Dear Girls

  After the time I spent in Hue with my mom’s cousin and her house with eighteen generations still alive in it somehow, I went to live with Auntie Nga in Saigon. She was my mom’s only sibling that had returned to Vietnam after studying in the United States. She lived in a tiny one-bedroom house and spoke perfect English. She would gossip about how one of her and my mom’s uncles would mess around with different women in his younger years and had a bunch of sexually transmitted diseases from it. She’d refer to him as “mango seeds,” which is a very poetic interpretation of what “raging genital warts” look like. Auntie Nga had two daughters my age, and I wished so badly that we had grown up together in the United States. They were so kind and loved to sing karaoke. Our favorite song was “La Bamba” because we thought it was so funny how we could just repeat “Para bailar La Bamba” over and over again. My cousin Titi spent a ton of time in the bathroom because it was the only place she could be alone and have some privacy. But my aunt would knock on the door to rush Titi out and say, “Hurry up, Mrs. Masturbator.”

  Auntie Nga would only speak to me in English because she desperately wanted her daughters to learn the language. And while I was having a great time, it made me feel really fortunate to have been born and raised in the United States, with an American education. Auntie Nga had to work so hard to teach her children to think critically. At the time in Vietnam, education was all about rote memorization. Especially now, with the Internet and Wikipedia, it’s a totally useless skill. It’s not an advantage at all, to have all of that information memorized. I was raised to ask why, to learn how to process information and think for myself. Knowing the capital of Mozambique and being able to fill in the entire periodic table of the elements does not give you an advantage these days when there’s Google. It’s more important to know how to pick a news program (hint: It’s not the one that has to dole out millions of dollars in sexual harassment lawsuits) and good friends (hint: It’s not that asshole boy at the park who throws sand and keeps licking the monkey bars).

  * * *

  Before your father, I had dated a couple of guys that were very scared of getting out of their comfort zone and could have greatly benefited from studying abroad. My senior year of college, I took a class on documentary filmmaking. I had a huge crush on my T.A. Superficially, he was the whole package: smart, articulate, funny, passionate, Asian American, nose piercing, and fucking ripped. Before class I would do leg lifts to tighten my core, and if I saw him walking around on campus, I’d scurry off to the nearest bathroom to check that I didn’t look gross. If I did, in fact, look gross, I’d walk in the opposite direction from him. But I never thought he’d be interested in someone like me. I biked around campus in huge cargo pants, wearing a backward SF Giants hat and a T-shirt that read SUCKA FREE.

  But I did such a great job on my final project that my T.A. slept with me (which is like extra extra extra credit). I fell in love very hard and fast, but I had gotten a scholarship to an intensive language program in Vietnam and was leaving to go back there after graduation. We handwrote each other letters that were sometimes twelve pages long. His letters made me laugh. Once he drew a before/after stick figure of me with a mammoth curly bush and then after, having by then trimmed it back considerably (upon his request). He’d tell me how much he’d think about me when listening to Tracy Chapman’s “The Promise.” (The best song when you’re longing for somebody, and possibly the greatest song ever made? Anyway, listen to Tracy Chapman. That bitch knows what it’s like to miss somebody and make them promise to wait for your ass!) And eventually, he came to Vietnam to visit me. I was so excited, but the man had never been to Southeast Asia. He had never backpacked. He was scared to ride motorbikes and eat food from street vendors (those two things are 99 percent of what Southeast Asia is all about). Tired of playing tour guide two weeks into his trip, I threw the Lonely Planet in his face and said, “It’s your turn to plan today.” Many times, I thought about ditching him in Cambodia. At Angkor Wat, I was very tempted to say “Hey! Look over there, it’s ANOTHER phallic statue!” and then quickly catch the next flight to Hong Kong. Unlike Hai, he was less concerned with enjoying the adventure and more obsessed with his body and maintaining his BMI. In our tiny hostel room, he led me in a home workout routine he developed. He slammed a deck of cards on the concrete floor, and instructed me to turn over the first card. It was a ten of diamonds, which meant that we both then had to do ten push-ups. He flipped over the next card, which was a jack of spades. So then we both had to do eleven sit-ups. In between panting breaths of the second and third push-up, I said, “Man, I’m pretty out of shape. This is hard! I think I’ve gained too much weight to do this.” He was supposed to say, “No way! You look bangin’, babe! Like Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing!” But instead, he replied: “It’s because of all that fruit you’re eating.” Like, dude, shut the fuck up. Criticizing someone for eating too much fruit means you’ve crossed the line from health nut to health Nazi. Adam and Eve ate fruit all the time and look at what absolute legends they turned out to be. My point is, girls, that if you don’t go abroad, you’ll become a provincial gym rat like that guy.

  Studying in a developing/third-world country is way more intense and formative than studying in a first-world fancy country. It makes you so much more open-minded, adaptive, and confident. You become so much more real. When you have to shit on two little bricks into a hole the size of a tennis ball at an elementary school in the countryside, or sleep in a farmer’s yurt after not bathing for five days, you become a much more easygoing person. It teaches you to value experience over material things real fast.

  And living in a different part of the world can sometimes present the opportunity to take on a new personality. I don’t think I could’ve let myself grow out my armpit hair and gain all that weight while living in Los Angeles. People on campus would’ve stared at me, and I would’ve felt so much peer pressure to pay more attention to my appearance. If I had tried to talk to that T.A. while rocking some long, flowing pit hair, he would’ve probably lured me into a cage with some peanut butter and dropped me off at the no-kill shelter.

  It was really moving to experience being a foreigner in the country that your mother grew up in. And it’s empowering to be in a place where everyone looks like you. But I realized I kind of had that already at UCLA and in San Francisco. In San Francisco everyone looked even more like me and, ultimately, I missed my tribe. I had stayed with Auntie Nga in Vietnam for a couple of months after the semester abroad ended and learned very quickly that I wouldn’t want to live there forever. I got worn down by the constant negotiation. The bargaining. Sometimes a bundle of cilantro costs an entire dollar and that’s okay! All the blatant opinions. How everything is a struggle. The heat. I began to appreciate the diversity in America. I missed listening to hip-hop on the radio while driving. I missed tacos. And there was a dismissal of women in Asia; actually, the men were the main reason I wanted to go home. They talked down to me. They laughed me off when I tried to play sports with them or drink at the table with them. I got sick of mosquito bites and the monsoons that would make my money wet and my shoes squishy.

  And I also really missed the American sense of humor. It was hard for Vietnamese people to understand my jokes because the concept of sarcasm doesn’t exist in Vietnam. The height of funny for them was when a man dressed up like a woman and nagged her husband. Basically those Madea movies, but with less rolling pins.

  If you girls end up studying in Vietnam (please), and I come visit you on your program (I will), you best believe that I’ll be out until two A.M., reminiscing with Hai about that time I ate a still-beating cobra heart.

  CHAPTER 7

  The DJ

  Dear Girls,

  This is going to be a short letter but it’s important because I don’t want you to repeat my mistake.

  I have always been attracted to men who dress hip-hop. I grew up in the nineties worshipping Aaliyah, Missy E
lliott, Wu-Tang Clan, Lauryn Hill, Tupac, and A Tribe Called Quest. There’s no better music to dance to than hip-hop, and no better music to listen to when you’re going through anything emotional than R&B. (No genre of music videos features more sensual candles than R&B. It’s very comforting.) I found it very hard to connect with anyone who didn’t agree with my music tastes. I have never liked men who wear bowling shirts on the off chance it might mean they would want to blast Smash Mouth while eating dino chicken nuggets for breakfast. I have also never ever been attracted to men that wear eyeliner because then I would be subjected to marathons of David Lynch movies and forced to listen to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon played backward. In the nineties there was this awful category of raver men that wore goggles and wide-legged fluorescent yellow pants and would dance like Teletubbies on acid. I would give any man in need of style help a hip-hop makeover. The clothes are very flattering because they inject instant masculinity and can give volume to a skinny dude’s body.

  My favorite hip-hop guy has always been the DJ, never the rapper. That might be partially due to the fact that I’m into Asian men and grew up near Daly City, where every hot Filipino practices one of the ancient art forms of Pinoy culture: DJing, breakdancing, or nursing. Rappers are generally megalomaniacs because their job is to rap about how great they are. It always felt strange to see grown men rhyme like that. In high school they would gather in these freestyle circles and “cipher” with their very prepared, very written, non-improvised raps. A common rhyme I heard was “the colonization of this nation”…coming from the white child of a venture capitalist attending a $30K per year high school. Recently, a friend who raps wanted to share with me one of his latest verses. Before I could have any time to say “no thanks,” he just started rapping and gesturing furiously in front of my face. I did my best to tune out but he kept looking me in the eye. One of his most memorable lines: “I write psalms, not rap songs.” It’s memorable because he paused after this line. I thought he was finished but then he faced his palms up to the sky and raised his eyebrows. Really, he was just waiting for my reaction to his genius play on the word “psalms” unexpectedly rhyming with “songs.” And it was kind of like a psalm because after that I was like, Jesus save me. But I felt bad and just said, “Dayuuuuuuuuum,” which fortunately made him feel good but unfortunately encouraged him to continue rapping for five more minutes. It was so awkward and I felt like I was being held hostage. Out of fear of being rude, it took a hundred percent of my willpower to resist the instinct to look away and scream, “You’re not Eminem in 8 Mile! I’m not Brittany Murphy and you don’t work in a steel factory! Xzibit is nowhere to be found! Stop rapping!” There’s nothing like having your time be assaulted by a grown man’s rhymes. That’s why I have always preferred DJs. You get the hip-hop performer without the obnoxious poet. They know how and when to shut up. Plus they can play weddings, which pay actual money, so you don’t have to support their rhyming asses.

  DJs also have the opportunity to really showcase how good they are with their hands. When they place that needle, scratch that record, adjust the fader, I just can’t help myself. All of that finger work. And then they always move their hips to the subtle beat of the song that not everybody else is dancing to. It’s like they have some extraterrestrial ability to hear a secret dog whistle hidden inside the music. It’s sexy when a man is passionate about something because you think that passion will translate into the bedroom. You’ve already witnessed him being committed to something. His passion also becomes healthy competition. The goal is to become so irresistible to him that you’re the one thing that can pull him away from crate digging and record scratching.

  In my early twenties, I had a huge crush on this underground DJ from Los Angeles, who I’ll just refer to as “that fucking DJ.” I already had a fetish for turntable men, and then on top of that he looked like a Filipino James Franco (lots of cute wincing). He was like an exotic hip-hop bird that could pull off wearing a beanie just on the tip of his head, like a yarmulke. Whenever we crossed paths, he laughed a lot. And when we took pictures together, he’d hug me from behind with his arms around my neck, which made my boyfriend at the time extremely angry. My boyfriend knew that I had a crush and forbade me from seeing him. He got very upset whenever he caught me scrolling through the DJ’s Myspace page. One night the DJ texted me that he was in San Francisco performing, and I very badly wanted to go but I knew my boyfriend wouldn’t let me. So I snuck out like a teenager in a family sitcom. I wore a denim miniskirt and a tight red tank top under sweatpants and a sweatshirt and pretended I was going to my parents’ house to do laundry. In my car, I changed out of my sweatpants, put on knee-high leather boots and makeup, and let down my hair. I did not cheat. I just saw the DJ, went to the back to hang out, and then drove home. Sure, it was extremely deceitful and went against my boyfriend’s exact wishes, but no body fluids were exchanged and nobody was penetrated so I felt all good in the morality hood.

  When my boyfriend and I finally broke up months later, I changed my Myspace relationship status from “In a Relationship” to “Single.” In the early 2000s, that was our way of putting the bat signal out for dick. It would show up in people’s newsfeeds and I was hoping the DJ would take notice. It was the sexual Amber Alert of our times. He called me immediately, telling me that he was in town, and asked if he could come spend the night at my apartment. Cue: Oh yeeeeeeah sound effect from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

  I quickly changed into a lacy camisole and pajama pants and made sure to wear makeup that didn’t look too overtly like I was so excited to finally fuck this DJ who had been off the table for way too long. I rushed over to the toilet to trim my pubes, stuck one foot up on the sink, and splashed my vagina with some water (which became inspiration for some of my finest stand-up work). His friends dropped him off and we talked on my couch in the living room for a while. Again, he was laughing laughing laughing at everything I said, and at first I thought, Okay, um, yeah, he’s just getting to know me a little more and is trying to be a gentleman. But by the second hour of talking I started to grow tired and impatient. By the third hour I was like, What the fuck is this dude waiting for? and asked him if he wanted to go to my bedroom, and leaned in for a kiss.

  He leaned back and replied that he just wanted to be friends. Cue: extremely loud record scratch.

  Prior to this, I had been broken up with. I had flirted with a man only to not have that flirtation reciprocated. I even had that whole Hai thing where I was madly in love with him but then read his journal entry about how long my armpit hair was and how he found me as sexually desirable as Eric Stoltz in that movie with Cher where he played a red-headed boy with a funky face. But never, ever had I made a physical move on a man and been flat-out rejected.

  At the time, I felt like he led me on. I was like a male harassment monster from a #MeToo story: What did he expect, coming over to my apartment for God’s sake?! Did he actually think that I said yes to him coming over just to hang out? I am entitled to a hookup godddahhhmmmmeeet. The difference is that I did not show my anger explicitly. No man is ever coerced into hooking up with a woman because he’s scared she’s going to be mad if he just wants to hang out. And I didn’t persist after he told me no because that would’ve been pathetic. I could never imagine harassing a man until he finally gave in. How could I even get off, knowing that getting his pants off took convincing? If a man rejects you once you’ve physically made a move on him, he’s not going to change his mind. The dick don’t lie. I don’t want him to kiss me because I wore him down. That orgasm is not worth the price I would have paid with my ego. I played off his rejection like it didn’t affect me because I was trying to preserve some dignity in this nightmare of an evening.

  Then he told me that he was a virgin for religious reasons, and when he said that, I was so grateful we didn’t have sex. Like, no thank you. I don’t want to have the remains of your innocence in my vagina! He woul
d’ve ejaculated with extreme guilt and potentially cried right after. A wasted number on my already too long list.

  So please don’t ever have sex with a virgin man unless you yourself are a virgin. And if you do have sex with another virgin, prepare to be wildly disappointed. They take seven minutes to put on a condom and then take forty seconds to cum. There is zero allure in taking a grown man’s virginity. They might not have a physical hymen that you can break and make them bleed, but their emotional hymen is real, and it’s thick, especially at that age. In fact, taking a grown man’s virginity is such a burden that, after that, I never pursued another DJ again for fear he might also be a virgin. Unless you’re a vampire trying to eat fresh, or a witch with a shopping list, virgins are just too much to handle.

  CHAPTER 8

  Mr. Wong

  Dear Girls,

  Whenever possible, I try to coordinate matching outfits for me and your father. We have matching black puff vests, matching Nike sweatpants, matching Allbirds shoes, and matching Hokusai print T-shirts from Uniqlo. I used to not understand why older Asian couples dressed alike. Some people think it’s because they’re slowly becoming the same person—an elderly, wise, balding, cheap, tai-chi-loving, ginseng-obsessed tortoise. But I have Daddy wear the same clothes as me in order to claim him. A wedding ring is not enough and him wearing a T-shirt that says TEAM ALI is a little bit tacky. I don’t want any bitch to be misled into thinking that he’s snatchable. Some might think it’s a bit possessive, I prefer to view it as a reflection of my love, and how much I value him.