kids stupid.
Ranier:
Lol omg I said that?
bbq dinner:
I might’ve added the "asshole" part. But the main point is, it didn’t take a few years to realize what an ignorant asshole I was.
Ranier:
Aww, what made you think this?
bbq dinner:
I was looking up vids of Jawn Ha on Youtube, and I found a vid of him teaching at a high school. I spotted this one kid who really sucked, more than I would’ve, and I laughed at him. Then I read through the comments and saw the other people also pointed out the kid, to which Jawn Ha responded, “That Kid is deaf.” And I was like, “Oh.” And I couldn’t bring my self to still think that the kid sucked. Do you see the parallels?
Ranier:
Sorta, so you’re sayin’ when you laughed at the kid you didn’t know he was deaf, and when you found out, it made you realize how fucked up it is to laugh at someone who tries no matter what disabilities they have in their lives.
bbq dinner:
Yeah that’s pretty much it.
Ranier:
Well I'm proud to see you type this, even though you still might be an ass or not (I wouldn’t know anymore). I’m glad that you realized that.
10 PM on a rainy Friday night. I waited outside the auditorium as Ray ran around making sure everything was getting put cleaned up and put away. He had just successfully directed a dance showcase at his high school for charity, and now he looked too adorable yelling into his walkie-talkie as he ran around frantically. When I thought he was done, he came up to me and told me that he forgot something in the dance studio.
He led me to the his school’s dance studio, and when I walked inside, there was some slow romancey music playing, and there was a bunch of candy and lit candles littered all over the floor. “Ranye’s B-Day Wish” was written across the whiteboard, and underneath it hung a banner that read, in big red painted block letters: “Valentine?” I scratched my head and looked at Ray. “Did you guys have some kind of party earlier today?” I knew it was Ranier’s birthday today, but it wasn’t that close to Valentine’s Day.
“It’s for you,” he said.
“Oooooooh.” It hit me. This was a surprise for me. “OH MY.” I hugged and squeezed him tight, and of course, I said “Yes” to his Valentine question.
Later that weekend, we made our relationship official: What’s my favorite type of music? R&B! 01.24.10. (It was originally, what’s my favorite html tag?—BR! But I decided to go with the less nerdy option.)
Ranier and the Funksters had a dance competition in San Jose at the downtown Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th. Seeing how I got back home just in time at the end of finals week and how it was in my hometown, I went to visit him. I didn’t actually see the competition because I had already spent twenty-five bucks on the Sockhop ticket, but I came to see him outside of the convention center after the competition ended. We met up and walked to my car so I could give him the black jersey that he had asked me to buy for him about a month ago.
“Notice anything different?” I asked Ranier.
“You got contact lenses,” he answered.
“Yep, I also got a haircut.” I lifted my hat to show him. “I’m wearing a hat though because it’s kinda ba—”
“What the hell did you do? It’s terrible.” He ran his hand through my poorly shaved mohawk to feel every little mistake. “Wow, who cut your hair?”
“I did.”
“Oh, well, you should’ve asked me! There’s not much you can do now buh shave it all off.”
I shrugged. We got back to my car and Ranier got his jersey. I drove him back to the convention center so he could wait with another Funkster for her dad to pick them up. Before going, I got one last hug from him and told him I’d see him at Sock Hop. I watched him walk a few feet after he left my car, and then I turned to the rear-view mirror to gaze at myself in my new contact lenses, no glasses, and my ugly hair. I bit my lips, slowly nodded, and put my car into drive and drove home.
Tags:
dancing,
flashback,
norcal,
ranier,
relationships,
socal,
spirituality,
winter spring 2010
Tháng Tư Đen: Part 2
Sunday, May 2, 2010
(Continued from Tháng Tư Đen: Part 1.)
In Duy’s reeducation camp, there was a Christian nun undergoing religious prosecution. Any mention of Christianity was strictly forbidden, but she refused to renounce her faith. Every day she would march through camp, telling each and every prisoner, “May the lord be with you.” Whenever the nun approached Duy, he would feel his spirits uplifted, even though he was not a religious man. He could not believe in a God at a time like this, but he deeply admired the nun for standing up for what she believed in.
What the nun was doing was no secret, however, especially since spies posing as prisoners continually reported that she was still expressing her faith to all the other prisoners. She wielded words and faith instead of guns and knives, but the Communists considered her just as dangerous. They beat her, chained her, and cut her food rations, but she did not relent.
One morning, my dad heard her cries ringing throughout the fields during call time. Already there were Communist guards on their feet running toward her. “Believe in the lord Jesus Christ, and we will be saved!” she proclaimed. “He is the one who feels our needs, our pains, and our weaknesses! Jesus Christ, our sav—” She fell to the ground as the guards ambushed her and dragged her away. They threw her into solitary confinement, and my dad was sure that he’d never hear from her again.
Duy had many friends who died. Some died from malaria, tuberculosis, or malnutrition. The communists beat some to death and buried others alive. Duy had two friends in the camp who tried to escape. They were captured and shot dead in front of Duy’s own eyes and the eyes of all the prisoners.
Every once in a while, Duy got visitors. Some friends and relatives, who brought him food, clothing, and medicine. But there was one certain visit that was too heartwrenching.
“Chào anh thầy!”
Duy was shocked to see the young faces of his students.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“We came to visit you!”
“Are you okay?” another student asked.
They were all under watch. Any wrong words would result in punishment; both Duy and his students knew this.
“Yes, I am doing fine. You did not have to come visit.” Duy looked at their faces. A thin layer of shimmering tears coated their eyes. They wept silently as they looked at the man who used to be their history teacher. He was so thin now, nothing but flesh and bones. He wore rags, and it was apparent that he hadn’t showered in months.
“We really miss you,” a student said.
“I miss you guys too.” Seeing his students tears, Duy could not help but begin to weep too. His chest tightened, and if he hadn’t felt broken before, he felt broken now.
“Don’t worry, I will be back soon,” Duy assured them.
He was released five years later in 1980, at the age of 35.
My dad was sitting on the couch, watching TV at 1:30 in the afternoon when I came down to say goodbye.
“Ba, I’m heading back down to Irvine now.”
“Ok. Drive safe.”
My dad sat still in place, so I leaned down to give him a hug and a very light peck on the cheek, and he returned it with a peck on mine. Carrying all my stuff, I disappeared out the door with my mom.
There went his son, back to Irvine. Tomorrow, my dad would be waking up in the morning to go to his most recent job: he ran errands and made deliveries for a computer technology business. It was the best job he could get at age 65. After work, he’d come home and make dinner so that there was food on the table for him, his older son, and his wife by the time his wife got home from work at 7. After dinner, he’d watch TV with his wife, and at 10, he’d go to bed and wake up the next morning to start the cycle over again. His job paid him the money he needed to pay for the education of the son he never saw or never really knew, the son who turned out not at all to be the son he had hoped for. His son often saw him as an enemy, and he wondered if his son even ever really cared about the kind of life his own dad lived. His dad didn’t go through the Vietnam War and reeducation camps just to have a son that would wage another war with him.
This past weekend, my dad was surprised to see me trying to reach him on his cell phone. “Hello?”
“Hi Dad, it’s Brian. It’s Black April, and I was wondering if you could tell me about the time you spent in the reeducation camps after the Vietnam War?”
The communists released my dad after he spent five years in the reeducation camp. They felt that they had scared enough sense into him. Not really, as he escaped by boat to Malaysia two months later. As for the Christian nun, she was still alive when my dad left, but he never knew what became of her. The only one thing he knew about what happened to her was that she never gave up.
Sponsored by one of his brothers, Cuong, my dad arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska in October 1980. At the end of 1981, he moved to San Jose. He married a beautiful wife on July 15, 1985, and they had their first son in 1987. On May 12, 1990, they had their second son, which they named Brian.
Our home, from 1990-1996.
In Duy’s reeducation camp, there was a Christian nun undergoing religious prosecution. Any mention of Christianity was strictly forbidden, but she refused to renounce her faith. Every day she would march through camp, telling each and every prisoner, “May the lord be with you.” Whenever the nun approached Duy, he would feel his spirits uplifted, even though he was not a religious man. He could not believe in a God at a time like this, but he deeply admired the nun for standing up for what she believed in.
What the nun was doing was no secret, however, especially since spies posing as prisoners continually reported that she was still expressing her faith to all the other prisoners. She wielded words and faith instead of guns and knives, but the Communists considered her just as dangerous. They beat her, chained her, and cut her food rations, but she did not relent.
One morning, my dad heard her cries ringing throughout the fields during call time. Already there were Communist guards on their feet running toward her. “Believe in the lord Jesus Christ, and we will be saved!” she proclaimed. “He is the one who feels our needs, our pains, and our weaknesses! Jesus Christ, our sav—” She fell to the ground as the guards ambushed her and dragged her away. They threw her into solitary confinement, and my dad was sure that he’d never hear from her again.
Duy had many friends who died. Some died from malaria, tuberculosis, or malnutrition. The communists beat some to death and buried others alive. Duy had two friends in the camp who tried to escape. They were captured and shot dead in front of Duy’s own eyes and the eyes of all the prisoners.Every once in a while, Duy got visitors. Some friends and relatives, who brought him food, clothing, and medicine. But there was one certain visit that was too heartwrenching.
“Chào anh thầy!”
Duy was shocked to see the young faces of his students.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“We came to visit you!”
“Are you okay?” another student asked.
They were all under watch. Any wrong words would result in punishment; both Duy and his students knew this.
“Yes, I am doing fine. You did not have to come visit.” Duy looked at their faces. A thin layer of shimmering tears coated their eyes. They wept silently as they looked at the man who used to be their history teacher. He was so thin now, nothing but flesh and bones. He wore rags, and it was apparent that he hadn’t showered in months.
“We really miss you,” a student said.
“I miss you guys too.” Seeing his students tears, Duy could not help but begin to weep too. His chest tightened, and if he hadn’t felt broken before, he felt broken now.
“Don’t worry, I will be back soon,” Duy assured them.
He was released five years later in 1980, at the age of 35.
My dad was sitting on the couch, watching TV at 1:30 in the afternoon when I came down to say goodbye.
“Ba, I’m heading back down to Irvine now.”
“Ok. Drive safe.”
My dad sat still in place, so I leaned down to give him a hug and a very light peck on the cheek, and he returned it with a peck on mine. Carrying all my stuff, I disappeared out the door with my mom.
There went his son, back to Irvine. Tomorrow, my dad would be waking up in the morning to go to his most recent job: he ran errands and made deliveries for a computer technology business. It was the best job he could get at age 65. After work, he’d come home and make dinner so that there was food on the table for him, his older son, and his wife by the time his wife got home from work at 7. After dinner, he’d watch TV with his wife, and at 10, he’d go to bed and wake up the next morning to start the cycle over again. His job paid him the money he needed to pay for the education of the son he never saw or never really knew, the son who turned out not at all to be the son he had hoped for. His son often saw him as an enemy, and he wondered if his son even ever really cared about the kind of life his own dad lived. His dad didn’t go through the Vietnam War and reeducation camps just to have a son that would wage another war with him.
This past weekend, my dad was surprised to see me trying to reach him on his cell phone. “Hello?”
“Hi Dad, it’s Brian. It’s Black April, and I was wondering if you could tell me about the time you spent in the reeducation camps after the Vietnam War?”
The communists released my dad after he spent five years in the reeducation camp. They felt that they had scared enough sense into him. Not really, as he escaped by boat to Malaysia two months later. As for the Christian nun, she was still alive when my dad left, but he never knew what became of her. The only one thing he knew about what happened to her was that she never gave up.
Sponsored by one of his brothers, Cuong, my dad arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska in October 1980. At the end of 1981, he moved to San Jose. He married a beautiful wife on July 15, 1985, and they had their first son in 1987. On May 12, 1990, they had their second son, which they named Brian.
Our home, from 1990-1996.
Tags:
dancing,
ethnicity,
family,
flashback,
gay,
norcal,
spirituality,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
Tháng Tư Đen: Part 1
Saturday, May 1, 2010
I don’t want to walk in on my son having sex with his new boyfriend.
My dad tapped my bedroom door. No response. He knocked.
A few seconds later, he got my response. “Yeeeeeeah?”
“I’m going to wash your car,” he said, in Vietnamese. “Could you hand me the car keys?”
“Yeah.”
My dad cautiously opened the door, but not even enough to peak in. He waited for me to get my clothes back on or whatever it was I needed to do. He figured that I had brought that Mexicanish Filipino boyfriend of mine over, since I drove up to San Francisco the day before and then came back home at night, instead of staying overnight in SF like how I did all the time during Spring Break.
“Uh, you can come in.”
My dad opened the door, only to see me, and no one else, in my bed. Strange, he had figured that I brought my boyfriend back to spend the night.
I got up and handed him the keys.
“Thank you.” My dad closed the door as he left, leaving me to go back to bed for another few hours.
My car was a mess. What else was new? My dad had long stopped bothering to clean up inside my car, not just because it was so messy, but also because sometimes, he didn’t like what he found inside. Dance workshop fliers, Aristotle and English books, teaching brochures—there was even that one time when I had a bag of condoms and lube sitting around in the backseat—they all served as reminders as to how his son completely steered off the path of a stable future.
But nevertheless, he had to get started on cleaning right away because after this, he had to go to Banh Mi Thanh Lan to pick up six chicken sandwiches for me. They were my favorite.
Following the events in South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the Communists invaded Phan Thiet and stole all of Duy Dinh and his family’s personal belongings. His father was jailed, and his mother committed suicide by burning herself to death.
The communists promised humanity, yet very quickly Duy started to question, “What humanity?” This question, along with the fact that he was a high school history teacher, put him in a reeducation camp, deep inside a forest one hundred miles away from Phan Thiet.
The purpose of reeducation camps, as the name suggested, was to, in the most humanitarian way possible, reeducate and to instill within the South Vietnamese a new sense of a new Vietnamese patriotism. But, it wasn’t as much instilling within as much as it was burning to the ground and trying to recreate a totally different person. The word “reeducation” was just a mask for brainwashing, and “camp” was for jail.
Each camper went through a curriculum of political indoctrination. Upon his arrival at the camp, Duy was forced to write a confession about his supposed crimes against the Communists. He had none, but they insisted that he did. They didn’t relent, so he gave them the fake confession that they wanted: as a history teacher, he taught his students a history that inaccurately painted the Communists of North Vietnam as scoundrels and the citizens of South Vietnam as victims.
Duy and the prisoners were taught about the greatness of the Communist Party, the weaknesses of the United States, and the evils of American imperialism. These lessons intertwined with hard labor. Duy planted cotton trees and made bricks. He and the campers got no breakfast when they woke up, and their lunch and dinner rations were very little. His meals would consist of meager servings of uncooked rice and vegetables, and rat feces were often mixed in. He knew this. All the prisoners knew this. But they all ate it anyway.
The communists had promised that people like Duy would only be staying for a few days. But days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and that was when everyone realized that they were not campers. They were prisoners.
My dad tapped my bedroom door. No response. He knocked.
A few seconds later, he got my response. “Yeeeeeeah?”
“I’m going to wash your car,” he said, in Vietnamese. “Could you hand me the car keys?”
“Yeah.”
My dad cautiously opened the door, but not even enough to peak in. He waited for me to get my clothes back on or whatever it was I needed to do. He figured that I had brought that Mexicanish Filipino boyfriend of mine over, since I drove up to San Francisco the day before and then came back home at night, instead of staying overnight in SF like how I did all the time during Spring Break.
“Uh, you can come in.”
My dad opened the door, only to see me, and no one else, in my bed. Strange, he had figured that I brought my boyfriend back to spend the night.
I got up and handed him the keys.
“Thank you.” My dad closed the door as he left, leaving me to go back to bed for another few hours.
My car was a mess. What else was new? My dad had long stopped bothering to clean up inside my car, not just because it was so messy, but also because sometimes, he didn’t like what he found inside. Dance workshop fliers, Aristotle and English books, teaching brochures—there was even that one time when I had a bag of condoms and lube sitting around in the backseat—they all served as reminders as to how his son completely steered off the path of a stable future.
But nevertheless, he had to get started on cleaning right away because after this, he had to go to Banh Mi Thanh Lan to pick up six chicken sandwiches for me. They were my favorite.
Following the events in South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, the Communists invaded Phan Thiet and stole all of Duy Dinh and his family’s personal belongings. His father was jailed, and his mother committed suicide by burning herself to death.
The communists promised humanity, yet very quickly Duy started to question, “What humanity?” This question, along with the fact that he was a high school history teacher, put him in a reeducation camp, deep inside a forest one hundred miles away from Phan Thiet.
The purpose of reeducation camps, as the name suggested, was to, in the most humanitarian way possible, reeducate and to instill within the South Vietnamese a new sense of a new Vietnamese patriotism. But, it wasn’t as much instilling within as much as it was burning to the ground and trying to recreate a totally different person. The word “reeducation” was just a mask for brainwashing, and “camp” was for jail.
Each camper went through a curriculum of political indoctrination. Upon his arrival at the camp, Duy was forced to write a confession about his supposed crimes against the Communists. He had none, but they insisted that he did. They didn’t relent, so he gave them the fake confession that they wanted: as a history teacher, he taught his students a history that inaccurately painted the Communists of North Vietnam as scoundrels and the citizens of South Vietnam as victims.
Duy and the prisoners were taught about the greatness of the Communist Party, the weaknesses of the United States, and the evils of American imperialism. These lessons intertwined with hard labor. Duy planted cotton trees and made bricks. He and the campers got no breakfast when they woke up, and their lunch and dinner rations were very little. His meals would consist of meager servings of uncooked rice and vegetables, and rat feces were often mixed in. He knew this. All the prisoners knew this. But they all ate it anyway.
The communists had promised that people like Duy would only be staying for a few days. But days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, and that was when everyone realized that they were not campers. They were prisoners.
Tags:
dancing,
ethnicity,
family,
flashback,
gay,
norcal,
spirituality,
teaching,
winter spring 2010
Meaning
Thursday, December 31, 2009
I have no doubt that within my lifetime, science will learn to fully explain with 100% confidence how a person becomes gay—or straight even. Whether it is that way from the start or the result of complex environmental factors, science will explain it down to every last detail: how overexposure to a certain chemical effects shifts in chemical reactions in the brain, how the subtle mutation of one allele affects an entire gene. The answers will be another accomplishment for science, another one for the textbooks, but what those who trust their textbooks without question do not realize is that, science, at its best, only explains how. Its one and only pitfall, the only one thing missing, is that it can never have answers to what is most significant: It can never explain why.
A male is made to deliver his sperm to a female, who is made to receive and likewise made to bear a child. Science wires the brain so that the male feels sexual arousal and the desire to, in blunt terms, insert his dick in the female’s pussy and pump it full of jizz, and nine months later, the mom gives birth to a baby. The purpose of life, at its most basic science, is reproduction.
Many people do not regard this as their purpose or as only a small part of their lives, but I, in cruel irony, have long since taken this up as “one of the only firm decisions that I’ve already made for my future.” It’s the only constant longing I have had since middle school, and it will remain constant through the future.
I am left to question the science that has made me the way I am. To put it in blunt terms again, my sperm are pretty damn healthy as far as I know, and I have the need, whether it is biological or purely emotional, to have my own blood-related kid. Yet, I have not the innate desire to engage in actions that make use of them (once again, out of diction: I don’t wanna fuck vajayjays because they scare me). Why is it that I want this but cannot have it, while there are even others out there who can but do not want to?
Whether the answers I want are in myself, in other people, in my past and future experiences, or out there and beyond, and whether or not I was meant for something different, I know—and I’ve known for a while—that the answer is not in the science that I’ve held close to the foundations of my reality.
---
“At the Kitchen Table”
Written January 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I want kids (when I'm an adult). I've had it decided since 7th grade, and it was one of the only firm decisions that I've already made for my future. I can't see what kind of job I will have, or who I will be sharing my life with, or where I will be living, but I can see myself coming home everyday to kids—two children, a boy and a girl. Unless my partner really opposes, their names would be Matt and Janelle.
I have imagined that I would always be the one that cooked for the family (watched too much Food Network back then). I sorta had this plan. There are four weeks in each month, plus a few extra days. The first week of the month, the dinner menu would be all Asian. The second week would be all French; third Mexican; fourth Italian. And the last remaining days would be open for new recipes. (Obviously I'm rich in this little dream of mine.) The kids would love it (or else I would force it down their throats), and they would actually come to the dinner table excited.
---
December 31st, 2009, New Years Eve, less than one hour to midnight. Exactly four years ago, I came out. Yet I still haven’t come to turns that I suck dick, and as a result I’ve been bitter. Many things throughout the four years have masked the bitterness or made me forget, but eventually, I always return to this feeling.
A male is made to deliver his sperm to a female, who is made to receive and likewise made to bear a child. Science wires the brain so that the male feels sexual arousal and the desire to, in blunt terms, insert his dick in the female’s pussy and pump it full of jizz, and nine months later, the mom gives birth to a baby. The purpose of life, at its most basic science, is reproduction.
Many people do not regard this as their purpose or as only a small part of their lives, but I, in cruel irony, have long since taken this up as “one of the only firm decisions that I’ve already made for my future.” It’s the only constant longing I have had since middle school, and it will remain constant through the future.
I am left to question the science that has made me the way I am. To put it in blunt terms again, my sperm are pretty damn healthy as far as I know, and I have the need, whether it is biological or purely emotional, to have my own blood-related kid. Yet, I have not the innate desire to engage in actions that make use of them (once again, out of diction: I don’t wanna fuck vajayjays because they scare me). Why is it that I want this but cannot have it, while there are even others out there who can but do not want to?
Whether the answers I want are in myself, in other people, in my past and future experiences, or out there and beyond, and whether or not I was meant for something different, I know—and I’ve known for a while—that the answer is not in the science that I’ve held close to the foundations of my reality.
---
“At the Kitchen Table”
Written January 2nd, 2006 (Excerpted)
I want kids (when I'm an adult). I've had it decided since 7th grade, and it was one of the only firm decisions that I've already made for my future. I can't see what kind of job I will have, or who I will be sharing my life with, or where I will be living, but I can see myself coming home everyday to kids—two children, a boy and a girl. Unless my partner really opposes, their names would be Matt and Janelle.
I have imagined that I would always be the one that cooked for the family (watched too much Food Network back then). I sorta had this plan. There are four weeks in each month, plus a few extra days. The first week of the month, the dinner menu would be all Asian. The second week would be all French; third Mexican; fourth Italian. And the last remaining days would be open for new recipes. (Obviously I'm rich in this little dream of mine.) The kids would love it (or else I would force it down their throats), and they would actually come to the dinner table excited.
---
December 31st, 2009, New Years Eve, less than one hour to midnight. Exactly four years ago, I came out. Yet I still haven’t come to turns that I suck dick, and as a result I’ve been bitter. Many things throughout the four years have masked the bitterness or made me forget, but eventually, I always return to this feeling.
Tags:
flashback,
future,
gay,
norcal,
repost,
spirituality,
winter spring 2010
My Life
Saturday, September 19, 2009
I’ve always wanted to be the French teacher—the one with kickass lesson plans and students who only wanted to speak French in class. This was my dream. I had spent my high school years shaping and obsessing over this dream that I had convinced myself that this was my destiny. But French has all gone to hell now, hasn’t it?
I still want to be a teacher; I just don’t know what subject.
About three weeks ago, I sent an email to one of my Breakthrough students. She still hasn’t responded. I’m not too surprised. I feel like I’ve let my students down; promises of continued contact and updates on my life through blogging have all failed.
What if I can’t even be the teacher I want to be? The classroom, the students, the knowledge to impart—I want that all because all that comes with being a teacher by default. Beyond the default, I hope to be the teacher that students look up to, get advice from, and laugh with, and the teacher whose class they look forward to every day. But what if I can’t do that? What if I suck at teaching? What if I come off as arrogant, as that teacher who tries too hard to be everyone’s friend?
Shaping my own destiny is hard enough when fate long ago decided to make me one of the fucking lucky 4% of the population that is gay. There are so many aspects of my life that I wish could be predetermined, but the sole thing that is predetermined, ironically, is the last thing that I would ever want to be predetermined: the fact that I am gay and will continue to be gay for the rest of my life. Gotta love fate.
Fuck fate.
I am my own fucking god, and there is no greater deity than my mind. My future and aspirations—I may give them the fancy name of “destiny,” and the coincidences that happen to have big effects—“fate.” But life is so ridiculously random that I can barely give any meaning to it sometimes. It feels nice to think of my hopes for the future as destiny and to attribute everything else to fate, to say that some force has this idea for where my life is going because I certainly don’t. That’s more comforting than saying that my life is aimlessly tumbling along as I live it.
But fuck comfort too. I don’t let myself get comfortable.
Maybe I could become the best French teacher in the world and maybe all my dreams could come true. Maybe I’ll become one sad pathetic shell of a person who never grows up. There’s the best outcome, and then there’s the worst outcome; I hope for something in between, but it’s hard to not expect the worst, especially when it’s what I see less hazily in the horizon right now.
---
3:10. The sound of the bell’s loud droning cut me off mid-sentence, and my students didn’t waste any time to reach for their backpacks and shoot to their feet.
“Hold up!” I shouted over the shuffling.
Their blank expressions gazed back at me.
“I’m not done yet,” I said, rather meekly. I glanced over at all of their long, bored faces, clear indicators that they wanted to be out of here. It had been a long class. A long day. “Alright,” I sighed, “we’ll continue tomorrow. You guys can head out. Don’t forget about your essays.”
I watched over my thirty-four students as they scuffled out the door. When the last one was gone, I sat back down at my desk, from where I tossed down my tie and surveyed my empty classroom.
An occasional motivational poster or a few crinkled essays from past years blotted the pale white walls. A ceiling light in the corner flickered until it finally died.
I brought my attention back to my desk when I noticed a folded post-it note staring at me from atop a pile of one-month old ungraded essays. Picking it up, I unfolded it and read the message scribbled inside: do you ever check ratemyteachers.com mr dinh? your not really the shit as much as you think you are.
I knew the handwriting.
I knew what ratemyteachers.com said about me.
I didn’t give a shit.
Around 4, I headed over to the school’s dance studio to choreograph for my weekly night class. I had to come up with something really amazing because my boss was coming in to observe my class this week. He had informed me that my work needed “validation,” based on some bullshit complaints that I had been using extremely similar choreo only set to different songs for the last three weeks.
5 o’clock came, and I had only accomplished getting my dress shirt soaked with sweat. I had wasted an hour figuring out how to move to music—as in, I was only moving parts of my body while music played in the background. I wasn’t actually dancing, so I gave up and took the bus home.
On the bus, I questioned myself. Why was I still doing this? Still dancing? My inspiration had run dry a long time ago. Maybe it was time to move on. This was a dream that I chased way too far, literally, and I had gotten nothing out of it. I only got losses. I had to stop wasting my life away; I wasn’t going to become any famous celebrity’s backup dancer anytime soon. It was time to grow up.
Around 5:30, I got back to my apartment, mail in hand. I trudged through the hypebeast graveyard that was my one-and-a-half bedroom apartment. LRG, Stussy, Johnny Cupcakes, Kid Robot, Upper Playground, Freshjive, Insight, New Era, Nike SB, Supra—they all lay on the carpet faded and dead, only to be brought back to life as zombies when I would shed my business attire and went out at night.
I let a voice message play from my message recorder as I sat down at the kitchen counter and sorted through the mail. The shrillness of my mom’s voice raided my apartment, but I promptly zone it out. We hadn’t talked since the day I left, but ever since my dad’s funeral, which I did not attend, she had been trying to reach me. If only I knew how to block her number on my home phone too.
I flipped through the mail some more, finding nothing but Penny Saver coupons, credit card ads, clothing newsletters—I froze. My mail slipped through my fingers and onto the floor, leaving one envelope behind.
This was the letter.
I clasped it with my hands at its edges. I stared at it so intensely that the envelope might’ve burst into flames right there. My heart was racing. I had to calm down.
I cautiously laid the envelope down on the counter, went to my fridge, and came back with vodka and expired orange juice. Took a shot and chased it.
I gently scooped up the envelope and held it before me. As though I was caressing it, I ran my fingertips down its side, careful not to bend it, not to bruise it, and gradually, I brought it up to my face and kissed it lightly. I let the smell of it linger under my nose, and then I lowered it back down and pressed it firmly against my heart. I slowly closed my eyes and began moving my lips. I prayed.
6:30. I had downed another shot, peed, taken a dump, organized all my dunks into their respective shoeboxes, wandered around my apartment a dozen times, and now here I was sitting by the window, vodka and orange juice on the lamp table next to me, and the envelope in my lap, unopened. I couldn’t open it. I figured that maybe I should just burn the envelope, but no, there was one thing left that I hadn’t tried yet.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I hit speed dial, and I immediately got his voicemail.
“Hey, don’t delete this message—” I hesitated. “Please...just listen to what I have to say first. Um, I know we’re not on talking terms right now, I don’t blame you, but...it’s here.”
I held up the letter in front of me to make sure, for the hundredth time, that it really was here. “It’s here, the letter from the adoption agency, about whether or not I’ve been approved. Whether or not I can get my kid. And I uh,” I paused to swallow my tears. I couldn’t let him know that I was and had been a mess.
“I-I can’t open it. This is too hard. I need you with me, just for this. I can’t open it without you.”
I said the words. The hard part was over. I breathed a small sigh of relief, and then I continued. “I’ll meet you at Oakridge, in our secret spot. I’m going to leave now, and if traffic isn’t too terrible on 101-South, I should be there in about an hour and a half.”
I hung up and sighed again. After pouring myself another shot of vodka, I gazed out the window. As I squinted, my eyes locked in on a glimmer far off into the distance. The night sky was settling in, and just beyond the horizon, the noble red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge fought resiliently to shine through the blue evening fog.
I still want to be a teacher; I just don’t know what subject.
About three weeks ago, I sent an email to one of my Breakthrough students. She still hasn’t responded. I’m not too surprised. I feel like I’ve let my students down; promises of continued contact and updates on my life through blogging have all failed.
What if I can’t even be the teacher I want to be? The classroom, the students, the knowledge to impart—I want that all because all that comes with being a teacher by default. Beyond the default, I hope to be the teacher that students look up to, get advice from, and laugh with, and the teacher whose class they look forward to every day. But what if I can’t do that? What if I suck at teaching? What if I come off as arrogant, as that teacher who tries too hard to be everyone’s friend?
Shaping my own destiny is hard enough when fate long ago decided to make me one of the fucking lucky 4% of the population that is gay. There are so many aspects of my life that I wish could be predetermined, but the sole thing that is predetermined, ironically, is the last thing that I would ever want to be predetermined: the fact that I am gay and will continue to be gay for the rest of my life. Gotta love fate.
Fuck fate.
I am my own fucking god, and there is no greater deity than my mind. My future and aspirations—I may give them the fancy name of “destiny,” and the coincidences that happen to have big effects—“fate.” But life is so ridiculously random that I can barely give any meaning to it sometimes. It feels nice to think of my hopes for the future as destiny and to attribute everything else to fate, to say that some force has this idea for where my life is going because I certainly don’t. That’s more comforting than saying that my life is aimlessly tumbling along as I live it.
But fuck comfort too. I don’t let myself get comfortable.
Maybe I could become the best French teacher in the world and maybe all my dreams could come true. Maybe I’ll become one sad pathetic shell of a person who never grows up. There’s the best outcome, and then there’s the worst outcome; I hope for something in between, but it’s hard to not expect the worst, especially when it’s what I see less hazily in the horizon right now.
---
3:10. The sound of the bell’s loud droning cut me off mid-sentence, and my students didn’t waste any time to reach for their backpacks and shoot to their feet.
“Hold up!” I shouted over the shuffling.
Their blank expressions gazed back at me.
“I’m not done yet,” I said, rather meekly. I glanced over at all of their long, bored faces, clear indicators that they wanted to be out of here. It had been a long class. A long day. “Alright,” I sighed, “we’ll continue tomorrow. You guys can head out. Don’t forget about your essays.”
I watched over my thirty-four students as they scuffled out the door. When the last one was gone, I sat back down at my desk, from where I tossed down my tie and surveyed my empty classroom.
An occasional motivational poster or a few crinkled essays from past years blotted the pale white walls. A ceiling light in the corner flickered until it finally died.
I brought my attention back to my desk when I noticed a folded post-it note staring at me from atop a pile of one-month old ungraded essays. Picking it up, I unfolded it and read the message scribbled inside: do you ever check ratemyteachers.com mr dinh? your not really the shit as much as you think you are.
I knew the handwriting.
I knew what ratemyteachers.com said about me.
I didn’t give a shit.
Around 4, I headed over to the school’s dance studio to choreograph for my weekly night class. I had to come up with something really amazing because my boss was coming in to observe my class this week. He had informed me that my work needed “validation,” based on some bullshit complaints that I had been using extremely similar choreo only set to different songs for the last three weeks.
5 o’clock came, and I had only accomplished getting my dress shirt soaked with sweat. I had wasted an hour figuring out how to move to music—as in, I was only moving parts of my body while music played in the background. I wasn’t actually dancing, so I gave up and took the bus home.
On the bus, I questioned myself. Why was I still doing this? Still dancing? My inspiration had run dry a long time ago. Maybe it was time to move on. This was a dream that I chased way too far, literally, and I had gotten nothing out of it. I only got losses. I had to stop wasting my life away; I wasn’t going to become any famous celebrity’s backup dancer anytime soon. It was time to grow up.
Around 5:30, I got back to my apartment, mail in hand. I trudged through the hypebeast graveyard that was my one-and-a-half bedroom apartment. LRG, Stussy, Johnny Cupcakes, Kid Robot, Upper Playground, Freshjive, Insight, New Era, Nike SB, Supra—they all lay on the carpet faded and dead, only to be brought back to life as zombies when I would shed my business attire and went out at night.
I let a voice message play from my message recorder as I sat down at the kitchen counter and sorted through the mail. The shrillness of my mom’s voice raided my apartment, but I promptly zone it out. We hadn’t talked since the day I left, but ever since my dad’s funeral, which I did not attend, she had been trying to reach me. If only I knew how to block her number on my home phone too.
I flipped through the mail some more, finding nothing but Penny Saver coupons, credit card ads, clothing newsletters—I froze. My mail slipped through my fingers and onto the floor, leaving one envelope behind.
This was the letter.
I clasped it with my hands at its edges. I stared at it so intensely that the envelope might’ve burst into flames right there. My heart was racing. I had to calm down.
I cautiously laid the envelope down on the counter, went to my fridge, and came back with vodka and expired orange juice. Took a shot and chased it.
I gently scooped up the envelope and held it before me. As though I was caressing it, I ran my fingertips down its side, careful not to bend it, not to bruise it, and gradually, I brought it up to my face and kissed it lightly. I let the smell of it linger under my nose, and then I lowered it back down and pressed it firmly against my heart. I slowly closed my eyes and began moving my lips. I prayed.
6:30. I had downed another shot, peed, taken a dump, organized all my dunks into their respective shoeboxes, wandered around my apartment a dozen times, and now here I was sitting by the window, vodka and orange juice on the lamp table next to me, and the envelope in my lap, unopened. I couldn’t open it. I figured that maybe I should just burn the envelope, but no, there was one thing left that I hadn’t tried yet.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I hit speed dial, and I immediately got his voicemail.
“Hey, don’t delete this message—” I hesitated. “Please...just listen to what I have to say first. Um, I know we’re not on talking terms right now, I don’t blame you, but...it’s here.”
I held up the letter in front of me to make sure, for the hundredth time, that it really was here. “It’s here, the letter from the adoption agency, about whether or not I’ve been approved. Whether or not I can get my kid. And I uh,” I paused to swallow my tears. I couldn’t let him know that I was and had been a mess.
“I-I can’t open it. This is too hard. I need you with me, just for this. I can’t open it without you.”
I said the words. The hard part was over. I breathed a small sigh of relief, and then I continued. “I’ll meet you at Oakridge, in our secret spot. I’m going to leave now, and if traffic isn’t too terrible on 101-South, I should be there in about an hour and a half.”
I hung up and sighed again. After pouring myself another shot of vodka, I gazed out the window. As I squinted, my eyes locked in on a glimmer far off into the distance. The night sky was settling in, and just beyond the horizon, the noble red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge fought resiliently to shine through the blue evening fog.
Tags:
dancing,
dream,
family,
french,
future,
oakridge,
relationships,
spirituality,
summer 2009,
teaching
Paramasturbatory Illusions
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
When I tell the story of how I got into hip hop choreo, there’s the short version, and then there’s the long version. When I don’t want to bore the hell out of everyone and lose my audience, I tell the short version: “Through a friend.”
That’s not an exciting story at all, and the long version isn’t that boring. It’s an intricate, seemingly disconnected series of cause-and-effect, a long chain reaction affected by other chain reactions. It doesn’t seem to be going in any direction at first, but bear with it.
- During my junior year in high school, 2006, DDR was dying, so black John got me into breakdancing. I quit permanently at the beginning of 2007 due to lol-drama between me and John.
- In 2007, a guy named Jon randomly messaged me on Downelink (the gay Myspace) and told me that I looked like his friend QA. I humored Jon and agreed to start talking to QA.
- Somewhere in my conversations with QA, he briefly mentioned a summer teaching internship called Breakthrough. I saw it as an opportunity to teach my very own French class, but the deadline had long since passed. I forgot about it after a while.
- In March 2008, I randomly recalled that one conversation with QA about the teaching internship. I couldn’t remember the name of the internship, and I figured that the deadline would’ve already passed. However, I decided to dig through my AIM logs anyway to find the name of that internship. I found it and discovered that I had two days left to do the Breakthrough application. I worked till the early mornings on it.
- I got the job, but then I found out that I couldn’t teach French for an elective. So, I had to think about something else. I looked back into my past and decided that it was time to revive my interest in breakdancing so I could teach it.
- After the summer, I decided to continue pursue breakdancing into college, and I vowed not to do any other form of dancing because breakdancing was probably the least gay of them. Admittedly though, I wasn’t too into it.
- When signing up for my winter quarter classes back in Fall 2008, I wanted this one Hum Core class for this one time, but that wasn’t available so I had to get another. I was kinda satisfied, but one random day a month later, I decided to check class schedules again and found that a another class for the original time I wanted opened up. Of course, I switched to that one.
- Winter Quarter started in January 2009, and there was no one really noteworthy in my class. I will mention that there was a tall Asian guy named Sam; he became important later.
- UCI held Vibe 14, one of the big SoCal dance competitions. I went because I still had a slight interest in breakdancing and wanted to see the breakdancing club perform.
- I had planned on going to Vibe early but ended up oversleeping, so I got stuck in the back of the line.
- Competing teams were practicing in area close to the back of the line, and that was where I spotted Sam practicing with CADC.
- CADC won, and I congratulated Sam in class the next day. We bonded over dance.
- He told me about Kaba Modern audition workshops.
- I didn’t want to go without Cameron, but Cameron didn’t really wanna go.
- While Cameron and I were walking back from the student center the day of the first workshop, he ran into his friend who convinced him to go. Since he was going, I was going too.
And those audition workshops were how I got into dancing.
All of the above was a summary of a really long entry that lead up to this entry:
---
“all things”
Written May 30th, 2009 (Excerpted)
The path of my life that has led to the person I am today is so delicate and fragile. One different tiny detour in that path could’ve led somewhere totally different. I ponder, what would’ve happened if Cameron and I left the arcade five minutes earlier or five minutes later. At the moment, leaving a little earlier or a little later didn’t seem like it mattered at all. But then we wouldn’t have run into the girl that had convinced Cameron to accompany me to the Kaba Modern audition workshops. If I had never accidentally fallen asleep before [Vibe 14], I would’ve gotten in line close to the front and would’ve not seen Sam. If I had never decided to randomly check the schedule of Hum Core classes, I would’ve not known Sam in the first place.
And going all the way further back to two years ago, if I never bothered to reply to the weird message from Jon on Downelink, I never would’ve met QA, never would’ve heard about Breakthrough, never would’ve forced myself to [relearn] breakdancing as a last minute resort, never would’ve actually gotten interested in breakdancing. It’s possible that I might’ve taken the same Hum Core discussion class in Winter Quarter, but I definitely would not have gone to Vibe 14 without my interest in breakdancing. And yeah, my whole path of becoming a hip hop dancer would’ve fallen apart with one detour that I did not make very early on. And it could’ve still easily fallen apart if I did not make any one of like, eight other detours.
Look at where I am. I’m a (beginning) hip hop dancer now. I once told my dancer friend Kevin, “I just realized that I really love dancing. This is the most fun hobby I’ve had since I quit DDR.” As nerdy as it sounds, to say that I love something as much as I used to love DDR—that’s really huge for me. DDR was six or seven years of my life, and I’ve won competitions and made some great friends through it.
---
I’m beginning to rethink that theory, that one tiny change in the past could’ve led to me never getting into hip hop dancing.
What if it was actually bound to happen? As in, meant to be? As in, fated?
Sam wasn’t the only one who told me about the Kaba Modern auditions. Alfonso told me about them too. So all that stuff about choosing my Hum Core class and sleeping in for Vibe might have not mattered.
Would I have gone to Kaba Modern auditions if Cameron didn’t go? Possibly. I was always prone to making last minute decisions due to getting really bored at night in Irvine.
And what was my reason for doing breakdancing and nothing else? Because breakdancing was the least gay. Cameron changed my attitude about all gay things toward the end of the year, and with my views changed, could I have been more open to giving choreo a try?
And let’s not ignore the obvious: I was going to UC Irvine, the “dancer” school. All of our three competing teams, Kaba Modern, CADC, and Common Ground placed in the top five at Hip Hop Internationals at Las Vegas. It would be hard to avoid going to any kind of dance workshop throughout all four years of college. Everything that happened before me going to Irvine might as well have not mattered.
I never asked for this. To start dancing. To fall in love with it. I feel like I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for dancing, and those sacrifices included bits and pieces that made up part of what I had envisioned as my future. I had a plan, a grand master plan, my own self-made destiny that didn’t include dancing at all. But unexpectedly, dancing did come along, and I guess it just threw things in total different directions. It’s a concept that I still have trouble fully understanding: fate coming in and throwing off the destiny that I had made for myself, as though I really am supposed to not have a choice in creating my own destiny.
---
“all things” (Continued)
There are some choices that I make because I can see the consequences, but then there are some choices that I make that lead to consequences that I could have never dreamed of. And it just happens that the latter type of choices happen to be big life ones. And, since they’re such big life choices that lead to consequences that I don’t see and understand at the time I make them, can I really say that I’m in control of my life?
I want some sense of control and assurance that my life is not just a random and hectic path leading down to my destruction, so I think it’s plausible to say that other people have some control over my own life. That’s reasonable. After all, it’s a well known fact that our lives are shaped by the way other people come into our lives. But really, when Jon messaged me to tell me that I looked like a friend of his, did he really intend to give me the choice of becoming a dancer? Nope.
So who’s in control of my life?
---
Gotta love fate.
That’s not an exciting story at all, and the long version isn’t that boring. It’s an intricate, seemingly disconnected series of cause-and-effect, a long chain reaction affected by other chain reactions. It doesn’t seem to be going in any direction at first, but bear with it.
- During my junior year in high school, 2006, DDR was dying, so black John got me into breakdancing. I quit permanently at the beginning of 2007 due to lol-drama between me and John.
- In 2007, a guy named Jon randomly messaged me on Downelink (the gay Myspace) and told me that I looked like his friend QA. I humored Jon and agreed to start talking to QA.
- Somewhere in my conversations with QA, he briefly mentioned a summer teaching internship called Breakthrough. I saw it as an opportunity to teach my very own French class, but the deadline had long since passed. I forgot about it after a while.
- In March 2008, I randomly recalled that one conversation with QA about the teaching internship. I couldn’t remember the name of the internship, and I figured that the deadline would’ve already passed. However, I decided to dig through my AIM logs anyway to find the name of that internship. I found it and discovered that I had two days left to do the Breakthrough application. I worked till the early mornings on it.
- I got the job, but then I found out that I couldn’t teach French for an elective. So, I had to think about something else. I looked back into my past and decided that it was time to revive my interest in breakdancing so I could teach it.
- After the summer, I decided to continue pursue breakdancing into college, and I vowed not to do any other form of dancing because breakdancing was probably the least gay of them. Admittedly though, I wasn’t too into it.
- When signing up for my winter quarter classes back in Fall 2008, I wanted this one Hum Core class for this one time, but that wasn’t available so I had to get another. I was kinda satisfied, but one random day a month later, I decided to check class schedules again and found that a another class for the original time I wanted opened up. Of course, I switched to that one.
- Winter Quarter started in January 2009, and there was no one really noteworthy in my class. I will mention that there was a tall Asian guy named Sam; he became important later.
- UCI held Vibe 14, one of the big SoCal dance competitions. I went because I still had a slight interest in breakdancing and wanted to see the breakdancing club perform.
- I had planned on going to Vibe early but ended up oversleeping, so I got stuck in the back of the line.
- Competing teams were practicing in area close to the back of the line, and that was where I spotted Sam practicing with CADC.
- CADC won, and I congratulated Sam in class the next day. We bonded over dance.
- He told me about Kaba Modern audition workshops.
- I didn’t want to go without Cameron, but Cameron didn’t really wanna go.
- While Cameron and I were walking back from the student center the day of the first workshop, he ran into his friend who convinced him to go. Since he was going, I was going too.
And those audition workshops were how I got into dancing.
All of the above was a summary of a really long entry that lead up to this entry:
---
“all things”
Written May 30th, 2009 (Excerpted)
The path of my life that has led to the person I am today is so delicate and fragile. One different tiny detour in that path could’ve led somewhere totally different. I ponder, what would’ve happened if Cameron and I left the arcade five minutes earlier or five minutes later. At the moment, leaving a little earlier or a little later didn’t seem like it mattered at all. But then we wouldn’t have run into the girl that had convinced Cameron to accompany me to the Kaba Modern audition workshops. If I had never accidentally fallen asleep before [Vibe 14], I would’ve gotten in line close to the front and would’ve not seen Sam. If I had never decided to randomly check the schedule of Hum Core classes, I would’ve not known Sam in the first place.
And going all the way further back to two years ago, if I never bothered to reply to the weird message from Jon on Downelink, I never would’ve met QA, never would’ve heard about Breakthrough, never would’ve forced myself to [relearn] breakdancing as a last minute resort, never would’ve actually gotten interested in breakdancing. It’s possible that I might’ve taken the same Hum Core discussion class in Winter Quarter, but I definitely would not have gone to Vibe 14 without my interest in breakdancing. And yeah, my whole path of becoming a hip hop dancer would’ve fallen apart with one detour that I did not make very early on. And it could’ve still easily fallen apart if I did not make any one of like, eight other detours.
Look at where I am. I’m a (beginning) hip hop dancer now. I once told my dancer friend Kevin, “I just realized that I really love dancing. This is the most fun hobby I’ve had since I quit DDR.” As nerdy as it sounds, to say that I love something as much as I used to love DDR—that’s really huge for me. DDR was six or seven years of my life, and I’ve won competitions and made some great friends through it.
---
I’m beginning to rethink that theory, that one tiny change in the past could’ve led to me never getting into hip hop dancing.
What if it was actually bound to happen? As in, meant to be? As in, fated?
Sam wasn’t the only one who told me about the Kaba Modern auditions. Alfonso told me about them too. So all that stuff about choosing my Hum Core class and sleeping in for Vibe might have not mattered.
Would I have gone to Kaba Modern auditions if Cameron didn’t go? Possibly. I was always prone to making last minute decisions due to getting really bored at night in Irvine.
And what was my reason for doing breakdancing and nothing else? Because breakdancing was the least gay. Cameron changed my attitude about all gay things toward the end of the year, and with my views changed, could I have been more open to giving choreo a try?
And let’s not ignore the obvious: I was going to UC Irvine, the “dancer” school. All of our three competing teams, Kaba Modern, CADC, and Common Ground placed in the top five at Hip Hop Internationals at Las Vegas. It would be hard to avoid going to any kind of dance workshop throughout all four years of college. Everything that happened before me going to Irvine might as well have not mattered.
I never asked for this. To start dancing. To fall in love with it. I feel like I’ve made a lot of sacrifices for dancing, and those sacrifices included bits and pieces that made up part of what I had envisioned as my future. I had a plan, a grand master plan, my own self-made destiny that didn’t include dancing at all. But unexpectedly, dancing did come along, and I guess it just threw things in total different directions. It’s a concept that I still have trouble fully understanding: fate coming in and throwing off the destiny that I had made for myself, as though I really am supposed to not have a choice in creating my own destiny.
---
“all things” (Continued)
There are some choices that I make because I can see the consequences, but then there are some choices that I make that lead to consequences that I could have never dreamed of. And it just happens that the latter type of choices happen to be big life ones. And, since they’re such big life choices that lead to consequences that I don’t see and understand at the time I make them, can I really say that I’m in control of my life?
I want some sense of control and assurance that my life is not just a random and hectic path leading down to my destruction, so I think it’s plausible to say that other people have some control over my own life. That’s reasonable. After all, it’s a well known fact that our lives are shaped by the way other people come into our lives. But really, when Jon messaged me to tell me that I looked like a friend of his, did he really intend to give me the choice of becoming a dancer? Nope.
So who’s in control of my life?
---
Gotta love fate.
Tags:
alfonso,
black john,
breakthrough,
cameron,
dancing,
flashback,
french,
future,
kevin,
norcal,
repost,
socal,
spirituality,
summer 2009,
teaching
Amor Fati
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
“Why did we just go hella out of our way?”
“To avoid someone.”
Saturday night at 7:30, San Francisco, Union Square Park, Sixty miles away from where both of us are from—of all things my first crush, “Vance,” could have been doing (eating, drinking, fucking), he had to be here, with another guy at a corner that SF Andrew and I were heading toward.
Well, it’s not super mind-blowing crazy. It is San Francisco, and Vance is gay. And no one is getting drunk at 7:30 in the evening.
But still, out of all places in San Francisco that he could’ve been at, he had to be there at Union Square Park and at the right time too. We were at the right place and right time. If I was five minutes earlier or later, I might’ve missed him.
I know it’s stupid that I’m making a big deal out of this. It’s not like I even talked to him or tripped and fell face first into his crotch. I just tend to get carried away when I think about how seemingly unrelated occurrences can lead to something significant but way even more unrelated than the occurrence that started the entire chain of events.
Last week, Andrew messaged me asking to hang out in SF. I agreed and figured that Saturday evening after dance rehearsal would be the best time because I was planning on attending a company class Sunday night. The day of, we decided to go on a vain search for the last bit of sun in the evening. We stopped by Forever 21 to browse for a bit. We then proceeded to Union Square Park. I spotted Vance.
I could go further back and start with me meeting Andrew or even way way further back and start with me starting to hang out with Cameron. Either way, one small difference could’ve completely changed the outcome. Andrew could’ve never decided to message me out of the blue. If I wasn’t taking a summer dance intensive in SF, I could’ve visited him on any day of the week at any time. We could’ve decided to not go outside into the cold. We could’ve not stopped at Forever 21 or could’ve stayed there longer. The point is that, based on all the preceding events, I would not and never have expected to spot my first crush at a corner of an intersection. But I did anyway.
This kind of sequence of events is so delicate and easily malleable that it forces my more non-rational (my “emotional”) side to come out and wonder, “These coincidences are too coincidental. Someone or something had to have set this up.”
The reason I came out at the time I did is very convoluted, at least when I explain it. I never planned on coming out on New Years Eve, an hour and a half left before 2006, at an arcade, to Peter.
My story of how it happened starts in 2002 or 2003 with black John, far back when we haven’t even met yet. John was attending a private middle school where one of his friends happened to be Vance. Vance had a birthday party with DDR set-up, and that was how John got into DDR. Middle school eventually ended, and John ended up going to Leland, a public school, while Vance went to Bellarmine, a private school.
One year later in 2004, I just finished middle school. I had a very bad ending to my friendship with Seth, my best friend since the second grade. I told him (and the world) via a blog entry that the last few years of our friendship were shit and he meant nothing to me, especially now that he was heading off to Bellarmine and I was off to Santa Teresa High School (yeah, pretty cowardly, public, and overdramatic). Never talked to him since the last day of the eighth grade.
Some time later that year, I met John through playing DDR at the arcades. We, along with Peter, Miranda, and many more, all became good friends.
December 2005 came, and feeling some kind of mushy Christmas spirit, I decided that I wanted to talk to Seth again to settle some issues. And I had to be very dramatic about it (again), so I wanted to do it through a messenger. I asked John if he knew anyone that went to Bellarmine, and he did. He knew only one person: Vance.
“Oh, by the way, he’s gay,” John randomly pointed out. He’s gay. That stuck out to me, just a little bit. I was still a closet homo.
I got in contact with Vance through myspace, and eventually, the whole issue with Seth was settled toward the end of December. Done with that mess.
During the whole ordeal, however, I got to know Vance and his personality somewhat. He was very bold and out there, and he comfortably joked about his own gayness. He was the first gay guy that I had ever met, and I considered his openness admirable. I couldn’t help but develop my first true crush.
These were emotions that I had never felt before, and I didn’t know how to handle them. I needed someone to confide in, but I didn’t know who I could really go to.
Late at night on New Years Eve, John, Peter, and I decided to drop by Oakridge to play a few games of ITG. We were the only ones in the arcade, and the only sound came from the ITG machine. Peter and I were sitting in some driving games watching John play (the song he was playing, I remember very distinctly, was Soapy Bubble), and out of no where, or as though fate had commanded him, Peter turned to me with a wide smile and asked, “Are you gay?!”
I was caught off guard. I used to be able to lie about this whenever it would come up, but that night, with my need to confide in someone about these new emotions building up inside of me, I couldn’t lie anymore.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
John immediately stopped playing and shouted “WHAT?!” as he jumped off the machine.
And so began some of the best and some of the worst adventures/months/years of my life. New emotions, new drama, new ways of thinking, basically a new era in my life. And of the million things from my past I can now attribute all that to, I can attribute them to 2003, when John and Vance, two people I didn’t know at that time, played some DDR. What’s even crazier about this case is that, in a way, I wouldn’t have met Vance if it weren’t for Vance (him introducing John to DDR).
Gotta love fate.
“To avoid someone.”
Saturday night at 7:30, San Francisco, Union Square Park, Sixty miles away from where both of us are from—of all things my first crush, “Vance,” could have been doing (eating, drinking, fucking), he had to be here, with another guy at a corner that SF Andrew and I were heading toward.
Well, it’s not super mind-blowing crazy. It is San Francisco, and Vance is gay. And no one is getting drunk at 7:30 in the evening.
But still, out of all places in San Francisco that he could’ve been at, he had to be there at Union Square Park and at the right time too. We were at the right place and right time. If I was five minutes earlier or later, I might’ve missed him.
I know it’s stupid that I’m making a big deal out of this. It’s not like I even talked to him or tripped and fell face first into his crotch. I just tend to get carried away when I think about how seemingly unrelated occurrences can lead to something significant but way even more unrelated than the occurrence that started the entire chain of events.
Last week, Andrew messaged me asking to hang out in SF. I agreed and figured that Saturday evening after dance rehearsal would be the best time because I was planning on attending a company class Sunday night. The day of, we decided to go on a vain search for the last bit of sun in the evening. We stopped by Forever 21 to browse for a bit. We then proceeded to Union Square Park. I spotted Vance.
I could go further back and start with me meeting Andrew or even way way further back and start with me starting to hang out with Cameron. Either way, one small difference could’ve completely changed the outcome. Andrew could’ve never decided to message me out of the blue. If I wasn’t taking a summer dance intensive in SF, I could’ve visited him on any day of the week at any time. We could’ve decided to not go outside into the cold. We could’ve not stopped at Forever 21 or could’ve stayed there longer. The point is that, based on all the preceding events, I would not and never have expected to spot my first crush at a corner of an intersection. But I did anyway.
This kind of sequence of events is so delicate and easily malleable that it forces my more non-rational (my “emotional”) side to come out and wonder, “These coincidences are too coincidental. Someone or something had to have set this up.”
The reason I came out at the time I did is very convoluted, at least when I explain it. I never planned on coming out on New Years Eve, an hour and a half left before 2006, at an arcade, to Peter.
My story of how it happened starts in 2002 or 2003 with black John, far back when we haven’t even met yet. John was attending a private middle school where one of his friends happened to be Vance. Vance had a birthday party with DDR set-up, and that was how John got into DDR. Middle school eventually ended, and John ended up going to Leland, a public school, while Vance went to Bellarmine, a private school.
One year later in 2004, I just finished middle school. I had a very bad ending to my friendship with Seth, my best friend since the second grade. I told him (and the world) via a blog entry that the last few years of our friendship were shit and he meant nothing to me, especially now that he was heading off to Bellarmine and I was off to Santa Teresa High School (yeah, pretty cowardly, public, and overdramatic). Never talked to him since the last day of the eighth grade.
Some time later that year, I met John through playing DDR at the arcades. We, along with Peter, Miranda, and many more, all became good friends.
December 2005 came, and feeling some kind of mushy Christmas spirit, I decided that I wanted to talk to Seth again to settle some issues. And I had to be very dramatic about it (again), so I wanted to do it through a messenger. I asked John if he knew anyone that went to Bellarmine, and he did. He knew only one person: Vance.
“Oh, by the way, he’s gay,” John randomly pointed out. He’s gay. That stuck out to me, just a little bit. I was still a closet homo.
I got in contact with Vance through myspace, and eventually, the whole issue with Seth was settled toward the end of December. Done with that mess.
During the whole ordeal, however, I got to know Vance and his personality somewhat. He was very bold and out there, and he comfortably joked about his own gayness. He was the first gay guy that I had ever met, and I considered his openness admirable. I couldn’t help but develop my first true crush.
These were emotions that I had never felt before, and I didn’t know how to handle them. I needed someone to confide in, but I didn’t know who I could really go to.
Late at night on New Years Eve, John, Peter, and I decided to drop by Oakridge to play a few games of ITG. We were the only ones in the arcade, and the only sound came from the ITG machine. Peter and I were sitting in some driving games watching John play (the song he was playing, I remember very distinctly, was Soapy Bubble), and out of no where, or as though fate had commanded him, Peter turned to me with a wide smile and asked, “Are you gay?!”
I was caught off guard. I used to be able to lie about this whenever it would come up, but that night, with my need to confide in someone about these new emotions building up inside of me, I couldn’t lie anymore.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
John immediately stopped playing and shouted “WHAT?!” as he jumped off the machine.
And so began some of the best and some of the worst adventures/months/years of my life. New emotions, new drama, new ways of thinking, basically a new era in my life. And of the million things from my past I can now attribute all that to, I can attribute them to 2003, when John and Vance, two people I didn’t know at that time, played some DDR. What’s even crazier about this case is that, in a way, I wouldn’t have met Vance if it weren’t for Vance (him introducing John to DDR).
Gotta love fate.
Tags:
black john,
flashback,
gay,
miranda,
norcal,
oakridge,
peter,
relationships,
spirituality,
summer 2009
Falling Star
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Last night, Trung and I left the house around midnight to go watch a meteor shower. We drove to the only somewhat dark and somewhat high up place we knew of: the hill. It was a hill in a park by my old high school friend Kathleen’s house. Getting to the top was very walkable, but the hill was still high enough so that I could see Kaiser Permanente, which was a mile away, and another road going up the Silver Creek/Evergreen Mountains, which was about four miles away.
I knew that memories of this hill wouldn’t be the only things I’d revisit that night. This hill was the only really good and easily trekkable hill in the area, so I expected to run into people I knew from high school but haven’t talked to (avoided) since graduation.
And I did. But it wasn’t anyone that I used to be close to, so the reunion wasn’t too awkward. A few yards away, Trung and I laid a blanket over the dirt and lay ourselves flat to get a good view of the entire sky and all its stars.
We’d chat, and periodically we’d see a shooting star in the corner of our eyes.
There’s something so magical/romantic/nostalgic/inspiring about shooting stars. The night sky is normally full of your typical stars—immobile, lazy. They wait on you; they’re always there blinking and winking at you when you’re happy or sad or angry or whatever. While a starlit sky is all very pretty when you’re in a really dark place far off from civilization, the sky is nonetheless more exciting when shooting stars randomly run across it. A shooting star has places to go, no time to waste. It dashes past all the motionless stars, leaving them behind. And a shooting star definitely isn’t there to wait for you when you’re happy, sad, angry, whatever. It moves on, completely unabashed by the lazy stars it brushes past and by the stargazers who wait and search for it.
---
“Mentally, I guess I was okay.”
Written September 8th, 2007 (Excerpted)
The second to the last week of summer break, Leon im’d me late at night, and I could tell that he was hornier than normal. “Jacking off alone is boring,” he complained.
“Go get your boyfriend,” I joked, knowing that he lived [far away].
After getting past the banter, the conversation boiled down to Leon trying to convince me to “play” with him—as in, watch some porn together but jack off individually. Aside from being amused by Leon’s corruption of such an innocent word, I was very apprehensive, but he managed to convince me that “playing” wouldn’t be cheating. “It’s not cheating as long as no one touches each other!” he explained. That’s all it really took to convince me because after all, Leon was hot. Plus, it was such a surreal opportunity that I couldn’t let it pass; the guy that I had had a [tiny] crush on a year and a half ago [and haven’t talked to since then] was willing to get naked for me. Even though I no longer had any kind of feelings for him, I wanted to make my sophomore self jealous.
[And so jealous I made my sophomore self.]
A few days later, Leon and his boyfriend broke up. Leon told me that they were going to give each other some until they [met up at school again]. And then I and Leon began discussing a second play session.
[Details about the second “play” were here. Afterward, he discussed the possibility of starting some body contact later on.]
I thought it was kinda inappropriate that Leon was willing to do anything with another guy even though the possibility of getting back with his ex, who he claimed to love unconditionally, loomed overhead. But then Leon was able to convert me to the idea of “sexual liberalism” (in the gay world, that apparently means being able to dissociate love and relationships from sex and to treat sex as just a casual friendly thing, but the rules of cheating while in a relationship still apply), although it wasn’t much of a conversion because I was already on the verge of going over anyway.
So another week passed, and school started again. I was invited to watch the meteor shower on the hill by Kat’s house, and I knew that this was going to just be another “romantic situation without someone to be romantic with”, unless I did something about it. I asked Leon if he would’ve liked to accompany me, and he was glad. We knew that that night, we were finally going to practice some “sexual liberalism” (which Leon still refers to as “playing”).
Autumn, Kathleen, Maggie, Loppy, and a few other friends of mine knew what I and Leon did that night; they witnessed it. Starting at 11 AM, everybody was huddled together on a few blankets laid over the dusty dirty on top of the hill. At first, I and Leon cuddled to keep each other warm, but…we ended up making out.
My hormones were shooting with joy. Mentally, I guess I was okay.
Around 2 AM, I and Leon decided to descend the hill and find a private place to just chat. We settled for a play structure and sat on its stairs. Made out some more, and then we got to talking. It turned out that things with his boyfriend just weren’t going to turn out well at all. Leon revealed to me some very shocking things about themselves—the couple that I had envied since the day they got together. [Unpleasant details.]
We also talked about [my first crush, let’s call him “Vance”], who Leon had known for about three years…Vance was now a huge party boy/drinker, but he was only on the verge of becoming one when I had still liked him. Time and boys changed him drastically.
I came to the conclusion that relationships were shit.
And then surprisingly enough, we talked about religion. Leon practiced Buddhism, but he said that he was really a theist but didn’t have a specific god or deity to pray to. However, I could never really picture Leon praying, or just being religious in any kind of way. I explained that I considered those who prayed or turned toward religion were only making a vain last-minute ditch effort to fix or understand something that they and everyone else failed in trying. I had never prayed [to anyone/anything else] for anything in my life, not even to have a chance to be straight when I was going through my sexual identity crisis.
Lastly, we discussed me and “how I was doing”. I was doing fine enough, but I was sure that I wouldn’t be having any kind of stable relationship any time in the next year or two. Leon asked me what I was going to do when he would go back to school, and I divulged that I had already started considering a few different guys to “play” with.
I looked at my watch; it was almost 3 AM, the supposed start time of the grand meteor shower. Leon and I headed back up the hill, and the whole group eagerly looked up at the sky.
One hour passed, and we all had yet to see anything thrilling. I and Leon decided to head back to my house. When we got there, we went up into my room and headed straight under the covers of my bed. [Blah blah blah.]
When we finished, we cuddled until we fell asleep. The next morning, I drove Leon back home.
---
Two weeks later, I would meet Trung, and he would be the one to get me back up on my feet.
I knew that memories of this hill wouldn’t be the only things I’d revisit that night. This hill was the only really good and easily trekkable hill in the area, so I expected to run into people I knew from high school but haven’t talked to (avoided) since graduation.
And I did. But it wasn’t anyone that I used to be close to, so the reunion wasn’t too awkward. A few yards away, Trung and I laid a blanket over the dirt and lay ourselves flat to get a good view of the entire sky and all its stars.
We’d chat, and periodically we’d see a shooting star in the corner of our eyes.
There’s something so magical/romantic/nostalgic/inspiring about shooting stars. The night sky is normally full of your typical stars—immobile, lazy. They wait on you; they’re always there blinking and winking at you when you’re happy or sad or angry or whatever. While a starlit sky is all very pretty when you’re in a really dark place far off from civilization, the sky is nonetheless more exciting when shooting stars randomly run across it. A shooting star has places to go, no time to waste. It dashes past all the motionless stars, leaving them behind. And a shooting star definitely isn’t there to wait for you when you’re happy, sad, angry, whatever. It moves on, completely unabashed by the lazy stars it brushes past and by the stargazers who wait and search for it.
---
“Mentally, I guess I was okay.”
Written September 8th, 2007 (Excerpted)
The second to the last week of summer break, Leon im’d me late at night, and I could tell that he was hornier than normal. “Jacking off alone is boring,” he complained.
“Go get your boyfriend,” I joked, knowing that he lived [far away].
After getting past the banter, the conversation boiled down to Leon trying to convince me to “play” with him—as in, watch some porn together but jack off individually. Aside from being amused by Leon’s corruption of such an innocent word, I was very apprehensive, but he managed to convince me that “playing” wouldn’t be cheating. “It’s not cheating as long as no one touches each other!” he explained. That’s all it really took to convince me because after all, Leon was hot. Plus, it was such a surreal opportunity that I couldn’t let it pass; the guy that I had had a [tiny] crush on a year and a half ago [and haven’t talked to since then] was willing to get naked for me. Even though I no longer had any kind of feelings for him, I wanted to make my sophomore self jealous.
[And so jealous I made my sophomore self.]
A few days later, Leon and his boyfriend broke up. Leon told me that they were going to give each other some until they [met up at school again]. And then I and Leon began discussing a second play session.
[Details about the second “play” were here. Afterward, he discussed the possibility of starting some body contact later on.]
I thought it was kinda inappropriate that Leon was willing to do anything with another guy even though the possibility of getting back with his ex, who he claimed to love unconditionally, loomed overhead. But then Leon was able to convert me to the idea of “sexual liberalism” (in the gay world, that apparently means being able to dissociate love and relationships from sex and to treat sex as just a casual friendly thing, but the rules of cheating while in a relationship still apply), although it wasn’t much of a conversion because I was already on the verge of going over anyway.
So another week passed, and school started again. I was invited to watch the meteor shower on the hill by Kat’s house, and I knew that this was going to just be another “romantic situation without someone to be romantic with”, unless I did something about it. I asked Leon if he would’ve liked to accompany me, and he was glad. We knew that that night, we were finally going to practice some “sexual liberalism” (which Leon still refers to as “playing”).
Autumn, Kathleen, Maggie, Loppy, and a few other friends of mine knew what I and Leon did that night; they witnessed it. Starting at 11 AM, everybody was huddled together on a few blankets laid over the dusty dirty on top of the hill. At first, I and Leon cuddled to keep each other warm, but…we ended up making out.
My hormones were shooting with joy. Mentally, I guess I was okay.
Around 2 AM, I and Leon decided to descend the hill and find a private place to just chat. We settled for a play structure and sat on its stairs. Made out some more, and then we got to talking. It turned out that things with his boyfriend just weren’t going to turn out well at all. Leon revealed to me some very shocking things about themselves—the couple that I had envied since the day they got together. [Unpleasant details.]
We also talked about [my first crush, let’s call him “Vance”], who Leon had known for about three years…Vance was now a huge party boy/drinker, but he was only on the verge of becoming one when I had still liked him. Time and boys changed him drastically.
I came to the conclusion that relationships were shit.
And then surprisingly enough, we talked about religion. Leon practiced Buddhism, but he said that he was really a theist but didn’t have a specific god or deity to pray to. However, I could never really picture Leon praying, or just being religious in any kind of way. I explained that I considered those who prayed or turned toward religion were only making a vain last-minute ditch effort to fix or understand something that they and everyone else failed in trying. I had never prayed [to anyone/anything else] for anything in my life, not even to have a chance to be straight when I was going through my sexual identity crisis.
Lastly, we discussed me and “how I was doing”. I was doing fine enough, but I was sure that I wouldn’t be having any kind of stable relationship any time in the next year or two. Leon asked me what I was going to do when he would go back to school, and I divulged that I had already started considering a few different guys to “play” with.
I looked at my watch; it was almost 3 AM, the supposed start time of the grand meteor shower. Leon and I headed back up the hill, and the whole group eagerly looked up at the sky.
One hour passed, and we all had yet to see anything thrilling. I and Leon decided to head back to my house. When we got there, we went up into my room and headed straight under the covers of my bed. [Blah blah blah.]
When we finished, we cuddled until we fell asleep. The next morning, I drove Leon back home.
---
Two weeks later, I would meet Trung, and he would be the one to get me back up on my feet.
Tags:
flashback,
norcal,
relationships,
repost,
spirituality,
summer 2009,
trung
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