OPINION
July 6, 2015
TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA
n Polo
What the [double-bleep]
just happened?
am suddenly and irrevocably old. And
if you’ve been reading this paper as
long as I’ve been writing here — 20
years, 1,000 essays — you’re just as likely
as me to be waking slow and looking long
into your bathroom mirror, and asking
that blurred reflection: Who is that, paused
there? And then the inevitable: And
aduh’illaah (OMG), where’s our time gone?
Pero you know, my job is not indulging
nostalgic grandpas and myopic grandmas.
Not like AARP The Magazine. Not at all.
There’re so many troubling matters
sinking so many more old and young;
straight and gay; urban and rural; white,
brown, black, and blue. Stalling us in front
of our morning mirrors.
According to my own totally sciencey
survey — conducted in Starbucks coffee
lines, on Target up-escalators, and across
Pho Van’s steaming fragrant noodle bowls
— more vexing than Whose face is that? Or
Where’s the time gone? is: What the
[double-bleep] just happened here?
That Big Q has KO’d almost everyone 16
to 60. To be more specific, I’m talking about
what the heck just happened to your love
interest. The lost one. I’m asking about
that moment of discovery that left you
silenced, to the bone. Utterly disoriented.
You’ve seen this moment in vintage war
movies: A laden Atlantic steamer’s mor-
tally struck by a single dead-on Nazi
U-Boat torpedo. Vvvump. There’s a long
wide-eyed moment of nothingness, no
fright, no flight. Then, the entire world is
punctuated by ferocious flame and thun-
der, by deck planking and iron sheeting,
heaving high into the overcast sky.
It’s that very thin moment of awful awe,
before the blast, we’re asking about.
I
Invitation to play
Colored Pencils Art and Culture Council
is collecting moments of love suddenly
torpedoed. It is a common core experience
to all Portlanders — those of us living on
River Willamette’s leafy westside, those
throwing down super-sweet Mexican cokes
on our far eastside, those of us rolling
between extremes in wheelchairs. It’s
happened.
Like a steely Atlantic U-Boat comman-
dant, let me be even more precise about
what our story requirements are.
Stories should not be about wrong-doers.
Of course, all just-torpedoed pauses are
followed by a blast of sadness and
madness. Pleadings and even beatings
follow. For parenting couples, three
generations of suffering follow. But, this is
not an invitation for those stories.
No villainizing. Certainly, all over town
real psychopaths cozy up to really sincere
lovers. But it’s statistically rare. Just as
rare are introspective stories about me and
you at the unexpected silent end of love’s
intoxicating arc.
The story we ask you to tell must be from
your perspective as a willing (not a
clueless) participant; as a smart (not an
incompetent) contributor; as an active (not
a passive) partner — in a dynamic
relationship that went belly up. Before it
swiftly sank. In 600 words.
What’s very valuable is a storyteller
honestly reporting his or her voluntary
and intelligent investment in that sunken
ship. That’s the story we invite. That’s how
we learn. And get better.
One such story
Love is ecstatic joy and glorious sorrow.
We willingly pay to play. Sixteen-year-olds
don’t yet get this. But sweet sixteen’s
multiples — 32-, 48-, 64-year-olds — know
it well. Here’s an example of one such
story, in 600 words.
When I was one of those multiples just
mentioned, I fell in love. I mean immediate
and breathless love. Inexplicable love. I’m
not too proud to tell you: Crybaby radio
stations, both teen pop and Country
Western, made deep abiding sense to me.
There’s more: I shamelessly parked my
quarter-million mile Toyota in front of
Hallmark stores, walked in and studied
cards, aisle after aisle of I Want You and I
Miss You cards. Coupled with pastel
envelopes.
Surely,
you’ve
heard
of
local
knuckleheads falling into hot-hot love
while travelling in elegant Old Bangkok or
seaside Puerta Vallarta. Not me. I did it in
crazy-cold Wisconsin. Smack in America’s
thick middle. Love hit me, I kid you not,
inside a packed Marriot up-elevator at a
national child-welfare conference. People
were talking too fast, laughing too loud,
the way they do at these things. She was
quiet. Modest. Boo-boo lips mouthing our
lift’s ascending numbers. It was her scent.
For sure. It filled me. So familiar. So I got
up close. As close as a body can be, without
actually sharing another’s shirt.
Earlier that fateful year, I was honored
by several writing awards and publica-
tions in prestigious places, then a teaching
fellowship at a Master of Fine Arts
program. I was so happy. I walked away
from 20 hard years of lawyering. And
imagined myself an Oxford tweed, college
prof. Writing full time.
I had committed earlier that year to
presenting at that Midwest conference, so
I had to go. That’s where love took over.
Took everything. “Oo-oo-oooo, baby
baa-by. Oo-oo-oooo, baby baa-by,” Smokey
Robinson warbled at the top of my car
radio, inside my reverberating skull too,
long after locking up, tip-top floor of the
Fourth Avenue SmartPark.
I walked away — no, waltzed away —
from my new career. I packed a single bag.
I gave away my little rice sparrows and
their bamboo mansion cage. I cashed out
my savings and caught an eastbound 737.
She met me at Milwaukee’s airport
wearing a leather coat, khakis, black
shoes, and a checkered keffiyeh —
urban-hip symbol of resistance in occupied
Palestine. Exactly the same outfit I
arrived in. We looked like a Mideast
nightclub act. I moved into an
International Hostel near her workplace. I
got a job there.
She and me had a lot in common. She
The need is constant.
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Give blood.
To schedule a blood donation call 1-800-G IVE-LIFE
or visit HelpSaveALife.org.
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
was a Snake Year foreign-born middle kid,
me too. Though I’m one snake cycle (12
years) older. After her Midwest bachelor’s
degree, she did Peace Corps in West
Africa. After my Pacific Northwest
bachelor’s degree, I did graduate research
in North then East Africa. We each came
back with great scars, stories, parasites,
and twisted copper snake armbands. In
trying to reintegrate into America, she
married a white guy, I married a white
girl. They made us bright and brave
babies. Beautifully.
After her master’s degree, she went to
the Philippines. She researched those
millions of unexploded U.S. bombs lying
around the Laos Democratic People’s
Republic. After my doctorate, it was
Manila for me too, to focus on Laos and the
Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, extracting
refugee families and political prisoners.
When our lives ultimately intersected
inside that same stuffed Milwaukee ele-
vator — she and her husband had two kids;
they lived in a two-story, two-bedroom
cottage on High Street, a nice Subaru
parked out front. All that, exactly like my
former wife and I shared, before we
divorced 12 years earlier.
And then, it was done
And when it all ended, all these wonder-
filled well-fitting Legos notwithstanding
— when it all de-constructed, suddenly
and badly, Smokey’s “Ooo Baby Baby” was
still its faithful falsetto soundtrack:
“I’m just about at
the end of my rope.
But I can’t stop tryin’,
I can’t give up hope.”
After six years of trying and trying. Of
awful then awfuller twists. Of taut ropes
leading to monster overhangs. She let
loose her grip. She had less to fall. As for
me, aching arms and screaming shoulders,
I hung on, dangling way out there. Frigid
Wisconsin above and below.
She started sleeping with a judge. Three
months before one of us believed we were
marrying. That, was my What the
[double-bleep] just happened? moment.
That was my long, silent, just-torpedoed
moment. A big bad hit. Just like in those
movies. Smack amid ships. An oceanic
pause.
Inside it, inside that agonizing pause, I
scanned the body of evidence, bookshelf
after bookshelf, lining the belly of my
doomed Atlantic steamer. I reviewed the
evidence of my belief of our blended
personal and communal histories. The
stories and the scars, the twisted iron
snake armbands and the checkered
Palestinian keffiyeh. I breathed deep her
familiar scent.
It wouldn’t add up — all that stubborn
belief, suddenly punctured by this U-boat
torpedo, lying there, ticking off it’s final
seconds. I sat on it, recalculating the
Snake Years cycled, the continents she and
me crossed, the seas we crisscrossed.
Check, check, check. My math seemed
tight.
I reassessed the algorithm. She left her
white man — staid math teacher, proud
Major League Baseball fan. She loves me
—
misplaced
ricepicker,
sweaty
community mechanico. She feels free.
Colored Pencils Art
and Culture Council is
collecting moments of a
love suddenly torpedoed.
What’s very valuable is a
storyteller honestly reporting
her or his voluntary and
intelligent investment
in that sunken ship.
Understood. Accepted. She trades for my
opposite. In every way. The waves were
making me seasick.
I pushed down the distracting (and
entirely irrelevant) disbelief that this
white boy judge must be believing in some
kind of immunity from the major
smackdown I was now bound to
administer. On his head. I know, you
know, every brown, black, and blue man
knows — I mumbled to myself — that a
Costco-size beatdown is mandatory in
these situations. Right? It’s inevitable.
Natural. Biblical. White guys don’t really
believe they get a pass, do they?
To confirm my rationale, I called every
self-respecting man I knew, inside my
long, silent, moment. That nasty Nazi
torpedo whirred and hissed.
A decade, a thick one, has now settled
itself between my mid-sea sinking and
now. 2015. I am in River City. We are six
hours by Boeing 737 and two time zones,
west of Wisconsin.
Today, I tell you true: Even if I find an
empty steel back stairway, even if I silence
my iPhone, sit down, and examine what
remains of that memory, I cannot tell you
for sure if that tick-ticking torpedo went
off. Or not.
If it did detonate — different from, say,
all those sleeping U.S.-made high
explosives waiting to be poked by a simple
farmer or by his bright daughter — if my
Nazi torpedo actually blew, throwing me
out of this precious life, then I am a ghost.
Present, but not living. Not really.
Present, but powerless to affect the living.
If it did not blow, if no deck planking and
no iron sheeting heaved toward our
heavens — which is my story’s more likely
end — then, why is that humbling monster
moment still hovering here? It weighs on
me like a sea-soaked woolen blanket,
laboring my achy arms, dampening my
voice and gauzing my eyes. Keeping me
from living, really. From crossing oceans,
eagerly. From paying to play, for sure.
Detonation or not, my guts’re gone, all
the same.
Notas:
Please submit your stories, and encourage others,
too. Five readers or performers will be selected. Our
event is planned for mid-September. Please send
questions to <polo.nwccounsel@icloud.com>.
Colored Pencils Art and Culture Council puts on
evening programs, some big and some intimate.
Events always combine culinary, performing, and
fine arts, centered on a theme common to those
dozen-or-so Portland ethnic, faith, sexual orienta-
tion, and socio-economic communities producing
each particular event. Lots of food, fun, family.
To learn more, please visit Colored Pencils at
<www.cpacc.blogspot.com> or on facebook.
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July 20 to August 2, 2015 edition:
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Wednesday, July 15 at 1:00pm
Artwork due: Thursday, July 16 at 1:00pm
August 3 to 16, 2015 edition:
Space reservations due:
Wednesday, July 29 at 1:00pm
Artwork due: Thursday, July 30 at 1:00pm
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(503) 283-4440 or e-mail <ads@asianreporter.com>.