Fresh Off the Boat

by Eddie Huang

  When we talked about “A Modest Proposal” I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor ’cause he was just a fan. I wasn’t an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn’t them it was someone impressing Christianity on me and when it wasn’t Christianity it was whiteness.

  Those other kids had more vocabs than me and more knowledge of the American canon. At that age, I didn’t know what Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, or even A Christmas Story was. There were so many gaps in my American cultural understanding because we just didn’t get it at home. It always hurt me writing or debating because I didn’t share their references, but that summer I was determined that it wouldn’t stop me. I wouldn’t try to talk about things they knew anymore. I would use the references that made sense to me and make them catch up. Before I ever read a marketing book in college, I understood what “pull marketing” was. Unlike the other kids, I wasn’t memorizing words or events. I was speaking from experience. For the first time, I wasn’t arguing just to argue. I wasn’t wildin’ out ’cause I was bored. I finally found another mind I fucked with and it was just my luck he was a dead-ass Irishman.

  I was never the same after that night, though. Swift gave me confidence. He didn’t use flowery language, ill vocabs, or references to obscure historical events. He had wit and that was it. Like Mark Jackson had a teardrop and AI had a crossover, Swift had satire. Seeing me that day must have been like watching a twelfth seed in March Madness. Reading “A Modest Proposal” was the moment I realized, “Dogs, you can win this game. You got these motherfuckers, b!” You look up at the clock with six minutes left and you’re only down two. Never did you ever think you’d be in that spot, but you look around and everyone else is complacent. They’re confused how they’re in that boat with you, but while they’re shook, you come with the full-court press and see a way out. Everything comes clear and you see exactly how you’re gonna win the game: by doing you.

  I found my voice and no one was going to take it from me. It wasn’t Swift’s voice, it was mine, but he gave me the confidence to let it go. My dad urged me to fight, but Swift taught me how. It wasn’t just sparring in the kung fu room or wearing a belt. I started to study the mechanics that writers and orators used: complex sentences, allusions, metaphors, framing, satire, parody, alliteration, syntax, logos, pathos, and ethos. It wasn’t enough to be right; you had to know how to argue. I started reading classic essays like “American Scholar” or Tolstoy’s “What Is Art?” There was a formula to being persuasive and I wanted to figure it out.

  There was a girl that summer, too, Brandy Jenkins, a bad Southern thing with dirty-blond hair, and I wanted to see if she had pink nipples. Allen had hooked up with this white girl and he always told me about pink nipples so I wanted to see them for myself, too, but the curiosity was deeper. I remember accidentally walking in on my mom once changing and she had brown nipples, so I obviously didn’t want anything to do with something that reminded me of my moms. If I was gonna see nipples, I kinda wanted pink so that they wouldn’t be screaming “MOM” and make me puke in my mouth.

  I remember the first day of summer session, everyone was up on her. We had the same class together and I kicked it to her, but she liked this white dude who played soccer. I was a little salty for a minute, but once I read “A Modest Proposal,” I stopped thinking about her. Every day, I worked hard in class participating in discussions, taking notes, and then doing the reading at night. After class, I would ball with my boys Jerel and Zack. All the floors would play each other in basketball. In Orlando, I never got on the court at school ’cause we had people going to the NBA. But in North Carolina, I was on one. Back then, Jerel and Zack would say I played like Penny. Anyone from Orlando would have laughed, but—can I live?—I could handle in the half-court, had a ratchet and a postgame. We could pick-and-roll but I really liked to dish out of the post or play high-low with Jerel, who was already six two at the time. I remember I got everyone with my spin move. I’d drive hard to the right, spin, and hit a floater; no one stopped it that summer. Once I gained weight, I started playing more like Mark Jackson, but that’s depressing so we’ll save it for another chapter.

  After a week or so, Brandy stopped fuckin’ with that boring-ass white boy. We started eating lunch together. There was no history between us, no commonality, no expectations, just two strangers in North Carolina tryin’ to kick it. I really liked her a lot. She was smart, funny, and didn’t just go along with things I’d say. She pointed out inconsistencies, disagreed, and had this ill Southern drawl. I’d never met a girl that was as confident as her, either. She knew everyone liked her and never tripped. She was on all the time. We got to know each other, but nothing really moved it past friends until the Counselors versus Campers basketball game.

  Our floor had all the best players except one dude that played small forward on another floor. I forget his name, but he was one of those long, thin, jump-shooting small forwards. He did a good job on the glass, ran the baseline, and hit mad fifteen-footers. The counselors were six to seven years older than us, but Jerel and I were convinced we could get ’em, even though the campers never beat the counselors. Jerel, Zack, and I practiced every day after class. When the game came around, we all had goofy-ass T-shirts that had our names tagged with Sharpies.

  The first play of the game, the counselors brick and Zack rebounds but I bring the ball up. Jerel’s already down the court in the post so I give him the ball and he draws double. Homie was easily our best player so all the counselors collapse and I fill on the left baseline. Jerel hits me with the pass and I nail a twelve-footer to go up.

  We lead the whole game by two or three points when their point guard comes down the court. I meet him a foot outside the three-point line. He drives right then tries to cross over, but I see it so I eat this motherfucker’s lunch. Ball goes through his legs, I scoop it, and head down the floor on the fast break. I have a clear path and the counselor’s on the floor, but he lifts his leg up and trips me—I jump up onto the counselor but then we all get separated.

  They canceled the rest of the game but we didn’t care. Everyone knew we won and all the campers were upset on some Bush v. Gore steez. Brandy and her friend Gwen even started barking at the counselors and I remember thinking, This bitch is pretty thorough! The girl definitely caught feelings.

  My knee was kind of fucked-up so I was sitting on my bed in the room when Brandy came through with Gwen, Jerel, and this chick Sheila. I didn’t want to move around ’cause I cut it up pretty bad. Being in high school, the girls were extra-dramatic about some small shit, but I wasn’t trying to stop it! That was the first time Brandy asked me about back home. They all knew I was from Orlando and Jerel was from Deerfield Beach, but we never really talked about what our families did. I actually had some photos of my friends and me so I showed Brandy. There was this photo of Emily and me on a Jet-Ski that she saw.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Oh, that’s my man Ben’s girl that he used to see.”

  “Why is she with you, then?”

  “We’re just friends; it’s not that serious!”

  Brandy was wide-ass open and it was pretty funny. She went upstairs after a few minutes with Gwen, but before the end of the night Gwen came back down.

  “Eddie …”

  “Wassup?”

  “Do you like Brandy?”

  “Yeah, she’s cool.”

  “No, like, do you ‘like’ Brandy?”

  It always cracked me up how people used like in high school. But I couldn’t front. I was all about her that summer.

  “I told you weeks a
go I was into her! She is always acting like we’re just friends, though, so I don’t try.”

  “Well, she really likes you.”

  “For real? Why didn’t she say something.”

  “Because you’re supposed to, you idiot.”

  I had to admit, I was a straight goon with girls. I never curbed my personality for anyone and everyone always talked about just being yourself around girls so I did. Problem was, just being myself was probably a little too raw. Most of my game came from shit Warren, Romaen, and I heard from skits on Doggystyle. Romaen was always tellin’ that “Deez Nuts” joke whenever he could. Emery loved that skit from DMX before “How’s It Going Down.” Luckily for Warren, girls just jumped him; kid didn’t even need game. I was funny so that was my game, but I sucked at closing. The next day, Brandy stepped up.

  “I like you and I’m taking your keys.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, come get them later.”

  And she put them down her shirt. Even a goonie goo-goo like me knew how it was gonna go down. I have to say, I was pretty fucking excited and happy that the first time I’d see titties live and in person would be so premeditated. I had hours to think about it, prepare for it, visualize all the fantastic things I’d do to those titties …

  After dinner, we snuck off and went to her room. She had on a white top, sun coming in from the window in her dorm room, and cutoff jean shorts that her butt poked out of. Brandy was no pro herself, but I remember looking into her light blue eyes and feeling comfortable. I kissed her and she put her tongue in my mouth first. Everything we did, she initiated because I had this irrational fear every time I was alone with white women that some parent or cop would bust in and arrest me for infecting them with yellow fever. Honestly, all the way until my freshman year of college, every white girl I made out with, I let make the first move because I thought I’d get arrested.

  But that evening, white people really weren’t so bad after all.

  We made out for a few minutes and then she took her shirt off. I went for her bra and surprisingly, it only took a couple of seconds of fumbling and off that went, too. And there they were … pink as motherfucking Laffy Taffy and soft as Swiss Miss pudding. My dick felt like a bound foot in my jeans trying to get out, but I figured that wasn’t happening so I did what anyone in that situation should do. I dove headfirst into her boobs and put as much of them in my mouth as I possibly could. It was like being at Golden Corral. I wanted it all, plates and plates and plates of titty, PLEASE. I didn’t want it to end, but I heard someone in the hallway.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “It’s OK, Eddie, the door is closed.”

  “Naw, I don’t want to get arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “Never mind …”

  She kissed me again, but I figured my time was up and kissed her back hesitantly before leading her to her clothes. It was kind of hilarious, but my first time hooking up with a girl, it was me that said “no more.” This guy, Eddie Huang, what a bitch.

  The last week of the summer, we got reviews. Everyone else’s parents came to pick them up, but my parents never did. I liked that. Once you’re past fourteen, you should be able to take a plane, not get your shit stole, and set up a dorm room. If you can’t do that, you’re going to be a biscuit anyway and your parents should save their time and money ’cause you are definitely not winning Survivor. The one advantage of coming, though, was that the professors would have conferences with parents. Brandy’s dad came, but she kept him on the side and didn’t introduce me. But at the dance during the last week, one of the counselors saw me and Brandy with her legs open so they bugged out and told the other counselors and our professor. Without getting detailed, the professor told her pops that we were messin’ around, so this dude writes me a letter. I remember one classic line: “I have a shotgun and I will use it.”

  I really liked Brandy, but more than that, I liked what I could be with her. I needed to get away from my family and Orlando. There was an individual inside me that wasn’t Chinese, that wasn’t American, that wasn’t Orlando. Just a kid trying to get the fuck out, tell his story, and arrange the world how it made sense to him. I started to think about whether I was who I was or I was just a reaction to something arresting me. I wanted to get free.

  As soon as I got home, I picked classes for my next year of school. Instead of taking Spanish like everyone else, I took Latin because I wanted to learn the history of language. I took creative writing, humanities, and since I always got in arguments with the gifted teachers, I dropped out of the program and took regular English and Integrated Math. They were basically English and math classes for kids that were going to get vocational degrees and GEDs. I made a conscious choice to surround myself with like minds instead of always feeling insufficient for someone else’s reference groups and masters. I started avoiding Warren’s friends. Life was too short.

  I read books, cut down on the smoking/drinking, and had my mind right. But, on the weekends, I’d still wild out, hang with my homies, and be a retard. I was never going to be a monk, but my consciousness was slowly rising. I remember one thing that I really regretted was hog-’n’-jogging from Steak ’n Shake one night. We ate, I was gonna pay, but Warren and Mike wanted to hog-’n’-jog so I went along with it. Nothing serious, we did it a few times before, too, but this girl Sheila Jimenez said something to me at school the next day.

  “You’re a real punk, you know that?”

  “What?”

  “I work at that fucking Steak ’n Shake you ran from! My coworker had to pay for you guys’ food.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “Well, you should. Not everyone is rich like your parents, you fucking asshole.”

  I’d been called a lot of things, but that really cut through all the bullshit. She was 100 with me and didn’t even want my money when I tried to pay later. That was the turning point for me. I realized I couldn’t have it both ways. I was either a good person or a shitty one. There wasn’t one logical explanation for why it was OK to hog-’n’-jog. We used to say it was OK to steal from Blockbuster or Best Buy because they were big corporations, but this time we got it really fucking wrong. I never wanted to be that wrong again.

  The two teachers who really made an impact on me that year were Mr. Barrows and Mr. Feddell. Barrows was the humanities teacher. A lot of the same kids that were in gifted and honors classes would take his class because you got college credit, but I just wanted to read the books he assigned. We got to read Siddhartha, the Tao Te Ching, and Socrates. It was like a hybrid humanities-philosophy class. I hadn’t been in class with those gifted/honors kids for a year so it sucked being around them again. They weren’t actually smarter than the kids in my regular English class, either. It doesn’t take much to get good grades. You memorize what the teacher says, write it down, and spit it back out. In regular English, it was like watching a movie in a theater in Brooklyn. Everyone had something to say and they were loud about it. People were from different parts of Orlando, different ethnicities, and no one agreed on anything. In Mr. Feddell’s English class, we had so many hip-hop heads we’d all talk about how lyrical Shakespeare was, compare him to Pac and Nas. For the first time, I became the teacher’s pet. Without a bunch of gifted/honors kids fighting to kiss the teacher’s ass, I got to actually have a real discussion with Mr. Feddell. Instead of playing the contrarian, I just spoke my mind about Hamlet, Macbeth, and my favorite, Julius Caesar.

  English was mad fun. Half the class worked at McDonald’s or Chick-fil-A after school and would most likely get GEDs, but for one hour every day, we really got into Shakespeare. Most of them weren’t reading between the lines, but they definitely understood it. Especially when we talked about Brutus, honor, and loyalty. Julius Caesar is the epic street tale. It’s all about betrayal, loyalty, honor, and going out like a G. Feddell couldn’t see it, but we did. We loved Julius Caesar.

  I started to realize that books weren’t meant
to be understood one way or the other. We took Julius Caesar and made it mean something entirely different than Feddell, Harold Bloom, or maybe Shakespeare ever expected. I remember Feddell was such a purist he’d cross-check all his thoughts with Harold Bloom but that was his weakness. You don’t need validation from anyone, not even the author. Just like we did with Nikes, breakin’ ’em out, wearin’ ’em with no laces, tying the Air Force 1 straps backward, etc. Like the Fab Five coming through with black socks, baggy shorts, and intimidation, we didn’t have to do it the Man’s way. That’s how we resisted assimilation. Every time people tried to feed us soma, we freaked it out. It was around this time that I stopped feeling helpless, became less nihilistic, and realized that if I didn’t want it their way it didn’t have to be, but that I’d really have to work. It’s harder to resist, but there’s honor in it.

  THEN IT HAPPENED. Emery was at the mall with his homies one weekend. Nader, Emery, Yuel, and Raul, they called themselves Windmill because of the break-dancing move. Yuel was Hawaiian-Japanese dred, Raul was Latino, and Nader was Lebanese. Emery’s United Nations crew was chillin’ at Hooters with some girls when these two white boys kept eyeing them, talking shit. Once they left Hooters, the guys followed them. They didn’t want to ditch the girls so they kept walking, but these dudes wouldn’t give up. Finally, they told the girls to go home and Emery led everyone into FAO Schwarz, where the kids followed. They went to the sports section, got junior baseball bats, and beat the shit out of the two trailing them. The next week at school, Emery was just eating lunch in the cafeteria when some kid ran up from behind, punched him in the face, and took off. I got home that Friday and Emery had a broken nose so my dad was like, “You already know.”