by Diane Farr
Seung is teaching me important bits of Korean language that I need to know as I meet each family member. I had already learned that you don’t call aunts and uncles and cousins by their specific names; rather, you call them by their gender and seniority ranking. Meaning, everyone is called “younger sister of my mother” or “wife of older brother of my father.” Seung doesn’t even know his aunts’ or uncles’ names! Which I found so funny about him, until I realized none of his cousins know the names of his parents, either. Seung’s whole generation just knows the “age rank” of their parents’ siblings and calls them that! And today—the day after my face-off with Kuhn Ama (wife of older brother of his father)—Seung is unknowingly oversharing when he explains that our children will someday call all his parents’ siblings Grandma or Grandpa because, of course, an even younger person couldn’t call these adults by a first name. This means all eight siblings of Seung’s father and their spouses and all eight siblings of his mother and their spouses are called Grandmother and Grandfather. Which makes sixteen grandmas and sixteen grandpas! And at least two who are mean to the one and only mommy!
I love my grandmother. She lived with us my entire childhood, and I feel she is my third parent. This is not a title I take lightly, nor something I want my unrealized kids to miss out on because it’s being wasted on thirty-two people.
This may seem insignificant compared with some of the other differences between Seung’s culture and mine, but the Grandma title is the one that makes me want to jump ship. Now, for the first time, I have an instinct to get off this ride right here. Of course, I can logically see that this issue is not insurmountable, but my bitter feelings (which I’m pretending are facts) may not even be necessary. It seems that this choice just might be made for me, by something totally outside the Korean language or mandate.
AS I’M SITTING IN my home office, future-negative-fantasizing about grandmas, I receive a call from my agency. My TV show in New York just got picked up for another season. Joy, congratulations, and praise are being uttered by many agents who are all on the phone together to tell me this “great news.” In the midst of which I hear, “You are shipping out in three weeks, girl, so start packing fast!”
When Seung and I began dating, I had just wrapped my first season on this job. Seung and I have only been dating for five months—in the city of Los Angeles, where I live. But now I will need to leave this city and go back to New York. Under the terms of my contract I will be required to be apart from him, for a longer period of time than we have even been together. The absolute minimum I will be away is six months.
I know how this separation plays out. When a woman physically leaves a relationship for a job, it does not sit well with the male ego/ libido/psyche or heart for very long. I have seen this fact, combined with the increasingly long and expensive hurdles of flying around the world, crush most of my adult relationships as an actress.
My agents are still celebrating while I’m stuck thinking my mother’s generation was wrong when they said women can have it all. I’ve tried to believe this hype since I started working regularly on television almost ten years ago, but over this decade I’ve seen the greedy-girl theory come up short every time.
After having my own mother pound into my head how equal I was to a man in all things, in the late 1990s I was then told, “Women are the keepers of intimacy in a relationship.” I spent two hundred episodes as the cohost of Loveline arguing with my dear coworker, Dr. Drew Pinsky, about this very subject because he kept telling me that along with my equality, this was true too. And I kept reiterating my belief that girls think just like guys when it comes to dating and sex. Drew told me over and over that there are hormonal secretions in women’s bodies that emotionally bond them to a partner after sex, and that there are similar secretions in the male body that basically make them want to expel semen whenever and wherever they can—and society tells us both of these instincts are uncool. Thus, each sex tries a variety of behaviors between what is acceptable and what is biologically wired into them. I was twenty-seven during my tenure at Loveline, and nearly a decade later I can now clearly see that the good doctor was right and I was totally and completely wrong.
My personal recap of Drew’s lesson is that women are actually the arbiters of how close a relationship is. If I am not bothered by no “title” in a relationship, neither is the guy. If I am cavalier about seeing other people while dating, so is he. If I am going to make work a priority over love, no man is going to yell, “Stop and choose us instead!”
But as of this moment I am legally bound to this job in the way most women my age are legally bound to a husband. I would be ostracized and sued if I tried to quit now, and the rest of my career might suffer. But as I realize I am probably going to lose this lover, I finally stop all the chatter in my head about some aunt whom my someday-children might call Granny. I am snapped back to the reality of focusing on a man and partnership that are both gratifying, passionate, and uplifting. Because if nothing else, space is about to come between us. So I’m making a fast plan to concede all the other space I can, right now.
WHEN SEUNG RINGS the doorbell of my house this night, I walk through my front yard and step outside the gate to meet him instead of buzzing him in. I step onto the sidewalk in my bare feet and babydoll PJs (that I bought today to look accidental, but that I knew were cute as hell, to make me seem worth the mess I was about to cause). Here, on a very busy street in the middle of Hollywood, I tell Seung, face-to-face, that I am going back to my job in New York City in twenty-one days. A low-riding Mustang drives by us and yells, “Tap that!” at me. Mission accomplished on the wardrobe.
Seung looks at me solemnly, waiting to hear what that means for us. I feel almost as if I’ve stepped outside my body and I’m watching the following sentence come out of my mouth: “While I’m gone I would like you to have these”—and I hand Seung Chung a set of keys to my house.
I tell him that all of my adult life has revolved around work, but I am considering making some changes to that. However, they aren’t going to happen as fast as I would like. In the meantime, I ask if he would be interested in moving in with me—while I’m not here—to give himself a chance to make my home feel like his home and practice cohabiting every other weekend, when I will fly back to L.A. to be home with him.
Seung looks a little nervous. Neither one of us has ever really lived with someone. And more than just the commitment this implies to each other, there is an even bigger commitment that would immediately be invoked, because as adults living in a big city, Seung would be giving up a rent-controlled apartment. Nothing proves love in Los Angeles like giving up rental real estate you have invested time in. On top of which, Seung rents a three-bedroom on the beach, with a six-hundred-square-foot party deck facing the ocean. I call it the “MTV Real World Asian Beach House,” as his roommates are Chinese and Korean. Letting it go would put the nail in the coffin of his single life.
Thirty seconds have gone by in total silence, and I see panic in Seung’s face. Which is just about to open a Pandora’s box of fears in me that have nothing to do with apartments, but perhaps mommies or daddies or mean old aunts and ... he clears his throat. As if he knows where I just went in my head and he does not want me to open up this receptacle of fear, because once that “I hate your family” energy is released, I’m not sure it can ever be put back.
Seung’s big heart is clearly aware that this offer is way out of my normal comfort zone, but I’m seeing it is also so far out of his. He can’t actually produce any words at all. But, white as a ghost, Seung takes the set of keys from my hand and unlocks the gate to my house. He then silently takes my hand and gestures for me to step inside with him and begin the rest of our lives together.
* I’M UTTERLY EXHAUSTED, AS WE LIE IN OUR BED for the first time in our home, twelve days after our first (of many subsequent) discussions about living together. Seung and I were both so nervous today as he merged his belongings with mine. There was a lot of ge
ntle maneuvering when otherwise I’m sure I would have screamed about his two thousand T-shirts. And his jovial critique of my need to fill in every inch of floor space might have been more of a “Come on!” But today there was a lot of laughter and holding on to each other, as we silently prayed that each of us was ready for this. Tonight, well after midnight, everything has found its place. At least until tomorrow when I get up and start moving furniture one centimeter at a time until it feels like the home I always dreamed of. I’m rubbing my knees together in excitement under the covers as I say for the one hundredth time, “I can’t believe we live together!” To which Seung takes my face in his hands to say, “Shhh. My mother might hear you.”
We laugh because he’s kidding, but he’s also not. Seung is not telling his parents we live together, because it’s outside of the K-playbook. Chastity is implied in Lessons Four and Five of being a good Korean that I got from the girls-gone-wild I know. Sleeping in the same bed on a daily basis does not allow for the illusion that we are saving ourselves for marriage. Specifically, that I’m not. I suppose I could be insulted by Seung’s refrain, but I find it kind of debonair. He called his mom in Korea today—from the back yard. Hoping, I suppose, that being outside might aid him in omitting the fact that he lives inside with me. During this call, I couldn’t resist standing in front of the windows of the newly arranged office, rocking back and forth in mock sexual positions within Seung’s sight line. Seung very maturely walked behind the trash cans, almost into the bushes, to hide from my gyrations. Which is exactly what I find hot about this. He is trying to protect me from judgment. As I’m trying to formulate exactly what seems chivalrous about this, I’m just realizing that Seung may even be protecting his parents from me. From my nervous energy about being judged. (Which might explain why I’m gyrating while he is on the phone with his mother?) Wow. That’s, like, doubly hot of him. If that is the case, then perhaps I should have enough faith in my man to discuss my fears about the bitchy comments from the aunts and the overuse of the Grandma title. Isn’t that the point? To confide in my partner and let myself, and my relationship, grow with him? Not to just collect two thousand T-shirts and too much furniture together?
Staring into the possibility of my future with this man, I choose to try. I suggest we each say three things we hope for in the near future as live-in lovers. Seung starts by saying he looks forward to waking up with me every morning. I say I want to know the sound of his car pulling into the driveway so well that it becomes the sound of my day being complete because he is home. Mine is too wordy but the sentiment wins. Seung is raising an eyebrow to up his game for the next pithy love notion, when I start spilling my filthy fears onto the brand-new comforter. Como, Kuhn Ama, Grandma, Grandpa, Lisa and Dave’s example of being pious, and my inability to keep my mouth shut when feeling attacked, and something about losing my house keys and being dependent on him to let me in. Every fear I can think of I spit out. To which Seung asks, “Who are Lisa and Dave?”
I feel like I’m living a scene from I Love Lucy where Lucy has some ’splainin’ to do. I begin catching Seung up on my diligence, on how to best deal with his family, and he is smiling all the way. I have to stop and ask him why. He says he finds my earnestness flattering and sometimes even he can’t believe “you’re dating the Korean guy.” I remind him that my dating the Korean guy “ups” my street credit. I was never taught to stay away from “Oriental people,” as my parents called them, but only because they weren’t even on their radar. Which is by no means a compliment. Sometimes I take pride in the fact that Seung is on my radar. Seung is very handsome and educated and well traveled and I have no right to claim that I’m evolved because I find him attractive, but from where I started, I kind of am. From this safe place we just reinforced for each other, Seung throws out the next question.
“What makes you think I want you to be a mute about your needs?”
I’m backpedaling fast now because I think I have misrepresented Lisa, whom I don’t see as speechless or weak. I see her as subtle and smart and ...
“I love your big mouth because it houses that big smile and that sharp tongue. I don’t want you to squash either of them,” says the man I now share my bed with. “And if someone insults you, use the amazing gift you have in communicating your feelings so well. Even if it starts an argument. Diane, if my family insults you, they insult me. You stand up for whatever you want to and I will stand with you.”
I want to fold into him. I want to kiss him passionately and thank him and believe that together we can see past the racially slurred trees and focus on the accepting forest and all will be well. But I don’t. I have had enough lovers before this day, when I have decided to live with one. These lovers have each taught me something that I needed to know in order to make this relationship work, and I am hoping that Seung is not just another lesson that I need to experience in order to facilitate some other union. I am hoping he is the union for the rest of my days. And in order to make that a reality I have to let some of the romantic tides I like to be swept into pass me by. I have to dig my feet in and remember what I have learned about people’s constitutions. That is, that people have an internal set of givens and that no matter how hard women try, we cannot change a man’s nature. I know Seung has a deeply ingrained reflex to do the right thing by his elders. I’m not going to pretend that my fighting with them is ever going to be okay.
Instead I tell Seung that I don’t want to argue with his family. Which is true. I tell him that I would rather find some strategy to appease them without canceling out who I am. Seung nods in agreement and adds that maybe the one couple that I spoke with isn’t enough. And then I see the lightbulb go off in his head. He tells me to call Sonu.
Sonu is one of Seung’s fraternity brothers. He is married to Jennifer. Sonu is from India and Jennifer is a plain old WASP, but neither plain nor old. There are two colors and two religions between them, and Seung remembers that there were some hurdles to overcome when they got together. However, the specific reason he wants me to call them is this:
“Sonu is so confrontational, he makes you look like a wallflower. I’m sure he didn’t miss a single opportunity to fight any argument when he and Jennifer got together. He will tell you exactly how to fight your way into a happy marriage.”
Seung is telling me to fight. He’s actually telling me where to get lessons in fighting. He’s trying to embolden my constitution as I’m trying to protect his. And this, more than all the adoration he has paid me over the last five months or the half of the rent that he ponied up this week or the countless I love you’s he has splurged on me today, makes me feel it is not the furniture being in the right place that will make this house our home. It is the pillow talk before bed—which, I once heard my mother tell her girlfriend, “is the most intimate thing you can do with a man.” Today I see what she meant. And finally, I fold into him.
Perchance to sleep, perchance to dream another dream together.
CHAPTER 4.
EVANGELICAL WHITE CHICK LOVES HINDU INDIAN MAN IN MARYLAND
“She was honest with me. She said it was going to be a problem, but I just didn’t see it as one. I had no frame of reference for people who won’t use logic or reason.”
—SONU SINGH
SONU AND JENNIFER actually attended the same high school. Sonu (pronounced so-new) graduated just before Jennifer began her freshman year, but Jennifer did see Sonu once. She remembers a poster hanging in their school for the then hit TV show Miami Vice. Stuck on top of Don Johnson’s face was a cutout photo of Sonu’s face. I ask Jennifer what she thought at the time, and she can’t answer fast enough: “What a wack job.”
They ran into each other four years later in person. Jennifer was a freshman again, at Virginia Tech now, and Sonu was “still” a senior there. Sonu stopped in a local bar and Jennifer was bartending. They soon realized they were both townies who grew up in this small college town.
I’ve been to this town—Blacksburg, Virginia—b
ecause Seung went to college there, too. And I have stayed at Jennifer and Sonu’s home with Seung. And I know their children. I also know that my husband greatly admires Sonu’s family because when he was in college the Singhs were the first immigrants Seung ever met who allowed their kids to be American. To have pizza and beer while watching football with the family. To talk about girls they liked and parties they attended. Seung has a lot of time and love invested in these people. Which is leaving me somewhat paralyzed to speak on each of my first calls to Jennifer and then Sonu. I’m afraid to say or ask something that might embarrass them and/or something embarrassing about Seung’s family. So mostly, I am just listening tonight. But as with Lisa, this is a story this couple knows well.
Back at the bar, Jennifer and Sonu made a plan to hang out over this weekend when they first met—their Thanksgiving break from school, while all their college buddies were back home. They went to a football game, a movie, had dinner, and Sonu just kept coming back to the bar. Jennifer believed he came because she was giving him a discount on beer. I find this hard to believe.
First, the beer was only fifty cents. Second, Jennifer is a nearly six-foot blonde who sang opera in college and designs her own jewelry now. Her personality is as shiny and jewel-filled as her pieces. Fifteen years later I’m not at all afraid to ask if she still thinks Sonu came for the twenty-five-cent savings. “Yes. I still think it was the beer.”
I also ask Sonu and he can’t answer fast enough. “There was this hot woman and I’d ask her to give me ten cents or half off on my beer—and she’d oblige me. It was a can’t-lose scenario.”
By Jennifer’s birthday, three months after the inaugural beer clearance, she was saying “I love you” and Sonu was telling her he thought this was forever. Jennifer turned nineteen, and Sonu was twenty-two. They had no issue that Sonu was born in India and immigrated to America with his parents as a child and that Jennifer is white. But for Jennifer’s family, who raised her as an evangelical Christian, faith was not negotiable.