by Eddie Huang
After dinner we walked outside and I noticed a huge line snaking its way toward the doors of Primanti’s, an unassuming restaurant across the street. I was still hungry because I hadn’t eaten much at Fuel & Fuddle, so I got in line.
Every kid was walking out holding a giant triple-decker sandwich wrapped in white wax paper. Every sandwich stacked like a g-pack except it had vinegar coleslaw, fries, meat, cheese, and three big pieces of white Italian bread. I literally got a boner in line I was so excited. Their slaw was slick, snappy, vinegary, and just peppery enough. The fries were fresh, creamy on the inside, crispy on the outside, and the bread was thick, buttery, and soft. They’d toast it on the griddle just a little if you wanted for a light crisp. I would take a bite and gas-face everyone around me it was so fucking good. People in Pittsburgh thought I was a gremlin that fell in water or some shit, ’cause I was running around all crazy over this sandwich. With that three-pound sandwich in your hand, you feel like the man: “Fuck you and whatever you got poppin’, I’m killin’ life with this sandwich right now, b!” Later that night, I would tell anyone I ran into how good the sandwich was and they were like, “Dude, I grew up here, I’ve had the sandwich, calm down.”
Without even meaning to, I now lived in a food city. I didn’t know they existed in America; my only fully immersed food experience prior was Taipei. Pittsburgh wasn’t Paris, Tokyo, or Taipei exactly, but, Fuel & Fuddle aside, it was a long way from Holando’s Denny’s and Perkins circuit. From that first Primanti sandwich, I was open; I spent the rest of my year rolling around Pittsburgh looking for new food experiences. I could smell them making fresh waffle cones at Dave & Andy’s from two blocks away. The ice cream was so banging, I’d eat it with no gloves on in ten-degree weather. They had the ill pistachio and cookies-and-cream, everything with creamy, rich, fresh natural flavors, it was like eating Mariah Carey’s ass with a spoon circa the “Honey” remix.
Then there was Mad Mex. Hands down, the best wings I’ve ever had. I like buffalo wings, but I prefer my hot wings with flavors like spicy garlic, or Japanese Izakaya wings at Kasadela, or BonChon Korean fried chicken, but the first time I had anything of that ilk was at Mad Mex. For breakfast, we had Pamela’s, with pancakes crispy on the outside like dollar bills but fluffy on the inside. They were so light you felt like you could throw ’em like Frisbees, but they also had a crazy buttery, rich flavor, which contrasted with the light texture and thin crisp. I’d get the banana walnut pancakes with a side of corned beef hash.
In October I took a trip to South Street in Philly to cop new kicks because there weren’t any good stores in Pittsburgh. It was the first time I’d ever seen sneaker stores that carried all the OG and retro kicks, every sneaker Saran-wrapped on the wall. I’d seen Japanese sneaker stores like this in magazines, but to bump into one accidentally on South Street was life-changing. The first pair I bought were white and silver Jordan V retros. Down South, we bought white Air Force 1s or white Jordans, but I realized with the quickness you can’t be rockin’ white up north. Once the weather hits, your shoes are done. I started wearing shoes with a lot more colors and blacked-out panels. My Timberland game switched, too. I got off the Beef and Brocs, back to the six-inch nubuck joints. For the first time, there was actually a purpose to rockin’ Timbs.
The first kid I met at Pittsburgh was a dude named Mark Mariz, who introduced himself to me as “Goombah.” He was pretty much what he said he was, a fucking goombah. Goombah was from Buffalo, and had a ton of Rogaine ’cause that Italian hair loss thing was killin’ his game. Goombah knew as much if not more about hip-hop than me, but he consumed it in a different way. Most of my homies back home that listened to hip-hop found real solidarity with the stories in the songs. Austin was in rehab and I actually saw his pops punch him in the face at the crib. Ben was adopted and never fit in with his fam. Jared got beat at the crib and his parents were getting divorced, too. With Warren and me, you already know. I’m not saying hip-hop is the HRS Anthem, but there’s pain and for kids like us, we related to it. You don’t go to school and talk about what happens at home, you just try to be normal ’cause that’s all you see then one day someone passes you The Chronic, you take a hit, and like Professor X with Cerebro on, you realize there are others out there like you. That’s it.
Goombah made me realize that we all connected with hip-hop for different reasons. Goombah was one of the first kids I met who listened to everything, could recite lyrics from the most obscure backpack tracks, but was just a nice white kid from Buffalo who was down with the culture, if not the lifestyle. He hadn’t seen the shit we’d seen, but I hadn’t seen the shit B.I.G. did, either, so who was I to judge? I just liked that Goombah tried to appreciate the music in an earnest way even if it didn’t come naturally. Goombah taught me that culture could be just as powerful if you absorbed it as a metaphor, not a list of commandments. You could live through it, learn from it, find yourself in it, and let it change you—a poem not a script. Hip-hop was my escape, but I realized that at times I was guilty of reading another MC’s route as my own way out.* Like they say, you learn more from Goombahs than wise men.
My best friend at Pitt was my boy Graham. A Philly cat with a con-man father, two turntables, and a microphone. Before I met Graham, I didn’t even know what backpack rap was, but Graham introduced me to the Outsidaz, Soundbombing I and II, Jurassic 5, and Blackalicious. We had another friend on the floor, James, a Cali guy who was the older cat so he could get us beer, weed, whatever. Then there was Cliff: he was a local dude from Pittsburgh and word got out that he had a gun, so people didn’t mess with him. There was this buffalo wing joint that Cliff delivered pizza and wings for so he was able to get a concealed weapons license. If you deliver pizza and carry cash, you can hold one.
I met Cliff outside of a house party run by frat boys. Some girls had invited us—James, Graham, and me—to the party but we got there late. I didn’t know Cliff at the time but he arrived at the same time we did. The frat boys were cranky at our late, uninvited asses and maybe they could smell our contempt for their little Greek clubhouse. They were crunchy and it looked like they were going to turn us away but Cliff wasn’t having it.
“Man, fuck this shit!”
Cliff goes in the back, pulls out the ratchet, and just licks off three through the roof.
“Oh shit! Run! Run!”
“AHHHHHH!!!”
Girls were running, everyone was shook. And, of course, the shit was hilarious to me. We all bounced but I saw Cliff later, in the lobby of my dorm tower.
“What up, son, that’s you with the ratchet?”
“Ha, ha, yeah, man, fuck those frat boys.”
“Yeah, bull, that’s what I’m sayin’. You had them runnin’ like roaches!”
“You think anyone saw me?”
“Hell, yeah! I saw you! Ditch that piece for a week.”
Cliff lay low and, understandably, didn’t hit up many frat parties after that. He didn’t care, though. He was like me: We didn’t understand frats. You went your whole life meeting friends, hanging out, having fun without needing to pay some motherfuckers, go through Hell Week, and wear shirts with Greek shit on ’em. If it was that ill, we would have been wearing Greek shit in high school, but it wasn’t. I’m convinced that frats are the beginning of the end for most of the people who end up running the world. It teaches them to give up individuality, independence, and even their paper for acceptance.
Just like in Orlando, the derels found each other and opposed the cornballs with curved brims,† but that’s the way I wanted it: the flavor was in the margins. I really didn’t get along with kids at college; most were pretty sheltered, bubble boys and girls, who didn’t know what I was talking about half the time. Even though I had Graham, I started to realize I might not have been ready to leave home. I liked that there were people in Orlando that knew everything and understood me. I didn’t have to explain why I was weird, I just was. I had become so close with Ben by the summer of 2000 that I tri
ed to commit perjury so he would be acquitted of an assault charge, until his lawyer stopped me. I look back on it now, not having spoken to Ben in eleven years, and laugh that I almost threw my life away for him, but he would have done it for me, too.
Things only got worse. Prior to bid day on campus, people may have been herbs, but they knew it and owned it. Goombah knew he was a goober, but once he joined a frat, overnight he started flexing like he bought some big-dick-willy game on eBay. For a guy who arrived on campus with Rogaine six weeks ago, he was pretty fucking brave. Watching bid week unfold, with all its talk about tradition and brotherhood, felt like watching a White History Month special with a bunch of meatheads handing out hood passes. No one was safe and we started to lose people, like it was the Rapture. Goombah disappeared, girls we hung out with got caught up with sororities, and everyone wanted to be at frat houses Friday night.
I got bids for two frats ’cause I was wild and played football with some of the “brothers.” Outside of their frat identity, they weren’t so bad, but once some asshole came around calling Jackson “Action,” or Steven “Scuba,” they’d have to play the part. The worst was when my cousin Phil joined a frat. Something about watching my older cousin walk around with a PKA hat on his fat head being hazed by white “brothers” pissed me off. It must have been how our grandparents felt watching the British or Japanese herd their people around in water lines. OK, maybe I was imposing my own meaning on the image, but there was something wrong with it either way. White people making my cousin carry their shit, wear their colors, and walk with his head down. It took every ounce of self-control not to go apeshit on his brothers and, when I was done, beat the shit out of Phil, too! It made Allen and me so mad that it finally brought us back together. Like watching William Hung sink your entire race with each word of “She Bangs,” we died every time Phil walked through the towers surrounded by frat brothers.
I couldn’t stand the Greek system, but Graham, James, and I were still curious to know exactly how it all worked—I went to a bid meeting at one of the frats so I could report back to Graham and James about what kind of embarrassing shit actually went down. It became a theme in my life. I always had friends on the periphery but the people we hated would always pick me to cross the line. I’d fake the part for a second to infiltrate, gather intelligence, and then ditch it, laughing on my way back to the outside. That’s the perk to being Chinese, you can walk through walls and no one really notices. The older cats that gave me the bid told me that I wouldn’t have to go through Hell Week like the other kids because I was already friends with them from football. But, once we got to the pledge meeting, they switched up their story.
“OK, all the people who just received bids, stand against the wall.”
“Stand against the wall?”
“Yeah, Huang, stand against the wall like everyone else. You’re a pledge!”
“Wait, I’m supposed to pay y’all to be my friends and I gotta stand against this wall while you sit?”
“Eddie, just do it, dude. It’s tradition!”
“Yo, you told me I wouldn’t have to do this shit like the other herbs. You already know me!”
“Everyone stands against the wall! We all had to do it.”
My argument with them went on for a good five to ten minutes before I left. It was funny, to me, how they shit their pants like Justice Scalia trying to maintain tradition—the tradition of crushing individuality through pointless humiliation even though they themselves didn’t believe in it. There was vindication in going, lifting the curtain, and confirming every bitch-made notion I had about them. In the end, you get a bunch of conformists all united in a cartel that asks them to sacrifice one year of their lives to feed someone’s ego, in exchange for the ability to do it the next three years to others.
Without any good parties, I got a taste of student activism in spring semester. I didn’t intend to get involved; something just set me off so I spoke out. I saw other groups get holidays off or school benefits for their organizations like Hillel or the Black Students Union, but the Asian Students Association didn’t even call for Chinese New Year exceptions for attendance. Growing up, my parents would let us stay home on Chinese New Year because there were things we had to do. Sweep out last year’s luck, pay respects to our ancestors, reflect on last year, and look forward to the new one. It wasn’t just a national holiday, it was a spiritual one. I figured being at a public university with exceptions for Yom Kippur and Good Friday that Chinese New Year would make the cut, but it didn’t. Every club had things they negotiated for, but the Asian clubs were always just happy to be vocational organizations. Everyone went and joined the club for resume filler, but when there was actually something to speak out about, no one wanted to be the punk that jumped up to get beat down.
Lucky for them, I gladly played the punk. As a freshman, I sent a letter into the school paper and they ran it. My letter wasn’t about how the school should give us Chinese New Year off. It was all about Uncle Chans and how they fucked the game up for Asian people. For too long, I wrote, we’ve been lapdogs. The people who don’t want to offend anyone. We hide out in Laundromats, delis, and takeout joints and hope that our doctor/lawyer sons and daughters will save us. We play into the definitions and stereotypes others impose on us and accept the model-minority myth, thinking it’s positive, but it’s a trap just like any stereotype. They put a piece of model-minority cheese between the metal jaws of their mousetrap, but we’re lactose intolerant anyway! We can’t even eat the cheese. I called out the Asian Students Association for not saying anything to the school, for not fighting for their identities, and for spending the budget on bullshit mixers and networking events without any substantive cultural programming.
When people don’t give you the time off work or school to celebrate the most important day of the year for your people, you lose yourself. How are you supposed to maintain your identity in America without your holidays? If not all of them, then how about one? It wasn’t just about Chinese New Year, though. I was sick and tired of half-assed potlucks thrown by ABCs (American Born Chinese) who didn’t even know how to cook Chinese food. These same ABCs couldn’t speak Chinese and didn’t care—but you don’t have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug—these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn’t understand is that after you have the money and degrees, you can’t buy your identity back. I wasn’t worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in the American wilderness, I respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn’t so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It’s funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn’t around, I carried the torch for her.
At school, there were Chinese New Year events, but they involved shitty lion dances, takeout Chinese food set over Sternos, and a bunch of conservatively styled Asians with a few flavorful Filipinos mixed in. I actually got along with the Filipino cats because they were frequently left out when the model-minority net got dropped in the water. People weren’t fishing for Pinoys and they got to build a lot of their own identity in America. Just like Joey’s parents and the other Filipinos in Lake Cane Park setting up shop, a lot of Filipinos were free to do their own thing because there wasn’t so much institutional or communal pressure to be one type of Pinoy. One of the board members was an older Filipino guy named Brandon who DJ’d a lot of the parties in Pittsburgh and he tried to get me to join the board, but I declined.
“Yo, that article was powerful, man! We need that voice on the board.”
“Respect! I’m glad you fuck with it, but I’m not an institutional cat. I’ll complain about it, but I’ll never be part of it.”
“I don’t get it, dude, we’d be giving you a platform?!”
“Look, man, I’ll never be ‘Asian’ enough for the people in this club.”
“Son, you playin’ yourself, you mad Asian! You know everything about the food, you speak fluently, you been back to Taiwan, you more Chinese than all these cats.”
“Yeah, but it’s different than what these ABCs expect. My pops isn’t an engineer or doctor; he got an automatic he used to put on my head while I watched cartoons.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“Everything! Dude, do you listen to the people in these meetings? They’re all dying to live under the bamboo ceiling and subscribe to the model-minority myth; I’m not OK with that shit. They don’t understand that in China, Taiwan, or the Philippines, we can be whoever we want. In America, we’re allowed to play ONE role, the eunuch who can count. You seen Romeo Must Die! Jet Li gets NO PUSSY!”
Whenever I tried to articulate what I really felt about being Chinese in America, my dad said I sounded like a slant-eyed Malcolm X. He’d always tell me not to talk like that in public because Americans would try to silence me. In Florida that made sense, so I played dumb, but college was supposed to be the place where you could have liberal ideas so I figured I’d drop the “dumb” act and speak my mind.
After a year, I decided to transfer home to any college in Orlando that would have me, but before I left Pittsburgh I got a lesson on Italian food that changed my life. It was .45-cal Cliff who taught me. The university was in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, but Cliff was from the other side. One day after playing ball at Trees, he took me to the Italian diner that he grew up eating at. I scanned the menu looking for my standbys—chicken parm or sausage and peppers—but before I could figure out what I wanted, Cliff summoned the waiter over and ordered for both of us.