After a late, home cooked dinner last night:
Me: I should learn how to cook from mom this weekend.
Me: I mean, do you like mom’s food?
Dad: (pause, shrugs shoulders) It’s so-so.
Me: So-so….?
Dad: (leans in closer) Let’s just say it’s like eating at the same restaurant for 30 years.
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This conversation is probably interesting to exactly 3 pretentious New Yorkers.
“Where do you live?” he asked at the bar. “In the city?” The din of neighboring conversations and white noise crowded on us as we tried to find common territory.
“I’m in Park Slope.”
Blank expression.
“Park Slope, Brooklyn.”
30% blank expression; 70% smugness as he registered it was not Manhattan.
Smiling politely, I lobbed the question back. “You?”
“Oh, I live on the island - 25th and 1st.” He took a sip of his Mojito.
“Oh, so… Gramercy?”
“Yes, Gramercy.” He purred each syllable the way a schoolgirl writes her crush’s name. “And where does your friend live?” He nodded at R, in conversation with another.
“Carroll Gardens.” Beat. “Also, in Brooklyn.”
“Oh - so you two live together.”
“No, we live in different neighborhoods.”
“But” - investment banker ‘aha’ moment - “you both live in Brooklyn.”
“Yes. We both live in Brooklyn.”
And he took another sip of his drink. His hair was long, wavy, and had the self-conscious look of product. His collared shirt was unbuttoned just-so, and he wore tan Kenneth Cole loafers. The conversation was wrapping up with the score Douchebag: 1; Bar Chick: O when I decided to play bottom of the ninth.
“Wait,” I wrinkled my eyebrow in faux confusion, head cocked to one side. “Did you say 25th and 1st?”
“Yep.”
“That’s not really Gramercy, is it? Gramercy ends at 23rd and 3rd. So, is that like East Gramercy… the way East Williamburg is Williamsburg.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he used wide circular gestures, drink still in hand. “25th and 1st is not East Gramercy.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” I continued. “That isn’t the name of a real neighborhood. You’re more, like,” - pause - “Murray Hill.”
His eyes suddenly grew large; his jaw clenched for a flash of a second. He played with his stalk of mint and started looking for his friends.
R and I exited soon after. I didn’t need judges to tally up the final score.
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My uncle died Friday morning. I found out from my mom via email. She told my brothers and me she was going back to Taiwan, effective immediately, and returning on August 2nd.
When I received the news, I didn’t know what to think. I calmly finished my morning routine and pushed it out of my head until the commute to work.
Ever diplomatic, my thought process went something like this:
1) It’s good that it happened when it did: during my cousins’ trip to see him back in Taiwan.
2) It’s good he got to see Patty, pregnant with his first grandchild, before he passed.
And then:
Should I be sad? Am I allowed to be sad? And I concluded there are more people who have priority on the sad scale. I shouldn’t be sad. My aunt, his wife, should be sad. My cousins, his children, should be sad. I imagine my mom, his sister-in-law, would be sad next, because she was so close to that family and she would be so worried for them, full of love that she is. They could be sad, I decided. For me, however, he was just another extended family member across the Pacific and half a world away.
I started to think of how many hours I must’ve spent with him in my lifetime. He was not a constant presence. He spent most of his time in places other than mine – in Taiwan, San Francisco, and Vancouver while I grew up in New York, Texas, and Philadelphia. He was a passing topic of conversation whenever I spoke with my mom. One of those people I asked about off my checklist during my weekly phone calls in university. I took to asking the latest developments in their family, a doppelganger of ours except 5 years more mature. I would use them as a way of seeing how we would dys/function down the road. And now one of them was gone.
I arrived at the office to find the same email sitting in my work inbox. It appears my mother has mastered the art of the CC. I pressed ‘delete’ and started my workday.
At the time, it seemed very important to impart a sense of stoicism. Like nothing was wrong. No one knew about my uncle’s state of health to date; it didn’t seem like a high priority to give them the play-by-play now. I only told my closest colleague about the news during our lunch break, inadvertently guilting her into seeing ‘No Reservations’ with me that evening. I felt I needed a romantic comedy to take my mind off things.*
Sometime that afternoon, however, my new manager came storming out of her boss’ office yelling my name. I could not catch her exact words except for the emphatic-ness with which she pronounced “N” over and over. Everyone within a 20-foot radius heard her. A coworker by the fax machine – to whom I defended my new manager the evening before – looked at me as if to say, I pity you. I had miscommunicated something via email, which now seem to be blown out of proportion. I immediately went to right the mistake and – full disclosure – had to tell my team why I might not have been operating at 100%. I remember thinking this is not the way I would have wanted it to come out.
I haven’t really let myself feel for a long time.
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Yesterday, I received the best gift.
It was given to me by a coworker. I was deeply absorbed in thought, meditating blue highlighter on yellow legal paper, when she peered into my cubicle.
“I have a late Christmas gift for you,” she said, looking in.
“I didn’t have any wrapping paper, but here you go.” It was wrapped in a FedEx delivery envelope.
As she walked away, I delicately tore away the tape. Inside
was a dark wooden box with a symbol etched on top. It looked like a calligraphy of nothingness. I opened the box to see if there was a definition inside. It was empty.
I asked my cubicle neighbor what the symbol meant.
“I think it’s ‘Om’.”
“Well, what’s ‘Om’?”
“I don’t know, but people say it a lot at the beginning and
end of prayers and stuff.”
“But what does it mean? Is it like hello? Is my box saying
hello?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
So we googled it.
It symbolizes ultimate Reality.
Another coworker came by as we were ‘Om’-ing.
“Oh ‘Om’?” He said. “Did you know that if you pronounce it
perfectly, it forms all the possible sounds you can make with your
tongue and mouth? It starts from the back of your throat like, like” - he pronounced it perfectly.
So a coworker gave me the gift of ultimate Reality and inside it was nothing.
(And she was worried about the wrapping paper.)
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Written during my year-long stint in China.
I almost totally forgot that Chinese people consider American girls sluts until yesterday. Last night, Greg said his girlfriend asked about my lasciviousness. A while ago, I had called him in a moment of panic, fearing I misled a local boy into thinking that I liked him simply by letting him accompany me on some errands. So I called Greg for his perspective on the matter. I ended up talking to his girlfriend and although I thought the conversation went well, apparently she asked exactly how ‘kai fang’ I was immediately afterwards. And how easily did I give boys “a chance.”
Well, fuck her.
While waiting in line at the post office, a grey-haired gentleman behind me informed me that I “looked like the girls in Gauguin’s paintings.” I did not know whether to feel flattered or lie in abject horror. I laughed it off, and attempted to deflect future comments with a “yeah, it’s probably because I’m so tan.” But he pressed on: asking me where I came from (China, not the South Pacific) and insisting that, I must at least be from Southern China (I don’t know).
“It’s like with the Africans,” he continued, his voice remarkably lowered. “You can tell the difference between the ones from Egypt and the ones from the Congo in their faces. Their bone structures are different.” And suddenly I felt further denuded before him, back turned, and reduced to a sheepish grin.
“Consider it a compliment,” he insisted.
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When the boy and I are cuddling, sometimes I nuzzle in real close to his neck and whisper, “mmm . . . pheromones.”
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I waited for him at Gare Montparnasse. I spent the morning walking from Place d’Italie in flip flops and my backpack prepared for the next month’s adventure. He did not want to meet at the hostel, navigate the metro by himself, or use the French flashcards his mother made him from my emails. So I gave him directions from the airport into the city and parked myself by the kiddie carousel - our meeting spot. His plane was arriving at 8:30 am. It had been 6 weeks since I’d last seen him.
8:30 am came and went. The sun rose. I migrated to the bus station precisely where he would be dropped off. I asked the baggage workers if this was the only Montparnasse stop. It was. With each arriving bus, my heart rose. I scanned the tinted windows for his face, his build, him. Hours passed. Noon passed. Sank.
I watched a man pick a fight with one of the bus drivers. Although unclear about the argument’s cause, his violent intent became apparent when he barreled through the line - shouting, cursing in ballistic French - and punched. The bus driver reciprocated by unbuckling his seat belt, exiting his vehicle, and running into the street. Baggage workers held both back. The man’s wife and daughter watched from the sidewalk. Police arrived and filed a report.
By 1 pm, my endurance was quickly diminishing. I thought about my directions, possible miscommunication, the wrong bus stop, traffic. I forgot whether or not I included hostel information in my emails. I saw other people greet their families, other couples scamper off. I was getting hungry. I put on the sunglasses Aaron lent me in Amsterdam and tried not to let my disappointment show.
When he arrived minutes later, I did not even see him. He ran towards me and when it registered, I burst into tears. “Are you mad at me?” he asked, anxiously. “I thought you looked mad at me but how could you be? Ah man, I just got off the bus!”
We spent the next half hour under a tree just holding each other.
I think about that moment now, the month then spent, and how we were actually young; that is, our relationship was young. I had only known him for five months and most - if not all my relationships - were doomed by the four month mark. I could eyeball their detonations if I did not explode them myself out of sheer impatience. But there he was, in Paris with me, and more than a year later, here we still are.
I think about that now and I wonder how much harder the year(s?) long interim will be. How much more he will mean to me by the time of my next departure.
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Looking at the as-yet titled works, the fiberglass sculptures, the acrylic drawings, the colored pencil and envelope sketches, I started to wonder at what exact moment did the child die within me.
During dinner, I interrupted a conversation about post-graduation plans. To please the parents, one senior set himself upon the elaborate scheme of applying to graduate school though that is not what he aspires to. When I asked him the typical follow-up of ’so, what do you want to do?’ he equivocated so pleasurably that I almost hated myself for telling him he was equivocating. ‘I would do nothing ,’ he said, after my many persistent interruptions. ‘ Nothing at all.’ His quiet eyes and sheepish demeanor belied a seriousness I was ashamed of interrogating.
But what is nothing?
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cunning little bitch
i saw your face yesterday
that was the last straw
michelle said you build
live behind the dryer, make nest
we kill your children’
other roommates dumb
squeal like sissies in their rooms
not i, you bitch mouse
you think you are smart
fine, don’t eat the poison pills
die in painful trap
don’t give me mickey
that cartoon rodent bullshit
you’re not fucking cute
this is war, you hear
RIP 2004
i pity the fool
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