June 19, 2002
memory
I've been reading back over my old entries and discovering to my chagrin that my writing resembles the way that I talk: all movement, no cohesion. There used to be a time, back in my term-paper days, that I would be able to start with a Beginning, move to a Middle, then triumphantly accept accolades at the End. I was Ritalin of the written word.
Meanwhile, verbally, I explored all the furthest boundaries of space and time, romping gaily through the distortions that accompany a White Hole spewing random fragments of linear progression out into the universe in odd and incoherent combinations.
Nowadays this is becoming a problem; more of a problem than it was when nobody around me listened anyway, back when I was working at Excite@Home. The people that I worked with were sharp, and English was their Friend. Now that I'm here at this new start-up, it's turning into a big deal. Of the people that work here, I can only name seven that speak English as a fluent language, and one of them is leaving for Yale come Friday.
I find it ironic that I'm more misunderstood now that I'm surrounded by Asians than I ever was surrounded by Caucasians and Indians.
O'course, we all know that the Japanese never got along with any other Asians. Damn foreigners kept trying to breathe our air.
THE GUY...
For the last two days now, the Guy has been floating around the apartment like a lacrymose muppet, flopping down every so often on a convenient piece of furniture to whimper, "I might die tomorrow."
And for whatever reason, probably because it's funny to watch a, let's face it, not-petite biker guy actually "waft" across one's field of vision, I've taken to biting him whenever he says it. Go figure.
Death makes my teeth itch. I have a whole new sympathy for cannibals.
"Kiss me?" he asked in the kitchen last night, "because I might die tomorrow."
"Be nice to me," he pleaded, when I made disparaging noises about his Medabots viewing habits and wanted to watch something -- anything -- else. "because I might die tomorrow."
"Make me some herbal tea?" he asked in a small voice, draped across my futon. "Because I might die tomorrow."
"You're not going to die tomorrow," I said patiently. I was busy on the computer. "Shut up with the dying thing. Your surgery isn't until Thursday. That's two whole days away."
"But I'm dating you," he pointed out, and whimpered a little more. "Anything could happen to me. The Hirata women are bad luck."
I dragged myself away from the computer long enough to leave him a nice, half-moon memento of my perfectly aligned teeth in his shoulder. "Shut up with the dying," I said firmly. "The clock only starts ticking if we're married."
FAMILY...
On Thursday my cousin from Japan, Toshiyuki (that's his name, not his origin), came into town for a three day stop-over on his way back home. For about a month he stayed at my mother's place in Seattle, sparing time from that maternal purgatory only long enough to visit our great-aunt in Chicago.
Mom adored him.
"I wish he was my child," she told me over the phone. "He washes the dishes, he cleans up after himself, he taught himself how to use the vacuum..."
"Is this going to be a guilt trip thing?"
"He's so wonderful," she cooed. "He's such an attentive, considerate boy. And smart, too."
"Hm."
"I wish my children...."
Masako picked him up at the youth hostel he'd found by Union Square, and drove him to meet me at one of the great tourist sites of San Francisco, The Stinking Rose.
We shook hands. He looked awkward. I considered hugging him -- he was family after all -- but decided against it after I realized he could quite possibly have died from the embarrassment.
"Huh," I thought. "I'm related to Milhouse."
My cousin turned out to be a stoop-shouldered young guy of about 27, midway between my sister and me, with wire-rim glasses and a haircut that was measured with a ruler. We learned over the course of the next day that he was a member of his chess club, he played clarinet, he liked drums, and he was intending to go into politics.
Friday, which I took off from work, was full of tourist pleasures with my sister firmly in tow. Early that morning she took him rock climbing in the Mission. Then we hit the Golden Gate Bridge (windy), Fisherman's Wharf (filling), then the Asian Tea Garden and Bison in Golden Gate Park.
That night I took him to Stomp, and treated him to his very first non-McDonalds (let's say it in Japanese altogether now, folks, "Ma-ku-do-na-ru-do!") hamburger.
He was baffled. Not by Stomp. By the hamburger.
I've always taken hamburgers for granted, so it hadn't occurred to me that there are people out there -- people related to me -- that have never actually consumed a real quarter-pounder before. Max's serves a big burger because Max's believes in the redeeming factors of quantity when it comes to food. Like most sit-down restaurants, Max's also serves its hamburgers open-faced, with the patty on one half of the bun, while the other half is placed elsewhere on the plate with all the other toppings (lettuce, tomato, onion) on top of it. Pickles are separate; the ketchup and mustard are brought by the waiter.
Toshiyuki stared down at his meal with a look that I couldn't quite translate until he started picking up his hamburger layer by layer and nibbling on each of the pieces separately.
"Um," I said.
"You don't know how to eat a hamburger," I guessed.
That look slid across Toshiyuki's face again. He was baffled. "Ma-ku-do-na-ru-do hamburgers are different," he observed, parenthetically.
No joke.
WORK...
For the past six months I've been under the impression that the people in this company lack a sense of humor, a failing that has made me seriously consider unemployment again as a viable career choice for the future. It could have been my imagination; the majority of the staff here is Chinese, and the Japanese have always considered the Chinese race a dull, overly serious lot. No matter what I may think, I'm still a victim of cultural conditioning, after all.
Given the choice between being poor or being surrounded by people that don't laugh, poverty starts to look rather attractive. There're a lot of things to find funny in the impecunious state. If I'd been rich I would never have lived in the tenement, and if I'd never lived in the tenement, I'd never have had the chicken family next door, and if I'd never had the chicken family next door, think how dull my life would have been.
I was sitting in a cubicle with several engineers and a project manager -- all Chinese, all speaking English for my benefit -- when one of them abruptly fell silent and stared out the window at the parking lot.
"Look," he said, nudging one of his colleagues. "There are white people near your car, Ken."
I glanced out the window myself, startled, and discovered that there were, indeed, three white guys standing in a lazy, hanging-out sort of fashion by one of the cars. They were plainly from the software company next door; if nothing else, their computer yuppie uniforms (khaki pants, goaties, cigarettes and hush puppies) promised no very high order of threat.
The first speaker wandered to the window and stared at them gravely, blinking behind heavy glasses. "Are white people allowed out there?"
All the engineers very solemnly stood up and gathered at the window to stare at the three white guys. It must have been a shock to the white guys, harmless as they were, to glance up from their conversation and suddenly discover a row of round Chinese faces mooning them through the plate glass. One of them flicked his cigarette away and they made a hasty retreat, bunched together for safety.
"Maybe they were going to steal your car, Ken. We should call the police."
"White people," one of the Chinese engineers said with great disapproval.
And that's how I found out they have a sense of humor after all.