Saturday, December 30, 2006
Friday, December 29, 2006
Jaundiced Eye
I found Omar’s videos in a battered banker’s box in his closet, behind the lovingly pressed Cerruti suits. The title stacked on the very top was Hustler’s Asian Fever, starring Mimi, Sweet Nicha, Orange and Nuim, advertising that: “Asia is the land of enchanment [sic], a land of beauty, a land of beautiful, cock-loving babes who can't wait to get into your shorts.” Until that night, I had never watched porn. I regarded this with open-minded anthropological curiosity. And, having the rare opportunity alone in the apartment, I wanted to experience firsthand how Omar spent the bulk of his unemployed days. There was an abundance of titles from which to choose. The double entendre of Pacific Rim was clever, but then I appreciated the attempt to class it up with Haiku even if the poetry was in title only. The big winner was Joey Silvera’s Big Ass Asian Party Girls IV selected based on the cover which showed two women engaged in an intense pelvic exam. Also, the fact that it was the fourth volume indicates the three that preceded it were of good enough quality to justify a sequel.
Or not. Let me tell you, dear reader, that Asian Party Girls IV is not much of a film. And I won’t be adding parts I, II or III to my Netflix queue either. I left the party girls in the VCR expecting that Omar would find them and know my humiliation. I have no problem with, as my friend Trey puts it, letting a man have his “me time”. The most troubling aspect was the knowledge that I had been intimately acquainted with Omar’s porn before I had ever seen any of it. It wasn’t until late in adult life, recently, that I realize how good sex can be and how little it resembles Joey Silvera’s big-ass party. Men who use porn to inform their sex lives have an inadequate understanding of women. They’re bad lovers. But at the time, I was less bothered that my partner refracted life through the distorted lens of porn than fact that it was a particular kind of fetish porn, which was an affront to both my gender and my ethnicity.
Although I am not alone in this view, not all Asian American women regard Asian fetishes with the same level of hostility. To some, it is simply an extreme form of appreciation; it’s positive. But the issue, as with anything involving race, is far more complicated than personal preference.
Years ago, I attended a weeklong destination wedding in southern France. After one evening of free-flowing regional wine, I overheard two non-Asian men, friends of the groom, carry on a conversation about how “Asian girls are so hot!” inspired, no doubt, by several strikingly beautiful women in the party including Lea, the bride. I also did notice that Lea had some attractive girlfriends. But, because it would have been perfectly natural for Lea to make friends from similar ethnic and social situations and because I know many common-looking Asian American women, I noted only the particularity of the instance, whereas the two groomsmen used the twenty-or-so sampling of wedding guests as a basis to stereotype all women of Asian descent. They expressed desire for these women, not as individuals, but as hyper-sexualized things.
I don’t know exactly when I first noticed the inversion in the relationship between race and beauty. Growing up in a homogenous suburban community, my Asian features were always perceived defects—so much so that I was deformed, alien, and asexual. On my first week in Grade 2 at Northside Elementary School, I was so conscious of my own difference that I was grateful that anyone should choose to sit by my Arts & Crafts workstation. I smiled at Delia, who sat to my left. She responded in a sing-song chant: “You chineeee, you ugleeeee!” Allison, on my right, only laughed. She swung her legs, two thick white turnips dangling over the side of her work stool, to kick me for good measure. You chineeee, you ugleeeee! Mr. Foster did not intervene—perhaps too busy making “African” masks from Chinette paper plates. You chineeee, you ugleeeee! I was quiet. They wanted me to cry. I didn’t. I just sat very very still and held it in. Because it was true. I am Chinese. I am ugly.
This is not a story of victimization. It is an illustration of the most obvious and simplest kind of racism at the hands of two unthinking seven-year olds. We can easily condemn their actions because racism is most recognizable in the guise of hatred, violence, and slurs. But, racism does not become acceptable in the guise of fetishes and sexual stereotyping. It is just as menacing when grown men leer at me on the street, with their konichi-wa’s and anyang-ha-seo’s. I don’t speak Japanese or Korean, but I would happily learn to say “Your Mother” or its idiomatic equivalent in either language. I have just as much resentment towards the two groomsmen who, even as the least and dorkiest among us, speak from a position of sexual and cultural entitlement—like those American tourists who, realizing the value of the U.S. $ to the RMB, expect to buy everything on the cheap. Omar was the one that I let in, making his betrayal the most damaging. Hatred and fetishes are two stalks growing from the same root; they are aggressive forms of dehumanization.
I am ugly. I am beautiful. It makes no difference. If we say that it does matter, then we have to answer the question: Says who? The arbiters of beauty have the privilege to construct the perceptions and realities of others. This is an extraordinary power. I certainly do not possess it nor do I accord it to Delia or some Asian fetishist. Consider:
Perhaps, dear reader, that all this seems like an overreaction. After all, your garden-variety Asian fetishist doesn’t mean any harm1. They’re not exactly the face of repressive white institutional power. In fact, they’re often pathetic and socially awkward. You know the type. Those guys who, as undergrads, would be the same faces auditing Intro to Modern Chinese, Asian American History, Asian American Literature, Japanese Anthropology, Ancient Chinese Philosophy, etc. They show up at AASA meetings or mixers where there would be high concentrations of Asian Americans. They try to impress females on their skills in Tae Kwon Do, their love of Dim Sum, or their fascination with The Pillow Book. They do all this and brag about how many APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) friends they have in an effort to convince you, a Taiwanese American girl, that they belong there. The problem is: they have no clue where ‘there’ is. The Asian fetishist construes diverse national groups as a single monolithic ‘Asian’ culture—a fallacy since ‘Asian American’ is a balkanized political classification so broad that includes three different subcontinents. (Of course, the pathology is different for the cruder less-educated fetishists: “Hey, there sexy China doll; Ho Chi Minh City, here I come!” Ask Waldorf how she feels about that one.)
I was recently in online communication with a young man who exhibited the textbook symptoms of Asian fetish. Although I felt my suspicions grow with each East Asian reference—to Heian, Tae Kwon Do, vacations to Seoul, Murakami, Wu Xia, edamame, and Buddhist vegetarianism—I held my tongue. But then he referred to himself as an “Egg”. That’s right: Egg. As in the inverse of “Twinkie” (the Asian equivalent to the hateful racial term “Oreo”). An Egg is white on the outside and yellow on the inside. So I asked him, “Excuse me, but I have to ask. Do you have an Asian fetish?”
It was a simple question wrapped around an accusation. Egbert’s response read like a Asian American Studies textbook. Frank Chin this. Fred Korematsu that. Apparently, all the classes he took at Berkeley really paid off. Blah-ba-tee blah. He then informed me that racism and discrimination against Asian Americans still exist. Oh, indeed? Do tell. Imagine my astonishment at his presumption, explaining to me the hardships of the Asian American experience. It is kind of like having some guy tell me what it is like being a woman. Then, Egbert defended his Egg status: (1) How dare I question him, (2) His thousands of APIA brothers and sisters call him an Egg, and (3) Everyone has a right to choose his own ethnic identity as he please. And that’s where he showed himself as the entitled white man that he is. He could hardly expect to make a racially-charged comment without inviting response. What his APIA friends call him is irrelevant to my views on the hateful term. And, ask anyone of color whether he or she can choose to be anything other than they are.
Sure, fetish is a rude term. But, I’d think that if someone asked me “Are you an asshole?”, my first inclination would be to find out what assholey qualities inspired this question and not list a bazillion reasons why I’m not an asshole—that is, unless I knew I was an asshole. But, the Egbert situation poses a complicated question: When does distaste of Asian fetishes become an insular racist response? Egbert levied an implicit charge that by my standards all white males are suspected fetishists. This caused me to reexamine some of my more strongly held ideas on fetishes. Extreme reactions of the targeted fetish groups often devolve to primitive notions of race and intolerance of interracial relationships. This is as odious as the fetish that inspires it. But I worry that Egbert may be unwittingly correct—that I am allowing my negative experiences with Omar to tar all future relationships with the brush of race.
These past two months, I’ve been seeing someone who I like very much. He is white. I know he doesn’t have a fetish. But I am afraid of this attachment, how vulnerable I feel. So, I do pause for a split second, uncomfortable, every time he makes a Japanese reference. My heart stops until I recognize that he’s drawing upon his own experience, having lived in Japan for six years, and not because he thinks I should identify with anything Asian. I cringe when his close friend pays me compliment over my good English, to which I thank his friend with subtle irony and explain that “I have been speaking it since 1980.” But, I can’t punish him for his friend’s gaffe, especially when he immediately informs his friend that I am a talented writer. I love him for that. On the street, I do notice the sidelong looks from Asian American passers-by—glares that communicate “traitor!” Am I just imagining it? I just cling to him tighter, comforted by his scent.
___________________
Note: 1This is based on my own experience. From an April 2005 YDN article, apparently, incidents on college campuses illustrate how fetishes are much more pernicious.
Or not. Let me tell you, dear reader, that Asian Party Girls IV is not much of a film. And I won’t be adding parts I, II or III to my Netflix queue either. I left the party girls in the VCR expecting that Omar would find them and know my humiliation. I have no problem with, as my friend Trey puts it, letting a man have his “me time”. The most troubling aspect was the knowledge that I had been intimately acquainted with Omar’s porn before I had ever seen any of it. It wasn’t until late in adult life, recently, that I realize how good sex can be and how little it resembles Joey Silvera’s big-ass party. Men who use porn to inform their sex lives have an inadequate understanding of women. They’re bad lovers. But at the time, I was less bothered that my partner refracted life through the distorted lens of porn than fact that it was a particular kind of fetish porn, which was an affront to both my gender and my ethnicity.
Although I am not alone in this view, not all Asian American women regard Asian fetishes with the same level of hostility. To some, it is simply an extreme form of appreciation; it’s positive. But the issue, as with anything involving race, is far more complicated than personal preference.
Years ago, I attended a weeklong destination wedding in southern France. After one evening of free-flowing regional wine, I overheard two non-Asian men, friends of the groom, carry on a conversation about how “Asian girls are so hot!” inspired, no doubt, by several strikingly beautiful women in the party including Lea, the bride. I also did notice that Lea had some attractive girlfriends. But, because it would have been perfectly natural for Lea to make friends from similar ethnic and social situations and because I know many common-looking Asian American women, I noted only the particularity of the instance, whereas the two groomsmen used the twenty-or-so sampling of wedding guests as a basis to stereotype all women of Asian descent. They expressed desire for these women, not as individuals, but as hyper-sexualized things.
I don’t know exactly when I first noticed the inversion in the relationship between race and beauty. Growing up in a homogenous suburban community, my Asian features were always perceived defects—so much so that I was deformed, alien, and asexual. On my first week in Grade 2 at Northside Elementary School, I was so conscious of my own difference that I was grateful that anyone should choose to sit by my Arts & Crafts workstation. I smiled at Delia, who sat to my left. She responded in a sing-song chant: “You chineeee, you ugleeeee!” Allison, on my right, only laughed. She swung her legs, two thick white turnips dangling over the side of her work stool, to kick me for good measure. You chineeee, you ugleeeee! Mr. Foster did not intervene—perhaps too busy making “African” masks from Chinette paper plates. You chineeee, you ugleeeee! I was quiet. They wanted me to cry. I didn’t. I just sat very very still and held it in. Because it was true. I am Chinese. I am ugly.
This is not a story of victimization. It is an illustration of the most obvious and simplest kind of racism at the hands of two unthinking seven-year olds. We can easily condemn their actions because racism is most recognizable in the guise of hatred, violence, and slurs. But, racism does not become acceptable in the guise of fetishes and sexual stereotyping. It is just as menacing when grown men leer at me on the street, with their konichi-wa’s and anyang-ha-seo’s. I don’t speak Japanese or Korean, but I would happily learn to say “Your Mother” or its idiomatic equivalent in either language. I have just as much resentment towards the two groomsmen who, even as the least and dorkiest among us, speak from a position of sexual and cultural entitlement—like those American tourists who, realizing the value of the U.S. $ to the RMB, expect to buy everything on the cheap. Omar was the one that I let in, making his betrayal the most damaging. Hatred and fetishes are two stalks growing from the same root; they are aggressive forms of dehumanization.
I am ugly. I am beautiful. It makes no difference. If we say that it does matter, then we have to answer the question: Says who? The arbiters of beauty have the privilege to construct the perceptions and realities of others. This is an extraordinary power. I certainly do not possess it nor do I accord it to Delia or some Asian fetishist. Consider:
The beauty myth tells a story: The quality called ‘beauty’ objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. This embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, sexual and evolutionary…The beauty myth is not about women at all. It is about men’s institutions and institutional power. (Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth)Let’s assume that by men’s institutional power we assume that it is white men’s institutional power. Call me wild and crazy. I do not rejoice that my Asian background, former cultural defects, have become a popular inspiration for sexual perversion. Aspirants to this exoticized notion of beauty are, in Bell Hooks’s words, “siblings fighting for the approval of ‘white parents’ whose attention we now have.” Sexual desire is not love. It is not respect. It is not necessarily a positive trait. It is the urge to control and possess. Fetishes are merely a twisted form of this.
Perhaps, dear reader, that all this seems like an overreaction. After all, your garden-variety Asian fetishist doesn’t mean any harm1. They’re not exactly the face of repressive white institutional power. In fact, they’re often pathetic and socially awkward. You know the type. Those guys who, as undergrads, would be the same faces auditing Intro to Modern Chinese, Asian American History, Asian American Literature, Japanese Anthropology, Ancient Chinese Philosophy, etc. They show up at AASA meetings or mixers where there would be high concentrations of Asian Americans. They try to impress females on their skills in Tae Kwon Do, their love of Dim Sum, or their fascination with The Pillow Book. They do all this and brag about how many APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American) friends they have in an effort to convince you, a Taiwanese American girl, that they belong there. The problem is: they have no clue where ‘there’ is. The Asian fetishist construes diverse national groups as a single monolithic ‘Asian’ culture—a fallacy since ‘Asian American’ is a balkanized political classification so broad that includes three different subcontinents. (Of course, the pathology is different for the cruder less-educated fetishists: “Hey, there sexy China doll; Ho Chi Minh City, here I come!” Ask Waldorf how she feels about that one.)
I was recently in online communication with a young man who exhibited the textbook symptoms of Asian fetish. Although I felt my suspicions grow with each East Asian reference—to Heian, Tae Kwon Do, vacations to Seoul, Murakami, Wu Xia, edamame, and Buddhist vegetarianism—I held my tongue. But then he referred to himself as an “Egg”. That’s right: Egg. As in the inverse of “Twinkie” (the Asian equivalent to the hateful racial term “Oreo”). An Egg is white on the outside and yellow on the inside. So I asked him, “Excuse me, but I have to ask. Do you have an Asian fetish?”
It was a simple question wrapped around an accusation. Egbert’s response read like a Asian American Studies textbook. Frank Chin this. Fred Korematsu that. Apparently, all the classes he took at Berkeley really paid off. Blah-ba-tee blah. He then informed me that racism and discrimination against Asian Americans still exist. Oh, indeed? Do tell. Imagine my astonishment at his presumption, explaining to me the hardships of the Asian American experience. It is kind of like having some guy tell me what it is like being a woman. Then, Egbert defended his Egg status: (1) How dare I question him, (2) His thousands of APIA brothers and sisters call him an Egg, and (3) Everyone has a right to choose his own ethnic identity as he please. And that’s where he showed himself as the entitled white man that he is. He could hardly expect to make a racially-charged comment without inviting response. What his APIA friends call him is irrelevant to my views on the hateful term. And, ask anyone of color whether he or she can choose to be anything other than they are.
Sure, fetish is a rude term. But, I’d think that if someone asked me “Are you an asshole?”, my first inclination would be to find out what assholey qualities inspired this question and not list a bazillion reasons why I’m not an asshole—that is, unless I knew I was an asshole. But, the Egbert situation poses a complicated question: When does distaste of Asian fetishes become an insular racist response? Egbert levied an implicit charge that by my standards all white males are suspected fetishists. This caused me to reexamine some of my more strongly held ideas on fetishes. Extreme reactions of the targeted fetish groups often devolve to primitive notions of race and intolerance of interracial relationships. This is as odious as the fetish that inspires it. But I worry that Egbert may be unwittingly correct—that I am allowing my negative experiences with Omar to tar all future relationships with the brush of race.
These past two months, I’ve been seeing someone who I like very much. He is white. I know he doesn’t have a fetish. But I am afraid of this attachment, how vulnerable I feel. So, I do pause for a split second, uncomfortable, every time he makes a Japanese reference. My heart stops until I recognize that he’s drawing upon his own experience, having lived in Japan for six years, and not because he thinks I should identify with anything Asian. I cringe when his close friend pays me compliment over my good English, to which I thank his friend with subtle irony and explain that “I have been speaking it since 1980.” But, I can’t punish him for his friend’s gaffe, especially when he immediately informs his friend that I am a talented writer. I love him for that. On the street, I do notice the sidelong looks from Asian American passers-by—glares that communicate “traitor!” Am I just imagining it? I just cling to him tighter, comforted by his scent.
___________________
Note: 1This is based on my own experience. From an April 2005 YDN article, apparently, incidents on college campuses illustrate how fetishes are much more pernicious.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Washington Square Park
No, I'm not moving from this park bench, Mister.
I don't care how furiously you're scratching your solar plexus.
I don't care how furiously you're scratching your solar plexus.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Must Love Biits
eHarmony can be diverting—amusing, even—once you get past the interminable questionnaire and once you shrug off the vague feeling of being a beggar. Don’t get me wrong. The candidates all appear to be decent people online. But my friends also built me up and let me believe that I was an attractive and rare (if aging) catch. I never foresaw myself peddling my emotional wares on the online love marketplace. At least I didn’t think I would have to resort to such measures. But, for the past six months, my Ta-DAAA of singlehood has been met with the humbling sounds of crickets.
Abstinence and the City.
Still, I tell myself to be reasonable. First, that kind of thinking is too passive. I owe it to myself to find rather than wait to be found. Second, there is no way to accomplish this when I spend the bulk of my waking hours in a cubicle at a cursed technology company—especially when this excessive focus on career only leads to more attrition in my small and ever-contracting social circle. Maybe there are lots of other busy people out there who need to outsource this process, too. Or, maybe my friends just don’t want to let on that I’m a freak from the planet Chiik.
I began in November by filling out an extensive battery of multiple-choice questions, short-answer items, and rubric selections. I hit send, setting the famous 29-point matching process in motion. And, lo! The site returned with no matches, explaining in the most conciliatory fashion that my personality profile did not have any corresponding counterparts and, therefore, eHarmony would rather give me nothing rather than risk an incompatible introduction. Oh god, I am a freak. Damn you, Dr. Warren!
"You’re supposed to find Bingley, not Darcy," said Waldorf, close friend & sex-life consultant rolled into one. "Now go back and moderate your answers. Take every response on those rubrics and ratchet it a notch closer to the middle. And don’t make those wisecracks about illegal NSA wiretapping." Okay, fine.
It isn’t surprising but slightly disappointing that my romantic possibilities increase manifold after blunting all sharp corners and suppressing these carefully cultivated eccentricities. It only affirms the idea that bland is indeed better. Next, I had to finish filling out the remainder of the "About Me" profile.
It was difficult not to fall into self-parody:
Halfway through writing "About Me", I felt my resolve dissipate into self-doubt and conflict. My every fiber rejected this idea of packaging myself like a box of (dry) goods. Any attempt would be little more than a caricature—one which makes me out to be a cross between Andy Rooney and Miss Marple. And I'm no longer young enough for the fogey-ness to be ironic or cute. One could assume that love for NPR, coffee, cheese, biits and film means only that the person is dorky, nervous, smelly, unkempt and socially dysfunctional. In my case, that would be a spot-on assumption. But how do I make that sound good? And should I even have to? At the same time, hiding behind self-deprecation is only self-defeating. I did pony up $40 like everyone else on this site, in hopes of some success—at what, I wasn’t sure. I needed to stop behaving as if I were above it all.
Also, based on the profiles of my new matches, I doubt that anyone agonizes about this as much as I do. For the most part, they were agreeable sorts open to anything and everything. They love being outdoors and enjoy spending time with friends. Maybe this namby-pamby nicey-nice works well with other women, but the indiscriminate pleasantness says nothing to me about a person’s character except cowardice and flabby thinking. They exist in the same sphere as those who only state the obvious ("Everybody loves chocolate!") or appropriate demographically-inappropriate catch phrases ("Holla!")—people who cannot utter a single thought that has not been first devised, packaged and approved by multimedia marketing. So call me a curmudgeon. It’s a new low when a third of my eH matches wrote that the last book they read and enjoyed was The Da Vinci Code. This all may be my just desserts for manipulating the 29-point system by impersonating insipid Jane. Bingley always seemed like a halfwit anyway.
The good news is that among the lackluster 250-or-so matches with whom I closed communication in the first month, there are also a handful of promising candidates and one exceptional front-runner. So stay tuned.
Abstinence and the City.
Still, I tell myself to be reasonable. First, that kind of thinking is too passive. I owe it to myself to find rather than wait to be found. Second, there is no way to accomplish this when I spend the bulk of my waking hours in a cubicle at a cursed technology company—especially when this excessive focus on career only leads to more attrition in my small and ever-contracting social circle. Maybe there are lots of other busy people out there who need to outsource this process, too. Or, maybe my friends just don’t want to let on that I’m a freak from the planet Chiik.
I began in November by filling out an extensive battery of multiple-choice questions, short-answer items, and rubric selections. I hit send, setting the famous 29-point matching process in motion. And, lo! The site returned with no matches, explaining in the most conciliatory fashion that my personality profile did not have any corresponding counterparts and, therefore, eHarmony would rather give me nothing rather than risk an incompatible introduction. Oh god, I am a freak. Damn you, Dr. Warren!
"You’re supposed to find Bingley, not Darcy," said Waldorf, close friend & sex-life consultant rolled into one. "Now go back and moderate your answers. Take every response on those rubrics and ratchet it a notch closer to the middle. And don’t make those wisecracks about illegal NSA wiretapping." Okay, fine.
It isn’t surprising but slightly disappointing that my romantic possibilities increase manifold after blunting all sharp corners and suppressing these carefully cultivated eccentricities. It only affirms the idea that bland is indeed better. Next, I had to finish filling out the remainder of the "About Me" profile.
It was difficult not to fall into self-parody:
Q: What is the most important quality that you are looking for in another person?This is a cheat, in a sense, because they asked you to pick a single important quality. Most of these prompts ask that you either speak in superlatives or top-five rankings. On top of that, none of the prompts are particularly inspiring. One calls for random conjecture about what people say or notice about you and another asks for a list of your best "life-skills". Yuck.
A:Must love biits. Neurotic female writer seeking genial ginger-haired propertied gentleman (w/ 5000£ p.a) who is blissfully uncaring about class differences. Angry depressives, Asian fetishists, and small-talking simpletons need not apply.Emotional maturity. Curiosity and a sense of play.
Halfway through writing "About Me", I felt my resolve dissipate into self-doubt and conflict. My every fiber rejected this idea of packaging myself like a box of (dry) goods. Any attempt would be little more than a caricature—one which makes me out to be a cross between Andy Rooney and Miss Marple. And I'm no longer young enough for the fogey-ness to be ironic or cute. One could assume that love for NPR, coffee, cheese, biits and film means only that the person is dorky, nervous, smelly, unkempt and socially dysfunctional. In my case, that would be a spot-on assumption. But how do I make that sound good? And should I even have to? At the same time, hiding behind self-deprecation is only self-defeating. I did pony up $40 like everyone else on this site, in hopes of some success—at what, I wasn’t sure. I needed to stop behaving as if I were above it all.
Also, based on the profiles of my new matches, I doubt that anyone agonizes about this as much as I do. For the most part, they were agreeable sorts open to anything and everything. They love being outdoors and enjoy spending time with friends. Maybe this namby-pamby nicey-nice works well with other women, but the indiscriminate pleasantness says nothing to me about a person’s character except cowardice and flabby thinking. They exist in the same sphere as those who only state the obvious ("Everybody loves chocolate!") or appropriate demographically-inappropriate catch phrases ("Holla!")—people who cannot utter a single thought that has not been first devised, packaged and approved by multimedia marketing. So call me a curmudgeon. It’s a new low when a third of my eH matches wrote that the last book they read and enjoyed was The Da Vinci Code. This all may be my just desserts for manipulating the 29-point system by impersonating insipid Jane. Bingley always seemed like a halfwit anyway.
The good news is that among the lackluster 250-or-so matches with whom I closed communication in the first month, there are also a handful of promising candidates and one exceptional front-runner. So stay tuned.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Explosive A*
It was another late night at work eating mushy capellini puttanesca from a foil container. “Executive Dining Club my ass," I muttered, anticipating oddly a different sort of problem. As I got up to toss the refuse, I felt an unusual rumbling in my nether regions.
“Errr, sorry. . . Did I just fart?” There was no doubt that I did. Quite boisterously. But, I didn’t know how else to acknowledge it since I wasn’t alone in the office. Thank goodness it was just Waldorf in the next cube. While we were laughing it off, I suddenly felt another rumble and a warm sensation from under my skirt—something oozing down my inner thigh.
Was it that time again? And what was that smell? Three seconds and a sprint to the lav later, I discovered that my colon was a veritable faucet of oil—orange and unctuous. Oh god. My insides were melting. Those years of naughty eating had finally caught up with me. I pictured myself fitted with a colostomy bag.
I tossed out the oil-soaked underpants and plugged my ass-crack with wadded up Corporate-Express® paper towels. I tried to keep from crying.
I waddled back to my cubicle and typed three keywords into Google: rectum...oily...discharge , expecting this all to lead to colon cancer. But what caught my eye several entries down was the Digestive & Bowel Disorders Forum.
Apparently, the culprit was the Escolar (a.k.a Butterfish, White Tuna, Ex-Lax Fish, Rudderfish) from dinner the previous night, which, in large enough doses, can cause quite a messy event. I scrolled through scores of mortifying stories of asses exploding at inopportune moments, dripping and staining everything in its path. Stories like Nagi who had to explain to her boyfriend, on whose lap she was sitting, where the orange oil came from—or, Sterneesh who had to drive home from an important business meeting, sitting on a stack of newspapers—lessened the isolation and the shame from my rectal misery. I don’t know how people used to live before the development of the online community.
*Term coined by Violet.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Pre-wedding crashers
I must have been drunker than I originally thought.
I wasn’t even invited to this pre-wedding dinner party, a room filled with self-impressed McKinsey folk and a grab-bag of doctors. It was the only dinner party that I’ve attended that didn’t have, well, a dinner. Also, I'm not sure if it's my ineptitude at making small talk but my attempts caused the prospective groom to undergo some sort of emotional break down. The very thought of marrying his bride-to-be, he confided, had him sobbing in despair just days before: "I haven’t cried since I was a kid. And I just found myself in tears."
What does one say to something like that? I patted him on the elbow: "There, there…erm, it's probably the pressure of weddings, it's natural to feel tense. I'm sure you'll both be very happy."
Oh, indeed. That’s rich—coming from a writer of traditional Westphalian cuisine who hails from, no other than, Cincinnati. Why did she assume that "what I know" is Chinese food? Was it my gender or ethnicity that she assumed that I should care more about recipes than I do about science? Just because some older women still cling onto retro stereotypes of race and gender does not behoove me to have patience for that. Besides, I wanted to point out that her husband seemed to be plenty interested in the practices of industrial farming that night.
The martinis I downed by that point made me ready for a fight. As Gisele and Huli took turns breaking it up, I allowed myself to be pulled away from the vole-faced lady. The evening looked to be a lost cause, leaving the three of us to our own devices for entertainment.
By midnight, the prospective groom passed out in the Moroccan-styled banquette. Those with medical training swarmed around him, taking turns compressing his chest. By that point, the three of us said our goodbyes, since the only person who seemed to appreciate our being there at the party had fallen unconscious, compromised by too much drink. We also needed to get some food into our bodies if were to keep ourselves from befalling a similar fate.
I wasn’t even invited to this pre-wedding dinner party, a room filled with self-impressed McKinsey folk and a grab-bag of doctors. It was the only dinner party that I’ve attended that didn’t have, well, a dinner. Also, I'm not sure if it's my ineptitude at making small talk but my attempts caused the prospective groom to undergo some sort of emotional break down. The very thought of marrying his bride-to-be, he confided, had him sobbing in despair just days before: "I haven’t cried since I was a kid. And I just found myself in tears."
What does one say to something like that? I patted him on the elbow: "There, there…erm, it's probably the pressure of weddings, it's natural to feel tense. I'm sure you'll both be very happy."
"Well, she's very ...practical."
Practical? Hmmm. What an odd response. I laughed nervously and drained the rest of my martini. "Oh my, I need a drink …erm, can I get you another?"
During the evening, I somehow convinced a vole-faced woman that I had nefarious designs on her husband. We were engaged in conversation on my pet topic of the month: bio-engineered foods. And as everyone well knows, the evils-of-industrial-agriculture bit is the oldest trick in the book of seduction—the clothes start flying off faster than you can say "GMO."
During the evening, I somehow convinced a vole-faced woman that I had nefarious designs on her husband. We were engaged in conversation on my pet topic of the month: bio-engineered foods. And as everyone well knows, the evils-of-industrial-agriculture bit is the oldest trick in the book of seduction—the clothes start flying off faster than you can say "GMO."
I guess can never know with people. It wasn't so much the crazy sexual insecurity that I found so off-putting as her posturing as some sort of modern-day M.F.K. Fisher and the insufferable presumption to teach me a thing-or-two about food writing: "Chinese food. That’s what you should write about. Not this food politics stuff. Write about what you know or you’re just a phony."
Oh, indeed. That’s rich—coming from a writer of traditional Westphalian cuisine who hails from, no other than, Cincinnati. Why did she assume that "what I know" is Chinese food? Was it my gender or ethnicity that she assumed that I should care more about recipes than I do about science? Just because some older women still cling onto retro stereotypes of race and gender does not behoove me to have patience for that. Besides, I wanted to point out that her husband seemed to be plenty interested in the practices of industrial farming that night.
The martinis I downed by that point made me ready for a fight. As Gisele and Huli took turns breaking it up, I allowed myself to be pulled away from the vole-faced lady. The evening looked to be a lost cause, leaving the three of us to our own devices for entertainment.
By midnight, the prospective groom passed out in the Moroccan-styled banquette. Those with medical training swarmed around him, taking turns compressing his chest. By that point, the three of us said our goodbyes, since the only person who seemed to appreciate our being there at the party had fallen unconscious, compromised by too much drink. We also needed to get some food into our bodies if were to keep ourselves from befalling a similar fate.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Am I paranoid or is everyone actually plotting against me?
Spending the weekend with my friend and her fiancé in the country should have been relaxing, but for the social dysfunction. On the drive up, sitting in the backseat of the cluttered SUV, I sensed distinct disapproval blowing my way. This made me nervous. I couldn’t decided if I should chat them up or shut the fuck up for fear that I should be perceived either as an insufferable gasbag or a surly stick-in-the-mud. During the car ride and throughout the weekend, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my offending personality was just being tolerated. Just.
Am I a jackass? Because if I’m not, then why do I get the sense that everybody thinks so? And, why is this sensation increasing in frequency over the past several years?
Friday, October 20, 2006
Goodbye, Lin Yu Feng
"Passed away" is never a comfortable euphemism to use, but it doesn’t feel correct to say dead. My cousin passed away. He never woke up from the car accident, stayed on life support for a week. He was 28. The family said goodbye and he went in a tranquil eight-hour ceremony.
Life is unpredictable and short.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Riibi Defiant
Riibi Defiant
Originally uploaded by OhChiik.
She has finally had it with him—his constant requests for grooming and his vegetable-stealing shenanigans. Riibi, the instigator, has taken to lunging and growling at gentle Pyuck. Three years of bonding replaced by biit pugilism. What next?
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Spaghetti I & II
I.
Mom came by this evening to drop off some braised fatty pork. She called earlier asking if I had a tomato sauce jar, which I did. As I put the freshly-rinsed mason jar into a clear plastic bag, she gave me a look: “What are you doing?”
Oh. A jar of tomato sauce, not a tomato sauce jar.
“What would I do with an empty jar? I’m making chili.”
II.
Mom came by a second time this evening. The chili was quite tasty, although it was a cross between Taiwanese and Southwest. She watched me eat and then left, satisfied by the results. The empty mason jar remained on the dining room table.
The half-bowl of chili came in handy an hour later when I was feeling hungry again. I considered just grabbing a spoon and gobbling it down straight, but then, it wasn't every day that mom made chili. Some capellini was in order. I watched the sticks of angel hair warp into the boiling water, taking care to prevent any pillows—clumps of stuck-together pasta.
If anything, I know the sheer worth of pillow-free pasta, having had an unpleasant experience in 1988 after cooking with dad in what was then his apartment in Philadelphia. We could tell from the semi-greasy film we had to wash off the pots that he preferred to eat out. But, spaghetti is an easy meal. Jars was in charge of the sauce, I was in charge of the salad, and nobody, apparently, was in charge of the slimy fist-sized clumps of near-raw pasta. That was a bad dinner.
Still, it was an improvement from dad’s first attempt, when he dumped marinara sauce onto the spaghetti before draining the starchy water. He probably expected the concoction to reduce. Jars and I thought this was hysterically funny until we realized that we actually had to eat those bowls of Tang Mien Italiano.
Mom came by this evening to drop off some braised fatty pork. She called earlier asking if I had a tomato sauce jar, which I did. As I put the freshly-rinsed mason jar into a clear plastic bag, she gave me a look: “What are you doing?”
Oh. A jar of tomato sauce, not a tomato sauce jar.
“What would I do with an empty jar? I’m making chili.”
II.
Mom came by a second time this evening. The chili was quite tasty, although it was a cross between Taiwanese and Southwest. She watched me eat and then left, satisfied by the results. The empty mason jar remained on the dining room table.
The half-bowl of chili came in handy an hour later when I was feeling hungry again. I considered just grabbing a spoon and gobbling it down straight, but then, it wasn't every day that mom made chili. Some capellini was in order. I watched the sticks of angel hair warp into the boiling water, taking care to prevent any pillows—clumps of stuck-together pasta.
If anything, I know the sheer worth of pillow-free pasta, having had an unpleasant experience in 1988 after cooking with dad in what was then his apartment in Philadelphia. We could tell from the semi-greasy film we had to wash off the pots that he preferred to eat out. But, spaghetti is an easy meal. Jars was in charge of the sauce, I was in charge of the salad, and nobody, apparently, was in charge of the slimy fist-sized clumps of near-raw pasta. That was a bad dinner.
Still, it was an improvement from dad’s first attempt, when he dumped marinara sauce onto the spaghetti before draining the starchy water. He probably expected the concoction to reduce. Jars and I thought this was hysterically funny until we realized that we actually had to eat those bowls of Tang Mien Italiano.
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