I snooze so many times that showering’s no longer an option if I want to make it to school on time. I raise my arm and take a whiff. Please, totally fine. I went swimming yesterday, I’m still plenty clean. People are way hung up on hygiene around here. When you shower too often, you kill all your skin’s good bacteria. Plus, it’s wasteful. I mean, California’s in a drought right now. We’re obligated to conserve. Yeah, this is Illinois and we’re right next to a big lake, but every drop still counts. Butterfly effect and all.
I grab a polo from its spot on the floor between my acoustic guitar and my film edit bay. My mom ordered a bunch of expensive stuff for me for back to school. I was copacetic with what I had already, didn’t need to consume anything more. Said if she was insisting on shelling out the duckies, I could use a new boom mike. She countered, telling me I could have whatever movie-making gear I wanted, but I still needed some outfits that looked “respectable.”
Whatever that means.
The shirt I pick up has two crocodiles on it. (I ripped one scaly li’l bastard off a similar shirt and superglued it onto the first one’s back, and now it’s like they’re making alligator amore.) I crack up when I see myself in the mirror. Yes, sir, I sure do look like everyone else in my golf shirt. Nothing subversive about that.
I pull on some cargo shorts and old-school checkered Vans and I’m ready, so I strap on my GoPro to capture all the going-to-school realness. I slide down the banister, careful to hop off before I hit the newel post. (You make that mistake only once, trust me here.)
I call, “What’s up, party people?” and my voice echoes through the two-story foyer. Nobody returns my greeting. Guess the ’rents already left for work without saying goodbye. There’s a shocker. Not. The way the old man rushes to the office at the ass-crack of dawn, you’d think he was headed for a day of nothing but titties and beer. I always tell him, “You own the joint, Pops, you can get in whenever,” but he never listens. My mom’s the same way. Kind of a toss-up as to which of their jobs I’d hate more—running an executive search firm or being a VP of Ethics and Compliance (WTF even is that?) at a giant pharmaceutical company.
The idea of putting on a suit every day, being cooped up in some high-rise, baking under all the fluorescent lights (kind of like a hot dog on those rollers at the 7-Eleven), and talking about spreadsheets or bottom lines makes my skin crawl.
Not Interested, party of one.
I take off the camera. Nothing to see here. Last year, I was all about short, fictional films—I even have a screening coming up in a few weeks for a class project. Now I’m thinking more along the lines of documentary. Reality’s the ultimate rush, right? I just need a good angle. I figure the inspiration will come, so I don’t push it.
I check out the fridge and settle on a cold slice of pizza. Breakfast of champions! Before Seamless, we kept a whole folder of takeout menus next to the landline. Every place had my mom’s credit card number on file, so I could call and ask for whatever I wanted. Now I just order from my phone. It’s easier.
My bros are always, like, “You’re so lucky that you never have to do family dinners,” and they’re probably right. I’m kind of a Ninja Turtle with all the pizza I eat and if we took our meals together, I’m sure they’d be all up my ass about it, especially because my mom’s on a gluten-free kick right now. I feel like gluten-free pizza is a legit crime against humanity.
I eat my slice over the sink and then wipe off my face with a dishtowel, making sure there aren’t any crumbs in my scruff. Earthy is good, dirty not so much. A quick trip to the restroom (yellow, not brown, no need to flush it down), and I’m ready to locomote. I grab my backpack and set the alarm on my way out the door.
If I have a challenging day ahead, like if I’ve got to give a speech or have a big test or something, I’ll rip a few bong hits in the a.m. or I’ll stop under the railroad trestle with my pipe. Honestly, I don’t make weed too much of a habit. People think I smoke way more than I do because I’m generally so relaxed as-is.
Socrates used to say, “Everything in moderation and nothing to excess.” I’m into Socrates. He was all about a life of simplicity, which is how I think it should be. Or, in the words of Bob Marley, “Every little thing’s gonna be all right.” I wonder if those two are kicking it together on the Other Side. I feel like they’d be buds. I bet Carl Sagan’s hanging out with them, too, just, like, blowing their minds about the universe. That’s a party I’d like to attend.
I’m barely down my drive when I hear, “Cheers, Owen!”
The new girl, Simone, jogs over and falls into step beside me. She’s pretty chill. “What’s up? You livin’ the dream?”
She gestures towards her bulging backpack. “Hardly. This thing weighs a metric shit-ton with all the books I’ve brought home. Will they lighten up on us with all the homework? We haven’t been in school for a week yet! It’s madness!”
“You wanna hear the truth or do you want to hear what’s gonna make you feel better?” I reply.
She considers her options. “Definitely lie to me.”
Poor Simone’s in for a real treat when midterms roll around, if she thinks this is a lot of work, but I’m not into scaring her or encouraging her to become one of the other grade-obsessed automatons up here. Seriously, I don’t get all the fuss about academics. For me, when I receive Bs on my tests? I’m stoked, I’m celebrating. Anywhere else in the world, Bs are pretty good.
I tell her, “Then you can expect smooth sailing over calm seas.”
“Outstanding,” she replies.
“Trick is, you’ve gotta pace yourself,” I explain. “Everyone gets so bunged up about their classes that they never take time to, I don’t know, give themselves a minute. Smell the roses. Just be. Like Ferris Bueller says, ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’”
I love John Hughes’s movies. He’s my favorite director, even above Kurosawa or Scorsese. He doesn’t always get the respect he deserves in my film classes, so I just smile and nod when the instructors dismiss his work. The man defined my parents’ generation, you know? The film-snob teachers can’t take that away from him.
I tell Simone, “Way I see it, we’re never going to be seventeen again. We’re never going to have less responsibility. I say we milk it.”
Simone looks at me like I’m a unicorn or something. “You don’t have your entire future mapped out with every single thing you’re going to do and be between now and age sixty-five?”
I don’t get that compulsion, either. Why would I pre-plan the next seventy years right now? I’m sure I have something that I’m meant to do, but I’m under no obligation to figure it out right this second.
Even if I did know my purpose, who’s to say I wouldn’t be into entirely different stuff in the future? I mean, around my bar mitzvah, I went through a phase where I kept Kosher because I wanted to be a rabbi. Another time, I was on a huge burrito kick, and now I barely eat them anymore. I was all about fiction last year and now I want real life in my movies. I’m not about to lock in the GPS coordinates until I’m sure of where I’m headed.
I say, “Definitely not. Like, some days I want to move to Colorado and be a whitewater rafting guide or maybe live in the Caribbean, scraping together a few bucks by tending bar and playing guitar. And sometimes I want to go to college and major in philosophy. I’m all about the examined life, you know? Thing is, I have time to decide. If I want, I can do everything. As for right now, girl, I don’t even know what I’m doing for lunch.”
Probably not burritos, though.
She glances at me from under a sheaf of hair that’s the same color as Buckeye, this big ol’ seal-brown stallion I used to ride when I was into show jumping. “That’s an extraordinarily refreshing perspective.”
I shrug. “I’m an extraordinarily refreshing kinda guy.”
I have my own car and a Vespa, too, I just don’t use ’em much. “Why burn fossil fuel when these work perfectly well?” I point to my feet.
“You remind me so much of my friends at home,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow at her. “That a good thing?”
“Absolutely.” Her cheeks get all pink when she says this. I can’t tell if she’s flirting with me. If so, cool. If not, that’s cool, too. I’ll hang with her however it shakes out.
She twists a piece of her hair and then becomes real interested in looking at her cuticles. “Owen...” she starts, before hesitating. I give her the space to find her words. I’m in no rush. “Um...would you ever want to get together to study or something?”
“That would be badass,” I reply, nodding. “Just gotta know when and where.”
She tucks her chin into her neck, but I can still see her grinning under all her hair. “Then it’s a date!”
With her happy aura, she looks like she’s making me feel. I get real good vibes coming from Simone and I kind of wonder if she means it’s a date or it’s a date.
Either way, I can’t say that I’m worried about a thing.
9
STEPHEN
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.
I thought I was making inroads with Simone, like she was starting to consider me as more than just a friend. I’ve been my best self. I’ve put it all on the line. I’ve been wittier and more outgoing than ever before. I’ve stretched, I’ve left my comfort zone, I’ve taken chances.
I let her see who I really am.
Thought that was good enough, that I’d finally be good enough.
She hugs me way more often than Kent and she’s always finding reasons to touch my hair. She says it’s because it’s so spiky and that she’s amazed at how immobile it is. She’s always trying to mess it up.
In my mind, my sad, mistaken, pitiful mind, I figured this was her way of signaling she might be open to something else.
Nope. Not even close.
At lunch today, she asked Kent about Owen. Was trying to find out if he had a girlfriend. Admitted she might “fancy” him.
I wanted to throw up my fish sticks and Tater Tots.
I can’t tell you what happened in my afternoon classes; they went by in a blur. Like it was Charlie Brown’s teachers up there lecturing, all “Waun waun waun waun waun.”
I felt my pulse throbbing in my head, and each beat of my heart pounded out the question WHY?, every thump increasing the pressure until my brain was going to explode. Was like a black cloud blew in and took away the color from every part of my life.
I didn’t even go to my Robotics Club meeting, normally my favorite part of the week. I came straight home.
I need to decompress so I put on my black Compton hat with the white Gothic lettering, turn up the speakers on my computer, and play the one song that can always make me feel better, that soothes my soul.
Before Tupac can even get to the chorus about laying him down in a bed of roses and sinking him in the river at dawn, my mother busts into my room. She says knocking’s a consideration for people who pay the mortgage.
“Ugh, no, this is the worst,” my mother says. On the outside, she looks like all the other women in the neighborhood, her statement jewelry and sleeveless dresses and hundred-dollar yoga pants. She’s always going to Pilates and playing tennis and drinking wine with her girls. But unlike a lot of the absentee parents up here, she’s totally a Helicopter Mom.
“Sorry, Ma, I’ll use my headphones.” I grab my Beats by Dr. Dre and go to plug them into my laptop, but she stops me.
She glowers at my computer, as though it’s personally insulted her. “How about not playing it at all? This music has a terrible message. No one says you have to go all Taylor Swift, but this stuff is garbage.”
I don’t argue with her.
Because I really can’t.
My mother’s family came to California from South Korea when she was in junior high. Her folks had nothing when they got here, but they worked their asses off, building a small grocery story in the Koreatown portion of LA, pouring all the profits into my mother’s schooling. They were so proud to be in America, the land of opportunity, where education could literally take you anywhere.
In the early ’90s, my parents were already married and Caitlyn—my sister—was a toddler. While my dad was taking classes towards his MBA at USC, my mom sometimes helped at my grandparents’ store. She was working there during the LA riots when the store was looted, ransacked, and finally burned to the ground.
The Korean community in LA refer to the riots as their sa-i-gu, meaning 4/29, which is the same kind of shorthand the rest of this country uses to describe 9/11. My mother never talks about what she witnessed over that six-day period. I think she just wants to forget the whole thing, which is probably why there’s very little Korean American about us.
Of course, I feel like the worst son in the world when she hears me listening to classic hip-hop, because it’s possible the music’s a trigger for her. She never says it is, but who really knows?
The problem is that these songs are what keep me sane, which is my dilemma.
I turn it off anyway.
My mother lingers in my doorway, as she’s clearly not done with me. “So, I called the Chalet. I asked them to drop off a brochure and price list at the Chastains’. I also touched base with Landscapes by Mariani and Greenworks. I figured they’d want to compare services to make an educated decision. Has Simone mentioned it to you? Given you any idea of their plans? I’m happy to make more helpful suggestions.”
Any compassion I feel for my mother dissipates. Her “helpful suggestions” are why Kent’s mom no longer calls her to play tennis.
“What the Chastains do with their lawn is none of my business, Ma. It’s none of yours, either.”
She clucks her tongue. “Stephen, property values are everyone’s business. They aren’t fulfilling the social contract. What, we’re supposed to be okay with our home’s asking price plummeting because they can’t call a yard crew?”
I grit my teeth. It’s grass, not a social contract.
My mother’s upset about Simone’s lawn, which is now unkempt, at least compared to the twenty other immaculately manicured homes on our street, one tidy green oasis lined up after the other. I just imagine Simone’s parents have better things to do than to chase after landscapers with a ruler, making sure the fescue hybrid is clipped to a uniform one point five inches.
Oh, yeah.
The crew that comes here loves Mrs. Cho.
“Ma, they’ll get their yard in shape when they’re done settling in. They’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“I just don’t want potential buyers to assume this town’s full of crack houses.”
Considering starter homes in our neighborhood go for one point five million and a bunch of Chicago Bears live here (along with tons of Fortune 500 CEOs and hedge fund managers), no one’s mistaking North Shore for Skid Row. And we’re not even in one of the “good” neighborhoods. Three blocks away, next to the lake, places start at four mil.
“Ma, is there anything else?” I ask, anxious to put on my headphones and start properly feeling sorry for myself.
“Shouldn’t you be at your meeting?”
I say, “I didn’t feel well,” because that seems easier than telling her I’m heartsick, that I’m enveloped in blackness, that I keep punching myself in the thigh just to see if I can feel anything.
“Stephen, please. If you’re okay to listen to music, then you’re certainly healthy enough to study. Seriously. Your father and I will be mortified if you fail any more classes.”
Fail. Right.
She’s referring to the C that I got last semester in my speech class, a requisite for all students, and one that I put off as long as I could. Most kids take it when they’re freshmen. For everyone else, the class was our school’s only easy A, but it was rough for me. I killed it first semester when we were allowed to write out everything and work from a script. The extemporaneous speeches of second semester are what slayed me. I couldn’t get the hang of speaking off the cuff in front of a group on topics outside of my wheelhouse. I’d freeze up and break into flop sweat. My teacher giving me a C was generous.
For anyone else, one C would not a be a big deal, but speech class took me out of the running for valedictorian, thus ending the Cho legacy of being first in the class, which included my sister, brother, mother, and father.
They’re all so proud. Or they were.
The bitch of it is, I’d probably have given a kickass commencement speech, because I’d have been allowed to write that shit down first.
Speech class is what started me resenting Owen, too. I kinda liked him when we were kids. We even hung out sometimes because we lived two houses apart. But now he’s this useless stoner, this complete wastoid. How was he able to get up to the podium and ramble with perfect ease and at length about anything in speech? Like he could be a politician or something. I resented his confidence, his conviction in what he had to say. He made everyone in class look bad, particularly me.
Now he’s using that golden tongue to win over Simone.
FML.
My mother studies me as I’m stretched out. “You are not lying down to study, (a) you’ll be asleep in two minutes, and (b) you’re going to mess up your back. Use your desk.”
Then she exits, knowing I’ll be powerless to refuse.
I do what she tells me to, relocating across the room. I drop into my chair and roll over to the center of the desk, resigned. The “back” argument is one I’ll never win. She’s been oddly relentless about our spinal cords my whole life. Apparently she never got over it when that actor Christopher Reeve became paralyzed in a horseback riding incident. I guess she was obsessed with him, as she learned English watching Superman again and again. Due to her age or maybe the language gap, some part of her must have thought the movie was real. So, when he was hurt, she was traumatized.
The Gatekeepers Page 6