by Ali Wong
Have your bachelorette party at Disneyland. After I had my miscarriage, my best friend came to L.A. I wanted to feel like my old self and be able to make light of the situation so we got extremely high. We each ate half of a chocolate cannabis heart. Later, a co-worker told me I should have eaten an eighth of the heart. Everyone in Los Angeles has some sort of Disneyland hookup. One of our friends had a brother who was a dancer. Another woman’s sister-in-law was a storyboarder for Disney. So we all went for free. Soaring over California was magical, because I was so high. And It’s a Small World made me feel like the world really was small, after all (I was high as shit). Space Mountain made me feel like I was in space (I don’t think I’ve even been that high). But then Indiana Jones was awful. That big ball threatening to crush me and that huge snake hissing in my face felt like I was about to die in the worst way possible. Do not get high and then go on Indiana Jones. Consider this your one and only warning. Anyway, then we went to a Napa restaurant, where they laid out all of these candy penises. The key to this whole thing is being high. Going to Disneyland sober for a bachelorette party would be an absolute waste of time.
Keep it super small. We just invited our families and our number one best friend. Nobody could feel left out because nobody was invited, and we got to spend quality time with our guests.
Make it all about the speeches. As I said, at the Chinese banquet following our wedding, it was so small that every single person gave a toast. It was personal and entertaining and free. It’s the best way to inject quality into the experience without paying top dollar for an Asian Adele impersonator you saw on YouTube.
Chill out. A wedding is not a marriage. It’s one day of celebration, one of hopefully many with the love of your life. I’m so proud of how your father and I began our marriage by carving our own path in life and didn’t get sucked into the mainstream take on “how things are done” despite feeling a lot of pressure to spend a ton of money on it all. We knew the journey ahead was going to be filled with expensive-ass purchases like a house and childcare for you little unborn ladies.
I have zero regrets about how your father and I got married. Now I’m at the age where people are getting divorced, and they wish they hadn’t spent so much on their weddings. When my sister Julia got married, she spent a lot of time and effort putting together a beautiful wedding at a museum for over a hundred attendees. I had never met half of them in my life. There was a chocolate fondue fountain. Julia took a ton of time planning the food, the invitations, and the decor. She also asked my other sister, Mimi, to please shave her armpits and legs, which Mimi hadn’t done in twenty years and hasn’t done since. Everything had been meticulously orchestrated, and she didn’t ask anyone in our family to make a speech except for me. Before the first course came out, my dad clinked on a glass with a fork, and unexpectedly sang a personalized song about my sister and her husband to the tune of “America the Beautiful.” Everyone was laughing until my mom went up to ask him to stop, and he exclaimed, “Tammy, get away from me!” which, while it would make a great country song, is not a great thing to yell at your wife at your daughter’s wedding. Right then, everyone saw a glimpse of their not-so-perfect marriage, and looked down at their laps uncomfortably while my dad continued with two more verses of his song as though it was still fun and funny.
My sister, understandably, was very upset. Our dad had coerced her three-man string band into playing the instrumentals, he had fucked up the timing of dinner, and he straight up embarrassed her. My dad was a well-intentioned and fun-loving guy, and it all would’ve been fine if it was just our family because we’re all comfortable with the fact that our family is weird as shit. But he loved the spotlight and the captive audience. The whole thing caused a lot of tension and a lot of charged emotions, which is very dicey and stressful to have at the start of a marriage. There is enough going on, no need to add wedding drama to the mix, especially in front of all those damn people.
If you happen to get married at city hall in SF, and the judge with the nose ring is still alive, ask her if you can read vows and when she says no, tell her she let your mom do it.
CHAPTER 14
Wild Child
Dear Girls,
I have another confession to make: I was an awful teenager and that resulted in a very tense relationship with my mother, and if karma is real (it is), then all of my bad behavior will come back to haunt me (oh God).
When I was a junior in high school, I went to a pajama-themed party where I started randomly dancing with a senior from another, much cooler high school. Students there tended to be more focused on arts and unconventional learning. He wore a big, puffy, black North Face vest over a flannel shirt with cargo pants, which was not in line with the theme, but it was the dress code to my heart. His outfit was simultaneously tough and laid back and, most important, warm. We barely spoke as he lifted up my leg and we dry humped (I mean danced!) in front of everyone to Tupac’s “California Love” while taking turns chugging on the same forty-ounce bottle of Mickey’s malt liquor. Later that night, we ended up on my parents’ living room couch, between antique Chinese lamps and stone carvings, doing everything but the nasty. I didn’t hear from him at all afterward and wasn’t even sure he knew my name. If he hadn’t gone to a school where we had mutual friends, I definitely wouldn’t have remembered his. Months later, he called for the first time to invite me to his prom, and I spontaneously asked him to mine as well. I had a great time at his prom and liked him so much that I was very nervous about hosting him at mine. I had hopes that he could be my San Francisco version of a quarterback boyfriend. Instead of impressing people by knowing all the game-winning plays, he would impress them by knowing all the members of The Hieroglyphics! My school’s prom itself was kind of boring for him, because the kids were a lot more academic, stiff, and not as into dancing, and none of his friends were there. I caught him peeking at his watch several times throughout the night. Then at an afterparty in Marin, I thought I’d loosen him up if I myself loosened up, by guzzling malt liquor and vodka. This led to me throwing up in the host’s bed and then getting punched in the face by his equally drunk friend, who, I guess, was very protective of his homie’s mattress. The guy with the North Face vest escaped to another party that night and never called me again.
Here are just a few examples of other shameful things I did in my youth, off the top of my head:
I smoked my first cigarette when I was eleven years old.
I regularly shoplifted Wet n Wild lipstick, electric-blue eyeshadow, and Wet Seal flared jeans. (The word “wet” made products one hundred percent more appealing to me as a teen, which is odd in retrospect, because when you’re a teen, that’s the time when you need the least help as a woman in getting wet.)
I wore scarf wrap shirts, with no bra, exposing my entire back, from this store called Bebe—an outfit that made the Kardashians look like background actors in The Handmaid’s Tale.
I bought my first marijuana pipe at age fourteen.
I dated a man who had graduated from college when I was still in high school.
I dated men who never went to college or graduated from high school when they were at the age where they should’ve graduated from college…when I was still in high school.
As soon as I got my driver’s license, I attempted a three-point turn on a very narrow block and accidentally hit two parked vehicles with my mom’s gold Volvo station wagon.
I tried taking laxatives for a week to make myself lose weight.
I once dropped an empty forty-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor from a twenty-story building onto the street and could’ve killed any pedestrian walking underneath.
I constantly hoped my mother would get sent to the mom version of Alcatraz.
I pretended to be sick in bed on very challenging test days.
One New Year’s Eve when I was seventeen, I made out with thirteen boys and three girls. That’s basically an entire high school production of Oliver!
There are many more appalling things I did that I’m way too ashamed to include in this list. To this day, I still feel consequences from my bad behavior. During my senior year of high school, I constantly wore four-inch platforms from Aldo because I was very insecure about my prepubescent body, and was convinced those ridiculous sandals would increase my sex appeal. I can tell you now that nobody wants to fuck you more because you’re four inches higher off the ground due to shoes that smell like Eternity For Men and cost $39.99 with the second pair half off. At one party where I was wearing my signature space shoes, I started jumping with my friend on her bed like it was a trampoline and I sprained my ankle. The next day my entire left foot looked like I had been stepping in a bucket of blueberries. It was so badly bruised that one podiatrist asked if he could submit the X-ray to a medical journal that I assumed was called Terrible Feet Monthly. I re-injure it every three to five years. It still gives me pain at night and is one of the main reasons I am grateful that marijuana is legal in California.
In sixth grade, at the day camp I attended, I had a huge crush on this boy named Jake King. He was half white, half Laotian, very tall, ate ketchup with spaghetti—all of which I found very endearing at the time (that dish is now a sign that somebody is a serial killer). I liked him so much that I decided to do something awful to him so he’d like me back. I figured out that if you pressed hard on the red highlighted word “occupied” on a porta potty and just slid it clockwise to “vacant,” it would unlock the bathroom. I opened the door on Jake while he was taking a shit. About ten other kids who were waiting in line laughed hysterically—some of them had to sit down on the woodchips because they were laughing so hard—as Jake sat frozen on the toilet seat, with his pants down at his ankles. Eventually he put his head in his hands, and I knew right away that I had failed as a pickup artist. I closed the door, feeling really bad about embarrassing him. I had crossed the line from a playful neg to the summer camp equivalent of Cersei’s walk of shame. I volunteered at the same camp in my twenties, when he was a leader as well, and the first thing he said to me was: “Hey, remember when you opened the door while I was taking a shit and everyone laughed at me?” And I did. Because you never forget something like that.
* * *
Even now, I’m not sure if I was actually wild or if I just wanted to seem like I was wild. I attended private schools with mostly white people, and while I didn’t have problems making friends, I never felt like my peers were my tribe. I never felt fully comfortable or at home with my classmates, so being regarded as a little crazy was my way of fitting in and getting friends.
Since my siblings were all so much older, I desperately wanted to grow up and be part of their world as soon as possible. Part of their world. I’m just realizing right now that that is probably why I love The Little Mermaid so much. I could not wait to catch up to my beautiful older sisters. In elementary school, I shoved their retired retainers in my mouth because I just wanted to feel what it was like to be old enough to need orthodontic care. My music taste was about ten years ahead of all my peers. I’m pretty sure I was the only third-grader who listened to Annie Lennox, 10,000 Maniacs, and De La Soul. I read Backlash by Susan Faludi when I was in fifth grade and didn’t understand any of it but I wanted to identify with feminist rage! In elementary school, I would also romanticize having my period, and sometimes wore my sister’s thick-ass maxi pads recreationally, under my yellow Esprit leggings. From the outside my vagina looked like a giant plantain that could yield a heaping plate of tostones. I am certain that part of my bad behavior was a concerted effort to grow up faster than my parents or biology would allow.
I shoplifted because it was thrilling to get something for free, to not have to ask permission from my parents to get makeup. I had worn uniforms forever, and they were oversized uniforms, no less. My mom bought them used. And they never fit me. The skirt always hung down to my ankles. I looked like the little boy Tom Hanks turns back into at the end of Big. My mom was scared of me growing out of my clothes and just wanted to buy one uniform. So high school was extra exciting because I got to dress myself. That’s why I exposed my body with those ridiculous outfits—because feeling sexy and, hopefully, desired was a new frontier, especially coming from an all-girls school. I dated an older man because the Asian American classmates my age didn’t make me feel older, so I had to outsource one that made me feel sexy beyond my years. No big psychological underpinning to when I dropped that forty-ounce bottle from that high-rise, though. I just did that because I was drunk from downing that forty.
Now I’m thinking more about The Little Mermaid, and I think that movie is the reason I flirted with anorexia as well. As you know, it was my absolute favorite movie growing up, and deep down I always wanted to have a tiny waist and big boobies and a collection of broken forks like Ariel. Now, as the mother of you two girls, I see that whole story line as my worst nightmare. It’s a terrible fable about a girl who leaves her family and sacrifices her voice for a boy that she’s never even met. Bitch, WHAT are you doing?? Get back in the fucking water! We are never watching that movie again after the next time we watch it.
Honestly, my entire high school was anorexic. All the girls drank Diet Coke and, when offered ice cream or cake, looked like they’d just discovered a turd in their backpack. For your average teenager, I considered myself to have a high level of self-esteem but, even so, I couldn’t escape body image issues. I’m gonna show you pictures of me during that summer in Hawai’i, when I was more than twenty pounds heavier, and looked like a coconut with glasses, but had the best time of my life. Nobody else gets to see those!
My mom kept generalizing my bad behavior as my “teenage phase,” which of course incensed me even more. We fought so much that when I’d try to really communicate with her about how I felt, she’d cover her ears, walk away from me, and scream, “YOU’RE GIVING ME A HEADACHE!” I thought my mom was the coldest, cruelest, and most annoying person in the world. As I said, until very recently, I had a lot of resentment toward her.
I used to think we didn’t get along because of cultural differences. Because she grew up in Vietnam, her school days were frequently interrupted by bombings, and she had to run in her áo dài uniform into a shelter. Meanwhile, I ditched class to drink malt liquor in a playground. We grew up in different countries with different recreational activities and conflicting concepts of what is acceptable for a young woman to do. It blew her mind that my siblings and I had friends of the opposite sex. Men were people who paid for meals because they wanted to eventually procreate with you. Other than that, why on earth would you have fun talking to them? What could you possibly have in common if they had a dick? It’s really rare for any immigrant mother to see any value in having a platonic male friend.
My dad was the first and ONLY person my mother ever even kissed. In Vietnam, during those days especially, kissing someone basically meant you were going to get married. So my mom could never coach me on how to handle heartbreak, because she had never experienced it.
I was always so jealous of my white friends who got pedicures with their mothers. I didn’t get my first one until I was twenty-seven. The poor woman who resembled all of my aunties looked at my feet and let out an audible sigh which roughly translated to: “Are you kidding with this shit?” It was a big task at hand. She carved out my toenails that were buried in twenty-seven years of cuticle skin. As she hacked away, it looked like it was snowing from my feet. And I couldn’t believe it only cost twenty dollars to have her do that.
I know it seems like mani-pedis are laced into Vietnamese women’s DNA. Vietnamese American people are really good at doing black and white women’s nails. But it’s not really part of Vietnamese culture to get our own nails done. Getting your nails done was seen as not only a huge waste of money and time,
but a huge nuisance when you were preparing food with your bare hands (nobody wears gloves in Vietnam, except to shield their hands from the sun or commit murders). I love my mom and I will never be as beautiful as her, but her feet definitely do not match her face. Her toenails are so thick and dark, they look like little barnacles on the bottom of a ship. Whenever I try to convince her to get a pedicure, she grabs her heels and screams, “No, I need my calluses!” That’s how third world my mom is. She’s grateful for her hard layers of skin and wants to keep them, just in case there’s some kind of mass shoe extinction.
* * *
In college, the debauchery continued but at least my mom and dad didn’t have to smell my malt liquor breath and deal with my fractured body parts firsthand. At UCLA, I peed in public parking lots and on public streets, at night, without toilet paper, conservatively, three hundred times. I would wipe my vagina with a friend’s unused menstrual pad or one of my socks and then throw it into the bushes. I ran with a pack of Asian American women and men that were like me, extremely academic and equally wild. One of the guys, Quoc, was born the day after me and we always had a party at someone’s apartment to celebrate our birthdays together. At my twentieth birthday, there happened to be plenty of vodka but no chaser like orange juice or soda. There was only a gallon of milk in the fridge. After a couple of shots I decided to wash down the vodka with milk even though I was lactose intolerant. I spent the second half of my twentieth birthday just farting, body rolling to Ludacris’s “Southern Hospitality,” and barfing, and then more farts.