Monday, April 23, 2007

Dear Friends,

I need a blog.

I am 25 years old, female, Harvard educated, Korean American. That's also a list of my allegiances in order of importance with the list downgrading by powers of ten from left to right. I am drunk. I feel like last night was my 26th birthday, but I am sure it was not my 26th birthday.
It was more like this middle school slumber party at the bad kid's house (who you didn't know was a bad kid until she "discovered" the scotch in her father's liquor cabinet where she was "sure the UNO deck would be," and after passing a few nervous furtive sips around the room (she'd proceed to tell us about getting her period getting fingerbanged at camp and liking it and her uncle touching her and maybe liking it while we got aroused with excitement and nausea on two sips of scotch. In the morning we'd wake up with funny feelings everywhere (see adults: kids are not like you, they don't have hangovers but maybe it's because they don't properly know how to drink, except they do. They treat drinking as a symbolic transgression and let their actions follow mesmerized and orgiastic like Bacchic cultists in the woods throwing their naked bodies at trees.

One thing. I was never allowed to go to these slumber parties as a kid. And the bad kid in middle school was me, or I thought I was bad even though I probably was an incredible Asian stereotype, or good. I did well in school and wanted to make my parents happy. Just one more thing. I had an incredibly bad temper and no patience for bullies especially the Irish ones who dominated the middle school scene like it was Tammany Hall. Like affirmative action, i joined their ranks without ever really earning my stripes (I was never beat up by my dad or poor white trash like Doug McFuckerface my archrival). But I did bulk up to defend my honor, my race, my sex against the likes of McFuckerface. Our historic altercation happened when he made his best Ching Chong Chink face at me while mouthing those words. Maori warriors and Aussie soccer stars do a similar dance to warn off rivals. He looked to me not like the Samoan with stubby appendages he was, but exactly as if tapped by the magical wand of Disney, a cartoon bulldog that could talk—in short—appalling. To this day, I hate the conceit of animals that talk (but not if they're reptiles or amphibians) and must leave the theater when Pixar trailers play).



I started with a kick to the groin. He went down. Elbow drops in his adipose. Hair pulls and the infamous bite scratch combo I perfected on my dad. In short I was a chubby, maybe fat little Asian girl with a sharp tongue, lacerating anyone and everyone with it, imagine a komodo dragon with pigtails that can talk. Trés charmant.

In fifth grade I sat behind an Asian boy named Sue Lee and everyday for a month I for no good reason stood up and silently pulled his chair away (he had a strange habit of not really sitting in his chair but letting his butt hover in the air while leaning his torso on his desk). During his descent to the floor I kicked him through the ass in the balls. I might have been inspired by Lucy and Charlie Brown. Or at the very least Lucy taught me that repeat brutality when done deadpan is funny. He at first was very upset but strangely did nothing in retaliation besides silently pound his fist on his desk afterward. He was honestly kind of mute.[1]



This nonaggression doctrine of his, I took as a weakness and chalked it up to his being more fresh off the turnip boat than me which in turn made me feel more justified in the superiority of my action. Thinking that i would learn him a thing or two about the Western value of going out there and kicking some ass! or the Country- Western value of putting a Boot in your ass, Non-Americans!
It's pretty obvious now what it was all about. All the willful ignorance stripped away. Sue was the class' star artist, he drew the stunning bald eagle for the cover of our grade school yearbook in pen! He could draw all the Marvel, Sanrio, and Saturday morning cartoon characters to scale from memory. I thought I was the more deserving great artist languishing in obscurity. He was pure mimesis. I—I had invented something. I was able to draw in pencil almost abstract, bow-shaped women with bows in their hairs that were in the shape of bowshaped women with bows in their hair that were women wearing bow-shaped women as bows. It got fractal-like very quickly and I would do it until I got motion-sickness or vertigo. You see, even then I was a conceptual artist battling the pure aesthete except now I'm the aesthete who wishes to be more conceptual, or more talented. Who was more talented me or sue? Can you be the judge? Will you? I want you to be. JEALOUSY. That's what it boils down to. Vignette over.


[1] and now that I think of it he was probably nearsighted too which would explain why he sat in such a crazy way straining to see the blackboard from the front of the classroom. Oh well, youth doesn't come with a cruelty-free sticker on it, Vegetarians.