Racial ninjas and origami tigers: cultural compartmentalization, gender mediation, Asian illegibility and the orientalization of the Asian American novel

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Content RACIAL NINJAS AND ORIGAMI TIGERS:

CULTURAL COMPARTMENTALIZATION, GENDER MEDIATION, ASIAN ILLEGIBILITY

AND THE ORIENTALIZATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN NOVEL

By

JACKSON BLISS

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
(ENGLISH)

May 2013

Copyright 2013 Jackson Bliss
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to express my endless gratitude to TC Boyle and Aimee Bender for their
continuous support, encouragement, inexhaustible talent and insight. Additional props
(and songs of praise and love) goes to Aimee for acting as my co-chair not once, but
twice. Both Tom and Aimee helped me become a more sensitive, polished and
controlled fiction writer and also a better reader of fiction too. I’d also like to express my
deepest appreciation and thanks to Viet Nguyen for guiding me through my entire
trajectory in Asian American literature, from our first directed reading together and our
off-the-record prospectus consultation at a Silver Lake hipster café to acting as my
dissertation committee co-chair, I could not possibly have written this dissertation without
his unrelenting guidance, vast knowledge, and sharp intelligence. Lastly, I’d like to thank
Duncan Williams for opening my eyes to hapa artists all over the world and for
encouraging the ontological/philosophical inquiry of this dissertation. His knowledge of
Japanese culture, hapa cultural production and his commitment to Buddhism has
anchored this project in a number of inconspicuous ways.

iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Ninja in the Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 2: The (Dis)United States Of Nara: Double Consciousness,
Ontological Multiplicity And The Cultural Compartmentalization Of Asian
American Identity In The Literary Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Chapter 3: Origami Tigers And Literary Geishas: The Gendering Of
Asian American Novels And The Mediation Of Asian American Masculinity . . . . . .70

Chapter 4: The Ninjas of My Greater Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136

4.1: Hapa Boy in the Cemetery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

4.2: “Girls”: A Four-Part Symphony by the Beastie Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

4.3: Do that Stuff, Just Do That Stuff! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168

4.4: The Gangsta Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

4.5: Confusing Confusion for Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

4.6: Broken Wires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216

4.7: The Cult of the Tango Hos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

4.8: White Girl Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

4.9: Anybody Is Never Somebody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240

4.10: The Dossier on Myself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

4.11: Pretty Hiragana Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

4.12: An Ugly Dress with Yellow Tulips in a Biker Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267

4.13: The Freudian School of Hottodoggu! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

4.14: The Dream of the Apple Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .285
iv

4.15: Laito, Kamera, Akushon! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .293

4.16: Lunch with Buffy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .312

4.17: 30-Day Seppuku + the Paintbrush in the Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .323

4.18: Love Beepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

4.19: World, Meet Taro. Taro, World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

4.20: The Commiseration of Ramen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

4.21: Searching for the Unclassifiably Beautiful and the
Infinitely Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

4.22: The Little Robot inside You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .391

4.23: Androides Amoris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

4.24: The Downrocking B-Boy and the Hokkaido Ice Queen . . . . . . . . . . . .423

4.25: A Bitch Slap Stencil of the Rising Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .436

4.26: Up Down, Turn Around, Please Don’t Let Me Hit the Ground . . . . . . .450

4.27: The First Year Japanese Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

4.28: When Snoopy Astronauts Watch Porn Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .462

4.29: The Exhibitionists in the Dollhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497

4.30: The History of Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .511

4.31: Je est un autre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

4.32: The Ninjas of My Greater Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .546

4.33: Just Bust the Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

4.34: The Nightmare about Walking through High School in
Your Underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586

4.35: The Day I Went Kamikaze on Your Ass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

4.36: The Class Reunion, The Random Tanzaku + the Yakuza Stamp . . . . .609
v

4.37: The Concerto of the Yakuza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629

4.38: Shin-Sekai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 642

4.39: Car Accident Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .676

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700

vi
ABSTRACT

This interdisciplinary dissertation (which includes both a creative and critical
component) focuses first on the contemporary forms of Asian American cultural
production, exploring the ways in which Asian American literature actively reflects,
challenges and also participates in its own self-commodification and
compartmentalization of competing cultural discourses and narrative strategies in the
internment novels of Yoshiko Uchida, Joy Kagawa, Julie Otsuka, and the short stories of
Hisaye Yamamoto. This project argues that negative cultural compartmentalization, as
exemplified in post-WWII literature, is largely a product of psychic and cultural trauma—a
literary manifestation of the way stigma, class or gender discrimination, institutional
racism and often war, necessitate broader, culturally flexible reconceptualizations of
Asian American identity such as double-consciousness. Positive cultural
compartmentalization, on the other hand, involves a more culturally flexible
reconceptualization of Asian American identity such as ontological multiplicity,
polyvocality and mosaic constructions of Asian American identity analyzed in the
contemporary novels by Miguel Syjuco, John Pham and Natsuo Kirino. In the second
part, this project critiques the mediation and construction of Asian American masculinity
in the work of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and Lan Samantha Chang before
analyzing the orientalization of the Asian American female narrative, arguing ultimately
for greater cultural, political, creative and commercial space in which contemporary
Asian American novels become a crucial part of an expanded Asian American literary
and cultural archive that straddles literary aesthetics and genres, political and critical
sensibilities, and formal and structural differences in a way that the current archive does
vii
not. Lastly, this interdisciplinary project attempts to carve out creative and critical space
somewhere between Viet Nguyen’s theory of panethnic entrepreneurialism that
acknowledges the flexible cultural strategies of Asian American cultural production on
one hand and Lisa Lowe’s materialist binarism between oppositional narratives,
fragmented modalities of cultural remembering and commercialized Asian American
cultural productions on the other. It is within this liminal, culturally narrow space that the
third and final component—a completed novel—dovetails with the critical components of
this dissertation to form an interconnected work of scholarship and creative writing.

1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: THE NINJA IN THE ROOM

I am a fourteen-year-old girl with bad spelling
And a messy room. If it helps any, I will tell you
I have always felt funny using chopsticks
And my favorite food is hot dogs.
My best friend is a white girl named Denise—
We look at boys together. She sat in front of me
All through grade school because of our names:
O’Connor, Ozawa. I know the back of Denise’s head very well.
I tell her she’s going bald. She tells me I copy on tests.
We’re best friends.

--Dwight Okita, “IN RESPONSE TO EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066: ALL AMERICANS OF
JAPANESE DESCENT MUST REPORT TO RELOCATION CENTERS.”

My critical interests with the contemporary forms of Asian American novels is
related to the way in which this literature actively reflects, challenges and also
participates in its own self-commodification and compartmentalization of competing
cultural discourses and narrative strategies. While not necessarily conscious,
pathological or even self-destructive, Asian American cultural compartmentalization in
current and post-WWII literature is still largely a product of psychic and cultural trauma, a
literary manifestation of the way stigma, class or gender discrimination, institutional
racism and often war, necessitate broader, culturally flexible reconceptualizations of
Asian American identity that can reconcile the inherent contradictions of state-sanctioned
racialization and the cultural refraction between national and transnational narratives of
the self within the urban and national sphere. Through the lens of a more culturally
flexible reconceptualization of Asian American identity and Asian American ontology, I
will argue for the necessity of greater space (both cultural, political, creative and
commercial space) in which contemporary Asian American novels are a crucial part of
2
an expanded Asian American literary and cultural studies archive that straddles literary
aesthetics and genres, political and critical sensibilities, and formal and structural
differences in a way that the current archive does not. Furthermore, I will argue that
turning the Asian American literary bibliography into an ideological witch hunt in which
literature that “resists” survives and literature which “accommodates” dies, simply
because of its cultural identity politics and narrative linearity, is culturally and critically
catastrophic. It is precisely this cultural binary that Viet Nguyen critiques in Race and
Resistance, arguing that “resistance and accommodation are actually limited, polarizing
options that do not sufficiently demonstrate the flexible strategies often chosen by
authors and characters to navigate their political and ethical situations.”
1
Like Nguyen, I
will argue for broader literary, aesthetic, ideological and cultural conceptualizations of
Asian American literature and identity that avoid both binary and rigid critical
orthodoxies. For this reason, I find the term cultural compartmentalization to be useful
because of the way in which it is both a critical intervention into a contradictory,
heterogeneous and amorphous categorization like “Asian America” and “Asian American
Literature,” and also because this term serves as a flexible reconceptualization of some
of the predominant cultural strategies that both Asian American novels, characters and
critics negotiate continuously, without being forced to discard literature that “sells out” to
the so-called commodified literary stylistics of the empire (i.e. literary realism).
While the Eaton sisters (writing under the pseudonyms Sui Sin Far and Onoto
Watanna) published “A Chinese Ishmael” and Miss Nume of Japan in 1899, widely
considered to be the first Asian American short story and novel respectively, the

1
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Race and Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
4.
3
trajectory of Asian American cultural studies is far more complicated. Partially
connected to the emergence of ethnic nationalist movements in the West Coast in the
1960’s, but also often relegated to a sociological subfield by universities
2
, Asian
American cultural studies is difficult to pin-point as a specific academic discipline in part
because of its inherent interdisciplinarity. For this reason, the Frank Chin-Maxine Hong
Kingston polemic is a good place to begin examining the genealogy of Asian American
cultural scholarship because it helps locate one of the first critical ruptures within the
Asian American academic community, not in terms of who won (what does that even
mean?), but in terms of what is still at stake in the argument itself. Frank Chin was a
figurehead of Asian American ethnic nationalism that found inspiration in the Black
Power and civil rights movements, framing the question of Asian American art and
representation inside a problematic framework of cultural (and racial) authenticity which
Chin defined in a specifically nativist, anti-Christian, masculinist way in his two
anthologies, Aiiieeeee! and The Big Aiiieeeee!. For obvious reasons, many Asian
American and feminist scholars rightly contested Chin’s controversial framing of Asian
American cultural authenticity, arguing, among other things, for a cultural critique of
Asian American productions not inextricably linked to masculinist notions of character.
Chin, at the same time, fiercely criticized the work of Maxine Hong Kingston, David
Henry Hwang and Amy Tan, among other Asian-American writers, whom he accused of
contaminating Chinese cultural authenticity, perpetuating Chinese stereotypes, and also
warping “traditional” Chinese tales in order to appeal to white readers. While the now
legendary gender war between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston raises

2
David L Eng., Racial Castration (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press,
2007) 20.
4
irreconcilable issues of racial, narrative and cultural authenticity (which Frank Chin
solidifies in his problematic Asian American anthologies), what gets lost in this polemic is
the handful of legitimate questions that Chin actually raised regarding the stereotypical
construction of Asian American masculinity in Kingston’s and other Asian American
novels, raising issues of gender mediation and cultural construction that are still
extremely relevant for Asian American cultural studies.
Since the first critical rupture, many current Asian American scholars tend to
privilege, and even fetishize, specific novels that conform either politically, formally or
aesthetically to Asian American postmodern materialist analysis at the cost of other
fictional subjectivities. This critical tendency inadvertently ignores the vast majority of
contemporary Asian American literature written in a realist aesthetic, which, according to
cultural theorists like Lisa Lowe, are connected to a national narrative of the empire that
“documents the history of imperialist war in Asia as a story of the progress of the United
States. . . exemplif[ying] a narrative of nationalist unification . . . and the narration of a
single unified object.”
3
The recent tendency for many Asian American literary and
cultural scholars like Lisa Lowe, Kandice Chuh and Rachel Lee, for example, to
repeatedly cherry-pick the prodigious and ever-expanding Asian American literary
archive and privilege many of the same authors (Bulosan, Cha, Ng, and Hagedorn, for
example) transforms critical focus to cultural compression, suspending a blossoming
period of Asian American literary production that by virtually all cultural, artistic and
economic metrics, is considered culturally prodigious, not to mention ethnically
heterogeneous. This archival reductionism is disastrous because it relegates so-called

3
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996) 107.
5
ideologically low-brow literature to non-academic discourse, as if New York Times
bestseller novels by Asian Americans are somehow exclusively part of popular and not
academic culture (which is a false dichotomy, anyway). This cherry-picking should be
resisted on its own terms since it marginalizes, and therefore, erases Asian American
cultural production, some of which bears witness to culturally resonant issues for the
Asian American community at large (e.g., the trope of the permanent Asian foreigner, the
exotification of Asian normativity, the false equivalence between assimilation and the
approximation of whiteness, institutional racism and hate crimes, to name just a few
examples).
While Lisa Lowe’s critical focus on avant-garde and postmodern Asian American
literature is hardly exceptional, due to the canonical status that Immigrant Acts has
acquired within Asian American criticism, Lowe has effectively established a precedent
where the literary marginalization of popular and contemporary forms of Asian American
fiction, based on the formal aesthetics and cultural politics of these novels, has become
normative and mostly uncontested. I believe Asian American literary scholars should
resist this purity test for intellectual reasons (many culturally significant, ideologically
subversive, and politically heterogeneous Asian American novels will continue to be
ignored, shunned and critically marginalized along with the other insipid, racist, and self-
commodified commercial Asian American novels), archival reasons (the Asian American
literary archive, while technically enormous, appears small because of the way in which
it has been largely flattened by Asian American literary scholars who often gravitate
toward many of the same postwar, episodically-constructed, ideologically transgressive,
post-WWII cultural productions), and political reasons (Asian American cultural and
6
literary scholars have a responsibility to critically engage with realist Asian American
novels even if they employ a “fetishized concept of development and the narration of a
single unified subject,”
4
because Asian American scholars are part of—or should be part
of—the cultural dialectic with, and also a ideological subversion of, those mainstream,
non-academic Asian American novels). Ultimately, while many popular Asian American
novels are often problematic for many of the same reasons that Asian American
scholars, Americanists, and Race and Ethnic Studies scholars have already pointed out,
deconstructed, relegated to inferior literary status or simply ignored in their own critical
projects, these contemporary cultural forms, nevertheless, still play a very crucial
archival role in any form of Asian American cultural studies. Contemporary Asian
American literature needs to be fully incorporated within the critical parameters of Asian
American academia because such archival expansion will include Asian and Asian
American work that is often, but not exclusively, heterodox, culturally contradictory and
polyphonic, politically and ideologically heterogeneous while oftentimes interdisciplinary,
including both realist, conceptual, experimental and hybrid cultural productions as well
as graphic novels, which have been largely ignored by Asian American criticism outside
of new media scholarship
Using cultural compartmentalization as a both a deconstructive tool of E.M.
Forster’s theory of literary characterization and also a critical entryway into select Asian
American texts, chapter 1 explores select instances of negative and positive cultural
compartmentalization in the form of double consciousness, assimilation, racial
performativity and existential multiplicity in the Japanese American internment novels,

4
Lowe, 107.
7
the graphic text of John Pham and the novels of Natsuo Kirino and Miguel Syjuco before
briefly critiquing Chin’s critique of the “identity crisis.” Through a close reading of works
by Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and Lan Samantha Chang, in conjunction with a
rigorous media analysis of two novel covers by Vivian Yang and Anchee Min and a little
number crunching of the publishing industry, chapter 2 will explore a few of the key
questions that Frank Chin raised about gender mediation/construction. Among other
things, I will argue that the mediation, and derogatory construction of Asian American
masculinity in select Asian American novels, in tandem with the gendering of the Asian
American narrative in general has ironically reconstructed a 21
st
century orientalism that
depicts Asian and Asian American culture in almost precisely the same terms that
postcolonial and feminist scholars have long objected to, gendering Asia as specifically
feminine, and framing it as culturally static, objectifiable, and sexualized. Through
pejorative constructions of Asian American masculinity and objectified novel covers self-
advertising Asian American culture, Asian American novelists become both intentional
and accidental collaborators in the orientalization of the Asian American novel.
Additionally, I will also take an archival stance, arguing that the narrowly focused Asian
American literary archive is severely restrictive, and therefore, damaging to Asian
American cultural studies because it dismisses “alternative” Asian American cultural
productions ignored by academia (e.g. graphic novels, hip-hop albums, hapa narratives,
Asian American commercial fiction, hybrid literary novels published by non-academic
presses, both by large publishing houses and independent presses) by relegating
culturally significant works to the margins of critical analysis (which is a type of cultural
erasure to be sure). Despite Lowe’s powerful critique of univocal narratives in the
8
Western bildungsroman, her argument that Asian American culture remembers its past
through fragmentation, alternative spaces and other critical historiographies that
becomes new sites of future subjectivities,
5
and despite her insistence that Asian
American cultural practices—much like the literature itself—are not fixed, homogeneous,
nor stable,
6
a critical assessment I largely agree with, even so, I believe that Lowe (and
many Asian American scholars interacting with her project afterwards) has managed to
condemn to the academic barracks, virtually every Asian American novel published in a
large press and mentioned in Publishers Weekly in the past twenty years. Furthermore,
while only a minute part of this project, I will also argue that graphic novels (specifically,
Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life), even as commodified Asian American cultural
productions, directly challenge both the framing and the narrativization of Asian
American cultural studies by using graphic elements and techniques of cultural
recentering that deprivilege the concerns of materialist Asian American cultural analysis
while simultaneously participating in, and also challenging, oppositional narratives.
Finally, chapter 2 suggests three correctives, adumbrating the novels of Karen Tei,
Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Lily Hoang, all of which complicate, resist and challenge archival
reductionism, forcing us to think outside of our own archival biases and offering fresh
new possibilities for Asian American narratology.
Ultimately, one of the goals of this project is to advocate for Asian American
academics to politically engage with contemporary Asian American literature in their
critique, not blacklist such a robust and contradictory archive simply because much of it
is shallow, stereotypical and formulaically racist. In their boycotting of current literary

5
Lowe, 29.
6
Lowe, 64.
9
and commercial Asian American fiction, not only do Asian American scholars
inadvertently elide many culturally significant novels in the process, but they also risk
perpetuating an intellectual disconnection from contemporary Asian American literature
that ironically canonizes dated, overanalyzed Asian American texts that resisted or
subverted canonicity in the first place (many of them written before the 1990’s). This act
of textual fetishization severely occludes the prodigious cultural production of Asian
American writers, especially in the past twenty years. At the same time, critical and
creative space needs to be carved out somewhere between Nguyen’s theory of
panethnic entrepreneurialism that acknowledges the flexible cultural strategies of Asian
American cultural production through global capitalism on one hand and Lisa Lowe and
Rachel Lee’s materialist binarism between oppositional narratives, alternative spaces
and fragmented modalities of cultural remembering on the other hand (e.g. the literary
realist novel, the bildungsroman, the 1990 Los Angeles Festival). It is within this liminal,
culturally narrow space that I see the creative component of my dissertation fitting.
My novel, The Ninjas of My Greater Self, is both the creative and the intellectual
matrix of my dissertation. Both a racial bildungsroman, a love story (or conversely, a
story of cultural and racial self-love) and also an examination of the problematics of
phenotypic and Japanese-American cultural identity, my novel explores the flawed
cultural logic of racial legibility and racial authenticity, provides a much needed hapa
(and multiracial) annexation to the Japanese American canon and instantiates a modest
corrective of the contemporary literary publishing industry and its propensity for
commodifying Asian American narratives, mediating gender performance, and
reconstructing orientalist tropes. My critical interests in Asian American literature,
10
minority discourse, hapa cultural studies, and the problematic of gender construction in
Japanese and Asian American literature actually first started with my novel. The Ninjas
of My Greater Self, among other things, is not only a coming-of-age story about Hidashi,
the narrator and protagonist, but also simultaneously a creative interrogation of the
specious politics of racial authenticity and Asian phenotypicality, not to mention a
deconstruction of the binary politics of racialization in American culture. While this novel
does none of these things consciously, it resists, challenges, negotiates and
reconfigures Asian American cultural identification to include hyphenated, non-traditional
and contradictory definitions of Asianness that are ideologically, semantically and racially
heterogeneous. At the same time, I see my creative dissertation participating both
willingly and accidentally in Kandice Chuh’s critical strategy of blurring the formal
distinctions between literature and theory in order to contribute to:
[T]he project of challenging the hierarchical racialization that effects the
subordinate status of Asian American literary studies in the realm of U.S.
American literary studies. That doing so, in other words, intervenes in the
conservative effects of U.S. multiculturalism. The deconstruction of other
distinctions, like those between “activist” and “academic,” can help . . . the
broader project of transforming the word and idea of the university.
7

In its own limited way, I believe that The Ninjas of My Greater Self will make a small but
notable contribution to the inversion and the collapse of the precariously artificial
professional binary that once separated Asian American activism from Asian American
cultural and literary scholarship, including Viet Nguyen’s theory of the bad subject and

7
Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003) 20.
11
the model minority, as well as Lowe’s semi-invented crisis between representation and
antirepresentational narrative strategies. Hopefully, my novel will act as both a critique
of the politics of Asian phenotypicality, as a corrective to the atavistic trend in literary
publishing to reconstruct culturally reductive and racially flattened Asian American novels
and also as a creative advocacy for racially hyphenated (i.e. multiracial), hapa literature.
My novel will hopefully act as an oppositional narrative both to the market forces of this
resurgent orientalism in publishing and also to older discursive strategies of racial
authenticity within the Asian American academic community itself, being part of a larger
cultural negotiation between conflicting racial, cultural, theoretical and literary
discourses.
My hope is that The Ninjas of My Greater Self will, in many ways, also open
“space for a different historical subject,”
8
as Lisa Lowe envisioned Hagedorn’s Dogeaters
doing through alternative historicization (via rumor and hearsay) while paradoxically
employing antirepresentational strategies with a semi-realist aesthetic. While Lowe
equates Hagedorn’s alternative aesthetic to realism as a subversion to the authority of
“official historical representation,”
9
and a materialist rehistoricization of neocolonialism, I
see this juxtaposition between literary realism and colonial narrativatization as tenuous
at best, and contingent at worse. Instead, I believe that realist Asian American novels
complicate the political and critical biases of Lowe’s position by reifying a cultural and
racial narrative that is in many ways defiant to the normative materialist orthodoxy of the
Asian American academic community at large, which tends to favor disjointed,
fragmented, non-realist novels and has largely ignored, or co-opted, hapa narratives

8
Lowe, 120.
9
Lowe, 120.
12
while insisting on the politicization of Asian American literary aesthetics, even when
these political valences are forced, contrived, incidental or superimposed. The Ninjas of
My Greater self not only disrupts the accommodation-resistance binary by incarnating
the cultural and racial dialectic of both the hegemonic and the subaltern narrative, but
furthermore, as a character-driven realist bildungsroman with flashes of conceptuality, it
also acts as a corrective to the exclusionary tendencies of Asian American scholarship
that tends to favor narrative fragmentation, disjuncture, ellipticality and heteroglossia
over plot linearity, characterization, narrative coherency and symbolization.
My novel begins with Hidashi, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, who is a
hapa, a man of mixed Asian ancestry. Because he is not legibly Asian, Hidashi does not
self-define himself as Asian despite his multiracial background. Rather, he reads
(himself) as white, a reading that is reinforced by the monoracially Anglo-Saxon town of
his childhood and the racial identity politics of his college where race is a juridical tool to
distinguish oppressed from oppressor. Although he grew up in direct contact with his
Japanese grandmother and participated along with his family in his Japanese heritage,
Hidashi is unable to reconcile the contradiction of being Japanese but not Asian until the
very end of the novel. This contradiction only makes sense in the highly volatile cultural
landscape of American racialization where race is phenotypically defined, but culturally
refracted, assigned and also contested according to its political and ideological
functionality at different sites (the college campus, the inner city high school, the streets
of Chicago, the expatriate community in Buenos Aires). Ironically, while college is a site
of potent racial and historical self-discovery for many multiracial students, for Hidashi it
reinforces his fear that race is both determined by phenotypic markers (of which he has
13
none) and also cultural performativity (which he is unfamiliar with). It is not a
coincidence that Hidashi ultimately reconciles his own identitarian conflict in Japan
where he falls in love with a hapa movie star named Duran Duran Murasaki (who herself
is a signifier of both cultural conflict, compartmentalization and symbiosis), and also
discovers that his Japanese family is part of a secret, global clan of ninjas whose
“costume” is a black suit, ironically delegitimating Japanese phenotypicality as a marker
of Asianness. Hidashi recovers his Asianness at the same time he deconstructs it,
essentially breaking apart the problematic, contradictory terms of racial authenticity in
the process (eat your heart out, Frank Chin!).
A second deconstruction of Asian phenotypicality in this novel occurs with
Kazuko, Hidashi’s most complicated relationship in the entire novel. Kazuko is legibly
Asian in a way that Hidashi will never be. Ironically, though, she does not identify at all
with her Japanese ancestry the way that he does. Hidashi and Kazuko’s relationship
complicates issues of racial authenticity, on one hand, while instantiating the problematic
of racial identity based on physical markers, on the other. An additional layer of
phenotypic deconstruction in The Ninjas of My Greater Self occurs midway through the
novel when Kazuko and Hidashi move to Buenos Aires, where Kazuko undergoes plastic
surgery repeatedly until her physical attributes are legibly Anglo-Saxon. This complete
erasure of her so-called Asian phenotypicality and her approximation of whiteness (and
white hegemony) not only becomes a site of resistance against theories of the
semioticization of the body and the somatization of story
10
, but also poses an emotional
challenge to Hidashi’s own deconstruction of Asian phenotypicality. Even though he is

10
Peter Brooks, Body Work (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) vii.
14
entirely conscious (even critical) of his overidentification with Kazuko’s Asian physicality
for the same reasons he is critical of Asian phenotypicality in general, Kazuko’s
visual/phenotypic syntax has changed so much that he can no longer read (i.e.
consume) her body at all. He becomes haunted by nostalgia for someone he never
loved but also alienated by his own defamiliarization of someone he never understood.
My hope is that The Ninjas of My Greater Self participates, in its own way, in what Viet
Nguyen has termed in Race and Resistance, the “development of multiple versions of
bodily signification that exist simultaneously, particularly with the increasing demographic
diversification of Asian America,”
11
while also contributing to the crisis of representation
and the destabilization of Asian American cultural studies, which my novel creatively
embodies.
A third deconstruction/reconstruction of Asian phenotypicality occurs with the
characterization of Uma, an android that Kenji Murasaki slowly constructs in twenty-
seven development stages in order to recreate his American girlfriend, Sasha, who died
in a drive-by in Detroit. Even though Kenji is a brilliant robotics engineer and graduate of
the most prestigious university in Japan, he is unable to actually recreate Sasha through
artificial intelligence or androidic replication, thematically suggesting that both the
existential self, much like the racialized and the socially constructed self, is unlocatable,
which is precisely what is problematic about the localization of racial identity in the first
place. Ultimately, because of the infinite complexity of the socially constructed self, Kenji
cannot recreate his ex-girlfriend, but merely translates his interpretation of her into a fully
functional robotic prototype that is programmed to perform Sasha but not actually be her.

11
Nguyen, 19.
15
It is not a coincidence, therefore, that Kenji, and his daughter, Duran Duran, decide to
name the android Uma, which, while still possessing connotations of rebirth in Japanese,
is not “Sasha” even though Kenji slowly built the android in Sasha’s image. Using
Sasha’s name would have obviously implied duplication or recreation, which is basically
impossible. Even more serious, this process of duplicate naming would also have acted
as a referent of loss for Kenji, creating a phantasmal signifier.
While I agree with Gayatri Spivak’s assessment in “A Literary Representation of
the Subaltern” that when it “comes to [our own] suppositions about the ‘natural’ way to
read literature, [we] cannot admit that this might be a construction as well, that this
subject-position might also be assigned,”
12
at the same time, my critical methodology will
be a text-centered close reading of specific Asian American novels because of the way
this reading privileges authorial execution over authorial intentionality or theoretical
superimposition and also delimits readings from within the text, not from without. While
this approach is not less controversial, nor any less ideological in the Spivakian sense of
the word, my personal intellectual inclinations lean towards permitting the primary text to
construct my hermeneutical framework and frame my own readings and not the other
way around.
Ultimately, the critical focus of this project, in part, is to collectively destabilize
existential monopolies of racial, gender and cultural construction of the Asian American
self and hopefully argue for the possibility, even the necessity, of complex Asian
American ontology (one of several gradations of positive cultural compartmentalization)
in the literary construction of Asian American cultural identity. In this sense, I agree with

12
Gayatri Chakvrakorty Spivak, In Other Worlds (New York: Routledge, 1988) 246.
16
Anne Anlin Chang in her seminal work, The Melancholy of Race, that the Asian
American academic community, for fear of committing mass essentialism, avoids
discussions of Asian American ontology whenever possible:
We are viscerally reminded that the deconstruction (as “in taking part”) of the
“composition of differences” (i.e., “class, gender, national diversities”) while
crucial, remains insufficient to understanding how the process of identification is
itself always already generating difference and sameness . . . We are so often
afraid in academia to talk about ontology, for fear of essentialism, universalism,
or intellectual quietism. Yet sometimes the stringent fear of essentialism or
essententialist labels prevents certain categories from being discussed,
categories that, for all their inherent instability, nevertheless operate in powerful,
fantasmatic ways.
13

And yet, the construction of Asian American cultural identity in literature is on one level,
the construction of a specific Asian American ontology. Through literary articulation,
Asian American existence is reified on some level, both dialectically interacting with and
also affected by the popular imagination. In a perfect world, the creative component of
this project would serve as a textual reification of Asian American multiplicity. But very
likely, this claim is too ambitious to be defendable. More realistically, The Ninjas of My
Greater Self explores some of the very problematics discussed in the critical chapters of
the dissertation. As a controversial and at times, heroic bildungsroman, this novel both
contests, transgresses and concedes limitations and possibilities of Asian American
literary and cultural construction by conflating the coming-of-age narrative, the

13
Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000) 27.
17
travelogue, the love story (or conversely, a story of cultural, racial and phenotypic self-
love), the manga narrative, and elements of speculative fiction.

18
CHAPTER 2: THE (DIS)UNITED STATES OF NARA: DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS,
ONTOLOGICAL MULTIPLICITY AND THE CULTURAL COMPARTMENTALIZATION
OF ASIAN AMERICAN IDENTITY IN THE LITERARY IMAGINATION

When you are someone like me, you will be many people all at once. You are a father, a
dictator, a servant, the most agile actor this land has ever known. And all throughout
you must be the favorite chaste love of the people.”
--Chang Rae Lee, Native Speaker
And that’s the truth about life/ What to do with the ghetto and the car rims or your ice/
Cuz even though we survive through the struggle that made us/ We still look at
ourselves through the eyes of people that hate us.
--Immortal Technique, “Caught in a Hustle”
To think of death, to pray. It may be that there is one who yet has need of this, and it is
to his need that the bells give voice. I no longer have any such need, for the reason that
I am dying every instant, and being born anew and without memories: alive and whole,
no longer in myself, but in everything outside.
--Luigi Pirandello, One, None and a Hundred Thousand

Sean: But she's a multiple personality.
Liz: Oh please! Who isn't? To my mother, I'm a child. To Jan, I'm a heartless, rejecting
bitch. And to my dog, I'm God.
Sean: Maybe I should get a dog.
--“Nip/Tuck,” Season 1, Episode 11

In this chapter, I will briefly adumbrate a few of the problematics of literary
characterization in the literary criticism of E.M. Forester and examine the ways in which
Asian and Asian American literature complicate western notions of literary, social and
cultural identity by briefly constellating cultural constructions of Asian and Asian
American identity. Beginning with a close reading of Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey to
Topaz, a semi-autobiographical novel about the Japanese internment, I will argue that
negative cultural compartmentalization is both a survival instinct, a metaphor of
19
institutional racism and a defense mechanism against the dehumanizing effects of racial
totalization and cultural dehumanization where Japanese Americans suddenly become
“japs,” stripped of their constitutional rights (or those conferred by legal residency), their
citizenship and their former American cultural identity, which temporarily reifies a
nikkeijin double-consciousness. From there, I will do a short, comparative reading with
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar, Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor
Was Divine, Hisaye Yamamoto’s “Seventeen Syllables” and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. I
will then conclude this chapter by exploring several possibilities of positive cultural
compartmentalization in constructed literary Asian American identity by briefly
considering both the risks involved, the aesthetic possibilities conceived and the cultural
self-emancipation possible with the negotiation of cultural, gender, historical and class
spheres in the works of Natuso Kirino, John Pham and Miguel Syjuco, each of which
examine, participate in, and exemplify the positive dynamic of existential multiplicity (i.e.,
polymorphous Asian American ontology) in profoundly different ways.
In his book of literary criticism, Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster argues there
are two main types of characters in literature: flat and round characters. Flat characters
essentially remain the same despite changes in plot or narrative, which makes them
easy to introduce into the novel and easy for the reader to remember.
14
Round
characters, on the other hand are unpredictable, dynamic and evolve over time. The test
in determining whether a character is flat or round is “whether it is capable of surprising
in a convincing way. If the character never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it

14
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (Orlando: Harcourt Publishing, 1927) 69.
20
is a flat pretending to be round.”
15
According to Forster, almost every good novel
employs a strategic combination of flat and round characters, which sounds
uncomfortably close to high school English class lectures about “static” and “dynamic”
characters. But the question is, can one character be both round and flat? In Forster’s
cut-and-dry delineation, the answer appears to be no. Whether his theory of literary
characterization is too binary, or only true in American and European realist novels, the
reality is that in the context of Asian, Asian cultural studies and Asian American literature,
the rules of characterization (or racial construction) are very different. Characters are
almost always flat and around, not to mention rectangular, triangular, possibly cylindrical
too. Instead of following the trope of the never-changing, unicellular das ego that has
become normative in Western psychoanalysis, or even Forster’s flat/round theory of
character duality, Asian and Asian American cultural identity in the literary imagination
tends to be a complex mosaic of microcultures, a collection of separate but connected
selves that are existentially divided and compartmentalized into separate, but imbricated
worlds, assuming multiple and semifluid identities that continuously shift according to the
social context, speaker, language and mediation. In this sense, cultural identification
and construction in the Asian literary sense is almost always a complex, protean and
dialectical process. Perhaps because so much Asian American writing involves some
level of transnationality (both the crossing of borders, the importation of cultural and
sociolinguistic memory, the trope of the permanent foreigner and also the negotiation of
exclusive cultural expectations), Asian American cultural identity is often an interactive
dynamic of social expectations, collective cultural and authorial (re)constructions and

15
Forster, 78.
21
semi-fluid ranking systems that are both obeyed and transgressed in various gradations
in both Asian culture and in Asian and Asian American literature, never presupposing a
fixed and stable “self.” It is precisely the relativity of the self in both fixed roles (that is,
the same role that one assumes with the same person) and in shifting or contradictory
roles (that is, the fluctuation of roles from one person and culture to another and from
one zeitgest to another) that the construction of cultural identity in many Asian American
cultural productions is necessarily contradictory, both culturally compartmentalized and
ontologically fractured. While this literary and cultural phenomenon is not necessarily
conscious, pathological or even destructive, per se, it can still be extremely painful
because of the way it is often necessitated by cultural stigma, class or gender hierarchy,
and often, trauma. The trope of the split or multiple self in Asian and Asian American
literature is both a defense mechanism and a manifestation of negative and positive
cultural compartmentalization, a negotiation between different social, gender, historical
and cultural spheres.
In his book, Japanamerica, Roland Kelts argues that there are at least two crucial
words to describe the polymorphous self in Japanese culture: 建前, tatemae, the public
you, the official or public self and 本音, honne, the real you, or according to Kelts, “how
you really feel.”
16
One possibility, according to Kelts, is that this duality is a geocultural
reflection of Japan inhabiting at least two worlds, both geographically and culturally since
as an island, it is literally situated between China and America. While Kelts’s argument
is hardly ground-breaking and also problematic because its challenges cultural

16
Roland Kelts, Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Invaded the U.S. (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) 24.
22
monopolies of the Japanese cultural identity while simultaneously substituting them with
dualities, cultural terminology like tatemae and honne is still useful because it contests
Western, dualistic literary theories of characterization like those depicted in E. M.
Forester’s book of literary criticism where only complex characters are granted the
psychological prerogative of interiority. Furthermore, tatemae and honne complicate
outdated cultural and biological narratives about the uniqueness of Japanese identity like
nihonjinron (some of which are implicit manifestations of crypto-eugenic ethnocentrism).
At the very least, the construction of Asian (American) identity in both literature and in
cultural analysis that includes both a public and a private self catalyzes the project of
revising and (re-)creating a more dynamic, inclusive Asian (American) cultural
vocabulary of the self that Forester never concedes. The so-called Asian (American)
self in literature, whatever that is, is a site of cultural, racial, political and identarian
heterogeneity that is always continuously shifting, resistant to claims of univocality, but
certainly not immune to the politicization of Asian American cultural theory. This chapter
aims at destabilizing the racial and cultural construction of the unicellular Asian
(American) self and will attempt to establish, if nothing else, the possibility, even the
necessity, of ontological multiplicity in the literary construction of Asian American identity.
In Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey to Topaz, Japanese Americans suddenly become
“japs,” stripped of their own hyphenated cultural identity as Nisei and first generation
Japanese Americans. The prisoners at Topaz, Utah, instead of being default Americans,
must “prove’ their Americannes now either by enlisting in the armed services or by taking
a loyalty pledge requiring that 日系米人 (nikkeibeijins, Japanese Americans) forswear
their loyalty to the Japanese Emperor, a purity test both Uchida, Houston and Yamamoto
23
point out, that is not asked of Italian Americans or German Americans during the war.
Journey to Topaz is told from a close, third-person perspective of young Yuki Sakane
and her family who are forced to relocate from their home in the Bay Area to the horse
stalls of the Tanforan track—a clear cultural and class relegation to subhuman status.
The rest of the Sakane family is forced eventually to travel to Topaz along with other
West Coast Japanese Americans. The long, arduous and covert deportation to Utah in
unmarked, crowded trains, serves as a cultural rupture between the prewar period when
Nikkeijin
17
were hyphenated Americans of Japanese descent and the postwar period
when their American nationality is revoked, a historical and cultural compartmentalization
of citizenship and treason that is forced upon them by the Roosevelt administration and
an emerging war hysteria exacerbated by major newspapers like The San Diego-Union,
The Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times.
18
Topaz
itself is symbolic since topaz is a precious stone, often colorless, a signifier for the
cultural myth of racelessness. Topaz can also be yellow (a derogatory signifier of
Asianness) as well as yellow and blue, colors commonly associated both with idyllic
spring days (an ironic Orwellian color scheme for racial incarceration) and also
whiteness, specifically, blue eyes and blond hair, visual markers that match very well
with the hegemonic phenotypicality of Utah, both mocking and accentuating the racial
differentiality of the so-called “alien” Japanese American prisoners. As it turns out,
however, Yuki and her family’s deportation to Topaz is not the first instance of cultural
compartmentalization in Journey to Topaz.

17
Nikkeibeijin and Nikkeijin are used interchangeably in this dissertation.
18
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (New York: Back Bay Books, 1998
[1989]) 200-201, 388.
24
In one scene earlier in the novel, Yuki is called a “dirty jap” by one of her
classmates.
19
Yuki responds by saying that she’s “not a Jap . . . [but] American,”
20
a
refutation that implies several possibilities: that one cannot be Japanese and also
American, which underlines the binary tendencies of racial identification in America.
Another possibility is that being Japanese is compartmentalized with being American,
that is, Yuki’s Asianness is subsumed within the broad multiethnic term, “American.”
Therefore, when she says she’s American, she is implying that she is also ethnically
Japanese because the term “American” subsumes racial and ethnic diversity. A third
possibility is that Yuki rejects the correlative association between being Japanese and
being dirty but accepts the implicit cultural assumption that being American means being
clean (i.e. patriotic, unsuspicious). A fourth possibility is that Yuki rejects being called a
“jap,” a racist and belittling diminutive of her nikkeibeijin roots but not being called
Japanese. Either way, the subtle politics of racial identification and cultural identity in
this scene belies the tendency for Asian Americans to create and internalize racial and
cultural partitions inside of themselves in order to avoid cultural amputation from a
hegemonic majority. Following Yuki’s exchange with her prejudiced classmate, Yuki’s
teacher introduces the concept of the Nisei to the class, which helps create cultural
space for Yuki and her family (and by extension, multicultural identity in the American
tradition) but also eerily anticipates the target demographic of Japanese internment
camps which were predominantly filled with young Issei, Nisei and Bisei. Yuki’s teacher
helps Yuki reconcile the trap of racialization but America in 1942 would not be so
generous.

19
Yoshiko Uchida, Journey to Topaz (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1971) 20.
20
Uchida, 20.
25
Cultural compartmentalization can be an intensely painful negotiation, both a
psychological trope of splitting from within and also a strategy of exclusion from without.
In Journey through Topaz, Japanese Americans are treated as spies in their own
country and eventually stripped of their constitutional rights. After Ken, Yuki’s brother,
explains that Japanese Americans will soon be deported to labor camps, their mom
responds: “Why would the United States do a thing like that? We are not spies or
traitors. And besides, you children are American citizens. You were born right here in
California. How could they do anything like that to citizens?”
21
And yet, the cultural
implication of interning 110,000 nikkeijin, two thirds of whom were American born,
22
is
precisely this notion that Japanese Americans are contradictions, both default patriots by
citizenship (or legal resident status) and also default traitors by national narrative. Even
US-born Japanese Americans are treated as double agents in Journey through Topaz
because of their so-called moral ambivalence. At the Topaz Relocation Center, the
Sakane family becomes prisoners of their own country and refugees of two countries,
surrounded by armed, white soldiers who stand at “each doorway with bayonets
mounted and ready,”
23
a detail that symbolizes the family’s imprisonment, implies
Japanese American paralysis in the face of a militarized American nation state, and also
implicates the national security threat of Japaneseness itself. On one hand, like
Manzanar and Heart Mountain Relocation centers, for example, Topaz becomes a
geography of shame that spatializes national prejudice and cultural separation. Many
Japanese Americans, like Ken, Yuki’s brother, are both ashamed of their heritage, due to

21
Uchida, 25.
22
Takaki, 15.
23
Uchida, 45.
26
Pearl Harbor and the vilification of Japanese culture in America, but also incapable of
becoming American—in every sense of the word—because “a law forbade it.”
24

Ironically though, at the same time, the Japanese Internment reinforces (not
deconstructs) the Sakane family’s Japanese identity, even without the paterfamilias,
since Topaz (as an act of institutionalized racism that targets only Americans of
Japanese descent) is both a Japanese ghetto and a Little Tokyo (that is, cultural safe
space much like nihonmachi) that is much more racially homogeneous and culturally
concentrated than the places from which most internees came. In Yuki’s new school, for
example, every person is Japanese American: “She liked her young Nisei teacher, and
after a while, got used to the strangeness of being in a school where all the pupils were
Japanese.”
25
The internment camp, ironically, becomes an act of Japanese cultural
consolidation. For the Sakane family, being Japanese American during the internment
suddenly becomes normative. Ultimately, it is the cultural purgatory of internment that
forces prisoners to compartmentalize their memories as American and Japanese
citizens, sublimating and storing their multicultural, generationally-conflicted identities as
nikkeijin. Both their Japanese and their American selves have become separated and
placed into separate, but entangled cultural spheres, some of which are temporary,
some of which are permanent, and some of which linger in the cultural memory as
historical haunting.
In Yoshiko Uchida’s Journey through Topaz, Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor
was Divine, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar, Japanese
Americans (or Japanese-Canadians in Kogawa’s case) are treated as both spies and

24
Uchida, 133.
25
Uchida, 76.
27
permanent foreigners. In Obasan, Sigmund (an insolent, misogynistic student who
comes to represent both white privilege and masculinist psychoanalytical aggression)
asks Naomi the elementary school teacher where she is from, which is hegemonic code
for racial identification (i.e., papiere, bitte). In the ensuing narration, Naomi explains that
people “assume when they meet me that I’m a foreigner.”
26
Later on in the novel, Naomi
reads one of Aunt Emily’s journal entries that describe the status of Japanese-
Canadians as permanent foreigners and permanent enemies: “So long as they
designate the enemy by that term and not us, it doesn’t matter. But over here, they say
‘Once a Jap, always a Jap,’ and that means us. We’re the enemy.”
27
In Farewell to
Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes one of her first classes after the
Japanese internment in public school in Southern California. After being asked to read
a passage out loud by her teacher, a blond classmate says: “Gee, I didn’t know you
could speak English.”
28
One of the cultural implications of interning 110,000 nikkeibeijin
is precisely a contrived war allegory that Japanese Americans are an irreconcilable
racial contradictions, at once default patriots, exemplars of cultural symbiosis and also
de facto traitors for being non-white and possibly non-Christian. Candice Chuh, the
Asian American cultural theorist, argues that Japanese cultural “foreignness” during
WWII became linked to Japanese racial alterity where Japaneseness “overflowed
Japan’s sovereign territory to constitute a simultaneously internal and external threat to
the United States.”
29
On one hand, wartime hysteria transnationalizes nikkeijin into

26
Joy Kogawa, Obasan (New York: Anchor Books, 1982 [1981]) 8.
27
Kogawa, 99.
28
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (New York: Hougton Mifflin, 2002
[1973]) 141.
29
Chuh, 65.
28
permanent foreigners (read: invaders), whose existence is fundamentally different and
unknowable to American mores. And yet on the other hand, both newspaper editorials
and national narratives concerning Japanese Americans through the judicial and political
structures affirm the essentialistic cultural and racial epistemology of nikkeijin as people
with “transcendent loyalty to Japan based upon . . . [a] purposive conception of a
relationship between race and national origins.”
30
It is precisely the status of Japanese
Americans as permanent enemies of the United States (or at least, in Takaki’s view, on
the mainland
31
) that the political and cultural valence of assimilation in postwar America
has the potential to shift for nikkeibeijins from an erasure of ethnic duality or biculturalism
to a subversion of permanent racial typecasting and permanent defamiliarization within
the public imagination. In Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor was Divine,
assimilation, for example (which is a type of cultural compartmentalization in which racial
and cultural Japanese identity is subordinated to a collective national narrative of racially
blurred, Anglonormative Americannness), becomes a clear survival strategy to integrate
within the hegemonic class and more importantly, avoid the scars of social
stigmatization:
We would join their clubs, after school, if they let us. We would change our
names to sound more like theirs. And if our mother called out to us on the street
by our real names we would turn away and pretend not to know her. We would
never be mistaken for the enemy again!
32

30
Chuh, 69.
31
Takaki, 379.
32
Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine (New York: Anchor Books, 2002) 114.
29
In Farewell to Manzanar, Houston describes her survival strategy as one of not only
cultural assimilation, but also of racial performance:
I’ve learned from the world I wanted into, not only standards of achievement but
ideas about how a girl should look and dress and talk and act, and ideas of male
beauty—which is why so many of the boys I liked were Caucasian . . . This was
my dilemma. Easy enough as it was to adopt white American values, I still had a
Japanese father to frighten my boyfriends and a Japanese face to thwart my
social goals.
33

In this passage, Houston recodes herself in the cultural symbols of White America,
aspiring towards an approximation of whiteness, which is the world she “wanted into.”
Her racial performativity involves etiquette, subscribing to California standards of (white)
male beauty and dating white boys. And yet the narrator’s Japanese father and his
Japanese legibility both threaten her assimilationist performance.
When the Nakane family in Journey through Topaz are forced to throw out their
possessions, sell them at a fraction of their original value or store them in unprotected
government storage units, the deportation process in Journey to Topaz slowly becomes
not just an act of cultural and racial totalization but also a technique of psychic and
cultural excision, forcing Nikkeibeijin to disentangle Japanese American families from
their transnational identities by denying them effective, safe storage of family heirlooms,
Japanese letters and books, rare kimonos, lacquer ware, and pictures from the
homeland, all of which are manifestations of mnemonic, ancestral, cultural,
sociolinguistic and genealogical materiality which together form a collective memory of

33
Houston, 154.
30
Nippon.
34
Deportation not only reinforces false (and forgotten) dichotomies about
Americanness (that one is multicultural or American, a traitor or a patriot, Japanese spy
or an Asian American citizen, a Buddhist/Shintoist or a Christian American) but it also
anglofies American cultural definitions of patriotism by removing Japanese Americans
from urban centers and redefining patriotism as a white cultural performance (i.e., the
absence of a yellow invasion). Eventually, deportation becomes a method of cultural
amnesia where Japanese cultural artifacts are destroyed, the stories behind those
objects slowly forgotten until Japan becomes completely partitioned from America,
transformed into a bedtime story. For all these reasons, the act of deportation is no
longer simply a physical exodus, but a mnemonic burial too.
In David Mura’s memoir, Where the Body Meets Memory, amnesia is directly
linked to the assimilationist strategy of former Japanese American prisoners. According
to Mura, the Japanese belief in gaman (loosely translated as “perseverance, patience,
tolerance, self-control, self-denial”), domesticated the rage of internees who were
subjected to nationalist racial incarceration, and it is through “forgetting their cultural past,
by becoming the model minority . . . [that his parents and other prisoners] could
assimilate.”
35
The very act of deportation instantiantes cultural amnesia where Japanese
cultural artifacts are destroyed and the stories behind those objects, slowly forgotten or
rendered immaterial until Japan becomes completely partitioned from nikkeibeijin
households. In Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, both the Japanese home and the objects it
contains transmogrify into cultural memory and material genealogy for Naomi’s aunt:

34
Uchida, 31.
35
David Mura, Where the Body Meets the Mind (New York: Anchor Books, 1996) 252.
31
The house is indeed old, as she is also old. Every homemade piece of furniture,
each potholder and paper doily is a link in her lifetime . . . The items are endless.
Every short stub pencil, every cornflake box, stuffed with paper bags and old
letters is of her ordering. They rest in the corners like parts of her body, hair cells,
skin tissues, tiny specks of memory. This house is now her blood and her
bones.
36

In my reading of these internment novels, the act of deportation—because it inevitably
involved the theft, abandonment, destruction and permanent loss of Japanese cultural
materiality in the form of ancestral, cultural, artifactual, sociolinguistic and photographic
objects, as well as cultural safe space and Japanese American cultural corporeality in
the form of Japanese homes—is no longer simply a physical exodus, but also a cultural
wiping, a class cremation and a mnemonic diaspora too.
In Hisaye Yamamoto’s short story collection Seventeen Syllables, the question of
the irretrievability of lost Japanese culture both materially and sociolinguistically, the
question of the conflict/negotiation between Japanese and American culture, and the
question of the fragmentation of the Japanese family (read: ancestry) within the national
American narrative of idealized racelessness, remain important issues throughout the
book, marked by various strategies of cultural compartmentalization by nikkeijin
characters who both deny, contest and assume multiple roles, identities, ranks and
performances that vary in degrees of assimilation and separation. In “Las Vegas
Charley,” for example, the eponymous character works as a woodcutter, pool shark,
gambler, janitor, student, babysitter and farmer as a means of survival, the multiplicity of

36
Kogawa, 18.
32
his professional identities forming his flexible strategy of cultural identity.
37
In the title
story, the generational conflict between Issei (Rosie’s parents) and Nisei (Rosie) in many
ways plays a secondary role to the class and cultural conflict between her father, the
hard-working but taciturn farmer from a working class family and her mom, the short-
lived poet from an upper-class family. In the pivotal scene in “Seventeen Syllables,”
Rosie’s mom receives a Hiroshige painting for winning the haiku prize from the
Japanese American periodical, the Mainichi Shimbun. While the newspaper editor stops
by their house to give Rosie’s mom the award (who speaks deferentially to him,
employing sociolinguistic class signifiers in her conversation like Japanese honorifics
and haiku theory), Rosie’s father waits impatiently for her mom outside in the tomato
patch (a symbol of the agricultural working class and also a contrasting site of
physicality). Without warning, he suddenly marches into the house. A few seconds
later, the editor is driving away quickly. The scene that follows transcends patriarchal
oppression or class jealousy and becomes a coercive act of cultural
compartmentalization:
Next her father emerged, also alone, something in his arms (it was the picture,
she realized), and, going over to the bathhouse woodpile, he threw the picture on
the ground and picked up the axe. Smashing the picture, glass and all (she
heard the explosion faintly), he reached over for the kerosene that was used to
encourage the bath fire and poured it over the wreckage. I am dreaming, Rosie

37
Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2011 [2001, 1998, 1988]) 73.
33
said to herself, I am dreaming, but her father, having made sure that his act of
cremation was irrevocable, was even then returning to the fields.
38

On one level, the cremation can be interpreted as a proletarian critique of the cultural
utility of poetry (which many social realist critics called bourgeois diversionism). Haiku
(and Japanese poetic forms like wa verse during the Heian era), for example, have a
long, established history with the Japanese aristocracy who often penned poetry
themselves and cited famous haiku in their letters in the art of romantic circumlocution.
His wife’s affinity, and more importantly, talent, for composing haiku, therefore,
aggravated the latent class differences between husband and wife and their conflicting
modes of production (one of which requires the selling of one’s own human labor,
another, an art created during disposable time, one physical, another linguistic).
Additionally, this short story suggests that haiku-writing becomes a gendered creative
activity of self-expression that the taciturn husband completely rejects because he is
threatened by it, essentially denying her a private sphere of creative identity and
simultaneously silencing her by destroying the language of her nostalgia. On another
level, the cremation represents the husband’s protest against his wife’s cultural
compartmentalization (i.e. her separate, interconnected but conflicting sphere of identity
that he is not part of) and simultaneously reinforces another type of cultural
compartmentalization in the family by effectively reclaiming his wife’s species-being as a
tomato farmer. By destroying her art, the husband has, economically speaking, removed
negative externalities, streamlined production and consolidated his labor force. The
destruction and cremation of the Hiroshige painting is also the death of her old life in

38
Yamamoto, 18.
34
Japan (of which the haiku is emblematic) before she becomes the wife of a farmer and
unpaid employee, an act that returns her past to the past. At the same time, haiku
writing is explicitly connected in “Seventeen Syllables” to the stillborn child that Rosie’s
mother had given birth to in Japan prior to marrying her father in America. Like the
number of syllables in a haiku, her mother had “given birth to a stillborn son, who would
be seventeen now,”
39
one year for each syllable. By destroying her award, the husband
has killed her art (and symbolically, her unborn child who had been psychically linked
and emotionally resurrected by her haiku). Furthermore, the husband’s cremation also
signifies the way in which the wife’s Japanese culture had been delivered prematurely, a
convenient metaphor for her voided Japanese life. Her love for America, much like her
love for her husband, is a love that is largely unactualized and dwarfed by necessity.
Unlike the relationship she’d had with boy from “one of the well-to-do families in her
village”
40
with whom she’d fallen in love and become pregnant, her marriage to Rosie’s
father is not a romantic, adolescent gesture of love nor a piece of art. It is an economic
and cultural arrangement to preserve dignity, protect her family’s honor and also
perpetuate a feudal economic contract—an appropriation of the Asian American female
body and a cultural sublimation of her forbidden desire for her lost country, a lost time,
and a lost romance. For this reason, Rosie’s mother’s life is fractured, split into a
thousand pieces between two countries, two men, two children, two languages, two
versions of Japanese, two cultural identities and two parallel worlds that overlap,
intersect, cannibalize and conflict with each other. In fact, World War II helped coin a

39
Yamamoto, 18.
40
Yamamoto, 18.
35
Japanese American double consciousness that is in many ways similar to Rosie’s
mother’s parallel world.
In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois makes one of the first arguments of
cultural parallelism and double-consciousness about African Americans. According to Du
Bois, because black people in the South are deliberately excluded and disenfranchised
from American culture, even though they are Americans, (an exclusion that causes
feelings of dehumanization and dejection), black communities with the help of Jim Crow
laws, have no choice but to live in a systemically parallel world to the hegemonic world:
Thus, then and now, there stand in the South two separate worlds and separate
not simply in the higher realms of social intercourse, but also in church and
school, on railway and street-car, in hotels and theaters, in streets and city
sections, in books and newspapers, in asylums and jails, in hospitals and
graveyards.
41

Interestingly enough, despite the obvious difference in historical causality, the parallel
worlds of which Du Bois speaks are remarkably similar not only to Ichiro’s mother’s split
self, for example, in John Okada’s No-No Boy (who is both a permanent transient,
waiting to return to Japan after the war and a historical revisionist of World War II where
Japan, not America “wins” the war), but is also similar to the psychic affect of Japanese
internment camps where nikkeijin lived in separate, racialized, ramshackle government
buildings (projects) that are monitored (read: occupied) by military agents of white
supremacy whose mere existence reinforces and protects a parallel world separate from
white urban centers. In another essay entitled “Of the Meaning of Progress,” Du Bois

41
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Signet Classic, 1986 [1903]) 128.
36
writes about a veil separating black Americans from prosperity, which he calls
“Opportunity.”
42
Discrimination, according to Du Bois, even though irrational,
essentialistic and ignorant, still makes its victims question, disparage and even hate
themselves, ultimately lowering their expectations of their own achievement.
43
Many
Japanese Americans leave the internment camp in the same economically-
disadvantaged, culturally alienated and racially stigmatized existential condition as many
black Americans did during the Jim Crow era, which Du Bois describes as usually poor,
homeless, lacking property or savings, and forced to compete with college-educated
skilled white Americans who do not suffer the same obstacles.
44
The Asian American
historian, Ronald Takaki, describes nikkeijin double consciousness as the “twoness” of
being both American and Japanese:
Their lives and their identities were bifurcated between the land of their parents
and the land of their birth, folk stories about the peach boy Momotaro and
children’s tales about Jack and the Beanstalk, the Japanese love songs their
mothers sang in the kitchen and the popular songs they heard on the radio, the
summer obon dances and the weekend jitterbug dances, Japanese New Year’s
Day and Christmas, the annual kenjikai picnics and high-school outings, banzai
to the emperor’s health and the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United
States.
45

Even Nisei and Japanese American names became signifiers of their cultural
compartmentalization, often shortening, altering or Americanizing Japanese names from

42
Du Bois, 102.
43
Du Bois, 51.
44
Du Bois, 49.
45
Takaki, 214-215.
37
“Makoto to Mac, Isamu to Sam, and Chiyoji to George,” even going so far as to translate
their Japanese names into rough, English equivalents: Katsu became Victor, Yuriko
became Lily.
46

Part of what’s disturbing (and also intriguing) about the stigmatization of
Japanese Americans during and after the Internment is that for the first time since the
advent of slavery in America, another minority had become, to borrow a controversial
verb from Cornell West, “niggafied,” at least temporarily, denied many of the same rights
and privileges that black Americans were denied in the Jim Crow south, rights that
Japanese Americans once enjoyed but that became revoked by the Department of War
and a war-hysterical culture bent on racializing—and finally, removing—the so-called
enemy and whitewashing the West Coast until the coastal states had been wiped clean
of Japanese transnationality. In When the Emperor was Divine, Otsuka describes the
period immediately preceding deportation in the traditionally progressive Bay Area as
violently racist and chaotic for many Japanese Americans, collapsing the oversimplified
distinction of the West Coast and the South as a cultural polarization between racial
tolerance and multiculturalism on one hand and racial discrimination and black-white
racial conflict on the other: “One man’s house has been doused with gasoline and set
on fire while his family lay sleeping inside. Another man’s shed had been dynamited.
There had been shootings in the valley, and gravestone defacings, and unannounced
visitors knocking on doors in the middle of the night.”
47
In Houston’s memoir, she
argues that the December Riots at Manzanar were simply the final confrontation after
months of dehumanized Japanese Americans protesting the squalid living conditions,

46
Takaki, 215.
47
Otsuka, 112.
38
exploitative wages, militarized ghetto, subhuman food, substandard public sanitation and
poor or non-existent school system at the “relocation centers.” For her, the riots were
“inevitable,”
48
occurring exactly one year after the Japanese aerial assault on Pearl
Harbor:
Some have called this an anniversary demonstration organized by militantly pro-
Japan forces in the camp. It wasn’t as simple as that. Everything just came
boiling up at once. In the months before the riot the bells rang often at our mess
hall, sending out the calls for public meetings. They rang for higher wages, they
rang for better food, they rang for open revolt, for patriotism, for common sense,
and for a wholesale return to Japan.
49

Houston’s description of the December Riots, in this passage, reflects a number of
striking socioeconomic similarities with the underprivileged African American
communities in which the Watts Riots and the Rodney King Riots erupted, including the
militarization (overpolicing) of low-income neighborhoods, the lack of class mobility due
to poverty, cultural alienation and economic inequality, the lack of private space and the
subsequent policing of public space, the social and class stigmatization of racial profiling
by the LAPD and news outlets, the connection between Los Angeles housing covenants,
redlining and the ghettoization of urban minorities and the occupation of minority cultural
space (both in inner-city low-income neighborhoods, Japanese American internment
camps, and later, the entire country of Japan itself). In other words, the December Riots,
much like the Watts and Rodney King Riots, can be viewed on one level as a revolt
against white supremacy, inequality and economic stagnation and also a grassroots

48
Houston, 66.
49
Houston, 66.
39
struggle for social justice that was catalyzed by oppression. In Race Matters, Cornell
West argues that black cultural nihilism is the effect of white supremacy, increasing the
likelihood of crime, deviance and revolt, which shows striking historical and cultural
parallels with the December Riots:
Under these circumstances, black existential angst derives from the lived
experience of ontological wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white
supremacist beliefs and images permeating U.S. society and culture. These
beliefs and images attack black intelligence, black ability, black beauty, and black
character daily in subtle and not-so-subtle ways . . . Ought we to be surprised
that black youths isolated from the labor market, marginalized by decrepit urban
schools, devalued by alienating ideals of Euro-American beauty, and targeted by
an unprecedented drug invasion exhibit high rates of crime and teenage
pregnancy?
50

Without oversimplifying the complex factors involved in urban poverty, civil disobedience,
racist nationalist narratives about the Other or full-scale riots, the point is that whether
the riots took place in the streets of Los Angeles or in the concrete bunkers of the Heart
Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming, what’s striking (and by that, I mean, heart-
breaking) is the way in which Japanese Americans and African Americans once shared
a temporary bond of dehumanization, economic stagnation, stigmatization, oppression,
paralysis, spatial militarization, cultural and familial fragmentation and collective revolt. It
is easy to see why Houston described the Japanese internment as an “open insult to that

50
Cornell West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994 [1993]) 27, 85.
40
other, private self, a slap in the face you were powerless to challenge.”
51
Unfortunately,
cultural, racial and social paralysis would not disappear even after the Japanese
internment.
Like for many people of color, professional mobility for Japanese Americans
before and after WWII was constrained at best and virtually non-existent at worse. For
example, when the mother in When the Emperor was Divine finally finds work after the
Internment, cleaning rich, white people’s homes (signifying her own complicity in the self-
cleansing of the stains of American racism), she discovers that the secret to keeping her
job (since nikkeijin have little or no job protection after the war) is simply to “ . . . just
smile and say yes ma’am and no ma’am and do as you’re told,
52
advice which echoes
both the performative, political and subversive elements of shucking and jiving during
slavery. Furthermore, a cogent argument can be made that the Japanese Internment
was not only a codified act of institutional racism and legislated racial incarceration, but
also state-sanctioned ownership of the bodies of Japanese Americans (proven in the
forced displacement of Japanese American families) whose constitutional rights of due
process, freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude and equal protection derived from
the fifth, thirteenth and fourteenth Amendments, for example, were rescinded due to the
racialized narrative of nikkeibeijin as both subhuman and subversive, an act of
dehumanization and authoritarianism that, according to Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary
of War, tore a “tremendous hole in the Constitution.”
53
In When the Emperor was Divine,
the expanded state control over the bodies of Japanese Americans is not only physical,

51
Houston, 30.
52
Otsuka, 129.
53
Takaki, 390.
41
but also cultural and linguistic too. For example, underneath the post-scriptum in one of
the letters that the father sends the family in Topaz, there is a “line of text that had been
blacked out by censors,”
54
which symbolizes not only the white control of bodies of color
(because the physical letter has been altered by hegemonic cultural redaction, thereby
disrupting both its meaning and reception), but also the implies the control of Japanese
American cultural production through the control of language (which is a type of cultural
and literary materiality), an act of cultural excision that allows the hegemonic body politic
to simultaneously evade its own moral agency through the censorship of its victims.
While slavery and the Japanese Internment are profoundly different in numerous ways,
both involve the bodily control, emotional and spiritual dehumanization, the (attempted)
ancestral, genealogical and linguistic obliteration and the constitutional abrogation of
people of color. The potentiality for Japanese American double-consciousness,
therefore, is deeply rooted in the ephemeral but systemic oppression and deracination of
Japanese cultural identity that mimics Jim Crow laws in form and substance.
In Kogawa’s Obasan, the internment of Canadian Japanese has an even more
disturbing political valence than cultural quarantine or cultural compartmentalization.
Echoing Ian Alistair Mackenzie, the Canadian liberal Minister of Veteran Affairs who
pandered to racist, anti-Japanese constituents, the forced displacement of Japanese
Canadian citizens is not done simply under the pretext of securing Canadian coastlines
or protecting nikkeibeijin—as the American Department of War postured—but rather to
permanently remove them so that “these Japanese shall not come back here . . .”
55
This
language reflects not only the trope of the permanent Asian foreigner (proven in the

54
Otsuka, 42.
55
Kogawa, 112.
42
identification of nikkeijin as “Japanese,” not “Canadians of Japanese heritage” or
“Japanese Canadians” or simply “Canadians”) but implies a complete and systematic
purging of Japanese culture from the entire country, many of whom were Canadian
citizens. Syntactically, this is the language of ethnic cleansing through visual erasure.
Additionally, Obasan reconstructs the spatial dehumanization of Japanese-Canadian
citizens, virtually all of whom lived in temporary livestock buildings that were
“impregnated with smell of ancient manure . . . [and where] the toilets are just a sheet
metal trough . . . [without] partitions or seats.”
56
As in the case of Journey to Topaz,
Japanese Canadians become both metaphorically and literally subhuman, forced to live
temporarily in industrial animal shelters before their eventual deportation to rural ghost
towns that are reverse cultural signifiers of the Japanese haunting of Canada during the
war. And as Avery Gordon points out in her influential, interdisciplinary book, Ghostly
Matters, haunting is a major weapon “wielded by the military in the war to steal and own
people’s hands, feet, heads, and hearts,”
57
where the boundaries of “rational and
irrational, fact and fiction, subjectivity and objectivity, person and system, force and
effect, conscious and unconscious, knowing and not knowing are constitutively
unstable.”
58
Furthermore, the housing of cultural prisoners in half-open stalls destroys
Japanese Canadian private space, merging private and public space into an exposed
site of state-sanctioned surveillance that entitles the Canadian government to police
sexual relations and interrupt Japanese reproduction from taking place (another level of
control over the bodies of people of color), which is tantamount to imposing cultural

56
Kogawa, 114-116.
57
Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008 [1997]) 125.
58
Gordon, 97.
43
sterilization on Japanese Canadians. In Obasan, Canadian constables stand guard at
the doorways of prisoner bunks. “They wouldn’t let me or any ‘Jap females’ into the
men’s building. There are constables at the doors—‘to prevent further propagation of
the species,’ it said in the newspaper.”
59
Even more devastating than the intentional
dehumanization of nikkeijin during WWII is the lingering affect of that dehumanization
after internment which perpetuates cultural modalities of paralysis, disempowerment and
self-loathing, cultural attributes that African American scholars like Cornell West have
used to describe the possible cultural nihilism of economically depressed,
underprivileged, African American neighborhoods. Furthermore, the motif of paralysis is
clear in Obasan with Naomi’s father whose arm has become numb. Like a slow burn,
the “numbness is spreading . . . [and it’s not ] his heart.”
60
In Mura’s Where the Body
Meets Memory, the aftermath of the Japanese internment is not only paralysis, but also
emasculation and resignation for many male survivors. The camps had:
emasculated the Issei fathers, at least in the eyes of their sons. After the camps
my grandfather ceased to be a father figure to my father, he was no longer the
frightening authority that chased my father around the yard with a two-by-four.
He had nothing for himself, he was completely irrelevant to the choices my father
was making in that he had no power to stop them, no power to voice his
opposition . . .
61

The emasculation of Mura’s grandfather as a product of forced deportation, cultural
amnesia, racial demonization, permanent social stigma and physical powerlessness to a

59
Kogawa, 116.
60
Okada, 122.
61
Mura, 259.
44
racializing nation-state is interconnected to his father’s disillusionment with his
grandfather and the erosion of his grandfather’s authority, all of which insinuates a
secondary level of fragmentation of the Japanese American family, split not only
between Nisei and Sansei, the haunted and the forgetful, but also between victims and
rebels. According to George Takaki, some former male internees not only felt
stigmatized from the Japanese internment, but they also felt like rape victims of the US
Government.
62
For many Japanese American families, they still had not come back yet
from the internment even though they had physically returned home.
During World War II, nikkeibeijin suffered from a systemic discrimination that was
the very embodiment of institutional racism: victims of racist cultural narratives, forced to
live in a marginalized, militarized space in America that was occupied by a white
supremacist military state, and atomic guinea pigs in a racist, military experiment in the
Pacific Rim that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Even after his presidency,
Roosevelt saw Japanese American immigration in America as a prelude to race wars
between two antithetical cultures, not only implying the inassimilability of Japanese
Americans but also echoing the same language of cultural and racial incompatibility of
the Jim Crow era.
63
After the armistice, many Japanese American were denied personal
loans, mortgages for houses in white neighborhoods and jobs for which they were
overqualified. John Okada’s No-No Boy captures this institutional racism well:
They’ll find that they still can’t buy a house in Broadmoor even with a million
stones in the bank. They’ll see themselves getting passed up for jobs by white
fellows not quite so bright but white. They’ll take a trip up to some resort, thinking

62
Takaki, 484-485.
63
Takaki, 202.
45
this is God’s green land of democracy for which I killed a dozen Krauts, and get
kicked in the face . . .
64

The prospect of being Japanese American in an institutionally racist country after the war
meant standing on the outside of American culture looking in, both an invader and an
outcast in one’s own land. Furthermore, the class and cultural exclusion expressed in
this passage mirrors America’s much longer history of minority disenfranchisement. In
American cities, Japanese Americans were refused entrance into movie theaters or
seated with African Americans (which reinforces their temporary class juxtaposition).
65

Japanese Americans were attacked with stones and snowballs, their stores were
vandalized, targets of both public humiliation and arson.
66
Obviously, though not
comparable to slavery in intensity, causality or duration, for a brief period in time, there
appears to have been a fascinating subaltern interconnectivity between Japanese
Americans and Black Americans as nikkeijin became the new (old) racial scapegoat of
America during World War II, forced to cultivate the same double consciousness that
black Americans had done from Reconstruction onward, a process of cultural self-
estrangement by which one views one’s self (and judges one’s self) through the eyes of
people who hate them. According to Du Bois:
[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight
in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but
only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar
sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self

64
Okada, 227.
65
Takaki, 182.
66
Takaki, 182.
46
through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that
look on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness . . .
67

Of course, the internment of Japanese Americans was temporary, but the phenomenon
of double-consciousness continued to exist for many nikkeibeijns living in the West
Coast long after the Japanese Internment was over. Since then, Japanese Americans
have by and large achieved success both through assimilation, the redefinition of cultural
identification and the acquisition of cultural capital in America that would never be so
simple and so immediate for African Americans for various reasons, the largest being
the continued and prolonged institutionalized prejudice that began with slavery,
continued with poll taxes, Jim Crow legislation, literacy and genealogical tests, and voter
suppression, to name a few examples. Nevertheless, even if the Japanese internment
had an identifiable expiration date, and even if it appears connected to a specific time in
American history, Japanese American double consciousness became institutionalized
with the building of relocation centers, the forced erasure of family artifacts (which is a
way of destroying collective memory) and the seizure of Japanese American capital,
which dwarfed and froze Japanese American mobility, relegating them to the cultural
margins of society and engendering a double Japanese American Diaspora (dispersed
from Japan physically and from America culturally). The parallel of Japanese Americans
double-consciousness is stunning because it underscores the way in which hegemonic,
state-sanctioned violence, whether through the local police department, a Klan chapter
or the American industrial complex, can be used to grossly oversimplify the definitions of
any culturally constructed war, separating people into patriots and spies, citizens and

67
Du Bois, 45.
47
criminals, Americans and foreigners—a process that often involves warping definitions of
racial and cultural identity in order to insert people into a fluid nationalist/nativist/racist
Manichean template of allies and enemies that shifts from war to war, from race to race,
and from city to city. This process almost always involves the simplification and the
essentialization of ethnic and racial complexity and the modification and reinvention of
national, civic and class narratives to justify subjugation, inequality and brutality of the
Other (even American citizens) as a “necessary” evil of military, mob or police theater—
all manifestations of war and white supremacy, interestingly enough. In this way,
Japanese American double consciousness should be seen as a type of cultural
compartmentalization that is both forced upon nikkeibeijin by white supremacy through
the internment, cultural amnesia, forced deportation, racist national narratives of
universal Japanese culpability and systemic North American xenofication but also an
organically constructed strategy of cultural flexibility and survival within the nikkeijin
community itself.
Of course, some Asian American artists and critics like Frank Chin, Jeffrey Chan,
Lawson Inada and Shawn Wong, for example, explicitly reject the existence of double
consciousness in the Asian American community. In their well-known anthology,
Aiiieeeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers, they argue in the essay “An
Introduction to Chinese- and Japanese American Literature” that authentic Japanese
American writers like Toshio Mori, John Okada, Mine Okubo and Lawson Inada, all “see
through the phoniness of the concept of the dual personality and reject it.”
68
According
to the anthology’s introduction, Japanese American writers, like other Asian American

68
Frank Chin, et al., Aiiieeeee! (New York: Anchor Books, 1974) 17.
48
writers, have been “rejecting the concept of the dual identity and asserting a Nisei
identity that was neither Japanese nor white European”
69
since the 1920’s, in part
because there is no cultural continuity from Asian motherland to democratic America.
The myth, according to the editors, is that “Asian Americans have maintained cultural
integrity as Asians, that there is some strange continuity between the great high culture
of a China that hasn’t existed for five hundred years and the American-born Asian.”
70
In
the follow-up anthology, Frank Chin writes in his essay “Come All Ye Asian American
Writers of the Real and Fake” that the trope of the Asian American dual personality is a
“ . . . white racist stereotype . . . “
71
It’s not clear, however, whether this rejection of the
dual personality in Asian writing is an empirical rejection or a deontic rejection. In other
words, is Chin arguing that the cultural phenomenon of dual identity has never existed or
that is shouldn’t exist? And here are some other unanswered questions: Is dual identity
the same thing as double consciousness? If it is, do the editors of Aiiieeeee! reject
African American double consciousness too? If it isn’t, how is something like Nisei
identity, for example, constructed then if a writer is neither Japanese nor white? How is
there no cultural sedimentation of the motherland in America? What happens to Asian
culture once it crosses over into America and why do Asian Americans not have the
ability to construct social structures at the same time these structures partially shape
their new cultural identity? Are the editors actually trying to pretend that Asian
languages are never retained in America, and is not language a bedrock of cultural
identification? And what does it mean to be Asian American when one does not identify

69
Chin, et al., 19.
70
Chin, et al., 7.
71
Frank Chin, “Come All Ye Asian American of the Real and Fake,” The Big Aiiieeeee!
(New York: Meridian Books, 1991) 51.
49
as Asian at all as the introduction indicated? How is the construction of Asianness even
defined in Aiiieeeee! then? Additionally, what warrants do the editors have to make such
claims about Asian American cultural identity at all when their anthology clearly
privileges Chinese and Japanese American cultural production while simultaneously
excluding the writing of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian,
Mongolian, Laotian and Singaporean American writers? Is it problematic that there is
not a single South Asian writer in the anthology or is this more of a geosemantic issue in
terms of what constituted Asia and what didn’t in the mid-70’s? Is it problematic that
female writers represent only a ¼ of the contributors in the entire anthology? Related to
this last point, to what extent is Aiiieeeee! a masculinist anthology designed to glorify
and consolidate Chinese, Japanese and Filipino male Asian American writers?
One of the problems with Aiiieeeee! is that it is both understandably sensitive to
white supremacy (which is a type of racist essentialism), and yet also complicit in the re-
essentialization of Asian American identity by simplifying its inherent heterogeneity into
three cultures. This is clear in the very first sentence which claims that “Asian
Americans are not one people but several—Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans
and Fillipino Americans . . . They have evolved cultures and sensibilities distinctly not
Chinese or Japanese and distinctly not white American.”
72
Not only have the editors
created an Asian hierarchy of cultural value according to the subjective criterion of
cultural evolution, which becomes a pretext for literary ethnocentrism, but additionally,
they have simultaneously marginalized all Asian American cultural production that falls
outside of the anthology’s purview while nominating themselves as the gatekeepers and

72
Chin, et al., ix.
50
the literary vanguard of Asian American writing in general, making Aiiieeeee! partially a
work of masculinist and intraracist ideology. Additionally, part of what is so problematic
about Aiiieeeee! involves the intrinsic power to anthologize literature, which includes the
power to exclude subaltern modalities, the power to privilege and reinforce pre-existing
dominant cultural narratives within the Asian American literary community, and the
power to claim the right of cultural and racial representation on behalf of the entire Asian
American community. According to the cover of Aiiieeeee!, Chinese American,
Japanese American and Filipino American writing is suddenly synecdoche for all Asian
American writing since it is an “anthology of Asian American writers.” One invidious
implication of the cover is that all Asian American writing produced by authors who aren’t
Chinese, Japanese or Fillipino aren’t Asian American. At the very least, their literature
has not “evolved” yet according to the editorial implications of the anthology.
Furthermore, and more to the point, Aiiieeeee! insists on the very language it aims to
disarm. Claiming univocality, the preface tells us that it “is fifty years of our whole
voice.”
73
While the anthology rejects the racial and cultural totalization of Asian
American culture from white supremacy, the anthology simultaneously invokes the
language of racial and cultural totalization in its editorial content, claiming to represent
and speak for Asian American culture and Asian American writing from the inside,
implicitly because of the right of cultural authenticity. At the same time, as Asian
American scholars like David L. Eng have pointed out, the editors of Aiiieeeee simply
advocate for an updated, male hegemonic framework that combines militant ethnic
nationalism with a mandatory heterosexuality:

73
Chin, et al., x.
51
Paradoxically, this reification of a strident cultural nationalism, with its doctrine of
compulsory heterosexuality and cultural authenticity, mirrors at once the
dominant heterosexist and racist structures through which the Asian American
male is historically feminized and rendered self-hating in the first place. Not to
question cultural nationalism’s heterosexist discourse of authenticity, in other
words, reinscribes the same mechanisms of identification that support
oppression in the first instance.
74

Thus, Chin and the other male editors of Aiiieeeee! ultimately mirror the very hegemonic
framework their anthology contests, replacing the so-called emasculating, culturally
inauthentic Asian American female narrative with a chauvinistic, heterosexist,
homophobic, self-heroicizing Asian American male narrative. Lastly, in the introductory
essay’s defense of John Okada’s No-No Boy and its intrinsic orality, Aiiieeeee! also
tacitly accepts the very thing it rejects, namely double consciousness, the dual identity
and the cultural schizophrenia of Asian American writing:
John Okada writes from an oral tradition he hears all the time, and talks his
writing onto the page. To judge Okada’s writing by the white criterion of silent
reading of the printed word is wrong. Listen as you read Okada or any other
Asian American writer. Okada changes voices and characters inside his
sentences, running off free form but shaping all the time. These voice changes
grate against the white tradition of tonal uniformity and character consistency . . .

74
David Eng, Racial Castration (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001) 24.

52
The style itself is an expression of the multivoiced schizophrenia of the Japanese
American compressed into an organic whole. It’s crazy, but it’s not madness.
75

This passage reads as a cultural defense of Okada’s polyphonic stylization and textual
multivocality, and yet the editors do not localize this “multivoicced schizophrenia” to
Okada exclusively. Instead, they argue that Okada’s orality, his changing of voices, his
stylistic and tonal multivocality is like “any other Asian American writer,” and the reader’s
only responsibility is to listen to the prose. Thus, while Aiiieeeee!’s editors reject the
trope of the dual identity in Asian American writing in theory, they universally defend it in
practice when it involves one of their own writers.
While cultural fragmentation or compartmentalized Asian (American) identity is
often both a manifestation of institutional racism and also a defense mechanism against
institutional racism (not to mention the product of cultural amputation and forced
amnesia), cultural compartmentalization, double consciousness and ontological
multiplicity in the Asian American literary imagination does not have to be
disempowering at all. In the past seventy years, there has been considerable upward
mobility and cultural and ontological flexibility for many, but certainly not all, Asian
Americans, who managed to succeed in spite of rampant state-sanctioned racialization,
a residual war hysteria, former redistribution of nikkeibeijin private property and former
myriad racial-exclusion laws. The Asian and Asian American literary imagination has
helped to slowly redefine the cultural valences of cultural compartmentalization into a
strategy of identarian flexibility and ontological multiplicity. In Natsuo Kirino’s feminist
thriller, Out, the flexibility of Japanese ontology is a powerful, provocative strategy for

75
Chin, et al., 25.
53
surviving trauma, becoming an operative metaphor and blueprint for the cultural
compartmentalization of Asian American identity and its vast, imbricated complexities.
Out is the story of four bento factory workers who become involved in a collective cover-
up when Yayoi, in a fit of rage, strangles her profligate husband, Kenji—an abusive,
good-for-nothing alcoholic who gambles away their savings in pursuit of Anna, an
attractive Chinese prostitute (a fatal attraction which ironically delegitimates the concept
of nihonjinron). After the murder, Masako, Yayoi, Kuniko and Yoshie work together to
cut up Kenji’s body into tiny pieces before disseminating his dismembered body
throughout Tokyo, a literal deconstruction of the male body politic that becomes
strangely empowering for Yayoi and financially lucrative for the women as they
eventually begin dismembering yakuza victims for profit. In Out, each woman embodies
one or a combination of Japanese cultural clichés (e.g., the overworked employee, the
alienated urbanite, the emotionally vapid label whore, the unappreciated house wife, the
sexual victim of patriarchy, the exploited, working-class factory worker, and the family
slave) but also defies these same stereotypes through violence, in this case, by
chopping up men’s bodies (many of them, morally questionable themselves), a secret
alternative identity that literally erases through atomization the violence of patriarchy
while also embodying the trope of cultural compartmentalization as double, multiple or
split lives (pun intended).
Out is replete with multiple characterization. Virtually every single character has
a double or multiple identity, instantiating Roland Kelt’s pop cultural anthropological
argument about Tatemae and Honne in Japanese society. Satake, for example, the
former yakuza thug and murderer whose homicidal instincts became dormant after he
54
raped and murdered his last victim, an identity he successfully compartmentalized, seals
his bloody past in order not to relapse to his former sociopathic life:
It wasn’t until some years later that he realized that the intensity of the moment
when he’d killed her had somehow shut him off from the more mundane
experience. When you discovered your limits, it seemed you sealed the
knowledge away, and ever since, Satake had been very careful not to break the
seal. No one else could really know the self-control this required or the
loneliness it entailed. Still, since they could never see this hidden self, women
came to him, defenses down, and became his pets.
76

After Satake is wrongfully blamed for the death of Yayoi’s husband (who coincidentally
used to frequent Satake’s illegal baccarat casino in pursuit of Anna), Satake’s seal of
self-control breaks and he goes on a killing spree to punish the four women who
accidentally framed him. Although Satake is a murderer, he is also a loving father figure
to his most successful escort, Anna, a contradiction even she finds uncanny.
77
Satake’s
cultural compartmentalization is repressive in nature because he had buried his other
identity as a blood-thirsty killer, structural because his hidden and pathologically violent
self still exists inside of him (latent and compartmentalized but also unstable and
dangerous), but also sublimated because such a psychic diversion allows him to function
in society without self-destructing as he does at the end of the novel.
For Yayoi, the mirror becomes an optic metaphor of her own multiplicity: “The
thought occurred Yayoi Yamamoto as she looked at her naked, thirty-four-year-old body
in the full-length mirror . . . She shook her head and the naked woman in the mirror

76
Kirino, 38.
77
Kirino, 234.
55
shook hers as well.”
78
Lacan, in his essay, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I
Function,” argues that mirror reflections play an important role in the “spatial capture
manifested in the mirror stage” because they reveal the “organic inadequacy” of the
“natural reality” of human beings, playing an important role in the mirror stage as an
imagos whose primary function is to “establish a relationship between an organism and
its reality—or as they say, between the Innenwelt and Umwelt,”
79
language which
sounds similar in several ways to Tatemae and Honne. According to Lacan, the mirror
stage becomes a “drama whose internal pressure pushes precipitously from
insufficiency to anticipation—and, for the subject caught up in the lure of spatial
identification, turns out fantasies that proceed from a fragmented image of the body to
what I will call an ‘orthopedic’ form of its totality . . .”
80
The mirror, for Yayoi, thus, is her
inner world externalized and transformed into her own spatial identification.
At the same time, contrary to Lacanian theory, this scene becomes a
manifestation of her physical and psychic fragmentation. Not only is Yayoi’s reflection
imply her own split self between her material and visual self, her external beauty and her
inner hatred, her relative youth and sinking feeling of mortality, but it also suggests a
parallel world between the fluid one-dimensional Yayoi inside the mirror and the
vulnerable, conflicted, emotionally-entangled Yayoi in the flesh, a chasm that divides her
into separate entities and symbolizes her own atomization into a million, shifting
reflections. Each and every oppositional version of Yayoi appears to live in a separate
world, united by her own fractured existence, her split self and her collective memory.

78
Kirino, 44.
79
Jacques Lacan, Écrits (New York: Norton, 2006 [2002, 1999, 1971, 1970, 1966]) 77-
78.
80
Lacan, 78.
56
Even the characterization of Masako in Out exemplifies the relativistic, overlapping and
fractured cultural identity that is always negotiating different social spheres. For her,
these roles are unavoidable: “Masako felt as if she were a ping-pong ball, bouncing
back and forth between her family and her office and totally alone in both places. There
was nowhere to hide and no way out.”
81
While Masako is the undisputed leader and
union boss of the four female butchers, she is also an estranged mom and ignored wife,
a dynamic but contradictory life that has been compartmentalized with her former identity
as a successful (but sexually harassed) executive for a high-profile company. Part of the
psychological utility of cultural compartmentalization is the way in which it allows a
character to go back and forth between competing spheres and psychic partitions with
amazing dexterity. The image of Masako’s ping-pong ball also typifies the possible
movement between conflicting roles as both a victim of patriarchy and sexism in the
workplace, power broker, diplomat, office martyr, estranged mother and ignored
housewife, organizer, go-between, head butcher and disciplinarian, and sudden heroine
at the end of the novel. Masako’s cultural and existential compartmentalization reflects a
deliberate strategy to reconcile, spatialize and balance a series of split, conflicting
cultural identities. Masako and Satake’s attraction to each other in Out, while both
disturbing and ultimately, self-destructive, is related to their fractured identities which
they both identify and reflect in each other:
“There’s something wrong with you,” she said, “something broken inside.”

81
Kirino, 157.
57
“Of course there is,” he said, stroking his hair. “Just like there’s something
broken in you. I knew it the first time I saw you.”
82

While Masako, like Satake, has a split (i.e. “broken”) self, and while both characters have
culturally compartmentalized, even sublimated their multiple identities in order to function
in society (or in Satake’s case, underneath society in the red light district), the major
difference is that Masako’s past involves sexism, dehumanization and also financial
prosperity, while Satake’s past involves rape, torture and murder. In other words, both
characters culturally compartmentalize different identities and histories, but their psychic
partitions are realized for entirely different reasons. Masako’s compartmentalization,
even after she’s raped and beaten up by Satake, is the way she survives sexual assault,
which does not (and cannot) erase the emotional trauma of that event but rather assigns
and links this trauma to a specific time and space. Or said another way, the temporality
of trauma is the compartmentalization of trauma.
At the novel’s dénouement, after Masako kills Satake in an abandoned factory
(which is not only the perfect mis-en-scène for a gritty thriller but also the perfect
metaphor of the moral vacancy of capitalism), Masako looks in the mirror, repeating
Yoshie’s Lacanian epiphany: “The sunglasses hid most of the swelling, but she watched
the woman in the mirror pull her jacket tightly about her, trying to hide the pain inside.”
83

Not only does Out repeat the trope of the psychoanalytic gaze, but it also serves to split
Masako’s self into an objective and subjective perspectives, a first person and third
person modality, a primary and a reflective reality, making the trope of cultural
compartmentalization existentially literal. The mirror reflects what Masako is, which is

82
Kirino, 388.
83
Kirino, 399
58
polymorphous. The mirror is the thing it reflects, which is the totality of contradictory
professional spheres, emotional realities and conflicting microcultures. But the mirror
also prevents what it reifies, which is the possibility of reunion between a Lacanian
organism and its reflected reality. Masako’s reflection distances herself from the real
pain inside her own body, both multiplying her visual identity and also separating it from
her physical identification. For the characters in Out, cultural compartmentalization is
part of a conscious survival strategy involved in the pinning of psychic trauma to a
specific space/time, repressing instincts of self-destruction and murder, juggling multiple
gender and sexual roles, intersecting and separating spheres of cultural, professional
and class subjectivities and negotiating fluid and fixed cultural identities. While certainly
gruesome and violent, this example of cultural compartmentalization is “positive”
because it is conscious, deliberate and self-determined.
A second, very brief examination of the positive narrative potentiality of cultural
compartmentalization can be seen in one of John Pham’s graphic novels. Prima facie,
Sublife appears utterly unrelated to the trope of cultural compartmentalization. Upon
further, inspection, however, Sublife is actually an episodic narrative of the intersecting
lives of Angelenos, a graphic representation of cultural compartmentalization expanded
to a sprawling urban center that embodies not only cultural schizophrenia and the
partitioning of cultural, class and racial identity, but also the narrative and spatial fluidity
between separate but interconnected storylines, neighborhoods, and characters. In
Sublife, the characters include a cat that is chased by neighborhood dogs (an analogy of
white supremacy), a family of white supremacists training their dog to attack minorities
(and protect a specific racial narrative of the city that is somehow connected to stray
59
animals and procreating minorities), a spaceship story sandwiching the graphic novel
about a captain making contact with a humanoid extraterrestrial (which appears
thematically disconnected at first, but by the end of the graphic novel becomes an
analogy for Asian American cultural displacement and also a xenophobic corrective
since the lost captain befriends the “alien”), and an Asian American “family” with a father
whose students mock and disrespect him when he teaches American history
(symbolizing the historical ignorance, and amnesia, of American culture), a son who
covers his face with a plastic bag (both an attempt to subvert racial legibility and cultural
totalization but also a signifier of self-willed blindness to the outside world, which
reinforces the historical and cultural amnesia of his father’s students), and a female
tenant who loses track of time and wears facial concealer religiously (emphasizing both
narrative atemporality, racial erasure and the politics of white approximation). Strangely
enough, as both a symbol of cultural and racial performativity and a place of mediated
visual identity, Los Angeles is actually the perfect metaphor of cultural
compartmentalization since it is an ongoing cultural laboratory of hypperreality, a case
study of spatial, class and cultural fragmentation where neighborhoods are
(dis)connected by highways, and also a contestatory site of racial and cultural identity.
Los Angeles is also the perfect metaphor of cultural splitting and the
compartmentalization of Asian American identity. In much the same way that
Bertolucci’s Besieged employs an Italian villa that is both the mis-en-scène and also
simultaneously a character, Los Angeles is both the background of Sublife and also a
patchwork multicultural identity. In Sublife, Los Angeles becomes a site of racial, class
and cultural simultaneity, a fractured but culturally intersecting and spatially sutured
60
entity. In other words, LA is a just another complex character. Furthermore, the lack of
Sublife’s authorship (there are no names, no authorial attribution on the cover page, no
author credits or introduction), no page numbers, and no coherent narrative structure,
such as a table of contents or plot loop, not to mention that several characters don’t even
have names but instead are known as A___ and B___, all of these details spell out the
thematic universality of the graphic novel through the avoidance of specificity
(highlighting, among other things, class conflict and cultural friction in LA,) and also
showcase the amorphousness (qua structurelessness) and timelessness (qua
atemporality) of the thematization in Sublife. Time cannot be calculated through space
and space cannot be calculated through time in the graphic novel’s own narrative. Even
more importantly, the lack of privileged authorship opens up a ken of contrapuntal voices
in Sublife where seemingly separate identities, characters, neighborhoods, time-frames
and cultural narratives become part of a larger metanarrative, connected implicitly
through episodic continuity and intersection and connected physically through the book
itself, creating a supracultural identity that is strikingly similar to the earlier sketches of
cultural compartmentalization in this chapter.
A third and final examination of the positive narrative, structural and
characterological potentiality of cultural compartmentalization is Miguel Syjuco’s
Ilustrado. A novel that combines elements of postmodernism (self-consciousness, non-
linearity, fragmented plot structure, the metafictional narrative of the MFA Columbia
student, Miguel Syjuco) with elements of Filipino pop culture, New York city clichés, the
trope of the bicultural (upper-class) Asian expat and the culturally displaced Filipino
writer, Ilustrado is everything and the kitchen sink. Reading Ilustrado is a contrapuntal
61
experience, like listening to a Bach fugue on the car stereo while being stuck in a traffic
jam in Manila at rush hour, a million cars honking at the same time. While Ilustrado is
certainly both a site of narrative fragmentation, cultural polyvocality and identarian
intersectionality, perhaps the book’s most compelling feature however, at least in the
purview of this chapter is the novelistic technology of portraiture. Ilustrado constructs
Salvador Crispin—the narrator’s mentor and biographical object—through aggregation.
Instead of employing realism to sketch a fictionalized biography of Crispin that would
normally rely on a superimposed narrative arc to create a sense of movement and a
superficial interconnectivity of anecdotes, Miguel Syjuco the writer/narrator develops
character structurally through literary pastiche: res media scenes between Miguel Syjuco
the MFA student (narrator) and Crispin the famous expat novelist, excerpts from
Crispin’s fictional essays (e.g., Tao, Crucifictions), poems (e.g. “Self-Addressed
Stamped Envelope”), novels (Manila Noir, Kapatid, QC Nights, Ay Naku!,The Bridges
Ablaze and the self-ironically titled The Enlightened, a direct translation of Miguel the
author’s novel), Crispin’s pseudoautobiography, Autoplagiarist, Crispin’s “legitimate”
autobiography, My Phillipine Islands, newspaper interviews with Crispin, scenes of
Miguel the narrator traveling through New York and Manila to interview Crispin’s family
and research Crispin’s childhood, Filipino celebrity and political blogs, text messages,
excerpts from the narrator’s own unfinished biography of Crispin entitled Eight Lives
Lived, emails from Crispin and the narrator’s girlfriend, and a slew of articles, editorials
and book reviews disparaging both Crispin and his novels. In this way, the reader
actively participates in the creative assembly of Salvador Crispin’s biographical fiction,
bearing witness to the narrator’s protean construction. Through both direct contact with
62
Crispin’s own writing, through mediated contact with Crispin through the (unreliable)
narrator and his evolving biographical project, and through reflected contact with Crispin
through print, digital and social media, the reader is forced to connect the pieces of
Salvador Crispin’s atomized portrait like a photographic jigsaw puzzle. Even the voices
of Miguel the narrator and his ex-girlfriend, Madison, help refract Crispin indirectly (if only
as a reflective surface), making the other voices intrinsic parts of Crispin’s portraiture. In
Ilustrado as in Bach fugues, the existential and vocal counterpoint, while containing
many separate voices, is still part of the same song.
Miguel Syjuco the writer also establishes polyvocality graphically in Ilustrado by
separating the voices according to font. There is the media res font, the font used to
help the reader identify the Miguel Syjuco as narrative subject. Then, there is the media
font (Times New Roman) used expressly for newspapers. The third font is used
exclusively as a fictional excerpt font to excerpt a passage from one of Salvador
Crispin’s works (graphically speaking, Ilustrado does not change fonts between non-
fictional and fictional Crispin excerpts, thus, blurring the boundaries between fictionality
and non-fictionality). The fourth font is actually an italicization of the first font, used to
transform Miguel Syjuco the narrator from narrative subject to narrative object (switching
from first person to third person). A fifth font is the internet/blog media font. A sixth font
is the email font. By integrating a number of different biographical sources (some of
which are supposed to be real, others fake, but all of which are obviously fictive
constructions of fictional and non-fictional sources), and by mixing contrasting fonts,
Ilustrado reveals itself as a literary and structural exemplar of cultural
compartmentalization and cultural polyvocality. The novel becomes a place of conflict
63
and confluence of literary subjectivities by giving readers multiple narrative subjects,
multiple narrative objects and narrative strands, multiple (auto)biographies, fictions and
characters that are all, in a sense, rewritten over and over again, not only revisiting old
scenes, but reconstructing character sketches with new details. Every “chapter” is an
interplay of cultures, voices, sources, roles and girlfriends (both spectral girlfriends from
the past like Madison that haunt the narrator and his current romantic interest in the
Philippines). At the same time, the intersectionality, the conflict and the imbrication of
voices, characters, narratives and constructed fictions are reconciled inorganically by the
physical connection of Ilustrado as a unified work of fiction and the narrative technology
of Miguel the biographer who compiles these narrative strands, sometimes even half-
hazardly, a clumsy process of constructive aggregation that collates disparate narrative
threads into a tangential, interconnected but non-linear novel of circular fictionality.
Additionally, Ilustrado conflates the novelistic subject and the novelistic object,
the narrative “I” and the biographical “I”, the subjective “I and the objective “I” through
metafictionality. Miguel Syjuco the author becomes indistinguishable at times with Miguel
Syjuco the narrator since both share the same name and many similar life experiences.
As in the case of virtually all metafictional narratives, it’s never clear where the borders
between autobiography and fiction are in Ilustrado, blurring both the autobiographical
and the fictional aspects of the novel until both become inseparable. Additionally, Miguel
the narrator blurs with Crispin, the literary object, since they are both writing the same
novel (Ilustrado, The Enlightened), one version in English, another in Spanish,
suggesting that on one important level, Crispin is actually a translated text of Miguel
Syjuco. Considering that Miguel Syjuco the author has written a novel narrated by
64
Miguel Syjuco the narrator who is writing a biography of Salvador Crispin (and by that, I
mean, converting both his experiences, his memory and his research on Salvador
Crispon into a novel in English, a language that is not even their native tongue),
translation becomes the operative word of ontological compartmentalization in this novel.
Furthermore, Ilustrado blurs episodic realism, verisimilitude and hyperreality:
That was one of the lovers’ things Madison and I did, our own affectation of
Atlantic academia: we referenced fictional characters as if they were people to
learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us
to understand. We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world,
populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity—
governing and inspiring themselves with all the lucidity with which we rendered
them.
84

Clearly, the characters are “real” enough to be aware of their affinity for “fictional”
characters which they don’t view themselves as being, but since the main characters in
Ilustrado are themselves, fictional constructions, we have fictional characters who see
themselves as real idealizing fictional characters (that is, themselves) for being more
concrete, more substantive and more real than they are, even though those idealized
characters are constructions of constructions, essentially collapsing the categories of
realness and fictionality. In Ilustrado, the process of writing fiction makes both Crispin
and Syjuco real in a performative sense, and yet their narrative and (auto)biographical
reality turns out to be a work of fiction. This interpretation concerning the conflation of
truth and fiction, narrative object and narrative subject, fiction and autobiography, is

84
Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado (New York: FSG, 2010) 31.
65
bolstered by the narrator’s confession of his own unreliability as narrator when he
revises an earlier scene in the airplane that took place with his neighbor:
The part about my seatmate in the plane and his wad of falling money didn’t
happen exactly as I recounted. That last bit about his coming home for his
children, that wasn’t accurate either. If I had spoken to him, I reckon that what
he’d have said. In a way, I wrote that part of him. He became more than the guy
beside me with annoying manners. What I said that he said to me, I could see
that in him. But no, I didn’t talk to him. When he tried to strike up a conversation,
I closed my eyes and pretended to be dreaming.
85

Because this passage legitimates Miguel Syjuco the narrator’s own narrative unreliability,
his biography of Salvador Crispin becomes another work of fiction created by an aspiring
MFA student. Ultimately, the portraiture of Salvador Crispin is a creative, interactive
amalgamation of tiny details, a state of conflict and also a negotiation between Crispin
and Miguel’s narratives, cultural identities and voices (both graphically and structurally
constructed). Crispin the biographical object becomes a dynamic fictional and cultural
construction whose characterization shifts and collapses according to every new literary,
editorial, narrative, speculative, anecdotal, fictional and metafictional detail, together
forming a holistic, continuously changing and contradictory (self-)portrait of mediated
Asian American identity that is a creative site of cultural self-emancipation, both
collapsing and intersecting cultural, gender, historical and class spheres while conflating
literary subjectivities and literary objectivities, verisimilitude and fictiveness, character
and author, fiction and autobiography. As Ilustrado illustrates, both conflation,

85
Syjuco, 47.
66
negotiation and intersectionality are at the heart of cultural compartmentalization, both
liberating the artist from the intellectual and theoretical constraints of racial and cultural
authenticity and the psychoanalytical constraints of existential uniformity. In other words,
the point is that the novel contains not one Salvador Crispin, not one self, but a
constellation of separate, overlapping, blurring, and constructed Crispins that continue
multiplying through the funhouse mirror of direct, mediated and refracted portraiture.
Every “chapter” calibrates, alters and expands the characterization of Salvador Crispin
and Miguel Syjuco through aggregate, and often, conflicting detail. Or said another way,
in every “chapter,” both the narrator and his biographical object continue (d)evolving.
Ilustrado is an aesthetic and narrative exemplification of the emancipatory potentiality in
positive cultural and existential multiplicity where conflicting identities don’t necessarily
reconcile, but rather expand, contract and reflect each other, culturally fragmented but
interconnected, polyvocal but disunified. And while cultural and characterological
terminology like double lives, double consciousness, flat and round characterization,
tatemae and honne, can all be problematic on one level because they describe
psychologically constructed cultural dualities whereas cultural compartmentalization
involves not just two lives or identities, but an infinite number of versions of the self that
expand, shift, collapse and intersect, nevertheless, at the same time, virtually all of these
prefatory concepts are crucial starting points in this cultural and literary inquiry of
constructed Asian American cultural identity because they all participate in the
subversion of E.M. Forster’s false dichotomy of individual characters, and ultimately,
help unpackage the polymorphous construction of Asian and Asian American cultural
identity in the literary imagination.
67
While Asian American cultural compartmentalization, double consciousness and
ontological multiplicity in Asian American literature are not necessarily conscious,
pathological or even self-destructive per se, they can still be extremely painful because
of the way they are often necessitated by cultural stigma, institutionalized racism, class,
racial or gender hierarchy, and often times, trauma. In this way, cultural
compartmentalization is both a defense mechanism, an example of characterological
multiplicity, parallel worlds and more importantly, a cultural corrective of dualistic
psychological theories of literary characterization. Cultural compartmentalization and its
variants (assimilation, double consciousness, simultaneity, existential multiplicity,
institutional racism, to name a few examples) play a collective role in the ongoing
identarian negotiation between different social, gender, historical and cultural spheres
that simultaneously intersect, collapse, conflict and reflect each other in the Asian
American literary imagination. The Asian American novel, in particular, is especially
useful as a site of cultural, theoretical and aesthetic resistance because of the way in
which it is a natural host to existential multiplicity, polyvocality and cultural
compartmentalization organically. Bakhtin outlines this heteroglossic phenomenon in his
essay, “Discourse in the Novel”:
The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even
diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized.
The internal stratification of any single language into social dialects, characteristic
group behavior, professional jargons, generic languages, languages of
generations and age groups, tendentious languages, languages of the authorities,
of various circles and of passing fashions, languages that serve the specific
68
sociopolitical purposes of the day, even of the hour . . . Authorial speech, the
speech of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those
fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia can enter the
novel; each of them permits a multiplicity of social voices and a wide variety of
their links (always more or less dialogized).
86

The novel, as an organically heteroglossic genre, is an ideal, even necessary site of
Asian American existential multiplicity and cultural and racial polyvocality. Perhaps one
of the most promising aesthetic and cultural features of negative cultural
compartmentalization is the way in which it helps us understand the necessity of a
flexible Asian American identification to negotiate trauma, institutionalized prejudice,
racist nationalist narratives and dehumanizing constructions of both Asianness and
Asian American cultural identity in the public, political and literary imagination. Negative
cultural compartmentalization, thus, becomes both a psychological survival strategy and
a mechanism of cultural and identarian negotiation. David Mura expresses a similar
argument in his memoir:
This was one layer. Pornography, drunken and stoned despair, an almost clinical
depression, formed other layers; other layers involved my affairs, the other
women I was with. From this distance in time it feels difficult to meld them
together, perhaps because they never melded; perhaps only by
compartmentalizing our actions, our psyches, could we go on like that.
87

86
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996 [1981]) 262-
263.
87
Mura, 172.
69
I end this chapter by arguing that cultural compartmentalization, therefore, is often reified
as theoretical resistance to melting pot rhetoric because like the inherent multiplicity of
the Asian American self, the layers of Asian American cultural identity do not blend into a
grey raceless, cultural gruel, they coexist and cohere as a fluid cultural construction, a
flexible mosaic of cultural identity whose contradictions require no reconciliation, no
cultural or racial amputation. Likewise, positive cultural compartmentalization is a
dynamic strategy of cultural, literary and racial flexibility that gives Asian American
cultural identity the opportunity to liberate itself from the psychoanalytical constraints of
the constructed, monolithic das ego and redefine the Asian American self through
ontological multiplicity, which is a conscious contestation of the cultural construction of
existential uniformity reinforced through state-sanctioned racialization, dualistic
characterological literary theory and psychoanalytical criticism, all of which reinforce the
notion of the static and immutable self onto Asian American identity and Asian American
culture. Both negative and positive cultural compartmentalization give us a license to
(re)define, recreate and revise Asian American cultural identity polymorphously,
polyvalently and polyvocally. Frank Chin almost had it right when he said, “we are not
one, we are several.” What Chin should have written, however, is this: “We are not one.
I am many.”

70
CHAPTER 3: ORIGAMI TIGERS AND LITERARY GEISHAS: THE GENDERING OF
ASIAN AMERICAN NOVELS AND THE MEDIATION OF ASIAN AMERICAN
MASCULINITY

Et la voix prononce que l’Europe nous a pendant des siècles gavés de mensonges et
gonflés de pestilences, car il n’est point vrai que l’œuvre de l’homme est finie . . . et
aucune race ne possède le monopole de la beauté, de l’intelligence, de la force et il est
place pour tous au rendez-vous de la conquête et nous savons maintenant que le soleil
tourne autour de notre terre éclairant la parcelle qu’à fixée notre volonté seule et que
toute étoile chute de ciel en terre à commandement sans limite.
--Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal

In this chapter, I will consider how the current publication of female Asian
American literary and commercial cultural productions in the American publishing
industry has simultaneously challenged the traditionally masculinist narrative hegemony
of white male writers and also dominated (and consequently, gendered) the publishing
landscape of Asian American novels. As a result of the prolific number of female Asian
American novels published in the past twenty years, Asian American masculinity has
become routinely mediated, emasculated, and even demonized, by the Asian American
female narrative. This mediation has become partially a mediation of Asian American
cultural identity and partially a construction of Asian American gender, creating a very
specific and generally typecast model of Asian American masculinity that is remarkably
static, asexual, sublimated, feral but also marginalized. This textual gendering has both
consciously and unconsciously reinforced many of the same orientialisms in American
publishing that postcolonial scholars have long since deconstructed. At the same time,
this culturally regressive trend in popular forms of Asian American literary cultural
production needs to be incorporated within the Asian American cultural and literary
71
archive precisely because of how problematic it has become. As Viet Nguyen argues in
Race and Resistance, Asian American literature that self-commodifies (or in the purview
of this project, that constructs orientalist tropes), is still extremely valuable “because it is
compliant and opportunistic, not in spite of being compliant and opportunistic . . . [being]
emblematic of a flexible political strategy still available to and still popular with
contemporary Asian Americans, including Asian American literary critics who refuse to
acknowledge that they practice such a strategy.”
88
I also agree with Nguyen’s analysis
that Asian American scholars have become complicit in the commodification of Asian
American cultural studies at large, if at no other place than the Academy itself where
“plurality and flexibility demonstrated . . . in the contemporary moment [and] overwritten
by the commodification of Asian American culture [has lead to] the transformation of
Asian American identity into a fairly homogeneous product for consumption.”
89
At the
same time, I believe that the commodification of Asian American culture within global
capitalism is also prevalent in the publishing industry. Many Asian American writers—
many of them commercial and/or literary fiction writers—are both forced and elective
collaborators in the self-commodification of Asian American cultural identity by publishing
companies and media conglomerates that often reconstruct and reinforce mediated,
(frequently) orientalist, one-dimensional gendered constructions of Asian American
identity. The basic difference, however, is that unlike Asian American academics, the
complicity between Asian American novelists and editors has not been decided within
the Asian American community itself—academically or creatively—but has been decided

88
Viet Nguyen, Race and Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 56.
89
Nguyen, 24.
72
on behalf of Asian American writers by a non-Asian editorship whose primary, but not
exclusive criterion, is profit-margin.
This chapter’s critical trajectory is ambitious. First, I will begin by examining the
mediation of Asian American masculinity in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, Lan
Samantha Chang’s Hunger, and Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, all of which were published
in major publishing houses. The tendency, even the willingness of these texts, to
mediate and simplify Asian American masculinity into the outlaw, the tyrannical
paterfamilias, the incorporeal placeholder, the paternal ghost, the professionally
emasculated immigrant and the sexless uncle (among other tropes), is problematic and
deserves a close reading. Second, I will look very briefly to Judith Butler’s Gender
Trouble, David Mura’s Where the Body Meets Memory and Daniel Kim’s Writing
Manhood in Black and Yellow for critical, cultural and autobiographical strategies of
understanding and collapsing constructs of gender, sexual and racial performativity. I
will also pay particular attention to the ways in which Kingston, Chang, and Tan, in
particular, flatten masculinity and participate in gender spatialization, often by employing
the tropes of the female victim and the (un)assimilated male oppressor who either
sublimates his cultural heritage or translates it into a complex system of male domination
over female Asian bodies. Furthermore, with a brief but rigorous media analysis of two
representative texts, I will argue that Asian American novel covers can reinforce both the
gendering and the orientalization of Asian American literature. Finally, I will briefly
examine three possible correctives in Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, Lily Hoang’s
Changing and Karen Tei Yamashita’s I Hotel in order to investigate the ways in which
Asian American cultural productions can defy questions of cultural authenticity, reify the
73
rights of graphic self-representation, and complicate monolithic constructions of race,
sexuality and gender (including, but certainly not exclusive to, Asian American
masculinity),
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, published originally in 1980 by Knopf,
Kingston not only intentionally conflates fiction, autobiography and new journalism
(which she admits in the introduction), but she also mediates Asian American
masculinity through female narrative portraiture. China Men employs a hybrid narrative
technique that is structurally divided into five primary sections, each of which constructs
a separate but interconnecting portrait of a male Chinese American ancestor. It is not an
overstatement, therefore, to argue that the voices of Chinese American men in this text
are literally mediated through Kingston’s narrative since they so rarely speak (that is,
narrate) for themselves. This mediation becomes problematic, though, because China
Men constructs a derogatory portrait of Asian American masculinity that depicts Chinese
American men as incorporeal, emasculated, sexless, angry and sexually predatory. For
example, in the essay “The Father from China,” the narrator describes her father as a
misogynistic tyrant:
But usually you did not play. You were angry. You scared us. Every day
we listened to you swear, ‘Dog vomit. Your mother’s cunt. Your mother’s smelly
cunt.’ You slammed the iron on the shirt while muttering, ‘Stink Pig. Mother’s
cunt.’ Obscenities. I made a wish that you only meant gypsies and not women in
general . . . You screamed wordless male screams that jolted the house upright
74
and staring in the middle of the night.’ It’s Baba.” We children told one another
(Kingston 12-14).
90

While this shocking passage effectively conveys the unpredictable and emotional trauma
of the children, it also initiates a series of essentialistic implications about the father that
are disturbing, among them, that his crude language and behavior is both symptomatic
of his masculinity (“wordless male screams” [emphasis mine]) and also targeted towards
all women (“I made a wish that you only meant gypsies and not women in general.”).
Later on, the narrator wants her father to disavow her own assumption that he is
misogynistic when he curses in Chinese. “What I want from you is for you to tell me that
those curses are only common Chinese sayings. That you did not mean to make me
sicken at being female. ‘Those were only sayings,’ I want you to say to me. ‘I didn’t
mean you or your mother. I didn’t mean your sisters or grandmothers or women in
general.”
91
While Kingston articulates a powerful and necessary critique here of the
valorization of the masculine in Chinese culture (and by implication, the dishonor of the
feminine), she also makes the father figure accountable to all women in this essay, even
though China Men does not assume the same level of accountability to all Asian men,
which of course, makes sense as a work of hybrid non-fiction whose principal aims are
in part, the restoration of female subjectivity and the reframing of Chinese cultural myths
within a feminist framework. Nevertheless, China Men begins with a double standard
that Kingston leaves unanswered. By constructing and mediating Chinese American
masculinity, to what extent is Kingston accountable to her own constructions? And how

90
Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (New York: Vintage, 1989 [1980]), 12-14.
91
Kingston, 14.
75
should discriminating readers separate the depiction of male chauvinism, sexism,
lasciviousness and violence in Asian American literature from its (re)construction?
Emotional and sexual exhibitionism are other common descriptors of Asian
American masculinity in China Men. In the essay “Great Grandfather of the Sandalwood
Mountains,” Bak Goong is both exploited and also explicitly angry, always feeling the
“fire [that] was the same as his anger; his anger was this size and red,”
92
a “privilege”
allotted only to men in this book. A few pages later, Goong is depicted as a feral
pyromaniac. “Like a savage, Bak Goong ran with brands, torching the cane along the
border,” during which time, his fires appear like “flurry red beasts” to the naked eye that
“roared into the black sky,” descriptions that primitivize Bak Goong by evoking imagery
of a hunting and gathering society. In another scene, Bak Goong and the other Chinese
workers, are visited by white missionaries on the plantation where they work. The men
are depicted as lascivious, conniving predators:
The briny men asked the Jesus demonesses, ‘Would you administer this
medicine to me?’ They grinned lewdly at one another, but the demonesses did
not see Chinese facial expressions. The men brushed up against their yellow
hair, reached behind and touched it. They talked about what was under the long
dresses; no lady would understand anyway.”
93

Thus, an odd but normative contradiction emerges in China Men where Asian male
characters are simultaneously predators and desexualized, faceless laborers, both
threats to white women and also white capital. Viet Nguyen echoes a similar dynamic in
his analysis of Asian American immigration and its connection to biopolitics: “The

92
Kingston, 101.
93
Kingston, 112.
76
asexuality of Chinese immigrants, an aspect of their inhuman dedication to work,
threatened white labor, while their contradictory voracious sexuality threatened white
womanhood and white patriarchy.”
94
After the missionaries leave, Bak Goong tells his
coworkers about a man named Chan Moong Gut who defecates on the doorstep of his
neighbors every morning, shifting this construction and making it scatological.
95
In “The
Father from China,” Ah Goong becomes a fatuous exhibitionist who begins “taking his
penis out at the dinnertable, worrying it, wondering at it, asking why it had given him four
sons and no daughter, chastising it, asking it whether it were yet capable of producing
the daughter of his dreams.”
96
Not only does this last passage conflate virility (i.e. giving
birth to four sons) with impotence (i.e. non-sexual self-exhibitionism, that is,
exhibitionism completely devoid of sexual power or arousal), but at the same time, it also
transforms Ah Goong’s flaccid penis into a sock puppet phallus (an object of shame,
make-believe and mockery), which instantaneously infantilizes his sexuality and makes
the other dinner guests captive spectators to his own masturbatory introspection.
Furthermore, this scene effectively establishes a gendering of public space, where Ah
Goong’s infantile (but phallocentric) performance grants him desexualized control over
public space, a gendered spatialization that has no female analogue in the book. This
theme repeats itself in Chang’s collection of short stories.
In “The Adventures of Lo Bun Sun,” Kingston begins the essay by giving the
reader the etymology of the eponymous character’s name:
Lo means ‘naked,’ man ‘the naked animal,’ and lo also sounds like the word for

94
Nguyen, 90.
95
Kingston, 113.
96
Kingston, 21.
77
‘mule,’ a toiling animal, a toiling sexless animal [emphasis mine]. Bun is the
uncle who went to China to work on a commune. And sun is like ‘body’ and also
‘son’ in English and “grandson” in Chinese. Sun as in ‘new.’ Lo Bun Sun was a
mule and toiling man, naked and toiling body, alone, son and grandson, himself
all generations. There is still another meaning of lo, the lo in ‘arhat,’ like
‘bodhisattva.
97

Not only does this passage construct an animalistic (“animal”), neutered (“sexless”) and
primitive (“naked”) portrait of Lo Bun Sun, but even more striking, it makes Lo Bun Sun a
culturally metonymic construction of Asian American masculinity (“himself all
generations”), an embodying symbol of every generation (i.e. an exemplar). The
sexlessness and emasculation of Lo Bun Sun is also accentuated by Kingston’s final
translation of Lo as connected to the word arhat, or bodhisattva, a juxtaposition that
simultaneously elevates his spiritual lineage but also denies Lo Bun Sun a physicality or
an identificatory sexual desire. According to Buddhist scholar, William Theodore de
Bary, Bodhisattvas embody the ten perfections, which include among other things, that
she or he “give up his body and his life.”
98
Thus, while Kingston has given Lo Bun Sun
an honorary spiritual status, this spiritual elevation conflicts with its primitive and
animalistic delineation, and also reinforces his emasculated, desexualized and
incorporeal delineation, a construction that by Kingston’s own syntax, exists in every
generation.

97
Kingston, 226.
98
William Theodore de Bary, The Buddhist Tradition (New York: Vintage, 1972 [1969]),
91.
78
In the short fairytale-like essay “On Discovery,” the protagonist, Tang Ao,
discovers a land completely populated by women where he is quickly dressed in drag,
his facial hair is plucked and his face is powdered white, his lips painted red.
99
He is fed
“women’s food” such as chrysanthemum tea to stir the “cool female winds inside his
body,” chicken wings to make his “hair shine” and vinegar soup to “improv[e] his
womb.”
100
Once Tang Ao’s transformation is complete, his “hips swayed and his
shoulders swiveled because of his shaped . . . dainty feet” as he served food to the all
female court.
101
Clearly, on one level, “On Discovery” is an example of patriarchal
inversion (i.e., matriarchy) where women hold positions of power and men are excluded
except in circumstances of gender performance such as female servants (where the
constructed definitions of “servant” and female” overlap). On another level, this essay
clearly represents female retribution. Tang Ao is forced to suffer a series of degrading
body modifications in order to approximate Chinese definitions of femininity but also to
suffer what Chinese girls have long endured according to Chinese patriarchal standards
of female beauty—a payback that is emotionally satisfying. On the other hand, “On
Discovery” is also deeply problematic, both in terms of its gender, culture and identity
construction: For one thing, the operative definition of femininity in this essay is highly
reductive and stereotypical, unless, of course, Chinese American definitions of femininity
can be reduced to swaying hips, red lips and tiny feet. Instead of deconstructing gender
codes, “On Discovery” basically switches them. The oppressed becomes the (strangely
empowering) oppressor and vice-versa, which raises troubling questions about the

99
Kingston, 4-5.
100
Kingston, 4-5.
101
Kingston, 5.
79
“empowerment” of male-dominated societies and their reciprocal image reflected in this
piece. If Matriarchy is so self-evidently empowering for the women in “On Discovery,” is
it equally empowering for male-dominated societies? The answer is obviously no, but
unfortunately, this essay does not investigate its own assumptions. At the very least,
“On Discovery” seems unwilling to demarcate the boundaries of the fairytale from the
political activism. Additionally, Tang Ao has his ears pierced violently, with two women
pinning him down and a third woman piercing his ear with a piece of blackened steel,
both an initiation rite and also a matriarchal tagging (Read: ownership of male bodies)
performed against his will. While this scene effectively rewrites the coercive process of
ear-piercing for young Chinese girls, it also reenacts its violence with a (queered) male
victim, essentially trading one act of violence (and one act of control over the bodies of
the so-called other) for another, which conflicts with the highly idealized depiction of
“Women’s Land” as a place where “there are no taxes and no wars.”
102
Interestingly
enough, as the women are piercing Tang Ao’s ears, they joke that instead of piercing his
lobes they intend to “sew . . . [his] lips together,” another reference not only to the trope
of the mute Chinese male/servant/bride (a role he performs in the essay), but also an
obvious signifier of masculine muteness, underlining how men can only find their voices
in China Men through the interpretation (and meditation) of the female Asian American
(Kingston’s) narrative. These essays collectively cohere Chinese American masculinity
as a crude, misogynistic, primitive, sexless, spiritual, neutered, and depraved, a
performance of violence, emasculation and victimization that is a marvel of constructive
contradiction.

102
Kingston, 5.
80
As in the case of China Men, the right to tell stories (which doubles as the right to
represent one’s culture) is granted exclusively to female narrators in Amy Tan’s The Joy
Luck Club, published by Penguin and Ivy Books. Comprised of sixteen intersecting
vignettes told by eight women from two generations (one of Chinese immigrants and a
second of Chinese American daughters), The Joy Luck Club epitomizes the traditional
art of Chinese storytelling (what Maxine Hong Kingston refers to as “story-talk”), written
with an implicit narrative orality that makes the book easy to read and the plot structure
fluid, shifting from speaker to speaker and time period to time period effortlessly.
Overall, the construction of Asian American femininity while sometimes cliché (e.g. the
model minority myth of Waverly as a chess prodigy or the stereotype of the Confucian-
sounding, grammatically-challenged Chinese mother), is still quite nuanced. The
characterization is dynamic, even contradictory, fleshing out female characters that are
assertive, self-loathing, aggressive, submissive, fully assimilated or culturally conflicted,
self-aware, clueless, affluent, poor, codependent and self-empowered, rebellious,
vacillating and obedient, sexually active and also asexual. And yet, The Joy Luck Club
is so much less nuanced in its construction of Asian American masculinity. In contrast to
China Men where Asian and Asian American men are ventriloquated, in The Joy Luck
Club they are mostly invisible, due in part to their marginalized role in the novel. For
example, in the first section of the novel, “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away,” Jing-Mei
Woo’s father sounds like a robot: “There she is! . . . Look at that . . . Will you look at
that?”
103
While there is no crime in writing canned dialogue, the social and cultural
implication of creating a male character who reads as a human pointer is telling, in part

103
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989) 14-15.
81
because it happens to be a pattern in this particular novel, and in part because of the
way in which male characters become place holders in the novel’s plot structure—both
forgettable and spectral.
Additionally, like most Asian American male characters in the Joy Luck Club,
June’s father has absolutely no physicality whatsoever. It is virtually impossible for the
reader to visualize him in the novel because Tan does not describe him within the
narrative. In comparison, June’s Aunt, An-Mei is described as a “short bent woman in
her seventies, with a heavy bosom and thin, shapeless legs. She has the flattened soft
fingertips of an old woman.”
104
When An-Mei herself, describes her mother at her
funeral, her description is equally vivid and specific:
The stickiness clung to her body. They could not remove the poison and so she
died, two days before the New Year. They laid on wooden board in the hallway.
She wore funeral clothes far richer than those she had worn in life. Silk
undergarments to keep her warm without the heavy burden of a fur coat. A silk
gown, sewn with gold thread. A headdress of gold and lapis and jade. And two
delicate slippers with the softest leather soles and two giant pearls on each toe,
to light her way to nirvana.
105

Neither An-Mei nor An-Mei’s mother is a textual abstraction. These basic physical
descriptions encode useful information for the reader and also reinforce female
physicality that is directly interconnected to their narrative incarnation. In the following
chapter, “Scar,” An-Mei Hsu states that “In those Days, a ghost was anything we were

104
Tan, 19.
105
Tan, 271.
82
forbidden to talk about.”
106
And yet, the ghost she speaks about is not only her mother,
who became a concubine to a rich merchant, but also her father, which helps reinforce
the spectral quality of abstract male construction in this novel: “The only father I knew
was a big painting that hung in the main hall. He was a large, unsmiling man, unhappy
to be so still on the wall. His restless eyes followed me around the house. Even from
my room at the end of the hall, I could see my father’s eyes.”
107
While it’s historically
realistic to depict a Chinese American family without a father due to the many wars that
took place in Asia, the waves of migration to America and the many American racial
exclusionary laws, at the same time, this painting of An-Mei’s father is both a inadvertent
metaphor of the flatness of the novel’s male characterization and also an ideal signifier
of the synchronic, static construction of Asian American masculinity in general in The
Joy Luck Club. Much in the same way as this painting typifies, male characters in this
novel are two-dimensional. They act as flat surrogates for complex male subjectivity.
Further, An-Mei’s father operates within the text as an externalized superego, both
incorporeal and immortal (as a portrait that does not age) that “watched [her] for any
signs of disrespect,”
108
and also as an visual embodiment of the male gaze which she
avoids whenever she has done something wrong,
109
effectively linking spectral paternity,
female objectification and ancestral (patrilineal) morality.
Additionally, the construction of Asian American masculinity and its potential
relationship to sexual identity in The Joy Luck Club is equally troublesome. For the Joy
Luck Club “uncles,” a term (Tan uses affectionately) that automatically desexualizes

106
Tan, 33
107
Tan, 34.
108
Tan, 34.
109
Tan, 34.
83
them by conjuring up visions of balding men in cardigans who amble around the house
in slippers, the emasculation of Asian American men starts with the novel’s
nomenclature. The marginalized status of the Joy Luck uncles, as the husbands of the
storytellers, amounts to sitting around and “talk[ing] about stocks they are interested in
buying. Uncle Jack, who is Auntie Ying’s younger brother, is very keen on a company
that mines gold in Canada. ‘It’s a great hedge on inflation,’ he says with authority.”
110

While the Joy Luck Aunts are retelling their stories of war, love, suicide, passion, honor,
betrayal and death, reanimating Chinese history orally, the Joy Luck uncles are investing
with fantasy money, their passion and sexuality sublimated into financial investments.
It’s a devastating and pathetic comparison that heroicizes the female Chinese American
diegetic narrative and belittles Chinese American old men, depicting them as
materialistic dotards while the “real” story takes place at a game of mah-jongg.
Marginalization is not the worst offense in this novel, however. In the next chapter, An-
Mei describes her wedding night with Tyan-yu, her husband by arranged marriage.
During the first months together as a married couple, Tyan-yu does not touch An-Mei,
sleeping in his bed while she sleeps on the sofa.
111
Through his sexual inactivity and
heterosexual illegibility, Tyan-yu becomes a symbol of the emasculated Asian American
man, part child and part brother:
That night I sat on Tyan-yu’s bed and waited for him to touch me. But he
didn’t. I was relieved. The next night, I lay straight down on the bed next to him.
And still he didn’t touch me. So the next night, I took off my gown. That’s when I
could see what was underneath Tyan-yu. He was scared and turned his face.

110
Tan, 17.
111
Tan, 57.
84
He had no desire for me, but it was his fear that made me think he had no desire
for any woman. He was like a little boy who had never grown up. After a while I
was no longer afraid. I even began to think differently toward Tyan-yu. It was not
like the way a wife loves a husband, but more like the way a sister protects a
younger brother.
112

To the extent that sexuality, masculinity and desire are interconnected in The Joy Luck
Club, Asian American men are empty cocoons. As the earlier passage suggests, Asian
American men have no desire for women (which implies a textual queering of Asian
American masculinity), or if they do, their sexuality is stunted, fixated, and most
importantly, harmless. In the chapter, “The Moonlady,” Ying-ying St. Clair describes her
vision of the female sublime. After falling off a boat, she eventually ends up back on
shore where she watches the performance of the Moon Lady, who had “[S]hrunked
cheeks , a broad oily nose, large glaring teeth, and red-stained eyes. A face so tired that
she wearily pulled off her hair, her long gown fell from her shoulders. And as the secret
wish fell from my lips, the Moon Lady looked at me and became a man.”
113
The Moon
Lady becomes not only an example of the transgendered Asian American male (whose
beauty is suspect and whose masculinity is absolutely illegible), but also a metaphor of
the emasculation of the Asian American male performance. Both Ying-ying in her
description of the Moon Lady after her gown falls to the ground (“[H]er long gown fell
from her shoulders. And as the secret wish fell from my lips, the Moon Lady looked at
me and became a man”) and An-Mei’s description of her husband after her own gown
falls to the ground where she “could see what was underneath Tyan-yu”, use the same

112
Tan, 57-58.
113
Tan, 83.
85
language of sexual discovery. In both scenes, female bodies are disrobed and Asian
American male interiority is pried open, an epiphany that catalyzes the speaker’s
understanding of Asian American sexuality as being somehow connected to disrobed
Asian female bodies while also reassigning this sexuality as a simultaneous
performance of queerness (the Moon Lady) and heternormativity (Tyan-yu). Ultimately,
The Joy Luck Club suggests not just the presence of a nascent, queer(ed) Asian
American male sexual identity, but also the glaring absence of a mature, adult
heterosexual one. In fact, one of the only examples of adult (and in this case,
heterosexual) Asian American male sexuality in the entire novel involves the sexual
violation of An-Mei Hsu’s mother by Wu Tsing:
As your mother slept soundly in Second Wife’s bed, Second Wife got up in the
middle of the night and left the dark room, and Wu Tsing took her place. When
your mother awoke to find him touching her beneath her undergarments, she
jumped out of bed. He grabbed her by her hair and threw her on the floor, then
put his foot on her throat and told her to undress. Your mother did not scream or
cry when he fell on her.
114

Ultimately, The Joy Luck Club defines Asian American male sexuality as a vacated,
avuncular (i.e., sublimated) and stunted heterosexual performance, as a queer
performance of Chinese femininity or heteronormativity, and finally, as an act of
heterosexual violence. There are virtually no nuanced or positive constructions of Asian
American (hetero)sexuality or Asian American masculinity in the entire novel.

114
Tan, 267.
86
The construction of whiteness in The Joy Luck Club, on the other hand, is a
completely different animal (pun intended). Even though Rose Hsu Jordan’s boyfriend
Ted, Lena St. Clair’s husband Harold, and Waverly Jong’s husband Marvin, all lack
physicality in the same way that Asian American men do, these three white men are still
depicted as powerful, dominant and sexually entitled in different ways that are denied to
the Asian American male characters in this novel (with the exception of Marvin Chen).
For example, in the chapter “Half and Half,” Rose Hsu Jordan describes her ex-husband
on the day they first met with a mix of reverse-exotification and white idolatry:
I have to admit that what I initially found attractive in Ted were precisely the
things that made him different from my brothers and the Chinese boys I had
dated; his brashness; the assuredness in which he asked for things and
expected to get them; his opinionated manner; his angular face and lanky body;
the thickness of his arms; the fact that his parents immigrated from Tarrytown,
New York, not Tientsin, China.
115

In this passage, the manifested attraction to the other is ironically an attraction to the
hegemonic white male, a sexual desire that blurs otherness, power worship and cultural
and racial normativity. In the Joy Luck Club, white masculinity is not only reflected in
stereotypical visual markers of the so-called white hunk such as height (“lankiness”),
strength (“the thickness of his arms”) and chiseled jawlines (“his angular face”), but is
also reflected through arrogance (“his brashness”), entitlement (“the assuredness in
which he asked for things and expected to get them”) and pedigree (“his parents
immigrated from Tarrytown”). Ted becomes a temporary white savior in The Joy Luck

115
Tan, 123.
87
Club, rescuing Rose from the trope of the yellow peril in America, which his mother
reinforces when she tells Rose that a white man cannot marry a Vietnamese woman due
to the infamy of the Vietnam War. Even though Rose is obviously not Vietnamese, the
silent fear of racism brings the couple together and breeds a temporary loyalty between
them, replete with cultural and gender clichés:
With imagined tragedy hovering over us, we became inseparable, two halves
creating the whole: yin and yang. I was victim to his hero. I was always in
danger and he always rescuing me. I would fall and he would lift me up. It was
exhilarating and draining. The emotional effect of saving and being saved was
addicting to both of us. And that, as much as anything we ever did in bed, was
how me made love to each other: conjoined where my weakness needed
protection.
116

Later on in the novel, Ted’s confidence transforms into domination. “Ted decided where
we went on vacation. He decided what new furniture we should buy. He decided we
should wait until we moved into a better neighborhood before having children . . . Ted
simply decided.”
117
The collective portraiture of Ted and Rose is problematic because it
insinuates white men as saviors to the very racial and cultural dehumanization for which
they are often directly and passively responsible. It is white hegemonic racism that
devastates Rose and it is white hegemonic paternalism that rescues her, a conflation the
novel refuses to acknowledge or contest even though it shows some awareness of
Rose’s role as the damsel in distress. Perhaps just as damaging, though, is the
portraiture of Rose as a weak, indecisive, malleable Asian American woman, which not

116
Tan, 125.
117
Tan, 126,
88
only implicates Ted’s white male power and control, but also insinuates her own Asian
American female paralysis seeking the refuge of white male decisiveness as a
performative rescue from her own collaborative disempowerment.
In the chapter, “Rice Husband,” one of the most indelible portraits is Lena St.
Clair’s construction of her ex-husband, Harold clenching the steering wheel of his
Jaguar, honking at elderly drivers and revving the car’s engine. “He was always the one
who tailgated old ladies in their Buicks, honking his horn and revving the engine as if he
would run them over unless they pulled over.”
118
While incorporeal as virtually all male
characters in The Joy Luck Club are, Harold is defined in the novel largely by a class
marker of wealth (i.e. his jaguar) that becomes an accessory to his entitlement, male
aggression and class posturing. Like Ted, Harold also exploits and dehumanizes his
wife. Though both of them work at his firm, Harold forces Lena to split monthly
expenses with him even though he pays himself a much higher salary, which makes her
financially dependent on him. This continual financial dependence makes her doubt her
own professional self-worth, instigates a pattern of disempowerment for Lena, and
ultimately destroys their relationship. Interestingly, The Joy Luck Club concedes
identificatory sexual desire for Harold that includes “five months of post-prandial love-
making, and one week of timid and silly love confessions,”
119
an identificatory desire that
mostly excludes Asian men. Waverly Jong’s first husband, Marvin Chen, is the sole
exception to the rule of the asexual Asian American male. Marvin has “bulging calf
muscles and one hundred forty-six black hairs on his chest. He made everyone laugh
and his own laugh was deep, sonorous, masculinely sexy. He prided himself on having

118
Tan, 163.
119
Tan, 168.
89
favorite love positions for different days and hours of the week; all he had to whisper was
‘Wednesday afternoon’ and I’d shiver.”
120
At the same time, Marvin Chen is a physical
variant of the model minority stereotype. He is a star varsity tennis player, Stanford
student on full scholarship and also a virile Asian male imbued with the markers of
stereotypical masculinity (e.g. chest hair, insatiable sexual desire and deep voice).
Thus, while the characterization of Marvin Chen gives much-needed nuance to the
construction of Asian American masculinity in the Joy Luck Club, it fulfills a different
cultural stereotype of the Asian wunderkind, relying upon hackneyed physical markers of
masculinity to approximate male subjectivity. Furthermore, it is not a coincidence that
Waverly divorces her high school sweetheart (and symbolically, her own culture) and
eventually marries Rich Schields whose full name implies both white refuge (i.e.,
“Shields,” reinforcing the trope of the white savior protecting Waverly from her
judgmental mother), and also class power (i.e., “Rich” a signifier of accumulated wealth,
a reading that is reinforced when Rich gives Waverly a mink coat later, symbolizing a
hunting trophy in both sexual and masculine figuration). Additionally, Amy Tan confers
male physicality to Rich in a way that is denied to Asian American male characters in
this novel, privileging the materialization of white masculinity explicitly: “He had the
same coloring as the crab on his plate: reddish hair, cream skin, and large dots of
orange freckles.”
121
Thus, with the exception of Marvin Chen, The Joy Luck Club
depicts non-Asian masculinity as both dominant, arrogant, exploitative, dehumanizing,
class-conscious and paternalistic, but also as romantic, sexually proactive, self-reliant,
physically present and emotionally passionate, a construction that applies almost

120
Tan, 192.
121
Tan, 228.
90
exclusively to white men in this novel. While Asian and Asian American male characters
in The Joy Luck Club are generally sexless, sublimated, weak, harmless, asexual and
emasculated (or conversely, mythic model minorities with legendary sexual intuition),
and while several Asian American male characters in The Joy Luck Club are literally or
textually queered in such a way that their so-called masculinity is subverted or
contested, the construction of white masculinity is antithetical. Ultimately, The Joy Luck
Club privileges whiteness not only through its construction of white masculinity as a
locus of power, wealth and sexuality, but also through the way in which female Asian
American characters choose white men, often in the most disempowering situations
imaginable, which elevates the status of white masculinity and simultaneously
interconnects Asian American female characters to their approximation of whiteness, a
cultural signifier for assimilation and mobility that is rampant in this novel.
Of course, as an Asian American novelist, Amy Tan is aware that her novels are
not read as literary fiction that just happens to involve Asian American characters. In her
memoir, The Opposite of Fate, she openly criticizes the double standard that Asian
American authors (and implicitly, authors of color) are subjected to, which pins Asian
American literature to cultural didacticism:
I know from reactions to my fiction that there are people who believe that the
raison d’être of any story with an ethnic angle is to provide an educational lesson
on culture. I find that attitude restrictive, as though an Asian-American artist has
license to create only something that specifically addresses a cultural hot point,
91
and not a work about human nature that happens to depict that through Asian-
Americans.
122

She is of course absolutely right to point out that minority authors are rarely given the
privilege to be simply writers who happen to write novels that employ different cultural
narratives with characters who happen to be people of color. This is perhaps one of the
greatest burdens placed on Asian American authors, one that is clearly not placed on
white authors. On the other hand, whether it’s fair or not, the reality is that Asian
American authors, like most minority authors, are almost always expected to perform
more than just the role of writer, precisely because they are the racial minority, which is
why cultural and racial representation becomes a contentious—but also absolutely
crucial—issue with minority authors. Invariably, all novels inform the literary imagination
in some way. Since racial, ethnic, gender and cultural stereotypes are based on
deficient, incomplete and simplistic representations of minorities and minority cultures of
non-hegemonic people, Asian American writers like Amy Tan are to a certain extent,
filling in the void with each book they publish, which is why her literary and cultural
construction matter so much. The point is, Asian American cultural constructions of race
and gender will always have enormous resonance in the American literary and cultural
imagination as long as there is a continued ignorance about Asian American culture in
general—an epistemic scarcity that is recycled, not challenged, by shallow, one-sided
and damaging gender constructions. And while Asian American writers are irrefragably
entitled to write novels for any reason and for any reader they want, this endless artistic

122
Amy Tan, The Opposite of Fate (New York: Penguin, 2003) 191.
92
license does not exculpate Asian American writers from the cultural consequentiality of
their own literary constructions.
In comparison, Lan Samantha Chang’s Hunger, published by Norton, gives a
slightly more nuanced construction of Asian American masculinity and Asian American
cultural identity. At least at first blush. The novella “Hunger,” in part due to its length, is
probably the most successful attempt, comparatively speaking, at rendering a more
complex male character. Tian is frustrated violinist attempting to make tenure at the
music college where he adjuncts. When his bid for tenure is denied, he forces his brutal,
violin lessons on his two daughters, displacing his own professional frustration. Tian
also has a sexual identity that is sorely missing in Kingston and Tan’s texts:
We made love on the floor of the new practice room. I remember my belief—a
moment of certainty just prior to abandoning thought—that our moans and cries
and our foreign words of love would permeate the walls of the apartment and
transform the place.
123

The construction of Tian is slightly more complex because of the way in which the
novella offers a fleeting glance of Tian’s interiority and concedes an Asian American
sexual identity, both of which are directly correlated to Tian’s textual incarnation. At the
same time, Tian (like all the male characters in Hunger) is still mediated through a
female Asian American narrator. With the exception of the occasional third-person
perspective, almost every male character in Hunger is mediated by women who do not
love them, which becomes a narrative signifier of the self-loathing prism of Du Boisian
double-consciousness in which Asian American cultural identity and masculinity is

123
Lan Samantha Chang, Hunger (New York: Norton, 2009), 16.
93
filtered through the eyes of the unsympathetic narrator, defined not by strength,
empowerment, success, self-love and benevolence, but by loss, tragedy, violence,
failure and fear.
Tian’s construction is fairly one-sided, following the formula of the Draconian first
generation Chinese immigrant father who, failing to integrate within American society,
terrorizes his own family in America. In much the same way as in Maxine Hong
Kingston and Amy Tan’s texts, Tian is given virtually no physicality at all. His only
physical details come at the beginning when his wife retells their first encounter: “He
wore a brown felt hat, and his overcoat seemed cut to fit his shoulders; most of the other
men seemed content to wear whatever would make do.”
124
This description is one of the
only instances of male physicality in the entire book. In comparison, when Tian’s
colleague and competitor is introduced, she is clearly incarnated in the text:
I remember one woman in particular, redheaded and milky-pale. This was Lydia
Borgmann, whom Tian had told me about: an instructor in the same year as
Tian, one of his colleagues who was vying for a professorship. She was only
about my size, but she wore stacked heels that brought her closer in height to the
others. She kept putting her hand on Tian’s arm—not necessarily to flirt, I
decided after watching her closely, but to give an impression of friendship.
125

The lack of physicality gives Tian a spectral quality in the novella that lingers through the
pages like an angry ghost, a description that is very much at odds with the delineation of
Tian’s archrival.

124
Chang, 12.
125
Chang, 21.
94
Additionally, the tropes of the permanent foreigner and the authoritarian Chinese
paterfamilias both resonate through the novella. During Tian’s recital, for example, he is
described as “dark and wild and foreign, almost altogether unfamiliar,”
126
language that is
not just literally dehumanizing, but that also exotifies, racializes and defamiliarizes Tian.
Later on, when Tian seizes his wife’s arm, she feels “each finger pressing into [her]
flesh,” the vein in his jawline pulsating,
127
which adds a sinister element to Tian’s
portraiture. The narrator later confesses to a waitress at work that she feels like she
“live[s] with a stranger,”
128
invoking the language of alterity. And Tian’s thick accent,
while perfectly realistic, in conjunction with these other salient details, reinforces Tian’s
foreignness. Tian tells his wife: ‘’They said I can’t teach theory. They said the students
have trouble with my English. They said my English has not improved and they don’t
think they will be able to wait for it.”
129
Ironically, Tian’s one redemptive talent in the
novella, (i.e., playing the violin), which is supposed to be his pathway to professional and
cultural assimilation, becomes the very thing that underscores his foreignness and
prevents his own integration.
Tian also incarnates the tyrannical paterfamilias role by spatializing the physical
and mental domination of his family in the house:
He had strong feelings about many little things. He insisted that we keep the
chopsticks in a certain drawer. The forks and spoons went in another. And he
had a special idea as to the rhythms of our days. Mornings must begin with a
bowl of porridge, fermented tofu, and youtiao, a fried bread that I learned to pick

126
Chang, 20.
127
Chang, 71.
128
Chang, 25.
129
Chang, 48.
95
up regularly in Chinatown. Over these dishes he would smile and joke. Evenings
were another story. Often he would drift into a silent melancholy.
130

Tian assigns the location of physical objects in the house and decides for the family what
it eats, a double assertion of male authority and gendered spatialization that grants him
control over the female Asian American body, blurring the family commons with his own
interiority. Tian is also physically overpowering, a hybrid construction of musical
perfectionist and violent, domineering father figure. When he plays violin at home, for
example, his shoulder and arms “encircled the violin and bow as if he were about to
crush them. His strong fingers hit the gleaming strings with audible force. His right arm
drew powerful, seemingly interminable long notes . . . I feared he might snap something
by pushing too deeply into the strings. I feared he would crush the wood in his
hands.”
131
Constellating the following words, “crush” (repeated twice), “strong,” “force,”
“powerful,” “snap,” in conjunction with “I feared” (which is also repeated twice), Tian is
syntactically constructed as a violent, dangerous Asian American archetype who
dominates his family through masculine spatialization, intense (often defamiliarizing)
animalistic strength and a ritualistic campaign of fear and filial preferentiality. When Ruth
cries, for example, he strikes the top of the piano and goads her to break down.
132
After
Tian begins losing control of his daughter, he starts slamming the doors in the house,
forbids Ruth from watching TV, and screams at her during their lessons together, making
her sob continuously.
133
Even by the narrator’s own admission, Tian treats Ruth as
“cruelly as he did himself—with complete disregard for her age and temperament . . .

130
Chang, 24-25.
131
Chang, 37.
132
Chang, 59.
133
Chang, 60-61.
96
She would play and sob for hours, but emerge from the room without a word.”
134
By the
end of “Hunger,” the sedimentation of Tian as an authoritarian archetype is complete.
When Ruth rebels and starts sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, for
example, Tian sleeps in front of her bedroom to make sure she cannot leave
135
, which
not only reinforces his control over the female Asian American body in the novella, but
also instantiates a long process of sexual, cultural and social censorship. Tian polices
the adolescent development of his daughters and then castigates them when they
transgress his Draconian rule by labeling them “whore[s]”
136
and segregating them from
the inner sanctum of his practice room,
137
an obvious signifier of fatherly love and
patrilineal morality transmuted into classical music training. Thus, despite the initial
complex delineation of Tian, which conferred a temporary sexual agency and a fleeting
male interiority, the construction of Tian devolves into another stock Asian American
male character. Ultimately, Tian’s nuanced initial characterization becomes eclipsed by
its own stereotypicality, embodying a new level of selfishness, sadism, professional
emasculation and bestiality. The finality of Tian’s derogatory construction is crystalized
when he confesses at the end of the novella that it was “never [his] desire to live an
honest life.”
138
Instead, Hunger fulfills the construction of the frustrated immigrant and
the bad, Asian American male subject.
Unfortunately, the other stories in Hunger construct Asian American masculinity
that is every bit as damaged and damaging to the Asian American literary and cultural

134
Chang, 62.
135
Chang, 78.
136
Chang, 95.
137
Chang, 56.
138
Chang, 95.
97
imagination as Tian. In “San,” the eponymously titled character is called “an unreliable
man.”
139
Like the other Asian American male characters in this short story collection,
San works temporary as a waiter, serving people.
140
And while there is absolutely
nothing demeaning about the service industry in and of itself, the continuous casting of
Asian American male characters in Hunger in exclusively domineering and subservient
roles is a troublesome pattern of false dichotomy. After San’s stint as a waiter, he
changes professions and becomes a “dutu,”
141
an addicted gambler who slowly
liquidifies the furniture in the house to continue his self-destructive gambling spree in
Chinatown’s red light district. Slowly, the house becomes an empty space (a referent of
cultural amnesia). San’s wife realizes that “[a]lmost all of the furniture had disappeared.
The old kitchen table and the three chairs, plus our rice cooker, were virtually the only
things left in the room.”
142
San’s gambling addiction in Chinatown and their empty house
in Brooklyn, become a polyvalent metaphor for the atomization of the Asian American
family, the slow obliteration of cultural materiality as a consequence of cultural delusion,
and the potential moral vacancy of unassimilated Asian American men. At the very end
of the story, San abandons his family for good,
143
becoming yet another male ghost
haunting a Chinese American narrative.

139
Chang, 122.
140
Even Tian, it should be pointed out, who lost his job at the music college, ends up
working at the same Chinese diner as his wife, a social and gender parity that catalyzes
his professional emasculation as an unassimilated, first-generation Asian American
violinist.
141
Chang, 129.
142
Chang, 129.
143
Chang, 132.
98
In “The Unforgetting,” Ming Hwang, the father, abandons his dream of studying
science and works as a photocopy machine repairman.
144
After his son becomes a
literary prodigy in high school and begins asserting his need for personal space, Ming
uses a Phillips screwdriver “to take apart the doorknobs and disable the locks on
Charles’s bedroom, the bathrooms, and the upstairs closets [because a] family . . .
should need no windows and no doors. In China there had been no locks on children’s
rooms.”
145
As in the case of “Hunger,” Ming appropriates the common space of his
family, collapses the cultural variants of personal space in the house and conflates his
own identification with the physical structure of the house itself until the two are
indistinguishable. This authoritarian assertion of masculinist spatialization turns the
house into his domain, thereby gendering and controlling both private and public spheres
of the home and also transforming it into a unified field of male power. This act of spatial
invasiveness is the death of psychic interiority for Ming’s family, which possibly explains
why his son applies to out of state colleges. In “The Eve of the Spirit Festival,” the Baba,
like the other central male characters, is an incorporeal scientist trying to ingratiate
himself with his coworkers. To facilitate his professional integration, the father
memorizes sports statistics in the Dallas newspaper to help him make small talk with his
colleagues, who he invites to the house for drinks, converting his family into unpaid
caterers. Interestingly, the father becomes the primary servant at the party, assuming
both a humbled and subservient role:

144
Chang, 135-136.
145
Chang, 145.
99
Baba walked around emptying ashtrays and refilling drinks. I noticed that the
other men also wore vests and ties, but that the uniform looks somehow different
on my slighter, darker father.
“Cute little daughter you have there,” said Baba’s boss.
146

This passage not only echoes the reoccurring tropes of the subservient Asian American
male, the self-degrading Asian American assimilationist impeded by a complacent white
power structure and the exploitative Asian American first generation tyrant (who
transforms his family into banquet servers for the enjoyment of white people), but it also
reinforces the trope of the permanent foreigner who is legibly darker than his colleagues
and incapable of approximating whiteness persuasively or performing professional and
cultural (dress) codes authentically. Because the father struggles so much to be
accepted by his coworkers, his family loses respect for him. In a word, the father in “The
Eve of the Spirit Festival” is pathetic (in the non-poetic sense of the word). Furthermore,
his depressing professional segregation is both mediated through his wife, and then
through his daughters after he passes away, neither of who show any affection for him at
all, which reads as another Du Boisian optical narrative. Thus, by being narrated
through the eyes of women who pity, and even loathe him, “The Eve of the Spirit
Festival,” implies Baba’s unlovability. This is perhaps one of the most flagrant flaws of
Hunger, specifically, the unlovability of the male Asian American characters in general.
Finally, in “Pipa’s story,” the master of the house is a “rich, handsome, and
powerful”
147
man who is “not very kind . . . he simply doesn’t take kindness, or certain

146
Chang, 158.
147
Chang, 177.
100
human feelings, into account. Of course, he seldom looks at people . . .”
148
. Later on,
the master is described as an “arrogant”
149
capitalist who collaborates with foreign
companies and frogmarches defiantly in front of his servants with “anger burning in his
face”
150
as Chinese communist forces lead him away. While Pipa’s own intrigue and
affection for Pipa, and the master’s fascination with Pipa’s literacy, helps humanize him
a modicum, the master is ultimately defined by his unabashed arrogance, by his asexual
polygamy (as the owner of a large harem whose own sexuality is inscrutable), by his
accumulation of capital, by his complete and absolute domination over his servants
(which has a biopolitical dimension since the master’s servants are almost all female
indentured servants, blurring race, gender and capitalist modes of production), and by
his failure as a capitalist in revolutionary in China. Collectively, these details both
reference and reinforce the historical emasculation and political paralysis of Asian men
by the nation-state. Thus, one of the implicit, sedimented arguments of Hunger is that
Asian American men, but especially fathers (a substitutable signifier for “master” in the
last story) are authoritarian in part because of their means of production, and in part,
because of their own abortive professional aspirations. In other words, Asian American
men, according to the operative logic of Hunger, are uncompassionate, stubborn, angry,
violent, unlovable and paternalistic characters partially due to their own economic
determinism. The problem with this construction isn’t that it is unrealistic or that it has
been somehow created in a vacuum. Rather, the problem is that negative constructions
of Asian American men like this are widespread in Asian American literature, as is the

148
Chang, 177.
149
Chang, 178.
150
Chang, 191.
101
normative female diegetic narrative, which tends to mediate male Asian American
voices, speak through and on behalf of them while perpetuating stereotypical
constructions of sadistic, vengeful, powerless but also domineering, unlovable and
paradoxically, subservient Asian American male characters. This dichotomous
delineation of Asian American masculinity is profoundly damaging because it
exacerbates the crisis of representation of Asian American men in the publishing
industry, replacing characterological complexity with cardboard, stock antagonists.
The construction of Asian American masculinity is further damaged through
oversimplification, a direct threat to Asian American subjectivity. Asian American male
characters are rarely depicted as having sexual agency at all. Rather, they are sexless,
incorporeal and professionally emasculated characters who are considered undesirable
by both Asian and white women. In China Men, heterosexual male desire is queered,
transformed into performative drag, ignored or censored through episodic narrative. In
The Joy Luck Club, assimilation is primarily expressed sociolinguistically through second
generation Chinese American women speaking English, abandoning Chinese
superstition and dating white men (an implicit signifier of white, male desirability and the
sexual awakening of female Asian American desire), which schematizes Asian American
women for white consumption and either queers, whitewashes, relegates to subservient
positions or completely deletes Asian men entirely. In Hunger, families are created
through the magic trick of sexless cultural inertia, not through identificatory male (or
female) desire. In fact, virtually every male character is both a dictator and a eunuch, a
bizarre oxymoron that repeats itself throughout the entire collection. By constellating
Kingston’s book of non-fiction published first in 1980, Tan’s novel published near 1990,
102
and Chang’s short story collection first published in 2009, a disturbing collective portrait
of Asian American masculinity and sexuality emerges: while Asian American women are
objects of desire by both the Asian and the White gaze (for example) in Asian American
novels and also entitled subjects of sexual agency, Asian American men on the other
hand, are neither. They are undesirable but also lack the right to a coherent,
identificatory desire at all. David Mura describes this lack of cultural space for Asian
American sexuality and Asian American male desirability in Where the Boy Meets
Memory when he expresses his shock at discovering that both his white wife and her
white friend were attracted to him in high school, an act of desire he found deeply
counterintuitive:
After years of joking about how she wasn’t really attracted to me when we first
met, Susie told me last year that after I left, she looked at her girlfriend and in an
instant of recognition concerning me they both smiled. It was a sign they both
thought I was cute. Upon hearing this, I felt confused. Even though we’ve been
together for twenty years, some part of me still finds this mutual smile difficult to
believe. It doesn’t fit with my conception of myself as an Asian, a Japanese
American. As a rule, white women are not supposed to find such men attractive .
. . a constant backdrop, lurking in my subconscious, though unspoken. If I think
of myself as at all attractive, it’s in spite of my Asian features, not because of
them.
151

Thus, part of the intrinsic narrative power of these female Asian American writers is the
power to reinforce (or contest) a coherent, identificatory female Asian American

151
David Mura, Where the Body Meets Memory (New York: Anchor Books, 1997) 138.
103
heterosexual desire as being both part of, and separate from, white sexuality, white
desirability and white approximation, which simultaneously informs, and in many cases,
emasculates and marginalizes Asian American masculinity, their sexual agency and
their social desirability. This construction is not limited to literary constructions either, but
has leeched into popular American culture. A recent Slate book review about Edward
Huang’s new memoir, Fresh off the Boat, points out that while “it is up to the Asian
American man to pulverize his sexless image . . . America has an unfortunate tendency
to neuter Asian-American men . . .”
152
. The review points out that the cultural logic of the
sexless Asian American man has a long history in American cinema (which doubles as
popular culture). Even when this stereotype concedes a heroic gradation to Asian
American masculinity (e.g. Bruce Lee or Jet Li), the hero never “gets” the girl in the end
the way the white protagonist does because he is not entitled to his own subjectivity. A
Washington Post article critiques the now standard practice in cinematic and TV
commercial typecasting that censors Asian American male sexuality: “[W]hen it comes
to depicting couples, the portrayal goes mostly in one direction: White guy and Asian
American woman. The combination may be the most common depiction of mixed-race
couples in popular culture.”
153
Thus, while the media construction of Asian American
sexuality and interracial relationships has probably improved by various subjective
metrics, at the same time, this construction concedes female Asian American sexuality
and is almost always coupled with white male characters, essentially converting Asian
female beauty into a trophy of white male power and virility while simultaneously

152
Anne Ishii, “Bow Wow Wow Yippee Yo Yippee Ya,” Slate 1 February 2013: n pag.
Web. 3 February 2012.
153
Paul Farhi, “Familiar Ad Trope: Pairing White Men and Asian American Women,”
Washington Post 27 September 2012: n pag. Web. 10 October 2012.
104
confirming the transnational and cross-cultural sex appeal of white male sexuality (or
female Asian American sexuality). Asian American men, on the other hand, are rarely
subjects of sexual agency or objects of emotional desire in the current media landscape,
a caricature that is reinforced, and interconnected, in popular and literary female Asian
American novels, unfortunately.
To be clear, I am not arguing that derogatory constructions of Asian American
masculinity are intentional nor am I arguing that it is somehow the responsibility of
female Asian American narrators or authors to center, privilege, or even incarnate Asian
American masculinity or Asian American male sexuality (in all its many variants) in their
own texts. The issue here is narrative focus. The right to construct narratives is also the
right to construct characters, which means the right to privilege the character
development (and flesh out the subjectivity) of some characters over others. Using the
examples of Kingston, Tan and Chang, I am arguing that oversimplified, desexualized
and vilified constructions of Asian American men (in both the center and the margins), as
well as the mediation of Asian American male voices, are synergistically detrimental
because they enforce culturally disastrous stereotypes of Asian and Asian American
men, simplify male gender performance and even worse, render Asian American men
invisible (or authoritarian) when these authors should be contesting and deconstructing
such constructions in their own narratives.
Of course, other Asian American writers and critics like Frank Chin, have argued
that Kingston and Tan have written fiction where “nothing is Chinese, nothing is real,
everything is born of pure imagination.”
154
Not only does Chin claim these female

154
Frank Chin et al., The Big Aiiieeeee! (New York: Meridian, 1991) 49.
105
authors as culturally inauthentic and hegemonically brainwashed by white supremacy,
he also argues that “[l]anguage is the medium of culture and the people’s sensibility,
including the style of manhood . . . on the simplest level, a man in any culture speaks for
himself. Without a language of his own, he is no longer a man.”
155
The problem here is
that both Chin’s critique and advocacy are likely more egregious than the authorial
constructions he critiques. Daniel Y. Kim critiques Chin’s masculinist politicization of
language for similar reasons. In his book, Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow, he
compares the work of Chin and Ellison and argues that:
Connecting the work of these two figures is, after all, a common rhetoric of
masculinity and sexuality—a rhetoric that depicts the violent psychic effects of
living under a racist regime through a symbolic vocabulary of emasculation,
feminization, and homosexualization. What they also share is a highly
masculinist conception of literature in which the act of writing is seen as the
privileged mode of combating a racism that seeks to effect the castration of men
of color. Their writings thus link virility with racial and literary authenticity.
156

For Chin, heroic literature (i.e., the masculinist literary narrative) is part of his solution to
the infusion of successful female Asian American writers and their racial and sexual
emasculation of the Asian American male. Kim explains Chin’s remasculation calculus:
If Asian Americans are perceived within the U.S. racial imaginary as a “womanly”
race, and if they also perceive themselves that way, this feminizing view can best

155
Frank Chin et al., “Fifty Years of Our Whole Voice,” Aiiieeeee! (New York: Anchor,
1974) 35.
156
Daniel Y. Kim, Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1995) xvii.
106
be corrected, Chin and his colleagues insist, by fashioning wholly virile and
racially distinct forms of manhood within the domain of literature.
157

Obviously, there’s nothing intrinsically masculine about language. An appropriate
corrective would be: “a person in any culture speaks for her or himself. And on a
cultural and artistic level, without language, she or he is no longer an articulated entity.”
The problem here is that not only do Chin’s gender politics reassign a phallocentric
paradigm to Asian American literary and cultural authenticity, but even worse, as Asian
American scholars like Viet Nguyen have pointed out, Chin collapses the emasculation
of Asian American males in female Asian American writing with the feminization of Asian
American males. “[F]or Chin, there is little difference between being less than a man
and being a woman.”
158
Indeed, because womanhood becomes a signifier of the
wounded Asian American male for Chin, both womanhood, female gender performativity
and the social construction of femininity become derogatory sites of passivity, silence
and victimization to Chin whereas manhood becomes a redemptive site of creativity,
articulation and self-heroicization. “[F]or by disparaging the feminine, these passages
denigrate not only women but also those men who are in some way ‘feminine.’ In his
descriptions of the feminizing stereotype . . . Chin tends to reiterate the commonplace
homophobic logic that equates femininity with homosexuality . . .”
159
This, Chin’s ultimate
intellectual contribution in Asian American criticism may be nothing more than inverting
the inversion, switching gender binarisms and forcing Asian masculinist hegemony into
the literary publishing world and the Asian American literary imaginary. However, even

157
Kim, 36.
158
Nguyen, 104.
159
Kim, 133.
107
the redacted language of racial authenticity and Asian American remasculinization in the
earlier corrective still smacks of logocentric chauvinism. How easy would it be to
conceive of Asian American personhood, for example, through the media of acrylics and
oil, pottery, documentary, choreography or musical composition? Furthermore, Chin’s
position on cultural authenticity and the so-called masculine creative process is
obviously fallacious (not to mention, misogynistic), as is his reductive, highly militaristic
interpretation of the Confucian Annals, his literary project of heroic masculinization which
conflates (re)masculinization with empowerment, and his profoundly essentialistic
reading of Chinese history. But those criticisms aside, Chin does manage to raise one
important issue in an endless stream of envy, sexism, oversimplification and invective
that I will modify for this project: When Asian American men lose their voice due to
narrative mediation, literary marginalization and anorexic literary representation in major
publishing houses, they can easily turn into place holders, cautionary tales, metaphorical
eunuchs, gender coloring books, spectral entities, and atomized male bodies in the
literary imagination. While such dehumanization, silence and invisibility is to be
expected in an institutionally racist society, it’s shocking and egregious to find the
intimations of it inside Asian American contemporary literature.
Ultimately, the question of the construction of Asian American masculinity is more
broadly the question of the construction of Asian American gender. Poststructuralist
critics like Judith Butler, define gender as the “repeated stylization of the body, a set of
repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the
108
appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”
160
According to Butler, this
repetition of gender performance is:
“[A]t once a reenactment and a re-experiencing of a set of meanings
already socially established; and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their
legitimation . . . effected with the strategic aim of maintaining gender within its
binary frame—an aim that cannot be attributed to a subject, but, rather, must be
understood to found and consolidate the subject. Gender ought not to be
construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow;
rather gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior
space through a stylized repetition of acts.
161

One striking implication of Butler’s now-normative definition of gender within the
academic community is this: because the Asian American male body politic is often
textually, philologically and culturally nebulous, or even worse, non-existent except as
stock characters and cardboard cutouts, Asian American men, on one level, anyway,
cease to have a textual gender at all as long as they cease to have a literary and cultural
body in contemporary literature with which to perform this repeated stylization. Another
possibility is that being both marginalized, simplistically constructed, atomized and
voiceless, Asian American male performativity becomes unpersuasive and incoherent,
further relegated to cultural inauthenticity precisely because of their lexical, literary and
performative fragmentation in the Asian American literary imagination.
Connected to the problematic of gender performance is the cultural resonance of
derogatory constructions of Asian American masculinity. These disastrous constructions

160
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1999 [1990]) 43-44.
161
Butler, 178-179.
109
can become culturally pandemic when they are published in major publishing houses
because major publishing houses have higher print runs, extensive distribution
infrastructure, greater levels of publishing continuity, long-standing relationships with
retail book chains and embedded cultural influence within the American popular
imagination at large. In other words, when a tiny independent press publishes five
hundred copies of a novel that commits the same type of gender mediation and
instigates the same negative Asian American male construction as a major publishing
house, the damage can be less culturally disastrous and less memetically viral due to a
smaller cultural effect. On the other hand, when Norton, Penguin, Hachette and Vintage,
for example, publish 50,000 copies of the same problematic novel, those same
constructions become much more pervasive, sticky and culturally embedded in the
popular imagination because of how those companies tend to occupy greater retail and
cultural space both online, in literary circles, book clubs, in public libraries, advertising
campaigns and the bookstore co-op. Novels from major publishing houses are also
more likely to curry higher-profile book reviews by well-known critics, print and sell more
hardcopies in a first print run, reprint successful hardcover novels later as paperbacks,
reach more readers through both national chains and local book stores, magazine and
radio advertising, and demand greater attention from the public in the form of author
interviews, book trailers, publicity campaigns and author readings—all of which
standardize negative cultural constructions and help them become viral constructions
(and eventually, normative constructions).
While it is refreshing, important and culturally significant that so many Asian
American novelists are female, and while this overrepresentation can be read as a
110
counterbalance to the overall literary fiction market which continues to be dominated by
white male novelists, at the same time, the crisis of Asian American representation,
along with the epistemic scarcity of Asian American culture in the popular imagination,
resonant negative constructions of Asian American masculinity in print and in movies,
and the atomization of the Asian American male body in general, is racially and culturally
catastrophic because it often solidifies the very stereotypes it should be deconstructing.
Whenever there is a poverty of knowledge about a particular race, gender performance
or cultural narrative, media constructions always bear more weight because of the power
to define that race, culture or gender to uninformed readers, unfair though that may be.
On the other hand, when there is an abundance of knowledge about a race or cultural
narrative (e.g. white culture), readers are much more likely to analyze those
constructions with a much higher level of nuance, scrutiny and sophistication. In other
words, due to the oversaturation of white media constructions, we almost never read a
novel with an evil white male protagonist and then make ontological inductions about
whiteness or white masculinity. But when readers have an incomplete, fragmented or
inchoate knowledge of Chinese or Chinese American culture for example, they can be
susceptible to the construction of the tyrannical paterfamilias in Hunger or the
desexualized uncle in The Joy Luck Club unless he or she interacts directly with the
Chinese American community or has extensive knowledge of Chinese American history,
culture or literature. Perhaps this is part of the reason that Asian Americans, according
to Eng, are “seen as the most foreign, racialized, and unassimilable in the era of
exclusion (the myth of yellow peril) and the most invisible, colorless, and compliant in the
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post-1965 era (the model minority myth) . . . ”
162
. While these constructions are certainly
problematic, the reality is that media constructions, like stereotypes, therefore, are used
to fill in the epistemological void of minority cultures with simplistic, melodramatic,
dehumanizing but also mnemophilic, specious, sticky characterizations that some
readers will likely accept in lieu of nothing. This is precisely why oppositional narratives
are so important in the Asian American literary archive, in part, to necessitate a richer
multiplicity of nuanced, complex cultural constructions and simultaneously to deconstruct
racist constructions that have reentered the cultural groundwater.
Furthermore, due to established relationships with retail merchants and greater
accessibility and exposure through significantly higher levels of publication (which often
correlates to higher levels of readership due to larger print runs), there is measurable
data suggesting that the female Asian American narrative by virtue of its higher level of
market and cultural saturation has become the normative de facto Asian American
narrative in general, which helps standardize the mediation and pejorative construction
of Asian American masculinity. For example, out of the approximately four hundred
novels analyzed in the appendix from the years 1992-2012, female Asian American
novelists published three times as many novels (301) as male Asian American novelists
(98). Female Asian American novelists also published their novels in major publishing
houses 77.7% of the time compared to 56.2% of the time for male Asian American
novelists. And even though female Asian American novelists published more novels in
small, academic or independent presses than male novelists did (67 novels compared to
43), only 22.2% of female Asian American novels published their novels in academic or

162
David Eng, Racial Castration (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001) 24.
112
independent presses compared to male novelists (43.7%). Furthermore, female South
Asian American novelists published almost four times as many novels as their male
counterparts did whereas female East Asian American novelists published three times
as many novels as their male counterparts. Perhaps most astonishing in connection
with this project, of the roughly 400 novels analyzed, only one male Japanese American
literary novel (The Island of Bicycle Dancers) has been published in a major publishing
house in the past twenty years.
163
It’s astonishing stuff, really. Even though the sample
size is relatively modest, statistically, the publication data is deeply troubling for a
number of reasons. One, it reflects a disequilibrium between the relative abundance of
female Asian American novels and the relative scarcity of male Asian American novels
in the publishing industry. As a consequence, the mediation of Asian American
masculinity through female authors is three times as likely as the other way around and
four times as likely if the novel is written by a desi author. Additionally, Japanese
American and hapa novels in general, and male Japanese American novels in particular,
are one of the most statistically marginalized Asian American subgroups in the American
publishing industry. The data suggests that while the Chinese American female novel is
often overrepresented in the American publishing industry, the Japanese female novel is
generally underrepresented. In comparison to either Japanese or Chinese American
female novels, the representation of the Japanese American male novels is miniscule.
In general, the publication blackout of Japanese American novels confers Asian
American narrativization, in general, to either female Japanese American authorship

163
Takashi Matsuoka’s novels, by comparison, are commercial fiction, and both Milton
Murayama’s novels and David Mura’s novel were both published by either an academic
press (University of Hawaii) or an independent press (Coffee House Press).
113
specifically, or to non-Asian authorship generally (e.g. Arthur Golden and David
Guterson), thereby requiring the mediation, translation and ventriloquism of male voices
by female or white male authors, which can standardize, even legitimate, derogatory
authorial constructions of Asian American men and idealized authorial constructions of
Asian American women. Only a quarter of the time, based on the above sample, do
male Asian American authors write their own narratives, meaning the delineation and the
construction of Asian American masculinity has essentially become the cultural property
of Asian American female novelists. Thus, due to a sustained and massive publishing
inequality between male and female Asian American writers, the mediated (or negatively
constructed) Asian American man in contemporary Asian American literature has slowly
become the normative Asian American man in the public imagination.
Connected to the market reality of publishing, contemporary Asian American
literature written through the female Asian American narrative appears to be highly
marketable, which might partially explain its widespread popularity. While this project
will not delve into the statistical intricacies of the publishing industry and the possible
corruption of literary fiction in profit-driven market capitalism (which is a separate project
altogether, requiring a much higher level of quantitative proficiency and a much more
evolved macroeconomic perspective than I possess), there does appear to be a
correlation between the sheer number of Asian American novels published in the past
twenty years and the very possibility of the gendering of—and in many cases, the flat,
and/or negative, construction of Asian American masculinity in—Asian American novels
published in major publishing houses. When three-fourths of the available novels written
in a twenty-year timeframe are written by women, this obviously genders the Asian
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American narrative, giving female Asian American authorship the right to speak on
behalf of, and also dictate, the construction of Asian American cultural identity in general.
Furthermore, when almost half of Asian American male novels are published in small
presses and when more than three-fourths of Asian American female novels are
published in major publishing houses, this suggests a probable power inequality in
cultural affect. One reason for this project’s focus on the larger publishing companies is
relatively straight-forward: On average, larger printing houses tend to have larger initial
print runs and bigger advertising, PR, publicity and outreach budgets. They generally
control a much larger portion of the literary market, which often corresponds to higher
levels of media saturation, and therefore, greater market power in the construction,
racialization and the commodification of a narratavized Asian American identity. The
best example of this is Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, which is possibly the best-known
contemporary Asian American novel in history. Whereas few Americans have likely read
Theresa Hak Jyung Cha’s Dictee unless they took an Asian American literature class in
college (more on that later), tens of millions of Americans have either read one of Tan’s
novels or watched the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club. Amy Tan’s next novel, The
Kitchen God’s Wife, was one of the only literary novels in 1991 to make a bestseller list
according to Publisher’s Weekly, sharing this publishing accolade with Stephen King,
Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, John Grisham and Alexander Ripley’s Gone with the Wind
sequel, all enormous commercial successes.
164
Considering that at least four of Tan’s

164
“Annual Best Sellers 1990-1999,” Graduate School of Library and Information
Services. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Web. 20 December 2012.
115
novels have become New York Times Bestsellers,
165
(which is unheard of for literary
fiction writers or for Asian American novelists in general—commercial or literary), the
reality is that the cultural, gender and racial constructions in Tan’s novels will have a
much more sustained, broader and deeper influence on the American popular and
literary imagination than lesser-known Asian American literary novels published in small
presses whose novels will never be as well circulated, well read, well known, nor as
systemically disseminated and culturally absorbed. Therefore, while all constructions of
gender, race, class and sexuality are powerful, as it turns out, some might actually be
more powerful than others in terms of cultural affect and social consequentiality.
Intuitively, the existence of a disproportionately female Asian American
authorship in major publishing houses might very well be an economic consideration.
After all, the target reader demographic for fiction is largely female since women
constitute close to 80% of the entire fiction market according to surveys conducted in
America, Canada and Britain.
166
At the same time, despite the possible profit motive for
overrepresenting the female Asian American narrative in the publishing industry, the
higher level of publicity and publication by female Asian American novelists, coupled with
concomitant higher rates of market saturation have the collective effect of gendering
Asian American cultural identity in the popular imagination and mediating both Asian
American masculinity and also constructing Asian American male sexuality in a way that
tends to demonize male power, celebrate (or mystify) female power, sexualize Asian

165
Amy Tan, “About Me and My Family,” Amy Tan Author. Amy Tan. Web. 24 January
2013.
166
Eric Weiner, “Why Women Read More than Men,” NPR 5 Sept. 2007: n pag. Web. 19
March 2012.
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American female cultural identity and simultaneously emasculate male American
cultural and sexual identity. Thus, the orientalization of many Asian American cultural
productions from major publishing houses does not appear motivated by self-conscious
orientalism, per se, but appears to be a reflection of anticipated reader demand (though
of course, this demand can obviously be manipulated by the publishing industry).
Gendering the Asian American narrative is very likely a market strategy to appeal to
female readers, or at the very least, to perpetuate a stereotypical construction of Asian
and Asian American culture that matches the expectation of the Asian Exotic.
Furthermore, even a cursory glance at a few Asian American novel covers
reveals the powerful way in which the visual cues of Asian American novels can operate
as encoded cultural advertising, selling not just the novel but the imagined author, her
narrative and her so-called Asianness as well. For example, in Anchee Min’s novel Wild
Ginger, the front novel cover referred to as C1 in the publishing industry (as opposed to
C2, which is the inner flap of the front cover or C4, which is the novel’s back cover)
displays a Chinese woman wrapped only in a red sheet covered in Chinese characters,
her shoulder exposed, her hair tied in pigtails. The woman’s body both centers and
foregrounds the visual space of the red background while the vertically inverted book title
and author’s name to the left of the model’s body is at the very end of the left margin,
spatially marginalizing both the novel’s title and author, but also forming a lexical frame
around the model’s body, a visual construction that reinforces the centering of the
model’s body over the book’s title. Thus, while the novel cover conveys crucial retail
information about itself as a work of artistic commerce, visually speaking, the novel
clearly privileges the Asian American female body over Asian American authorship.
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Additionally, the delineation of the potentially naked cover model covered in a red sheet
of Chinese words not only renders her vulnerable to the reader’s gaze (a reading which
is bolstered by the model’s perspective in profile, which makes her oblivious to reader
scrutiny), but also eroticizes and exotifies both her body, and Anchee Min’s narrative by
sexualizing the Chinese language itself. The model’s body is literally protected from the
reader’s gaze by Chinese characters, a visual argument that insinuates the paternalistic
protection of the Chinese language and implicates the naked female Chinese body as
both underneath, and also at the core of Chinese culture itself. Furthermore, the
depiction of the cover model in pigtails not only constructs a picture of youthful, passive
and vulnerable innocence (underscored by her bare shoulder and closed eyes), but also
transforms her womanhood into pubescence, essentially reinscribing Asian American
femininity with Asian American female adolescence. This visual conflation of cultural
mythology and cultural construction perpetuates the stereotypical power dynamic of Asia
as a signifier of the beautiful, sexualized, naïve, vulnerable, eternally youthful female and
the Western reader as a signifier of the rational, objectifying, invasive, consumeristic,
heteronormative reader who demands knowledge of, fantasy with, and invitation to the
Asian American female body. According to the implicit visual cues of Wild Ginger, the
act of reading becomes equivalent to the act of sexual domination. Both reading and
commodity consumption become acts of cultural imperialism that are directly connected
to the transmogrification of the female Asian American narrative into the Asian American
female body. By buying the novel, readers assume partial ownership of the Asian
American female body politic. And by reading the novel, readers become symbolic
consumers of the gendered (in this case, female) Asian American narrative.
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Another example of the gendering of the Asian American narrative is Vivian
Yang’s novel Shanghai Girl. On C1 there is once again a young, possibly adolescent
Chinese or Chinese American woman straddling a bike, one leg spread open with her
high heel resting on top of a pedal, the other leg planted on the ground for balance.
Dressed in tiny shorts and high heels that highlight the cover model’s long legs and a
halter top that hints at side cleavage and displays slender arms gripping the handlebars,
the front cover not only privileges the Asian American female body, it clearly objectifies it
through overt sexual objectification, a reading that is reinforced by the cover model’s
white high heels (who rides a bike in high heels?), three quarter pose, coiffure flower and
adolescent body type. By situating the model at the very right margin and centering her
leg, the model is both marginalized as a woman but also centered as a sexual
commodity in the cover. Additionally, by employing a faded, faux-60’s cover to convey a
classic vintage effect, Shanghai Girl’s constructs a visual contradiction that is both
timeless and extremely dated, a replica of the All-American girl in costume, physical
exuberance, suggestive sexual precociousness and muscular development, and also
Asian American in facial bone structure, visual cues of Asianness (e.g. epicanthic folds),
and suggestive fertility (expressed primarily through her floral adornment). This visual
hybridity of the familiar and the foreign, the physically developed white girl and the
exotic, innocent Asian girl, combines elements of the girl next door with the Asian Exotic
syndrome. Furthermore, the cover model’s legs are both sexually suggestive (with one
leg opened in a half spread eagle and both legs straddling a bike seat), and also
physically strong and durable (with the other muscular leg firmly planted on the ground in
a white high heel), suturing elements of sexuality and athleticism, suggestibility and
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stability, exotica and reality. The C1 font buttresses the overt sexualization of the Asian
American cover model too. Not only is the placement of the uppercase “H” and the
uppercase “A” of the word “SHANGHAI” covering her chest like a linguistic brassiere, but
this graphic superimposition helps interconnect the Latin alphabet (which is the bedrock
of Anglophone cultural hegemony) with the female Asian American body, acting as both
a territorial marker of the female Asian American body politic and also a brandishing of
the commodified Asian female object, turning her into a cultural product of American
market capitalism. Lastly, by placing the words “A Novel” on the open thigh of the cover
model, Shanghai Girl conflates the sexualized body of the brandished Asian American
female body with both the reader’s gaze and his/her consumption of the text. The
“novel” in Shanghai Girl is both the text proper and also the cover model’s body whose
right thigh is given the same title as See’s narrative, conflating Asian American female
physicality and the Asian American female narrative. Thus, according to the visual rules
of the novel cover, by reading Shanghai Girls, the reader consumes the sexualized but
permissive Asian American female body. By buying Shanghai Girls, the reader owns the
Asian American female body politic to the extent that this body is both juxtaposed with
the Asian American female narrative, is a cultural product of market capitalism and is
also a narrative instrument of cultural somatization.
In both examples, the book covers of Asian American novels, but specifically
female Asian American novels (since empirically they are much more widely published
and circulated than male novels) become encoded signifiers of the so-called Asian
Exotic, which female Asian American authors on some level become inadvertent
representatives of, whether or not their own narratives correspond in any way to the
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visual orientalist trope of the cover. These novels generally rely upon both graphic and
textual representations of advertising (and commodifying) the signified other for public
consumption, making Asian American novel covers complex but powerful sites of fictive
literary self-orientalization and visual self-exotification of Asian American culture in
general that (en)genders, and therefore, sexualizes, the female Asian American
narrative through the transmission of visual cues that simultaneously capture reader’s
attention, brandish the female Asian American body, conflate literary and sexual
consumption, and also falsely advertise in extremely hypersexualized and profoundly
masculinist terms, the mythologized culture of the female author. Of course, female
Asian American authors—like male writers—have absolutely no say over which book
cover is selected to “represent” their own novels, which is precisely what is so
problematic about the publishing industry, namely, the phenomenon of mostly white
editors perpetuating the visual construction of orientalism, which effectively schematizes
this orientalist relationship between author and reader. The orientalization of the female
Asian American novel, therefore, becomes interconnected with the profit motive of the
publishing industry, the commodification of the female Asian American body (politic) in
market capitalism and the cultural imperialism of white readership, all of which
superimpose the industrial technology of mass production and the cultural technology of
the (fe)male gaze on to the transnational Asian American female body both graphically,
symbolically and lexically. For this reason, this tendency in Asian American literary
novels to mediate and visually represent the cultural, literary and gender heterogeneity
of Asian American identity makes the publishing industry complicit in the atavistic
reconstruction of orientalist tropes in contemporary American literature, and for that
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reason, deserves critical attention by future Asian American scholars. Hopefully, this
chapter inspires a crucial dialogue to take place between Asian American literary
scholars, race and ethnicity scholars, visual culture scholars and the commercial and
literary publishing industry at large someday.
Despite, and in many ways, precisely due to the emergent orientalization in
contemporary publishing in America, I think Asian American literary criticism needs to
incorporate the prodigious archive of literary and commercial Asian American novels, not
only on its own terms in order to contest and deconstruct the (self-)commodification and
marketability of Asian American exotification, but also hopefully to interrogate the
diegetic monopolization of female authorship and its possible intersectionality with
derogatory/mediated constructions of masculinity and orientalist narrative modalities in
the literary imagination. Furthermore, an expanded Asian American literary archive is
valuable because even flawed Asian American novels contain important political,
creative, cultural and theoretical materiality, even literature that “accommodates” self-
commodification and cultural orientalization. For example, even in the three books
critiqued earlier in this chapter, each work is still culturally and critically valuable for
Asian American scholars. Despite specious constructions of Asian American masculinity
in China Men, the book retains significant cultural and literary value because it creates a
feminist framework with which to reread and reframe Chinese myths, an act which
intentionally destabilizes the masculinist domain of Chinese history and the artificial
boundaries of fiction, non-fiction, memoir and orality. Despite the prerogative of Asian
American sexuality allotted only to white men and hapa females, The Joy Luck Club
retains its cultural, critical and literary value by exploring culture conflict
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intergenerationally and contesting the stereotype of the proverbial Chinese English
speaker (i.e., Chinese Americans speaking like fortune cookies). And despite the
derogatory delineation of Asian American men as tyrants, crooks and servants, Hunger
retains its cultural, critical and literary value by nuancing Asian male constructions and
giving (limited) agency and identificatory sexuality, if only ephemerally.
Additionally, due to the highly compressed Asian American cultural and literary
archive, many intelligent, socially-conscious, intellectually nuanced, politically relevant
contemporary Asian American novels are often thrown out with the bath water, either
ignored or neglected to the detriment of Asian American studies departments
everywhere. While novels like Jess Hagerdorn’s Dogeaters, Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s
Hanging, Theresa Hak Hyung Cha’s Dictee, Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart,
John Okada’s No-No Boy, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, Maxine Hong Kingston’s A Woman
Warrior, Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, and a token work by Jhumpa Lahiri or Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni are all repeat offenders in course syllabi,
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their popularity has
reached canonical status now within the Asian American academic community.
Meanwhile, other Asian American novels published in major publishing houses and
independent presses of equal cultural, literary and academic value, are mostly ignored
by the Asian American academic community. For example, short story collections like
Nam Le’s The Boat, Toshio Morii’s Yokohama, California, Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years
of Good Prayers, Ha Jin’s Under the Red Flag, The Bridegroom, Saboteur, A Good Fall,
David Wong Louie’s Love Pangs, Rishi Reddi’s Karma, and Mary Yukari Water’s The

167
A cursory glance at representative course syllabi available online at universities like
Bucknell College, Cornell University, Hunter College, Mount Holyoke College, New York
University, the University of Oregon and Wesleyan University, for example, all seem to
support this inductive assertion.
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Laws of Evening, to name just a few examples, are almost completely absent in course
syllabi. Likewise, novels like Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (a work of social realism,
no less), Ha Jin’s War Trash, In the Pond, Waiting, Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt,
Lê Thị Diễm Thúy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For, Nina Revoyr’s The Age of
Dreaming and Southland, Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl, Susan Choi’s American Woman,
The Foreign Student, Noel Alumit’s Letters to Montgomery Clift, Ayad Akhtar’s American
Dervish, Julie Shigekuni’s A Bridge Between Us, Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country,
Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere, Sigrid Nunez’s Salvation City, Han Ong’s Fixer Chao,
Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, Tony D’Souza’s Whiteman, and Karen Tei
Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel and David Mura’s Famous
Suicides of the Japanese Empire, are almost entirely absent from Asian American
Literature course syllabi, and only slightly more available in Asian American criticism.
Just as troubling, Asian American graphic novels are rarely included in Asian
American literature syllabi with the exception of Gene Luen Yang’s American Born
Chinese, a token gesture for sure. And even when graphic novels are available, they
are generally sequestered into isolated seminars focusing exclusively on Asian American
graphic novels, which expands the Asian American studies curriculum for sure, but also
demarcates Asian American literature from graphic novels, implying a secondary or
specialized focus instead of a normative or literary one. Not only is there a long history
of Asian American graphic novelists in America (which ironically, are not included in
canonical reading lists of Asian American cultural productions, thereby complicating the
canon’s historicity in the first place), but furthermore, as will be argued later, graphic
novels are crucial components of Asian and Asian American cultural narratives because
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of the way in which they help to counteract the visual orientalization of Asian American
novels through graphic self-representation, providing an alternative cultural history to
literary narravatization and a graphic technique of cultural recentering. One could argue
convincingly that Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, for example, is just as vital in the Asian
American literary archive as H. Hwang’s M. Butterfly, for the way it examines the dyadic
exotification of the other, the interconnectivity between gender and racial performativity,
and the idealization of whiteness as a marker of hegemonic sexuality. Without a doubt,
there are already some Asian American literature scholars teaching the Asian American
graphic novel, like Stanford’s Stephen Hong Sohn, UIC’s Karen Su and Wisconsin’s Tim
Yu, to name a few examples, but in general there are a number of important Asian
American graphic novels that are simply not receiving the attention they deserve in
survey courses of Asian American literature: Tomine’s Summer Blond, John Pham’s
Sublife, Jillian Tamaki’s Skim, Indoor Voice and Gilded Lilies, GB Tran’s Vietamerica,
Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, Elisha Lim’s Butches,
Jason Shiga’s Empire State: A Love Story, Belle Yang’s Forget Sorrow, Lynda Barry’s
One! Hundred! Demons!, Lela Lee’s Angry Little Girls and Jen Wang’s Koko Be Good.
It’s something of a methodological irony that most Asian American criticism is so finely
attuned to the literary and cultural marginalization of Asian American cultural productions
within the chauvinistic Western canon, and yet at the same time, so often sluggish and
resistant to challenging its own bibliographical canonicity.
The problem, of course, is not book preferences. After all, literary scholars are
expected to teach the literary works they are the most passionate about, and for good
reason. The problem is that a very small number of Asian American cultural productions
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have become canonical not despite academia, but through academia, including
academic research, graduate level coursework, literature reviews, field reading lists and
doctoral programs. The academy is forcing both emergent and tenured Asian American
scholars to return to the same Asian American archive as a professional prerequisite for
participating in the critical discourse of Asian American cultural and literary scholarship.
Regurgitated reading lists in Asian American literature survey courses are simply a
dialectical consequence of the triangulated pedagogical cycle between faculty,
undergraduate and graduate students, which consequently, compresses, marginalizes
and therefore, suspends an immense Asian American literary archive.
Ultimately, the point here is not to excoriate Asian American scholars, or criticize
their literary darlings, but rather to advocate that Asian American scholars incorporate a
larger, more longitudinal, more contemporary sample of Asian American literature into
both their course syllabi and critical projects from both academic, independent and major
publishing houses in order to interrogate, emend and deconstruct stereotypical and
orientalist constructions of Asian American identity, to suture the disconnection between
the Asian American scholarly community and the publishing industry, to reconnect the
popular and the literary imagination, and just as importantly, to mine this capacious
archive for redemptive cultural productions that have nuanced gender and racial
constructions, socially-conscious political resonance, and ideologically oppositional
narratives. In the simplest terms, when we boycott or ignore unoriginal, stereotypical,
popular or marginalized literature, we lose the critical value of deconstructing that
literature. At the same time, we also lose many culturally, literarily and critically valuable
works “hidden” in the same archive. Furthermore, every time Asian American scholars
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teach the same canonical Asian American texts in their classroom and include the same
cultural productions in their own research, the more calcified and restrictive the Asian
American archive becomes, the less heterogeneous it appears pedagogically and the
more stagnant and redundant it becomes culturally.
While no Asian American novel will likely survive the sustained scrutiny of Asian
American criticism in the long run, and while no Asian American novel will possibly
satisfy the cultural, racial, sexual, political, theoretical and ideological politics of the entire
Asian American academic community, I would like to quickly adumbrate three possible
correctives to the currently deficient Asian American literary archive that I believe both
represent and embody microcosmically, part of an expanded Asian American archive:
Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, Lily Hoang’s Changing and Karen Tei Yamashita’s I
Hotel.
A Drifting Life is Tatsumi’s magnum opus. Adrian Tomine, the Asian American
mangka who has published cover illustrations for the New Yorker and is the creator of
the critically-acclaimed Summer Blond, Shortcomings, New York Drawings and the Optic
Nerve series, helped edit and introduce three of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s graphic works to
America with the help of Drawn & Quarterly editor Chris Oliveros.
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Through Tomine’s
help, the English incarnation of Tatsumi’s work has become partially an Asian American
cultural production. Both an ambitious epic graphic memoir about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s
professional evolution as a manga artist, a postmodern graphic novel about the graphic
novel and also on another level, a graphic biography of gekiga (the adult equivalent of

168
Michael C. Lorah, “Adrian Tomine—Editing and Presenting Tatsumi’s Goodbye,”
Newsarama 10 June. 2008: n pag. Web. 27 January 2013.

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manga), A Drifting Life is an unflinching portrayal of the arduous professional trajectory
of manga artists in Japan who are constantly forced to negotiate editorial constraints,
public expectations, narrative and graphical innovation, and commercial reality. For this
reason, Tatsumi’s work mirrors in many ways the perennial conflict between literary and
commercial fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction and celebrity drivel in the publishing
industry in America, making it relevant to this project in more than one way. Additionally,
A Drifting Life instantiates something that Kingston, Tan and Chang’s books ignore:
Asian American male interiority, male self-portraiture, mimetic narrative and male
sexuality. As with all graphic narratives, A Drifting Life privileges graphical narrative over
lexical narrative, subordinating language (Kingston’s talk-story) to (self-)imagery,
transferring the narrative license from the normative female Asian American storyteller to
the male Asian American artist—an important, if exceptional, counterbalance to the
female diegetic narrative and its simplified construction of Asian American masculinity.
In my reading of A Drifting Life, the graphic novel/memoir becomes an important
modality of Asian American graphic self-representationalism and also an alternative
history to literary narravatization. Additionally, by employing a narrative arc and graphic
techniques of cultural recentering, A Drifting Life directly challenges both the framing and
the narrativization of Asian American cultural identity by deprivileging logocentrism as
the exclusive technology of the Asian American narrative while also challenging the
materialist critique of Asian American cultural analysis which traditionally objects to plot
linearity and male coming of age narratives as being tied to class trophies of the
bourgeoisie and the stylistics of the empire. By telling its own narrative through its own
visual constructions, A Drifting Life also contests the potential visual orientalization of
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Asian American novel covers whose graphic constructions are decided outside of the
Asian and Asian American community by a complicit non-Asian editorship whose chief
concerns are profit margin, not artistic integrity, racial authenticity or cultural nuance. A
Drifting Life simultaneously participates in, and also complicates, the standard definition
of the oppositional narrative by deglamorizing the manga industry and the artist, by
subverting the diegetic mediation of Asian American masculinity through graphical
narrative, by externalizing male interiority into an objective visual culture that expands
the frame of Asian American subjectivities, by reifying identificatory Asian American
male desire, by reasserting a mimetic narrative arc into a graphic autobiography, and
also by controlling the graphic representation of Asian American cultural identity. A
Drifting Life takes away the power of cultural configuration from the Asian American critic
and the potentially orientalist editor and returns it to the artist and the reader where many
Asian American novelists feel it belongs.
In Lily Hoang’s Changing, the ancient Chinese text I Ching is retold as a fictional
genealogy of myth, revised fairytale, tragic memoir, poetic excerpt, subverted and
repeated prophecy and impossible love story. Through cultural and literary
“translation,”
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Changing rewrites the I Ching, the book of Chinese prophecy, by
transforming it from an objective text of divination into a subjective text of self-fulfilling
prophecy. Detailing episodes of abuse, neglect, racism and molestation, Hoang’s
Changing is a powerful, brutal and touching narrativization of the sixty-four hexagrams,
which riff, reflect, intersect and overlap each other cyclically. Both a beautiful but heart-
breaking telephone game of personal loss and also a bold, vulnerable work of cultural

169
Lily Hoang, Changing (Tuscaloosa: Fairy Tale Press, 2008) 6.
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alterity and familial alienation, Changing both reveres and fundamentally complicates the
I Ching. The female narrator becomes the oracle. The reader becomes the fortune
seeker and also indirectly the lover (since the narrator speaks directly to the reader as
“you” whose multivalent second person referentiality shifts throughout the narrative).
Changing’s “prophecy” concerns the narrator’s (fiat) destiny of the appropriated
hexagrams: “Not a teller of fates but at this moment I am pretending to be & I can be
because this is mine, this whole thing is mine & when I say this is a love story it is a love
story . . .”
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On one level, this novel becomes an egocentric work of Asian American
female subjectivity and a personal appropriation of Chinese divination. At the same
time, the fundamental alteration of this ancient Chinese text from objective cultural
production into novelistic performance of Asian American subjectivity also collapses the
role of the human mediator, which reconfigures a narrative power in language and
conflates the narrator with the oracle and the fictional subjectivity of the text with the
destiny of the narrator. Thus, on one level, the role of the Asian American narrative
(whether cyclical, episodic, linear or fragmented) has been irrevocably changed in this
novel from vivid storyteller to blind oracle, a confluence of Asian American subjectivity,
narratology and prophecy. “You reading this & wanting to know what it means & looking
for answers & I am sick of offering you answers so easy & I want you to look at this I
mean really look at this & from these stories find your own future.”
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The narrator can
only predict what already happened in hindsight. Ultimately, the narrative “destiny” of
Changing is the (re)telling of the destiny itself.

170
Hoang, 88.
171
Hoang, 42.
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Additionally, Changing also reifies the ontolgocial multiplicity of Asian American
cultural identity. First, this reification occurs on a grammatical level. The second person
pronoun (i.e., the “you” in this text) shifts from the narrator’s boyfriend, older sister,
father, classmate, to the fiction reader, a girl behind the counter, the narrator herself (“I’m
really talking about me & calling it you”),
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and the fortune-seeker. “Of course you know
that I’m not talking about you lover that I’m using you loosely & you could be you lover
but it could be any number of yous & you lover I can tell that you lover are offended by
my universality,”
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The second person in this novel becomes a signifier of polymorphous
Asian American ontology. Thus, because the “you” in Changing has multiple sources of
self-identification (often conflating with both first and third person modalities), the
semantics of Asian American cultural identity has the same flexible ontology. In
Changing, Asian American subjectivity cannot be pinned down. It shifts, (re)cycles, and
symbolically changes shape, form and signification. Second, this reification occurs on a
level of performative cultural translation. Changing is not only an unreliable linguistic
transliteration of the ancient Chinese text from Chinese characters into the Latin
alphabet (a project which the novel concedes is “constrained by language,”
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echoing
the poststructuralist critique of language itself), but the novel is also a cultural, formal
and ontological translation of the text from a fragmentary tool of prophecy (where one
hexagram is read in isolation) into a linear Asian American narrative (where “hexagrams”
are consecutively from beginning to end). Furthermore, the performative cultural
translation of the text becomes entangled with the speaker’s polyvalent cultural identity

172
Hoang, 37.
173
Hoang, 11.
174
Hoang, 121.
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as both a conflicted sister, a girlfriend, a victim, an oracle, an artist, a novelist, a love-
starved daughter, and an unreliable narrator, all of which instigate and bear witness to
the existential and narrative “change” taking place continuously in the text. An additional
level of existential multiplicity in Changing involves the narrator’s incessant performative
metamorphosis with her family:
The voices of Mother & Father & brother Big brother & sister
Big sister their voices so loud & firm & I try to listen love but
your voice is also so loud & firm & all of you all of you lover and
families you all have expectations you all have desire for me
what I should be for what I should become & so I have twisted
myself I have changed myself a constant chameleon for you for all
of you & now I myself am so flattened so deflated so tired from
exhaustion of expectation.
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Thus, through an imperfect linguistic, cultural, and ontological translation, Changing
effectively establishes a multiplicity of Asian American subjectivities that is symbolically
reinforced through both its own linguistic and cultural constraints (implying both the
impossibility and the infinity of translation) as well as the novel’s linear and cyclical
narrative elements, which read as alternative hexagrammatic translations of themselves
(and of the narrative subject), both in form and content. In this way, Changing both
destabilizes and also reinforces Asian American literary history, narrative modality and
Asian American cultural compartmentalization.

175
Hoang, 9.
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Finally, Karen Tei Yamashita’s I Hotel is a seminal, genre-defying work that is
both thematically and formally radical. An exemplar of the polyvocal, multigenerational
and dialogical narrative, I Hotel is actually ten intersecting novellas narrated from a
number of different characters, genders, historical periods and gradated political
ideologies. Unlike the novels analyzed in the beginning of this chapter, masculinity and
femininity are both self-constructed, mediated, and also refracted through multiple and
overlapping narrators. There is no gender narrative monopoly. Furthermore, I Hotel is
formally syncretic, integrating elements of the graphic novel, cinema verité, realist and
postmodern narrative (including both episodicity and metanarrative), dramatic
monologue and dialogue, poetry, journalism, manifesto, parody and portraiture—among
other narrative technologies—to reify a zeitgeist and simultaneously destabilize plot
linearity and genre integrity. Not only does I Hotel incarnate the conflicting narrative
polyvocality of the Civil Rights movement in San Francisco, it incarnates the conflicting
narrative polyvocality of Asian American cultural identity in general through ambitious
characterization, the depiction of class and racial conflict, and the exploration of
splintered, and sometimes, cannibalistic political ideology. At the same time, I Hotel also
examines the identarian heterogeneity of the movement itself, which occasionally
collapses into chaos, a structural embodiment of Asian American ontological multiplicity
that creates a series of breathless, stylized but imbricating voices that are virtually
impossible to keep track of. Beyond the sheer ambition of this language-driven novel
lies the ability, even the willingness of the metanovel to critique its own ideological
captivation at the same time I Hotel declares revolution on the publishing industry (and
the realist novel).
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Additionally, I Hotel also functions extremely well as a performance of hapa
cultural identity. In many ways, the cultural narratives of hapa writers are part of a
unique multicultural body politic with which to navigate and contest the cultural splitting
of Asian American cultural identity because hapas, like all multiethnic Americans, are
capable (often out of necessity) of reconciling competing, discursive strategies of racial
self-identification in a way that multigenerational, ethnically homogeneous Asian
Americans may not be. Certainly, I Hotel helps contest the default conservatism of
American multiculturalism, the artificial unity of Asian America as a homogeneous
cultural entity and the dubious univocality of specific Asian American critics. As I Hotel
makes explicit, Asian America is a professionally, racially and linguistically diverse, a
continuously shifting cultural entity, not an artistically and intellectually coagulated
vanguard of Japanese, Filipino and Chinese Americans:
We were Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia. We were
Filipinos, Koreans, Thai, and Japanese. In another decade, our wave crested
again higher, as we Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Hmong, Nepalese,
Burmese, Indonesian also joined our distraught destinies to life across the
Pacific. And in this same time period, the contours of Asia officially pushes
southward so that we of the Indian peninsula, we Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi,
also entered as Asian Americans.
176

While the path to assimilation for many Asian Americans often becomes conflated with
a self-identification with hegemonic structures of power generally and elastic definitions
of whiteness specifically, hapa narratives often embody racial polyphony, ideological

176
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2010), 602.
134
heterogeneity and discursive and identitarian simultaneity quite organically without
resorting to cultural amputation or monolithic racial constructions. In this way, I Hotel
epitomizes both the internal struggles of Asian American radicalism as a movement of
ethnic nationalism, the inherent polyvocality of Asian American (and hapa) cultural
identity, the flexible strategies of political and cultural accommodation/contestation in
both radical and assimilationist discourse, and the normative cultural
compartmentalization of hapa narratives, which are intrinsically multiracial and
heterogeneous, polyvocal, subaltern and hegemonic.
Furthermore, as a hapa novelist, Karen Tei Yamashita’s cultural narratives help
further destabilize the constraints of Asian American racial identity and the illusory
construction of cultural consensus while redefining Asian American cultural identity in a
way that allows for multiple identities. Yamashita’s novel participates in, what Ronald
Takaki argues is, the reconfiguration of the term hapa, which, like the voices in I Hotel,
have shifted in American culture over time:
[T]o mean all combinations of racial mixtures . . . Today, Asian Americans can
have green eyes, red hair, and freckles. Their last names can range from White
to Wong. They can take pride in multiple ethnicities. With equal enthusiasm,
they can celebrate Kwanzaa, Hanukhah, St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, as
well as Chinese New Year, the Tet Festival, Choosuk, and the Cherry Blossom
Festival.
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As I Hotel makes evident, multiracial identity, much like the heterogeneity of the Civil
Rights Movement, is not simply a cultural, political, racial or ideological construction. It is

177
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (New York: Bay Back Books, 1998
[1989]) 505.
135
an emergent matrix in which Asian American cultural identity is not only explored and
reconstituted, but also transgressed and transformed. “For many multiracial Americans,
the proclaiming of their complex identity has more than a cultural purpose. Politically,
they are challenging the rigid categories and notions of race that have been socially
constructed throughout history.”
178
Thus, the political and cultural valences of Asian
American ontological multiplicity in I Hotel, which are mosaically constructed, are
precisely those taking place in hapa culture at large. This cultural and racial multiplicity
destabilizes state-sanctioned racialization (which, for reasons of data compilation, is
inherently binary), and also emancipates Asian American cultural identity from the
exclusionary discourse of racial, literary, political and cultural authenticity. Both
multiracial and hapa cultural constructions of Asian American identity and graphic
narratives in general all contest the self-commodified orientalization of mainstream Asian
American cultural productions by providing sites for cultural resistance, racial polyphony,
graphic self-representation, and dialogical narratives between artistic resistance and
capitalist accommodation. In many ways, hapa narratives both excavate and challenge
the politics of cultural erasure, double-consciousness, negative cultural
compartmentalization, historical amnesia, and institutional racism by interconnecting
antagonistic modes of racial, cultural and historical identification (both hegemonic,
metamorphic and subaltern modes) in a unified but flexible field of artistic construction.
Through its narrative polyvocality, formal hybridity, and graphical and lexical modalities,
this (meta)novel is the perfect prototype of polymorphous Asian American subjectivity.

178
Takaki, 506.
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CHAPTER 4: THE NINJAS OF MY GREATER SELF

4.1: Hapa Boy in the Cemetery

So listen, this is where it all begins, stuck on the rooftop of the Tokyo Dragonfly
Hotel, high on adrenalin and crazy in love with a Japanese movie star. But now I’m time
traveling to the future. As a conceited (insecure) teenager and notorious pretty boy who
couldn’t grow leg hair to save his fucking life, I’ve always struggled with the contradiction
of being part Japanese but never Asian. It’s the type of contradiction that molests you
forever in America. In middle school, my parents split up out of the blue, vaporizing my
childhood in a single burst of atomic light. In a flash, I lost the idyllic countryside, I lost
forests, sand dunes, cherry orchards, pristine lakes, watercolored sailboats named after
Triple Crown Winners and wonderland blizzards that formed barricades around my
house, protecting me from multiplication tables, Jap jokes and geography quizzes,
freezing time just enough to donate a perfect snow day. I’d sled through snowdrifts until
my cheeks were drunk-pink and slurp instant hot cocoa, the tiny freeze-dried
marshmallows looking like mysterious teeth in my I heart Ōsaka mug. It was like, hey
childhood, mata, ne?
After my parents finalized their divorce, my mom moved to Florida because it was
the opposite of Northern Michigan and my dad moved to Chicago because it was the
opposite of Florida, moving their caravans to different ancestral lands. They gave me
two choices and both of them sucked, at least in my mopey teenage brain: Michael
Jordan or Daffy Duck. I wanted to live with my mom in Orlando but I couldn’t stand the
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fucking hot and pasty summers, the big furry-fetish of Disney World, the stupid-ass
Cuban Embargo, the materialistic body sculptors of Miami, the tacky tourist shops selling
mummified starfish and ossified little seahorses—that shit always upset me. Back when
the whole family, including my MIA siblings, took long, painful road trips all the way from
Traverse City
179
to Winter Park, Florida, our bodies crammed in the family Subaru with
too much luggage, a nylon travel box of 80’s pop cassettes for the stereo and a large
plastic cooler full of a million lunch meats and assorted cheeses, Capri Suns, potato
salad and linked hotdogs from Maxbauers, there’s always been a big part of me that
never got Florida. Part of it was the state itself, which looks like a cock with Peyronie’s
Disease. But mostly it was how we got to Florida: Trudging through the slushy country
roads in Northern Michigan, driving around the urban decay of Detroit and then stuck on
the highway for a dragged-out eternity until we finally descended into the always-moist
south where people wore cowboy costumes even when it wasn’t Halloween, addressing
my dad as sir and asking my mom if she was looking for a Chinese restaurant even
though she’s Japanese-American like me, motherfuckers. After a lot of hesitation, I
eventually moved to Chicago and became a fourteen year-old accident. At the same
time, I also lost the hatred and prejudice that used to follow my family around like an
abused German shepherd (an image that always brought tears to my eyes), so maybe I
should have been more grateful for our dysfunctional togetherness while it lasted.

179
Among other things, the magical land where this ninja was born and where no one was legibly
multiracial. The few token Asian kids I did know were treated like Special Ed kids, magically
transforming me into a uniform, default white kid, an assimilation fight I rarely fought in middle
school except when ignorant, white-trash dumbasses made fun of my obāsan and her thick
Japanese accent—then it was a fucking dogfight. Also, Traverse City is the Cherry Capital of
the World + the place where Michael Moore created the Traverse City Film Festival—an
explosion of culture right in the middle of God’s Country.
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Ultimately, I moved to Chicago with my dad because there was a void inside my
heart where our relationship was supposed to be. Unlike Florida, Chicago at the time
drew a blank anyway, which was the absence of anything. When we pulled in front of
his broken-down apartment in Rogers Park, he said: Well, this is it, and my stomach
collapsed. It was a chilly, overcast June day in Chicago. There was a Hispanic dude in
sweatpants (one leg rolled up to the knee) and a Chicago Cubs jersey, dealing crack
across the street. The half-abandoned greystone on the corner was all bolted up on the
first floor like a garment marked with tailor’s chalk. And at the end of the street I noticed
a bunch of fancy apartment buildings with hanging patios (with tiny Weber grills and lawn
chairs that sparkled on summer days), space-age circular windows, entire walls made of
steel and glass, their gated entrances protected from the decay and addiction of the
outside world, from people like me who wanted to touch everything they didn’t
understand. The street, like my family, was full of these conflicting messages I never
learned to decode in high school. My first day in Chicago was like shock therapy with a
low voltage. I’ll never forget that feeling of eternal hopelessness I’d felt in the city, a
feeling that stayed with me until I made out with a Haitian girl on a balmy summer day in
Evanston, until I’d lived in Paris and started dreaming in French, a feeling that only
disappeared once I met Duran Duran for the first time in a Tokyo subway almost twenty
years later. But now I’m time traveling again to one of the happiest moments of my
kettai life.

Like an abducted bride, my dad carried my suitcase for me up the rickety staircase,
staring back to make sure I was following him (which felt like gallantry and coercion). I
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clutched an old Jansport backpack that used to be my older brother’s before he’d moved
to New York and disappeared off the grid as we hiked up five flights of stairs, inhaling the
smell of old wet carpet with every squishy step. My dad fiddled with his keys, opened up
the door and pointed to the living room: Our old TV, perched on a cardboard box inside
the fireplace, the navy blue pullout couch that used to be in our old house in Michigan,
back when we were a middle class performance. Then he waved in the direction of my
bedroom: There was a collapsed single bed frame, a few of my cassette tapes (The
Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Duran Duran, Joy Division), a yellow Sony water-proof boom
box, an old desk with one of the legs propped up with a Greater Chicago phonebook.
He led me inside the kitchen: There was an old antique fridge, a small plastic microwave,
an old accordion (steam) heater in the corner, an out-of-place mahogany kitchen table
with espresso varnish and a dead cockroach underneath the kitchen sink, its front legs
held in prayer against its thorax.
That’s when I looked through the window and noticed the cemetery down below:
The profiles of the tombstones jutted out against the scorched sky, the crosses looking
like fuzzy lower case t’s made of prickled limestone, the air fading to dirty ash, mixing
with scattered flakes of burnt-out Chicago sky. It was the most elegiac fucking kitchen I’d
ever seen. The first night as I lay on my bed, I felt like complete shit. I thought about
Florida. I thought about my mom, the way she walked around the house on the
weekends with a cigarette dangling from her chewed-on fingernails, wearing her favorite
kimono bathrobe, a red and blue disaster she’d bought in Tokyo back when my parents
were still entangled pieces of stereo wire and business was the 80’s surrogate family. I
remember thinking: Epcot Center isn’t that bad. At least it’s make-believe everyone
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agrees on, a fantasy without temporality. The next morning, I woke up late in the
afternoon, just as the sun was changing quadrants in the sky. There was a note on the
kitchen counter that said: I’ll be back tonight. I looked through the kitchen window again
and felt lost. I didn’t wanna be a spoiled asshole, but there was nothing to eat in the
apartment since my dad practically lived on bar food, nothing except sticky air and the
hardwood floors. I was flat broke and I didn’t know shit about Chicago, could barely
believe someone had written a musical about it. I remember eventually sitting on the
couch and holding my stomach, flipping through Russian novels, glancing through the
window every time someone parked out in the street. Sometimes I cooed at the pigeons
on the chipped-plaster balcony and told them to bring me back a bag of Dorritos. I’m not
picky though, I assured them, anything without a face will do.
My dad came home at 1:15am, his flushed face was a pungent working-class
perfume of Camel cigarettes, grilled onions and double whiskeys. He plopped a
styrofoam container on the kitchen counter and said: Here. As I was scarfing down
wedge fries, I pretended not to notice how cold they were, or that the club sandwich was
half-eaten and had white bread (something I never ate). Afterwards, as I was slurping
water from the faucet, my dad walked from the bathroom past the kitchen and said:
Good night. Then he went to his bedroom and closed the door. Three hours later, as I
was lying on my bed (the box springs sinking to the ground), I thought about the
cemetery in the kitchen and the sticky heat in Orlando. I thought about the Sears Tower,
The Art Institute and Wrigley Stadium (place names I didn’t understand yet), the smell of
Chicago invading my open window—sour, ashy, fertile, greasy—and then I thought
about a million tourists in Citrusland, pushing their way through Space Mountain,
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copping a feel on Minnie Mouse’s ass, rock-covered beaches devoured by thousands of
bloated tourists and their chubby kids who filled up plastic buckets with wet sand, the
pale fathers, their noses covered in zinc oxide, day-old newspapers on their laps,
middle-aged women in one-piece bathing suits supervising the waves, staring at the
ocean skeptically. It was hard to know where I belonged and which place I hated more,
the sidewalks of Chicago or the beaches of Orlando, a city of bruises or an 80-dollar
simulacrum. But that feeling, that stubborn, unswallowable feeling of dread, that feeling
that I was irrelevant to the world and intangibly alone, that tasteless sensation of limbo,
of not knowing where I belonged and who I was anymore, caught between the vise of
reality and the interstices of make-believe, I’m not sure if that feeling ever left me, at
least, not until I got brain fever and fell in love. During my first summer in Chicago, that
quiet sadness lingered until the instant my bed frame collapsed to the floor and my
dreams poured out of me like a harpooned whale. But on good days (and there were
those too), I remembered to call my mom and catch her when she was in between shifts,
telling her to talk, as long as she wanted, just so I could hear her melodic voice and
remember what it felt like to extricate my feet from the jaws of solitude. My mom’s voice
felt like verbose love to me, circling in soft crescendos of gossip, just for me, just at that
moment in time, a cycle of profane words for the requiem of my once-pretty life.

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4.2: “Girls”: A Four-Part Symphony by the Beastie Boys

I became a quick understudy of Chicago. After a gritty summer reading the shit
out of the Rogers Park public library where I vaporized the literature shelves (checking
out every book I could get my hands on by Ibsen, Larsen, Nin, Hugo, Goethe, Woolf,
Faulkner, Wright, Miller and Salinger), eventually time ran out. Classes started at the
nearby high school, and once they did, I got thrashed in the hallway almost once a
month by black gangbangers in baggy jeans and Whitesox caps worn at 45 degree
angles on their foreheads and Vietnamese gangbangers that carried wooden batons in
their pockets wrapped in old handkerchiefs. Whenever I looked at them, they always
said: Whachew looking at, WHITE boy? It’s not like you have a choice. If you don’t look
where you’re going in the hallway, you’ll crash into the fucking lockers.
Once, after a Chinese guy in a green flannel shirt started giving me shit near the
principal’s office, I told him I was part Japanese and he gave me a look like yeah right
and who gives a fuck? Another time, a group of black kids stopped me in the cafeteria
and asked me if I was lost. Or searching for Harvard Square. Was I one of those dikey
special ed teachers? They asked. Then they’d crack up like it was the funniest shit
they’d ever heard. I’d just roll my eyes and be like, whatever, man. My mouth got me in
trouble a lot and my fists wouldn’t be able to keep up, so I ate my words a lot. I was
hardly what you called a rich kid either. I mean, there’s a fucking dealer who’s opened
up shop on my block and he sold crack on the fucking corner, sold in tiny film canisters
that were scattered in the alley. How rich could I possibly be? My uberprep style—
which had carried over from my monoracial, Ralph Lauren-obsessed days in Northern
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Michigan—didn’t help one fucking bit either. It made me conspicuous, a prerogative
reserved for G’s, thugs and ballers. But if there’s one thing I learned after my parents
got divorced, it’s this: you may not be able to control your family, your class, or your
income, but you can sure as hell control the way you look. Aesthetically, you’ve got
quality control. Even when you’re poor as shit, you’re an image editor. In America, you
control who you love, who you fuck and who you hate. Besides that, the only thing you
control is your visual message to the world. And even then, your repertoire was pretty
fucking limited when you’re barely a teenager.
Because I was the farthest thing from a gangsta, I couldn’t fight my way out of
situations. But I also had no cash flow, so I couldn’t buy my way out. I didn’t have the
Notorious B.I.G.’s wicked jump shot or mobster uncles with disyllabic names making
mysterious deliveries in the middle of the night but I also wasn’t a grunge rocker, or even
a science nerd. Eventually, I realized the safest place in Chicago was girls. Because
my parents gave me biracial creds at birth, I knew how to charm and flirt and entertain
and sound all deep and tell crazy stories and give long hugs and make the world glow
with wonder and intrigue, even if I didn’t know how to give any of that shit back. And this
weakness (talent) helped me make it through four years of racial slurs, scared teachers,
switched-off metal detectors and cholo lunch fights in the cafeteria with box cutters. I
had at least twenty girlfriends in high school (some of whom lasted months, others a
single night on bunky acid), but as I see it, there were four movements in my Love
Symphony that went something like this:

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1. Freshman Year (Yoshiko): We started dating in the middle of ninth grade, back when
I still thought I was white and Michael Jackson thought he was black. That is, right after
I almost got my ass beaten to a pulp for the first time. Jermaine, this skinny black kid
who looked like Kid’s zygotic twin in baggy Gibaud jeans and a bomber jacket (à la Top
Gun), was always fucking with me in the hallway. He’d do shit like follow me into the
bathroom and push me into the wall just because he could. The first time, I didn’t even
know what hit me but the next day I had a shiner on my right eye that was dark and
mushy like an old plum. I had to wear my dad’s sunglasses for a week in class, my
teachers harassed me like I was copping attitude and I got heckled in the hallways by
Jermaine’s homeboys. Whenever a security guard walked by, I told them to fuck off. I
was like those NBA players that only lunged after their opponents once their coaches
restrained them, but at least I can admit it. I’m not a scrapper. Never was. I’m just a
pretty boy with a feisty mouth and a dirty mind, but I know where the sidewalk ends.
Whenever Jermaine’s crew had a chance, they’d chase me up the staircase or corner
me in the locker room or follow me after school, looking for a reason to smash my pretty
cheekbones against car doors. Out of necessity, I became skilled at evading the
Eraserheads. My favorite technique was the fake clue. Sometimes, I’d pretend I was
talking to one of my classmates and then I’d drop a line like: man, I need a smoke. I’m
gonna hit the 7-11 afterwards. Ten minutes later and five blocks away from the store, I’d
peer down the alley and sure enough, Jermaine and three of his friends would be waiting
there for me like dumbasses with metal pipes in their hands. I just didn’t get it. Why
didn’t these assholes take the Metra to Naperville and beat the shit out of some racist
football players? Why didn’t they go to DuPage County and start a fight with a
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conservative soccer mom? Why me? Sometimes, I walked past them within view of the
cops that patrolled the school, never losing track of them in my peripheral vision. Other
times, I’d hop on a southbound El going in the opposite direction of my apartment and
just walk back towards the high school exodus. I figured out how to defend myself, but it
required wasting a lot of time, which sucked ass.
One day, though, my luck ran out. I ran into Jermaine and his wrecking crew at
Yoshiko’s party in Uptown. When they saw me in the kitchen, they bumrushed me, their
baggy jeans flapping like frightened seagulls. I grabbed the first thing I saw—an empty
bottle of sake—and raised it in the air, ready to break it over Jermaine’s stupid head, but
then Ichiro, Yoshiko’s older brother and three of his homeboys, stepped in and told
Jermaine and his friends they had two choices: smoke a spliff with me and get over his
shit or get the fuck out. Jermaine was no peacemaker, but he also didn’t want to lose a
fight or lose face in front of so many Asian hotties—some of them were dimes before
dimes were called dimes—so he sat the fuck down and smoked with me. That was
probably the first smart thing I ever saw him do. Three hours later, Jermaine left the
party with a cute Vietnamese girl in his arms with a shotgun tattoo on her shoulder blade.
He nodded at the front door and held his hand out to me. That’s where I learned how to
give a correct hip-hop hug for the first time, and after that, I never had another problem
with Jermaine, or his crew, or any other kids at my school again. We were cool, and all
because of a fucking spliff. Word got around school fast because rumors are the biggest
sluts of all. Suddenly, I could walk through the hallways with ease. It was amazing.
Even the Vietnamese gangstas ignored me.
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Later that night, as the party was dying down, I’d walked back into the kitchen
and thanked Ichiro, told him I owed him. When I finally dragged my body into Yoshiko’s
dimly lit bedroom, she was spinning, bumping her head back and forth, her headphones
wrapped around her ears, her hands moving back and forth between the mixers and
turntables, her eyes filled with fierce love. Not for me, though. For the music in her head.
—Yo, you wanna join me? I asked, pealing off my shirt, —I’m beat.
She nodded her head and smiled. —No baby, the music’s in my head right now.
I slipped into bed and fell asleep with a snap of the fingers.
Three months later after, I took Ichiro’s SAT for him and considered my debt paid.
Unfortunately, I bombed the math part because I’m terrible with digits, but I ripped the
shit out of the verbal. After Ichiro got his scores in the mail, we hugged each other,
kanpaied each other with huge shots of sake and ate some fancy ramen (Yoshiko
adding sliced pieces of cabbage slate, hardboiled egg halves like cartoon eyes,
kamaboko erasers, furikake gravel). Afterwards, I washed the bowls and hashi, then
walked into Yoshiko’s bedroom and shut the door. Her turntables were still spinning, a
breakbeat whispering through her earphones. She was fast asleep on her side, exhaling
in flower panties and pink tank, her toes pointing to the wall like she was doing a pas de
deux in her dreams. I smelled her arms, her skinny wrists weaving into a single basket
strand. She looked so calm and peaceful, covered in worn cotton sheets. When I
slipped my hand between her legs and started kissing her neck, she purred, whispering
‘Dashi, not now, baby. Not now. I wrapped my arms around her waist and fell quickly
asleep, freefalling in time, my body tense with longing.

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Unfortunately for me and my teenage libido, Yoshiko was a virgin and she wasn’t giving
it up for anyone, at least not for the next year, which is like a decade in teenage time.
Even more fucked up, Yoshiko didn’t believe in blowjobs. It wasn’t a Christian thing
either, she just thought dicks were gross and her handjobs were like prison labor (just
imagine an inmate being forced to scrub pots and pans all day). Her problem, if you
wanna know what I think, is that she didn’t know how to hate me (and I was hateable
then, let me just clear that up right now). And my problem is that I didn’t how to love her.
In fact, I wasn’t even close. Even more confusing, she was my type: poor beautiful
Japanese complex smart tough feisty, not to mention way ahead of her artistic bell curve.
Yoshiko was a Hip-Hop DJ before Hip-Hop had a name in Chicago, and I’d always felt
like her first love was turntables, followed by Tribe, Ice Cube, Public Enemy and NWA,
then her family, then her friends, and after all that, the wounded hapa with a spear for a
tongue. Like the League of Nations and the Esperanto movement, Yoshiko and I just
weren’t meant to last. We were a typical teenage couple, after all: full of shit, afraid of
missing out on something better, selfish beyond belief about other people’s time,
stubborn and uncompromising about our needs, superficial but also irrationally
convinced that we were creatures of immeasurable profoundness, seconds away from
stardom, always encroaching on the forbidden city of greatness, even in our sleep.
There was no way we could last in Chicago, filled with millions of horny kids that were
just as delusional and just as egocentric as we were. Yoshiko and I were destined to die.
Besides, I had a make-out policy that required blowjobs or lots of intuitive petting (I was
a virgin then too) and Yoshiko didn’t make the cut. She wouldn’t go down on me, which
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made me feel kinda bad about my body, like she didn’t like it or something (though I
would never have admitted that at the time).
I remember this one time we were eating Pho at a noodle joint on Argyle street
when she told me she didn’t want to lose her virginity until she could vote.
—That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, I said.
—Maybe you’re right, she said, but I don’t care. It’s my body. I can be as stupid
as I wanna be.
—Lemme tell you, that body of yours was made for sex.
—Yeah, right.
—No, I’m totally serious, I protested. — Everyone’s is. Orgasms are your body’s
way of saying: keep up the good work!
—Is that right? She said, laughing.
—Yeah, I nodded, blowing on the broth in my tilted soup bowl.
—Well, I think a baby is my body’s way of telling me: GAME OVER.
—Fuck. Why do you have to be such a quaalude?
Did I mention that her handjobs felt like electric sanders? Anyway, what really
fucked with my mind though, what tore me up for weeks, is that after I broke up with her,
she started dating Jermaine. And because he and I were cool now after the Spliff Treaty,
I couldn’t find someone to kick his ass for me. Fortunately, Chicago is full of girls as raw,
insecure and delusional as I was back then so I just moved on, trying hard not to think of
Jermaine fucking Yoshiko’s tight little pussy on election day—a vision that aroused and
infuriated me at the same time. Sometimes, when I couldn’t help it, I reminded myself
that Yoshiko hated dicks, and she treated handjobs like volunteer service at the animal
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husbandry ranch. That kinda helped me sleep at night, even if it wasn’t true anymore.
The last thing I heard, though, Jermaine and Yoshiko were still going strong. I guess
they were right for each other after all. Maybe that’s why she wanted to wait. Maybe
that’s why he hated my ass so much.

2. Sophomore Year (Masha): When I was a sophomore I met Masha at No Exit Café on
Poetry Night. She was wearing black Doc Martin 12-holes, a grey flannel shirt and a
short purple velvet skirt that looked like a reincarnated couch. She had short curly hair
that was kinda scrunchy with purple Manic Panic highlights, tits that reminded me
tangerines and gigantic blue moats for eyes that said fuck me and fuck you. She was
my first urban rapture. I’d just finished reading one of my suckiest poems of all time into
the mic. So bad, in fact, it was almost good. I think there was even some Latin in in it,
dona nobis pacem and dona nobis bellum. People just stared at me like I was speaking
in tongues. Right when I was about to get the fuck outta there, Masha walked up to me
on stage and said: Latin? You put Latin in your poem? Boy, you just raised the bar on
pretention. I told her to fuck off but my eyes were flickering little declarations of lust,
glinting like freshly lit tea candles. The next thing I knew, we were making out in front of
forty disgruntled teenagers, all of them howling and trying hard to be the center of
attention. By the time I’d reached for her ass, a few poets were howling and shaking
their keys in the air. Masha, detached her lips that were stuck to my teeth and shouted:
Everyone, that was called Love Rockets Death Joy #2. It was the first time I got a
standing ovation for something I didn’t deserve.

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We made out maybe two or three times after that, always drunk and always after a big
fight. One day in the early fall, as we were sharing the last cigarette between us and
nursing the coffee dregs in our cups at Scenes café on Belmont while Enigma’s
“Sadeness” was blasting through the speakers, Masha exhaled, stabbed her cigarette in
the ashtray. Then she told me she was breaking up with me. In fact, she was just
heterocurious, not straight, and she’d never dated a boy before me. I should have
known the signs: the too-short hair, her jubilation for the dominatrixy elements of
Madonna’s “Vogue,” the way she was always telling me how pretty I was, her clinical
fascination with the blood vessels in my cock. God, it was amazing how self-absorbed
and oblivious you could be when a girl was willing to make out with you.
—So did you like being with me at all? I asked.
—For awhile, she said.
In the background: Sade, dis-moi.
—How was the, you know. . . oral, um—?
—It felt good after we smoked pot, but other than that, to be honest, darling, your
cunnilingus technique was tragic, even for a 15-year old boy.
Sade, donne-moi.
—Wait, why? I asked. —No one has ever told me that before.
—They were thinking it, I promise.
A girl breathing through the speakers.
—Bitch!
She smiled. —Anyway, listen honey, you need to go to Borders and buy an
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atlas so you can figure out where the clit is located. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Kansas
City.
—Fuck. You.
—Tried that. Wasn’t my thing. Just think what a disaster it would have been to
do it all over again.
—You know, I don’t deserve this. I’m learning as I go, just like you were, you
fucking heteroposer.
—Ohhhh, I think I hurt your feelings.
—I think my ego has multiple fractures.
—Come on. You’re a typical, vain, self-consumed teenager. You’ll get over it.
—I love how you’re acting like you’re so much older than I am.
—Oh, that’s the other thing.
—What?
—I’m 27.
My mouth opened involuntarily. You could have stuck a wedding cake inside.
—I know. I’m sorry. I look young for my age. Anyway, don’t tell anyone about
this. You’re still a minor and I don’t wanna go to jail.
—What the fuck? That’s what you’re worried about? What about lying to me?
—Well, I feel a little bad about that. Bust mostly I don’t want to go to jail,
especially on account of such terrible cunnilingus.
—Then why did you date me then if it was so terrible? I asked, screaming.
—I just told myself two things whenever things got rough: the penis is a giant clit
and your face is prettier than mine.
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I choked on all the words coming up from my stomach.
—Other times, she continued, I just pretended you were a woman. It was
actually quite easy.
—Okay, I’m leaving now, I said, standing up.
—‘Dashi, don’t be mad.
—Mad? I’m fucking furious!
—You have the most beautiful white skin I’ve ever seen, man or woman.
—It’s not white, I protested.
—Sure it is, she said, biting her lip.
—I told you, I’m part Japanese. Why is that so fucking hard for you to accept?
I’m French and I’m fucking Japanese.
—Hence, the beautiful skin.
Yeah. We only lasted a month.

3. Senior Year (Brit): I was at the Bourgeois Pig café (Lincoln Park, not Franklin Village),
trying to understand what the fuck Heidegger was saying. Somewhere between dasein
and lebenswelt, I realized I hated German philosophy.
It was the beginning of the summer when the sunlight tasted like apricot juice.
There were a million girls overtaking Fullerton street for summer school, their bodies
passing through that temporary deformity stage—somewhere between the jagged edges
of adolescence and the smooth curvature of womanhood—bodies that were so luscious,
unbalanced and awkward underneath the blue paint-chip sky, their breasts and hips
were ripening before my eyes like oddly-shaped heirloom tomatoes. While Jesus Jones
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played in the background, packs of girls passed by the window in a serenade of
pheromone and flesh. I’d close my eyes and inhale Aloe Vera, Camel Lights and
Obsession by Calvin Klein, the chemical cocktail filling my pores and clinging to the plaid
collar of my oxford like tiny spurs of pregnant fragrance.
After rereading the same page for an hour in my book, I finally threw it on to the
ground and stomped on the cover.
—How you like that, you fucking Nazi? I shouted.
That’s when Brit walked up the café stairs in Jean-Paul Gaultier sunglasses with
spring temples, a tight, layered slinky black and gray dress wrapped around her
overdeveloped waist, her hair tied into golden boughs at the back of her head, sparkles
exploding on her cheeks like crushed stars sticking to the epidermis. Brit was one of the
most insanely beautiful girls I’d ever seen, seemingly too precocious to date boys, too
aware of her vitality to date creepy old men. When she sat down at the adjacent table,
immersed in her Portuguese novel, I fell into a state of sexual reverie. I imagined her
wet and luscious lips biting my nipples, felt her hand sliding down my stomach and
grabbing my cock like a eurotrash Lolita, her dirty little words blowing into my inner ear.
Just the thought of her open legs drove me crazy, her trimmed pubic knoll prickling
through transparent lace panties, riding up between her ass cheeks, the warm stickiness
inside sticking to the fabric. But like all insane-in-the-membrane teenage boys, it was
never just lust. I actually respected Brit because she ignored me. I didn’t know real
happiness back then and I know for a fact that I didn’t feel I deserved it anyways. In a
relationship of mutual distance, I could have both things: the impossibility of
consummation and the infinity of desire.
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I became slowly fascinated by Brit’s silence (a silence that felt so comfortable
with itself, so mature it seemed artificial), mistaking her emotional lock-down for
mystique, her side-glances for self-awareness, her aloofness for confidence. As I
discovered later, we were both fucked up, just in different ways: she was scared of
being known and deconstructed and I was scared of being unknown and erased. I
couldn’t live without female attention back then and I loved a challenge. To my sixteen
year-old brain, attention—which often led to infatuation—always felt like love. Brit and I
were a perfect couple, if perfection could be a disaster.
For a month, Brit and I played café chess: we made sure to come back to the
Bourgeois Pig whenever we were looking especially good (to prove our hotness wasn’t a
mistake), whenever we were in the company of beautiful friends of the opposite sex (to
prove we were desirable), and whenever we were absorbed in a book (to prove we were
indifferent to each other but also engrossed in our own evolution). Of course, all of these
constructed messages we sent each other cloaked our deepest desires. But the
intention behind them was real. We were just trying to cover up our weaknesses. Build
up our own social value. Demonstrate how easily we could find people to love if we
wanted to. And in doing all of this shit, we were really making a declaration of how much
we wanted each other. Otherwise, what was the point? Why go to such lengths to
ignore one another publically when we could just disappear? After a month of freezing
underneath the shade of her anonymity, one day I did something I’d never done in high
school before: I approached a girl. And Brit was hardcore, the stuff of British spy flicks:
multilingual, photographic memory, natural-born storyteller and seductress, killer
Brazilian accent, infinite wardrobe and soft brown eyes that got sticky in the center when
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she laughed. Brit was smart as shit and better read than I was too (though I could never
admit it at the time). As I soon learned that day, she was the daughter of French
diplomats (UNESCO and WHO) having spent most of her life in Rio, Paris, Addis Ababa
and Shanghai. She spoke French, Italian, Portuguese and English perfectly and also got
by in Mandarin and Amharic too. Brit was a revelation to me, a girl so fully in control of
superpowers she’d done so little to deserve. Many of my old high school girlfriends up to
that point were three-month downgrades: Maybe they had read every single book by
James Joyce or they were obsessed with Eisenstein film theory, or they could hum the
Star-Spangled Banner while deepthroating you or they wore neon thigh-highs to school
or they knew how to make Fried Chicken from a glass of water and some baking soda or
they could do headspins on the dance floor or they were obsessed with making Sisters
or Mercy videos in their hallway or they were on the debate team or their mom was a
famous designer or they brought fresh donuts to our first date or they knew how to shake
it on the dance floor, but usually, more often than not, there were only a few numbers in
their pager, if you know what I mean. Brit, on the other hand, was a fucking promotion. I
could tell right away by the cut of her dresses and her slick hair styles, by the books of
Saramago, Sade and Mallarmé she brought to the café, by her sleek plastic frames that
were fifteen year ahead of their time, by her aloof sexuality when I gazed at her in an
orientalist kinda way, by her lack of giddiness when she smoked Du Mauriers as if they
were a part-time job—cigarettes I’d never even heard of, by the way. The truth was, Brit
was completely out of my league, and that was, of course, exactly the appeal.
Teenagers always want the next best upgrade, they don’t settle and they’ll do anything
to get what they want. I was no exception. Finally, one gilded August afternoon, after a
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month of exchanging bishops for knights, I couldn’t stand it anymore: I marched right up
to her and said:
—You and me should really be something, I said, channeling my inner
Ferlinghetti. —Even if it’s just a mistake.
She smiled. —It’s about time. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to
say something?
—I never hit on girls, I explained, it’s against company policy.
—First time for everything, she said, looking me up and down.
—You know, there’s something about you that doesn’t quite fit in here.
—Aren’t you charming? she said, pulling out a cigarette.
—But that’s why I noticed you, because you clash with this world.
—I don’t fit in anyplace, if that’s what you mean. It wasn’t my choice, though.
—I know what you mean.
We talked for most of the afternoon, drinking tea and chainsmoking. It felt good
to waste the day away like that, lost in the purity of our ideas, the fuel of our language. I
hadn’t felt this good since last summer with Angélique, my heart still in triage, my brain
only slightly repaired since she left. But then, after Brit returned from the bathroom, she
sat down, bit her lower lip and then looked me in the eyes and smiled. That’s when she
gave me what I call the Brittany Wager: did we want to be friends? Or did we want to
fuck all night long but never talk again?
Brit led me to her parent’s condo in the Gold Coast. At the bottom of the
staircase, I shook hands with her dad who looked me up and down before muttering: Ne
brise pas son coeur, chérie. Il ressemble á Rock Hudson aux dents de travers. At the
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time, I didn’t speak enough French to understand anything except Rock Hudson. Brit
laughed though, I remember that. And her mom smiled, before offering me a glass of
wine and a plate of melted Brie de Meaux, baguette and pear slices, dill-encrusted
smoked salmon and tapenade as a consolation prize. Ten minutes later, I was upstairs
fucking Brit doggystle against the wall of her minimalist, blue stage bedroom while EMF’s
“Unbelievable” blasted from her fancy Taiwanese stereo system, her forearms wrinkling
a poster of Depeche Mode’s “Violator” with every thrust. That night was some of the
hottest sex I’d ever had: dirty and aggressive, unapologetic and selfish, a kinky synergy
of lust, our bodies wrapped around each other like leopard slugs. I stuck my finger in her
ass. She inhaled my cock, humming Serge Gainsbourg songs as she fingered herself. I
hogtied her legs with her thong and then flicked her clit with my tongue as I muttered
French conjugations to her: j’suis un film cochon, t’es un film cochon, elle est un film
cochon. She poured wax into an exclamation point over my stomach, slapped my face
and thrust her pussy into my mouth like a freshly baked pie. I graffitied her torso with bite
marks, the fat underneath her skin stuck between my teeth. She toggled her tongue
against my nipples and clawed squiggly lines into my back. We were like a buffet of
teenage flesh, filling our plates again and again and again until we were ready to throw
up. I loved all of it: the cascade of pleasure, the inflammation of nerve endings, the
translation of desire, the wet animal smell, the taste of flame in our mouths.
I finally crashed on her bed, exhausted and dripping all over, my skin panting, my
muscles feeling like warm jelly. The sun was sticking its fingers between the French
blinds, blessing everything with fresh light. Brit slept underneath her hands, our asses
touching like a Dolby logo. At the time, I thought that we had something too good to drop.
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I really did. I was that fucking naïve. But I never saw Brit again, not at the Bourgeois Pig,
not in the Gold Coast and not on Halsted. It was only years later that I figured out how
much Brit had played me: she didn’t even go to high school in America. She was
visiting her parents for the summer. And the day after our escapade, she flew back to
Geneva. The choice she’d given me was a false one. She probably never looked back
at our night in Chicago the way I did, with so much confusion and unjustified hope. She
was far away, living in a parfait dream, smoking Gaulloise cigarettes through the open
castle window, gazing at the wonder world of her boarding school in the sugar-coated
Alps while I returned to Bourgeois Pig by myself, lingering on my coffee refill, kinda hurt
and broken up inside about being dumped again.

4. Junior Year (Angélique): There are two simple reasons why Angélique is a brain
sticker. One, she was my first love—and you never forget your first love. And two, I lost
my virginity to her on the warmest night in Chicago—and you never forget the first girl
you banged, whether or not you loved her, because she helped you cross the Lethe.
We’d met at a party in Wrigleyville that I’d totally crashed by accident—somehow I had
inverted the address of a party I’d been invited to, mistaking my 7 for a 3. After I walked
inside the apartment and noticed the matching Pottery Barn end coffee tables, I knew I
was at the wrong place (my friend wasn’t that fancy). There were only a few dudes there,
hovering around the vodka, both of them gayer than a pink leisure suit. Then I saw
Angélique. She had a bottle of wine in her hand, her frizzy hair bouncing in the air like
astronauts on the moon. The second time I saw her, she had looped a bag of lingerie
over her forearm. The third time, she was nibbling on a tortilla chip like it was delicate
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glass, pain squeezing through her eyes. The fourth time, she was helping a friend carry
a wax statue of Boy George into the living room. Each time I saw her, my heart thumped
like construction boots inside a dryer. Finally, Angélique bumped into me, looking at me
with eyes that burned like incense cones of Sandalwood. She was fucking blazing, so
insanely hot it fucked up my brain: I stuttered, my sentences turned to oddly-shaped
fragments, I got a nervous twitch, my stomach hurt. Her beauty broke me down and
short-circuited my brain. It had something to do with her eyes, brimming with such
intense desire, so alive, so sticky and warm like the center of a cinnamon bun. In the
background, I could hear her friends giggling as we stared at each other. She was a
perfect fucking accident and I was sprung for the first time. Bent. Knocked out. She
placed her fingers on my arm, rubbed gently and smiled at me like she could read my
thoughts. Every time Angélique said something clever to me in her thick French accent,
her eyes exploded with crazybeautymagic while Cubs fans roared from Wrigley Stadium
in the distance. I thought of my dad who went out with his work buddies and brought me
back his leftovers, I thought about my mom stuck in a cartoon Wonderland, I thought
about how broke and clueless all of us had become ever since my parents got divorced,
how shut off from the whole world I’d become after my parents had split up like two
feuding tribes dividing up ancestral land, I thought about my obāsan, who lived in a
trailer by herself in Northern Michigan and hemmed bulky clothes for rich, ugly white
women who smiled when she spoke English. As Angélique and I stood there, looking
into each other without judgment or fear, for one second, for one breathless eternity, I
felt like my life was something, a beautiful deformity of the ugly pain I’d been holding
onto inside.
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—God, I said, I love the way you look at me.
—You are zo byuutaful, she said.
—Shut up.
—Non, it’s true. But you know what? Your problem is zhat you, how do you say:
t’as peur que t’es tout seul, que ta vie manque de sens, et en plus, que tu mérites pas
qu’on t’aime.
—Um, I said, embarrassed, my French isn’t that good.
—You’re afraid zat you’re alone and zat your life have no . . . sense.
—Meaning?
—Exactement.
—Maybe, just a little.
—‘Dashi, zere is sadness in you. Zee sadness of someone who can’t love and
can’t be alone, non plus.
—Right now I’m happy.
She smiled and covered my lips with her fingers. —Ta guele, le silence est beau
aussi.

Two weeks later, Angélique and I walked to North Beach in the early evening, just as the
sun was crashing into Lake Michigan like a kamikaze pilot. That’s when she picked up
a piece of calicinated bark stuck between two giant rocks on the beach. She threw the
piece of bark into the air, caught it with one hand like a Hollywood swashbuckler and
then bent down to the ground, keeping her back and ass straight in the air. I wanted her
immediately. With the absorbed focus of a studio artist, she began drawing a series of
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sand pictures on the shore, using stick griot figures as narrators, palm trees as girls,
Uruguay suns as dancers, each picture, each story was a frame from the other world
(her mystical sun-drenched world), a drop of blood from the island, a library of images I’d
never seen and would never know, the pictures forming a story, the plot melting into a
thick sauce of love and folklore, turning us into a patois of sand, irregular verbs and
streaming rays of munificent sunlight. This is the story she drew for me in the sand, the
story I remember anyway:
The Sun and the Island
One day, the sun and the wind broke up. That’s when the sun left Chicago,
threatening never to come back. He wandered from Miami to Playa del Carmen to
Habana to Kingston, and from there to Barranquilla, Caracas and then finally Port-au-
Prince. The sun loved Haiti instantly, his infatuation gushing out of him like a massive
entry wound. He covered her long skinny body with every inch of his mango-colored
light, falling immediately in love with the curves of her island where plantains glistened in
the mist-whisper morning and the waves sang love songs of Black Jacobins and Zap
Mamas. Then, one day, a jealous hurricane broke them up, spitting on the ground and
throwing peugots in the air like toy cars, his temporary wrath destroying everything in his
path. The rage of the great hurricane was insatiable. Finally, he kidnapped
timelessness and her children, pulling them to the grave, dragging the golden age of love
and war a hundred feet deep into the soil where they suffocated underneath the ground,
leaving memory and her children to tell the story of the sun and the island. Now, once
every year, they inscribe their promise in the sand:
The sun and the island are lovers.
But we know: yo ka alé démen
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It’s ridiculous to say this, but first time we made love, I cried like a baby. It was a long,
unglamorous sob I never told anyone about. We’d just finished having a picnic with all
this gourmet food we’d ripped off from Treasure Island (before Whole Foods swallowed
urban American): souvlaki, a wedge of smoked Gouda, kalamata olive bread, marinated
mushrooms and artichokes from the deli, a can of smoked oysters, some cold
spanikopita and half a bottle of sweet, spicy lukewarm wine. We were on a beach in
Evanston with the lake crashing against the rocks and teenagers roaming through the
sand in their bare feet, the night covering us in a cloak of darkness like something out of
Athena’s spell book. It was a hot, brackish and hazy night, the Gewürtrztraminer blurring
the rules of lust and the protocol of decency. There was a small patch of stars in the
northern sky glistening like studded dog collars on sale at the Alley. And there was a
slight wind in the air, more like a sigh than a Zephyr. Losing my virginity was a rare
and delicate combination of two first experiences for me, compressed into one summer
night. I’d fallen in love with Angélique, a light-skinned Haitian girl I had just met three
weeks ago who was taking summer classes at Northwestern while I worked at a book
store at North Pier when it was still a beautiful mall of steel and brick. Together, we were
a beautiful fucking accident. The truth is, we were never supposed to meet, but
somehow we just fell through the windows like wounded pigeons.

It took me a long time to get over Angélique. She flew back to Port-au-Prince in August
and six months later, she was engaged to a Belgian paperpusher. They got married
shortly after I graduated from Dangerous Minds High. From the little scraps her friends
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told me when I stopped by their apartment in Wrigleyville, he was some wealthy diplomat
with a fucking preposition in his last name. Before Angélique left, she’d promised to
come back to Chicago the next summer and see me. She said she would call whenever
she was sad. I even started looked up airfares in the travel section of the Tribune, told
my parents to add up their gifts for Christmas and my birthday. I was ready to do
something I’d never done before—give up my little life for a girl. Sacrifice everything for
something like love that didn’t happen to fucked-up people like me who crushed
everything we plucked from the soil. I was ready to be with her, maybe even forever (a
word that was absolutely fucking verboten in teenage parlance), even though I didn’t
understand that word then, or ever. But after she blew me a kiss from her window seat,
the airplane glided down the runway and levitated into another world. I stood there,
crushed by our multiplying distance. After harboring irrational daydreams that I only told
my mom about when we talked on the phone, I never heard from Angélique ever again.
Not a single phone call or an email. Not even a blank postcard two days before the
marriage. I wanted her to call me so I could tell her the summer air in Chicago smelled
like sweat and cinnamon, stolen wine and algae. I wanted to tell her I could still smell
her on my fingers and see her story in the sand where the sun and the island used to be
lovers. Yo ka alé démen.

When I came inside of her that night, I cried like some asshole who had just lost his
mom. It was my first time I’d come with someone else, my body fully celebrating
seventeen years of unpenitent release. She rubbed my back with her hands and said:
t’es beau, tu sais? Plus fragile, belle et cachée qu’une barrière de corrail. I’d never had
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a girl tell me I was a coral reef before. I’d always thought (hoped/assumed/pretended) I
was an anchor. Explicit. Powerful. More brilliant than Stadium lights. More nostalgic
than national monuments. Didn’t she know I was a semiotic genius? A bad poet who
used Latin in his poems? A hapa who dreamt of going back to the motherland
someday? That night, protected by Athena’s cloak and lulled by Lake Michigan’s Negro
Spiritual, I became all feeling, a convoluted mass of interconnected emotions. The
beautiful and fragile part of me was invisible (therefore endangered). It was an invisibility
I didn’t understand at that age, a fragility I would have never admitted, even at gunpoint.
I just wasn’t brave enough then.
When I woke up the next morning, Angélique was sitting Indian style with her
elbows on her knees, her hands cupping her cheeks, watching Lake Michigan shimmer
underneath that bloated halo in the airbrushed sky. I watched the reflection of the water
undulating on her arms and shoulder blades, tiny aquatic shapes twisting and turning on
her skin like bacteria in a petri dish. Angélique was a vision to me with her frizzy hair all
messed up, her eyes heavy with dreams, her face indented by stones. After we’d made
love for the first time on a dorm sheet stretched out on the beach, I understood that love
was actually loss. Loss of ego. Loss of dread. Loss of numbness, solitude and finally
self-loathing. And two months later, after she left me for good, love became a
responsibility. After all, protecting that kind of radiance and joy was a burden, like giving
birth to perfect children in a world of broken glass, discarded needles and loaded guns.
It felt irresponsible to conceive love (innocence) in such a morally corrupted world, so
dank and wretched with the garbage of our own mistakes. If she had stayed, I would
have commited acts of arson for her on our anniversary, left graffiti tags all over Chicago
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with her name, blown up abandoned crack houses in the West Side and set off fire
alarms in every skyscraper on Adams Street, just to prove I loved Angélique recklessly,
politically, emotionally, idiotically. In the summers to come, I’d bring home loaves of
freshly-baked Rosemary-Brie-Olive bread and bags of waxy persimmons I’d bought at
the Farmers Market. And if she was lucky, I’d feed her spoonfuls of homemade Borsch
as she was studying for the bac and cook her spicy Chinese soups on the wettest days
of the summer. Look, I know all of this is over the top sentimental romance bullshit, but I
was young then, so afraid and so courageous, so deeply unaware of how deeply love
digs into your lungs, stuck like a burr, its hooked bristles enmeshed inside your breath.
But I didn’t give a shit then (still don’t) if I sounded dumb and sappy and insane and
hypersentimental, it was such a novelty to someone who was used to feeling nothing
(loneliness). The truth is, I was fucked (completely in love), temporarily immune to the
plague of self-consciousness, failure and self-criticism. And that’s exactly why I could let
go, just for a summer, just for a fling that meant more than anything in my life then.
But because I was seventeen when I met Angélique—meaning I was all desire,
all imagination, all invention—instead, I sat behind her on the beach, formed a vise
around her waist with my arms and wrapped the coils of her hair around my fingers until I
felt locked to her body, sniffing the smell of sand and cinnamon and Chanel in her skin,
completely unaware that I’d never see her again. As a raw teenager tweaked out on
love freebase, my job was to ignore everything that went wrong and destroy everything
that felt good. I mean, who was I to deserve such joy? Who was I to deserve such
withdrawal? And how could something like love stay alive in a world where all things die,
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even mistakes, even myths about the sun and the island, even bad ideas like love and
war?
I loved Angélique for selfish reasons, I can fucking admit it. Back then, I was just
a horny, clueless, reactionary, sensitive heart-breaker, an insecure boy craving female
affection and control over my own powerlessness, yearning for stimulation, excitement
and identity. I was burning up the world with my anger and then drowning it with my
blindness. But Angélique still loved me. The way she looked at me the next morning
(eyes softened with uncorrupted love) kept me grounded to the world, connected to the
sand and the air, giving me the space to feel emotion where thoughts normally took over.
I saw the black market of insecurities inside of me, bartering with my defense
mechanisms, I began to understand the basic things I had always been in denial about,
namely, that I was scared of dying young, afraid of my own vulnerability, confused about
why I was alive, and deeply convinced that I was immune to (unworthy of) love and its
violence. For two summer months that felt like forever in my teenage brain, I was scared
because I was happy. It had something to do with the way Angélique slept on my chest
when we used to cram our bodies into her single dorm bed, her hands folded into
delicate gang signs on my stomach, her breath forming a wet spot on my t-shirt, little
copper coils of her hair spread out against the pillow like spilled gladiolas. It had
something to do with the way she spoke French Creole in her sleep: Mwen ka alé
démen. Part of our stickiness had to do with the way she used to look at me with such
curt tenderness, especially after we made love in a piano room in the music building on
campus, or when the sunlight was gagging on the dark clouds in the late evening, or
after sitting together in long silent shower, our bodies entangled and glowing like a pile of
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wet Christmas lights (our embrace like a holiday, an electrical mess, a fire hazard).
Despite my vanity, despite my weakness for other girls and my impatience for new
beginnings, I loved Angélique, loved her for reasons I didn’t entirely understand then, but
also for selfish ones too that made perfect sense to me, even then, even when I was a
shiny, brand-new wrecking ball. She understood I would hurt her if given the chance
because that’s what I did back then to feel alive, I punctured girls’ hearts with a handful
of shurikens. And yet she still loved me, without fear or escape. And because I loved
her hard and slow and fast, the pain boomeranged, lingered in my dreams, hardened in
my liver. My body slacked in her arms that first night we’d made love, the cold air
sticking to the follicles in our hair like midsummer dew. She held me so close, keeping
me pressed against her skin until she had melted completely into me, our bodies were
stuck together like a human alloy, my hands slowly disappearing up the back of her t-
shirt, outlining her spine with my fingertips. I could see Angélique’s story in my head,
sketched on the sand with an old piece of bark, I could hear her speaking in French
Creole in her sleep, her voice like a song for every wave that died after reaching the
shore, for all the clumps of sand the water dragged back into the wreckage. Mwen ka alé
démen. Mwen ka alé démen. Tomorrow, I can go. Tomorrow, I can go.

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4.3: Do that Stuff, Just Do that Stuff!

At Oberlin College, the question of race became a giant knot of nerve endings,
and I fucking hated it. At its best, it became the great transformation: Taking your silent
pain, your continuous marginalization, your visual and historical erasure from history
textbooks, neighborhoods, country clubs and billboards, collecting the accreted dribble of
your own trickle-down dehumanization and drinking it, vaporizing it, harnessing it into
hydroelectric energy, transforming your trauma into strength and intellectual inquiry,
demanding social justice and deconstructing the question of the questioner. At its worst,
it lead to this shit: White students arguing with their black friends about why being white
didn’t make them racist, black students arguing that powerlessness prevented them from
being racist at all, even when calling their white friends “ugly, clumsy, toe-headed
crackers,” queer students petitioning for drag ball to be more draggy, Asian students
protesting in front of the Student Union, shouting into the microphone: You think that just
because I’m Asian I’m good at math? Well, I SUCK at math. It’s my worst subject. In
fact, I’m an idiot. I’m the stupidest Asian in the whole world! The crowd cheering
deliriously.
And then there was the radical fringe, too liberal even for my ass, people who
tried to avoid white people whenever possible, calling for staggered reparations,
afrocentric curricula, race workshops where white students began each sentence with an
apology for their whiteness, I remember a group of pissed-off Latinos from Third World
Co-Op protesting in front of Jock House, arguing that interracial dating was a type of
neoslavery where white athletes gained control over brown bodies and brown gene
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pools, where black, brown and mestizo dudes were selling out to white pussy and
changing racial paradigms of beauty to something women of color could never be, which
was white. All of the arguments for and against race-awareness and race-blindness,
racial deconstruction, historical reconstruction, ethnocentricism and pluralistic
multicultural historiography turned race discourse into fucking West Side Story minus the
switchblades. And while all of this talk about institutional racism and class disparity
made sense to my evolving hapa brain in my comp lit seminar, near a keg, at Wilder
Bowl, at the Snack Bar, in front of the library, walking through Tappan Square, holding
hands at the Arb, even back then when I still thought I was white (when I was told I was
white by race-baiting dickheads), I still did everything in my power to avoid getting
involved in a conversation about my own race, pretended it was just a bad case of
intellectual herpes and my job was to do everything in my power to avoid any and all
contact with the open sores of cultural identity politics, but race just kept coming back
again and again, always ending in an outbreak (a smackdown, a drive-by, or a gunfight).
Race was everywhere on campus, getting into your mouth like Harmattan dust. If you
really wanna know what pissed me off, it was urban, race-conscious college students
trying to accelerate social justice on our campus to make up for the ills of American
slavery, but doing it in a way that was always too easy, always a little glib and sound-
bitten, always full of self-consuming fury that stuck to every egomaniac who touched the
honey, challenging the chains of white supremacy one minute, erecting another
storefront of prejudice (against interracial couples, white rappers, black conservatives
and white kids with black friends) that was just as racist in my mind as burning crosses
in people’s front yards or segregating drinking fountains.
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Don’t get me wrong: The history of America is the history of institutional racism. The
Constitution is stained with the blood of slaves. The construction of the other is
connected to the control of bodies of people of color. All of that shit has been true,
almost forever. But dude, the critique is the easy part. It’s the methodology that’s wack:
For example, why didn’t I have a say in deciding what my race was? Why had my race
been decided for me, like forever? The straight dope is that I didn’t like what students
did to my own racial identity, the way they’d squeeze the Asian out of me like orange
juice vendors in Microcéntro and turn me into a complacent honky before I’d had a
chance to say a word in my botchy nihongo. And maybe that’s because in college,
everyone was obsessed with your cultural and racial imagery and no one believed I was
Asian or anything else besides my phenotype, which is why race ended up being just a
bad fucking LSD trip for everyone who sucked the blotter.
Either way, beause I had a low threshold for chaos, I stayed on the sidelines,
kicking it at the Feve café, spending long hours at Campus diner eating (stealing) blue
plate breakfast specials and reading until the evening, nursing seven cups of stale coffee,
hidden in my little café world of shitty napkin poetry and obsessive book underlining, far
away from identity politics and racial essentialism altogether because I had too many
answers and so did everyone else, and too many answers was a huge fucking problem
when you pretended there was only one solution to something as genetically basic but
culturally complex as race. I learned very quickly to flee from the Pandora’s box of racial
identity in college because it only brought suffering, defensiveness and persecution to
your 8:00 pm tea date at the Java Zone, because it only spread hatred to everyone who
touched the flame, because I didn’t fucking know how to sing my own hapa blues in
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college. In that regard, I fucked up, and I take full responsibility for that. Maybe I just
wasn’t strong enough then to face my own shit, my own default Midwestern values, my
white privilege, my ethnic sublimation, my willful ignorance of the one-drop law which
should have applied to my Japanese heritage too, at least after the goddamn Internment.
And maybe I was right all along to defend myself from that kind of circular grief. Either
way, it doesn’t matter. Oberlin was an insane, awesome, fucked-up dream: An anti-
grunge, genderbending, pre-hipster, theory-dropping, tight-jeaned, hip-hop-heavy, sex-
starved, cigarette-bumming dream, full of hook-ups in castles, co-ops that smelled like
permanent granola, dirty smoking lounges and divided doubles like capsule hotels, a rich
and creamy bowful of late-night conversations, cheap wine and Laughing Cow cheese
parties at French House, two-hour smoke breaks in front of Mudd library, a pile of dog-
eared novels on the floor of my room, a hundred concerts at the Con every week, a
rented Picasso on my dorm wall, the whole campus like a goddamn fashion show for
exiled urban scenesters who could bust out a bunch of shit about the subaltern, pomo
clichés and gender performance one second, then critique the fuck out of Beverly Hills
90210, NFL mascots and gummy worms in the next sentence, and the only thing that
made all of that insanity bearable was the pretense of love, the sheer fuel of desire.
language and knowledge, a million books to devour and phat trip-hop beats pounding
through the floor, Q-Tip, De la Soul and Digable Planets busting out smooth words
through dorm windows and late-night electronic music synthing sustained chords
through our troubled post-adolescent souls—your whole invented world bumrushing you
from all sides at once, making your college experience one big aikido of the heart.
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Maybe that’s why instead of looking for answers about my race, I searched for
consolation in my friendships, to help me survive the dissection of my soul.

Le Vrai was my best friend in college, not to mention the biggest smartass I’d ever met.
Known for the long katana scar above his eyebrow, his flat nose, 90’s goatee, waxed Fu
Manchu moustache, straw cowboy hat that came all the way from a little hut in San
Ignacio, Mexico and his unbridled love of Black Power clichés (which he shot from his
mouth to make white kids shit in their pants), Le Vrai was something of a legend at
Oberlin: he had the kind of coolness that came from not trying to be cool—a rare and
precious commodity in a place where everyone was trying to be something
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. Unlike
most Obies, Le Vrai didn’t really give a shit if you liked him or not. He had a high
tolerance for the truth, wasn’t bothered by rumors and was always armed with the
perfect comeback. He wasn’t an asshole at all, but if he came off that way, he also didn’t
care because being an asshole was never his intention. Robust, Swedish farm girls from
the Midwest, skinny black girls from old Atlanta dynasties, ethnically ambiguous SoHo
art chicks in vintage tees and hush puppies, and blond-haired, freckled-nose
backpackers from Utah—they all flocked to him like he was a prophet with special
powers to heal depression and self-hatred, rich-guilt and obesity. I guess being a light-
skinned black messiah with a French first name had its privileges, one of which was that
everyone felt like they could connect to him. A musical comp and anthro double major,
part-time volunteer at the Lorrain County shelter for battered women, secretary of
Oberlin’s Amnesty International Chapter, respected music critic for the Oberlin Review

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But not just anything, but usually an upgraded version of one’s self
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and lead singer for a shitty funk group called Dat Shit Ain’t Right, Le Vrai was an
interesting dude. You had to take him or leave him, and pretty much everyone took him.
I just happened to be his roommate at French House my first year. For the record, I
never heard him speak French a single fucking time, except to tell people his name.
The first time I met Le Vrai, it was the night before classes. Dressed in pulled-
down jean overalls, a Guerrero Negro t-shirt and his patented cowboy hat, he strutted
through the door like it was nothing, holding a boombox on his shoulder that was blasting
Parliament so loud it hurt your teeth, a crew of hot interracial groupies trailing behind him
like the fucking Fellowship of the Ring, each girl carrying a piece of luggage and a
grocery bag. Le Vrai’s waxed Fu Manchu mustache glistened in the harsh fluorescent
light.
—Yo, you my roomie or what? He asked, adjusting his hat before putting it on
again.
—What? I said, pretending not to hear.
—Lemme turn George down, he said, twisting the volume knob, I said, you my
roomie or what?
—Guess so, I said, shrugging.
—They would place me with a white devil, he said. All the girls snickered like
white devils were an inside joke.
I looked around, examining the pride: a clan of hot, Bohemian girls transferring
Le Vrai’s clothes into dressers, polishing his mirror, setting up his stereo, organizing his
vinyl alphabetically, lighting some sort of musky incense, wrestling his satin fitted sheet
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onto the corners of his bed, their skirts riding up their asses majestically like dust covers
sliding off Greek Attic statues. —0 for 2, my man, I said.
—My man? I like that. Why 0 for 2?
—I’m not the white devil because you’ve gotta have power to destroy kingdoms
and I’m just a flat broke complit major with a pretty face. And second, I’m not the white
devil because I’ve got hyphens.
—Hyphens?
—Japanese-French-American, son.
—Japanese?
—Yeah. I’m hapa.
—Ha-pa, sang the light-skinned black girl. Dressed in green flannel shirt, black
miniskirt and Doc Martins, she continued humming as she put Le Vrai’s shirts on
hangers, organizing them by color.
—Hapa, huh? Le Vrai asked. You got a name, Mr. Hapa?
—Hidashi.
—Oh shit, you weren’t playing. You really are part Japanese.
—Yup. What’s your name?
—Birth name’s Le Trotsky, but everyone calls me Le Vrai.
—Your nickname is The Truth? You’ve gotta be joking.
—Yeah, he said, something like that.
—Fuck, that’s a lot of pressure.
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—Actually, said the blond girl organizing his sock drawer fastidiously, Le Vrai
doesn’t understand the meaning of the word pressure. He resists it completely, just like
white supremacy.
—Black power! Le Vrai shouted, raising his fist in the air.
—Power to the people! The girls echoed.
My eyes moved from the sock girl in her tight Daisy Dukes, 2-inch cork wedges,
Greenday t-shirt and bra-strap headband to Le Vrai in his enlightened country bumpkin
outfit and then back to the sock girl. Finally, my curiosity overcame me: —Who are you
girls and where do you come from?
—Oh, they’re friends from Ziggy Stardust, Harkness, African Heritage House and
Dascomb.
—Are those dorms? And what do you mean by friends?
—Friends of the Black Power movement.
—I didn’t know there was a Black Power movement anymore.
—It’s called college, he said, cocking his head, —ever heard of it?
I shot him a dirty look, then said: —What’s this thing you call college? Is that a
club or something?
—Kinda.
—Well, then I guess I’m part black! I said, giving him my best Mad Dog scowl.
—My man, he said, slapping me on the shoulder, you and me are gonna do just
fine.

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Later that night, Le Vrai and I were tripping our minds out on shrooms we’d scored from
Sock Girl who seemed to have an endless network of drug connections on campus. All
of us sat in a circle on the floor while Le Vrai went on and on about the 6
th
Bach Cello
Suite, its rising and descending melody reminding me of stock market charts. Le Vrai
was obsessed. He kept saying:
—Yo, listen to that! Ya’ll hear those arpeggios? That’s Yo-yo mama.
—Pretty sure it’s Yo-yo Ma, I said, pretending I didn’t know anything about
classical music.
—Whatever, punk. That’s the sound of him taking a bite out of yo’ass, like a
musical declaration that just keeps going and going, winding in circles, making you dizzy.
All of us sat there, entranced by the Allemande. By the time we got to the 2
nd

Gavotte, Le Vrai and Sock girl were dancing around the room like French nobles getting
down to a Gigue. It was the funniest fucking thing I’d ever seen. All of us laughed so
much we were ready to puke. Must have been the drugs. The truth is, I’d always liked
classical music ever since I started playing piano (though the only thing I can play are
Schubert Impromptus), but stopped listening to it once I was in high school, mostly
because I couldn’t find anyone who shared a love of old music written by dead white
European dudes in wigs. I remember when I was in Junior High, I went through a phase
where I used to blast Mahler and Shostakovich symphonies on the family stereo (dorky
as shit, I know), conducting the trumpets of Jericho with my hands when my dad would
come home from work, shoot me a weird look, pour himself a scotch, then march into the
living room a few minutes later and hit the off the button, right there, right in the middle of
the greatest orchestral crescendos in the whole world. It used to piss me off so much
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when he did shit like that. You see, because my parents were basically plugged-in and
had amazing tastes in vinyl, so classical music, strangely enough, was my rebellion,
which lasted until I moved to the Chi. It wasn’t exactly cool to listen to a Brandenburg
concerto at a public high school in Chicago, not if you planned on getting laid, anyways.
By the time Le Vrai had put on Portishead’s Dummy, I had already had my first
college moment. “It’s a Fire” blew me away, so soft and dark and textured, it went
straight to my heart like a syringe of adrenalin. By that time, all of us had already
peaked, so music and food were the only things we could still feel. Eventually, I looked
at Sal de Mer (the light-skinned black girl). I started feeling something for her, in part
because she completely ignored me (flashbacking my ass to Brit), and also because
she’d hummed the word ha-pa like it was a strange and mysterious and powerful hymn.
Also: she looked exactly like Angélique from the side, as lame as that sounds. To
protect my delusion that I was reuniting with the girl I’d lost my virginity to (whose
psychic traces were still all over my fucking soul), I covered my ears every time Sal de
Mer said something to Le Vrai. Whenever she spoke without a French accent, I knew
she wasn’t Angélique. Was it nostalgia, the body-buzz from the shrooms or just straight
up jungle fever that made me manipulate reality this way? My brain was mushy, my
heart kinda broken, but still I was ready to love again, even for a single night. Classes
started the next day and I didn’t have a clue where anything was: King Building, Peters
Hall, Harvey, the goddamn Student Union. Not even the dining hall. Where the fuck
were those buildings anyway? Why had I waited until the last minute to leave Chicago?
What was I afraid of? Starting over again? Going back to a small town? Living in a
class war zone like Lorain County? Disappearing in the long-winded rows of cornfields?
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Naturally, because I was a talented girl-crazy escape artist, I focused my
attention on getting it on with Sal de Mer, trying not to think about school. I pretended
Sal de Mer was Angélique, which was almost easy since she rarely spoke. My whole
senior year, when I was still raw inside, I kept having dreams about Angélique off and on
(sometimes even in French Creole). I still saw the picturestory she’d drawn for me in the
sand, still smelled the Evanston air that summer, still saw her gang signs she used to
flash in her sleep, her fingers forming a W for West side (the best side), the side she
abandoned when she returned to Haiti. For my whole senior year, especially between
girls, I wondered if Angélique thought about me, if she ever pretended that her dipshit
Belgian technocrat fiancé was me when they made love in the dark, whether she ever
asked him to speak English to her with an American—midwest—accent. Sometimes I
even wondered if he could ever love her the way I did—with some much intensity, punch
and self-destruction. One night in Chicago, home alone and drunk on my dad’s
champagne, I’d taken a deep breath and opened up my first acceptance letter to college
I’d been avoiding all evening, and then I started to cry. I was so happy, but I didn’t have
anyone to share the moment with, which broke me down again. So I picked up the
phone, pretended I was making a long-distance call to Haiti, pretended my French was
good enough that I could call information and locate Angélique’s house in Port-au-Prince,
and then I pretended I was talking to her mom, who of course had heard of me because
Angélique talked about me tous le temps, because she missed me and was too proud to
admit it, which is why she never wrote, to her hide own pain, and then when I got
Angélique on the line, when she finally said allô, I pretended I’d asked her how she was,
whether she was going to marry him, why she left me and why I was, in fact, so leavable.
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Sal de Mer got up and stretched, her arms raised in an arabesque, and then she
started dancing with the Sock Girl like they were both in a fucking Sade music video. Le
Vrai told them to kiss each other. Now with a pretext, they started making out and
laughing, their tongues gliding into each other’s mouths, hands lifting up moist t-shirts
and cupping tumescent nipples that stuck through the fabric like ear plugs, they giggled
and sighed, almost for our consumption, their wet mouths nibbling on concave stomachs,
fingers disappearing past the national border of cotton panties and lace thongs.
—Goddamn, Le Vrai muttered, taking a drag from the Marlboro Red I’d given him
hours ago, —I gonna hit this lovefest. You in,‘Dashi?
I sat there, impressed by Le Vrai’s aplomb, aroused by everyone and everything,
not to mention, fighting my own sadness and completely confused about the rules.
Could I join in? Did both of them want a ménage à trois with Le Vrai? Was this my cue
to bounce? Did Sal de Mer even notice me? I sat there in quiet envy as Le Vrai
entwined his body with the girls’ like AV wires, distended hands groped and traced body
contours and massaged every bump, pulling down their sticky clothes to the floor (a
black miniskirt, a pair of overalls and a pair of tight jean shorts). My hands disappeared
within my shorts, waves of chi flowed through my body in a single focused stream of
pleasure. I almost popped my clip right there. Then Sal de Mer whispered something in
Le Vrai’s ear.
—‘Dashi, Le Vrai said, get over here, man. I wanna see you and Sal de Mer
make out. For one night, Le Vrai was my hero.

180
It was sometime around two in the morning when the eight of us—Me, Sal de Mer, the
Sock girl, Le Vrai and four other silent groupies—decided to go skinny-dipping in Phillips
Center. Never a great swimmer, I sort of did a leisurely sidestroke when Le Vrai leapt
from the high platform and folded his legs into a fortune cookie yelling, “Do that stuff, just
do that stuff!” I watched in slow-mo as Le Vrai soared through the sky, his folded body
casting a shadow over the swimming pool, the light growing dim as he plummeted
toward me like a piano falling from the sky in an old cartoon. For a second, I thought I
was going to die. I thought: well, this isn’t the way I thought I was going to leave this
earth, but it was a good life while it lasted. I got accepted to Oberlin, Northwestern and
Vassar, never got mugged the whole time I lived in Chicago; I got to try acid, pot,
shrooms, I learned to smoke Marlboro Reds, speak French (almost); I got to have sex
with a light-skinned Haitian girl who loved me like a bad drug, two native American girls
that didn’t, a Latina who suffocated me with her tongue, some drunk teenagers from
Lincoln Park that tag-teamed me, a drama major from DePaul who practically screeched
at the top of her lungs when I was fingering her, one teen mom in jean shorts who called
my cock Mr. Squirty, a eurotrash polyglot (Lolita) and even a lawyer in a plaid miniskirt
who’d asked me to help her carry a box of copy paper into her office and then gave me
the best blowjob of my life in the hallway before straddling me on the shoe rug, I got to
sneak into the practice rooms at Northwestern and play Schubert impromptus in the dark,
I got to make out with a boy, just once, just to say I knew what it was like to be on the
other team, I learned to surf (get pummeled) in the Pacific Ocean, got lost in the Art
Institute, took a road trip to New York, kissed a complete stranger who looked just like
Paula Abdul at a New Year’s Eve party, I knew what it was like to fall asleep listening to
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Barber’s Adagio (the strings sticking to the atmosphere in my dreams), stay faithful to
one girlfriend, host a mutiny of dreams of visiting Japan, inhale fermented soil and wet
roots as I ran up a forest hill in the early morning, collect morels in wrinkled paper bags
with my family in Empire, Michigan, go to a hip-hop club in the West Side and shake my
ass to “Midnight Marauders,” amass a pillowcase of butterfingers, caramel chews and
milk duds each Halloween, play Schubert’s G flat Impromptu at a piano recital (that I
would play for my obāsan many years later), talk my mom out of leaving her third
husband when he hugged the wrong woman from behind at a party, learn to read a bad
poem at open mic night at No Exit Café, jump over a fence at a Michigan State party
after the police crashed it, steal a Nabokov book from the bookstore and win a
motherfucking spelling bee in 8
th
grade. I knew what it was like to hold my mom and feel
the heaving in her chest, her tears burning my neck as I held her, trying to contain the
damage I’d done after I told her I didn’t want to live in Florida. I knew what it was like to
love a girl’s voice and then suffocate in her silence after she sledghammered my heart
and disappeared between the cracks (like a textbook assassin), I even learned recently
what poverty tasted like, I remembered what a family used to feel like before our dream
collapsed, how much it still hurts me to know that my Obāsan lives by herself in a trailer
in a small town in America (not Nippon), a hostage twice to a country that never loved
her and never understood Japan, never apologizing for what my grandfather did to her
as a US soldier while in uniform. I knew hatred, fatality, alcoholism, love, music, desire
and collapse. Dying in a swimming pool isn’t how I thought I was going to go, but yo, at
least I got to understand what puberty is, what shame feels like wrapped around your
stomach like a girdle, at least I got to feel the magic spell that teenage girls cast when
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they look at you like you’re first boy they’ve ever seen, their eyes so full of raw and
embryonic love, so overflowing with innocent desire, unpackaging the abstraction of love,
just for you, just in that moment in the hallway, showering you with their full-spectrum
light that erased the anger rising up from your spleen for your dad’s absence and healed
your scrapes and bruises from BMX wipeouts and a part-time berserker mom, a miracle
lasting just an instant. That’s when Le Vrai’s body punched through the water, missing
me by four inches before he sunk to the bottom of the pool. I looked up as the pool
water formed a mushroom cloud above my head, wincing. The Sock Girl yelled heads
up. I ducked my head the way they taught us to do for tornado drills, the water splitting
up and breaking apart into a thousand water droplets that quickly became a chemical
rain.
After Le Vrai erupted through the surface, he shouted: —That’s right,
motherfucker! Do that stuff! Just do that stuff!
—Stop singing that fucking song, I shouted, your George Clinton almost killed me.
—That would have been a privilege, the Sock Girl said.
I shot her an incredulous look. —I don’t see any privilege in dying young, I said,
grabbing hold of the swimming pool edge, my breath completely lost in my lungs. —But if
that’s your thing, go for it.
—Dashi, Le Vrai said, be nice to the white sister. At least she likes George.
—So what, I said, I like my life, son, shrugging my shoulders and rubbing my
hands slowly through my hair like a swimsuit model. Le Vrai busted out laughing when I
did that. Then I did too.

183
It wasn’t my idea, that’s for sure. But somehow, maybe because it was getting late and
we were all famished after swimming, Le Vrai talked everyone into breaking into
Stevenson Dining Hall, wherever that was.
—I saw this big ole ladder in the backyard of someone’s house, he said, maybe
three blocks south of Tappan Square.
—Isn’t that Nancy Dye’s house? Sal de Mer asked.
—Who? I asked, covering my ears for a second.
—The new college president, Sock Girl added, like duh. Where have you been?
—Chicago, I said.
—Check it out, Le Vrai said, grabbing hold of Sal de Mer and Sock Girl’s hands,
—we’ll be right back. They disappeared into the humid Ohio darkness. That left me and
the outer circle (the silent groupies), all of us exchanging limp smiles, our clothes
dripping on the ground like a cult that lived in the sewers.
When the three of them came back ten minutes later, they were carrying a
twenty-five foot steel ladder.
—Yo, I’m not climbing up that thing, I said.
—You don’t have to, Le Vrai said, I’ll climb it and then let y’all in through the front
door.
Sure enough, after hearing the sound of crashing plates and cups knocked over
and spinning on the floor, Le Vrai opened the front door and held it for everyone. —
Welcome to Café Le Vrai. How many?
—Punk, I said, elbowing him in the stomach and walking by.
—Boo, I’m hungry, Sal de Mer said in passing. They got frozen yogurt?
184
—Hell yes.
—I want Lucky Charms, Sock Girl said, slapping Le Vrai on the cheeks and
entering.
—I know they got those.
The rest of the groupies walked through the entrance. Le Vrai entered the cereal
room with his arms wrapped around the shoulders of two nameless girls like a star
quarterback arriving at Homecoming. He looked really happy to get his snack on.

After two bowls of Cocoa Crispies and a double cone of chocolate fudge and vanilla, I
was ready to crash hard. I washed my bowl in the dishwasher room and then placed it
in the drying rack. Inside the Cereal Room, Le Vrai and I watched Sock Girl stuffing the
pockets of her dress with Lucky Charms.
—You almost done? He asked, tapping his foot. Birds were singing R & B
songs from the rooftops and the sky was now the color of pink lemonade.
—Yeah, she said, chewing on rainbow-colored marshmallows, just give me a
second, I’ve still got my back pockets.
—You can always come back in like three hours, I said. —There’s this thing—
maybe you’ve heard of it—it’s called breakfast.
—Shut up smartass, she said, I hate breakfast. I just like cereal.
—Where’s Sal de Mer? I asked.
—Over they’re, he said, emptying a scoop of cereal into Sock Girl’s back pocket.
I followed Le Vrai’s finger to the salad bar, where Sal de Mar was sleeping, her naked
185
feet curled underneath a bed of prewashed spinach, her hand resting inside a plastic
bowl of croutons.
—There’s something enchanting about that picture, I said.
—Word, he said smirking, I think someone’s a little sprung.
—Whatever. I walked over to her, placed my ear against her open mouth,
listening to the windmill inside her lungs powering a deep, opiate sleep. I rubbed my
hand on her forehead, inhaled her hair, which smelled like radishes. Of course, because
I’m a sentimental asshole, I thought of Angélique, the way she used to sleep with her
hands on my stomach, her fingers making gang signs for another world. I thought about
her voice, the way it floated around the room, nudging the ceiling, delaying my head-on
collision with reality. I thought about Angélique’s skin, smelling like old pastries, Chanel,
Evanston sand and yesterday’s flowers, a memory left out to die in the wilderness of my
repressed sorrow.
—Sal de Mer, I said, wake up. We gotta get out of here.
Her eyes were a slow, beautiful flitter as she disengaged her brain from the
feeding tube of her dreams.
—Hey, I said slowly, rubbing her forehead.
Finally she exhaled, opening her eyes at me, softened and ruined by sleep, her
lips forming a question.
—We gotta go, I said sadly, my hand reaching out for hers.
She traced my cheekbones with her fingers and looked up at me, her droopy
eyes unable to hold back the parallel sun rising inside her. —Ha-pa, she sang, Ha-
paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
186
4.4: The Gangsta Family

One of the big mistakes I made in college was letting race-obsessed students
erase my Japaneseness and tell me I had white privilege just because I looked like a J.
Crew dropout. They wanted racial definitions, exclusions and boundaries, and I didn’t
fucking care as long as I had a pile of French novels to read, a pack of smokes and a
smart, eccentric, warm-blooded girlfriend to fall asleep with on those cold-ass blizzardy
nights when the lingering, sub-zero darkness froze the entire Midwest plains from the
inside out, each dorm room window forming a collective godview of gellid flat Ohio land
that sparkled like spun sugar nests, the winter morphing dead lawns into fragile sheets
of crystal, bird baths into ice sculptures and empty streets into arctic wastelands. So
instead of getting in arguments with people about institutional racism, the Rodney King
Riots or OJ Simpson mug shots, I drank lots of whiskey, played pool in the basement of
the Feve, went on long walks in the Arboretum all bundled up, slept with a bunch of
verbose, too-hip-for-reality Brooklyn girls, stole novels from the Co-op bookstore (which
went out of business years later, a fact that still fills me with enormous guilt). I read
voraciously, made love to Steinways in the practice rooms of the Con (lights off), took a
road-trip to Montréal and Québec City with some French friends and skipped class all
the fucking time (always doing all of my homework, though, and then some). Before I
knew it, three months slipped through my fingers like free range egg yoke.
The night before Christmas vacation, the entire campus became carnivalesque.
Every dorm, co-op and language house became a First Thursday: Forgettable East Hall,
the Days Inn North, Please-Repaint-Me French House, My-Baby’s-All-Grown-Up Burton,
187
ESPN House, the Women + Children First House, Talcott the Secret Castle,
cinderblocky Dascomb (the first co-ed dorm in America, bitches!), I-Wish-I-Was-the-Ivy
League Noah, the Goyim Hebrew Heritage House, the White-Devils-Not-Welcome
African Heritage House, the Orientalism-is-Hot Asia House, the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-in-
College Barrows, the Young-Marxists-Spanish House, the We-Are-an-European Youth
Hostel South Hall, the Dirty-Hippies-Welcome Harkness, Save-the-Bees Fairchild,
Angry-Non-White-People-Third-World-Co-Op-That-Should-Be-Called-the-Developing-
World-Co-Op-But-Isn’t-Because-Oberlin-Is-Racist Co-Op, the Rupaul Cottage, Dirty-
Hippies-Not-Welcome Tank and the I’m-Too-Cool-to-Be-a-Co-op Ziggy Stardust Co-op.
Most students were staggering drunk, blazed and red-eyed, or illuminated on E, a few
even cranked up on coke, everyone delirious from a week of essays, or stuck in a what-
the-fuck-do-I-do-now-that-I’m-done-with-my-exams sort of daze. Students, many of
them carrying Manhattan Portage satchels or half-empty wine bottles, migrated from
room to room and from dorm to co-op, bumming smokes, stealing fistfuls of mellow
Cheddar cheese and bottles of fresh organic milk from co-op fridges, playing drinking
games, telling dirty jokes in primitive Russian and arguing about Foucault with complete
strangers in study lounges, making out with classmates in the hallway, getting it on in co-
ed showers in their skivvies, disappearing inside tiny divided double bedrooms, crashing
on dirty twin beds wearing Jedi robes, sunflower masks and Andy Warhol wigs, their
hands still gripping light sabers and plastic longswords, Some dudes passed out in the
closets of strangers, waking up in someone else’s pants, or wearing bras on their heads
in homage of Weird Science, the faces of passed out boys painted like Geishas by their
188
girlfriends. It was a night of complete bedlam, a cathartic mess of hormones and
mourning that felt too good to fight. So I didn’t.
Somewhere in that chaos, I ran into Le Vrai at a small house party at Asia House
where a skinny Hong Kong DJ in a black Adidas track suit and Stüssy cap was spinning
tracks of remixed Notorious B.I.G., Cypress Hill and Ice Cube, a cluster of long-legged
Asian girls in leotards, lycra miniskirts and tube skirts, their hair tied up in scrunchies, a
few belly button piercings bouncing halogen lamp light in your eyes, their hips grooving
back and forth like slalom skiers, cigarettes dangling from painted fingernails. It was a
beautiful vision: The girls’ disenchanted college beauty, their long, mutant legs wrapped
up in grunge olive green leggings; the sight of Le Vrai getting his groove on, using only
his neck and his shoulders.
—Yo ‘Dashi, Le Vrai said, come over here and hit this thing before I swallow it
whole. Hatless, dressed in baggy pants and a hoodie, and surrounded by a group of
fresh girls, Le Vrai was holding a spliff in his hand that was fatter than a club sandwich.
—Where’s your cowboy hat? I asked, dislodging the spliff from his ironclad fist.
—Son, don’t even bring that up.
—Wait, why? I asked, inhaling, —did you pawn that?
—Shah. That bitch stole my hat.
The smoke was climbing up my lungs, tickling my bronchial tubes, scratching my
throat. —Who? I asked, exhaling slowly.
—Sock Girl, he said, grabbing the spliff.
—Wait, you call her Sock Girl too? I thought that was my own thing.
—Naw man, that’s her name.
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—Her name is Sock Girl?
—Well yeah.
—Well damn.
—What? You thought you were the first motherfucker to call her that?
I shrugged, taking another drag. —Yeah, pretty much.
—Actually, me too, he said, shaking his head and grabbing his spliff back, —but
my drummer told me that’s what everyone here calls her. You know, she really liked
putting away my socks. 'Member that? He asked, inhaling.
—Of course, I said, nodding, she looked possessed.
—Last year, she got arrested for stealing socks at Brooks Brothers. Supposedly,
she ran out of Tower City with an armful of men’s tube socks. Blue, yellow and green-
striped tube socks. The kind people wore in the 80’s.
—Shut up, I said, shaking my head. —When you make up shit, it sounds too
good to be true.
—No, for real, he said, pointing with the spliff, —that girl’s gotta fetish, man. The
first time I slept over at her place, you know what she did?
—Lemme guess: she performed Battlestar Gallactica with her vibrators.
—No, punk. When it was time for bed, she slathered this crazy aloe shit on her
fingers and then she put fucking socks on her hands and fell asleep, just like that. When
I woke up, I got confused, thought her hands were feet.
When I imagined the picture in my head, I bust out laughing.

190
Around three in the morning, Le Vrai and I walked to Tappan Square to look at the Clark
Bandstand, which reminded me of a snow-covered pagoda in Sapporo. The fresh layers
of sparkling snow cast a silvery constellation over the lawn, icicles dangling from the
rooftop like glass scabbards, fog exhaling from our lungs. We went underneath the
wooden rooftop, shared a flask of Jim Bean Le Vrai produced from underneath his
Northface parka and smoked the last two cigarettes in my pack.
—Le Vrai, I asked, what’re you doing for Winter Break?
—Ah man, nothing. Going to see my niece in Cleveland, then I’m heading back
to the D for a couple weeks. Gonna work with at-risk kids at this local joint. You?
—Going back to the Chi.
—You excited?
—So much, man.
—Whachew miss the most?
—I miss riding the El and getting lost in museums, spending all day on chilly days
inide 24-hour cafés in the Gold Coast, nursing coffee and people-watching, having my
own bedroom, flirting with women fleeced in winter coats, getting rosacea, wet neon,
steaming bowls of udon.
—You’re a straight up nerd, ‘Dashi.
—Shut up, punk. You asked.
—But I got love for you man. You know who you are and you’re not ashamed to
be smart.
—Why would I be? Our school is like the pretention capital of America.
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—See it’s like this: in my family, acting smart will get you smacked in the face.
My mama loves that I’m here. She’s always like, my baby’s at Oberlin, the first school to
accept black folk and women in America. She loves shit like that. But not my daddy.
See, it’s not cool for me to be at this fancy college. He thinks college is for pussies,
white kids and ballers. If you’re not heading toward the NBA, then you’re either a pussy
or you’re acting white.
—That’s bullshit. Learning shouldn’t be just for white people.
—That’s the perception, man. Besides, not everyone wants to deal with books
and exams or teenage bullshit or rich hippy kids or white pomos. That shit’s not for
everyone ‘Dashi.
—Guess that’s true. But still, I think your dad should be mad proud of you. He
raised a good man and smart son.
—Yo, you trying to date me? You’re know you’re not my type.
—Don’t worry, I’m not into messiahs. And frankly, you could use a shower.
He smirks and then inhales from his cigarette. —See, my daddy uses a
pocketknife to cut the world into pieces. I hate it. I really do. If I felt the way he did, I’d
break into a pawnshop and blow my brains up with the first glock I found.
—The thing is, dads are only proud of you when you do exactly what they want.
You’ve gotta follow their orders and meet their expectations, I said, taking another drag,
—It’s a pretty fucking small margin of error.
—True that. Part of it too is that my Daddy doesn’t see the world the way I do.
Doesn’t understand people the way I do either. I read archaeology books for fun, I like
volunteering when I have a little time and I love seedy motels. I’m just different than he
192
is. I’m not gonna lie though, I love that my life here complicates his binary world. That’s
how I know I’m doing it right.
—Yeah, I feel you, I said, taking a long drag from my cigarette, holding it in, then
letting it go. —It’s weird. I feel like if my dad weren’t my dad, he would never talk to
someone like me.
—Word.
—I remember when he used to come home from work when I was in 8
th
grade,
right before my parents split up, and I’d be practicing a Schubert impromptu—one of the
really easy ones—and instead of coming up to me and saying that sounds really good,
or whatever—
—Right.
—He’d say shit like, can you take a break please? I have a headache and I want
some peace and quiet right now.
—That’s cold, man.
—I know, right? You’d think he’d be happy that his son wasn’t smashing
people’s kneecaps with a pool cue or stealing jewelry to pay for his ridlin habit. But
instead, it was like he was saying: Who is this kid? Why can’t I relate with him?
—Know what you mean.
The truth is, even though I act like an asshole sometimes, I actually care about
people a lot, that’s always been one of my biggest secrets that I’ve guarded with my
fucking life. —The straight dope is you don’t get trophies for your emotions in this
country, at least not as a man. The instant you feel, for some reason, you’re less of a
man. It’s just a big gender performance.
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—Yeah, he said, inhaling and shaking his head, —but since when do you care
what society says about anything?
—I dunno, I guess I don’t give a shit, but I always care. It’s one of my
contradictions. The truth, though I wouldn’t admit this to Le Vrai until much later in our
friendship, is that a part of me, a major part of me is just afraid people’ll drop me on my
ass . . . they always do (cf. “Girls”). So instead, I talk shit and act immortal.
Le Vrai nodded, exhaled, looking up at the rhinestone sky. —You know what
though? he said, inhaling, —you can’t let other people shut you down man, even if they
do hurt you. That’s their pain, not yours. Your only responsibility is to yourself: Figure
your shit out, be kind to people and find the courage to love, even if it hurts. Especially if
it hurts.
I nodded, taking another drag. —You know, even though you’re a cult leader and
you can’t carry a tune to save your fucking life, you’re good people Le Vrai.
He shook his head and smirked. —Yo, you too.
It’s weird, but at that moment, I realized it had been a long fucking time since
someone said something so kind to me like that. The gratitude I felt made me want to
cry.
—Listen up ‘Dashi, let’s make a promise right now to never treat our kids the way
our dads treat us, no matter who they become: Diplomats or drug dealers—
—Hoodlums or professional weightlifters—
—Porn stars—
—Funk singers—
Le Vrai raised his eyebrow. —Toll collectors—
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—Jizz moppers—
—Jihadists—
—Crooners—
—Even deadbeats.
We gave each other hip-hop hugs (because that’s what you did in the 90’s if you
listened to hip-hop) and then we threw our cigarette butts in the snow. Yeah, we weren’t
very green back then. Le Vrai headed off to Ashley Vo’s place. I listened to his boots
squeaking in the snow for a second and then I headed back to our apartment at French
House where the paint was peeling like old skin and suitcases were packed, ready to
return to the city of Tough Love after spending all semester at My Little Bohemia.

I was feeling really good about life and still kinda drunk, thinking about Chicago and
looking forward to reuniting with old friends, kicking it at 3
rd
Coast café, haunting the Art
Institute, riding the El from the Loop all the way to Evanston, listening to the Smiths on
my Discman. That’s when these two white wannabe gangstas with prepubescent
moustaches tried to jack me. Somewhere between College and Main Street, I noticed
them in my peripheral vision as I was walking back. Dressed in baggy cargo pants,
Lanes, Michelin parkas, one wearing a Cavs cap, another wearing a red beanie, I
noticed them a mile away because that’s what you do in Chicago, you always know
where everyone is. Once I’d crossed Lorrain Street, I looked back and realized they
were a half a block away now, jogging casually towards me like marines on an early
morning run. Now, I’m not a paranoid person. It just doesn’t come naturally to me. But
those dudes were closing in on me fast. I was officially freaked out, my feet sticking into
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the slush and ice as I pressed harder into the sidewalk. The snow was falling from the
sky in large clumps of fluffy cotton, my breath bellowed out through my nostrils like a
chimera and the sky was a frozen glaze. I felt profoundly alone and vulnerable at that
moment.
They sprinted toward me, their feet stomping the salted street. I ran down down
the sidewalk across the lawn to the front door of French House, thrusting my hands into
my jacket pockets: My ID card wasn’t there. Front right pocket: cigarettes. Front left
pocket: Granola I stole from Harkness for a late-night snack. I could hear them
breathing hard through their mouths as they closed in on me, smelling my panic. I could
see their pupils now: Wide, dilated, inflamed. One of them yelled: Clock his ass! They
were thirty feet away now. I opened up my jacket, fished through my back pockets. Fuck
him up, one of them shouted. In a burst of adrenalin, I ripped my ID out of my inside
pocket, tearing my jacket. I thrust it through the card reader: Error. I slid it again slowly.
Get that rich faggot. Fuck him up. The door clicked open like a bank vault. I slammed it
shut, looking back through the window, my heart uppercutting frantically through my
jacket.
—Man, I told you to trip his ass up, the guy in the Cavs cap shouted outside.
—He got the jump on me, Eddie, the dude in the red beanie said.
—Don’t say my fucking name, JJ.
—Man, chill out.
—Don’t tell me what to do.
Then their voices trailed off. I walked up the stairs, washed my face in the sink,
walked into my room and started undressing when the phone rang.
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—‘Lo? I said.
—‘Dashi?
—What’s going on, man?
—Yo, listen, was that you I saw in the distance getting chased by two white
homies.
—Yeah.
—Listen up—
—No, it’s—
—I don’t let no one fuck with my family.
—I appreciate that but—
—Yo, I’m gonna borrow Ash’s car and I’ll be there in a flash.
—Le Vrai, it’s over man. Just let it die.
—Naw, I don’t think so. That’s not how I work, kid. This time, I’m calling the
shots.
—Seriously man, it’s cool.
—It ain’t cool. Wait for me near the exit.
I hung up the phone, sighed and started putting my clothes back on.

We must have driven around for like an hour before we spotted them near Lorenzo’s
pizza joint. I turned to Le Vrai as if to say: What the fuck are we doing?
—Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna do anything crazy, he said.
—Le Vrai, let’s just go back, man.
—Naw, can’t do that.
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—Yo, this isn’t worth it.
—‘Dashi, this is your next lesson in black power. It’s called payback.
—Oh, please. Shut the fuck up.
He chuckled. —No seriously, we’re not gonna hurt those motherfuckers. Just
scare them a little.
I shook my head.
—No one messes with my family.
—Fine. I get it, all right?
—Put your hoodie on, he said, turning on the headlights of the Range Rover.
The next thing I know, Le Vrai pulled his hood over his head, rolled up the Land
Rover’s tinted windows, turned on the stereo, nudged a CD in and cranked up the
volume until the beats were shaking the dark windows and Dr Dre’s baritone was
thundering through the speakers and the bass was messing up our heartbeat. We sped
around the corner until we were driving right towards those fucking assholes. Then, Le
Vrai slowed the car down to a crawl. They looked up, their eyes, wide-open and carmine,
broken up and burning in the cold winter air. Le Vrai opened up the window, slow and
dramatic. The stereo shouted:
Hop back as I pop my top ya trip
I let the hollow points commence to
POP POP POP

Then Le Vrai turned off the headlights and those dudes were fucking out of there.
I’ve never seen two white guys run so fast before in my entire fucking life, especially in
Micheline Man winter parkas. Once they were gone, Le Vrai and I laughed so hard we
were wiping the corners of our eyes.
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—Yo, you see that? He asked.
—I saw that, I said, wiping my eyes again.
—Ah man. That’s what we call non-violent resistance.
—I’m not sure Gandhi would have approved.
—Gandhi was a bitch-ass ho.
—You know, you never hear people say that.
—I got your back ‘Dashi, that’s all I’m saying. You remember that.
—Seriously man, thanks. I appreciate you.
—Same here. Now let’s go raid a co-op.
That was the first time I understood what real loyalty was. But it wouldn’t be the
last. Le Vrai would come and help me a second time in Japan seven years later, with a
new haircut and a Royal Marine-issued L115A1 long-range sniper rifle with Schmidt +
Bender telescopic sight and suppressor.

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4.5: Confusing Confusion for Beauty

It was right after a string of short-lived relationships (fiascos) with several hipster
girls from Brooklyn the year before, all of them too cool for school (just like I was back
then) and a recent summer break-up with an Azeri nymphomaniac who used to fuck me
until my cock turned blue (talk about Liz Phair clichés) that I finally talked to Kazuko for
the first time at a Halloween party at Ziggy Stardust, a countercultural co-op off the grid,
full of artists, activists and rockers. It was the beginning of my last year of college. The
influx of world-weary students returning from three months of city life and the arrival of
baby-cheeked students invading our so-called postmodern campus like missionaries
finally reaching the banks of the Dark Continent, turning the campus into Mardi Gras.
Oberlin was an electric circus, a full-fledged surrender to disguise. It seemed like
everyone was ready, in an instant, to infect the Ohio air with their urban malaise, their
changing stories as New Yorker interns, Prague bartenders and rehab VIP’s, their
radioactive self-consciousness sickening those around them. Meanwhile, I was having
my own crisis: I was starting to have this nagging feeling that I was all shriveled up and
godless inside, though I kept that shit to myself (except for when I talked to my mom on
the phone or when I hung out with Le Vrai). As a writer for the “All Hipsters + Christians
Must Die” column (not the official title) that I wrote for once a month for the alternative
newspaper, Disobey!, I now had a reputation on campus for being a smartass, a player
and a committed atheist (but who wasn’t at least one of those things at Oberlin?).
Sometime last spring, with the encouragement of one of my Japanese history professors,
I’d started dabbling in Taoism and Buddhism, and that’s where I began to understand
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the real chaos and destruction of my mind, the way it broke people down like a chop
shop until there was nothing left of them except a fractured chassis and two rusted
hubcaps. For the first time maybe in my entire fucking life, I started to question whether I
was happy, even found myself longing for strange (forbidden) things I’d both denied and
rejected before, like tranquility, joy and simplicity. I mean, even saying those words out
loud made me feel like a jackass. Still does, in fact. The problem is that happiness
wasn’t cool in college, depression was. As I’d been complaining about in my column
recently, I was starting to have my doubts about coolness, started to wonder if it even
existed, if it was even worth it and if cool people—both on campus and in movies—were
even happy with their lives without drugs and critical theory, or slobbering fans and
gender trophies. I started to wonder—because that’s the kind of shit you do when you
spend too much time in the cornfields—if coolness was just another social construct
invented by cheating, coked-addicted movie stars to make up for their empty lives. I
mean, why were we idealizing celebrities? Most of them were fake as shit, impulsive,
drug-addicted, plastic surgery-loving, self-consumed, materialistic, jetsetting self-
promoters who didn’t even give a shit about anyone else unless it helped their career.
What exactly was the appeal and why was Hollywood defining coolness for so many
Americans when so few Americans would ever step inside a production studio? I just
didn’t get it.
In my brain, coolness, chaos, peformance and insecurity were all interconnected
in some way. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew they were, and my interest with chaos was
related to my desire for slowness. That’s how I started meditating, in part, to get my shit
together. My secret spiritual life was an amulet to rescue me from the nihilist swamp of
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postmodernism, which was all the rage back then. Besides, you couldn’t believe in
nothing forever. Eventually, that nothing became something. It was during one of the
strangest times in my life, on the threshold of the inevitable shoot-out between my
spirituality and my nihilism that I bumped into Kazuko at Ziggy Stardust. She was
dressed in a tight Pocahontas suede dress and turquoise ribbon headband, her hair tied
in little pigtails, her little curves spilling out of the fabric. She was the hottest thing at that
party, shining in the penumbra like a kerosene lamp. I was suffocating in a Zorro
costume of black leather pants and V-neck tunic, boots I borrowed from a transgendered
classmate in my French lit class that were hypergénial and an old musky curtain I’d
ripped off from a study lounge that I’d worn as a cape. In my hand I brandished a sword
made of tin foil, cardboard and plastic. Already high and drunk (Le Vrai’s fault), I pushed
through the crowded hallway to the bathroom, chatting with complete strangers (many of
whom passed me joints in conversation) as I slowly pushed my way through a throng of
undersexed students, many of them dressed in Devo, Laura Palmer, Mad Max and
Madonna costumes, their cigarettes streaking in the smoke-filled, semisweet darkness of
the hallway. With all the chemicals playing roller derby inside my brain, everyone at that
moment looked novelistic and supernatural. That’s when I saw her in the distance,
calming down one of her friends. Kazuko was dressed in her politically incorrect Native
American outfit, her body like an offering of insane curves and high cheekbones and her
face like a city of celestial lights, giving off a fierce glow of punk desire. I was turned on
by I wanted to see.
Half-Japanese, half-Swedish, Kazuko was a fucking stunner man, practically
born to give men heart attacks in her tight Diesel jeans wherever she walked. But until
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that night when we’d talked for the first time, her neck emanating some sort of fucking
mind-altering pheromone, I’d never considered Kazuko because she was close friends
with Yadari Yatutu, a notoriously angry lesbian from Ghana who fucking hated me and
Le Vrai ever since we hooked up with Sal de Mer—evidently she’d been crushing hard
on her since last year when they’d flown together to New York for spring break. It wasn’t
like talking to Kazuko was some sort of ethical dilemma, like I thought it was wrong to
lust after an enemy’s friend (that was the easy part), I just knew how girls talk, dissecting
guys (just like I dissected them) until there was nothing left of us except spirals of rib
cage and pelvic girdles that looked like cowl masks for Drag Ball. You can imagine my
surprise when I started putting the moves on Kazuko and she smiled back at me in the
same forbidden way, the pungent odor of pot resin hovering near the ceiling like trapped
spirits, Prodigy’s “Firestarter” blasting from the stereo in the dining room, the comforting
smell of toasted granola and raisins rising up from the kitchen. Our first conversation
was an act of social transgression and the way she grazed my arm the first time was hot
beause it was taboo. In the beginning, Kazuko was a fluke to me, a hallucination caused
by all the cheap box wine and schwaggy weed I’d smoked with Le Vrai in the bathroom
of the Sco and then inside the hallways of Ziggy Stardust two hours later. Kazuko was
just part of the spiritual war taking place inside me that no one knew about. But by the
end of that night, we were dancing close, so close, giving each other slow kisses to Toni
Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart” in the kitchen with a bunch of half-naked pirates,
trenchcoat mafia and Vulcans chit-chatting and groping each other on the sidelines—
voyeurs, posers, dreamchildren, all of them. On the floor, a group of disheveled
students in (half-) deconstructed costumes were smoking a bong made from a
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saxophone, passing a glass pitcher of fresh whole milk around the circle like it was a
Château Lafite, their heads resting on each other’s stomachs, some of them, purring and
whispering in baby babble. Sometimes, as we kissed, I could hear people snorting and
burping in the background, followed by coughing and then laughter. Other times, I only
heard the sound of our lips smacking, the breakbeats snapping in the background, the
world disappearing before my eyes.

Everything seemed so promising back then. No one at school expected us to hook up,
not Le Vrai, not Kazuko’s friends (especially the militant Ghanian), but unpredictable
things always turned me on. They still do, actually. For another thing, Kazuko was
blazing hot in a non white-girl kinda way—and as a general rule, white girls just weren’t
my delicacy (unless they had a cluster of freckles on their cheeks). And fuck, Kazuko
was Japanese too. She was from the motherland, but also estranged from it, just like I
was. I mean, I hoped I could talk about my favorite childhood manga with her (Riki-Oh
and Tokyo Love Story) and watch cult horror flicks (Ringu, Androgynous Switchblade
and Battle Royale), anime (Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, Demon City Shinjuku) and
Shomingeki flicks. I could already envision our life together: At Japanese restaurants,
the owners would scan our cheekbones, nod in appreciation and escort us to special
rooms in back with tatami mats and doors made of paper and cedar wood, pouring us
special sake that had hints of melon, mandarin orange and quince, made from fresh
spring water that came all the way from a tiny village near Abashiri. Together, as koto
music played in the background, we would exchange stories about obdurate sobos and
mythical cousins from the homeland we’d never met before. At night, we’d hold each
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other in the chilly climate of limbo where a million hapas like us found shelter inside old
bunkers of forgotten wars, all of us, bicultural and estranged and blood-hungry and war-
weary, so lost in the fog of culture and identity, determinism and free will. For the first
time, I believed a relationship might help me answer questions I could never figure out
on my own: How much of who we were, was cultural, and how much of it was
biological? Were we products of cultural friction, host-country rebellion or symbiosis?
And what were the landmines growing up in America as a Nisei?
On top of everything else, Kazuko seemed so self-aware, so confident of her
trajectory then, and it was hard not to admire a confident girl (or anyone, really at that
age) who knew what she wanted, even if it was only what she didn’t want, which is
totally fucking different. At cafés, when I talked to Kazuko about the theme of
physiological identification in Kundera novels, she wanted to know why humans
identified with their physical bodies at all. Why, she asked, couldn’t we be just be who
we are and let our bodies change. I turned to her, stunned, wondering why I’d never
thought about the illusion of the (physical) self in Kundera’s novels, the way it connected
so perfectly with the stuff I’d been reading about recently in my eastern religion class.
Those moments, back when Kazuko and I were strangers to pain and autumn was
starting to fill in her coloring book in the treetops, were almost perfect. We used to hold
hands in her car, driving through the countryside with the windows wide open and fresh
cigarettes glowing between our fingers, the cool air pouring into our lungs, making us
breathless, the fading sunlight flashing encoded poetry through the branches, DJ
Shadow playing in the speakers, the memory of college receding into background. Back
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then, our relationship was just a hatchling of something that wasn’t yet real. We were
almost beautiful then, and Kazuko radiated some kinda joy.
But that didn’t last. As it turned out, Kazuko’s technique of questioning the
question, despite its initial allure for me, was actually a defense mechanism. And like all
fucked-up college boys in love with fucked-up college girls, I bought all of it in the
beginning, worshipping each and every burst of jealousy, anger, distrust, self-loathing,
emotional translation and distortion like they were not only acts of defiance, but also
moments of crude and brutal authenticity too. Little did I know.

The first time I saw a glimmer of Kazuko’s craziness was on a rain-sleety day at the
Feve, this café/bar one block from Tappan Square, filled with scruffy, procrastinating
hipsters before hipsters had a name or a vocation (as dirty, artless, indier-than-thou
posers). Le Vrai and I looked like rappers that had been dropped into a dunking booth,
so sopping wet there were puddles around our bar stools. He was wearing baggy jeans
and a starter Jacket, sporting an ugly 90’s goatee and a tight Detroit Tigers cap that
made him squirm a little bit, probably longing for his Mexican cowboy hat that had
disappeared with Sock Girl after she dropped out of school and moved back to Santa
Cruz. I was wearing some preppy rugby disaster my obāsan had given me for
Christmas and a White Sox cap that screamed Wanna Be Gangsta. We were there
kicking it, having a few drinks, catching up on the past month, part of me wishing we had
stayed roommates at French House, wondering if I’d made a mistake deciding to move
into Kazuko’s studio at Ziggy Stardust next semester when I already my own little safe
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space at Asia House. I mean, we’d only been dating for a month and hadn’t even
learned how to lock our bodies into place when we cuddled.
Le Vrai and I were finishing off a second pitcher of Guinness that looked like
foamy tar when Kazuko showed up. She came over and gave me a long-ass kiss that
felt kinda territorial, like she was claiming my mouth or something, sticking a flag
between my lips. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little nervous. I mean, I wanted everyone to
get along.
I looked at Kazuko. —You wanna drink?
She shook her head.
—Yo, why don’t you hang out with us for a bit, I said.
—I can’t, she said, I have to get going.
—Sisterwoman, don’t let this white man give you the blues. Grab a glass and
hang out with us.
—No, I’m good, she said, smiling, —and by the way Le Vrai, I’m Asian, so those
black power clichés don’t work with me. Besides, ‘Dashi already told me this is your way
of fucking with people.
—Damn, okay.
—Now that you’ve bitch-slapped Le Vrai, you sure you don’t want a drink? I
asked, I think you deserve it.
—Yeah, I’m sure, she said, stone-faced, I have to finish some costumes tonight.
—For Drag Ball? Le Vrai asked.
—A Brecht play.
—Cool, he said, way to keep the politics in the art, sisterwoman.
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In addition to being an artist, Kazuko was also a costume designer, so she was
always working on something late into the night. Her art—just like her chaos and her
autonomy—was a major turn-on back then.
—Okay, well, I guess I should go, she said, lingering at the door.
—Nice seeing you, he said.
—Pleasure, Le Vrai, she said, smiling.
—Power to the people, sister.
—Um, sure.
Then she stood there and looked at me, her smile becoming wooden and intense.
—All right baby, I said, smiling, I’ll see you later tonight. I should be home by
oneish.
—Dashi, stay out as long as you want.
And right up to this point, I’m thinking: I have the coolest fucking girlfriend in the
whole goddamn world. She’s hot, multiracial, artistic, independent, smart, urban, strong,
spunky and totally cool with me kicking it with my best friend. I’m loving every spoonful
of this relationship.
Then she dropped this bomb: —In fact, why don’t you come by tomorrow. Or
next week. Or even next month, or whenever it’s fucking convenient for you to stop by
and honor me with your presence, you egocentric piece of shit.
I sat there with my mouth wide open like Pantagreul. In the background, Fiona
Apple’s Criminal was playing on repeat.
Kazuko flipped me the finger and walked down the stairs. A second later, the
front door slammed shut.
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Le Vrai patted me on the shoulders and said: —Now you know I love you, but if
you wanna get laid in the next month, you’ll follow my advice and get the fuck out here.
—Fuck that, I muttered, that shit was cold.
—Sure was. Gangsta cold.
—Shut up, bitch.
—Make me.
I leaned to the side and flicked his stupid Tigers cap off.
Le Vrai laughed. —Normally I’d kill you, he said, sighing, —but I got nothing but
love for you, my white friend. In fact, I’ve got more love for you than most people cuz
you’ve got the bone structure of a woman and the skin of a mannequin. He bent down
and pickced his hat up.
—Punk.
—Skin so white, it actually blinds people.
—If you call me white again, I’m gonna kill you and your brainwashed followers, I
said, growling.
—Well, well. Ain’t we touchy? he asked, sitting up and flicking the dust off the
rim.
—Wouldn’t you be? I think my girlfriend might be insane.
—Gotta be, to be dating your sorry ass.
—Thanks, chosen one.
—No problem, he said, rubbing my shoulder.
—By the way, where’s your cowboy hat? Your head looks all naked and
vulnerable and it’s really fucking cold outside. That sleet just chills you to the bone.
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—I’m gonna kill your ass.
—Just saying. It’d sure be nice to protect yourself from the elements, you know?
Le Vrai starts laughing—Shut up and finish my beer for me, he said, sliding it
toward me, —I’m full.
—Of shit.
We laughed.
I grabbed his glass and took a big gulp, staring into space. —Fuck, Le Vrai, I
said, shaking my head, —Who was that?
—Hidashi, that was your girlfriend with the banging body, he said. She just
happens to have razors for teeth and a goddamn harpoon for an arm.

That night at the Feve café was a microcosm of all the psychic deforestation yet to come
in the enchanted forest of love and war. Over the course of the next year and a half, I
watched my own transformation from mischievous bon vivant, glowing lovefool and
prankster makeout-slut to self-doubting douchebag and resentful escape artist: In other
words, I became the person I used to mock in college. It was fucking terrible. This
existential demotion happened slowly, but the signs were in your face like a stroll
through Vegas.
There was the incident in the Bayou Inn during Winter Term. After driving from
Oberlin through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi to New Orleans in a rented El Dorado,
we arrived at our Bed and Breakfast. And for two weeks, we did nothing in the Big Easy
except walk around the French Quarters, scarf down overpriced Jambalaya on Royal
Street and greasy beignets at Café du Monde and fucking fight every single day. We got
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in fights about girls lifting up their shirts on the balconies. My job was to look away or act
disgusted. But I was like: cool, tits. Her retort: I know you wish mine were larger. My
response: No, you’ve got a great ass. Her rejoinder: you don’t believe that and I’m not
a hamburger.
Then, there was the fight about Jambalaya—and who fucking fights about Cajun
food, anyways? Her argument: real Jambalaya had chicken and smoked sausage. My
argument: Bitch, please. I’m a vegetarian. Her retort: Bitch, you’re not eating real
Jambalaya then. My rejoinder: I fucking hate arguments where meat makes things real.
Next, there was the fight about her ass. One night, this black dude walked up to
her and grabbed her ass before fading into the last-call crowd of Bourbon Street. My
argument: I’m gonna tell him what’s up, even if I get my ass kicked. Her argument: my
ass isn’t your property. You don’t own it. My I’m-a-complit-major argument: all
relationships are a type of ownership (e.g. of hotness, sex, bodies, intentionality, desire,
time).
There was also the fight about tipping. Her argument: 18% is the standard wage.
My argument: 20% is not only a better deal for waiters since they live off tips (the base
salary being shit), but it’s also a helluva lot easier to calculate too. Her retort: Well,
when you make money, you can leave the extra two percent. My retort: What’s your
Daddy’s money got to do with me? Her reponse: Obviously a lot because I’m the one
paying.
We fought about Henry Miller, Milan Kundera and Proust. Her argument: I don’t
need to understand what the text means, I just have to appreciate the beauty of the
language. My argument: But the language, in addition to being beautiful, also means
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something. Her retort: Well, fine, but the language means something different to you
than it does to me. My retort: Language still means something, even if it means
different things to different people, so you can’t say it has no meaning when in fact, its
meaning is just multivalent. Her response: You’re a pretentious prick, you know that?
My response: No, I’m a complit major. Her retort: What’s the difference? My rejoinder:
Pretentious pricks get jobs.
We also fought about Portishead—the soundtrack of our disenchanted hipness.
Her argument: “All Mine” is the best Portishead song of all time. My argument: Wrong
album and wrong song. “It’s A Fire” wins (beautiful build, empowering lyrics, powerful
organ) with “Glory Box” a close second, at least before Tricky ripped it off like an asshole.
We fought about who was more Japanese. Her argument: I’m Japanese
because I look Japanese. Also, biologically, I’m half Japanese and you’re only a quarter.
My argument: I’m the only one that speaks Japanese in this relationship, if barely. Also,
I have a dormful of uncles and aunts and cousins that live in Tokyo, Kobe, Ōsaka and
Sapporo. And I can trace my lineage. Besides, I’m a Nisei. You’re Notsei. Her retort:
Army Brats born in Japan aren’t Japanese. My retort: My mom is half-Japanese
because her mother is Japanese, not because she looks hapa.
We fought about the Con. Her argument: The Oberlin Conservatory is
postmodern. My argument: It looks like a fucking radiator. Her retort: Radiators can be
postmodern. My retort: So can conversations about postmodernism.
We even fought about sex—and what was there to fight about? We were young,
horny and ravenous, and sex should have been détente. But that didn’t stop Kazuko
from making the argument that on January 14
th
, at 1:21 pm, I came a split-second before
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she did, cheapening her orgasm. My retort: Are you fucking insane? Her retort: If you
loved me, you’d go down on me right now to prove you know how to take care of
business. My retort: I have my Marxist Theory seminar in nine minutes (remember that
argument about ownership?). And besides, I would go down on you, but I hate your
fucking attitude and I’m not gonna let you manipulate me.
We fought so much in New Orleans, it should have been called the Little Difficult,
because all we did was bicker about the little things (the smallest, most inane things you
could imagine) and yell at each other like novela stars. It was fucking insane, and not
even in a sexy way either. Sometimes, Kazuko threw an unsuspecting high-heel or
makeup kit at me in the bedroom, leaving nicks in the drywall and puffy clouds of
foundation in the air (of course, because I’m part ninja, I always dodged that shit).
Eventually, after a big fight, Kazuko, would slump to the ground and cry next to the door
in our bedroom. She might as well have had a fucking mic in her mouth and a Fender
amp hooked into her ass: she was that loud. Sometimes, the other guests at the Bayou
Inn would whisper through the door: Are you okay? Is he hurting you again? The day
we left, I dropped off the key at the front desk and the woman gave me a dirty look like
I’d been beating Kazuko with a bamboo switch. I just shook my head and muttered
whatever under my breath. I couldn’t deal with the drama. It’s like we were professional
kickboxers trying to forget how to scrap. You just can’t unlearn that kind of violence
when you’re so good at inflicting it.

Out of all our little wars, the episode with my aborted grad school dream should have
been the thing that pushed me over the edge, but it didn’t because I was so far gone at
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that point—and the problem with being gone is that you don’t even realize you’re not
there. Even though my grades were never amazing (too much skipping, too many 3-
month girlfriends from Brooklyn, too many novels I wanted to inhale), somehow I got into
some legit Masters programs (Columbia, McGill, Toronto, USC), and I remember
thinking: Fuck, I’m actually gonna go to grad school. As I sat there on the corner of her
futon, stuck in a museum of Kazuko’s mind, flanked on all sides by half-finished
sculptures made of bicycle parts, old vacuum cleaners and paper mâché masks, stacks
of painting aisles, shrinkwrapped canvases and iridescent tubes of leaking acrylic paint,
seeming to give birth to toothpaste worms on the floor in Uptight Patrician White, I Never
Meant to Cause You Any Sorrow Purple, Earthmuffin Green, Muddy Waters Blue-Black,
Getrude Stein Rose, Anita Bryant Orange, Shells and Cheese Yellow and Toro, Over
Here Toro Red, I just sat there inside Kazuko’s room, surrounded by her art supplies,
chewing on the thought of living in Paris for a year, maybe even more if I was lucky. I’d
order three pains au chocolat at the corner pâtisserie named after streets, flowers or
philosophers before my morning classes as I gazed through the tear-stained window on
depressing winter mornings, admiring the fog-cushioned steps that lead up to the Sacré
Coeur Basilica and into the clouds like a Led Zeppelin anthem. Each walk through Paris
would be a hallucination of pointed arches, national monuments, gabled windows,
legions of scarves and satchels, cross vaults, Rococo buildings with seashell motifs,
neoclassical pillars, Art Nouveau metro entrances, intellectuall French rap songs
cranked up high through taxi windows, and the pungent French incense of café au lait,
cigarette smoke and freshly baked bread. The five-story Hausmanian apartments
(complete with top-floor maid rooms) in Montmartre with their glaucous Mansard rooftops,
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black iron-wrought balconies and Desert Sand-colored walls would be my undoing, my
spirit walk through my past life as an poor-ass philosopher who used to salivate walking
past café windows, but in this life as an American grad student in Paris, I’d skip class
and go to museums just like I used to in high school in Chicago, dressed in a fancy grey
cashmere scarf tied around my neck like an Egyptian Ankh. Paris was such a beautiful
dream, a dream I had dreamt more than once in my life.
But before I was even twenty minutes deep into that daydream, Kazuko barged
through the door like a fucking emotion hound smelling my joy a mile away. She stared
down at the torn Columbia envelope on the floor, the acceptance letter in my hand, the
dazed expression on my face, the dreamy look in my eyes, the cigarette in the ashtray,
burned to its filter, and then she said: —You’re not seriously considering going to Paris
are you? Because if you do, we’re done. I can’t deal with long distance relationships
and I don’t trust you with French women and their little accents.
If I’d met her in high school, back when I was an egocentric power drill, a
powerless heart-breaker drilling into the nubile flesh of Evanston girls, I would have told
Kazuko to fuck off. If I’d still had all of my superpowers when Kazuko had given me her
ultimatum, If I hadn’t been going through my own existential crisis at that very moment, I
would have moved in with Le Vrai for the rest of the semester, graduated from college,
stayed with my mom in the Phallus State for the summer, saved up money, flown to
France, and then I would have made fierce, desperate love to the first Parisian girl to
touch my cheek with the back of her hand in a bistro in the 5
th
arrondissement, only forty-
five steps from l’École Polytechnique. And I would have done that without looking back.
But because my relationship with Kazuko was not only a state of suspended animation
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and a step-by-step castration, but also my first and only attempt at redemption for an
entire life of serial monogamy and cyclical infidelity (the two working hand in hand), I
fucking wussed out. I didn’t fight for my right to live like a dreamer, dreaming up fat,
impossible other worlds. I didn’t even fight for love this time. No, this time, I was fighting
for two specific ideas that I desperately needed to believe, at whatever cost: That I was
basically a good person who happened to act like an asshole sometimes, and that I
could make a long-term relationship work if I gave it everything I had.
Man, that dream was fucking over before I could even fall asleep.

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4.6: Broken Wires

As it turned out, the problem with Paris wasn’t Parisian girls or their little accents.
It wasn’t that my French was decent now after three years of French class and a year
living in a language house and Kazuko didn’t know merde from Meredith. It wasn’t that I
was part French and Kazuko was part Swedish (and also a full-time frog-hater). It
wasn’t even that I was slightly obsessed with Fleurs du Mal while she had the complete
Ingrid Bergman boxset. Well, it was all of those things, actually. But the real problem,
the big problem, was that Paris was my dream, not hers. It was a dream I’d had before I
met her, thereby predating her, and in her eyes, erasing her. She couldn’t deal with the
headwork. So, when we moved to Buenos Aires a year later, I ignored all of the obvious
double standards: How moving to Argentina was her dream, how her obsession with
Argentine culture, Argentine men and tango predated our relationship too. And I didn’t
know carrajo from crack ho.

In the beginning, maybe because I expected to hate it, I was actually quite taken by
Buenos Aires: the insane traffic, the sheismo (beshow, showgur), the midday merienda,
armies of corporate chicks in miniskirts, high heels and French scarves walking up the
subway stairs like a Kevin Johnson video, the Belle Époque architecture near Alto
Palermo, the broken sidewalks, Ateneo (a huge theater in Recoleta that had been
converted into a bookstore, filled with security guards and bibliophiles), the single block
of primary color in La Boca, the secret code of Lunfardo in tango lyrics, all the little cafés
in Palermo Soho, riding the Subte during rush hour from Bulnes to Catedral (always a
217
mistake unless surrounded by smooth-legged shorties), the sound of cold rain spraying
the French windows in the living room next to the radiator (which reminded me of the
Oberlin Conservatory), cranked up high in the middle of July, the broken cobblestone
sidewalks in San Telmo, the ritual of drinking mate in the park, the massive harp bridge
at Puerto Madero, the used bookstores on Corrientes street, the dirty capitol dome in
Congreso, covered in fifty years of exhaust, my weekends alone at Plaza Palermo
drinking mate with strangers while Kazuko slept in, the Chinese supermarkets selling
Kasugai nuts and Poky sticks at Belgrano that reminded me of obāsan’s snack cabinet.
Sometimes when in Recoleta, if I squinted my eyes just right, I could have sworn I was in
Paris. There was something so dirty, romantic and faded about the city too. The street
lamps on Avenida de Mayo, especially at dusk, were hauntingly pretty and quiet, so
historically transfixed between dictatorships, continents, cultures and languages, in fact,
a simple late-night stroll could have turned an existentialist into a lyric poet. There were
other things too that crushed me: Eva Perron’s tombstone in the Recoleta Cemetery,
covered in roses and love letters from adoring fans, stocky old Argentines in button down
and cardigans dancing tango with young white female tourists in tight skirts and long
heels at Confitería Ideal, little kids dressed in their Sunday’s best, carrying bags of
medialunas, speaking in Spanish with Italian Sine wave inflections. After a chunky
month of staying at a cheap hotel in Microcentro, during which we explored a new
neighborhood each day in Capital Federal, we finally moved to a tiny apartment in
Palermo SoHo three blocks from Plaza Serrano where artisans sold hand-made bead
necklaces, scented candles, knock-off sunglasses and mate paraphernalia. Somehow,
we managed to form rituals out of emptiness. Our apartment was designed for a family
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of dolls, with two twin beds connected together with padlocks and a porous bedroom
balcony where the rain leaked in, forming Yves Tanguy shapes on the floor. We had an
apple green kitchen the size of a large fed-ex box, a Gustav Klimt print overlooking the
dining room table and several couches stained with mate ringworm bullseyes and
cigarette bullet wounds. Our place was charming. And by charming, I mean, kinda
disgusting. But it was a disgusting and loved because it was like nothing I’d ever
experienced before. Kazuko, being a rich kid from the Upper East Side, and totally
inexperienced with Third World adjustments, was straight-up horrified. She said she felt
gypped. I laughed.
—It looks different than it did in the photos, she insisted.
—It always does, I say.
—No, I mean in the photos, this place looks huge, she said, pulling out printouts
from a manila folder where she’d kept all of her documents.
—I don’t think those are photos of this apartment.
—Shut up.
—No, seriously. In the photos, the couches were brown. These are red.
—
—Also, the dining room table in the photo was metallic. This one is made of
cheap wood. And it’s round too.
—Holy shit, she said, fishing through the fotos, you’re right.
—Yo, this is what happens when you pay for an apartment on the internet
She threw me a dirty look. —If we’d listened to you, we’d be in Chicago right
now dying from the humidity.
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—That sounds amazing. I fucking love dying from the humidity, especially when
it’s in Chicago.
—Well, we’re not in Chicago, Mr. Ness, so get over it. This is our new home.
—Fuck that. This is not my new home.
—Is that a threat?
—It’s just the truth. I’m gonna give this place a chance, for us, and if I don’t love
it, I’m out.
—I know that’s what you really want.
—No, what I want, is to be with you and find a way to be happy at the same time.
—‘Dashi, no one forced you to come with me.
—Um, usually in a relationship, people want to be together.
—And we are.
—Yeah, in Buenos fucking Aires, where everyone pretends they’re Spanish-
speaking Italians living in Paris.
—So what?
—I mean, it’s beautiful here, I’m not gonna lie, but . . .
—But what?
—It’s just that we never even talked about moving to South America. It just sort
of happened.
—Sorry your life is so fucking terrible.
—Shut up. No one said it’s terrible. You’re just being dramatic again.
—Sorry I’m so fucked up.
—Would you stop saying that shit? Please?
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—
—Anways, like I said: if we break up or something, I’m out. But I wanna make
this work with you. I really do.
—Oh boy.
—Maybe coming here will give us a fresh start.
—And maybe it won’t.
—Whatever.
—You know what? I can’t deal with you anymore, she said, walking to the
bedroom windows and closing the shutter.
—Yo, deal with what?
—You and your bullshit, she said, facing me.
—My bullshit? Let’s get something straight here: You wouldn’t even consider
moving to Paris with me so I could I get my fucking Masters degree (which was a big
fucking deal for me, in case you didn’t know), but now, here we are, living in your dream
city, with no jobs, no friends and no cashflow except Daddy Warbucks Dollars. Great
fucking plan.
—This was our dream.
—You mean, your dream.
—No, we both agreed that Buenos Aires was the only realistic option for us.
—Like hell we did, I said, dragging the suitcases into the bedroom, —Buenos
Aires was just the path of least resistance. You vetoed Paris, Toronto, New York,
Chicago and LA.
—Damn right I did.
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—Well, what’s left? I shouted, raising my hands in the air, —someone had to be
flexible. Might as well be me for a change.
—Oh Hidashi, you’re so enlightened. All that meditating has really paid off.
—Don’t hate. At least I’m trying.
—Yeah, trying to be an asshole.
—Actually, believe it or not, I’m not trying to start shit with you. I’m just
communicating. Ironically, the word communication had become controversial in our
relationship because every time Kazuko criticized me, she did so under the guise of
communication, so now it sounded like I was being spiteful. But I really wasn’t trying to
be.
Kazuko’s eyes narrowed angrily. —You know what, Hidashi? Why don’t you just
pack your fucking bags, jump on the first flight to Paris and save us both the heartache.
I’m sick of your whining.
—As tempting as that is, I said, I wanna work on us.
—Well, you obviously don’t want to be with me.
—You’re wrong, I growled, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, trying to live in the
dollhouse with you.
—I know you don’t love me, Hidashi.
—What the fuck are you talking about? I said, ready to howl.
—The truth is, you never loved me. You’re just scared to admit we failed.
I wanted to refute her so badly then, but in my heart I no longer had the courage
to be honest with myself because honesty demanded excision. That would take at least
a year. But back then, I didn’t and couldn’t admit that I didn’t love Kazuko, the reasons
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mutating inside my heart like a Fibonacci sequence. Part of it was that she was always
pissed off, hurt, upset, numb, crazy jealous or irritated with something I did, which never
made me feel safe enough to let my guard down with her (and I can’t love someone I
don’t trust). In college, before I’d moved in with her, we used to fight all night in my room
at Asia House about the stupidest shit: why was I twenty-five minutes late? Which
“friend” was I hanging out with (her airquotes, not mine)? Why did I have so many
friends who were girls (because they made me feel safe)? Why did I stay in contact with
so many ex-girlfriends (because a friendship is a terrible thing to waste)? Did I have
feelings for Jewels, my friend from Guam who used to skat like Ella Fitzgerald in front of
a big band at Finney Chapel and croon like Old Blue Eyes at the Cat in the Cream café
(maybe)? Why did I like looking at porn? Didn’t I think it was degrading to women?
Wasn’t I intimidated looking at pics of dudes with cocks like fire hoses? Why didn’t I
ever give Kazuko flowers out of the blue? Or why did I only give flowers out of the blue?
Why hadn’t I taken her to the grapevine café for brunch (because I was flat broke)? In
Buenos Aires, there was a new set of questions: Why wasn’t I teaching English more?
Why couldn’t I get more hours (because it took twenty hours to commute between
companies). Why couldn’t I just stay away from her when she was feeling depressed
(because we lived in the same apartment and after teaching for four hours, I was fucking
exhausted)? What was my issue with vibrators (none, except that they desensitized her
clit)? Why couldn’t I admit that I thought her tits were too small (because I liked her ass
more anyway)? What was the point of being a complit major (doing the New York Times
crossword puzzle)? Why did I like Hooverphonic so much (they reminded me of college
before we started dating)? Why couldn’t I stop talking about Amsterdam (it was the first
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trip I took to Europe as an adult), my mom (she’s all I had) or hip-hop (it’s in my blood)?
Why was I such a label whore (because I’ve been poor as shit since I was a teenager)?
A metrosexual (an Oberlin refrain: gender is a social construction!)? Why didn’t I know
how to replace tires (after her Volvo broke down on a Mississippi freeway, I learned real
fast)? Then, she shot all the questions at me that I just refused to answer: Why didn’t I
know how to fix running toilets? Break things with crowbars? Give Shiatsu massages?
Play the guitar? Speak in baritone? Play tennis? Why did I hate women so much?
Why did I impulsively get a tattoo on Frenchman Avenue instead of getting one in
Cleveland like we’d agreed? Why hadn’t I waited for her? Why did I do things to hurt
her whenever I could? Why did I respect her so little?
I’m not saying I wasn’t a pain in the ass, because we all know that’s true. But
before I met Kazuko, I used to be happy. I had a soft inner glow, I smiled when I slept,
girls in Chicago would hurl flirty looks at me like throwing knives. People just straight up
liked me. I could crack jokes to strangers on the El and make them forget their pain for a
second. Little kids used to talk to me on the sidewalk before their parents leashed them
back to safety. Old people would flag me from the street and ask me for directions, or
ask me if I was a girl, or tell me I reminded them of their nephew who lived on an organic
farm in Vermont. I regularly watched the sunset with my Encinitas friends every time I
was in SoCal, staying with my mom for the holidays. I met girls everywhere I went.
Sometimes we hooked up in the back of her Honda Civic or in the frontseat of a
Pittsburgh-bound Greyhound, sometimes we just talked all night about Jay-Z, 10,000
Maniacs, Boyz II Men, iced Nescafé, Breton Manifestoes and the many uses of Frank’s
Red Hot Sauce. Sometimes we ate spaghetti at the Rat and then went to the Sco
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afterwards and danced real close to DJ Krush, Massive Attack and the Chemical
Brothers. Other times, we wrote each other filthy and elegant emails, pretending we
were opium-smoking beatniks, we walked around the arboretum and held hands in
silence, just soaking in the Autumn chill. In short, my life used to be radiant and fucking
awesome. I had joie de vivre. I did crazy shit with Le Vrai like break into dining halls and
steal hubcaps from police cars and get high in cemeteries and take midterms drunk and
hook up with girls at Safe Sex Night and rip off a harpsichord from the Rare Instrument
Room at the Con (radiator) and sell novels we’d stolen from the coop bookstore (mea
culpa!) and make prank calls to asshole professors. I used to be insecure but basically
kind, radiant and alive and fun and cool and unpredictable and sarcastic and afraid of
being hurt and in love with all the miraculous things my body could do, always facing off
with my immortality. My only problem was, I just didn’t know how to stay in a long-term
relationship. That was my mortal flaw, my greatest weakness, the reason I latched onto
Kazuko, in part, to prove I could make this shit work if I gave it everything I had.
With Kazuko, everything changed. I wanted to blame her of course because it
was extremely convenient, but the truth was it was my own fucking fault. I relinquished
all control to the relationship in the naive hope that somehow I could be faithful, happy
and true to myself, all at once. I was sick of feeling like a serial monogamist, I wanted to
settle down with the right person for once in my life. And though Kazuko wasn’t the right
sister for me—the farthest thing from it, in fact—I used to harbor irrational hope that
despite what a selfish, insecure and inflexible couple we were, somehow we could still
navigate through the underworld and learn to be vulnerable and grow old together and
trust and forgive each other for our foibles, hang-ups and character flaws. I thought—I
225
hoped, actually—that if we could open up space inside of ourselves that was untouched
by rancor, resentment, fear, pain or hypersensitivity, maybe, just maybe, we could learn
to love each other without blueprints, freakshows or meltdowns. And if we could do
that—fuck, man, what a bigass if—I really belived we could learn to do anything with the
broken, frayed wires in our hearts that were always catching on fire.

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4.7: The Cult of the Tango Hos

After ten months, the thing that scraped away whatever embryonic love I thought
I had for Kazuko was her newfound obsession with tango that she now shared—like a
meth addiction—with her tango friends. They were the kind of friends you wanted when
you were single and heart-broken and bored with your life (but think about what that said
about me). One day, as I was in the living room, trying to watch La Crónica on TV and
eat an onion and cheese empanada with a chopstick, Kazuko stormed into the
apartment with three almost-attractive women dressed in bright red asymmetrical high-
slit skirts, ruffled black bandeau and halter tops and five-inch, closed-toe high heels.
One girl had brown, dead ox eyes (I don’t mean that Homerically either). The second girl
wore a fake rose behind her ear with water drops made of dried glue. The third girl was
tubby in a Midwestern, steak-and-potatoes kinda way. She had duct-taped her
enormous tits into a fortress of freckled skin and wore enough layers of eye shadow to
be an onion.
—Where’s the wedding? I asked.
—Very funny, Kazuko said dryly. Jackie, Shelley, Alice, this is Hidashi.
—Huh, the girl with the dead animal eyes said.
—Nice to meet you, I said, kissing them on the cheek. They smelled like porteño
cigarettes, too much make-up and cheap American perfume. And their lips were tight
and sharp enough to be guillotines.
—So yeah, Kazuko continued, smiling, —as you can see, we should probably
make it a girls’ night out, if you know what I mean?
227
They all laughed.
—I don’t know what you mean, I said, bobbling my neck with black girl attitude.
—It’s not supposed to be anything, she said.
—Sure it is, I said, everything means something.
—Not that argument again.
—Whatever. Anyway, look, I said, I’ve never been to a real milonga.
—Well, we’re not going out until late, she hinted.
—I get your hint, I said, but I’m still curious.
A deflated silence covered the room like a gigantic parachute, so I walked into
the kitchen and boiled some water for my mate. Once it was done, I sat down, took long
sips from my bombilla and devoured my copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles I’d
discovered at a used bookstore in San Telmo. Seven hours later, when we got to Salón
Canning, I wanted out. I’m not gonna lie, the live orchestra was fucking amazing, but
some of the dancers were fucking fake as shit. I wasn’t even a tango dancer and I could
see that! And you should have seen Kazuko: she looked so serious out there on the
dancefloor, like she was counting out the beats in her head. It was kinda funny (though I
never had the heart to tell her). And sure, I felt all the dirty things we feel when we
suddenly realize the agony of of our delusion (as if Kazuko’s absence never hurt me,
never made me jealous, never fucked me up inside), but another part of me just couldn’t
take it seriously. It was like an elaborate costume party for people who didn’t know
they’re in costume.
That night, I made the rounds and chatted with people taking a break from the
dance floor while the Orquesta Típica played Carlos Gardel, Litto Nebia, Juan María
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Solare and Ástor Piazolla. As the hours passed by, measured in glasses of delicious
Mendoza Malbec, I started to realize that the Argentine milonga was the 21
st
century
version of self-help, filled with tourists and expats, almost all of them looking for love on
the dance floor (and by that, I mean, porteño cock). Over time, I saw a trend: straight
women, couples and gay dudes, mostly from France, America and Japan, arriving in
droves in Buenos Aires for one to three months with a small fortune in their savings and
a library of form-fitting skirts (or pants) in their suitcases. They came armed with one
hundred words of Spanish, the bruises of fresh heartache still visible through their ribs.
Some still had scar tissue from divorce, canine bite marks from a nasty break-up, others
were avoiding stagnant relationships (i.e. settling), fleeing from a vapid world without
passion, joy or triumph. Other tangueros were infected by a debilitating loneliness that
only body heat could cure. Over the next three months, because Kazuko wanted
nothing to do with me, I met lots of people at Salón Canning, La Viruta and the outside
Milonga del Indio in Plaza Dorrego, all milongas I’d crashed out of curiosity and
loneliness despite Kazuko’s protests. And in a sea of horny, heart-broken, wine-is-the-
new-water-drinking, meat-stabbing female tourists, I managed to find good people in the
rubble, smart people, interesting people, many of whom, spoke perfect porteño Spanish,
were well-traveled and deeply in love with both la ciudad and el pueblo. Some sought
adventure, music and affection in Capital Federal. Others simply wanted an alternative
identity, an alias, a different entry point into the same universe. And I guess considering
how fucked up my own relationship was with Kazuko, I didn’t blame them. Argentina
woke you up, even when you wanted to sleep, even when you didn’t know how to stay
awake. The one thing I was absolutely sure people in milongas didn’t want, was a
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basically-straight white-looking hapa dude from America not completely enamored with
all things Argentine. After all, in Argentina, America was the loud boyfriend everyone was
trying to shut up, even though they heard every word.

Sex was the only thing Kazuko and I had going for us as a couple during hurricane
season. It was the only thing that worked perfectly for us in college despite our broken
circuitry, but now that we weren’t getting down, we had no other safety net. No
redemption verse. We’d barely survived when the sex was good (and even then it had
become straight up formulaic: kiss-touch-fuck), and now we didn’t even talk anymore
with her marathon tango sessions, even when I did tag along. I mean, I hadn’t heard her
say my name once in like six months except to bitch me out. I could barely remember
what it felt like to be known by her lips. Could barely even remember what Kazuko’s
tongue tasted like, in fact. After a certain point, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing in
Argentina anymore. Tango wasn’t the culprit. It was just the latest translation of our
fuckedupness. But somehow, like a horror movie on a placid beach, things still got more
fucked up in paradise before the credits rained down the screen.

In the course of the next few months, tango transformed from social event to personal
obsession for Kazuko. And in a weird way, I felt jealous of someone I didn’t even know
how to love. I watched as she paced back and forth from the bathroom to the living
room (to look at herself in the full-length mirror) four to five nights a week, spewing words
to the bridesmaids on her cell phone about dance partners:
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—Is hot Mateo going to be there? . . . God, I hope not. He always steps on my
feet. . . I know, right? Too bad, because he dresses well. He’s got a nice body too. . .
Me too! . . . He’s so sweet and boyish, he’s almost dreamy. . . Oh. No, I’m talking about
Tall Nacho. . . Not the one from Caballito. . . the one that looks like an angry George
Clooney. The married one. . . Yeah, she sighed.
Personally, I didn’t have problems with her nightlife. After all, it gave me time to
read, meditate, drink mate, watch uncensored reality TV and write my mom long letters
that would take me weeks to send her since I always put off going to los correos, mainly
because I didn’t want to wait an hour in line just to buy a fucking stamp. When Kazuko
wasn’t in the apartment, we didn’t fight, so her tango sessions helped foster an artificial
state of tranquility. But intellectually, I also knew that if I’d spent most of my week doing
my own thing in the company of other girls, grinding with them, chatting them up at
romantic, candle-lit dinners, and cooing about them with my homeboys like this in front of
Kazuko, I would have gotten one of her feminists rants about how women aren’t
hamburgers. And right after that, she would have stabbed me with her Swiss army knife
to prove she wasn’t a victim. When I thought about it, this double standard pissed me off,
so I tried not to. Another thing, Kazuko was the only person in her group of expat friends
with a boyfriend living in Buenos Aires with her, but she acted like she was single. And
that gesture was romantic erasure as far as I was concerned. Part of me was like: Fuck,
why don’t we just break up? Go our separate ways? I’m a fucking vegetarian trying to
live on Neopolitan pizza, mate yerba and kale empanadas and she’s an adventure-
seeking omnivore who spends her every waking moment rubbing her body against
sleazy ojisans. If she were single, she could do whatever the hell she wanted. What the
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fuck was I doing here? Like the Iraq invasion that would take place a year later, I didn’t
have a plan, an exit strategy or a love of the land I was occupying.
But the real problem was that our sex life was kaput. And if there’s one thing I
couldn’t stand—for emotional, physical and semiotic reasons—it’s lack of intimacy. Now,
whenever I hit on her in the sleepy part of the morning, it was the same fucking refrain:
Not now, it doesn’t feel right. I remember one day, I was kissing Kazuko’s neck and
outlining her body with my hands, and of course, she was like:
—Not now, it doesn’t feel right.
—It never feels right.
—Don’t pressure me.
—I’m not. I’m grieving out loud.
—Every time you hit on me, she says, sitting up, it makes me feel like I don’t
have a choice.
—Obviously you do. That’s why you keep rejecting me.
—You’re pressuring me.
—What am I supposed to do? Wait for you to hit on me?
—Yeah. Why is that such a crazy idea?
—Because we tried that. It didn’t work.
—You mean it didn’t work for you.
—We didn’t have sex for three months!
—Because I have issues with you, she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
—Tell me about it, I grumbled, standing up and putting a t-shirt on.
—Right now, sex feels like domination to me.
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—Yo, whatever. We’re not at Oberlin anymore. You don’t get points for
deconstructing patriarchy.
—Have you ever considered that maybe there’s not a thing as consensual sex,
she asked.
—Shut up, I said, shaking my head.
—You know, she said, shrugging, some feminists argue that all heterosexual sex
is rape.
—Then why is Andrea Dworkin getting laid so much? Can you tell me that?
—You’re an idiot.
—Is this why we don’t get it on anymore?
—It’s one of the reasons.
—Well, then give that sermon to the tango ho’s. They don’t seem to have any
problem fucking a new dude every night.
—Well, that’s different.
—Really? Why?
—Because polyamory liberates women from monogamy and monogamy is a
masculinist construct.
—Is that right?
—Yeah, and it’s not having a choice about sex that is the root of all oppression.
—Oh, I see, so it’s only rape when men desire women.
—Well, yeah, she said, half-laughing.
—You know what? Fuck you. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my desire
for you. In fact, I think you’re an asshole for not wanting me.
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—Oh ‘Dashi, stop being so dramatic.
—Why, cuz that’s your job?
—Fuck you.
—Yo, I’m just saying. I turned down a lot of girls at Oberlin to be with you.
—Well, that was your big mistake.
—No, my mistake was being a dumbass and giving up Paris to be monogamous
for the first time in my life with a girl who doesn’t want to fuck me.
She opened up her mouth but didn’t say anything. Instead, she threw on a t-
shirt, sweat pants and a leather jacket and walked to a 24-hour yoga studio in Palermo
Hollywood, just like that. And suddenly, I felt like the bitch.

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4.8: White Girl Disease

When Kazuko came home one day with a white bandage over her nose, my first
instinct was maternal concern, however misplaced. Love or not, when I see someone
hurt, I can’t help but care about her. So when Kazuko staggered to the kitchen table,
bundled up like a malnourished mummy, I ran over and cupped her face in my hands.
—Holy shit, I shouted. —Are you all right? What the fuck happened to you,
baby?
—You haven’t called me that in years.
When someone hurts my girlfriend (whoever she is), it makes me want to kick his
ass. Break vases with Kung-Fu finger positions. Key a ballad on the door of a sparkling
Mercedes. Chuck blue-rimmed Crate & Barrel glasses against the wall and hurl water
balloons full of sewer water at men in gray, flannel suits.
She smiled, her eyes closed, basking in invisible sun.
—Talk to me.
—I didn’t get beat up, she sighed, as much as I love the attention.
—What happened?
—I got a nose job.
At the time, I didn’t know that Buenos Aires had one of the highest rates of plastic
surgery per capita of any place in the world, and for a simple reason, the scalpel was
cheap as hell in Argentina. Way cheaper than a fucking laptop (export tariffs, people).
Plastic surgery was so standard in Buenos Aires that nightclubs had raffle contests for
tit-jobs. I’m not even making that shit up. As it turned out, one day, early in the morning,
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Kazuko woke up and decided she wanted to change her nose, so she hopped in a taxi,
went to Microcentro, walked inside the first plastic surgery office she saw, walked over to
the counter and plopped down Daddy’s Mastercard like it was genie lamp. And that’s
when the real madness started. Over the course of the next twelve months, Kazuko
went under the scalpel nine fucking times, one time for each cat life. First, she got rid
of her flat little nose (one of the features I loved most about her). After the skin healed,
her nose was slightly longer, pointy and Spanish-looking. Then, every motherfucker in
Capital Federal thought she was Argentine, which drove me crazy. But with her new
hisapanification project, she snored and got sinus infections regularly. I’m not hating, I’m
just saying.
Next, she got a boob job. In one week, she went from Devon Aoki to Nurse
Ratched. Now, everything with a pulse stared at her and harassed her everywhere she
went. Charismatic porteño businessmen in fancy suits and imported Italian loafers
chatted her up in the Subte, even when I was with her, pretending I was her nephew or
something. When I’d give them dirty looks, they’d shrug their shoulders like Roberto
Benini and smile. The dude at the verdulería on Corrientes and Medrano gave her free
bananas (symbolizing his own erections everytime he looked at her) and always
undercharged her for strawberries. When the postman buzzed our door to give us our
mail (yes, letters are rare enough to warrant personal visits), he began trying to get into
our apartment regularly, telling Kazuko he needed water, was dying for some mate,
wanted to use our toilet. Once, he told her he wanted to catch the rest of the Boca-
Racing game in our bedroom. I had to block the apartment door with my foot and tell
him to get the fuck away or I was gonna romper la puta mano que usás para hacerte
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una paja (i.e. break his masturbation hand). There was a pause. Then he said: dale,
chicos. Chau. Every single weekend night, after we walked home from Palermo
Hollywood, bloated on overpriced channa masala, jasmine rice and garlic naan, dudes
would whistle cat-calls from their motocycles, inside taxis, run-down Fiats, ambulances
put their sirens on, cop cars would flash their lights like they were making an arrest and
grocery delivery trucks would honk their horns and try to pass us bags of purple grapes
through the window. ¡Boludos! I know somewhere there’s a study that’s been
conducted that proves that tit jobs alone increase the rate of sexual harassment by
400%. Post pectis augmentationis, I lived in fear now, afraid to leave her alone at the
Último Beso Café for longer than five minutes. Kazuko, on the other hand, despite her
recent flirtation with militant feminism, basked in the attention, choosing to see each and
every new case of sexual harassment as confirmation of her new and improved life as
an honorary (fake) Latina. Where I expected her to bitch out the dude for treating her
like a piece of ass, instead, she’d just smile, tuck her hair behind her hair and shake her
ass like a rainstick. Passing sexually objectifiying stares by complete strangers had
become a novel, redefined enterprise for her. I couldn’t even get my cuddle on in the
morning, but meanwhile, unctuous guidos with slicked back hair, open button-downs and
pervasive knock-off cologne were free to compliment her bumps at will. It didn’t make
one fucking bit of sense.
A few months later, Kazuko got an ear reduction, for reasons that totally eluded
me. Besides her nose (RIP, my little flat friend), Kazuko’s ears were my favorite part of
her face, in part because they didn’t quite belong there. Just the slightest bit big, puckish,
and just a little pointy on top, her ears used to be fucking beautiful, straight out of a Yves
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Tanguy triptych. On many nights in our stuffy Palermo apartment, just as I was waking
up from a numb and slow sleep, I would look at Kazuko sleeping on the other side of the
bed, lying on her side, arms behind her back in surrender, still wearing her evening top
as if she didn't want to let go of her night on the dance floor. And it was her exposed,
little ears, staticky, brown hair wrapped behind them like shading behind bass clefs, it
was that image of her beautiful little auricles, the awkward, smooth and bulky cartilage
on top, it was that image of her exposed self, the self she couldn’t control, the ears that
listened to morning traffic even as she slept, it was that image that silenced the silent
rage in my solar plexus and brought tears to my bloodshot eyes. And she had to go and
fuck it up by chopping off her lobes. Now, she looked like every other Asian girl in the
world.
But Kazuko wasn’t done. After getting fake dimples, a chin cleft, stomach
liposuction, a second nose job to smoothen the bridge, an impulsive face lift she didn’t
need after a long night of draining bottles of Mendoza Malbec with her American-Men-
Are-So-Boring trio, smoking a million Milenios, after all that shit, Kazuko decided one day
to get her epicanthic folds removed after a guy in a River Plate said, che, china!, and
that’s when I lost my shit for good. I mean, I’m not saying you have to look Asian to be
Asian (just look at my fucking hapa mug), but in Kazuko’s case, her face was the only
Asian part of her left besides her metabolism. For as long as I knew her, she talked,
walked, dressed, danced and cried like a white girl. Only her eyes and her surname
looked and felt Japanese to me. And now, cut by cut, incision by incision, Kazuko had
slowly transformed into an alternative universe, living on another continent in a different
city, speaking in musical Spanish (that got better every day), and to people that knew her
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only in tango heels and asymmetrical sequin skirts while Carlos Gardel played in 2/4
rhythm through the speakers and cigarette smoke sketching portraits of Buenos Aires in
the dark landscape just above the tabletops, a hazy monochromatic world that fell apart
with every breath.
All of my friends told me to dump Kazuko and come back to the States with the
scraps of my dignity stuffed in my carry-on luggage. Le Vrai sent me drunk, late-night
emails telling me to get the fuck out of my code blue relationship before we started
circling the existential drain. He said it wasn’t my fault that Kazuko didn’t love me, it was
her fault for not knowing what’s up. I was a flawed boyfriend, he continued, I could be an
overadvocating little asshole, I liked cuddling too much to be a man, I didn’t know how to
dance to hip-hop, I wished I was part black and I could be arrogant, provocative, self-
righteous, but I also loved people irrationally, even though I pretended not to, I cared
about animals, worried about my mom, I got along with kids and I carried a flame with
me everywhere that burned radiantly like midnight oil. Sure, I was dumb and
courageous enough to want to love a girl who regularly hated me, I was blindly stubborn
about my own experiments with truth, willing to try almost anything to save our
relationship even though it couldn’t be saved. But those things weren’t flaws, he insisted,
those were the best things about me. If you have to be stubborn, be stubborn about the
things you want to love, be stubborn about your right to love, be stubborn about finding
new ways to love people, over and over again. No shame in that. Besides, he said,
Kazuko was a slow-mo car accident without the car, everyone knew that. It was time for
me to jump out before she drove her existential Fiat into a river (plate). Even my
normally unflappable mom called me one day out of the blue and said, honey, I’m sorry
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to say this but Kazuko is a dramaturge. Not a drama queen—one who invites drama—
but a dramaturge, someone who actually invents drama, someone who studies drama,
someone actually gifted at creating it. Over the course of a year, I watched in awe and
disbelief at an almost-perfect thing gone wrong, every day, month and year. And then
one morning, after not seeing Kazuko for almost a week (she sent email updates and
one generic postcard that said thinking of you from Bariloche where she was having a
Girl’s Vacation with The Tango Hos), I realized I was completely sick of my solitude and
my celibacy, sick of porteño Spanish and polluted streets, starchy Argentine croissants
and belching colectivos, broken sidewalks and battlefields of dog shit, flash inflation at
cafés and deranged drivers blazing through stop signs, ignoring red lights and
accelerating toward pedestrian cross walks. With Kazuko, it was like I was dating a
complete stranger now whose body had become a series of rough drafts, each new draft
erasing some part of her (and my) physical memory. She’d become a stranger to me,
the semiotic text of her protean body, constantly changing over time, slurring into some
arcane, anatomical foreign language I would never decode, never break down, never be
part of and never read fluently. It hit me, it finally hit me like a thousand tennis balls
striking me right in the nads by one of those expensive tennis ball machines trainers use
at country clubs, it hit me right in my ball sac that I was lost in someone else’s dream
and she was never going to wake her ass up. The truth is, when I woke up beside her
and looked at her face, it felt like I was still asleep.

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4.9: Anybody Is Never Somebody

Look, I know it’s wack to identify a girl with her body, but you can’t exactly blame
me either. The body is a system of messages, and when a body changes, so does the
physiological syntax, the wavelength, our spatial relationship with intersecting limbs.
And the truth is, I no longer recognized Kazuko after her step-by-step metamorphosis. I
didn’t recognize her new body and I couldn’t decipher the messages it was emitting.
When we ate dinner together (in those rare moments when we couldn’t escape each
other), I felt like I was looking at the scrambled image of my old girlfriend. The new
Kazuko was a slick simulacrum of the imperfect Kazuko: She’d lost her ass, halved her
adorable earlobes, found some tits and anglofied her face. I fucking hated it. It’s like the
girl I used to know was a Japanese poem and every new operation erased a stanza from
her body, stroke by stroke, kanji by kanji until she was just a page of unconnected
radicals. Maybe she was still a girl (a beautiful but altered one at that), but what Kazuko
stopped being for me was a poem. Her limbs weren’t smooth and awkward anymore,
there was no meter in the swish of her walk, her eyes never rhymed with her lips. And
when we hugged (awkwardly), my body remembered the old version of her before the
Great Slice, a space of connectivity where our arms and legs used to fit together like a
model plane set: A million little ergonomic pieces, each with its own intersecting purpose,
now inhabiting negative space.
But now, my physical memory of her told me I was hugging a stranger, no
different than any other hot porteña in a short skirt sashaying down Avenida el Salvador
in Palermo SoHo. And while I found many porteñas incredibly hot, I wasn’t dating them.
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I had never broken bread with them, never cried burning tears of shame because they’d
broken my heart with their own self-redaction.
Kazuko lived her life in Buenos Aires like some bohemian looking for her own
private Weimar. She acted like she was an exiled artist, a kinetic romantic on the dance
floor, and that new definition of herself altered not only the way she looked at her body,
but also the way she used her body to communicate with the outside world. And that’s
when the real madness began for me, first aesthetically, then syntactically and finally
semiotically. I witnessed a great drift away from our collective memory as two bodies
sharing the same mad hallucination. First, she started smoking milenios, which are the
nastiest cigarettes on earth (think of dirt and then think of it wrapped in toilet paper).
Second, she started drinking like an amnesiac, ordering new drinks before she’d
remembered to finish old ones. Sometimes, when she just left a milonga without saying
a word, I’d have to pay her tab, even when she’d bought seven rounds of drinks for the
Tango Ho’s, depleting half my monthly salary in one night of blurry drinking, which made
me dependent on her until my next pay check. Third, she walked around Recoleta and
Belgrano in tight dresses, tango heels and shawls, chain-smoking and talking in tango
code with her friends on her cellphone, always within striking distance of the next
milonga, as if they’d wither up and die without the fresh blood of tango, like they were
under tango vampires. Fourth, Kazuko said che every chance she got, even when she
was speaking in English. It really got on my nerves, che. Fifth, she deliberately cooked
lomo in the kitchen even though she knew I fucking hated the smell of cooked meat—
I’ve been an inconsistent vegetarian since I was 18. The point is, with a closet of Tango
costumes and the impossibility of separating her act from her performance, Kazuko
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became a foreigner to me. And not just in an affected way. And while she seemed
really happy with these upgrades, which many women would describe as empowering
and romantic and adventurous, it had all happened at my own expense as her boyfriend.
I believe people change. I believe change is both inevitable, redemptive and
organic. But usually, it’s not so drastic. And when it is artificial, you hope to change with
your partner, not out of your partner. But that’s what happened. The new Kazuko was
just her way of disconnecting from the flawed world we were both addicted to. In a
series of surgeries, she deconstructed the only body of hers I understood, one of the
only things I’d loved unconditionally in our relationship. If I’m wrong for being so
attached to the way her body used to be, then she’s equally wrong for becoming
someone I would never recognize. Her body cheated on my memory, a transformation
from familiarity to alterity, and that’s mostly on her.

I know it’s a fallacy to identify with the body. I realize that our body is not who we are in
the eternal sense of the word. It’s effervescent at best: Foamy bubbles, the life span of
an orchid, a sort of accelerated entropy that peaks too early to be a work of art. Works
of art, after all, have longevity and stick around centuries after their critics have keeled
over with blood on their fingernails. Even so, this self of ours, this persona behind the
Nō mask, behind the Pirandello stage directions and the elaborate Halloween costume,
behind the markings of human culture, this soft, ethereal spirit of ours that ignites our
eyes, setting the pupils on fire like underwater flares, helping us connect to the living
biosphere on earth, this crude, spiritually primordial self of ours, lurking behind the
frontiers of our flesh, where exactly is that? How is it that we have so much faith in
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something as basic but mystical as the self (or the soul), considering we cannot locate it
anywhere inside our bodies? Are the electric impulses inside our brain the real self, or is
that just neuroscience? Do we confuse the human spirit with human physiology? The
soul with the spirit? Or are we logocentric enough to believe that the self manifests itself
exclusively, snobbishly, insistently, through language? And if the self (the transcendent
stuff of ours) is not inside the body, not inside our brains, not somewhere in the spaces
between synapses, how do we actually know that it, or something like it, actually exists?
What if the self is just another construct of rationalism? Another phenomenological trend,
like the law of attraction in New Age bookstores?
The crazy thing: even though I knew it was a mistake to identify with the body—
after all, weren’t the limitations of phenotypic identification my biggest curse on earth, the
very bane of my existence as a secret hapa?—I still couldn’t help identifying the body I
used to know in Kazuko. Or said another way, I felt completely divorced from this other
body that Kazuko had become, whether or not I could learn to embrace it (or not). My
hands and lips didn’t recognize her erotic landscape. My skin didn’t understand her
altered topography. Where there used to be tiny swellings on her chest, there were now
two grenades held together by a saran wrap layer of skin. And where there used to be
longer, Buddha-like earlobes, constrained curves, a smushed nose and folds of baby
skin in the corner of her eyes like recently weaned Shar Peis, there was now lost flesh
and invisible scars. My body had its own cellular memory of Kazuko and it completely
rejected her upgrade. The aesthetic violence of her surgical revisions ended up
destroying the last thing I could relate to: The physical intersection of our bodies when
we slept. And while real intimacy (and further, real sex) was rare the last six months of
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our relationship, at night our bodies knew how to forgive each other for all of the
moments during the day that our minds failed to accept what we were and what we
would never be. As the streets were filled with a thousand golden slits of setting sun
flickering through gilded palm leaves like specks of hot gold, disintegrating into the
viscosity of the dark, sludgy sky, I know at that moment that we were becoming
strangers to our own bodies, enemies of our hobbling synchronicity.

As a hapa, I always knew I was part Japanese but I never considered myself Asian.
Asian described your appearance, not your feelings. Being Asian was tied to whether
your ancestors spent time at Manzanar and Amache and Topaz, whether you had
distant relatives who were boat people, whether your great uncle had been tortured with
bamboo spikes slipped underneath his fingernails by the Khmer Rouge or took showers
in USA-made napalm in the jungle, it wasn’t just how you felt inside. Otherwise, every
zit-faced white otaku in America who was obsessed about Japanese schoolgirls in
miniskirts, soup-in-a-cup and RPG’s was Japanese too. As Kazuko turned into a
stranger before my eyes, my anger at her visual betrayal turned inward and I began
interrogating myself, asking myself all the questions I’d dodged in college: Just because
you’re fascinated with incorrectly labeled hentai and contemporary geishas and
epicanthic folds and Final Fantasy spell combos and rainbow sashimi plates and
Cosplayers with cute asses and drawn-out ocha ceremonies and Nō drama and samurai
codes and Astroboy metaphors and kamikaze legends and Godzilla allegories of war
trauma and the redemption of Moé school girls and the phenomenon of femmish boys
with protruding cheek bones and long, flowing hair pouring lonely girls sake in smoky
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karaoke rooms and shiny Ginza department stores and Japanese sex cults doesn’t
make you Japanese, motherfucker. Wanting to be Japanese isn’t the same thing as
being Japanese because race is a sentence that can never be commuted. In fact,
wanting to be nihonjin only proves you’re not Japanese because people never want to
be what they already are. But does feeling Japanese inside, does growing up Japanese,
does being part Japanese, constitute being Asian? What about adopted Japanese kids
who don’t know nihongo
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from their ass? Are they still Asian? What about expats who
move to Ōsaka and stay for fifty years, embracing the language, the people and the
culture? Are they Kansai shusshin? Does it matter whether expats marry Japanese
people and live like them too, whether they feel they belong in a Japanese society that
will insist they’re tourists of culture forever? What about Japanese women in dreads,
Hip-Hop-loving Tokyoites, Nisei living in Chicago and racecar-drifting teenagers in Kyōto,
are they still Japanese? At what point does the expat, the cultural import, the bi-racial
baby born in an army base, the permanent foreigner and the gaijin
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become Asian?
And if being Asian is not simply genetic, or cultural or pathetic, then what the fuck does it
mean to be Japanese? Or any race for that matter? Does it matter that I’m hapa? That
my mom was born in Ōsaka, the daughter of an alcoholic GI who raped my obāsan and
forced her into an honor marriage before she could ask her parents for protection? Does
it matter that I’m Nisei? That my obāsan was born in Tokyo? Does it matter that I have
a whole legion of Japanese uncles and cousins and aunts I’ve never met in Sapporo and

181
The Japanese word for Japanese in Japanese.
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An abbreviation of 外国人, gaikokujin (foreign country person), gaijin is a loaded Japanese
word that means foreigner but literally means non-Japanese, alien, outsider, freak of nature.
Okay, I added the last translation. The word gaijin also has a strong racial connotation since is
often used as a shorthand for the West, therefore, it’s associated with whiteness too, which is a
mistake if you know anything about Western multiculturalism.
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Tokyo and Kyoto and Ōsaka? Or that when my obāsan was dying, I had to speak to her
in nihongo because her English was crumbling away into phonemes, then letters, then
musical notes of air. Does it matter that I call chopsticks hashi and soy sauce shoyu?
Or that I find comfort in anthropomorphic cartoons, hot baths and miso shiru? And what
about the fact that I obsess about group harmony, cleanliness and honor way more that
my white friends but also consciously rebel against my ancestors every time I think about
myself, forget to call my mom, screw up honorific speech, or get a new tat? Do these
things make less Japanese-American, or just a bad nikkeijin? Do I qualify yet? Have I
earned my non-white creds yet? And what does it mean to discover your Asianness in
your 30’s? What the fuck is that? I was always part Japanese, and I always knew I was,
but why didn’t I know that I was Asian until the day I fell in love with Duran Duran, the
darling of Japanese indie flicks? What is it about American culture that makes race feel
both deterministic and binary, like we have no choice but also only one choice, and it
better be the right choice? What the hell is that multiple-choice test for if not the caging
of our soul? When does phenotypic stereotyping stop and complex racial self-profiling
begin? And considering how bad I needed my calligraphy brush to paint my self portrait,
why, why, did you hand it over to a bunch of pissed-off, self-loathing assholes in college
and hide it from a group of racist redneck Young Republicans in middle school, both
intent on clarifying your race for you? The truth is, I have no fucking idea. These are the
only things I do know: I still act lke a straight-up punk sometimes, I love people
unapologetically, I speak Japanese like a toddler and my existential calligraphy stopped
evolving once I moved to Argentina.

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The last time I saw Kazuko was from the window of our apartment, and only after I’d
woken up from the most fucked up dream: I was gripping a baseball bat and she was
pregnant with another man’s child—one of her tango instructors who had a bell-curve gut,
melting eyes and kielbasa fingers. Even though the dude was tubby, he was still
handsome in his matching fedora and cravat and there was a twinkle in his eye as he
explained to me that he loved Kazuko like a goddaughter, like a Phoenician slave. It
wasn’t personal, he said in his broken English, I know how love her. That’s when I
swung into the meaty part of his cheeks, hitting him so hard I knocked his head off. But
his headless body continued standing, his hands made the same animated Italian
gestures that belonged in the streets of Rome, serenading broken inamoradas,
entertaining cousins in a dining room where old Chianti bottles were used as candlestick
holders. They were hands that told stories with stubby fingers, becoming flags for old
crusades. Kazuko came into the room, heavy with child, her hands absorbing the baby’s
kicks. And then I swung at her stomach too, pounding at the curvature in her belly with
the handle of the bat until blood started running down her legs, dripping onto the floor
until I could make out the following word in red plasmic kanji:
去って！

Satte is the imperative form of saru, and basically means: leave, go away, pass,
elapse, be distant. But it can also mean: send away, drive off and divorce. When I
woke up, I bawled. I felt so guilty about my dream, ashamed of my unconscious taste for
violence. It was six years later that I understood what that dream really meant. At the
time though, I thought the satte was my inner voice telling me to escape the murder
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scene. In reality, it was telling me to get the fuck out of Argentina. After all, Buenos
Aires was Kazuko’s rebirth. It was her child and she was Argentina’s baby girl. Her
rebirth had nothing to do with me. I woke up, wiped my eyes, washed my face and
brushed my teeth for all of the evil things I had wanted to tell Kazuko in my dream. As if
to confirm the fuckedupness of My Argentine Life, I spotted Kazuko immediately through
the bedroom window. It was creepy as shit: Right when I happened to look outside, I
saw her across the street, stepping out of a taxi with a group of drunk people in wrinkled
dresses and ruffled button-downs. They were laughing, lighting fresh cigarettes in the
early morning (the best kind, really). I watched them trot down the sidewalk, arm in arm,
away from our cramped apartment where love was extinction. They headed towards the
24-hour panaderia on Scalabrini Ortiz that sold spongy croissants and cookies slathered
in dulce de leche. As I watched them walk away from me, I suddenly felt broken down,
ignored and irrelevant. Lonely, like this fragment

After taking a long bath and getting dressed in my favorite hoodie, whitesox cap and
Diesel jeans, I walked to Kazuko’s underwear drawer and grabbed four thick, violet rolls
of pesos and plucked her dad’s Visa card between piles of her folded lace thigh-highs.
Using dial-up, I went online on her high-tech laptop and bought the first available one-
way ticket to Tokyo I could find under two thousand dollars. And then, because I wanted
to hurt Kazuko, and also, because I wasn’t thinking straight, I did the one thing that gave
me comfort in Buenos Aires besides talking to my mom. I boiled some water for my
mate, poured it into my stainless steel Thermos, stuffed my mate gourd with fresh yerba,
grabbed the necklace my mom gave me and then I walked outside, leaving the rest of
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my clothes, my used, dog-eared books, my toiletries, I left fucking everything inside our
cramped apartment, leaving the front door wide open. I hoped to haunt the apartment
with my ghost, lingering between the floor cracks and the drywall like the smell of food. I
wasn’t a perfect man by any means. I wasn’t a perfect boyfriend either. But I deserved
more than this. I deserved one of those nasty fucking croissants with the cheap butter
oozing from the inside. I deserved a saccharine cookie covered in sweet-tasting shit. I
deserved one of Kazuko’s kisses, full of poison and ash. I deserved all the misery in my
life but also deserved all the joy too. I deserved to be alive again and feel the sun in my
throat. I deserved to die by my own blade and dream my own fucking dreams. I
deserved to be drunk with despair and kept awake at night with pathological lust. I
deserved to break every bottle of wine at the supermarket with a golf club and kiss a
thousand sluts on the forehead at a Guns N’Roses concert.

I walked to Avenida Costa Rica and hailed a taxi. Inside, I passed a hundred peso bill to
the driver and told him to keep the change. Then I swallowed a mouthful of mate through
the bombilla and watched Buenos Aires streak by the window in a high-speed montage.
The mate scarred my throat. The cars honked their horns. The driver turned up his
stereo when “Luz de Día” came on by Los Enanitos Verdes. Belle Époque buildings
whizzed by my head like an architectural slideshow. I felt shame burning in my sinuses,
pushing its way up to my eyes. The pain I felt, was the pain of failure and dislocation,
the moment when you realize you’re an empty cocoon, the magic all dead inside.

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4.10: The Dossier on Myself

As I watched bad Hollywood flicks on my flight, one of them involving a slick,
one-liner-obsessed detective who roamed around LA asking skinny blond women
questions over martinis, then I drank a copious amount of apple juice and ocha, asking
for more honey-roasted peanuts and pretzels that tasted like soft wood, harassing
stewardesses about when we were going to be served dinner, prodding them for free
snacks, anything to occupy my hunger. At some point, my own brain started organizing
files for all the crimes I’d committed since Kazuko. I stared out the window at the
swirling horizon and nibbled on the residual peanut skins in my mouth.
Abstract: The would-be assailant, Mr. Hidashi N., after committing four counts of
robbery, one count of identity theft using a stolen credit card from the would-be
assailant’s girlfriend’s father’s card and one count of property damage to the couple’s
apartment in the fashionable Palermo SoHo neighborhood in the Federal Capital of
Buenos Aires, was also found later guilty (in a court of law inside the would-be
assailant’s own superego) of violent infanticide of a one Kazuko Yamaguchi, his now ex-
girlfriend’s dream child, of which Hidashi N. was neither the biological nor custodial
father. Afterwards, the would-be assailant fled from custody in greater Buenos Aires
with said stolen property crammed inside the pockets of his expensive blue jeans
(probably, also stolen), boarding flight # 441 from Ezeika International Airport to Narita
International Airport.
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A. Time Frame: the would-be assailant did not appear to have a specific
destination in mind in Japan nor did he appear to know the duration of his itinerary. His
whereabouts are still at large.
B. Possible Motives for Flight:
1. Returning to the (idealized, unknown, impossibly embellished) motherland.
Note ongoing symbolism of maternal figure as a potential dossier motif. Also, note
Japan as redress for would-be infancticide. Additionally, note the kanji 日 (meaning
“origin”) in the word for Japan 日本. Further, note ongoing fascination of would-be
assailant with what ethnographers call, the “lost world phenomenon.”
2. Would-be assailant, suffering from delusions of grandeur, as identified in
repeated utterances about possessing what the would-be assailant referred to as
“superpowers,” which he claimed were sapped from the would-be assailant’s now ex-
girlfriend using warfare tactics of Hannibal from the Second Punic War, sought to
reconstruct his own (delusional) identity, both his so-called “shadow,” “psychic,”
“physical” and his so-called “object” self.
3. The twenty-five hour flight from Ezeika International to Narita International
Airport (along with an 8-hour layover at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumcino Airport), would give
the would-be assailant (who was prone to intellectualization) considerable time to
ruminate on his collapsed domestic relationship with his now ex-girlfriend, Kazuko
Yamaguchi, possibly giving the would-be assailant space to understand “where
everything had gone wrong,” a statement that would be repeated in future
correspondence between the would-be assailant and a black militant revolutionary who
goes by the alias of Le Vrai Frazier. In future electronic correspondence, the would-be
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assailant referred to the 33 hour voyage as a “few days of purgatory to take a personal
inventory of my mistakes, conceits and delusions,” where would-be assailant “hoped to
to figure out everything lost in the mudslide.”
—Something to drink? The stewardess asked the man next to me in a flannel
suit and green tie. He was dead asleep.
—Sure, I said, handing my plastic cup to her.
She gave me a look like: I wasn’t asking you. But then she refilled my cup
anyway with apple juice from the box. —Lemme guess, more peanuts?
—Please.
She plunged her hands into her apron and plopped four bags of honey-roasted
peanuts on my tray table. —We’ll serve lunch in a half an hour.
—Thanks, I said, trying to smile.
I looked through the window.
Would-be assailant showed signs of distress, depression, bipolarity, object-
fixation and catatonic space-outs. Personality disorder exam never administered.
Would-be assailant still remains at large.
C. Purported Rationale of Would-Be Assailant’s Departure:
The would-be assailant, as suggested in future electronic correspondence with
biological mother, a one Le Vrai Frazier, and various other female college friends (only
some of which the would-be assailant shared a sexual relationship with and/or received
late-night drunken fellatio from) and ex-girlfriends (only some of which ended in an
amicable early termination with the would-be assailant), claimed to have reached his
“BBJP,” or “Bungeeless Bungee Jump Point,” a nonsensical term coined by the would-be
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assailant to describe the point of no return where someone, in a moment of such
unbearable torment and self-hatred, decides to bungee jump at a designated bungee
jump platform with or without the proper elastic cord attached. Supposed explanations
for aforementioned torment and self-hatred appear to include the following issues:
1. Lack of sexual activity or reciprocity in relationship with Mrs. Kazuko
Yamaguchi
2. The collapse of male gender construction, based on aforementioned lack of
sexual activity or reciprocity in relationship with Mrs. Kazuko Yamaguchi
3. Identity crisis brought on by the aforementioned collapse of male gender
construction
4. Class resentment of, and disempowerment from, Kazuko Yamaguchi’s
automatic allowance of $20,000 deposited into her Citibank savings account on the
second of every month from her father’s estate in Poughkeepsie, New York, thereby
nullifying the would-be assailant’s role as wage-earner, who worked approximately 20
hours a week in San Telmo as a mistreated, underpaid, underappreciated TEFL
instructor
5. Lack of diaphragmatic or lachrymose laughter with Kazuko Yamaguchi
6. Lack of merriment or feeling of general well-being in Buenos Aires
7. Lack of deep sleep, or what would-be assailant called “the dreamless sleep
I’m always reading about in the Upanishads”
8. Would-be assailant displayed classic symptoms of existential crisis (e.g.
staring at hands, staring through windows during inclement weather, frequent “surfing” of
pornographic internet web sites—especially those involving teenagers and concupiscent
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mothers suffering from Oedipal complexes—prolonged salt baths, excessive sighing,
remaining in pajamas for several weeks, rumination, chronic consumption of yerba mate)
9. Prolonged distance from would-be assailant’s mother, Chicago friends, and
best friend (the aforementioned revolutionary and black power dissident) Mr. Le Vrai
Frazier
10. Monotonous Argentine diet comprised largely of: cheese and onion/Kale
emapanadas, sugar cookies processed with dulce de leche (aka “sweet-tasting shit”),
neopolitan pizza, spaghetti, carne de soja and burned omelets
11. Documented pattern of aggression, dissociative reaction and psychosis of
porteño drivers, several of whom, almost dismembered the would-be assailant, after they
failed to come to a halt at designated pedestrian crosswalks and intersection stop-signs,
which might as well be green lights
12. Idealization of Chicago and American culture in general in absentia
13. Prevalence of canine feces on sidewalks, specifically in Palermo Viejo,
Constitución, La Boca, Amargo, Collegiales and Nuñez
After finishing my peanuts, wiping my mouth with a stiff airline cocktail napkin,
drinking my apple juice and cramming everything into the plastic cup, which I handed off
to a passing male stewardess like a quarterback who sees an open lane, I leaned my
chair, pulled down the window blind and put the free headphones back on my head
D. Would-Be Assailant’s Motives for Remaining in Buenos Aires Prior to
Departure despite Would-Be Assailant’s Former Claims of Torment and Self-Hatred:
1. Novelty of expatriate life in South America
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2. Naïve hope on part of would-be assailant to “reset the factory settings” of the
so-called “glitch-happy operating system” would-be assailant refers to as “the worst
relationship of all time”
3. Pure, unadulterated denial: would-be assailant was incapable of admitting
that he did not actually love Kazuko Yamaguchi, despite abundant and cogent evidence
proving this
4. Delusional belief on the part of would-be assailant that couples could simply
“start over again,” when the rules of relationships (such as familial proximity, strength
and influence of social and alumni networks, patterns of learned behavior, geocultural
identification) were irrevocably changed
5. Theory of Pet Project Romance: would-be assailant, based on electronic mail
and telephone correspondence later on from Tokyo to Chicago and Winter Park, Florida,
used relationship with Mrs. Kazuko Yamaguchi to prove that he was capable of “not
flaking when things got fucked up.” Aforementioned relationship with Kazuko
Yamaguchi became a pet project of would-be assailant, to dispel the myth (to himself
and to others) that he was a “player” or “serial monogamist,” two accusations that
appear to deeply trouble would-be assailant
6. Distortion of lust for Kazuko Yamaguchi’s body when towel-drying herself in
the bathroom mirror which, would-be assailant claimed, blindsighted him more than once
from doing the right thing (i.e. looking away)
7. Economic and emotional paralysis: would-be assailant used personal income
to spit rent for Palermo SoHo apartment with Kazuko Yamaguchi while aforementioned
partner paid for utilities (e.g. water, dial-up internet) as well as grocery delivery service
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by El Tallo Verde, despite Mrs. Yamaguchi’s excessive hoarding of personal allowance,
an arrangement that essentially wiped out would-be half of assailant’s monthly salary
and left would-be assailant’s girlfriend in perfect solvency. In theory, would-be
assailant’s paltry income was to be “supplemented” by Kazuko Yamaguchi’s monthly
allowance, however, evidence exists supporting the possibility that Kazuko Yamaguchi
ran up a “spite tab” on money supposedly “given” to would-be assailant which became
“money owed” after would-be assailant and Kazuko Yamaguchi argued in the kitchen
about cuddling, sex and relationship neglect, sometimes ending in throwing star practice,
but with porcelain plates that would-be assailant blocked with wooden cooking spoons
8. Would-be assailant’s fear of solitude after months of not being touched
E. Purported Rationale of Would-Be Assailant’s Travel to Japan Both Now and
Six Years in the Future:
1. Data unavailable at this time

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4.11: Pretty Hiragana Rain

Since the day puberty blessed her with obscenely statuesque legs that rivaled
Calder’s Flamingo in Federal Plaza, Duran Duran has been the darling of Japanese
cinema (and liberal arts colleges across America). Her stardom began with those
infinitely long, paper-crane legs, remained in the tabloids with her easy-to-remember
movie star name that was actually her real name and then stayed for good in the public
imagination with her Stygian tears that poured down her cheeks in elegant shodō brush
strokes, one stanza at a time, her face like paper for obscure haiku and illegible kana
painted with smudged mascara, as if her eyes were shedding sumi ink one slate at a
time. Those tears would later become her signature, a patented moment of grief for
every movie she graced, from Robot Love onward until her tears became a fashion trend
for Harajuku girls. Known as プリッテイーヒラガナレーニグ (Pretty Hiragana Rain, or
PuHiRe), young girls, most of them Gothic, Broken Doll and Wa Lolitas, deviant Usagi
Tsukinos and Buffy fans, smeared their eyes with stage mascara and forced themselves
to cry, making PuHiRe part cosplay, part dreamworld and part catharsis. By picturing
the most gruesome scenes imaginable inside their head—their doting moms raped by a
group of burly bandits, a colony of kittens crushed by American tanks, their favorite robot
toys from their childhood, stolen and sold on eBay for .99, their two-month boyfriends,
tortured with sharpened slivers of bamboo underneath their fingernails and then
mutilated by psychopaths dressed in Care Bear costumes—disenchanted teenage girls,
fashion hawks and deranged Duran Duran fans created rituals of worship and
lamentation out of sloppy makeup that helped them express their unfathomable grief for
this impatient world that no longer gave girls the time to act their age anymore or the
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childhood space to fight off their own warp speed. PuHiRe became the stuff of
cinephiles and character worship, movie clubs and fan fiction. The truth is, Duran Duran
didn’t just cry in the jungle (Billy Sugoi’s name for the moviet set), she also cried in real
life too because she had never dated a boy before and she missed her mom in a fatal
way, and these two things made feel deeply, irreconcilably alone in this world. Other
than that, she was good. No matter: Girls saw what they wanted to see in her maudlin
characters, imitating them to purge the sickness inside their own hearts, as if grief were
a muscular ball of phlegm and adolescence were a nasty chest cold.
Duran Duran’s rise to fame is one of those classic plucked-from-reality stories
you hear about all the time in celebrity biographies. One day, she was walking home
from school in her cute-ass Joshibi School uniform, dressed in her shorter-than-short
Sailor Moon miniskirt, hand-crafted navy tie and navy military jacket (on which she had
sewn epaulettes, another violation of school policy that got her reprimanded more than
once) when Billy Sugoi, one of the most famous indie directors in all of Japan, saw her
across the street from the Hard Candy Café as she was putting on purple lip-gloss in the
store window, a soft breeze lifting her hair into the air like the wings of a whooper swan
trying to lift itself out of an oil spill. With the sun behind her, framing her body in a
confectioner’s glaze, a diffused halo shining through her wingspan, the freckles on her
face bursting three-dimensionally through ceramic-white skin, the rawness of her red-
fruit lips and her Nutella-thick eyes shedding blurry hiragana poems onto her cheeks, it
was at this precise moment that Billy Sugoi had his first vision of Duran Duran as a
future teen apotheosis, and his visions were never wrong.

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Duran Duran had all of the essential stuff that fans fucking adore: Eccentric first name,
Big Sky eyes, half-whispering voice, insane runway legs, unpretentious attitude, easy-to-
remember personality tick, hapa face and meteor field of freckles covering both
cheekbones. Fangirls devoured her awkward beauty immediately, seeing their own
imperfections illuminated—even celebrated—through her. Every time a new movie
poster of Duran Duran was posted on an electronic advertisement, the cool kids of
Tokyo wanted to be geeks, the sad kids became cool and the social misfits felt acquitted.
Another thing, Duran Duran’s sex appeal cut across class, education and gender lines in
a way even Billy Sugoi didn’t believe. Duran Duran was an accidental star, even before
the first stalker chased her down an alley in Nagoya with a bag of melonpan in his arms,
before she won her first Japan Academy Prize (日本アカデミー) for an actress in a lead
role, before the first Harajuku cosplayer copped her style—black Hiragana tears and all.
The problem for Duran Duran, if a problem can be an eternal understatement, is that
once she became famous, her energy got splintered up into a million interviews,
commercials, cameo appearances, her face plastered on billboards in Tokyo, Yokohama,
Ōsaka, Sapporo and beyond, her fame moving too fast, shining too bright, shedding too
much light too quickly to remain a stable fixture of pop culture. Duran Duran’s celebrity
was a mistake, a by-product of her disdain of popular culture (something fanboys loved
immediately about her), and mistakes have no loyalty, always looking to erase the
damage they’ve done in the next opportunity for redemption.

Even though she was only thirteen at the time, Duran Duran’s first movie was supposed
to be Ringu, but a month before its release, skeptical executives changed their minds
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after sucking down five bottles of soft-tasting Hanagaki sake and a plate of bad toro in
the back room of a strip club called No No Yes Yes, and Hideo Nakata was given the
director’s seat and ordered to replace Duran Duran with Hitomi Sato. Though she had
the body of a seventeen year-old, the producers couldn’t get over her age, which was
young, even by the standards of creepy old dudes with no taste for the sublime. It was
Duran Duran who was supposed to watch her friend, Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi) die after
getting swallowed by a scary-ass head-chomping poltergeist, a role that Duran Duran
cherished. Envied, actually. But with less than a month before its debut and budget
costs multiplying like Danny Zuko’s chills, the studio had no choice but to keep the
original posters for Ringu since they’d already been printed and distributed all over the
island, Duran Duran’s unmistakable and indelible lips, her wet, freckled cheeks and
syllabary-crying eyes now front and center in the public imagination, her lucent face
glowing like a celestial émigrée. And because her face had been used in all the ads, her
name was retained in the credits, bumped down to the very bottom of the cast list after
Hiroyuki Sanada like this: Duran Duran Murasaki . . . Masami (invisible). Once Ringu
became a blockbuster in Japan, Duran Duran became a legend for not appearing in her
first movie. Boys stopped in the middle of zebra crossings, halting traffic to pledge their
undying love to the mysteriously beautiful actress with her trademark Hiragana tears,
even though she was never actually in the movie that made her a star. The cafés near
Todai
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were full of students exchanging theories on why Duran Duran never made it to
the screen: she was a mutant reptile (hence the black tears), she had a rare genetic
disorder where she was born without nasolacrimal ducts, she ate raw meat and wore

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An abbreviation for Tokyo University in Japanese.
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sunglasses all the time (even in bed) to feast on permanent darkness. Others
speculated that Duran Duran had been offered a huge modeling contract from Glamour
Model Management after l’affaire Ringu and was now the reigning princess of the
Roman Runway. Maybe, some argued, the Immigration Bureau of Japan had kicked her
out of the country for all of the traffic jams her face had caused at major intersections in
Japan, or wherever there was a commercial for The Ring. Then there were other
theories that were more captivating: Duran Duran didn’t actually exist, she was just a
construct of vector editing software, a creation of socially disconnected graphic
designers, she was an amalgam of several models, rock stars and actresses cut, pasted
and then glued together into a Frankenicon (giving her all the underworld creds she
could ever ask for). Some people claimed Duran Duran was actually an altered portrait
of the young Devon Aoki, invented by studio executives to bring in orientalist customers
during the global depression. Others said Duran Duran was the secret lovechild of Mick
Jagger and Meiko Kaji, the product of a one-week love affair that started in a New York
City oxygen bar and ended in a high-end fetish boutique in Roppongi that sold baby
outfits. Before Duran Duran had even starred in her first film, she was a legend, a
warped aidoru (idol) for every Japanese misfit that fell through the cracks, a lightning rod
for conspiracy theorists, speculative fiction writers, part-time rebels, bullied hapas,
otakus of every stripe, and pathologically insecure Japanese girls who refused to believe
an Asian girl (hapa or not) could be so tall, so mesmerizingly hot and so perfectly
strange without special effects or Photoshop touch-ups. Even in their hatred, there was
unquenchable fascination. Duran Duran was simply too much for people, and that was
before she rocked the shit out of her debut movie.
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Duran Duran’s first real movie was Robot Love, directed by the same director that had
originally cast her as Masami in The Ring before he got ousted. Billy Sugoi was a dark,
eccentric and intense visionary known for his cult classics The Suicide Pact (how ironic),
The Five Versions of Fuzukawa and Yuki the Destroyer. As director, he hated
celebrities, so he picked normal people out of the slush pile of Tokyo culture, scouring
the stores inside the Roppongi Hills mall and the alleys of Akihabara (Electric Town) and
the cavernous late-night cybercafés near Keio University and underneath the wet
sanctuary of tree shade at Ueno Park, searching the whole city for strong and
idiosyncratic faces that intrigued him, the one essential ingredient of all his hand-picked
stars being that they possess an unconscious and deviant beauty. Billy Sugoi was
extremely loyal to his vision, and since Duran Duran was part of that vision, he did
everything he could to flesh her out from the secret world she used live in inside her
head in high school prior to becoming a star. Billy Sugoi was also a generous man, a
disturbing and brilliant artist, and above all else, a stubborn motherfucker, all qualities
that accelerated her stardom. Robot Love made Duran Duran the most famous sexdroid
in Japanese cinema, a detail that embarrassed her father enormously when she dragged
him to the premiere. Duran Duran was , Hestia, named after the eternal
flame at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, a state-of-the-art sexdroid that not only had a
sophisticated human AI chip that allowed her to change her desires and love-making
techniques depending on the core temperature, pupil dilation, circulation and blood
pressure of her client, but was also programmed to shed tears whenever she wanted to
be held or when she was happy, which is how PuHiRe got started. Duran Duran had no
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problem shedding tears—that’s always been one of her superpowers. She’s always
known where to find the sadness in things, even joy. While the first of Billy Sugoi’s three
black and white movies in his Death Neon Sake trilogy helped introduce Duran Duran to
the world, his vision almost killed her by giving her free reign of her melancholy. But now
I’m getting ahead of myself.

Androgynous Switchblade was the second movie in trilogy and the first one to make
Duran Duran’s fame spread beyond the art house to the Tokyo apartment. Starring as
Lucy Hasegawa, a blind, teary-eyed mercenary who had superhuman hearing which
allowed her to hear people’s thoughts, even the thoughts they didn’t think (including the
narrator’s, a sarcastic detective who had a weakness for goth girls and pineapple
sherbet), Duran Duran became a pin-up poster princess overnight. There were still a
few people arguing on fan sites that Duran Duran was a digital construct invented in a
Sony lab, but her ghost work in Ringu, her red carpet appearance as a geisha assassin
with her hair adorned in ofuku style and crossed in back with two thin switchblades, and
most importantly, her incarnation of Lucy Hasegawa in Androgynous Switchblade as the
gorgeous, blind antihero who roamed the streets of Tokyo kicking the shit out of Nikkei
stock brokers, protecting stray dogs and helping flood victims and Korean War widows,
ignited a rabid fan base that stayed with her even when she took a small break to join a
suicide sex cult.
Duran Duran’s third big movie was ぼくはきみだな, translated as I Am You.
Starring as Kantan Mizuki, a morally conflicted tomboy and novitiate from the Aum
Shinrikyo cult who decides at the last minute not to puncture a bag of sarin gas into a
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crowded Tokyo subway with her red umbrella, the movie examines the conflict between
free will, individual agency and group harmony, creating characters that simultaneously
desire immortality, peace on earth and annihilation. Despite its many movie house
clichés (moments of extended silence, cleverer-than-life dialogue, grainy film feel,
cinema verité perspective, indie playlist), the acting itself was pretty damn good for a
group of obscure nobodies, most of whom still had day jobs. Another thing: the
soundtrack was fucking amazing, full of b-side Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone,
David Bowie and Sigur Ros. I Am You won a number of awards at the Tribeca Film
festival, two Palmes d’Or at Cannes, three awards of distinction at the Sundance Film
Festival and several Japan Academy Prizes. With her second major role in another
Japanese release (both of which were critically but not commercially successful), Duran
Duran became the most famous (and miserable) 19-year girl in Japan, not to mention,
one of the only Japanese celebrities to keep her epicanthic folds intact. She also
became one of the wealthiest Japanese teen celebrities too, coveted for newspaper
interviews, magazine spreads, video games and TV cameos, toy and perfume
commercials, most of which she avoided whenever possible unless her publicist
cornered her at Natural House, a health food store in Omotesando. Duran Duran was
regularly hounded by wobbly-kneed fans and frothy-mouthed tabloid reporters that
followed her everywhere she went, their camera flashes flaring up on her perfect skin
like an ugly case of herpes. The problem with all of the fame, adulation and attention is
that she lost the one thing she valued in this world—her independence—making her
time-released depression not only tragic, but completely fucking inevitable if you knew
her at all back then.
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One morning, Duran Duran had a mouth full of wool socks from drinking complimentary
chocolate martinis all night in the VIP lounge of the Moonwalking Lizards bar in Ginza
with the other unknown actors she worked with. She didn’t realize she’d forgotten her
disguise (antique sunglasses with rhinestones on the temples and an old Yokohama Bay
Stars baseball cap) until she was already walking around Shibuya. That’s when three
girls approached her on the sidewalk and asked her for her autograph. Two of them
were dressed as Lucy Hasegawa, the blind antihero, one dressed as Hestia, the
sexdroid and the third was dressed as Kantan Mizuki, her body squeezed into the
character’s quintessential black miniskirt, fedora hat, snoopy necklace and gray striped
button down. Duran Duran noticed all three girls were wearing PuHiRe on their faces, the
frozen black scribbles on their cheeks quickly covered by fresh tears that smudged
volcanic ash down their faces once they realized that the famous Duran Duran Murasaki
was walking out of Tokyū Hands with a bagful of Japanese fans, calligraphy pens and
notebooks, a little detail that was recounted again and again on fan sites for a month
straight afterwards.
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The only thing Duran Duran remembered, was the black tears that
were plopping onto the sidewalk, little pieces of wet font slowly forming into kanji radicals
on the girls’ faces, shed from the saddest places inside their heart, their whole bodies
purging years of invisibility, irrelevance and self-hatred. When Duran Duran pulled out a
Kleenex from her pocket and wiped their faces clean, the girls started crying again,

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Especially http://iloveyouduranduran.com/movies, http://puhireeveryday.com and
http://asskickingbitches.com/japan

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convinced she was expressing her affection for her fans. Really, she felt guilty for
creating a trend that was now turning beautiful girls into works of dirty calligraphy.

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4.12: An Ugly Dress with Yellow Tulips in a Biker Bar

Duran Duran and her otōsan have a tradition that goes back to when she was a
little girl with stilts for legs: They’d buy bento boxes at the Isetan Department store, take
the JR train to Harajuku, walk around the Meiji Shrine and then finally eat their fancy five-
course lunches on benches in Yoyōgi Park, just far enough from the dog run, the
basketball courts and the bike path to feel sane but close enough to picknicking families,
hand-holding couples, manga-reading students, frolicking children, Shinto weddings and
cosplayers to feel connected to Tokyo. It was a simple ritual, but one she cherished for
the simple connection it gave her to her dad who spent the rest of his week inside a lab,
trying to translate Duran Duran’s mom into a simulacrum of titanium, stainless steel,
silicone, aluminum and cast iron, devoting his life to the translation of his greatest loss
into his greatest accomplishment: An AI amodroid made in Sasha’s image. Some of
Duran Duran’s happiest memories were with her dad, smelling the sunshine, people-
gazing, and nibbling on pickled vegetables and Koala Yummies in the park.
Duran Duran knew—she’d always known—that her dad loved her deeply and
unconditionally, bringing her up the best way a single Japanese man could in a culture
so dependent on women. He taught himself to cook osushi, agedashi tofu and
vegetable tempura after Duran Duran rebelled against Kenji and became a vegetarian.
He learned how to air futons in the sun and clean duvets with toothbrushes, wash
lacquer bowls with his fingers, iron shirts without the use of starch and do the laundry in
the kitchen sink after Duran Duran announced one day that house cleaning was a tool of
patriarchy. At the time, she didn’t even know what patriarchy meant, but Kenji did, which
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is why he laughed out loud and told her to grab a sponge. Then they did the laundry
together, blowing bubbles at each other in between washes. The one thing Duran Duran
knew for sure as a girl accelerating through warp speed into the awkwardly beautiful,
gangly masterpiece she’d become, was that her dad loved her as much he loved anyone
still alive. He loved her not only for the brilliant misfit she was (because he was a misfit
too, too dorky to be cool, too socially aware to be dorky) but also for the way Duran
Duran helped him hold on to Sasha, her features capturing, illuminating but also
modifying her mother’s face in a way no master artist could have envisioned (or
controlled). At the same time, Duran Duran also knew that her dad loved her with a
broken heart, which wasn't strong enough to love her every waking moment. His love for
her was stable and eternal, but his body was like a million broken computers, the power
cables, crushed microprocessors, rotting motherboard batteries and shattered RAM
cartridges, all held together by a catastrophe of wires, most of them, now obsolete and
unused. Their Friday lunches at Yoyōgi Park were the most important moments of her
life as a little girl. For a few hours, she felt close to her father and he felt close to his
dead wife. And while each person found solace in each other’s laughter and in the
shadowplay of Sasha’s ghost, they did so together, the Fridays turning into musical
loops that played over again inside their heads when they were alone, stuck between
melodies.

The day Duran Duran told her dad she wanted to take a break from acting, she was
sitting next to him on their favorite bench in the shade, dressed in her favorite disguise of
the week—a powder blue and grey t-shirt with flying dogs in yellow capes, a tiny grey
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fedora pulled snugly over colitas, Crayola-colored jelly bracelets slinking up her wrists,
70’s porn star sunglasses and a pleated gray miniskirt that barely covered her yellow
panties (rhinestones shining invisibly on the waistline).
—Otōchan, she whispered, I’m fed up with movie star galaxy: Actor drama,
bitchy paparazzi, gossip rags, foaming-at-the-mouth otaku that smell like dish soap,
crazy fangirls that grab fistfuls of my hair on the sidewalk because they love my work,
exhibitionists that keep sending me naked photos of them dressed in capes.
Kenji started laughing.
—Maybe I should just dye my hair magenta and roam the world in a unicorn outfit.
—Unicorn? He said, putting down his hashi, —that’s never been done before.
Why not?
—Or maybe, she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, —I could walk around the
whole world in my robe and slippers, passing out oshibori to people. It could be my little
gift to the world: Piping hot hand towels!
—Sometimes, those little things are the best because you don’t take them for
granted.
—True. Suddenly, Duran Duran’s purse started vibrating. She pulled out her
pink cellphone but when she saw that it was Comet Tanaka, her coke-obsessed publicist
who’d been harassing her to accept a role as Tom Cruise’s Asian lover in a new spy
thriller, she bit her lips, rejected the call with her thumb and looked back at her dad. —
Gomen, ne.
He waved his hand. —Besides, he continued, —maybe that’s your calling. Your
name could oshiborijin, the hot towel giver.
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—You’re a cute old man, you know that?
Kenji smiled, scraping the skin off his Salmon shioyaki with his chopsticks.
—Otōchan, she said, becoming serious, —are you okay?
—Hai, he said, nibbling on rice.
—So do you think I’m making the right decision?
—That’s not for me to decide. If that’s what you wanna do, then that’s the right
decision.
—So if I wanted to become addicted to PCP and walk around the world with
mouth sores and a distended belly, that’s okay with you?
—Duran Duran, don’t be a smartass. If that’s what you want, then that’s what
you’ll do. Of course I don’t want a drug addict for a daughter, but I also know how
stubborn you are.
—Sometimes, I feel so lost, otōchan, she said, spearing her agedashi with her
hashi, — I don’t know what the point of my life is anymore. Maybe I never knew.
—We’re all winging it, actually. To tell you the truth, I feel that way all the time.
Sometimes, more than others.
—Does it get better?
—No, he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head, —but on a good day, you
learn to appreciate the small things: Your warm hand towels, for example. Or bonsai
trees, a nice bowl of katsudon, little birds chirping on the balcony, ugly transvestites with
missing teeth.
—You’re funny.
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—No, I’m serious. An ugly transvestite will give me joy for a week, especially one
wearing too much make-up and a bad wig. Maybe it reminds me of your mom. —
Nani?
—Have I not told you this story?
She shook her head.
—Well, one night, she asked me to take her around Roppongi at night to look at
escort boys. She kept going ohhhhh and ahhhh because she thought they were prettier
than she was, which was impossible because no one was more beautiful than your mom.
Kenji paused.
—Go back to the transvestites, she said, pointing to the Meiji shrine in the
distance with her finger, the jelly bracelets slinking back and forth.
—Oh. Right. Well, she was convinced that cross-dressing was normal and
gender lines were abnormal—a revolutionary concept for the 80’s, you know—so every
time she saw an ugly transvestite, she shook her head with satisfaction, and then turned
to me and said, you see that? That’s how humans really are: unclassifiably beautiful and
infinitely complex. It became a sort of joke of ours.
—Did mom cross-dress?
—Sometimes, but even the day she dressed like a matador (all decked out in a
big montera hat, flashy chaquetilla, taleguilla tights, and black flat slippers), her lashes
were a dead giveaway. She even forced me to wear an ugly dress with yellow tulips on
it. We went to a gay bar and everything: The ugly drag queen and the matador.
—Chotto matte! You never told me that story.
—Why would I? It’s ridiculous.
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—No it’s not, it’s the coolest thing you’ve ever told me.
—Gee, thanks.
—So, go back. Mom made you dress up as a woman?
Kenji nodded.
—Then what?
—She dragged me to a lesbian biker bar in Ni-chōme called Spank Me, Thank
Me.
—But you were wearing a yellow dress!
—I know. That was the worst part.
—And?
—God, you’re embarrassing me, he said, rubbing eyes, —I haven’t thought of
that night in years.
—So what did you guys do in the lesbian biker bar?
—We made out, that’s what we did. We made out like two biker lesbians in love,
okay?
—Oh my god, that’s amazing. You guys are like my heroes now. She shook her
head in wonder.
—That’s what it took for Mom to become your hero? A make-out session in a
dykey leather bar?
Duran Duran took her hat off, held it in her hand, smoothed her dad’s hair on the
side where it wanted to stick up and leaned her head on his shoulder, counting the
seconds in her head until Kenji’s watch alarm went off. A soft breeze shook the leaves
in the tree above them, emitting a soft, woody fragrance in the air. A group of skinny
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teenagers, two boys and a girl dressed in high school uniforms, passed by on the path,
speaking in rushed, high-pitched voices, the boys competing for the girl’s attention, the
girl’s giggling traveling through the park like a canyon echo. Duran Duran lifted her head
and watched the girl out of the corner of her eye until they disappeared within a grove of
older trees. Then she laid her head on Kenji’s shoulder again and waited. She knew
she’d have to wait another week to see her dad. Once he entered his lab, no one saw
him for days until the moon wore another mask. It made her sad just thinking about it.

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4.13: The Freudian School of Hottodoggu!

A few months later, Duran Duran met friend Boots at a café one block from the
sparkly, glass-and-steel Omotesando Hills mall. Duran Duran wiped her eyes, blew her
nose and walked inside Cha Cha Chai! The café was bright and spacious, with giant
sombrero chandeliers hanging from the ceiling (one for each table), deafening Latin-
American love ballads playing on the stereo, a projector showing psychedelic dancing
maracas on a pull-down screen, the images melting together like pieces of iridescent
plastic—the perfect stage for Boots to make her entrance. Dressed in a long tube skirt,
ostrich boa, giant big brim hat and platform sneakers, Boots walked in moments later
and gave Duran Duran a kiss on the head, plopped a small shopping bag on the table,
then sat down. Duran Duran loved Boots’s attitude and fashion sense, but mostly she
liked how she forgot about her own incurable sadness when Boots was telling a story.
(S)he was the perfect hybrid of the boyfriend she’d always wanted and the girlfriend
she’d never had.
—Yo, ossu? She asked, pulling off her aviator sunglasses.
—Ussu, Duran Duran said.
—What’s good here?
—The Harley Davidson Iced Oolong is pretty snazzy.
—Oh girl, that’s not sweet enough for this bitch.
—They’ve got bubble tea.
—So they do, she said, glancing down the menu.
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A chubby waitress in a panda shirt walked over to the table. —Hola guys, she
said, nanikani shita?
—Ee, Boots said, I’ll take the Pink Swizzlestick Latté, two chocolate biscotti and
that panda shirt.
—You can’t have it. This is my favorite shirt.
—Let me ask you something. When you go home, do you eat bamboo?
—Huh? Me?
—No, the other girl dressed as a panda bear.
—Of course I don’t eat bamboo.
—See, that’s a shame.
—I like this shirt, I’ll have you know.
—Girl, everyone makes mistakes. But why do we have to suffer? I mean, what
did I ever do to you?
—Gomen ne, Duran Duran interjected, —she’s having a bad day.
—Well, the waitress said, he doesn’t have to make me feel bad, stomping her
foot.
—Girl, he said, that shirt’s making everyone feel bad.
—Her boyfriend just broke up with her, Duran Duran whispered into the
waitress’s ear.
—Her name is Rio, Boots said, don’t even go there.
—Ohhhh, I see, the waitress said, —damaged goods, huh?
—Who you calling damaged, grass-eater?
—I’ll take a chocolate soy milk, Duran Duran said.
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—Hai. Coming right up.
Boots looked the waitress up and down.
The waitress returned his look: —Humph. Then she walked away.
—You be nice, Duran Duran said, pointing at her with middle, index and pinkie
fingers pointed in an okay sign.
—Girls on Film, I’m always nice. I’m just trying to help a sister out. The sooner
she stops wearing that fucking costume, the sooner she’s gonna get some action in the
futon.
—When was the last time you made out with a boy?
—I know, I know, he said, —it’s been twenty days, but someone should be
getting laid.
—Oh, that’s very considerate of you. What would the waitress do without good
Samaritans like you?
—Sleep in a bamboo cage probably until she’d eaten her way out.
The waitress arrived with their drinks. After she’d laid the cookies on the table,
she turned to Boots and said: —And for the record, I don’t live in a cage. I just shake my
ass in one at nightclubs. So there!
—My bad, girl, she said, you’ve got more spunk than I thought.
The waitress cocked her head in the air and walked away smiling to herself.
—Well damn, Boots said, who knew pandas could be slutty.
—
—So girl, listen to this:
And that’s when Boots told her the story of the stalker.
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The Story of the Stalker
—Girl, Boots said, I gotta tell you about the story of the stalker.
—You’ve got a stalker? Duran Duran asked, sipping from her drink. —I don’t
know why, but I feel relieved, and also . . . what’s the word? . . . jealous.
—Bitch, don’t be. It’s your stalker.
—Oh brother, she said, just as her cell phone began vibrating. When Duran
Duran saw it was Comet again, she let it go to voicemail.
—So three weeks ago, I was walking home from this ramen place near Shinjuku
station with this boy I met at Kiddy Land.
—You met a boy at Kiddy Land? Kiddy Land, for those who haven’t yet made it
to the second greatest city in the world (the 1
st
being Chicago), is like a toytopia for
adults. Of course kids can shop there, but most of the customers are teens and adults,
because they have money and sadness to get rid of. Kiddyland has something like
seven floors of toys, stuffed animals, gadgets, stationery, stickers, collectibles. It’s
fucking terrible and wonderful, all at once, and Duran Duran hadn’t been able to visit
since she was a little girl. Fame can be a bitch that way.
—Don’t judge me, he said, jabbing her with his eyebrows.
—I’m not. I just wanna know which floor.
—The Snoopy floor.
—Okay, she said, he passes.
—So yeah, we’d just finished devouring our soup when my date—
—Kiddy Land Boy—
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—Right. That’s when he grabbed this large duffle bag of his and said I’ll be right
back, I have to go wee-wee.
—He said those words?
—Yup: wee-wee.
—Uh-oh, Duran Duran said, shaking her head and sipping her drink, —that’s not
good.
—No it’s not. So I wait there for like a good fifteen minutes. I mean, if I’d brought
money with me, I would have just paid for the damn bill myself and run away. But he
was treating and . . .
—And you became a hostage to his kindness.
—Exactly. So I’m waiting there like some no-good transvestite, when he walks
out of the bathroom dressed in a giant hotdog costume. But it’s not just any hotdog
costume—
—Right, like the normal hotdog outfits people usually wear.
—Shut up. It’s not just any hotdog costume. It’s a hotdog dressed in baby
clothes, bonnet and all.
—Eeeee?
—You heard me, a goddamn hotdog costume in baby clothes. And even
stranger, he had a huge inflatable penis strapped around his waist. That thing was like
three feet long.
—I’m sure you’ve seen bigger.
Boots raised his eyebrows as if to say, well that’s true. —The crazy thing is, he’s
trying to make his way back to the table, but it’s a small restaurant and all the tables are
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close together so his hotdog costume—not to mention that weird-looking mushroom
poking out between his legs—is knocking everything over: shoyu bottles, plates, hashi,
sake carafes, wallets, hats, sunglasses, everything is flying around, crashing to the floor.
And I’m thinking: I’ve seen crazy, but this might too be crazy even for me. No boy is
worth this kinda crazy.
—Except Johnny Depp.
—Bitch, I’m over him. The pirate costume isn’t a costume anymore.
—Wow, Duran Duran said, slurping the final drops of chocolate soy, —that’s a
snazzy story, Boots, nodding her head.
Boots shot her a look like it’s all right.
—Well, better you than me.
—That’s not the end! So I stand up and tell Baby Hotdog I think we should go,
but by that time it’s mayhem inside the restaurant. People are screaming, the sous-
chefs are threatening us with their butcher knives, one of the businessmen is calling the
police on his cell phone, and a bunch of tourists are taking pictures of us like stuff like
this happened everyday in Tokyo. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore so I grabbed my
purse and started running. Three blocks from the restaurant, I turn around and he’s
following me in his hotdog suit, his bonnet flapping in the breeze, that giant inflatable
penis bumping into the backs of people’s heads. Even knocked a woman’s purse out of
her hand.
—I’d love to hear her retelling that story at dinner, Duran Duran said, almost
smiling before she waved to the panda waitress for another chocolate milk.
—
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—So then what happened?
—I panicked and ran to my apartment. Baka, ne?
—Yeah, now he knows where you live.
—I know, I know. I panicked. Once I got to my apartment, I ran inside and
locked it real quick. Five minutes later there was a knock on the door—
—Oh god.
—I know, but this is where it gets crazy.
—What do you mean? It’s already crazy. It’s ridiculous, actually.
—So I tell him through the door: please go away. Last night was fun, but it was
just sex. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.
—What a heartbreaker you are.
—And that’s when he says: Sometimes, there is nothing I love more than to feel
your heart beat through the door. I feel you in other people’s eyes, broken up and
splintered into a thousand shards of light. This is how I understand you: like a liquid
dream, like a twisted desire, like a little dog aroused by first love.
—You are the mouthpiece to the other world. When I kiss you,
—I kiss her—
—My inevitable suicide—
—My androgynous
—Switchblade! They yelled in unison. Every eclectically stylish 20-something
hushed inside the café, chucking coy glances at their table from invisible wrist rockets. A
few began whispering to each other. Boots shrugged her shoulders and flipped her boa
over her shoulders superciliously. Duran Duran uncrossed her legs.
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—Oh, so he did all that, just to get close to me?
—‘Fraid so, New Moon on Monday.
—That’s kinda sweet, actually. I’d date a boy in a hotdog costume.
—Dressed as a baby? With an inflatable penis?
—Sure. Why not? I’m sick of snot-nosed otaku, starchy businessmen and
make-believe gangstas sending me pictures of their penises. Is that all Japan has to
offer?
—That’s because you stick with straight boys.
—Oh, is that the problem?
—Hell yes, girl. Straight boys are predictable. They love money, high-tech
gadgets and girls with huge racks. Most of them want mommies as girlfriends, Xboxes
as roommates and GT Mazdas as boyfriends. And they don’t know how to deal with
their emotions so they pretend they’re samurai, which is how they stab people by
accident.
—Okay, now you’re depressing me.
—Listen, I Won’t Cry for Yesterday, those are the facts. Don’t lik’em? Then date
a gay boy.
—Boots, I don’t think that would work.
—Bitch, please. They’d make an exception for your cute ass. I’ve got two
friends that wish they were you. Fucking you would be the next best thing.
—Yeah, for a character study.
—I’ve had sex for worse reasons.
—I guess we all have, she said, shrugging.
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The waitress in the panda shirt returned with another chocolate soymilk. Duran
Duran and the waitress exchanged glances, Boots examined his cuticles. In the
background, the music changed to J-Lo.
After she’d finished her drink, Duran Duran walked over to the counter, opened
up her wallet and realized she was out of cash. Then she sighed and plopped her credit
card on the counter without thinking. The manager announced the bill total, bowed and
then swiped the credit card. After Duran Duran had signed the merchant copy, the
woman scanned the name. That’s when her eyes bulged out of their sockets. She took
a step back, bumped into a barista and screamed: —Aremaa! Aremaa! Duran Duran
Murasaki! I lobe you, she said in English. —You’re my favorite actor in the whole world.
The woman started jumping up and down.
The waitress in the panda shirt walked over. —What’s happening? she asked
—Kochira Duran Duransama dane, the manager said.
—The actress?
—Hai! Hai!
The waitress in the panda shirt pulled her head back like she’d just been slapped,
her eyes bugging out hyperthyroidally. —Aremaa!
Now the manager and the waitress in the panda shirt were jumping up and down,
holding hands, screaming, Duran Duransama!
Duran Duran bowed quickly and ran back to the table. —Boots, jump in the
DeLorean. We gotta go.
—I told you not to use your credit card.
—I didn’t have any cash, she said, her hands in the air.
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—Bitch, please. You’re a goddamn Manson cult all by yourself. You should
know better.
This is when Duran Duran’s momentary happiness got fucked up: Almost on cue,
a large group of girls in hippy chic dresses and gothic Lolita outfits (several of them,
wearing full PuHiRe make-up) crept slowly toward them like stylish girl zombies. A few
held out napkins and permanent markers. One of the Gothic Lolitas in a black dress with
red ruffles, white button-down shirt and matching white bow in her hair, holding a black
lace umbrella in her hands, advanced to Duran Duran, her eyes resembling inkwells,
black tears streaming down her face like a musical score. She walked up to Duran
Duran and said: —I lobe you Duran Duran, she said, her eyes shedding fresh sheet
music that streamed down her trembling lips.
—Dōmo ne, Duran Duran said in Japanese, that’s very kind of you.
— I love you so much it hurts.
—Dōmo.
—Can I have a hug?
Duran Duran looked around as the other girls formed a circle around her, their
mouths wide open, their hands reaching out for her like body snatchers. Boots shook his
head, adjusting his boa once more, sighing. Duran Duran gave the girl a long,
empathetic hug and she began crying fresh tears of paintbrush water.
—Duran Duran! Another girl shouted. —I wanna hug.
—Me too!
—Duran Duran, I’m your biggest fan.
—I lobe you!
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—Boots, help! Duran Duran said, throwing her purse on her shoulder and
grabbing his hand, —The Ghouls are at it again.
—Sure are.
The two of them ran out the door and down the street, sprinting until the first
Tokyo Metro stop. Inside the subway, Duran Duran put on sunglasses and her favorite
Yokohama Bay Stars baseball cap, holding onto Boots’s hand like a blind woman
(superhero) until she’d arrived in Ikebukuro. Then she started to cry again.

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4.14: The Dream of the Apple Tree

After Duran Duran said goodbye to Boots, she took the Marunōchi subway all the
way to Ikebukuro, a working class neighborhood in Tokyo, and cried the whole way like
an Asian Margery Kempe. She really hated the ghouls. They were everywhere,
sprouting up like an urban fungus after the darkest rain. When the subway finally arrived
at Ikebukuro station, Duran Duran panicked. She didn’t have the courage to take the
escalator up to the street so she wiped her eyes underneath her Jacky-O sunglasses,
patted her drenchced face with Kleenex, blew her nose like a bugle to the dismay of the
people around her, and waited for the next subway back to Shinjuku Station, the
crumpled Kleenex still in her hand. Duran Duran slowly disappeared in a crowd of
exhausted commuters, some of them dragging attaché briefcases, fiddling text
messages or grooving to their iPods, lost in their headphone fantasia.
A month later, Duran Duran finally found the courage (hit rock bottom) to take the
long, winding escalator in Ikebukuro all the way up to Meiji-Dori. She walked in a
dizzying zig-zag pattern inside the space-age Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space (the steel
confetti raining from the ceiling) through the gloomy shops of the Sunshine City mall (that
ironically, used to be the Sugamo Prison) before taking a shortcut through the basement
of the Seibu department store, slicing through chatty groups of magnetized, wrinkly rōba,
their shopping baskets full of packages of daikon radish, pickled tsukemono, fancy
sashimi slices of hamachi and boxes of curryrice, greedy tourists taking pictures of $80
melon, protected inside tiny crates and covered in gold stickers of authenticity. When
Duran Duran was on the street again, she headed down an alley, up three flights of
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stairs, through a suspended breezeway between a large parking structure resembling a
Rubic’s Cube and creepy biotech skyscraper building shaped like a geometric
salamander, its reptilian, axe-shaped head covered in a million glittery triangles. Once
inside the sketchy biotech building with the glass armor on the outside, Duran Duran
came to an unmarked elevator in the hallway, pulled out the key sent to her by the
DoRiKi recruiter, stuck it into the keypad, and then pushed the penthouse button, the
elevator shooting up into the sky like heroin pushed into the vein with the syringe plunger.
After a three-note monophonic da-dee-dum, the doors opened silently, the smell of
Apple Cider incense rushing into the elevator. Duran Duran adjusted her clothes and
then walked to the conference door. She typed “ ドーりーき” (an abbreviation of dorīmu
no ringo no ki) into the keypad, the Japanese words for dream of the apple tree. The
vault door opened with a clean metallic click.
Duran Duran entered the room, looking around nervously. A smooth-skinned
(unctuous), handsome (sketchy) man greeted her with a knowing smile, dressed in a
crimson silk robe with a larger-than-life apple tree insignia on back, small
anthropomorphic apples falling from the branches into a radiant cosmic ocean of swirling
galaxies, gas dust and dark matter. With his slicked-back wet hair, trimmed soul patch
and perfect facial symmetry, the Japanese attendent looked like the hot (slimy) evil
kung-fung badass you always see getting killed in dumb action flicks by towheaded
hakujins
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who always carry glocks everywhere they go to compensate for their lack of
one-liners, eventually killing the hot (slimy) evil kung-fung badass after a drawn-out fist
fight in the bustling kitchen of a restaurant, making all the girls in the theater sigh when

185
White dudes, not legibly white dudes who are actually hapa.
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he finally exhales his last breath on a cutting board. After Duran Duran handed over her
wallet, cellphone and had changed into a moss-colored novitiate robe (the insignia on
back being an apple tree full of tiny green apples), Duran Duran walked into the Prayer
Hall (called the Orchard) of the DoRiKi headquarters. It would be months after we’d first
started dating before Duran Duran finally got the courage to tell me that the Dream of the
Apple Tree was a suicide (sex) cult in Tokyo that targeted beautiful 20-somethings on
college campuses and in online forums because they were the most likely to be
intravenously connected to the internet, the least capable of dealing with reality and the
most afraid of their own mortality. I guess when you’re a teenager, you’re still on
vacation. And as a 30-something, you accept your limitations in part because you have
no choice: your body is starting to fall apart like a Soviet-era apartment. But the 20’s is
where everything starts to turn to shit, usually at the exact spot in your life where you
thought you’d have it all figured out. Among its ranks, the Dream of the Apple Tree was
especially successful at online recruiting of former models, law school drop-outs,
bankrupt stock brokers, orphans of the state, the clinically depressed, the super-rich, the
once-famous and colonies of Japanese girls dragging their broken hearts with them like
old bathtubs. Duran Duran told me that the collective grief alone could kill you if you
were sensitive enough.

According to the recruitment pamphlet she’d received mysteriously in the mail after
visiting a bunch of suicide forums one night, The Dream of the Apple Tree is comprised
of the following principles, many of which were completely ripped off from the
Dhammpada, motherfuckers!:
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The 12 Guiding Principles of the Dream of the Apple Tree
1. Life is full of pain and suffering because pain and suffering are intrinsic components
of human existence. Pain and suffering, therefore, are unavoidable as long as humans
are alive

2. The human body isn’t a shell (as the Heaven’s Gate cult claimed), but an actual tree:
the legs are roots, the waist is the trunk, the arms are the branches, the head is the fruit.
Once spiritual fruit is sufficiently ripe, it eventually falls into a great cosmic sea of ecstasy.
This is the moment when the soul detaches itself from the body

3. Death is eternal sleep

4. Life—even sleep—is the opposite of eternal sleep. Being alive is what’s known as
temporary awakeness

5. Because temporary awakness is simply a pit stop between revolving stages of eternal
sleep, people basically have two “growth cycles” or choices, in terms of the ultimate
purpose of our existence on earth:

a. Accelerate our life as fast as humanly possible to reach the cosmic sea of
ecstasy after we’ve died (prescribing speed, promisuicuity and group flash
suicide)

b. Spend as much of our life as humanly possible in a dream state, which not
only mimics our eventual state of eternal sleep, but also ironically, tends to
extend human life, giving us more spiritual training before we reach the shores of
nirvana (prescribing downers, celibacy, gradual self-medicated euthanasia, in
some cases, drowning)

6. The color red symbolizes ripe apples, therefore, only those fully initiated into the
Dream of the Apple Tree Club are permitted to wear the cardinal red robes

7. Sexual consummation with the current leader, who goes by the name of
(The Juice), is optional—though strongly encouraged—to aid in both the accleration and
the prolongment of human life, depending on the member’s growth cycle and sexual
orientation. In rare instances, lesbian members may be allowed to participate in
sanctioned consummation sessions with each other as long as The Juice is allowed to
observe from two-way mirrors

8. The Dream of the Apple Tree Club requires a monthly tithe, calculated as 20% of
annual gross income unless total income falls below ¥3,000,000, or if a member doesn’t
receive bonus payments from his or her employer, in which case, the surcharge goes up
to 30% of annual gross income, a scaled taxation rate that is supposed to motivate
members to live prosperously

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9. All fully initiated members are required to wear the official Pierre Mistumoto label
Cardinal Robe ($400 bucks a pop) at all meetings, national conferences, religious
retreats, suicide mission practice and whenever members are inside the kitchen—
considered the holiest room in the Dream of the Apple Tree Club

10. While The Dream of the Apple Tree Club doesn’t prescribe a specific diet per se,
fully initiated members are strongly encouraged to order and consume one box of official
Dream of the Apple Team Organic Apples© each day to ripen their own spiritual
awakening
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11. All novitiates must pass (endure) the spiritual entrance examination before being
admitted into the Dream for the Apple Tree (which is sort of like being accepted into an
online, for-profit university—a complete an absolute illusion to make members feel like
they were the chosen ones).

12. All members, prior to fulfilling their suicide mission, are required to participate in a
month-long juice fast, during which time, they will ride with The Juice aboard his G-force
aircraft AF1 (Apple Force 1) from Tokyo to New York City and receive advanced spiritual
training in their respective growth cycles by The Juice during the 15-hour flight. Upon
landing in New York City, all successful candidates that successfully accept Final
Ripeness and Decoring will will fly back to Tokyo and begin their final descent into the
great galactic ohhhhhh

It’s crazy shit, but the worst part is, some of it kinda makes sense too. Considering that
almost half of Japan is Buddhist (meaning the belief of dukkha, or suffering, is quite
common), considering there is no cultural taboo on suicide, the IT bubble bursted really
bad in Japan, leaving many dotcommunists broke and bleary, and also considering how
high the pain threshold and the cost of living is in Nippon, group suicide doesn’t have,
has never had, the same taboo as it does in pro-life America. Sometimes, suicide isn’t
even considered tragic or untimely in Japan. At the same time, like many new-age
religions, the Dream of the Apple Tree ripped off a lot of shit from other scriptures:
Blending body fetishism from the Honohana Sampogyo cult that used people’s feet to tell
their fortunes, the color symbolism of the Pana Wave Cult that draped members—and
their cars—completely in matching white outfits to block destructive electromagnetic rays,

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Available at participating Aeon Supermarkets
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the Dream of the Apple Tree appropriated tenets of Buddhism, Scientology, rival cults
and diet crazes, casting a coherent eschatology that, while crazy doctrinaire, bizarre as
shit and also very fruitarian, was insanely successful. As an organization, it was
extremely organized, image-savvy and effective at recruiting self-loathing Japanese 20-
somethings ready to give up everything to stop being aware of themselves. Duran
Duran, while not desperate like the other members of DoRiKi, was just sad enough, just
bored enough and just curious enough to take a peek at a suicide forum called Y.O.D.
where she poured through hundreds of posts by strangers who were looking for suicide
partners because they didn’t want to die alone even though they lived alone, a detail that
brought her to tears again and again. Little by little, Duran Duran became consumed in
reading the confessions of complete strangers, slowly learning their suicide acronyms,
identifying the frequent posters with their forum handles, separating the posers, the
fanatical prolifers from the crestfallen, the attention-seeking prima donnas from the
gloomiest rejects, crushed by self-loathing and powerlessness, and above all, sadness,
a profound and sticky sadness that seemed to go so deeply into people’s souls.
Sometimes Duran Duran even violated the rules of the forums, writing people little notes
that told them they were completely lovable, beautiful, in fact, precisely because they
would never be the way society tells them to be, and Duran Duran never knew if the
people she wrote, if the silly (beautiful) messages she sent them made any difference at
all because so few people returned to the suicide forums once they’d found a suicide
partner, rescued their own life from the trash heap or simply given up on life and on
death. Duran Duran wanted to know: What did their silence mean? Was it the silence
of a girl soldiering on or the silence that comes right after she kills herself? Duran Duran
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had no way of knowing. But what began as a passive curiosity turned into an active
fascination. Before she knew it, she was reading group suicide forums every night, on
her iPhone in the Jungle, on her laptop in stylish cafés in Omotesando and in her
bathroom taking a long, salty bath or on her new, fancy-ass desktop with the widescreen
monitor she’d bought in Akihabara, becoming more and more engrossed in reading the
final messages that people left before they committed suicide, written in short, cryptic
sentences and posted triumphantly in forums for the whole world to witness. Sometimes
Duran Duran cried when she read people’s farewell haikus because they were so naked,
so hopeless and exposed, sometimes she daydreamed about inventing a tracking device
that could track down potential suicides before they happened, then, she would bring a
bunch of them together and throw a huge party in a Yokohama nightclub, and there
would be delicious hors d’oeuvres and great hip-hop music and crepe paper streamers
and balloon animals, and some of the people who had wanted to stab themselves with
their steakknife or jump off the Tokyo Bay Bridge or inhale charcoal burners in a sealed
car, some of those people, not all of them, but some of them, would realize that they’re
not alone, that there are people who understand them, all of them, even those lost inside
their own labyrinths of darkness, they’re people who could even love them with the right
amount of blue sky and patience and cultivation and forgiveness. And for everyone else,
at least they would spend the rest of their life (the days and hours) not alone, struggling
to live and die with love and dignity, which everyone deserves, even investment bankers,
economic hitmen and psychopaths, even warlocks, five-star generals and ghoulish
fangirls.
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One day, Duran Duran had received a celebrity brochure for DoRiKi with a
special key for potential VIP members. She never figured out how those motherfuckers
tracked her down (IP address datamining), but over a breakfast of granola, diced
peaches and soy yogurt, she opened up the packet anyway because she was curious.
Just curious. And curiosity was enough to put you—and keep you—in a DoRiKi silk robe
until your brain was a grey mushy compote.

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4.15: Laito, Kamera, Akushon!

Duran Duran showed up six days late, right after her first Decoring Session,
which included a six-day schedule of meditation lessons, a spiritual entrance
examination and a chanting intensive where novitiates sat in lotus and half-lotus
positions around The Juice, humming sawed-off sutras and drinking apple juice until they
got the runs, had reached a higher level of consciousness—known as getting past the
skin—or had fallen asleep on their meditation pillows. Six days later, Duran Duran
walked in and sat down in the movie set chair for The Ninjas of My Greater Self, carrying
a duffel bag of Hello Kitty water bottles, each one filled with official Dream of the Apple
Tree Organic Apples© apple juice, Duran Duran’s face illuminated with a fuzzy-picture
tranquility that cast a soft, ethereal light throughout the room.
Billy Sugoi, dressed in camouflage pants, addidas sneakers, a Hawaiian polo
shirt and Greek Fisherman’s hat, turned to Duran Duran, shocked. —Bakayaro! Where
the fuck have you been? You’re a week late, superstar. Is everything okay? You look
different. What’s up with all the water bottles? Fuck, I’m pissed off at you, you know
that?
—Suman Billy, she said, her face radiant like a yogi.
—You need to get your shit together, he shouted, pointing his cigarette at her, —
Why are you looking at me like that? What’s wrong with your skin? You look too skinny,
Superstar, you know that? By the way, you know how much mullah I’ve spent waiting for
you?
—I know, she said, shrugging, —gomen, ne? I had to go. . . somewhere.
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—Yeah, where? Tierra del Fuego?
—My own private Idaho.
—Great movie. But seriously, where?
—A retreat.
—A retreat? he asked, grabbing a glass of whiskey with his other hand, —what
do you mean a retreat? A retreat from what? You’re a fucking moviestar! You’re whole
life is a dream.
—
—What kind of retreat? Like for Buddhist eggheads?
—Sort of.
—Well isn’t that nifty? he said, nodding and taking a deep drag from his cigarette
before flicking it to the ground.
Shabu, one of Billy Sugoi’s assistants, stomped on the cigarette.
Billy Sugoi downed his glass of whiskey, poured another glass and then downed
that one too. —Okay, well, I forgive you superstar. Shabu! Nodo! Call everyone back
to the jungle, now! It’s movetime! The greatest time! Let’s rock and roll, people!
While they waited for the other actors to return from their trailers, Billy Sugoi
looked at Duran Duran and thought about telling her again how pissed off he’d been with
her before she showed up, so pissed off, in fact, he’d considered sending her a bill for
the production costs. But Bill Sugoi didn’t have the attention span to bear a grudge for
long. Besides, The Ninjas of My Greater Self centered on Duran Duran who was
supposed to be the first female ninja in history. All the other actors were replaceable,
but not her. She was the movie. So instead of bitching at her, he plopped down in his
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director’s chair and got a nasty case of vertigo that stayed with him until Nodo brought
him his seventh cappuccino. He drained his cup, a dainty, little white mug with an
orange contour line, stolen from a snotty café the last time he was in Venice. Then he lit
another cigarette and waited for his best boy grip to come back from going on a snack
run at Lawson.

As Duran Duran was getting her make-up done, she looked at herself in the mirror. The
freckles on her face looked like frozen explosions of chestnut-colored paint, the rawness
of her red-fruit lips looked dipped in stage blood, her wide Nutella-colored eyes shined in
the mirror, glowing, serene, soulful. She saw herself from the outside (aka Lacanian
gaze), saw the woman in the mirror acting as her, an unbalanced version of herself with
awkward arms, long, fidgety legs and eyes that were warm and gentle, looking back at
her like a Chinese New Year’s dragon with different crew members controlling different
parts of her body, each section sovereign, independent, and rebellious. Six days ago,
she’d followed the clinically handsome man with the slicked-back wet hair and soul patch,
walking in her swishing novitiate robe with the green apples on back, the cool marble
floor stinging her bare feet. He led her to a green and red silk pillow, yellow tassles
dangling from the corners. The man pointed to the pillow with with a clean wave of his
hands, bowed deeply and then returned to the lobby. Duran Duran sat down, glanced
around and followed everyone’s lead, trying her best to meditate for the first hour
(though her mind wandered a lot, cycling through random things like the hole in her sock
and not-so-random things like Billy Sugoi and his ten cappucini a day, and Kenji who
would stay inside his lab for another week before he tasted the custard sunlight again,
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her whites she realized she’d left in the dryer). Duran Duran’s failed meditation session
was followed by a cycle of chants repeated between two sections of the auditorium like
ocean waves rushing back and forth, the syllables crashing into each other. Finally, the
Juice entered the room with two sumo wrestler bodyguards and an entourage of
devotees in shimmering red silk robes. The Juice was dressed in a golden silk robe,
fancy-looking geta and a glittery gold medallion pendant with a picture of a shiny apple in
the center (guru bling). He had a long gray beard, tied in a ponytail and a web of broken
capillaries covering both cheeks. Girls from his entourage hoisted bamboo baskets on
their forearms and sprayed apple blossom petals on the floor, clouds of sweet earth and
essential flower oil exploding in the air, one clumpful at a time. The Juice pranced to the
center of the room where he climbed on top of a mountain of pillows with the help of two
sumo wrestlers. Some of the pillows had gold tassles at the ends, others were covered
in embroidered, turquoise and gray landscapes of young Buddhists drinking water from a
well in Dhamasala, llamas being led through the mountaintop, hamburgers dancing on a
grill, even spaceships flying towards a planet shaped like a Granny Smith apple. Then it
was time for Duran Duran’s first Decoring Session. According to the DoRiKi Handbook,
no members of the Dream of the Apple Tree are allowed to look at either the Juice or the
applicant during the spiritual admissions interview. There’s one trick too: All visitors
were treated like applicants, whether they were or not.
The Juice cleared his throat and bowed his head slightly toward Duran Duran. —
Tell us why you seek the dream of the apple tree.
—I’m not sure I do, Juususan, I was just visiting.
—Well, you’re here, aren’t you?
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The other followers murmured in agreement, their heads bowed down to the their
criss-crossed feet.
—I am.
—Everything happens for a reason.
—What about the Apocalypse? Earthquakes? Glitches in the matrix?
—I’m sorry, one of the followers whispered, bowing her head apologetically away
from Duran Duran, —but we don’t make fun of The Juice. He is our portal.
—Suman.
—It’s okay, Duran Duran, the Juice continued, I don’t mind. If you’re here, then
there’s a reason for it. The same reason that everyone else is here. There’s no such
thing as coincidence.
Duran Duran noticed the other followers nodding their heads, either because they
agreed or because The Juice had seduced them with the same strategy. She couldn’t
decide. —Okay, fine.
—I’d like to ask you some questions. I think it’s extremely important that you
answer them to the best of your ability, okay?
—I’ll give it a shot. The truth is, while Duran Duran is always the spunkiest girl on
the block, she’s also extremely open with people and doesn’t know how to hide her
emotions. It’s one of her many contradictions. Also, sometimes it’s just easier to be
blunt with complete strangers, especially if you think you’ll never see them again, so
Duran Duran just locked and unloaded right there inside The Orchard.
—So let’s get right to the point. What tortures you?
—Huh?
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—What makes your life unbearable?
—I miss my haha.
—Are you depressed?
—Recently.
—Do you feel alone?
—Since I was a teenager.
The Juice closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The other
acolytes—every one of those brainwashed, cow-towing, silk-loving motherfuckers—
looked at their master with great anticipation, waiting breathlessly for him to pour out his
wisdom. —I know who you are Duran Duran. I’ve seen all of your movies. They’re
fantastic.
—Arigato.
—And yet, in all of them, you are miserable, he said, pointing at her with his
hands held in prayer.
—That’s the general idea.
—I also know that your father spends most of life inside a lab.
—How do you know that? She asked, scowling. —Please leave him out of this.
The thought of Kenji brings her to tears automatically. He’s innocent. The Dream of the
Apple Tree had nothing to do with him.
—And I also know what happened to your mother. Is is painful for you think
about her? Does the thought of her puncture you?
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—Of course it does, she said, her hand pressing on her eyes. —I miss her all the
time and I have to live knowing that I’ll never see her again. I used to have a vivid
memory of her, but now it’s fading.
—Life is pain, Duran Duran. Life is suffering, he said, scratching his gray beard.
—
—Pain and suffering are intrinsic parts of human life.
—Okay, now I’m really depressed.
—Of course you are. That’s what it means to be human.
—Can I ask you a question? What’s your secret? Why aren’t you depressed?
—The Juice isn’t mortal, the woman whispered again, bowing her head in
opposite direction,—so he doesn’t feel what we feel.
—Must be nice.
—Why don’t you tell us about your pain? he said, pointing at her with prayer
hands again.
—All of it?
—Sure. Start from the beginning.
And that’s when Duran Duran told him about the Hapa Girl Blues, the unabridged
version.
Hapa Girl Blues (The Unabridged Version)
The thing that killed Duran Duran the most was growing up in a world without her
mom. It was like a congential hole in her heart passed down in utero, making the blood
in her veins pump faster and harder until her heart expanded one day into a monster of
blood and iron, enlarged beyond capacity, the oxygenated and unoxygenated fluid
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mixing between the two atria and overflowing into her lungs until Duran Duran could
barely breathe, an emptiness inside of her (pathology) that would follow her wherever
she went until her heart finally exploded one day. Duran Duran knew there was
something fundamentally sadomasochistic about mourning for a woman she both loved
and didn’t know, but even imaginary cardiomegaly made her feel closer to her mom.
Then there was her broken daddy genius. Duran Duran loved her otōsan, and
not in an obligatory father-daughter way either. She loved him more than any other man
in the whole world. She loved how vast, encyclopedic and organized Kenji’s mind, was, a
veritable rolodex of data, memories and stories, she loved how he was always
misplacing his cellphone in the fridge, or in the beverage section of the supermarket on
their lunch days, she loved the way his keys still had the same Chococat keychain she’d
given him for Christmas as a little girl—her first real gift she’d bought with birthday
money. Duran Duran loved the stories he used to tell her about his days at Todai where
he used to goof off and get drunk before exams and change his classmates’ passwords
when they weren’t looking, how he and a bunch of his friends once disassembled their
electrical engineering sensei’s Toyota and then reassembled it inside his office in time
for auditing, Kenji used to tell her stories of his warped life married to a Hokkaido ice
queen who cared more about pruning (taming) her bonsai than him, he recounted his
travels to Seoul, Ho Chi Ming City and Beijing with her mom, who’d dropped her new
camera down the Great Wall of China right after they’d finished scaling the marathon-
runner staircase in Badaling and yelled yatta! at the top of their lungs. These were
stories that delighted and inflamed her teenage brain with steroidal intrigue. She always
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begged her dad for more: more stories, more pranks, more laughter, more mom,
everything twice its natural size, a palace of storytelling, floating in the sky.
Kenji was a good man, battered down by weltschmerz and the half-life of
misattributed memory, but he had always loved Duran Duran in his odd and devout way,
which had always given her stability even if it didn’t solve her mom’s absence. He made
sesame soba noodles, oishiitashi (smothered in shaved bonito and marin) and veggie
tempura every time she stopped by his lab unannounced, he let her name all the bonsai
trees in the house (Howling Wolf, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, JLK for John
Lee Hooker and BB for BB King) when she was a rebellious teenager going through her
Blues phase, her taught her how to trim their arboreal afros and talk to them one-by-one,
he spoke to her in his broken-down English on the English-speaking days (Tuesdays
and Thursdays) when she was a child, days that became part séance and part role-play,
he spent the whole day with her on each of her birthdays, always cooking her omelets
(with kewpie mayonnaise) in the morning and always serving her oreo cheesecake and
mochi for dessert. Kenji was stable and completely devoted to Duran Duran in his own
absent-minded way, he just spent the rest of his life inside his high-tech lair of cyborg
research, disappearing there until she stopped by for ocha or brought him a bunch of
DVD’s to watch. The only time Kenji left his lab was to see Duran Duran. He even
ordered his groceries online: soba noodles click, sesame oil click, Koala Yummies
double click. In his own, distant, always-in-the-lab-but-always-thinking-about-you kinda
way, he was part of her life, the best part, in fact. She knew—she’d always known—that
Kenji loved her, supported her in whatever she did, even in her obsessed project of pain,
since pain, all by itself, is always a university with its own core curriculum. Kenji came to
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every one of her movie premieres, always dressed in the same outfit: a blue cardigan,
Detroit Lions tie with dancing blue lions, a gift that Sasha had bought as a joke at a
Goodwill in Flint, a matching blue button down, gray pageboy hat (replacing his Run
DMC Bowler nightmare he used to wear up until the late 90’s when he accidentally left it
inside Yodobashi, on the camera floor), and some weird gold necklace only Jam-Master
J could have rocked (or understood). Kenji had his own shit going on—misery, robotic
obsession, abandonment issues—but he never let his own issues get in the way of his
commitment to Duran Duran. She was always around the corner of his mind.
And yet, there had always been something so tragic, so defeated and utterly
devastated about her dad, something that made her feel so angry about the world. It
used to break her up inside to see the sadness in her dad’s eyes welling up when she
used to talk to him on English-speaking days as a girl, on the anniversary of the day
Kenji and Sasha met in Tokyo, or also the day she was killed in Detroit—days that were
treated with as much reverence, nostalgia and loathing as Christmas day, where part of
the day was always spent burning plum incense and preparing rice for Sasha’s framed
picture on the altar and the other part was spent watching old black and white American
flicks on TV, dubbed into Tokyo Japanese, drinking girly. Melon-flavored sake (Duran
Duran’s choice) and eating sukiyaki, the glass noodles, tofu, egg and thin slices of meat
(for Kenji) sizzling in the air, the smells overpowering the gloom in room, dissolving the
pain and nostalgic in a way the TV couldn’t. The sadness she saw in her dad’s eyes
throughout the years just fucking killed her. Sometimes, it got so bad she just avoided
Kenji for whole weeks, pretending she was on location in some Thai village. Sometimes,
that was easy, especially if she really was on location in a Thai village or wherever.
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Other times, she didn’t have a good prefab excuse except that she couldn’t bear to touch
her dad’s broken glass all the time, it made her feel sad and wrathful about the world:
How could something so terrible happen to such a kind-hearted man? It really didn’t (still
doesn’t) make sense cosmologically. But every time she stopped by the house, Kenji
always made time for her, no matter what subproject he was working on inside the lab to
sublimate his grief, he always made time for his eccentric and beautiful daughter with the
crazy long legs and the freckle explosions on her cheeks, and this made her feel not only
grateful, but of course profoundly guilty for all the times she’d stayed away. The least
Kenji could do was give her a bunch of heart-thudding guilt trips to make her feel like shit,
wasn’t that part of the parental constitution? But that wasn’t how he rolled. Never was.
There were other things too—intense, but less devastating things—that really
fucked with Duran Duran, things that just came out of her mouth during the Decoring
session before she’d had a chance to filter them from The Juice. Why, for example had
she never had a real boyfriend before? What was wrong with her that she could get laid
whenever she wanted to—wasn’t that what actor trailers were for?—but she couldn’t
score a boyfriend to save her fucking life? It’s not like she was asking a lot: She liked
boys that were a little taller, a little more solid and just slightly more masculine than
Japanese boys but also sweeter, prettier and gentler than American boys. The rest of
the world was a raffle: Israeli boys were too cocky, Italian boys pretended they were
Trojan warriors in bed, both protectors and kidnappers of Helen, Russian boys treated
Japanese girls (actually, according to her Russian actor friend, all girls) like blow-up dolls
and a whole bunch of arty American types just wanted to talk about their gruff,
unaffectionate dads or curl up in a ball inside an empty bathtub singing Neutral Milk
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Hotel songs, maybe snort lines of snow until their mucus membranes exploded all over
the kitchen table.
There was one time though. Duran Duran had fallen fucking hard for Julien, a
French-Tunisian actor she’d met at a wrap party, a handsome (douchey), Sorbonne
dropout from Marseille with salt-and-pepper facial stubble, dark blond hair moussed into
various faux-hawks, making him look both punkish and metrosexual (2/2!). Julien liked
tight jersey sweaters, grey scarves (cultural clichés!), designer Levi’s jeans and
demolition oxfords. For a whole month, Duran Duran felt something tingle inside her
ventricles, the blood pulsing a strong drum’n’bass beat through the metaphorical hole in
her heart, ready to expand (detonate). Together, as two movie stars not totally
comfortable with stardom, they went out every night with the techies, got drunk on free
French champagne, courtesy of the production company that flowed like BP’s ejaculating
oil rig and took a taxi to Julien’s high-roller apartment in Ginza in the early morning, so
buzzed and bubbly and slight and free. But they never made it inside his apartment.
Instead, they suffocated each other with a million blistering kisses in the elevator, their
hands pulling at each other’s clothes, the buttons popping off like richocheted bullets in a
bad noir film, Julien hiking up her skirt, tearing Duran Duran’s flimsy panties off with one
hand and unzipping his fly with the other, taking her right there in the glass elevator with
the security cameras rolling. And in flashes, through the elevator window, Tokyo’s
cityscape looked like a blurry, electric carnival to her, so foreign in that state, so
breathtaking and so distant. Five times they went out together, five times Duran Duran
hoped to wake up inside his wrinkled bed, and five times they fucked in his Willy Wonka
glass elevator, their disheveled appearance, torn clothing and hobbling steps afterwards,
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making them look like they’d just defeated an army of dwarves. And yet after five times
of public sex and spontaneous Eros, they weren’t an actual item. Boyfriends—even
French ones—take their girlfriends to their apartment so they can record the smell of
their skin in their own sheets, they search for purple underwear with sparkly stars on the
waistband on top of the speakers, inhaling the moist fabric slowly, they wake up
completely emancipated of their loneliness, a soft, little hand held tightly to their bicep.
Sometimes, boyfriends even make grape jello for breakfast, a plate full of jiggly, sweet
love just for you, just when the sunlight is pouring in through the phyllo dough blinds like
melted butter. But that’s not how it turned out for her. A week later, after Duran Duran
had gone shopping for underwear and longer skirts in Harajuku, stopping by a toy store
in Ueno to buy two Snoopie stuffed animals, one for her to cuddle with at night and a
small one for Boots’s keychain, a little friend to follow him wherever he went telling him,
you’ve got spunk! You’ve got bluster!, Julien flew back to Paris sans adieu to promote
Meuf de calandre, a cheesy-ass flick he’d starred in the year before with Sophie
Marceau that had just premiered at Cannes, which never made it to the states because it
was too foreignfilmy (sucky) for American audiences used to slapstick comedy (car
explosions). Julien L’Asswhipe never made Duran
2
a single promise before he’d left,
never sent her a sloppy, drunk email from the beach, staying clear of all romantic
suggestibility as if the signs (or the early stages) of dating were taboo when not mutual.
She’d expected at least one I’m-high-on-coke text, a late-night booty call the next time
he was in town or a bouquet of wish-you-were-here-but-not-really orchids with a laser-
printed love note. But nanimo. Three months later, Duran Duran found out through the
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celebrity grapeline that Julien spent a chunky month
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in Southern France, having sex
with Sophie Marceau’s younger cousin, right on La Croisette before returning to Tokyo
where he proceeded to fuck a new Japanese groupie every day of the week, posting a
picture of each new conquest on his official fan site, Juju.com, in the nouvelle amie
section.
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When Duran Duran finally googled his website in her apartment, every page of
the website covered with photos of his brain-dead fuck friends, literally plastered with
skinny Tokyo bitches, most of them on a groupie high, Duran Duran screamed at the top
of her lungs, kicked her laptop off her desk and bawled, wiping her hands with her
sleeves, the PuHiRe flowing magically down her cheeks. She felt like her grief had
become her very own Pay-per-View movie, just for the world to watch, just at that
moment. In the distance, a Tokyo ambulance drove down the street suddenly, its siren
looping inside her head. Duran Duran stood up and looked through her window, the
bright lights of Shibuya glowing through the fog like a pachinko machine, millions of
people walking on invisible railings, their paths intersecting and collapsing on the Zebra
crossing. Then she noticed something strange down below: a middle-aged man in a
powder blue snowsuit in the middle of the summer, crossing the street, surrounded by
groups of femish rocker boys, Gothic Lolitas and Kurt Cobain wannabes. He looked so
odd and beautiful surrounded by so much costume, too old and too colorful to be walking
in Shibuya, but her heart seemed to fold in her long yellow and green tunic as she
watched him slowly cross the street, teenagers moving around him, giggling to
themselves. There was something slow and anachronistic about the man in the blue

187
A month and a half.
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Also check out: http://doucheyorientalists.com/Frenchies
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snowsuit that really hurt Duran Duran inside: His oblivion, his insulation, his
obsolescence. Finally, she called her dad on her cell phone and left a message because
he screens his calls. Then she left her apartment, walked through the Zebra crossing,
looked for the man in the blue suit (he’d disappeared) and took the subway to Akihabara
to buy a new computer. Besides watching porn, a new laptop was the only way she was
going to forget about Julien. It’s sad, pathetic really, but Julien was the cloest thing
Duran Duran had ever had to a boyfriend. And he was barely a fling, barely a rental and
barely a scar.
Besides Julien, Duran Duran explained, she was basically a make-out whore:
three thimbles of sake and she was unlocked. Sure, she’d made out with a few girls
(wish I coulda seen that shit) and a bunch of prettyboy cynics, chic-looking extras or
hipsters (same thing) at bars in East Village, Shibuya, WeHo, Mitte, or on set, usually as
Johnny Sugoi screamed cutto! at the top of his lungs. Duran Duran had sex a couple
times between shoots in her Road Wrangler: After all, it came with a king-sized bed, tiny
Japanese tub, state-of-the-art blender for making smoothies, fully loaded minibar
restacked with mineral water and a fridge crammed with a million pre-made salads, tofu
dishes, fruit salads and samosas. Someone should be making out, why not her? She’d
insisted. But those were just hookups, she explained to the Juice, the things you do
when your mind needs to remember what your body already knows. And yet through all
of her dysfunctional romance, Duran Duran felt more and more unspecial, more and
more like the Tokyo bitches on Julien’s webpage: Hopelessly pretty, clingy and woefully
normal, not to mention skinny and replaceable. The only difference was that she was
accidentally famous and strange and they wore PuHiRe to look like her, sometimes,
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even painting on her freckles with melted chocolate. Duran Duran suffered as much as
they did, probably more because boys didn’t hit on her unless they were drunk. It was
too much of a mind fuck otherwise. Duran Duran got lots of attention, but it was the
wrong kind of attention, the attention you wish you could translate into something
beautiful.
Finally, Duran Duran explained, there was the pain of her stardom, a detail she
hates complaining about because its sounds so fucking conceited. But it was true:
Duran Duran hated her celebrity almost as much as she hated the man that killed her
mom, but that’s another story. There were all the obvious problems with fame: So much
money, so much free coke and weed and speed and catered food and five-star hotels
with handsome, impeccably dressed concierges that seem to know everything, even
what you want to eat at four in the morning and these things fucked with her
understanding of reality and of her self until nothing made any sense unless it was
glowing on the silver screen with a soundtrack pushing the plot forward. In Duran
Duran’s profession, there were so many beautiful, always-on-a-diet actors, many of them,
vapid dilletantes renting their body out like storage space to directors, so many actors
who didn’t listen to a fucking word you said but wanted you to watch everything they did,
all the time, even when it was just rescuing burnt grilled cheese sandwiches from the
stovetop. But egocentric, starving thespians were the obvious problems of the industry.
The real problem with being famous, especially in Japan, was that everything was a
performance (or a snapshot), so there were no boundaries between public and private
space. In this way, Hollywood and Tokyo were monozygotic twins of the hyperreal: The
fake becomes the real, the real becomes the fake. Also, in America, the paparazzi
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ignored people’s space to score the perfect headline photo, but they still knew they’d
crossed a boundary—it was all part of a calculated risk. But in Japan, fans and
magazine photographers didn’t see the boundary at all because private space was
public domain. Duran Duran used to get groped so much on the Odakyū and Inokashira
lines by chikan (mostly by middle-aged guys with major Lolita fantasies and RPG
fanatics searching for Final Fantasy characters like Tifa or Yuna in the real world) that
she had to start wearing antique sunglasses with rhinestones on the temples and an old
Yokohama Bay Stars baseball cap until even that disguise got figured out by an
computer science grad student at Waseda university, a complete and total otaku who
specialized in body metric analysis software that could successfully identify any person
in its database just on body and hat type, lipstick color and the arm-leg-waist ratio with
98% accuracy. The next day, Duran Duran bought her fedora and changed her lipstick.
The only time Duran Duran had space to herself anymore was at her two-bedroom
apartment in Shibuya, and she felt like she was never there. The truth is, if Duran Duran
had something to go home to, it woud change her life forever. But the years passed
quickly like a jammed time machine with a stuck fast-forward button, and it was bumming
her out. She was starting to hate her life, which made her think about all sorts of things,
crazy things, fucked-up things, impossible things, like moving to Rome and committing
suicide on almond gelati, flying to Mexico City and getting facial deconstructive surgery
so no one would recognize her anymore like Jennifer Grey (time to put baby in the
corner, bitch!), paying a thousand male prostitutes to lavish her with attention inside a
dark gymnasium where she could smoke a burrito-sized blunt and then lose herself to a
thousand soft hands playing piano on every inch of her body, she’d fantasized about
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getting katana blades surgically implanted into her forearms that slid in and out of her
veins like retractable erasers to fight corrupt politicians and serial rapists, or a reloadable
missile launcher skinweaved into her back that was operated by three universal control
butons grafted in her fingertips to duel with polluting corporations and crime lords. She
could steal a massive brick of heroin from a trigger-happy yakuza boss and kill herself by
injection during Armageddon, just as Tokyo was on fire, a majestic cityscape of
napalmed avenues and imploding billboards, the kanji glowing like neon flashcards in a
demonic city.
Yo, the Juice told her to tell him everything, and that’s exactly what she did. Now,
inside the make-up trailer, as Duran Duran was scrutinizing herself in the make-up mirror
again, Billy Sugoi ran inside with a freshly-lit cigarette pointing directly at Duran Duran’s
face, the smoke forming puffy loops around his face. —Okay, superstar, let’s dance!
We have a lot to make up.
—Wakattayo, she said, nodding.
—See you in the jungle, saucer eyes.
—Snazzy, she said, taking a sip of apple juice from her Hello Kitty water bottle,
just as her stylist was doing the finishing touches with her PuHiRe.
More and more, Duran Duran thought about killing herself (first out of curiosity,
then morbid fascination and recently, intermittent obsession) and it had everything to do
with feeling both unlovable and undatable on one hand, and also having everything she
could ever possibly want in her life, on the other. Everything except love, which was a
perfectly good reason to stay alive. Only the thought of her otōsan stopped her. The
day Kenji died, she would cram a hundred Vicadine down her throat and squeeze a little
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box of strawberry-flavored soy milk into her mouth through a crooked straw and then
wrap herself in a soft, thick cashmere throw, climb up on her balcony overlooking the
funky streets of Shibuya and jump, letting the whole world defrost into a puddle of
sounds.

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4.16: Lunch with Buffy

Six months later, Duran Duran was waiting for Kenji on a park bench, dressed in
a slinky yellow cardigan vest, a new, gray, pin-striped fedora, crayola jelly bracelets
slinking up her wrists, turquoise miniskirt and new 70’s porn star sunglasses—she
looked strange and luminous, so colorful but so invisible in Harajuku with her beautifully
mutant legs, bony-wedge elbows and scatter-shot freckles. Duran Duran sipped from
her water bottle, drinking a sort of Arnold Palmer (Dream of the Apple Tree Organic
Apple Juice© mixed with her favorite tea, Fast Times iced oolong that was sweet and
sludgey) as she fiddled with her cellphone, erasing text messages by scores, most of
them sent by bigtime American directors specializing in action flicks that involved several
past-their-prime white actors, a bunch of car explosions and a minority typecast, no
doubt in a supporting role involving kung fu (not karate), continuous cleavage (which she
didn’t have) and a thick, comic-relief accent that belonged in racist shit like Dr. No.
Duran Duran wasn’t interested in being anyone’s bitch, least of all, Hollywood’s. And
though she didn’t necessarily object to the positive stereotype of ass-kicking Asian
chicks, she hated the sex kitten/dragon lady pigeonhole, not to mention she didn’t need
the cash and wasn’t looking for another gig. Besides, she felt burnt out by the bright
lights and was still kinda dismayed that Julien turned out to be such an asshole. Only
spending time with Kenji and Boots meant anything to her right now.
When Kenji arrived, he was carrying two huge Bento boxes (one with teriyaki tofu
erasers, sea vegetable salad, a sliced, deconstructed seitan katsu patty, brown rice and
pickled root vegetables and another one with roasted salmon, white rice, thin sashimi
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slices of toro, hamachi, Ika, a bouquet of gari ginger and a little volcano of tsukemono
vegetables). Inside Kenji’s backpack was also a big bottle of Fast Times Oolong tea,
which he brought because he knew how crazy his daughter was for that shit. Duran
Duran had just finished erasing 213 email messages using just her thumb, and had just
sent an email to Joss Whedon, asking him for time to think over his proposal to cast her
as Echo in a future TV series about memory implants and identity. The truth is, she
didn’t know whether she’d even be alive when filming started. Still, she didn’t—
couldn’t—close that door because she loved his work so much: All of his protagonists
were beautiful, smart, spunky, ass-kicking chicks in charge of their own bizzare destinies.
Duran Duran saw her dad struggling and grabbed the bento boxes from his hands,
placed them on the bench, gave Kenji a big hug, slipped her cell phone into her vest
pocket and grabbed his hand and sat down on the bench, halfway between the musky,
cat-in-heat shade, the soda-stained bike path and the high school musical taking place
on top of the hill.

Duran Duran scratched her nose with the back of her hand and then scooped up brown
rice into her mouth with her chopsticks. —So guess what, otōchan?
—Nani?
—The director of Buffy just asked me to be in one of his next projects.
—Buffy?
—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she said, nibbling on a pickled root vegetable.
—
—I gave you the boxset years ago.
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—Oh yeah, I remember. Cool show.
—You watched it?
—Of course. I watched the first three seasons in one weekend. It inspired me
when I was searching for ways to modify the PAM.
—PAM?
—Personality Algorithmic Microprocessor.
—Snazzy.
—That show deserved more than three Emmys.
—Totally. Wait, how do you know that?
—I have to do something to pass the time in the lab when I’m not working.
—Anyway, I told him I needed more time.
—Why? You’re not doign anyhtoung aniymo, he said, his mouth full of roasted
salmon.
—
—What? He asked, swallowing.
—I’m taking an extended vacation, mister. Thinking about going to Paris. Or
Rome. Or New York.
—A vaction from what? Isn’t the movie done?
—From myself.
Kenji nodded and took a sip of tea from his paper cup. —Okay. I get it. Just
promise to come back.
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When he said that, she felt enormous guilt about the dark, blood-sucking
thoughts inside her head, most of which she had never pierced with a wooden stake
before.

After they’d finished off the bottle of Fast Times tea, Duran Duran pulled out a bar of
dark chocolate from her purse. It had freeze-dried orange shavings in it (her favorite).
She broke it into pieces and then broke those pieces into more pieces, holding out the
foil wrapper to her dad like the United Way logo.
—Sweets, Otōchan?
He smiled. —It’s like your very own continental drift, but with chocolate.
—I will name it: Edible geology.
Kenji laughed. —You’re definitely my daughter, he said, examining the fragrant
pieces of chocolate. Hmm, let’s see . . . I think I’ll take North America.
—Of course.
—You?
—I’m gonna go for Europe, she said, plucking a long, jagged piece with her
thumb and index finger.
As the chocolate began melting in their mouths, they looked around Yoyogi Park:
A group of old women were practicing Tai Chi, their bodies lithe and synchronized like
reflected water. On the other side of the green, a group of punks were dancing and lip-
synching to a Billy Idol song, complete with studded-bracelet-fist-pumping and lip-sneer.
A few 甘ロリ(Sweet Lolitas) dressed in pink Edwardian dresses and white knee-highs
and visual kei rockers were having a pic-nic, some of them making out underneath pink,
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ruffled parasols. Nearby, three men dressed up as clowns were performing a routine
that involved unicycles and a rainbow of tied-together handkerchiefs. A colony of
teenagers were sprinkled all over the grass, talking on their cellphones, holding clammy
hands under trees, rehearsing for Hair, smoking Hope cigarettes and laughing. Far in
the distance, Duran Duran could see the wooden torii of the Meiji Shrine, one of her
mom’s favorite landmarks (or so her dad used to tell her).
—Otōchan, Duran Duran said, pointing to the other side of the park, —You know,
we should go to Meiji Shrine sometime. We never go there.
Kenji nodded.
—I understand why we don’t, but it would still be nice sometime.
—Maybe someday, Duran Duran. I guess we can’t avoid that place forever.
She turned to him. —Do you still miss her?
—All the time.
She nodded. —Lately, I’ve been thinking about her all the time. I mean, more
than normal. Sometimes I feel like she keeps popping up.
—I know that feeling.
—Usually, it conforts me. But recently, it’s been bumming me out.
Kenji nods, sucking on the chocolate.
—How do you deal with the pain?
—I don’t know. I’ve never been good with that.
—Does it ever get better?
—Honestly, no. You can’t fill that hole.
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—God, what a drag, she said, biting her lips and shaking her head. —And here I
was hoping you had words of wisdom to help me deal with the pain.
—Duran Duran, the pain never goes away. Ever.
She gulped.
—But you get stronger. Or you die from the grief.
Duran Duran’s eyes welled up. She turned away, traced her eyelashes with her
fingertips, wiped her cheeks with her wrists, and then put her sunglasses back on.
—I guess the thing I try to remind myself, he said, grabbing for chocolate
Antarctica, —is that my suffering is also a celebration of my love for her. Everytime I
cry—
—Nani? I never see you cry.
—Well, he said, breaking Antarctica into two pieces and sliding one in his mouth,
—you know I don’t like showing my emotions. But when I cry, sometimes, I get this
comforting thought: Crying is a type of jubilation.
She was surpised. She’d never heard Kenji say anything like that before. Finally,
she asksed: —But is showing sadness the same thing as showing love?
—I don’t know, Duran Duran. I’m not a psychoanalyst. And there’s a lot sadness
that has nothing to do with love, but the sadness I feel when I think of her, the sadness I
see in you sometimes, it’s different. It’s the sadness that comes from loving a memory,
not losing one.
—The sadness of empty spaces.
—Yeah, pretty much.
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—Huh. She paused. —You know, for years, I never thought about her—typical
teenager, I guess.
He chuckled, putting the rest of the continent into this mouth.
—And when I did think about her, it didn’t hurt. She was my beautiful mom—an
idyllic, almost mythical character in someone else’s world. But recently, she’s been on
my mind all the time. Sometimes I dream about her and we’re doing the breast stroke
together in the sky like two baby clouds, or I see her in real life drinking boba tea at a
Ebisu café or I catch a glimpse of her in the first class section of the airplane, listening to
her iPod, or I think I hear her singing anime theme songs at a karaoke bar when I walk
around at night.
—You have a good memory.
—And I remember every single story like they were my own memories.
—So, what’s the problem? He asked, handing her a napkin.
She wiped her mouth and nodded. —I feel like all I have are stories, she said,
wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, —And my sadness has something to do
with mom, she said, sticking chocolate South America into the back of her mouth, —I
always understood why you missed her—I mean, you knew her so well—but to me,
she’s always been a ghost, or a story, ever since I was a teenager. And how do you
miss a ghost? How do you love the absence of someone? How do you miss someone
you don’t even know? How do you love someone who’s frozen in time?
—I dunno, he said, rubbing her head with his hand, —but ever since I’ve known
you, you’ve loved her in this beautiful and tragic way.
—
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—When you were little, you would talk to her picture at the altar and say:
Mom, I miss you when you’re not here, you know that?
—God, I don’t remember that.
—You were just a little sparrow.
—The thing I remember most are my dreams. Mom used to visit me when I slept,
especially when I cried in bed.
—Which was all the time, he said, a hint of a smile in his cheeks.
—I’m a crybaby! she said, raising her arms in the air, —So what?
—
—One thing I do remember, though: In my dreams, mom used to rub my
forehead and kiss my temples.
—She was protecting you.
—Yeah, maybe, she said, pulling her knees to her chin and buckling her arms
around her legs.
—Besides, your mom did the same thing when you were a baby, but in real life.
She nodded.
—It used to make you smile in your crib.
—You know, it’s weird: The only proof I have that she was even alive is through
your pictures and stories. Without those, I’d have nothing. And I don’t even know what
her voice sounds like except for that tape you guys made that one time when you got
really high and recorded yourselves talking about Abbie Hoffman and Reaganomics and
David Bowie and UFO’s and Five Alive, whatever that was.
—It was this terrible juice they used to sell in the States.
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—Oh, really?
—It was awful, he said, sticking out his tongue.
—I also remember you blabbing about this dystopic manga you loved. What was
it called?
—The Year of the Laserblade Warriors!
—Yeah, that, and mom was going on and on about not being hentai, and how
she didn’t want to go back to Detroit ever and then at some point, I think you were
playing the bongos and mom started singing a Men At Work song and you were
whistling and clapping and beating a snaredrum—
—Tea tin.
—With drumsticks.
—Hashi.
—And mom was talking about how she never wanted to speak English again,
how she found the language suffocating and ambiguous and brutal and inelegant.
—How is it you remember all those things but you don’t remember mom’s face?
—Because I listened to that tape like a million times as a teenager.
—How in the world . . .
—Yeah, she said, smiling, I used to steal it from your safe and then return it
before you got home.
—How did you figure out the combination?
—You might be a genius otōchan, but you’re not very original: Mom’s birthdate?
Come on!
—How did I never know this? He asked, sighing.
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—Because I’m stealthy. You taught me that too, by the way.
—I can’t believe it, he said, wiping the corners of his mouth with his hand, —
please tell me you didn’t snoop around there.
Duran Duran spotted a Japanese Wagtail near the pond, hopping on pebbles: it’s
fluffy white chest feathers looked like cotton, the black and white plumage on the face
like an aerobics headband. The tiny bird hopped onto a large rock and looked up, so
solitary and beautiful, a sentinel for the crumbling world. —Don’t worry, I didn’t notice the
other stuff, like your Star Trek porn.
Kenji ‘s eyes overflowed with the panic like he was choking on a fish bone.
—All I cared about was the tape with mom’s handwriting in flowing, connected
katakana. That’s all I cared about.
Kenji cleared his throat. —Phew, he said, pausing. —I guess that’s all you should
care about.
Duran Duran leaned her head on her dad’s shoulder, and then she started to cry
softly. And though Kenji didn’t like showing his emotions, especially in public, he
swallowed his own embarrassment and held Duran Duran in his arms just as he used to
hold her mother, Duran Duran’s body suddenly going limp, trembling like a pot of
Azaleas caught in the middle of a violent storm. Kenji rubbed her head as she wept,
giving her the space to grieve for both of them. When she finally stopped, Duran Duran
wiped her eyes and apologized. Kenji shook his head and handed her a tissue. She put
her sunglasses back on and then looked for the Japanese Wagtail but she’d flown away
somewhere. No one understood the expanding hole in Duran Duran’s heart better than
her dad did. The same monster of blood and iron was inside him too, slowly sucking the
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breath out of his lungs, leaving puncture wounds in his spirit where its dirty claws used to
be.

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4.17: 30-Day Seppuku + the Paintbrush in the Sky

What Duran Duran didn’t (couldn’t) tell Kenji the last time they ate lunch together
in Yoyogi park is that she was thinking about killing herself on the anniversary of Sasha’s
death for the simple reason that death would be the mutilation of her own sadness, a
contagious, superviral sadness that obviously had no cure in her family, a supervirus she
couldn’t slay but tomorrow she would shed, not only replacing the lead in her veins with
the purest morphine of the afterlife, but also transporting her to her smart, spunky and
pretty white okāsan, a woman who was blurry around the edges like every half-though
out fantasy. And part of Duran Duran’s desire to be reunited with her mom had to do
with her own furious vengeance with the cold, greedy, selfish, violent, ugly, malformed
world she lived in, a world that brought the AUM cult, tsunamis and gangbangers, all of
whom had successfully fucked up her life in Japan, kidnapping her mom like a goddamn
80’s Persephone, her mom, her beautiful and spunky mom, a woman who was planning
on spending the rest of her life in Nippon with Kenji and her daughter with the mutant
long legs after the Tokyo lights had set her American heart on fire like an atom bomb.
Life is pain, Duran Duran thought, everybody knows that, especially teenage girls looking
at themselves in the mirror, especially Japanese girls, each one, trapped in her own little
municipality of time, a bubble of evaporating space that shrinks with every male gaze
slitting through her clothes and each boy yanking a petal from her celestial rose. When
she died, Duran Duran’s body would be a tree of cosmic salvation, sprouting forth new
buds, shedding dead leaves, naked to the winter chill and buried in a cemetery of
crystalline snow, and death, no matter when it happened, would be eternal sleep, so why
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not accelerate her own salvation, end the pain and reconnect to her lost world right now?
She had nothing to live for except her dad and he could survive the coming of the
antichrist, a wave of nuclear warheads obliterating Tokyo’s synthetic Eden on earth or
even a seven-continent domino line of tsunamis. That dude was a survivor. Someday,
he was going to finish recreating a complex, charming and sexy prototype of her mom
translated in androidic form and then Kenji wouldn’t need Duran Duran at all. She was
absolutely (mostly) sure of it.
Granted, she did find some of the practices of the Dream of The Apple Tree
kinda fucking lame. For example, she’d already used speed as a teenager and vowed
never to touch the stuff again and therefore, couldn’t see how white crystals could lead
her, or anyone else, to nirvana, more like the Land of Picked Scabs. Also, she refused
to sleep with The Juice: he had creepy and intense eyes and smelled permanently of
stale skin and applesauce, reminding her of hospital food. But the DoRiKi—like so many
other cults, new-age fads and mythologies—made so much sense, even if it wasn’t
fucking true at all. And when you felt raw, miserably alone, and glossed over by the
whole universe, a coherent cosmology (even a fake-ass one) was always better than the
nothingness of a lonely bed.
The idea of flash suicide in particular, especially with a group of burnt-out 20-
somethings, appealed to Duran Duran, for some reason: The spontaneous annihilation,
the instant and pure twirl of fate brought on impulse, the sudden passing into the
dreamworld of eternity, the painless infinity of her spirit, soaring, dancing on the galactic
dancefloor—what’s not to love about that shit? She’d disappear from the face of the
earth ahead of schedule, grief-stricken but never alone. And if she were alone, she
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wouldn’t fucking care. She’d be dead, motherfuckers. Instead of waiting to die like
everyone else, she would control her destiny and avoid becoming another celebrity
tragedy. In fact, being a movie star, her death would inspire and perpetuate her
mythology, not detract from it. If only she cared about that shit.
After the Juice realized he had missed the perfect day—numerologically,
speaking— for the Dream of the Apple Tree cult to commit suicide on an epic scale (May
9
th
2008),
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the rules of suicide for DoRiKi changed from mass suicide to flash suicide.
Now, members of the Dream of the Apple Tree cult were encouraged to prolong their
lives to imitate sleep or to spend time together with other “accelerators” so that the
instant they decided to kill themselves, they could do so on the spot without explanation
or last notes. Flash suicide allowed them to be existential slaves to their own psychic
impulses. Death without premeditation or living wills was better anyways—it always left
an element of mystique. Nucleic sadness and suffering were banal, escapism was a
value-judgment, protecting one’s honor was culturally cliché in Japan, being nekura
predictable, and heartache, too romantic and sentimental. But spontaneous group flash
suicide—now that was something to make a video clip about, something even a theory-
spewing cinephile could applaud, so damn wide-screen and stunning, visually speaking,
it was fucking grotesque.
As required of all DoRiKi members contemplating suicide, Duran Duran began
her month-long juice fast drinking nothing but Dream of the Apple Tree Organic Apple

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Calculated in the following way where A=1, B=2, etc., etc: DREAM = 41 (4 + 18 + 5 +1 + 13),
41 can be broken down into 4 + 1= 5 (May) + OF = 21 (15 + 6) = 2 +1 = 3 + THE = 33 (20 + 8 +
5) = 3 + 3 = 6  3 + 6 = 9 (May 9th) + APPLETREE = 98 (1 +16 +16 + 12 + 5 + 20 +18 + 5 + 5)
= 17, 17 = 1 + 7 = 8 (May 9th 2008)

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Juice© and some tapioca. After a week of battling starvation, blurred vision and
occasional dizziness, her body calmed down and she felt light, soft and fresh like a
spring mist. Duran Duran skipped most of the meditation sessions at the Orchard,
electing to watch teen romance flicks (which made her cry), meditate on her balcony,
take long baths or do yoga in Nabeshime Shoto Park. She was feeling light, erratic and
limber like a kite dancing in a violent storm. One day, she met Boots for bobba tea in
Kanda where he told her she was acting like a chipmunk high on crystal meth, which
made her snort through her nose and choke on tiny sea mines of tapioca, and then the
next day, she stopped by the house to watch season 3 of Buffy with Kenji where he told
her she looked too skinny to be anything but a work of art, like a paintbrush coloring the
sky. It was her favorite analogy of all time. By the third week, though, she was starting
to feel restless and a little weak, alternating between moments of pure tranquility and
sudden nausea. The day she boarded The Juice’s G-Force airplane with some of her
DoRiKi friends (each of them carrying a crate of Dream of the Apple Tree Organic Apple
Juice© in their wobbly little arms), she didn’t have the heart to call her dad from the cabin
and tell him she was going to America, a tiny detail that filled her bloated heart with
enormous guilt and adrenalin.

Inside the The Juice’s luxurious airplane (known as AP1 or Ju-Ichi or Ju-1), Duran Duran
chatted nervously with other members of the Dream of the Apple Tree aboard AP1, all of
them, preparing for suicide missions. Unlike Duran Duran, most of them were all
accelerators, but everyone was dressed in official Pierre Mistumoto Cardinal robes.
Some of them were weak and sickly, barely able to keep their heads up from fatigue and
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anorexia. Others stood up, drunk on life, dancing to their very own Blind Melon inside
their head. Some of them were tweaked out on shabu, superemaciated, bothered and
twitchy, scabs covering their lips and face like the make-up in Thriller. Duran Duran was
having second thoughts, but like her nausea, she knew they would pass.
A femish Asian boy with a perfectly drawn jawline, sandy blond hair covering his
eyes and expertly-applied mascara turned to Duran Duran and smiled. —Gawd, The
Juice told us not to botha you, but yo’is the most beautiful gurl I’ve evuh seen, he said
with a strong Okinawan drawl that sounded almost Cajun, —I’m like, yo’ biggest fan.
Duran Duran lowered her head. —Domo. Has anyone ever told you you have a
Cajun accent?
—Just Cajun people.
—
—Do yo’ know how many times I sah Robot Love and Adrogynous Switchblade?
I even ren-ned RIngu, just to see ifiz was true what they say about yo’creeping through
the television set dawn the credits.
—If they’d let me do that, I would have dragged the audience back with me. You
know, throw a little par-tee
—Robot Love got me through fo’years of science exams at Cohnell and a
naaasty breakup with my on-again-off-again boafriend of seven yeas with a Joe-juh
cowboy who had a lisp and limp and a little red house. Seven yeas! Can you imagine
snapping the same boy for seven long yeas?
—No, but I’d like to.
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—Trust me, yo’ don’t, ‘specially in a little red schoolhouse. I mean, it wasn’t all
bad, but I missed out onalot. For example: beds.
—God, I know exactly what you mean, she said, nodding her head, —and yet,
I’ve been single for my entire adult life and I promise you: You haven’t missed a thing.
Most people would love to get their cuddling on in a red schoolhouse.
He raised his eyebrows.
—Okay, maybe just me, she said sighing,—but a bed sucks too when you have it
all to yourself.
—Damn gurl, you’is hotter than a Korean Bahbacue, he said, shaking his head,
—Look at dem legs underneath dat robe.
Duran Duran laughs, playing with her jelly bracelets.
—So, you gonna do this thing? You really gonna fall?
—Dunno, she hesitated, spinning her blue bracelet around her wrist.
—Gurl, why you heah anyway? Yo got enough cash to kill yo’self, freeze yo’brain
and then come back again even hotta the second time.
She shrugged. —I know. But the idea of controlling my destiny and seeing my
okāsan appeals to me. And there’s probably worse things than being a happy ghost.
—If I had your beauty, I’d just start my life over again once every five years in a
different city.
—Are you kidding? You’re the prettiest boy I’ve seen in years.
—Yo’s gonna make me straight if you keep saying dat.
—I dunno. Maybe we’re both stupid for joining this.
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They both laughed. A few dizzy acclerators looked their way, then turned their
heads back to watch a DoRiKi propaganda anime playing on large cabin movie screen
with flute music playing in the background. When Duran Duran glanced, she saw
cartoons of red apples slowly falling from a golden apple tree with chakras lined up trunk,
the ripe, dancing fruit leaping into a spiraling cosmos below. She found the video
disturbing.
She turned her head back. —It’s just the pain that brings be back here, she said.
—Yo’gotit bad? He asked.
—I haven’t slept well in a month, can’t stop crying, especially when I remember
my dreams or watch dumb romance flicks where the cool guy falls in love with the nerdy
girl. Worse, I’ve been missing my mom like crazy recently and I didn’t even know her. If
it wasn’t for my chichi, I would have killed myself a long time ago—it’s the fastest way to
my haha.
—I’ve seen pickchas of yo’daddy in the newspapers. He looks so cute in his
cahdigan and hat.
—I know, right? It just kills me when he wears that outfit. I love him in blue, she
said, sadness leaking into her heart.
—Dang gurl, yo’ duhm. If I eveh used the word love in my sentences or if my
daddy loved me the way yo’s does—
—You just said love twice.
He put his hand up. —I sure as hell wouldn’t be in this damn cult.
—You think this is a cult? she asked, leaning towards him and whispering.
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Suddenly, the other members stopped talking and looked at them, following the
Juice’s orders.
The boy with the sand-colored hair and the perfect mascara looked around and
shouted: —Ya’ll need something? A smack in yo’head, maybe? The cabin was
completely silent. —Anyway, he said, turning back to her, —in answer to yo’question:
Uh huh. The Juice is just another lazy, duhtty old man who smells bad and has visions,
most of them, involving pretty young thangs bouncing up and down on his lap.
—I’m so glad you said that, she said leaning in and talking in a quickfire whisper,
—I’ve almost felt bad that I don’t buy he’s divine—
—Only thing divine about The Juice is his heavenly appetite.
They both giggled.
—And have you noticed his smell? It’s gross.
—Like a musty yakitori.
—Exactly!
They paused, looked around the cabin (the DoRiKi propaganda video was
replaying), then they turned toward each other again.
—You know, she said, I’ve been feeling kinda. . . you know, guilty. . . about being
in this club too, like I’m not fucked up enough to belong here and not fucked enough to
quit either.
—Yo’not.
—You either.
—Shah.
—Seriously, what are we doing? She asked, touching his arm.
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—Oh gawd, yo’is touching me. I’m gonna faint.
—Gomen, ne, she said, retracting her hand.
—Don’t be, you jez made my day, he said, wiping his hair across his forehead
and out of his eyes.
—So what’s your name?
—Randy. Randy Cables.
—What an amazing name.
—Thanks. I made it up one day in the emergency room.
—Why does that name sound familiar?
—I’m only the most famous gay J-pop singuh in the whole wurl. If you’d spent
more time in Ni-Chome, you’d know how large my kingdom is.
—And you wanna die? I bet the boys just line up for you, she said pointing.
—Look who’s talking, Miss Legs.
She ingnored his comment. —I wonder what my chichi is doing right now? she
said, fiddling with her jelly bracelets again, —probably tweaking his “wünderdroid.”
—You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you?
—Of course. Lotta guilt too.
—That’s nohmal. You feel like you’re betraying evuhyone,’specially those you
love.
—Exactly!
—But what if your life is the betrayal?
—I dunno. Then change it, I guess.
—Easiuh said than done.
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—I know, she said, nodding, —I’m a big fucking hypocrite. Sometimes the pain
gets so bad, you’ll do anything to end it.
—That’s it.
—But, on a good day, I don’t need DoRiKi. I don’t need anything except mango
sunshine, the smell of a boy on my sheets, eating bento boxes with my otōchan at the
park, a pomegranate smoothie, buying gothic maid dresses on Takeshita Street and a
nice hot bath.
—Sounds like a puhfect day.
—I know, right? What’s wrong with me?
—Nuthin. Yo’jez feel bad.
—Only secretly.
—
—On a bad day, I can’t stay away from this place. It’s like a support group for
the cosmically-challenged.
—Gurl, yo’is too spunky to die.
—You too.
—But then again, beautiful people kill themselves fo’the silliest reasons, mostly
cuz they don’t know how beautiful they is.
Duran Duran looked into his eyes and smiled. She felt an intense and sudden
affection for Randy Cables.
And that’s when the Juice appeared from his private bedroom with two female
novitiates, their robes disheveled, their lipstick smeared on their cheeks like Robert
Smith cosplayers, their hair resembling pointy tropical fruit. —Okay, everyone, the Juice
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said with sleepy eyes, it’s time to begin our special exit training before you make your
final descent into the great galactic ohhhhhh. Let’s begin with a cycle of chants and then
I’ll begin today’s lecture.

The chanting was effective enough, calming Duran Duran down a bit, but the so-called
lecture was a joke really. The Juice pretty much rambled on and on about the
importance of clean hands at the moment of death, how unique and semiotically packed
the lines on people’s hands were, virtually identical to the universal grammar encoded in
the human brain or the historiography of tree rings. He made a big stink about how
dangerous harsh, chemical soaps were to the epidermis, how the Bad Apple list has
quadrupled since the advent of smartphones and that novitiates were strongly
encouraged to achieve sexual om with him prior to great galactic ohhhhh. Rand Cables
and her exchanged looks of disgust. Once The Juice retired to his bedroom with two
lesbian members of the Dream of the Apple Tree, everyone else sat around, taking naps,
listening to music on their iPods, sipping apple juice or listening to Vangelis music on the
cabin stereo. For a group of beautiful, drug-addicted cult members ready to kill
themselves, they were amazingly nonchalant about everything.

When they finally arrived at Times Square, their bodies limp and light and free, Duran
Duran and the rest of the members were starstruck. Maybe it was the liquid serenity
flowing through their hearts from a never-ending juice fast, the funnel vision of life before
death and the sixteen hours of travel that felt like a dream, or the astonishing glow of the
neon signs and 40-story billboards advertising perfume, cable shows, clothing, pop,
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kicks, albums, movie premiers, musicals, running gear and disturbingly anthropomorphic
cartoon characters. Maybe it was the naked cowgirl, strumming her acoustic guitar to a
group of seedy teenagers that howled everytime she hit a power chord (exposing a large
tittie, the nipple covered with a X of two strips of blue painter’s tape), and maybe it was
the absence of the steaming ramen bowl, a unique and concrete memory that Duran
Duran had from her visit to Times Square as a little girl, a memory that was comforting
and magical and exciting for her because it connected her imagination to her life (there
was such a thing as a life-size instant cup of soup, she hadn’t made it up, and you could
swim in its broth if only you could find a way up there), the massive cup of instant soup
was an iconic point of reference in New York, a magical childhood memory that brought
her and Keji together, made them partners in crime as they stayed at a fancy hotel in
Midtown and ate lots of sugared peanuts and knishes and hotdogs layered in rows of
lime-colored relish and went shopping in the East Village for t-shirts and vinyl, that giant
steaming cup of instant ramen she’d oggled at in Times Square as a girl, pointing and
screaming, it was the very opposite of her childish world in Japan of tiny objects,
miniature ramen erasers, tiny bears holding books of Baby’s First Kanji, the beginner’s
hashi set Kenji bought her until she was a teenager, that big-ass cup-of-instant-soup
was one of her fondest memories of New York, actually, and now, just like her childhood
memory and her hope for love as a disenchanted actress, that icon, that memory, that
moment disppeared, irretrievable and unacknowledged, replaced by other billboards
and neon signs that contained no history, no connection to her translated memory, no
comforting flight of imagination. Whatever the explanation, no one except Duran Duran
probably cared anyway, the group of DoRiKi followers becoming a giant diversion,
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crossing the streets in three wobbly rows, wearing their expensive, Cardinal red robes,
holding hands like the villagers of Who-Ville who were celebrating another Christmas
without gifts.

The next day, Duran Duran was back in Tokyo, taking the Marunōchi subway back to her
apartment, ready to die. It scared and delighted her: tomorrow was going to be her last
day on earth. In twenty-four hours, she would disappear from the world, her face
haunting the stills of her life story like the invisible Masami. Tomorrow, Duran Duran
would become pure energy, pure light, pure raw spirit. She would rip off the manacles of
her depression like Houdini escaping his suspended straightjacket. And all of the
suffering and shit and indomitable grief and anger bubbling over like a rolling boil, all of
the pent-up, unconjugated sexual energy bottlenecking inside her, all of the bloodshed
and disease and decay and horror taking place in this vengeful world that is so addicted
to war and the bad company she keeps, all of the spectral melancholy caressing Duran
Duran’s body at night, all of that shit and piss and denial and resentment and normative
insanity would disappear tomorrow, evaporating like the cells in her body. Duran Duran
would be become the ultimate escape artist for once. Tomorrow, she would become
effervescent, a million small air bubbles of DNA, the tiny, dancing helixes popping one at
a time like soapy bubbles until there was nothing left of her except the craters of a dead
star and the tone scales of her soul playing throughout the cosmos.

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4.18: Love Beepers

The story I’ve heard over and over again from Duran Duran is that it was a chilly
Sunday afternoon in Tokyo in 1986 and her badly-dressed mom, Sasha, was
speedwalking to Robots on Acid—this restaurant in Ginza that serves sushi on conveyor
belts—when her pink Love Beeper started going crazy, beeping for the first time in
months. Normally, she used it as her keychain. And the few times she turned it on, it
found terrible love connections: teenagers dressed in Edo samurai armor, little kids in
elaborate pirate costumes, pervy guys wearing I Heart Pussy t-shirts, and microscopic
businessmen with bulging insect eyes, their heads barely reaching her waist. With every
successive failure, she’d slip the love beeper into her pocket and whistle like in the
movies, watching her “match” doubletake every schoolgirl in Ginza, sniffing around like a
lost French Bulldog. One day though, as she reached into her pocket for her cell phone,
she turned on her Love Beeper by accident and it found a match right away. And
instead of clicking it off like she usually did (always did), for some reason, she let the
green light strobe on and on like an electronic serenade. She looked around, focusing
her attention at the Mitsukoshi Department Store in the distance when Kenji walked up to
her, pointing at his blue tear-shaped Love Beeper and laughing this dorky laugh of his
that just killed Sasha.
The first thing her dad said to her mom was: —You want Karaoke?
Suddenly, Japan was cool and infinite again.

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Instead of piling up plates of Nigiri Sushi or steamy bowls of Edamame, they drank
coffee and split a twenty-dollar Melonpan (which was a huge deal back then), served by
a waitress with enormous tits. The melonpan was crispy, chewy and sweet, sorta like
what would happen if you crossbred a glazed donut, a bagel with cream cheese and
honeydew. For hours they sat at Melon Magic! and chatted like old college friends,
sipping from each other’s coffee cups and telling jokes in Japinglish. The truth was they
were complete strangers, it just didn’t feel that way to Sasha at the time. She didn’t
know who Kenji was, or why she’d agreed to go on a date with him, especially to a
dessert cafe trying to be like Hooters before Hooters was a magnet for chicken wings
and fake titties. All Sasha knew is that she liked Kenji instantly. Part of it was the look in
his eyes: gentle awkward smart ecstatic. Another thing: Kenji looked like an otaku
renting a Run DMC costume: His black jeans were just a little too tight, the brim of his
black bowler cap was crooked, his Addidas Superstars were so bright they were
sparkling like diamond dust, and his gold chain (the 80’s equivalent to bling) was actually
loosely-knitted yellow yarn. In a word, everything about Kenji was just weird, which is
exactly what Duran Duran’s mom liked.

Fortunately for Kenji, Sasha had a thing for weird guys. Always did. When she was a
freshman at Detroit Mercy Academy, she dated a theater boy from Bloomfield Hills who
wore dressed and talked like McMurphy in One Flight over the Cuckoo’s Nest, even in
bed. His name was Antonio Lopez, but he went by the nickname Three because
everything for him was divisible by three. He would make Sasha repeat his name three
times before every make-out session, every time she bummed a Kool from him and
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whenever she wanted him to listen to her bullshit poetry about cultural brushfires in
suburbia, teenage suicide and angry puppets. The night she broke up with Three for
cutting himself again, she kissed him on the cheek and told him he had issues. She only
said his name once, and he just stood there with a band-aid in his hand like a dumbass,
waiting for the magic number. In twelfth grade, she fell in love with an old man with
Alzheimer’s. His name was Charlie, and he lived by himself in a trailer community. As
she was walking home from school, she’d seen a flyer stapled to a telephone pole that
said:
I’ll Pay You a $25 a Week to
Read Henry Miller to My Father.
(313) 833-3996

Two days later, Sasha was reading Under the Roofs of Paris in her line-breaking poet
voice, her face radiant with delight and shame. It was the raunchiest book she’d ever
read, especially to a stranger. But Charlie was hentai and he loved him some Henry
Miller. Whenever he heard a particularly good passage, he’d slap his knee and sigh.
Other times, usually at the smuttiest point in a story, he’d nod his head like he was trying
to work out the physics in his head. In college, they’d graduated to The Tropic of Cancer,
and by then she was smitten with the dirty little bed wetter. God, did he have a
weakness for the perfect metaphor. He would shake his head in awe in the tension of a
good sex scene and pound his fist against the bed railings whenever he detected a
strong rhythm in a passage. This was one of his favorites, especially when Sasha read
it in a loud whisper: I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for
grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of wack, I want everyone to scratch
himself to death. He would sit there in his lazyboy, shaking his head, lost in a timewarp
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of sexuality. Charlie was her castrated Don Juan: so passionate about women,
language and art, and yet so completely incapable of consummation. One day, Charlie
died on her. After the people from the morgue took his body away, she slept on his floor
for a week, reading Quiet Days in Clichy out loud in homage. Climax was her way of
letting go of him. When she was a junior at the University of Michigan, knee-deep in her
Japanese electives, Sasha fell in love with a sound engineer from Nagano named Kaze.
Her friends said he was a freak, and he was. What caught her eye, though, was the way
he touched things: he was always picking things up, rotating them in his hand,
examining them, holding them against the light, placing his ear against the surface.
Sometimes he smelled the texture, like someone shopping for sensation. She liked his
curiosity for structure, his fascination with form and transgression. The other thing that
made her weak in the knees was Kaze’s sound bank. He would record the strangest
things and then play them back on his stereo like they were songs: people breathing
when they slept, changing street lights, the sound of books closing, water passing
through pipes, fingers dialing keypads, squeaky hinges of cabinet doors, paper being
torn and the declarations of blue jeans when you unzipped them. From his library of
sound he would create textured melodies, refining sounds into musical scores. Kaze
was magical that way, a boy circling different planets. And Sasha loved him obliquely for
two whole years, even after he asked her to play dead during sex. She just took his
affection as he gave it and assumed at the time that his corpse fantasy was role-playing.
So, anyway, for all of the above reasons, even despite Kenji’s failed attempt to look
MCish and his dorky laugh, he had an enormous margin of error with Sasha. And the
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more otaku he was, the luckier he was going to get. I mean, you’re only as normal as
the last person you loved.

After Melon Magic, they went to a Karaoke Bar in Hibiya and rented a fully-equipped
room for two hours, complete with disco strobes, smoke machine, polished mirror walls,
and a gigantic monitor for the lyrics in dancing pink bubble font. The first song Kenji
sang was an instant hit. He picked Van Halen’s “Jump,” and when he got to the chorus,
he jumped off of one of the tables, pointed at her with his index finger and shouted
Midaswell Jumpu, Jumpu! He was so unbelievably cute, it just killed her right there and
then. When her turn came Sasha picked Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue.” She ripped off
her taxi color schemed t-shirt, tied it into a turban over her head, and sang in her inside-
out bra. Kenji whistled and clapped. When she got to the chorus, he did this goofy
dance with his neck like a nodding ostrich high on electric drums, his crooked bowler hat
falling to the ground every time he revved up his air motorcycle. He was so fucking dorky,
it just tore her up inside. Before she knew it, her eyes were sparkling jewels of affection.
After Wang Chung, OMD, Tears for Fears, and Kim Wilde, her heart was on a
sugar high. The truth is, she didn’t want the night to end. She worked Tuesdays through
Saturdays, so Mondays were her Sundays. Also, her happiest moments in Japan so far
were all far away her cramped studio in the outskirts of Tokyo. And then she had other
things she wanted to ignore: The student debt she wasn’t paying back from her two
Bachelor’s degrees in Japanese and English lit, the image of her parents shaking their
heads at her when she’d told them she was moving to Japan to teach English, a dream
she’d had since she was a stick drawing of a girl, the sadness she felt in Tokyo for being
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both single and homesick of a state she fucking hated (which was fucking prophetic, by
the way). And then there was her unquenchable lust for the shiny surfaces of Japan, a
lust that wouldn’t go away. So for all those reasons, Sasha really wanted her moment
with Kenji to last the whole night, wherever it took her. She’d figure out what they meant
the next day.

They left the karaoke bar a little before midnight when Kenji realized he’d left his beeper
at the cash register. After retrieving it, they took the Yamanote line to Harajuku, holding
hands the whole way. By that point they were starving. Under the yogurt moon, they
shimmied to a busy fast restaurant called Mr. Squid. Kenji opened the door for her and
walked to the counter while she snagged one of the last tables. It was a whole other
universe inside, packed with men in suits, tourists clutching new cameras from
Yodobashi, and Japanese teenagers, most of them dressed in full cosplay costumes.
For Sasha, it was like being at the Jingu Bridge all over again: A host of power rangers
and Voltrons, four girls dressed as Boy George, two Olivia Newton-Johns in blond wigs
and roller skates. She noticed Captain Kirk was holding hands with a zitty Princess
Leah, ET was flirting with a group of Alex Owens (Flashdance, motherfuckers), two
Indiana Jones girls in drag, one of which, carried a fake whip and an arc of the
convenant amulet dangling from her necklace. Kenji and Sasha saw androgynous Billy
Idols in knee-length boots, Greasers with freshly whipped ice-cream hair and one girl
who looked exactly like the Coal Miner’s Diner.
He came back with two baskets of Takoyaki. She dipped one of the fried octopus
dumplings in the special mayonnaise sauce and groaned.
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—Oishii, she said, this stuff is delicious.
—Ee, he said, nodding.
She grabbed another dumpling, dipped half of it into the special sauce, and then
took a sip from her strawberry milk drink. —So Kenji, she continued in Japanese, why
did you bring your Love Beeper with you? That thing’s like three years old.
He paused to consider the question. —I bought it years ago and I’d never used it
so I thought, why not today? What about you?
—It was an accident, she said, tossing the other half of the dumpling into her
mouth.
—Actually, I was just bored, he said, handing her a napkin.
They laughed.
—So, what do you do?
—I’m a Robotics engineer.
—Nerd, she chimed.
—Pretty much.
—Are you married?
—Divorced.
—Really? That’s bitchin’. Give me details.
—We met at Todai. She was a classmate. I saw her now and then in the
hallway, speaking in Tohoku dialect. One day I asked her out to a movie, she said yes,
then stood me up. The next day I apologized to her for being forty minutes late. She
looked confused, then told me not to do it again.
—You’re clever.
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—We dated casually for a couple years, got married after graduation. We were
comfortable, you know? We were the Japanese dream: Functional, quiet and stable.
The problem though is I didn’t love her.
—How did you know?
—Because I never noticed when she was gone. I never cared when she was late
and I never saw her face in a crowd.
—Yeah. I understand. So what happened?
—I told her I wanted her to be happy whether it was with me or not, and the next
day, she packed her bags and moved back to Hokkaido.
—Do you miss her?
—No, he said, dunking another dumpling, that’s the problem. I miss the clues
she left around the apartment because they proved I wasn’t alone: An empty miso shiru
bowl in the kitchen sink, the TV on mute, a pink sock on the floor, an indented pillow
case, watered plants on the balcony, half-eaten poky stick on the kitchen table, running
shoes under the coffee table. But I don’t miss her, I just miss the traces.
—You’re kinda rad.
He looked at her, puzzled, not sure what the word meant.
—What? She asked.
—So what about you? Are you married?
—God, no.
—Single?
—Yes, she said, snorting.
—Straight?
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—Bi.
—Wow. Have you ever done that ménage à trois thing?
—No way.
—Do you want to?
—Absolutely.
—Ah, so you’re hentai, he said, pulling down his Bowler hat.
—No. Wait: are you serious?
He shook his head, smiling. His eyes gave off a hint of fire, warm and melting in
the center.
—I’m not hentai.
—Touchy subject, huh?
She shrugged her shoulders and looked away. At a nearby table, two Olivia
Newton-John’s were giving their phone numbers to a group of palm trees dressed in kilts.
—So where did you learn Japanese anyway? Your pronunciation is perfect.
—Thanks. I studied it at university. Also, I had a Japanese boyfriend once. He
liked to record the wind, and touch everything with his hands. And other stuff too.
—Another American girl with fireworks in her eyes.
—I don't think I know that expression.
—I mean, do you watch manga and love katsudon?
—Like, who doesn’t?
—Do you own a kimono?
—Two.
—Do you like small, cute things like smiling flowers and happy frogs?
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—Uh.
—You’re a nipponaphile.
—I don’t know. Maybe. Is that bad?
—No, he said, dipping another dumpling into the sauce, it’s normal.
—Okay, now I feel bad.
—Don’t. We get two kinds of visitors here: People that want to be Japanese,
and people that want to sleep with them.
—You know, I came here because I love Japan, not just because I think
Japanese boys are cute.
—I believe you, he said.
One of the T-Birds and one of the Indiana Jones girls in drag were giving each
other a series of little, erotic kisses behind Kenji’s head. She tried not to laugh. She
turned to him again: —You think you’ve figured me all out, she said, nibbling on another
Takoyaki ball.
—No, he said, shaking his head, but I will someday.
—That’s what men always say. The next thing you know, they have their hazard
lights on in the middle of a highway with a map on their lap.
—Okay, tell me one thing about yourself.
—My favorite album is The Smiths.
—What band?
—The Smiths.
—Oh, yeah, I know them. I like “Real around the Fountain.” 15 minutes with you,
he sang.
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—You know them? She squealed. That’s amazing. No one knows them in
America.
—Yeah, well, what can I say? I’m countercultural. That’s why I love the Cocteau
Twins too.
—Me too! God, she said, pausing, . . . I’m so happy you like the Smiths, She
said, handing him another napkin, you have no idea what that means to me, to be able
to share that kind of sadness with someone.
He nods.
—Someday, let’s go listen to the whole thing together in the dark, she said,
wiping her fingers with a napkin.
—Ee, he said smirking, how about next week?
—Sure, she said. She knew it was foolish, but at the time, she couldn’t stop
thinking about how easy everything was with Kenji.
—You know what I like about you Sashasan?
—Nani?
—You mismatch your clothes and you’re not a cross-dresser.
—Wait. What?
—It’s just that this past month, three of them asked me out. It made me feel
really bad about myself, like I was giving off the wrong signals.
—Where were you? At the Kanamara Penis Festival?
—Pretty much: I was eating lunch at Shinjuku Park, and I ended up in Ni-Chome.
—Oh, you just ended up there?
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—I walked the wrong way, he sighed. —I always do: I have a terrible sense of
direction and I forget things all the time.
She smiled.
—Besides, it’s easy to get lost in Tokyo, he said, pulling down his crooked
Bowler hat. The city is always changing while your sleep.
They sat there for a while talking, their fingers bleeding grease, their mouths,
completely unhinged. By the time they’d made it outside and were two blocks away,
Kenji realized he’d forgotten his beeper again. And strangely enough, she felt his
absence for the first time. It was just twenty seconds, nothing more, but she was alone
and she wasn’t ready yet to let go of their togetherness. When Kenji returned, she
stared at his eyes when he laughed. They reminded her of lunar cycles, traveling
through phases of secrecy and explicitness.

At Pacman’s Palace of Small Wonders, they spent several hours mindlessly shooting
metal balls into Pachinko machines. Several times Sasha came close to falling asleep,
but Kenji nudged her, occasionally rubbing her shoulder with his hand. He had a good
touch: Strong but soft.
She had a Ghostbusters pachinko machine and Kenji had one from Beverly Hills
Cop. As she quickly learned, a ¥250 for a box of 500 balls wasn’t such a bad deal after
all. Of course, the amphetamine lights, the giddy electronic beeps, the zombie button-
pushers with their vacant expressions, not to mention the cigarette smoke troposphere
blanketing the ceiling—none of that was her normal idea of fun. But for some reason,
she liked pachinko with Kenji. And Kenji had explained to Duran Duran when she was a
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teenager that there was something about shooting those balls into the playing field (and
praying for Kakuhen, the payout mode that pays a shitload of yen) that seemed so much
like the lottery of dating or the possibility of finding love or striking out with strangers on
the street. Pachinko was pointless entertainment (even symbolically), the odds were
random, the process, totally mindless, the payback, absurd. But with those odds Sasha
had a reason to stay up the whole night. There was something about the set-up that
made her feel closer to Kenji, like she was risking next month’s rent to have another hour
with him. It was romantic to waste money like that for a boy, not to mention stupid as
hell. But hey, that’s the way love works.
As it turned out, they got lucky in every sense of the word. She walked away with
a deluxe rice cooker, some gold coins and a vase-sized perfume bottle from Rome. Kenji
practically heisted the parlor. He got 10 jackpots in thirty minutes, cleaning the place out
like a sting operation. He actually won a scooter. The manager gave them a dirty look
when they left. Outside there was a slight wind. Sasha zipped up her pink and grey
Members Only jacket. That’s when Kenji realized he’d left his beeper at the Pachinko
parlor, disappearing in the electric entrance. The wind felt cold, but the silence felt
colder. When Kenji returned, he pulled down his crooked Bowler hat, guided his scooter
across the street. She followed him with her arms full of Pachinko Loot until they came
to a kiosk with a dark glass window. It was creepy, especially on such a quiet street.
The window opened, and a disjointed hand reached for the bag with her gigantic
perfume bottle. For a second, she considered holding onto the rice cooker. It had twelve
different settings and could even make bread for you while you slept, which was crazy
high-tech for the 80’s. But Kenji shook his head because, as he’d explained later, the
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merchandise was shit—all of it—so she handed the bag over with a little sigh. Then he
motioned to the employee. A door opened. Two hands grabbed his scooter and yanked
it inside. A minute later, the dark window opened again and the disjointed hand laid out
two envelopes on the countertop before disappearing. One was thin like a taco shell, the
other was overstuffed like an awkward manicotti. Kenji won ¥280,000, equivalent to two
and a half months of her salary as an English teacher.
—Let’s go spend some money, he said, holding out his hand.
For a poor girl from Detroit, those magical words hit the On Button in her opiate
receptors. She opened up her envelope and counted: ¥25,000. The smell of those
twenty-five crisp Nastume Sōsekis was a huge aphrodisiac, powerful enough to make
her strip down to her panties and sing Echo and the Bunnymen songs in Midwest twang.

By the time they arrived at Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry (a nightclub in Roppongi), she
was feeling kinda beat. At least until they hit the dancefloor. Because she was a gaijin,
the bouncers gave both of them a discount at the front door. Inside there were three
floors of music and a secret city of Japanese kids in race denial: Girls in weaves and
shrunken, flouorescent miniskirts; boys burrowed in Soul Train afros and Coca-Cola
Rubgies. When they got to the Hip-Hop floor (which, in case you’re wondering, was
before Hip-Hop had a name and before rapping could be a career), Kenji let go of her
hand, walked to the center of the dance floor as if in a trance, and then he started
locking and popping like Double K high on crank, his crooked Bowler hat puffing up with
air as he moved back and forth, his arms synchronized to a Kool Moe Dee song. As the
legend goes, Kenji was monopolizing cute out there as he began adding full-body spins
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and b-boy moves for flourish. Gone was the Ostrich Dance that made Sasha laugh so
hard in the Karaoke Bar, replaced by something she hadn’t expected from him: The real
sexy. She never would have thought so, but Kenji had some great moves. Before she
knew it, the crowd had formed a circle around him, shouting and dancing. She laughed
from the sidelines, dancing along as best she could. Then he motioned to her from his
invisible platform. The crowd parted, her heart tapping her t-shirt from the inside as she
walked—petrified—into the center of that dance stage. Suddenly Kenji was spinning her
all over the place, grooving her, throwing her into the air, guiding her body to athletic
feats she didn’t know it could perform as people nodded their heads and clapped,
looking at them with detached admiration. She was never that girl with the insane
moves who could just jump into the middle of a dance floor and shake her ass like a Fly
Girl. But Kenji brought something out of her she didn’t even know she had. Something
she didn’t even know she wanted until they left the club.

Around six in the morning, they checked into the Royal Nippon Hotel, Kenji’s treat.
Neither of them was ready yet to see each other’s apartments because that would reveal
too much too quickly. You can tell a lot about someone by looking inside her apartment:
The vase of dead flowers, the pile of peach-flavored Pinky wrappers in the trash, a dirty
clothes hamper full of streaky underwear, an collection of bondage anime, a spotless
kitchen sink, a fridge with nothing but Hello Panda bread and two cans of Sapporo.
There was just an abundance of evidence for crimes not yet committed. So they opted
to stay in a nice 4-star hotel in the middle of Shinjuku. They weren’t prudes or a one
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night stand, so whatever happened was okay. At least, that’s what she kept telling
herself.
After taking separate baths in a traditional ofuro bathtub that was made from
western red cedar and big enough for five sumo wrestlers, Kenji and Sasha sat on the
floor in hotel bathrobes, drinking a small bottle of forty-dollar sake as they looked through
the window. From the twenty-seventh floor, the Tokyo cityscape was a dizzying mess of
neon lights: So hypnotically calm, so luminous and so visually euphonious. When their
room service arrived, Kenji disappeared, returning with a pot of ocha (green tea), a plate
of Western-style omelets, bowls of miso shiru and a plate of glistening wagashi sweets.
He laid the food on the table beside the bed and then sat down next to her, pouring
steaming tea into tiny cups. They sat there in front of the windows forever, watching the
electronic signs pulsating in the half-empty streets before the sun slowly overtook the
sky like some divine starship. It had been so long since she’d witnessed the sunrise,
since college actually. So long in fact that she wondered why she’d waited two years to
taste the morning light like that. On the bed, she pulled Kenji towards her, kissing him
with the expectation that he’d open up her robe slowly, drag his nail against her nipples
and down the canyon between her ribs and finally kiss the soft dough of her thighs. But
they were both so tired and overstimulated. They just crashed, embraced by their robes,
his hand in hers with the sunlight gushing into the windows like molten copper.

There was no morning sex (except in her mind), but that’s probably a good thing
because her hair was a furball that her pillow had thrown up. On the nightstand, Kenji
had left her a note to meet him in the hotel restaurant for lunch. From the elevator, she
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stumbled into the Sky Palace, lost and grumpy. She felt a sudden irrational fear: Maybe
he’d left the hotel. Maybe, she thought, she wasn’t worth the next day, or he’d just
wanted a love doll, not a girl with spunk, insecurity and desire. But just as she was
glancing at the elevator, Kenji returned from the bathroom, his Bowler hat tilted at an
angle. He laughed his dorky laugh and raised his eyebrows. She smiled. They sat
down at a table and ate fancy ramen served in yellow and red ceramic bowls. As they
talked, she looked occasionally through the window: Tokyo was gloomy, touched-up
with a smoky silver acrylic paint that made everything look supernatural.

At the Meiji Jingu Shrine, they stopped in front of the torii and strained their necks.
—It looks like a giant Yen kanji, she said.
—Hmm, he said, smirking, I was thinking Space Invaders.
—You mean the Atari game?
—Ee, he said, nodding, I didn’t think that was your generation.
—Kenji, I grew up dancing to Cindy Lauper.
—Gurls just wanna have funnu.
—You would know that song.
—See, hentai, he said, pulling down his Bowler hat again.
—Wait: Do you really think that?
—Of course not, he said, smiling, you didn’t even kiss me or stick chopsticks up
my butt in the hotel room.
—It’s not like I wasn’t thinking about it though.
—The chopsticks or the kissing?
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—The kissing. I’d already stolen the chopsticks.
—I thought about biting your shoulder, he said, but my body stopped responding.
—Oh, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve said all night, she said, kissing him on the
cheek.
—So, he said, ready?
—Ready, she said, grabbing his hand.
—Ikō.
And then they passed through the giant cypress torii, walking down the gravel
path until they came to the main shrine. Kenji led Sasha to the water basin where
worshippers were washing their hands. When their turn came, she made a flesh bowl
with her fingers and Kenji poured water over hands, which felt cool and slippery on her
dry lips, falling into the cracks of her mouth. It had a clean, slightly metallic taste. The
Meiji Shrine was amazing—a whole religion made from paper and wood. There were
kiosks selling artifact replicas, good luck amulets for newlyweds and students taking
university exams, flowers and multilingual pamphlets on how to be a good Shintoist. As
Kenji looked the other way, she turned her back and pulled a piece of scallion from her
teeth. —Kenji, she said.
—What?
—Promise we’ll see each other again.
—Promise.
—Promise you’ll call this week and ask me out for dinner.
—Promise.
—Promise to eat sushi with me at Robots on Acid.
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—I love that place.
She held him really close to me and then kissed him with wet, metallic lips. It
was a luscious piece of PDA, the kind we all hate to watch but love to do. Afterwards,
they walked back through Yoyogi Park in silence, radiating with an untested joy and
innocence that only new couples have.

And then everything turned to shit. For two weeks she carried her beeper with her like it
was a home arrest bracelet. But Kenji never called. Not once. Sasha was so confused.
To add to the drama, the batteries in her beeper were dead. At the time, she didn’t think
twice about it. She just told him her number, watched him write it down on a napkin
she’d snagged from Mr. Squid and then they kissed goodbye like cartoons in love. She
figured he’d call her the next day, or when he could. But he never did. The first week
she dismissed it as a work casualty. Or a family ordeal. Maybe Kenji had an old,
shriveling obachan that lived in the countryside and only ate fresh kumquats from
Okinawa. He might be riding the Shinkansen right now, holding a giant pot of them for
special delivery. And maybe, she thought, he was just swamped with work, doing
whatever it is that robotic engineers do all day that makes their hair stand up on one side.
But by the end of the first week, though, she stopped feeling the warm glow of optimism
inside. She felt ripped-off. Betrayed. Gypped. And those feelings didn’t seem like Kenji
at all to her.

Sasha came to Japan to get away from her family. Since the day she grew out of her
stick-girl-in-a-dress stage, she’d had to live with the knowledge that she was a complete
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disappointment to her parents. They were old skool (in like a bad way) and wanted her
to be a corporate lawyer, a brain surgeon or an astrophysicist, something they could
brag about at family reunions without actually understanding what it is she did. They
wanted resume sound bytes for their daughter. In the back of their mind, they expected
her to make more money than they did because she’d gone to college. Wasn’t that the
whole point of school? To make some serious bank? Her dad worked at the Royal
Snack Foods factory in Detroit: He was the dude that overlooked the artificial cheese
gun, making sure the cracker sandwich packs (that glow in the dark like orange highway
cones) all had the same amount of artificial cheese. Her mom worked at the ticket booth
at the Detroit Zoo (located, strangely enough, in Royal Oak). Five nights a week they
ate meatloaf sandwiches or steak and potatoes. They drank Tom Collins in coat-of-arms
steins (no ice, more alcohol) and they chainsmoked Marlboro Light 100’s as they
watched Jeopardy reruns on their TV in the bedroom. Sometimes, they went out to
O’Keefe’s or they came back from bingo night plastered, mumbling about number
conspiracies. The thing that killed Sasha more than anything, was they never talked to
each other. Their communication consists of one-word abstracts: Funny, bullshit,
napkin, asshole, double, more. So of course, her teenage rebellion consisted of talking
all the time to fill up the dead space in the house. Soon, she was dating misogynistic
drama majors, filling their ear with sentence conjunctions. By the time Three and her
had started dating, her parents were concerned she was a freak of nature, a mouthy girl
with no fashion sense (even by teen standards) with a rotten goth girl soul. Four years
later, she made the mistake of bringing Kaze home for Thanksgiving. They sat at the
dining table listening to Mork & Mindy echoing through the TV room while her Dad tried
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to talk about Japanese machinery with Kaze, using his cigarette as a pointer and nouns
as verbs (corporation, honor, wages, production). Kaze looked absolutely bewildered.
Her mom walked back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room, refilling their
stupid German mugs with a lit cigarette wedged between her knuckles as she poured
more Tom Collins and chewed gum really loud behind their heads. At the front door, her
dad accidently called him kamikaze. Her mom said bye kids, lit another cigarette and
shut the door on them. Sasha apologized almost the whole way on I-94. She felt so bad,
in fact, that once they got to Ann Arbor, she took an ice-cube bath for Kaze and let him
have his way with her. Evidently, the bad thing about ice is that you can’t feel the pain,
even when you want to. The good thing is, often you don’t want to. Two weeks later,
Kaze dumped her. He got mad at her because she’d itched her nose as they were
getting down necrophile-style. She was supposed to lie perfectly still, but she couldn’t
help it. A piece of lin had landed on the tip of her nose. Single, horny and ashamed now,
she laid in bed at her dorm for days, devouring boxes of Poky cookies, consoling herself
with lots of green tea and hentai anime. For about a month, she ignored her friends
when they called her because she didn’t want to hear about how right they were or how
much better off she was without Kaze. Instead, she called her parents and hung up on
them. One time, every day. Sometimes, her Dad cursed—monosyllabically—then hung
up. Once, her mom even said Sasha. The truth is, she didn’t know how to talk to them,
she just wanted to know they were still there: Alive, safe and far away.

After the Great Pout, she decided to go back to all the places in Tokyo they’d gone
together. Maybe Kenji was waiting for her to find him, like hide-and-go-seek for cross-
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cultural lovers. Love could be a game, and so many ugly things too. She walked back to
Ginza but got swallowed in the Zebra Crossing and ran away to the subway. She
entered Pacman’s Palace of Small Wonders but there was no one there except a group
of Japanese sailors absorbed in their creeping poverty. She took a taxi to Vanilla
Chocolate Strawberry and the bouncer tried to charge her full price, as if she were a
nihonjin. She retraced her way back to the hotel and the concierge told her Kenji hadn’t
come back. And then she loitered around Yoyogi Park since the Meiji Shrine was closed,
watching Grease and Karate Kid dancers get down to music blaring from large boom
boxes. Kenji was nowhere to be found. In each and every instance, she was never able
to return to the time/space she shared with him. The serial beauty of their extended
night together was lost forever, frozen in its own carbon dating like a fossilized
experience. Kenji was two simple syllables away from a hallucination.

As the days went by, her insecurity started to slowly destroy her like a bio-accumulative
toxin. She wondered if Kenji’s silence was its own declaration, like any other statement.
Japanese hate shame and humiliation, after all. And indirectness is considered an art in
the motherland. But maybe this was all on her. Her gift for adoring people could be a
character defect, like any other addiction or hang-up that attracted pain and caused
emotional spirals and self-destruction. Was she too kinky for Kenji? Crazy considering
she hadn’t even told him about the things Kaze and she did together before the
necrophilia stage, like fucking inside a coffin and groping each other at the very top of
the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. Of course she was going to tell Kenji about that stuff
someday. Just not in the beginning. That was relationship sabotage. But maybe in the
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world of unspoken things, she didn’t need to say anything to Kenji. Maybe he already
knew by the way she’d looked at him that night, her eyes burning with girlish love and
polymorphous desire. Should she not have told him she was bi and curious about
threesomes? Was that a mistake? She’d always thought everyone was a little bi and a
little curious about something in this world. But what if Japanese men didn’t know how
to deal with women that actually liked sex? What if Kenji wasn’t the scatterbrained,
ecstatic, complex boy genius that she’d hoped he was? Maybe he was all otaku and no
samurai. Maybe, just maybe, the real problem was that she crushed on people too
quickly and too hard and never asked questions about relationships until she thought
she knew the answers.
Two weeks drifted by like the world’s longest root canal. In a dual gesture of
spite and empowerment, Sasha went out and bought batteries for her beeper and then
walked to Robots on Acid anyway. It totally fucking sucked ass. She was trying to prove
to herself that she didn’t need Kenji to eat soft-shelled crab or to fall in love. She was a
big girl: Strong enough to leave Detroit (the only city she’d ever really known) and weak
enough to fall in love again. She recognized the terrain of a broken dream and knew how
to get out of a broken parachute. It wasn’t easy, but she could do it, just like tying a
cherry stem in her mouth with her tongue. She figured out how to get over Kaze, so she
could do it with Kenji. The thing is, she just didn’t want to.
Inside her booth with Japanese synth music blaring from tiny surround-sound
speakers and tiny capsules of sushi whizzing by on dual conveyer belts, she sighed with
gratitude and dismay. The setting was picture-perfect. But in Kenji’s absence, she’d
picked a feast for two anyway, insinuating his importance even as she pretended to
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negate it. His spirit was spread around the table, divided into plates, tastes and
expectations. There were a series of dishes where she had already chosen her every
desire, one craving at a time: Plates of battery-sized Toro slices, agedashi Tofu cubes,
Salmon Skin Maki, bowls of edamame, crispy Spider Rolls, a plate of unajyu, and large
boats of iridescent nigirizushi, all faithfully assembled like a collector of palpalable
memories. Even dinner became an editorial act of love, a series of syntactical
statements about the color and texture of her own feelings for Kenji, picked and
rearranged so the whole table was a perfect—but impermanent—love story of her
misplaced hunger.
Even though they’d only spent one night together, she really missed him. She
missed the way Kenji wore clothes that didn’t looked right on him at all (just like she did),
the way he offered her napkins and fell asleep holding her hand as they laid on top of
expensive hotel sheets. She missed his stupid ostrich dance that just tore her up inside
and the lunar calendar of his eyes, traveling through phases of explicitness and secrecy.
Maybe the problem was that they had done too much in too little time, glued together not
by a series of shared (incredible) memories but by the absence of real things.

It was an act of desperation, a rubbing of the genie lamp and possibly, just boredom
again. But amid loud Japanese synthesizers blaring through the speakers in her booth
and peppy bus girls refilling people’s water glasses and replenishing tea cups, their
bodies dressed in bulky robot costumes, finally she pulled her keychain out and held the
Love Beeper in her hand. It was such a ridiculous invention and an even more ridiculous
pretext for a relationship: A large plastic pager with three simple settings (talk talk, let’s
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go karaoke and yum yum), none of them, relevant to her heartache. Impulsively, she
pressed the “yum yum” button for the first time, just for the hell of it, even though she
wasn’t looking for a hookup. Then she paused and listened closely: Nothing at all
except Japanese New Wave and conveyor belts. But honestly, she expected that to
happen. After all, Tokyo is a city to get lost in, a city that recreates itself. And this is
how you lose your memories of the things you love.

Somewhere between her ninth cup of green tea and her first bite of agedashi, something
happened. She never saw the green light flashing with all that bubblegum décor. She
didn’t even hear the electronic beep with the voices of pop girls singing songs in their
helium falsettos as the music drew celestial squiggles around her head. She just heard a
little sound: A small unmistakable beep, sticking out like a bony elbow between the
drumbeats. Her Love Beeper was beeping and flashing its green light, and when she
picked it up, trying to understand what was going on, suddenly Kenji walked towards her
in his crooked Bowler hat and Addidas shoes, his hands holding thirty illuminated Love
Beepers, their green lights flashing like an electronic chorus of loss.
—Sashasan! He shouted, the Love Beepers raining from his hand onto the floor.
One of the busgirls dressed as a robot tripped, dropping a pot of green tea that splashed
onto a customer who promptly screamed (which, by the way, is exactly how she felt
inside). See, even with love, there’s slapstick.
Kenji ran to her, furious and awkward. She could have died at that moment.
Whatever people say, when the person that haunted your dreams suddenly runs towards
you in real life, it fertilizes your heart.
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—Where the fuck have you been? She shouted in Japanese, her eyes ready to
burst.
—Gomen ne. . . I left my beeper on the subway, he said, adjusting his Bowler
hat..
—Shut up, she said, sniffling, that’s too easy.
—No, it’s true, he said, grabbing her wrists and kissing them.
She looked at him, wondering why she hadn’t just asked him for his phone
number, just to be safe. She just wasn’t thinking. She’d been too high on Kenji.
—Do you know that I’ve come here every night for two weeks now? He asked.
—Honto ni? She asked, her hand on the tip of her nose, sniffling.
—Yeah, they really hate me here.
She covered her mouth before she could giggle. She didn’t want to give him the
satisfaction but she could feel herself defrosting. And that upset her. Part of her felt like
she should put up a fight, but she didn’t know how to resist him yet, didn’t even know
how to ignore him really. —Kenji, I missed you so much. Way more than you deserve.
He nodded, his eyes blinking understanding.
—But look, here’s the deal. I don’t love you.
—Nani? He asked incredulously.
—But I could someday. So don’t disappear for two weeks like that ever again.
You promise me?
—Promise.
—I could love you Kenji. I could. I’m just saying.
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And that’s when he broke her jaw with a long forceful kiss, putting his fireworks into her
eyes.

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4.19: World, Meet Taro. Taro, World

For the first two months of their relationship, Sasha wouldn’t let Kenji see her
apartment because she felt self-conscious about it. What if he noticed her underwear in
the dirty clothes bag, covered in ducks, flowers and geishas? What if he just happened
to spot the x-rated black and white graphic novel in her bookcase that a friend had given
her for twenty-third birthday of hung pirates, salacious octopi sticking their tentacles in all
the wrong places and big-titted sea fairies rescuing shipwrecked virgin boys? Even
worse, what if he found her place dull and uninspiring? Besides, she told herself, her
apartment was at the outskirts of Tokyo to begin with, which was inconvenient for both of
them, and even worse, it was dumpy, even by bohemian standards (which, by the way,
is an oxymoron). Instead, they started eating dinner at Kenji’s apartment in Ueno, which
was psychoanalytically thrilling for her to say the least. Once before bedtime, Kenji sunk
his hand into his couch and pulled out a spare key to his apartment, which he handed to
Sasha, telling her to keep it for herself. When she gave him a puzzled look as to why he
had a key hidden under the pillows of his 70’s lime green couch, he explained that he
was always forgetting his keys, so he’d made thirty copies and left them all over the
apartment, including two keys hidden behind secret flower-themed tiles in the hallway
(specifically, the sunflower and the iris). Sasha smiled, happy to have her own key to his
apartment. Within a week though, even though she promised not to, she started
snooping around the apartment before Kenji came home from the lab. At first, she was
respectful, sticking to kitchen cabinets and the fridge where she discovered a whole shelf
of cooking oils (canola, sesame, olive, peanut), a squeezable kewpie mayonnaise
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container, individually wrapped units of prewashed vegetables (carrots, cabbage,
cucumbers), a wide assortment of noodles (somen, soba, udon) pickled vegetables,
furikake seasonings (some of them containing exotic things like dried plum and spicy
squid eyes) and lots of Tupperware containers with miso paste, fish cake and dashimoto.
The cupboards were loaded too with rice crackers, gigantic instant ramen bowls,
resealable bags of shaved bonito, barbecue corn chips and Koala Yummies (a minor
obsession that eventually got passed down to Duran Duran). From this data Sasha
learned a few things about Kenji: He was more of a food assembler than a cook,
creating not actual meals, but a series of appetizers. Another thing: Kenji was a serious
snacker, which said a lot about his views of immediate gratification, something that she
found comforting and reliable. After all, snacks were comfort food for Sasha—the saltier,
the cheesier and the sweeter, the better. From the various oils she’d discovered, Sasha
realized that Kenji’s secret talent in the kitchen involved noodles of some sort, which
turned out later to be true. When they were both between paychecks, Kenji made them
curry sesame noodles in the winter that had a wonderful afterbite that was spicy enough
to make her cry and somen noodles with dashimoto, scallions and wasabi in the
summertime. Kenji would dab a napkin in the corners of Sasha’s eyes when he used too
much curry or horseradish, and sometimes that made her smile.
After a little while, she relocated her boyfrirend investigation to the living room
that was basically a large cabinet crammed with a small TV, a million pocket-size
Japanese novels and a new Apple IIgs desktop computer, which she was convinced
stored all of his dirty little files—an accusation she couldn’t prove though because they
had separate login accounts and Kenji was smart enough to use some ancient kanji as
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his password she’d never seen before. Still, she liked it that Kenji protected a certain
amount of his personal space. For Sasha, it was mysterious when someone withheld
part of himself from you, not to mention kinda sexy too.
It was only a matter of weeks before she began snooping through Kenji’s inner
sanctum, savoring it like the middle of a sandwich. Inside his bedroom closet she found
a an old shabu shabu grill and a stack of letters in a shoebox, tied up in three stacks,
swaddled in tissue paper like a gift-wrapped memory from the old world. The letters
were all postmarked from Hokkaido, which of course made Sasha feel like a big asshole.
She exhaled and rolled her eyes, full of guilt but still shameless. Inside Kenji’s naughty
drawer in the bed stand, the drawer she had deliberately saved until the very end, she
found—much to her disappointment— an insipid collection of condoms, a small bottle of
rokustaa (rockstar) lube and some noir porn that she quickly flipped through as
detectives in Zoot suits bent sad female clients over their desktops and fucked them as
part of an ongong “investigation.” She translated one of the dialogue bubbles out loud
and laughed: Is THIS what you’re looking for, Mrs. Yamamoto? The detective asked,
his pants forming a circle eight around his ankles as he plunged into his client from
behind.
Finally, running out of state secrets, Sasha decided to look underneath Kenji’s
futon where she found a tiny area rug that looked like something from Kenji’s college
years. It was suspicious. Sasha rolled up the area rug and discovered a latch. She
yanked the latch and found a little trap doorwith a key inside the lock. She turned the
key, opened up the trap door and found a bunch of android schematics that meant
nothing to her and a stuffed black lab with floppy ears and a tongue like a pink shoehorn.
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For Sasha, that was already cute enough, but right next to the stuffed animal with a red
bough around his neck there was a bowl of rice that someone had placed between its
paws not too long ago, a few grains just starting to mold. She was touched by her
discovery. She loved the idea of Kenji feeding a stuffed animal every week, simply
because food was nourishment and nourishment was love. Maybe that’s why the
Japanese love food so much because eating was a way of feeding a mirage. Also,
Sasha thought, wasn’t there something also noble, even moving really, about the fact
that Kenji pretended the velvety Labrador was alive? What was the difference between
believing something abstract like goodness or joy or paradise or hope exists, something
essentially unquantifiable but also crucial, and believing an inanimate object had its own
ghost, its own sacred mathematical spirit? What was the difference between projecting
our human emotions on to other people, some of them putrefying and frozen to the very
core, and projecting emotions on to stuffed animals that were very much alive in a
tragically silenced and passive sense? Feeding a stuffed dog seemed to make as much
sense as pretending your half-thawed parents in Detroit loved you, Sasha thought, even
though they’d never hugged you as a grown woman (and would never hug her again
once she gave birth to Duran Duran). In fact, in some way, loving a stuffed animal
makes more sense because there’s no rejection of love, no rewriting of emotion, no
denial of fantasy. One evening when Kenji was working late, Sasha decided to make
sukiyaki for Kenji using his Shabu Shabu hot pot. She bought thin slices of beef, some
cellophane noodles, shitake and enoki mushrooms, pieces of marinated tofu and a bottle
of local sukiyaki sauce she’d bought in Tsukiji. When Kenji got home, she jumped up
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from the kitchen table where she was finishing her lesson plan for her next class and ran
over to him.
—I’m so happy to see you, she said in Japanese, wrapping her arms around him
like erotic tentacles.
—Wish I could say the same.
—Kenji, you little jerk.
—Sorry I’m late. I left my wallet in the lab.
—Of course you did.
—What’s all this? He asked in amazement. The tofu, enoki mushrooms and thin
slices of beef were sizzling on the shabu shabu in a small pool of sukiyaki sauce, filling
the kitchen with a tantalizing aroma of hot, fresh food.
—Smells good, huh?
—This is making my mouth water, he said, wiping his lips with his wrist.
—I thought I’d make dinner for a change.
—Wonderful.
Sasha followed the instructions in one of Kenji’s cookbooks like a good girlfriend,
remembering to place a little oil on the hot pot and dip the Chinese cabbage, beef slices
and mushrooms in egg.
When Dinner was ready, Kenji was about to take his first bite of hot love when
Sasha stopped him. —Hold on a sec, we have one more guest.
—Nani? He said.
She came back a second later with the stuffed dog in her hands, sitting in the
palm of her hand. —I brought a friend. I think he’d appreciate some food too.
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Kenji gave her a wounded and horrified look.
—What’s wrong?
—
—Are you mad?
—I don’t know, he said, hanging his head, —more like shocked.
—Oh fuck. I’m sorry, she said, bending down and planting her head on his lap,
—I didn’t mean to hurt you.
—I know, but that was locked for a reason, he said into her ear.
—Oh Kenji, I think it’s adorable, she said, looking up at him.
—No it’s not. It’s embarrassing: A grown man with a stuffed animal.
—Well I think it’s beautiful. I love this about you.
—
—I really do. And I’m sorry I snooped around your bedroom.
—You know, it’s okay for us to have secrets.
—You’re right and I’m sorry for being such a snoop.
—Snoop, he repeated, laughing.
—You can beat me up and hurt me if you want to.
—I hope you’re joking.
—Of course.
Kenji’s face relaxed. —Good, because violence doesn’t turn me on.
—Yeah, me neither, she said, looking away. This was of course a partial lie, but
Sasha was happy to keep this to herself since she used to be pretty kinky in college,
back when she was dating Kaze. He’d satisfy his necrophile fantasies with her after she
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took an ice bath, spank her ass until the skin was a flamboyant, irritated red and
sometimes even strangle her when she was coming. A few times, right near the end of
their relationship, Sasha and Kaze had actually slapped each other back and forth while
they fucked, but Sasha started crying afterwards and said she would never do it again,
which angered Kaze. Since then, violence stopped being erotic for her and Sasha found
love in all the same places where violence used to be. But this would remain one of
Sasha’s secrets.
Kenji kissed her forehead.
—So what’s his name?
He paused. —Taro.
—Nice to meet you Tarochan, she said, kissing the little dog on the head. —So
what’s Taro’s story?
—I found him on the street last year. He looked sad so I brought him home with
me. Sometimes, when I missed Kōri, I’d put him in the chair while I ate dinner and give
him some of my rice. It’s stupid, isn’t it?
—No, it’s beautiful.
—Then why do I feel like an asshole?
—Because you are.
Kenji showed her his teeth.
—Anyway, I think Tarochan should eat dinner with us. He’s part of the family.
He thought about that. —Okay, he said, shaking his head, but don’t tell anyone.
The lab technicians would skewer me if they knew I fed rice to a stuffed animal.
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After dinner, just as Kenji was about to do the dishes, they hugged in front of the
tiny sink and kissed like fish under water. When they fell asleep later that night, Taro’s
little face were peaking out from under the covers, Sasha’s hand gripping one of his
floppy ears. A gelatinous moon was frozen in the sky, like a lemon rind inside a Jello
mold, its soft, pale light shining through the half-open blinds of the bedroom window and
casting soft lines on their sleeping faces.

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4.20: The Commiseration of Ramen

Sasha didn’t actually believe that chikan were anything but cautionary tales
invented by paranoid, claustrophobic women arsenic-poisoned by misandric Japanese
talk shows, at least until the day a chikan stuck his hands up her skirt somewhere
between the Tabata and Nishi-Nippori stations, squeezing her ass in the middle of rush
hour like a stress toy. That’s when she wanted to slice the guy’s dick off with her
umbrella and toss it into a koi pond. At first, it was hard to tell what was going on:
Everyone’s junk was crammed against everyone’s else’s junk, pelvis to wrist, tits to
lumbar, nut to butt. Sasha mistakenly thought that Kenji was putting his hand up her skirt
from behind, an idea (two-way exhibitionism) that turned her on so much, she started
moaning into his ear until she noticed Kenji itching his face. With both hands. Then she
flipped out and screamed at the top of her lungs, an act of public dissonance that didn’t
go very well with the silent commuters. Kenji looked horrified. But once Sasha had
explained in slangy, semi-automatic English that there was a creepy dude with his hand
up her skirt, Kenji squished his body behind Sasha’s, yanked the chikan’s hand out, and
then proceeded to slam it against the man’s own face, shouting:— 何してだよ。恥をし
れ!!!!
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At the first subway station, they’d pushed their way through the subway. Kenji
held Sasha close to him in the middle of the subway platform while she cried. People
were shaking their heads, looking away, staring at them as if they were a freakshow, like
they were two lepers falling apart at the seams in front of your eyes, their atrophied limbs
crumbling to the ground, their bodies collapsing into cosmic string. Kenji wasn’t a big fan

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[haji o shire], which is kinda like saying what the fuck are you doing? Shame on you! in
Japanese. Not nearly as badass, though.
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of PDA at all because he’s old school, but he felt really bad for Sasha, so he sucked it up
and hugged her really hard because he knew that’s what she wanted from him. At that
moment, he didn’t care about social protocol even if he was painfully aware of it, he just
wanted Sasha to be okay, so he held her in his arms and cooed soft Japanese words of
consolation in her ear like a distressed pigeon. Kenji’s instinct was to protect Sasha
even though she didn’t need his protection and save what was left of the afternoon even
though it was already evening.

Right when they stepped into a tiny café near the Shiodome Freight Terminal called
Invisible Snack Monsters!, it started to pour. From their high stools, the rain looked like
quicksilver streaming through the sky, metallic traces racing down the glass, the cold
chaos on the other side of the world. Sasha rubbed her hands together, still wearing her
navy Members Only Jacket, her teeth chattering despite the warm air that billowed and
rolled through the café. Sasha pulled the sleeves of her jacket over her hands.
Kenji looked at her, trying to read her face.
—Kenji? Sasha said in English. —Can you order for me? I’m not feeling right.
Kenji nodded, reaching over to touch her arm.
Sasha grabbed Kenji’s hand and then placed it on her forehead. That’s when her
teeth stopped chattering.
— 今晩は, said the barista, wiping the counter behind the window with a fresh rag
that smelled like liquid rose. His gray hair was gelled back, his gray button down was
half- rolled up to his elbows, bartender style, and his black pants were pressed and
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clean. He was wearing a bartender’s apron, his hands resting inside. — だいじょうぶで
すか。
Kenji nodded, withdrawing his hand. —Do you guyz have spaghetti?
—Nope, said the barista, shaking his head, —only snacks.
—Sake?
—Nope, said the barista, rolling up the other sleeve, —only snacks.
—Is soup considered a snack? He asked, rubbing Sasha’s forehead.
—Technically no, soup isn’t very snacky, the barista explained, but we decided to
make an exception since everyone kept bugging us. Besides, Yoshimoto our cook, he
said, motioning towards the kitchen—
Kenji and Sasha looked behind the counter at the cook dressed in a black cook’s
shirt and black mushroom toque who nodded like he’d been waiting for the barista to
acknowledge him.
—Yeah, well anyway, Yoshimoto is a Ramen Wizard!
—Ramen sounds amazing, Sasha groaned in English, scratching her nose, her
eyes still closed.
That’s when Kenji ordered two bowls of ramen and a big pot of ocha.
The barista nodded and took his order to the kitchen, returning with a glazed
burgundy pot of tea and two grey mugs. The rippled gray exterior and the smooth pink
interior of the mugs reminded Kenji of glazed seashells. He poured tea into Sasha’s
mug first, then his own, moving the mug back and forth underneath his nose like
smelling salts. He placed his hand on Sasha’s forehead again. She groaned, opened
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and closed her eyes, her hands still covered by the sleeves of her jacket, her foot
tapping the stool, waiting for the tea to cool down.
—Thanks honey, she said, resting her hand on Kenji’s hand, —for some reason I
can’t deal with Japanese right now.
Kenji took a sip of his tea. —Sasha, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain.
She looked at him with her bleary eyes, a tight smile slowly setting in in her lips.
—Here, drink this, he said.
Sasha took a long warm sweet sip of his tea.
It’s interesting: Even though Sasha was completely fluent in Japanese (so
fucking jealous, man), when she got freaked out, she always spoke in English, especially
when she forgot where she was. It was if her mother tongue blew up everything she’d
ever learned in school whenever her brain started freaking out. Or maybe it was simply
the comfort of familiar syllables, the phonetic hominess of English that transported her
back to her house in Michigan when the TV would blare throughout the house each day
from the moment her mom washed the Pond’s Cold Cream off her face in the morning
until the moment she smeared it back on before bed in the evening, maybe it was the
comfort of English’s masculine rhyme, its tiny moments of staccato phrasing, the
vibration of words Sasha had been repeating since she’d taught herself to read a book of
haikus she’d found in the attic (her favorite place in the house) and speak in run-on
sentences at the age of two, to make up for the lack of verbs at home. For some reason,
being groped on the subway brought Sasha back to a place of powerlessness and
silence, back to her gritty, experimental teenage life that included siphoning gin into a
Mellow Yellow bottle from her parent’s cupboard before she went out to parties on the
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weekend and climbing on her dad’s shoe rack in his bedroom closet to find his stash of
Penthouse magazines (some of them a little sticky) piled high to the ceiling in the corner
of the storage shelf and driving through Detroit with her no-life boyfriend when she was
in high school, smoking pot and fucking in the backseat of his corvette with the tinted
windows, the classic stoner car rocking back and forth in an abandoned alley, Sasha’s
mind sometimes traveling back to her bedroom, to the TV in the upholstered living room,
to her parents, passed out on the frumpy couch with their mouths open, their pinkies
connected. The crisis in the subway brought Sasha back to the Germanic (Norman-
spliced) diction of England, to the armory of language, back when she tried to speak in
long, ornate, slithery sentences as a little kid. Sasha used to try so earnestly to hold on
to each moment of her life back then, using words as points of reference to battle the
drunk bullet-point conversations in the dining room, singing (speaking) anything that had
a ring to it, any idea that boomeranged back to her tiny, blossoming brain, speaking over
her parents whenever she could who drank from beer steins and smoked long, smelly
cigarettes and watched television like chronically ill patients. Crisis brought Sasha back
to the Dukes of Hazard and Night Rider, back to her time when she dated Three, offering
to give him blowjobs in exchange for poetry critiques and backrubs. And a lot of these
memories weren’t comforting at all for her, but they were familiar and she had
vanquished her fetal sense of powerlessness once before, and in each of those
memories, she harnessed language like a blacksmith beating a hot piece of steel into a
graceful blade of judgment on the world.
Sasha took a sip of her tea. —Kenji, she continued in English, did I do something
to deserve that?
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He looked shocked. —What? he said in Japanese, —no one deserves that.
—And you’re positive there’s nothing I could have done differently? She asked,
sipping from her tiny mug.
He shook his head resolutely. —Nothing. Of course, you didn’t have to moan in
the subway.
—Shut up! I thought it was you.
—I wish it had been, he said, looking around the café. —But it was a chikan.
—Know what that sounds like?
—Nani?
—Chicken.
—Yeah well, groping captive women is pathetic. Opportunistic, maybe even hot
in a forbidden, sexually deviant sort of way, but pathetic in reality.
—You dirty old man.
—Yup, Hentai all the way. Why else would I be with such a beautiful gaijin?
—Shut up! You’re not nearly as dirty-minded as you think you are.
—You’re hurting my feelings, he said, withdrawing his hand from her forehead.
—No, wait, put it back, she said, smacking Kenji’s hand back on her forehead,
it’s comforting.
They stayed that way for a good five minutes, listening to the rain trickling down
gutters, inhaling the smell of soba noodles cooking in a strong tonkatsu
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broth. When
the ramen was done, the barista returned to the table with two gigantic, steaming lacquer
bowls. There were thin slices of pork floating in the mustard-colored broth, rubbery,

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A pork bone broth. I think it’s nasty as shit, but most nihonjin drool when you say the word like
it’s the Pavlovian bell.
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pink-and-white star-shaped islands of kamaboko, two hardboiled eggs (bullseyes) split
like half shells, a large black cloud of nori, half-immersed within the broth, a tiny pile of
beni shoga that resembled wet pieces of poisonous fire, and raindrops of sesame seeds
and scallions. It was steaming salvation in a hot bowl of wonder.

Even though the movie Ramen Girl pretty much butchered the psychic therapy that
ramen plays in Japanese culture, the truth is, ramen really is the pilot light in the
Japanese soul. So when Sasha and Kenji began slurping the broth with their soup
spoons and inhaling the soba noodles, the steam from the ramen pouring down their
throats and nuzzling their faces with fluffy, evaporating warmth, the steely rain outside,
racing down the café windows and pounding the streets as if fired from a million nail
guns, it’s not an overstatement to say that the ramen transformed their moods from wet,
sulky silence to hearty, slurpy goodness. That’s how comforting fresh ramen is. There’s
something about the heat of the ramen broth and the heat of the ramen bowls, which
devour the coldness in your fingertips and fills your stomach, your pores, your hands
with such primal warmth, the soft, rolling clouds of steam pouring into you and passing
through you like a maternal cloud of energy, flowing through your bones, something
about the orgy of flavors cavorting inside your mouth, the squiggly wheat noodles and
the salty, slightly fermented broth (whether it’s pork bone or miso), the tangy beni shoga,
the chewy, dense half moons of kamaboko and the cutting, unspiraling circles of scallion,
the rich, gooey nuggets of egg yolk and the mildy sweet, sticky scraps of nori, something
about the explosion of umami in every spoonful, the arousal of the brain’s chemistry,
accelerating taste processors, each synaptic yum like fireworks detonating on your
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tongue at the same time, that makes ramen both a consolation and an epiphany, both
comfort food and speed racing.

When they were done eating, Kenji grabbed Sasha’s hand and kissed it, holding onto it
under the table. He hated PDA (most nihonjin in the 80’s did), but was always violating
his own system because he loved Sasha enough to violate his own illusions. Sasha
looked at Kenji with thawed eyes.
—How are you feeling? He asked in Japanese.
— もっとい, she said, better than before.
—Do you want to go? He asked in his best classroom English.
—Wanna, she said, winking.
—Do you wanna to go?
—Do you wanna go.
—Oh, do you wanna go?
—Perfect. No, I just want to stay here with you, she said in Japanese.
—Okay. I’ll order dessert.
—Bitchin.’
—And afterwards, we’ll go home and listen to The Smiths and make out in the
dark.
Sasha smiled, the tears falling hard down her temples, thumping on the counter
like the rain outside, a grey parallelism. —Kenji, thank you for knowing me, she said,
sniffling, you’re like the VCR I always wanted as a teenager.
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Kenji rubbed her shoulder and then ordered green tea ice cream with mochi.
When their dessert arrived, they watched the rain falling hard through the window,
spiraling down like metal spikes. They spooned tiny, fluffy curls of green ice cream,
replentishing the sweetness and the bitterness in their mouths again and again as the
rain poured down on the other side of their communion, their legs touching, the streets
flickering like a drumroll.

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4.21: Searching for the Unclassifiably Beautiful and the Infinitely Complex

It was Sasha’s idea (half sociological imagination, half polymorphous sexuality) to
dress in drag and stroll around Shinjuku’s (Ni-chōme) neighborhood. And it was
also Sasha’s idea to have a drink at the lesbian bar, Thank Me, Spank Me, afterwards.
Either way, Kenji did his best to roll with it, even though it was tough for him. Mostly, he
wanted to see Sasha decked out in a matador outfit. With some reluctance, he
eventually agreed to wear one of Sasha’s ugliest dresses—a flimsy, summer dress with
yellow tulips on the shoulder straps that was a hand-me-down from her rich aunt in
Farmington Hills—just to see his girlfriend in a cape and tights. In his mind, Sasha’s
transgender experiment was (hopefully) worth the shame and humiliation it caused him
while wearing an ugly Laura Ashley dress with a shoyu stain on the hemline, if only
because it was important to Sasha, allowing her to subvert her socially prescribed
gender roles while multiplying the laws of attraction.
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Besides, Kenji was always ending
up in Shinjuku Ni-chōme by accident anyway during the day since he had a terrible
sense of direction, why not go there deliberately at night in a costume no one would
recognize you in, with the protection of your hot Americanjin girlfriend who’d be by your
side to rescue you from cultural ambiguity and assert your own heterosexuality
whenever you needed it? What better way to view a whole new microculture of Tokyo
spawning before your eyes? At least, this is the argument Sasha made to Kenji. Really,
she concluded, dressing up in drag was the safest way to experience Tokyo’s alternative

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Okay, Kenji never said those exact words. I’m kinda paraphrasing. But, being fluent in the
discourse of gender, race and sexuality the way all Oberlin students are—don’t fucking hate,
bitch—this is something Kenji would have thought if he’d been a humanitiesbrat instead of a mad
(genius) scientist, so I’m kinda saying it for him. Deal with it.
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nightlife because Kenji himself would be part of the performance, gaining firsthand
experience of subculture he had only heard about but never investigated himself. The
clincher, though, for Kenji: They agreed to take a taxi.

For several hours, they walked around the inconspicuous gay neighborhood, passing a
few American sailors still in uniform that weren’t really uniforms, looking completely lost
in dimly-lit streets without romaji,
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their heads turning back and forth between signs.
After that, they saw two drunk Australian guys in matching Astroboy t-shirts, the one with
a 12 o’clock shadow whistling at Sasha, who smiled underneath her fancy matador hat,
her cheekbones bright and resplendent, her lips soft and refined. Kenji shook his head,
scoffing. Then they both watched (admired) a group of Japanese drag queens dressed
in Marie Antoinette costumes parading across the street and stopping traffic, their hands
held out like Motown singers to make the red Nissan in one lane and the white Honda in
the other hit the breaks, their yellow and purple, 18
th
-century-looking Christian Louboutin
shoes with the six-inch heals making pic-pac-poc, pic-pac-poc sounds once they’d
finished school patrol and had resumed strutting their shit across the street to the Ace
bar. That’s when Sasha clenched Kenji’s arm and said famously: You see that? That’s
how humans really are: Unclassifiably beautiful and infinitely complex, which became
one of Kenji’s favorite memories according to Duran Duran. After peeking in at some of
the best known gay bars in Ni-chōme like Dragon Men, Rehab Lounge and Arty Farty,
Sasha decided on the gay-friendly bar Spank Me, Thank Me, dragging Kenji who
dragged his feet.

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Japanese translitered into the Latin alphabet as a community service for head-scratching gaijin
so they don’t have to stare at kanji in bewilderment.
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At the front door, a hot, butch madame dressed in skin-tight, black leather
Grease Lightning pants, a blood-red scarf tied around her neck and a lit cigarette
dangling from her cinnamon-colored lips, stopped them like the Marie Antoinettes. —
Sorry kids, she said, putting up her hand, —but this isn’t gonna work out.
—But why? Sasha asked, her eyes all wide and doey.
—Well fuck me! the bouncer said, I should have known with those beautiful
lashes. You really are too pretty to be a matador. Look at those cheekbones.
—Domo, ne?
—You can enter, she said, waving Sasha in, —but you, she said, pointing with
her index and fuck-you finger to Kenji in the ugly dress with the tulips and the shoyu
stain on the hemline, —you can forget about it. No boys.
—But he’s my boyfriend, Sasha said.
—Okay, like I said before, this isn’t gonna work out.
—Doesn’t he at least get points for pretending to be the better sex?
—Are you kidding me? That costume is an insult to real women everywhere.
Kenji winced, turning to Sasha. —Okay we tried. Can we go now?
—Honey, it’s fine, she said under her breath, grabbing his hand.
His eyes said: It doesn’t feel fine.
—Well, Sasha said, hunching up her shoulders, —I think he’s kind of a cute
woman. Awkward, but very cute.
Kenji rolled his eyes.
—Yeah right, the bouncer said, inhaling, —he might be the ugliest woman I’ve
ever seen in my entire life, shaking her head in disgust, then exhaling.
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—Gee, thanks, Kenji said, embarrassed.
—Look, even if I was sweetest little thing—which I’m not, by the way—I don’t
think you get it: This is a biker bar, sweetheart.
—Oh, she said.
—Oh, he said.
—A lesbian biker bar.
—Oh, she said.
—Oh, he said.
—And you guys look like you just raided a costume store.
—Actually . . . he said.
—I mean, is today dress-up day for straight people?
Sasha laughed.
—Okay, he said, that’s fine with me. We tried honey, he said, patting Sasha on
the shoulder. Ikō, ne?
—Wait, Sasha said, Look: The truth is, I may never convince Kenji to wear this
ugly dress again.
—It’s true, he sighed, I pretty much hate my life right now.
The bouncer raised her eyebrow. Sasha laughed.
—And I just want him to get out of his little bubble for a couple of hours. He
spends all day in a lab and I think it would do him some good to experience Tokyo’s
alternative lifestyle. By the way, I love that scarf. It’s like the cutest thing.
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The bouncer stood there and dragged on her cigarette, exhaling a large cloud of
smoke that mushroomed in the air. Kenji looked over his shoulder toward the street,
contemplating his escape. Sasha put her hands together, pleading.
The bouncer half-smiled like it pained her and then paused. She took another
drag, a look of unbridled intensity in her eyes. Sasha and Kenji exchanged looks.
Traffic whizzed by behind them on the street. A Wham song started playing inside the
bar. Sasha gave her the biggest authentic smile she could muster and twinkled her eyes.
The bouncer exhaled and looked inside the bar. Then, finally, she nodded. —All right,
fine, she said, opening the door wide, —but don’t get any crazy ideas.
—Thanks so much, Sasha said.
Kenji nodded. The bouncer snarled at him.
Later on, Sasha and Kenji decided that the reason the bouncer let them in was
because of how petrified Kenji looked at the prospect of being the only (straight) dude
inside a bar of tough biker chicks and lipstick lesbians (none of whom looked like they
messed around with choppers, booze or girl love). Also, it didn’t hurt that Sasha’s
Japanese (flattery) was stellar, that it was still early when they’d arrived in Ni-Chōme,
and that Spank Me, Thank Me’s regulars wouldn’t show up until after midnight anyway.
Sasha’s long, curving eyelashes that looked like goddman pitchforks were very
persuasive when they wanted to be.

After ordering two Scotch and Sodas, Sasha and Kenji sat down at a booth and looked
around. Tina Turner was playing in the background. There were five or six women there,
all wearing biker jackets, studded collars, fluffy pink skirts or leather pants, and all of
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them staring at him as he fiddled with his dress straps. Kenji was clearly violating the
bar’s safe space, his fuschia lipstick starting to smear into his chin stubble. Sasha took
off her big montera hat, adjusted the moña that was holding her ponytail in back and
then she pulled her green and gold chaquetilla to the center of her chest for no reason.
When she looked at Kenji again, she started giggling.
—Nani? he asked.
—I take back what I said before: You look ridiculous in my dress.
—Why am I being abused so much tonight? This was your idea, he said,
fidgeting.
—Because you love me.
—Says who? He grumbled.
—Says me. Seeing you in drag is the cutest thing.
—Oh, don’t try to be all sweet with me, he said, adjusting the dress strap.
—Kennnnnnji, she said, in her sweetest tone, are you mad?
—I’m not mad, just uncomfortable. I mean look at me! I look ridiculous. Kenji
licked his lips and shook his head.
—You know, it never occurred to me until now, but cross-dressing is a lot more
empowering for women than it is for men. I mean, I can tell by the way you keep
fidgeting that you feel like an idiot, but I feel like a movie star. I’d wear this stuff all the
time if it wasn’t so stiff, she said, grabbing her chaquetilla.
—Not me, he said, eyeing the drinks coming their way.
—Two Scotch and sodas, the waitress said, dressed in a red and white flared
poodle skirt, bowling shoes and a black and white polka dot neck scarf.
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—Ikura desuka? Kenji asked.
—They’re free, courtesy of the two ladies over there, she said, pointing to a
chubby white woman in a leather motorcycle jacket, black Billy Jean King stencil t-shirt,
perfect gel-sculpted hair spikes and Elvis Costello glasses who was holding hands with
her skinny Japanese girlfriend dressed in a short, red-and-white polka dot Minnie Mouse
dress and yellow patent leather shoes with red bows on the toes.
The waitress returned to the bar. Kenji and Sasha nodded at the two women.
They nodded back, smiling.
—That’s something you don’t see everyday, he said, pointing with his head.
—They’re such a cute couple, she said, looking back.
—You think?
—Definitely. Look how happy they are. You can tell they’re good for each other.
Kenji turned his head, right when the two women kissed. The two women looked
into each other’s eyes and smiled, their faces glowing with love and bourbon (each
feeding the other). It started to dawn on Kenji that he’d never seen two women kiss
before. Even in the ocassional porno he’d skim through in college, female desire was
always so phallocentrically portrayed. And though he’d ended up in Ni-Chōme before
due to his heinous fucking sense of direction and also had two classmates who had
come out sometime after graduation, never in his life had Kenji ever seen two women
express their love for each other so tenderly before. It was strange for him—that’s the
truth—but also touching to see love with different definitions. For Kenji, it was like
discovering a totally new solution to an old equation.
—I’m gonna buy them a drink before we go, she said, nodding.
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—Sure, why not? It’s not everyday a matador buys them a drink.
—Ha. You can say that again.
Kenji took a big gulp of his gin and tonic, grimacing. —Wow, this drink is strong,
he said, stirring it with the black cocktail straw.
—Sure is.
—Are you having a good time?
—Yeah. Definitely, she said, nodding. She sucked down the rest of her drink
and winced. —Wow. You weren’t kidding.
—No. It’s serious stuff.
She gave him a long, loving look. —Kenji, she said, wiping her mouth, —I know
this isn’t your cup of tea, but I really appreciate you being a good sport about all this.
He nodded. —I’m doing the best I can. This isn’t my scene—
—I know, and I appreciate it.
—And I feel like an asshole, to be honest, which makes me a little resentful.
—Honey!
—Let me finish.
—Wow, someone’s touchy, she said, raising her eyebrows.
—But at the same time though, he continued, if I just think about tonight as
another experiment in my own reality, it becomes a good thing.
—You sure?
—I think so.
—I appreciate your honesty.
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—I mean, I still feel like I’m on another planet, but that’s okay. Tokyo isn’t a city
so much as a constellation anyway. I’ve known ther’re other planets out there, just never
been on one until now.
—God, you’re right. That’s like the perfect analogy.
Kenji finished the rest of his Scotch and soda. —I’m embarrassed to admit this,
but watching those two girls—
—They’re women, Kenji.
—Okay, well, seeing them kiss made me think about love in its rawest, purest
form, and I’m beginning to see that my definition of love, whatever love is, has been very
narrow until now. And that kinda makes me feel more ashamed than wearing an ugly
dress.
She grabbed his hand and smiled. —God, I love you so much.
He smiled, less embarrassed about Sasha’s PDA than normal. —Of course you
do. You have a nerd fetish and a daddy fetish.
—Do not.
—And I knew the instant I saw you you were hentai.
—Wait: Are you serious?
—Coming from a girl dressed up as a matador? Who likes shokushu gōkan?
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—It was one book! She said, pointing her index finger, —and there were pirates
too. And it was a gift.
—I’m just joking. When will you learn that I don’t actually care?

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, or shokushu gōkan, is kinda fucked up hentai manga that explores, among other
things, tentacle erotica, that is, Japanese women being penetrated by tentacles. To each their
own, man.

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—I know you don’t . . . it’s just . . . my issue.
—What issue?
—Ugh, she said, finishing her stiff drink and making a face, —Okay. Well, the
basic rule is women aren’t allowed to be sexual. They can be moms, they can even be
lawyers, but they can’t like sex. Explicit sexuality is a male privilege. The instant a
woman is sexual, she’s slutty.
—What’s wrong with being a slut? He asked, laughing. —At least sluts know
what they want.
—Being called a slut is just the modern version of the Scarlet Letter, Kenji. It’s
just another way of judging, disparaging and punishing female sexuality.
—The scarlet what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
—Anyway, the point is, even in the 1980’s, women aren’t allowed to desire. The
instant they do, their morality is compromised. But when men desire, it’s actually
considered an extension of their masculinity. Even in this modern era, desire is still a
male prerogative.
Kenji took another sip and grimaced. He thought about what Sasha had said,
working through it in his own mind. Finally: —Huh, I guess that’s true, now that you
mention it. But you don’t have to repeat that double standard with me. I don’t judge
people. I’m too weird for that.
—Which is why I love you, my little breakdancing science nerd.
—Wow, talk about low standards.
—Ha! You know, she said, leaning forward for a kiss, you’re the raddest
boyfriend in the whole world. I’d slay armies of goblins to be with you.
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—And you’re the most infinitely complex and unclassifiably beautiful girl I’ve ever
met.
She smiled long and hard, the scotch like fuel in her heart for the journey her
feelings were accelerating through. She gave Kenji a long, hot, steamy kiss until the
lipstick was gone and there was nothing left on his lips except a plastered grin.
Suddenly, The Cars’s Drive began playing on the jukebox and they laughed, their eyes
glassy, ready to break and spill over into reality. Though it sounds impossible, Sasha
and Kenji were thinking the exact same thing at the exact same moment: The world
could be so random, so strange and so brutal, but it could also be so unpredictably fair,
so perfect, so insanely kind. Like the other couple that had bought them drinks out of the
blue, holding each other near the juxebox, they were just glad they found each other
when they did.

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4.22: The Little Robot inside You

Near the end of Winter, Kenji and Sasha finally made it to Robots on Acid after
their Love Beepers (re)found each other like lovers reunited after the war, singing their
electronic duet in the frisky, cold spring air when Kenji and Sasha’s love began a million
beeper years after their beepers had already rekindled their tiny love for each other, an
operatic reunion of gadgets that threw Sasha into another dimension: A new life in
Tokyo with a nerdy, kawaii science-nerd who became a Sisyphean crush and then a
boyfriend raison d’être, the whole frequency of her life changing in a single electronic
flutter. After Kenji had left his beeper on the Yurakucho subway getting off at Kojimachi
station, which prolonged their first intentional act of desire (i.e. date), Kenji and Sasha
were finally going to sit down now and eat a sumptuous meal at Robots on Acid without
the drama or the heartache, the same restaurant where they were now celebrating their
nine month anniversary. Sitting inside the booth with Japanese synth music blasting
from tiny surround-sound speakers and a million plastic capsules of iridescent sushi
blurring by on conveyer belts, Sasha sighed happily. She felt fucking awesome. The
company she was working for as an English teacher was on break for the whole month.
The following day, Kenji and Sasha were taking the shinkansen to Hokkaido where they
were staying in a luxury cabin in the woods, within striking distance of a gourmet
restaurant called Frozen Stars that specialized in Hairy Crab, twenty kilometers from
Sapporo and just a short snowshoe jaunt away from their steamy love shack.

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Kenji returned from the bathroom and sat down in the booth across from Sasha,
touching her hand. —You won’t believe it, he said, pointing to the restroom with this
thumb, there’s a guy sleeping in one of the stalls.
—Honto ni? Is he snoring? She asked, tapping her feet on the floor.
—Yeah, that’s exactly what’s he doing.
She gave him a quick, nervous little smile. —Um, so how was your poop?
—Um, okay, I guess.
—
—
—Are you not comfortable talking about your bowel movements? She asked.
—Uh, not really, he said, but I’m trying to be.
—If you don’t like talking that stuff, then don’t. I don’t care. I was just curious,
she said, the hunger in her own stomach feeling more like nausea.
—I know it’s a sign of trust or something, he said, waving one of the tea robots
over, but there are some things you don’t need to know.
—Got it.
—Thanks for understanding, Unchisan.
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—Gross!
One of the busgirls dressed in a bulky robot outfit walked to their table, nodded
and placed two large white teacups on the table, pouring steamy, sage-colored tea into
the cups before disappearing. Sasha looked at her teacup and noticed a line of robots in

195
Which translated roughly as Mrs. Poop.
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different sizes and colors getting down to music, pairing off into couples as they grooved
down the center. Think Soul Train, but with robots.
—Why have I never noticed these teacups before? he said.
—I think they’re new, she said.
—That makes me feel better. I thought my memory was eroding.
—Morally, it might be, ero-oyaji.
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Kenji laughed, picking up his teacup, smelling it and then slurping his tea.
Sasha fidgeted in her seat, her shoulders hunched.
Kenji finished his tea and looked up at her. —Stop fidgeting!
—I’m not fidgeting. I’m just hungry.
—Well, let’s eat then.
This time, they did it right, celebrating (eating) the way they were supposed to
celebrate their life: From the twin conveyor belts full of color-coded capsules blurring by
at astonishing speed in both directions, each capsule with a different contour line,
corresponding to a different price (magenta = ¥200, orange = ¥400, etc., etc.) filled with
a never-ending assortment of sushi, appetizers, noodles, desserts and teriyaki dishes, a
whirl of freshly prepared food by chefs who slaved away in the center of the restaurant
(dōjō), the conveyor belts spinning around both of them, every second like a new
offering/possibility/combination from the sea, every minute like a different forecast of
destiny. Finally, they focused on the dishes that excited them and slowly stacked up
capsules of pure yum: Rainbow-bright nigirizushi, steamy bowls of Edamame, ice cream
cone-shaped temaki filled with soft-shell crab, roe, and maguro with green Olympic rings

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Ero-oyaji, is the Japanese word for dirty old man.

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of scallion, cuddling pairs of inarizushi,
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glistening, green bundles of oishitashi
sprinkled with bonito shavings—creating a table of Technicolor flavor, a world of
contrasting textures and sensations that matched, color for color and pound for pound,
the hunger slowly growing inside of them since their modest, midafternoon snack of
onigiri and sweet tamagoyaki in Kenji’s dining room. As far as dinners went, their first
legit dinner together at Robots on Acid was an ass-kicking epic feast, the stuff of
extravagant Caligulan weddings and gluttonous Japanese emperors.

With a stack of empty capsules in various sizes and colors on the table, piled high like a
wobbly architecture model of a futuristic city, Sasha and Kenji sipped their ocha quietly
and looked at each other, sighing.
Sasha slowly finished her mug of tea, the dancing robots still getting down
between her fingers. Then she refilled Kenji’s teacup. He nodded gratefully, then filled
her own tea cup. She blew on the fresh tea, slurped from the mug’s lip, the soul train of
robots marching into her mouth. She wiped her lips with her hand and then looked up at
Kenji who was looking around the restaurant, admiring the robot girls who hustled from
table to table, carrying teapots, baskets of Coca-cola cans and backpacks of piping hot
plastic bags of oshibori.
— あの、she said, hesitantly,
あたし。。。きみ何か言わなくてはいけないわ。
After a long silence, J-pop music starting blasting from the tiny speakers in their booth,
the beats were a drum machine, the lead singer’s voice, soft and pixiesh, high on the

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A sweet fried bean curd usually filled with rice, sometimes thin carrot slices too. Duran Duran
practically lived on this shit when she first started acting.

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reverb, singing three notes that repeated over and over again, forming triangular haloes
around their foreheads.
— 何だ？he asked, nervously, —you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?
—I know we’ve only been together for nine months, but . . .
— 何だよ？
—Kenji, I have fireworks in my eyes, which is the way she told him that she loved
him the first time.
He smiled.
—And by the way, she said in English, I’m pregnant, taking another sip of her
tea and searching into his eyes for a response.
It makes sense (to me) why Sasha would have told Kenji in English first: Maybe
he didn’t know that word, or maybe he’d heard it before but didn’t quite understand what
it meant, maybe saying it in English gave Sasha just a little time to process her reality
before Kenji had the chance to be part of her destiny. After all, speaking is a material
rite of passage and only by saying things out loud do we commit them to the world. We
speak, and by speaking, we turn our words into other people’s things, relinquishing
control of reality but also giving birth to it at the same time.
— 何？
—I’m pregnant Kenji, she said, lingering in her maternal tongue for just a second
longer.
—
— あたし。。。妊娠中わよ。
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Kenji’s eyes bulged out like he was constipated, but it wasn’t fear exactly, more
like intrigue, as if Sasha had just told him the most amazing fairytale about her body.
There they were, staring at each other in mutual awe as conveyor belts of encapsulated
food whizzed by, J-Pop music formed sacred rings of iconographic light around their
heads, anointing their nine-month love, setting their beautiful wedlock to music. One
single tear trickled down Kenji’s face, a small, runty, flashy karat of liquid gem, followed
by Sasha whose tears flowed professionally (like mother like daughter), her cheeks wet,
muscular and carmine like bobbing apples. Together, they flashed their love back and
forth at eachother like flashlights in the wilderness, like the two low-tech gadgets that
had brought them together in Ginza the first time they’d met. As they cried, they laughed
too, moved by their emotional synergy, a conception born from love and spontaneity
where love and spontaneity were the only stable things in the whole world.
Kenji wiped his eyes with the fat of his palms, and for the first time since they’d
started dating, he grabbed Sasha’s hand and exclaimed: —This is the greatest day of
my life. Greater than the day I got into Todai.
That’s when Sasha started crying all over again because she knew how much
Kenji loved school. He was dorky that way.

Over the course of the next three months, Sasha and Kenji struggled with finding the
right name for their future baby, a tricky science for both of them considering how many
baby name rules kept popping up:
Sasha and Kenji’s Baby Name Rules
1. Gender-neutral names are preferable so their child doesn’t feel constrained by the
construct of gender one way or the other (Sasha)
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2. No names from anime, Star Trek, manga or sci-fi flicks, meaning Spock, Hikari
Kimojō, Rick Deckard or Nyota Uhura are out (Sasha)

3. No stodgy traditional Japanese names like Tarō, or variations of Tarō, like Shintarō,
Shōtarō, Ryōtarō, or old maid names like Machiko, Reiko, etc., etc. (Kenji)

4. No names after Japanese cities. It would just be too confusing: Can you imagine a
father shouting, Kyōto! Kyoooooooto! Where are you? (Kenji)

5. Unique is good as long as it’s not bizarre, like 3 Times or Psychic Chinchilla or Fruit
Punch Zest or The Lord Jesus is My Indomitable Savior or Meteorite Shower (Sasha)

6. No names based on food either. Having a child named Fried Pork Slice (Katsudon)
is an abusive way to bring a child into the world (Kenji)

7. Fruit names are adorable: Apple or Kiwi or Quince or Piña are all really cute (Sasha)

8. Fruit names like Apple or Kiwi or Quince or Piña are terrible, and should be avoided
at all costs to prevent traumatizing the child (Kenji)

9. Names based on colors, as long as they’re multisyllabic, are also cute: Midori,
Murasaki, Ki-Iro, Chairo, Hanairo, Usumidori (Sasha)

10. Names, especially based on Japanese names for colors like Midori, Murasaki, Ki-Iro,
Chairo, Hanairo, Usumidori should be avoided at all costs to prevent traumatizing the
child, or making him/her feel pressured to become a great artist (Kenji)

11. No names based on American rockers (e.g. Rick Springfield,), trends (e.g. Swatch)
or soft drinks (e.g. Tab) (Sasha).

12. The child’s name must be cool, it must be unique and most importantly, it must be
unanimous (Sasha and Kenji)

Eight and a half months later, after Sasha enrolled in every prenatal