LYD Classic: Editor’s Note, 2026

In 1994, when I was eighteen and still in the closet, I did an interview for a book about queer young people. I hadn’t come out to my parents. I’d come out to exactly four people on my dorm floor. Here, lightly cleaned up from the original scan, is what I said.

I am eighteen years old. I was born in Hayward, California1, and raised in El Sobrante, California, a small suburb a couple of minutes from Berkeley. I’ve lived there ever since junior high (seventh grade). I live with two parents and a sister. My father is currently sixty-two, my mother fifty-nine. My sister is twenty-eight, ten years older than I am.

Since my sister is so old, I consider her more of a mother than anything else. It was difficult living with my sister because I had to live with her through her hardships. She has a learning disability. She had a mental breakdown at fifteen. (I still remember the police dragging her out of the house when I was five.) I saw her life as she became dependent on medication, how she “gave her life to Christ,” how she now lives by herself in a rented room, barely making it month to month. Being Chinese, this puts a lot of pressure on me to succeed.

As a first-generation Chinese American, I was raised speaking English while my parents spoke to me in Chinese. (My mother to this day refuses to speak to me in English.) This causes many communication problems. While I can talk to my parents about conventional things — dinner, money for college, the weather outside — I am unable to talk to them about abstract ideas, such as my being gay, without added bits of fractured English.

I knew I was gay at an early age. Of course, I didn’t know it was being “gay,” but I felt a close desire to be with guys my age as early as age five. I knew the feelings I felt had a name by junior high. It was also about this time when I knew it was “bad.” My parents are Chinese immigrants, very conservative, and Christian. Bad things, when you’re growing up and coming to realize you’re gay. I wanted to be a good son, so I’ve always done what I was told. Unfortunately, that also meant a lot of pain, not being true to my own feelings.

One time, my mother was cleaning my room and read a couple of letters I wrote to friends about guys I had crushes on in high school. When my parents confronted me about this, they suggested therapy to change myself. But instead of telling them that they were wrong about being gay, that I couldn’t just change myself, I freaked out. I told them it was just a phase. They believed me and left it at that. I don’t know what I’m going to do about telling my parents. They’re currently supporting me financially through college, so I do not want to come out to them just yet.

Most of the time, I felt like an outsider. Because I didn’t really get along with the people at my school, I looked to the church for support and soon found a group of Christian friends who went to my church. Finally, these were some people who accepted me for who I was, and I didn’t feel like such an outsider anymore. Of course, I didn’t tell them I was gay; then they wouldn’t like me anymore. During high school, I told three people in my church group. One girl took it very well, while the other two guys accepted me as a friend but condemned “my sin” and didn’t want to talk about my feelings. It was okay at first, but it ended up hurting me because I couldn’t tell my closest friends how I felt toward other people.

Now that I am in college, things are a little different. I live in the dorms, and I am still hesitant every so often about coming out to people because I’m afraid that they will reject me or condemn me. I guess I’m expecting what some of my friends from church did. But so far, all of my coming-out experiences have been positive, even though I’ve only come out to four people on my dorm floor. I’ve been starting to hang around more gay people, also, so I am gradually coming out of my shell.

Six years of church and all your friends being Christian do rub off on you. Through high school, I had learned that while loving another guy wasn’t bad, having sex with him was. I’m not so sure if I believe that anymore. Some of it has gone away after going to college. I’ve told most of my friends that these are my years to “discover myself,” and they’ve taken it rather well that I haven’t gone to church at Davis.

I went to a financially troubled public school for high school, but hell, aren’t all public schools financially troubled these days? It was a very diverse school, with around 30 to 40 percent of the students being black, the rest divided among white, Asian, and some Latino students. I never really felt like I belonged with the people at my school — when I was a freshman, I was in Thespians and had a niche there, but that was gone when my father told me to enroll in computer classes. There were always people to hang around with, but I never got close to them, and they were never close to me. I didn’t need them anyway, since I had my friends from church. Of course, I had lingering crushes on various guys through high school, but I was too scared to tell myself I was gay in high school, much less tell them. Now I go to UC Davis, and I feel a lot more comfortable about my sexuality, although I don’t want to come out of the closet just yet.

As far as meeting other gay folks is concerned, I meet other people through the Internet.

The first time I went to a gay youth “support” group was when I was fifteen. I went to a group in Berkeley. I guess I was expecting there to be people like me. There weren’t. Instead, they were cliquey and arrogant. The only people they would talk to were people who acted and looked like them, and since I wasn’t like them, I didn’t belong in their little group. I ended up never going to a group again, and to this day, going to a support group makes me uncomfortable. Currently, I meet other people online.

I want to find that “perfect guy” as much as the next gay guy. I guess growing up the way I have has made me want the idea of the traditional family, with a wife, three kids, a job, and a picket fence. Being gay, I wouldn’t be able to have that, and that’s my biggest fear, something I’ll have to work out throughout my life. I see myself in a monogamous relationship, with a good job, a decent house, maybe a kid, somehow. I just want to live my life simply with someone.

You’re not alone in the world. I thought I was. I learned in college that many other people thought they were, too. But we’re not alone.

LYD Classic: Editor’s Note, 2026 —

“HORNEY” is from July 2004, back when I was 27, blogging out of Oakland, and apparently incapable of getting through a simple takeout order without incident. A man gave his name at a counter. The counter had a very large microphone. I’m sure people in Bakersfield heard.

(The scene: Chaat Cafe, last night. I’m at the counter with my boyfriend, ordering dinner. This time, instead of italics being in Chinese like in previous posts, italics signify a heavy, heavy Indian accent.)

Ernie: Hi, one chicken pesto-stuffed naan and a chicken tikka dinner, please, to go.
Woman at the counter: Okay. What’s your name?
Ernie: Ernie.
Woman: What?
Ernie: Ernie.
Woman: Ornie?
Ernie: Ernie.
Woman: ORRNIE? [flashes Ernie a dirty look]
Ernie: ... yes.
Woman: Hrm. [writes my name down, hands it to chef]

After paying with my credit card, I open up my wallet and look for some cash to put in the tip jar. Since I only have bills above $10, I decide I’m not that generous and put my wallet back in my pants, only for the woman cashier to notice and give yet another glare of death. “I think she hates me,” I say to Mike.

So, I’m sitting on one of the benches marked for to-go customers, taking in the ambiance; there are framed pictures of Bollywood stars, and the restaurant is still filled mostly with Indian patrons, a promising sign of whether the restaurant is going to be good or not. (As opposed to a restaurant that has a name like, say, “Rick and Molly’s House of Sushi.” Right?) I find it funny that the Indian chef calls out “Horny” for a to-go order. What kind of Indian name is Horny?

The chef repeats the name again. “HORNY?” on the giant microphone. Except this time he is looking straight at me.

Now at this point, I’m not necessarily thinking he’s trying to say the word “horny” - I’m thinking the cashier wrote the name “Ornie” and he’s just pronouncing the name a little differently because he’s not from America and it’s like the game Telephone, when you sit around a circle with your 12-year old friends and you giggle as the phrase “The love of Jesus surrounds me” turns into “I fucked arugula on a pony,” so I’m telling myself that it’s cool, no harm, no foul.

And only THEN do I look down at the receipt. And there under the order, written in large letters with a giant BIC pen, do I see my name spelled the following way:

H-O-R-N-E-Y.

I look over to the cashier in horror. She’s helping another customer, oblivious.

Let’s stop time right here. At that moment, I figured I could do one of two things: Mike hasn’t seen the receipt yet. I can grab the dinner and run, run for Mexico where no one will ever know about this somewhat awkward moment and live my life in semi-anonymity with sea lions and Tijuana hookers.

Or, I could tell Mike, and he could give me shit for the rest of the night.

Eh, what the fuck. It’s blog-fodder.

Ernie, to Mike: (Dude, look at the receipt. Look what she wrote as my...)
Mike: HOLY SHIT!

(Ernie and Mike run out of Chaat Cafe, hoping the chef doesn’t do anything embarrassing, like holding up a can of soda and screaming “HORNY, YOU FORGOT YOUR DRINK” while 30 Indians point and laugh)

At least the chicken tikka dinner was delicious. All it cost was a couple of dollars and MY SOUL.

LYD Classic: Editor’s Note, 2026 —

I wrote this at three in the morning in August 2005. I was twenty-eight. That summer, my relationship had ended, and my parents had separated, and one night the thing I’d been outrunning for years finally sat down on my chest and started talking back. This is the first time I had ever tried to put depression into words on this blog. The elephant came back that December. He never fully left — but he did, eventually, get less obtrusive, exactly like he promised.

Lately, it’s showing up more. Always late. Always when I’m alone, sweating in a bedroom that feels like a sauna, hacking up phlegm from too many cigarettes. I try lying on my back. Nope, that’s useless. Flip to my side, face in the pillow, hoping something—anything—will just knock me out cold so I don’t have to think for a few hours.

It’s there. It’s back.

A thought pops up. Not a voice. I’m not that far gone. Just this idea: It never left. It’s always been there. Years of negativity, self-doubt, all the usual greatest hits—work, family, life—swirl together into this heavy, dark cloud. Except now it’s shaped like a giant white elephant, and it’s parked right on my chest while I’m just trying to get some sleep before work.

Look, I’m not losing it. There’s no actual elephant in my bed. It’s just a metaphor. Roll with it.

“The fuck you doing here?” I would ask, theoretically.

And the elephant would answer, “Fuck am I doing here? I’ve always been here. Was there when you were a kid when you dealt with the family, was there all through college. I’ve never left. You’ve pushed me in a corner for the last two and a half years, I’d say. I was, maybe, a tenth of the size I am now. But I’ve never left.”

Hack, cough cough, sputter wheeze.

“You need to stop smoking,” says the elephant.

“Fuck you.” I pause for a second. “I’m going to pull through this, you know. You’re going to go away, for good.”

“Fantastic. Maybe someone will do a Lifetime movie on your life, Meredith Baxter-Burney. You don’t believe half the shit you say.” Goddamn elephant, he sees right through me. “Besides,” he says. “I’ll never really go away. I’ll get less obtrusive, perhaps, and maybe you’ll forget about me down the line. But I’ll still be here.”

Now the sheets are soaked, pillows a mess. I get up and start remaking the bed. So, I ask, when are you going to be less annoying so I can actually sleep?

“I don’t know,” the elephant says. “When I feel like it. When you feel like it. Days, months. Not so sure. But in the meantime, while you’re sulking and feeling sorry for yourself, I’ll be watching infomercials.” Since this is my imaginary sequence, the elephant can pick up my remote control, turn on my cable television, and change channels. “You know, Ernie, you can become a millionaire just by working from home, thanks to tiny, tiny ads.”

But I’m not paying attention, because I’m on my bed, curled up in a fetal position, wishing everything — the dark elephant-shaped cloud, my coughing fit, myself — would disappear forever.

A couple of weeks ago, my dad’s side of the family all got together at a Chinese restaurant. We hadn’t done that in about twenty years. The last time all my cousins and I were together, I was three, and we were just playmates—not the “smart cousins,” the “popular cousins,” or the “freak cousins.” (Angela and I are, of course, the freak cousins.)

The reason for the gathering was my grandmother’s 90th birthday. I love her so much. She’s amazing.

Everyone loves their grandma, of course. But has your grandma ever had to share a husband with two other women, escape both the Communists and the Japanese, and then move to a country where she didn’t speak the language?

That’s why I think she’s a trooper. When I was four, I used to spend whole afternoons at her apartment, looking through old photo albums. There were pictures of my family in the 70s, when my mom was pregnant with me, then earlier, when my grandfather was alive, and even earlier, when he was in his twenties.

“Nainai,” I would ask in my tortured Chinese, “who is he?”

“That’s your grandfather, honey,” she would reply. “Here, have some more orange slices.”

She always bought the sourest oranges in all of Oakland Chinatown, but I would eat them anyway.

“Where is Grandpa then?” I would say “Grandpa” in English because I didn’t know the Chinese word.

I honestly don’t remember what she said to that. I probably wouldn’t have understood the whole story anyway. My grandfather was in the Chinese military, fighting under Chiang Kai-Shek. My grandmother was the second of his three wives, and none of them got along—they argued with each other and with him. I can’t imagine my dad going through the same tough family stuff I did. My grandma is a strong Christian, and from what I know, wife number one was a Buddhist. I’m not sure if that made things harder, but I like to think it did.

But what she did say to me was this. She would give me a look I can’t really describe—somewhere between sentimental and troubled—and simply say, “He is a very good man, but he has many faults.” Then she would kiss me on the forehead, and I would smile, eat more sour orange slices, and watch Grover explain near and far on Sesame Street.

She’s been through so much in her life. I’m sure she’ll live another ninety years.

Hey you. Come here. Come a little closer.

Wanna know a secret?

I’m gay. Imagine dramatic silence, crickets, maybe a cell phone going off at the worst possible moment.

What?!

Fine, you got me. Not exactly a state secret. If you’ve read my blog for more than five minutes, you’ve probably done the math. Even if you just skimmed the parts about my family being a mess or my brief, shining moment with ecstasy, you’d get the picture.

And after some thought, no, maybe it really isn’t a secret. My friends know. People who read my weblog know. My dad knows, although it’s an uncomfortable subject ever since the trip to China, where he tried to set me up with a girl. And on a subconscious level, I’m sure my Mom knows. She’s not ready to deal with it at this point in time, but trust me on this one.

As far as strangers are concerned, if they bring it up, I’ll tell them. But usually they never bring it up. Stereotypes suck, and I don’t consider myself feminine at all anyway. Well, there was that one time I answered the telephone and the telemarketer thought I was a chick. Stupid bitch. Incidentally, my voice isn’t that high, is it? No comments from the peanut gallery, por favor.

So, do you really wanna hear a secret? Okay, maybe not so much a secret as it is an unusual fact about myself.

I was in a book. Flash back around six or seven years ago. Seventeen years old, out of high school, living in the dorms, away from parents. I was the kind of guy in high school with no friends. You know, the type of guy that hung out by himself, daydreaming about the school bursting into flames. I was the one whose name would be brought up at a lunchtime crowd, and someone would say, “Ernie? You mean the guy who got crapped on by a seagull in 11th grade?” True story, by the way. No comment.

I knew I was gay, but telling anyone? Not happening. Growing up gay is bad enough. Growing up as the gay freak? No thanks. You couldn’t pay me enough to do high school over.

So, leaving high school, I was gonna change myself. You know, the whole “you’re out of high school, you get to start over” mentality. And that’s what happened, with mixed results. It was easy to make friends in the dorms. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as good at finding gay friends. Other people like me. Add that to a mixture of internal hang-ups and the college environment. Davis was known for having queer activists and closet cases, with not much in between. Times may have changed since then, who knows?

So I did what any Asian college freshman with internet access would do. I went on IRC. Don’t laugh. You’re online right now, probably talking to some Asian girl typing in alternating caps. I see you.

On the newsgroups, there was a woman who was writing a book about gay teenagers. “If I asked you a couple of questions about growing up and parents and religion and such,” she wrote, “would you be okay with answering them? You can even be anonymous.”

Why the fuck not.

So I answered her questions. Did I always know I was gay? Yeah. Did my parents know? Absolutely not. Religion? It was there, somehow. Was I happy? Not really. I was more detailed than that, but you get the idea. I typed for four hours, editing, re-reading, overthinking. For once, everything was out there. Me, flaws and all, staring back from the screen.

Then I did something that even surprised me. Instead of being anonymous, I used my real name. Ernie, insecure about himself, his sexuality, his relationship with his parents, just about everything, used his real name in a book that would be available in queer bookstores around the nation. All my cards are on the table. What was I gonna do? Was I going to call? Or was I going to fold? Call or fold? Call or fold?

I clicked on the send button. Call.

Then I waited. And waited. Four years. That’s how long it took her to finish the book.

So when I was told that there was a book in the mail, I was shocked to say the least. And when the book came in the mail, a book called In Your Face - Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth, with my name in the table of contents, I didn’t know what to make of it. I read it cover to cover that night and the morning after. It’s a strange feeling, reading something that’s been forgotten about for years. Kind of like finding a yearbook from junior high, seeing girls with teased hair and hot-pink LA Gears. There was a mixture of feelings swimming through my head. Wonderment that something I wrote was actually in a book, horror that I could reveal so much about myself at the age of seventeen, happiness and yeah, a bit of jealousy because other teenagers profiled in the book were comfortable with themselves in a time when I wasn’t.

But mostly, I was relieved. Relieved that I could look back four years and realize that I had grown a bit. Slowly, I had become comfortable with myself during that four-year period. I had a solid group of friends to rally behind me. Most of them weren’t gay, but that was fine by me. I’m more comfortable with being plain old dumb-ass Ernie rather than Ernie, the gay-Asian-Chinese-Insert label here-guy anyway. But they didn’t kick my ass when I told them I was queer, even when I was drunk as fuck off half a wine cooler, even when I couldn’t bear making eye contact. My friends were cool with it. Even the macho wannabe ruffneck guys. Imagine that. Didn’t even talk shit behind my back… about the gay stuff, anyway.

Am I completely comfortable with my sexuality? I’d be lying if I said I was. My dad isn’t too thrilled that I won’t be pumping out grandchildren. “I will never be happy again,” he told me in a busy Shanghai department store, after I wigged out under constant attempts to “just talk” to the pretty nurse who was conveniently living in the same apartment where we were staying.

But it could always be worse. He could have disowned me. You know the drill. I try to be pretty careful revealing myself in certain situations. But then again, coming out to a bunch of ghetto ass lowered-Civic riding Asians says something. Although what it says, I’m not quite sure.

Cards on the table, took my chances, and didn’t lose too big. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Alright, so I have this thing for video games. Call it Asian upbringing, call it parental rebellion. When I was ten, I’d go to a friend’s house and watch him play Kid Icarus and Metroid on his Nintendo, mesmerized.

“Dad, can I have a Nintendo?”
“No, you should be studying.”

Months later…

“Hooray, it’s Christmas!”
“Open your present, Ernie.”
“Is it a Nintendo? Is it a Nintendo?”
“No, even better.”

Unwraps Christmas present

“Uhmm… Dad? This isn’t a Nintendo.”
“I know. It’s an Encyclopedia.”
“This is only volume 2. Where are all the other volumes?”
“Too expensive.”
“Oh.”

Video games have always been my escape. When my parents were fighting, when there were issues at school, when I was dealing with the whole sexuality thing, I went back to them. Some habits die hard, I guess.

This year’s video game of the moment? Dance Dance Revolution. DDR is one of those things every trendy Asian kid in California knows about and has some type of experience with, similar to going to a rave or rebelling against your parental units. In case you’ve been living under a rock, DDR is a music-based video game where, instead of a joystick, there are giant floor panels marked with arrows. The arrows come up on the screen, and you step on the correct arrow panel to the beat. Kind of like karaoke, except you’re dancing.

The songs, for the most part, are cheesy Japanese pop tunes about lost love or dancing to the beat. Anyone who plays the game is so concentrated on stepping in the right place that they leave their hands to their sides, so it looks like they’re doing a bad Asian Irish jig. And usually the DDR machine is flanked by flashy, multi-colored lights and placed in an easily visible area of the arcade so everyone taking a break from their miniature golf can point and laugh. A lot.

A dollar a game. That’s how much it costs. You get such a workout playing a couple of songs that you’re out of breath by the time the game is over, reminding everyone watching you how chubby you are playing video games instead of, say, taking a walk. It’s embarrassing.

And I’m totally addicted to this game.

It all started innocently enough. You move to a new city; you don’t know anyone. Hey, there’s a video arcade nearby; I think I’ll go! What’s this? A new video game? Hey, I like music! So I started going a couple of times a week and putting in more money.

Now I’m at the point where I set the difficulty to hard and play both sides at once. I can draw a little audience and get applause from the white people and dirty looks from the Asian ones. The kids at the arcade know me.

It’s like being a heroin junkie, except with cheesy J-Pop music. God help me. Or at least help me find the nearest DDR machine.

LYD Classic: Editor’s Note, 2026 —

“And That’s Okay” went up on iistix.com in February 2001, which makes it approximately a thousand years old, or twenty-five, depending on how you count. I was 24, recently out, still doing that thing where you keep a very specific kind of pain at arm’s length by naming it and immediately shrugging. The essay is about church, and high school, and a phone call I thought about for years. “And that’s okay” is the refrain, and I’ll say only that the phrase reads differently now than it did when I typed it at 24, which is probably why it felt worth dusting off. Anyway.

The last time I went to church was for a candlelight Christmas Eve service. The actions to go to church seem so mechanical… My sister and I jump into a car. We drive through the Berkeley hills. We park in the compacted parking lot a block behind Telegraph Avenue, and instead of getting your nose pierced or buying a water pipe (for tobacco use only), you enter the familiarity and sanctity of the House of God, Presbyterian denomination.

But have you ever been to a place that feels familiar, yet not comfortable? That was exactly how I felt. I recognized a couple of faces: teenagers I spent countless Sundays with six or seven years ago, now marked by facial hair, breasts, or wedding rings. None of them recognized or acknowledged me. Maybe they don’t even recognize each other anymore.

And that’s okay.

When I was in high school, I was heavily involved with my church. I had joined the church and its youth group for very selfish reasons, however. I was one of those guys in high school who would dread lunchtime. It meant walking around the campus by myself, figuring out what the hell to do for the next 45 minutes. People in high school didn’t know what to make of me. I was the “weird guy,” the guy who would hang out with a clique of people and then quietly wonder why they wouldn’t invite me to their poker nights on Friday. You wanna know how I was known at graduation? I was “Ernie, the weird guy that got crapped on by a seagull that one day in April.” I wish I were kidding.

So going to the youth group on Sunday became a social outlet for me, not to mention a great way to escape bickering parents. I even played piano for the church high school choir, going on trips to Alaska and Chicago every summer. From there, I developed friendships with a group of guys, and we would hang out during the week, when one of us had access to a car anyway. All I had to do was somehow survive Monday to Friday.

But it was never about God. Mind you, I believe in God, whatever that entity may be. But I was angry at God. Maybe I’m still a little bit angry.

If there was a loving and just God, like everyone at church said, why did my parents fight? How could God explain what happened to my sister? I won’t even touch the issue of my sexuality with a ten-foot pole, but you can probably imagine. Looking back, Christianity wasn’t my religion; my friends were. I know how cold that sounds to anyone who once saw me as spiritual (which was a long, long time ago), but it’s true. My friends filled a niche I desperately craved.

Eventually, I went off to college with a plan: “I’m going to start over,” I thought to myself. “I’m not going to be an outcast anymore.” So I did.

Not to say I abandoned my spiritual side outright. At college, I joined a Christianity group for the first couple of months. But they were very intellectual, very matter-of-fact about their spiritual matters. I remember falling asleep in the middle of a five-person bible study. Not good.

But the nail in the Christianity coffin came when, during my first year of college, I came out to one of my close church friends from high school over the phone. He was then attending Northwestern University and planning to enroll in Seminary school. After I told him, he fell silent, then muttered something about living in a den of sin. “I’ll pray for you,” he said, and then hung up. I haven’t heard from him since. I was never angry at him for that—just a bit sorry. I’ve moved on. (A quick Internet search later showed he’s now married and works as a case manager for an adoption agency—good for him.)

By now, it’s after midnight, and everyone is in a sudden rush to get 200 cars out of a parking lot that only fits one hundred. The air is cold and damp, and I quickly reach into my pocket to light a cigarette.

I get a lot of dirty looks, but no one tells me to put the cigarette away.

And right there, I realized that in seven years, I had transformed myself. I went from a piano-playing Chinese boy on a mission for Jesus, sitting in the front row, eager for each hymn, to a person among hundreds walking quietly out of a church after midnight—tired from the late hour, confused because my beliefs conflicted with things that mattered deeply to me, and yet, just for the night, content because I had fulfilled my duty at a house of worship on a Judeo-Christian holiday.

And that’s okay.

LYD Classic: Editor’s Note, 2026 —

This one’s from late 2018, when I was 42 and apparently had Feelings about it. The original subtitle — “Improv classes! A trip to Mexico! Crippling depression!” — does most of the heavy lifting as far as summaries go, though the actual essay is less zany-fun-year and more about aging parents, a city I’d lived in for five years without ever quite landing, and the specific weight of a depression that felt hard to claim out loud. I’m reposting it now at 49 mostly intact, which required reading it in full, which was a thing. I’m doing okay, for the record — not “everything is perfect and I’ve learned so much” okay, but okay enough to dust this off and put it back out there. Anyway. Here’s 42.

It’s been a rough year for me. Even though there have been some bright spots, I’ll remember 2018 as the year depression kicked my ass.

Okay, may not past tense. Maybe present tense, too.

This is the year depression is kicking my ass.

I don’t talk about my depression publicly. I don’t do that for several reasons — one, you don’t really bring it up in regular conversation. A friend of a friend or someone you have to call for work makes small talk and asks, “how was your weekend?” You’re not supposed to answer that with, “I woke up stupid early due crippling anxiety, go to sleep feeling resigned to the world around me, and spend the time in-between wanting to feed my emotions because it brings me brief but fleeting moments of satiation.” Instead, you reply with a polite, “it was fine. And yours?” And life goes on.

Two — if you know anything about me or read anything I’ve written at all over the past (checks calendar) sixteen years, you know that I have a very severely mentally ill sister, cognitively slow and unable to interact with another human socially on the good days, profanity-laced and physically assaulty on the bad ones. As this has happened since I was four — in an immigrant family on top of that — anything I feel would be deemed null and void, compared to what my sister goes through. “Aww, you’re depressed, Ernie?” I imagine my sister’s schizophrenia would say if it were an actual person. “Hold my beer.” And then poof, there goes Angela having a screaming fit in the middle of a suburban McDonalds, while we all shift our seats uncomfortably in the plastic booths.

I’m not 100% sure what the trigger has been.

It may be my parents. They’re getting older, dad has gotten senile, and it’s clear some sort of intervention will be needed. The TL;DR version: my parents are divorced, but it would make financial sense for them to get back together, as they have to see each other on a regular basis because of my sister, and my mom can no longer pay the bills to their house. Her central heating has broke, and it’s too expensive to fix, so she’s wrapped herself in electric blankets and bought an army of space heaters. So they start to reconcile until they have a bitter argument and swear never to be in the same room again or my dad’s short-term memory loss kicks in, and he’s forgotten the whole part about reconciling. Repeat this two or three times.

My therapist says I don’t have any obligation to tend to my parents whatsoever; that we don’t live in a time where it’s expected for unmarried Asian children to drop everything, fly home, take care of their elders. My brain knows this.

It may be that after five years of living in Miami, I’ve inadvertently decided that the best way to cope with things around me is to isolate myself. I don’t have close friends here, tried to find a tribe, ended up in evenings where it’s easier to just lie on the couch watching YouTube videos of cats rather than the spent energy.

My partner has been supportive overall but is a staunch defender of where we live. “What’s to say you wouldn’t feel that if you moved somewhere else?” And a part of me passive-aggressively send definitions of “gaslighting” over Facebook messenger, but another part of me knows he’s probably right, the asshole.

So, I’ve poured it all into work. Ahhh, work. See, putting your anxieties into your job is fantastic, because it gives you a distraction from yourself, but then it just opens more opportunities to create more stress that you’re unable to cope with. But you don’t know what else to do, or what other creative or social outlets you have any more, so you spend that all on work! It really is the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe karoshi — that whole death by Japanese salaryman overwork thing — will kick in for me, and I imagine having a heart attack in the middle of the office, grabbing my chest before I dramatically slump over a keyboard. Until I do some internet research and most of them work a hundred hour weeks, and I would be too lazy to commit suicide by working too much.

I went to Mexico City with Kareem and some friends. That was nice, and the break was good, although I ate this chicken and rice dish at some themed restaurant where the waitresses are dressed as nuns and caught food poisoning for forty hours. So I missed the Day of the Dead and would just have to settle for celebrating the Day after the Day of the Dead.

So that’s where I am right now. Next month I’ll fly back to California again for an unspecific amount of time. My goal is to convince mom to sell her house, and at the very least consider moving into the condo I own. A part of me thinks I’ll be staying a while, even though I know my parents, separately or together, will drive me over the edge. But it’ll be something different, and something different is definitely need right now.

Dad didn’t start acting like a human being until after the divorce. Five, maybe six years ago. Before that, he was all about being strong. For the family, allegedly. He played the part—husband, father, the whole stoic Asian dad package—even while he and my mom were at each other’s throats, even while my sister was quietly vanishing into her own private hell. Post-divorce, he moved in with a widow from his old Taiwanese Naval crew. My sister got stuck with my mom. Lucky her. Lucky everyone.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” my mom asks in Chinese. She’s implying that the casual acquaintance she’s had over the past forty years is my father’s new girlfriend.

It is, of course, but I keep my eyes glued to dinner, shoveling rice into my face. That’s my usual M.O. at Mom’s house: come in, eat dinner, listen to Angela talk crazy, chain-smoke on the drive home. The confirmation came months earlier, at my grandmother’s funeral. My mom had arrived unexpectedly at the wake and saw my dad sitting next to her at the banquet afterward. She sat at a round table across from theirs, and they exchanged awkward glances between bites of food.

“That’s fine. What makes him happy.” She pauses. “Your sister thinks she’s ugly, but I tell her that’s not a very nice thing to say.“

Mom eats up that last sentence like it’s Jello chocolate pudding eaten with a tiny, tiny spoon.

Amy Ai-yi, otherwise known as Aunt Amy, or basically, Dad’s girlfriend, took him on trips. A vacation to Brazil and Argentina here, a cruise to Alaska and Hawaii there. Growing up, I never knew him to take a vacation, unless it was a family trip that erupted into a screaming match, or a journey back to Mainland China with his naval buddies. The calm in these new photos stings: now, years later, I walk through the house he shares with his girlfriend and notice pictures I’ve never seen before. There’s a photo of him and his girlfriend, posed in front of a backdrop, both smiling in a way he never did at home—a prom or dinner cruise smile. Another photo shows him in full military garb, proud and upright, taken maybe five or ten years ago—a photo I’ve never seen in the house. I imagine the other photos he hasn’t put up yet, pressed with memories I was never invited to. Maybe there are pictures of him and his girlfriend in Rio de Janeiro, flanked by Carnival dancers, his smile wide, while he wears a white Kangol hat and linen pants, Christ the Redeemer in the background. I’m sure he’s in the background of a Flickr photograph somewhere, happier than I’ve ever seen.

This month, Dad and his girlfriend are off to Spain for a couple of weeks. I keep picturing him in Ibiza, sunburned and confused, trapped in a foam party while some DJ blasts a remix of LMFAO’s “Shots.”

I do this because it’s easier to turn him into a joke than admit I’m jealous.

Realistically, it will be a bunch of his Taiwanese naval buddy friends. Perhaps, in the near future, they’ll all meet at a grandiose Catholic church, greet each other, and talk about who died of a heart attack this year. Then, reminiscing over the years they’ve shared camaraderie, they’ll find a tour company, where a polite mainland Chinese exchange student living in Barcelona will show them around. Later, my dad will try tapas for the first time and make a face, because it’s not soup noodles or cold pickled dishes he’s used to at home.

I don’t know what did it. Distance from my mom and sister? The girlfriend? Just getting old? Whatever it is, Dad went soft. A couple of years ago, at Hometown Buffet, he slid a red envelope across the table, like he was trying to sneak contraband. Awkward, but weirdly sweet.

“What’s this?”

“Hongbao.” Chinese New Year’s lucky money. Something my dad stopped giving me when I was ten or eleven.

“Dad, I’m in my mid-thirties.”

“I didn’t know this, but Amy said you’re still supposed to give this to any family members who are single.”

I had contemplated telling him about my new boyfriend in Miami, but I bit my tongue. “Not married, at least,” I thought to myself.

I took the hongbao anyway. Twenty bucks. Not bad.

I’m talking to my cousin, the overachieving jock police detective living in the South Bay, over the telephone.

“Talk to me, Chris. How does the 800 block of East Saint James in San Jose sound?” I’m anxious. The sounds of someone winning a car on The Price Is Right play in the background.

He laughs. Apparently, my finding an apartment in Silicon Valley is funny to him. I rephrase my question.

“Okay, how about on a scale of one to ten... one being Walnut Creek, ten being hood Richmond with the bullets flying by my face.”

“Seven or eight.” There’s no pause. “Hope you speak Spanish fluently,” he adds. Police detectives are witty like that, apparently. “I would rather live in the bad part of Sunnyvale or Mountain View than any part of San Jose.” I thank him for being the bearer of low-rent bad news and hang up.

Finding housing shouldn’t be this difficult. I have a nerd job. And while it’s the standard “I just got out of college so pay me like I just got out of college” job, I’m not dancing around in a giant Chuck E. Cheese suit singing “Happy Birthday” to special needs kids. So I’m left with a housing lead given to me by… my mother.

“Ai-Ya! Ernie!” She gets off the phone, all excited. “I found a room for you to rent! See? Here, in the China Daily Journal! And it’s in Cupertino, where you work! For four hundred dollars!” She emphasizes the cost of rent by repeating the phrase “four hundred dollars” in English. She’s obviously very proud of herself; no white person would ever dare to put an apartment rental in an American newspaper.

And they’re Chinese, I think to myself. That’s all I need. Renting a room, living with another set of foster parents while I’m away from home. This has obviously happened before, while I was interning for another company. The million-dollar house in the Los Altos Hills was great until the nice Chinese couple acted like a webcam website without the webcam. “Ernie’s such a nice boy,” the homeowners gushed to my parents, adding a touch of concern over the telephone. “But once he gets home, he leaves the house and doesn’t come back until late! After midnight! On a Wednesday!” Imagine the look of horror on my parents' faces.

But for a rent of a third of what rent usually goes for in the area, it was an idea I wanted to check out. Hell, I’ll give up a couple of my civil liberties as a human if it means I’d be rolling in cash later. Sheesh... $400 a month? This offer is too good to be true.

The first sign that the offer is too good to be true is when the address given turns out to be a swank Chinese restaurant conveniently close to a Ranch 99. The hostess, an abnormally tall woman wearing a leopard skin dress and too much foundation, notices our confusion. “You must be here for the house,” she smiles, walking to the back of the room in stiletto heels and telling the restaurant owner that “the people are here” in a Beijing accent.

“I’m kinda busy,” the owner calls back in Mandarin. “Get Li to show them around.” Apparently, Li is the man with the wifebeater and the weathered face who doesn’t know how to smile, because he’s holding a set of house keys. He gives my mother a brief second of eye contact and walks out the door.

Mom, convinced that she will be the one to find me a place to live and save the day, starts small talk with Mister Li while walking to the “real” house. My mother is the queen of Chinese small talk, and the evidence shows that Li’s responses in his heavy Chinese accent become less curt and more relaxed. “China... Yaoling province... I have two little sisters also in the US... I work at the restaurant and two other jobs... Yeah, China has some good and bad points, but it’s home.”

We pass an elderly white man guarding his ‘66 Chevy, and Li opens the door to the house. I make a mental guess as to the first thing I will see. Will it be bamboo plants? Incense burning? Those cheesy Asian calendar girls advertising their soymilk? Li opens the door, and Mom and I peer in to see...

Sandals.

Fucking sandals. Littered everywhere in the hallway.

And then I take another look and realize that there’s organization behind the chaos. The sandals, in all shapes and sizes, are stacked together, but they gravitate towards one of the five doors in the hallway, each numbered with ACE Hardware labels.

It only hits me when I notice the distinct but not immediately familiar smell of the house. And then it really hits me when an elderly woman, holding a baby, peers out from room number five and smiles at me. There are whole fucking families in these rooms. All from Mainland China, I’ll bet. Most of them probably work at the Chinese restaurant. I lower my head in respect, almost an instinct from my two-week trip visiting relatives in Shanghai the summer before, and glance over at my mom. She knows something’s up, but she ain’t going to go out like that.

“So, which room is it?” she asks politely. Li opens up door number four. Kinda like a fucked up showcase on Let’s Make a Deal, except I won a beat-up mattress and a warped desk instead of a sports car or a donkey.

The substandard state of the room was obviously too much for Mama’s baby. “Thank you. We’ll definitely think about it.”

“Yes,” I say to Li, “Definitely.” I couldn’t look him in the eye for some reason.

The conversation during the walk back to the car was surprisingly (or not surprisingly) short. “You know,” Li says in the Beijing-accented Mandarin, “You can always move in for a couple of weeks and then move out when you see another apartment you like. It’ll save you some money.”

I look up and give him the sincerest Chinese I can muster, for someone who was born in America and learned all his Chinese from his parents and a 14-day trip to China. “I will definitely consider that,” I think I said to him.

My mother and I hopped in the car, and not saying much, endured the two-hour commute home. “You think they were illegal immigrants?” I ask somewhere on the northbound Interstate 280. Mom looks straight ahead and shrugs it off. Doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Ten minutes later, she says, “That place was dirty anyway.”

I’m still looking for a place to stay.

Whenever I go back to San Francisco now, it’s always the same thing: I spend a week with my friends, usually eating as much Asian food as I can possibly handle. Carnitas, too, usually in the form of burritos. For the most part, my home base will be in the Mission, where I lived for five years, with ventures into downtown to work at the local co-working spaces. Maybe I’ll be the very tourist I avoided as a local and walk along the waterfront or go to the Castro.

After that, I hop on the BART train to the end of the line, the suburbs in Fremont. I spent the second week visiting Mom in the room that Dad stayed in before he moved out, which has now become the computer room. Or in my case, the guest bedroom. It’s a twin mattress, the bed frame I had as a kid. The mattress is super firm, and it feels like a cot in the barracks, probably the most suitable sleeping environment for Dad. I usually lie to my mom and tell her that I just flew in. I’ve told the truth in the past — that I’m flying from Florida to California but seeing friends first — but she doesn’t take it too well.

Staying here has been fine, for the most part. One part of coming home is always the inevitable English or technology-based errand. Burn some CDs, make sure she wasn’t being convinced she was dying of cancer when she gets an English reminder about her mammogram. This time around, it was to “fix her TooYoo,” by which she meant, of course, making sure her YouTube works.

I upgrade Flash on her Safari browser.

What did you do? she asks in Chinese. Did you purchase something? They always want me to purchase something.

“No, I just installed Flash,” I say in English. She has no idea what I’m talking about, so she leaves the room, goes into the kitchen, and returns with a parfait glass filled with pineapple chunks. I salted them, she said. Kills the germs.

The most annoying thing is the lack of locks on the doors because of Angela. As a result, mom and her open the door at random times. Do you want some iced tea? Do you want some hot tea? How about some fruit? I cut up some fruit. Have you showered yet? Most of the time I brush her off: no, mom, I’m fine. Seriously. Mom, I’m okay. The times I eventually give in - sure mom, I’ll drink some water, okay, I’ll take a shower at night - I end up feeling guilty, like I’m enabling all of this to happen as a thirty-eight-year-old instead of an eight-year-old.

Angela comes into the room as well. “Is that your work computer?” she asks while I type this.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have friends and freedom?” she asks out of the blue.

“I guess I do.” I keep my eyes on the computer.

“I wish I did. I live in a straight jacket.” She leaves the room again.

Just a Thursday evening.

Right now on the local news, there is a live feed of the house of the local 13-year-old boy who won the National Spelling Bee. I wonder if the news crew is aware that the kid isn’t going to be at his house, since, you know, the spelling bee takes place in Washington DC, and not at his house.

This took top billing on the 11 o’clock news tonight, probably because it’s a slow news day and we don’t have any humpback whales slowly dying in our rivers this week.

I did get a chance to watch the live coverage on ABC, though - they had ESPN Commentators and those special segments they do with Olympic Athletes, except they replaced “athletes” with “11-year-old geeky boys with glasses and braces.” One segment in particular focused on blond-haired, blue-eyed Tia Thomas, the all-American girl with pigtails, who is athletic, unlike the other homeschoolers and Chinese and Indian overachievers. Shots of her playing the flute, skiing, and discussing Parkinson’s Disease over dinner. The producers had a plan for her, man. Pretty and smart, she was going to be America’s next sweetheart. Maybe even a walk-on role in a movie.

Then she spelled “zacate” wrong. Oops, her bad.

I would have live-blogged this - I mean, it’s two hours of live spelling, and thus, instant blogging zaniness, but for the most part, watching the majority of the spelling bee consisted of the following: Some random Asian kid is given the task to spell “bouleuterion.” Kid writes with his finger on the back of the piece of cardboard with his name on it, while an ESPN commentator reminds us that he’s not REALLY writing the word out, it’s just his finger. After we watch him do this for two minutes, the bell rings, meaning he’s spelled the word wrong, and, defeated, he walks to his parents and sits with them on stage. Neither parent consoles their child nor shows support.

“Holy crap,” I think to myself. “That kid is going to get the BEAT DOWN when he gets home.”

3:47 AM, Tropical Chinese Restaurant, Southeast Miami

I’d been ping-ponging between San Francisco and Miami for this long-distance relationship thing (because apparently I hate myself), and look—I’d made my peace with being the token Asian guy everywhere we went. You develop this sixth sense for it. The slight head-tilt when people register your face. The mental filing system clicking: Asian boyfriend, noted.

But then my boyfriend mentioned dim sum at Tropical Chinese, some spot in Southeast Miami, and I perked up like a golden retriever hearing the word “park.”

Dim sum. In Miami. Served by actual Chinese people speaking actual Chinese.

After months of trailing behind my Cuban boyfriend to hole-in-the-wall spots while everyone around me machine-guns Spanish at approximately seven thousand words per minute—and me standing there with my two years of “Lupita es alta” high school Spanish like some kind of linguistic toddler—I was ready to flip the entire script.

I had this whole fantasy worked out. I’d stand on one of those metal dim sum carts (structurally unsound, definitely a health code violation), arms raised like Rocky on those Philadelphia steps, flanked by the eleven-to-fifteen-year-old lady dim sum attendants in fighting stances, and I’d announce to my boyfriend: “That’s right, asshole! You’re in MY part of town now.”

(Yeah. I’m aware. I contain multitudes of pettiness.)

Here’s the thing, though, and this is important: I’m a dim sum fraud.

Like, a complete and total phony. My first proper Hong Kong-style dim sum experience didn’t happen until college—COLLEGE—which in Asian terms is like admitting you didn’t learn to use chopsticks until you were legally allowed to vote. My parents aren’t from Hong Kong. They’re from China, via Taiwan, and Sunday mornings weren’t spent eating small plates of fried pork and shrimp and taro products in their infinite permutations.

No, they were spent at Chinese Baptist Church (yes, that exists, yes, it’s exactly as culturally confusing as it sounds), and any small plates we ordered at restaurants consisted of cold, pickled dishes to accompany a bowl of rice porridge. Comfort food, sure—but definitely not the fried pork goodness people crave for the same reason they beeline toward every deep-fried-everything booth at the State Fair, arteries screaming.

In college, I made up for lost time. Went to enough dim sum places to give myself gout. Learned to identify har gow versus siu mai with the fervor of someone compensating for eighteen years of jellied, pickled, cold stuff.

My boyfriend had eaten dim sum before—he’s not culturally sheltered or anything—but never properly in Miami. Never with the old ladies pushing carts around like they’re running a mobile restaurant empire, hawking their wares to seated customers with the aggressive salesmanship of carnival barkers.

Which made me, by default, the foremost expert on Chinese brunch. The Lone Ranger of dim sum. The guy who points and orders with confidence.

(Narrator voice: He was not confident.)

Eating at Tropical Chinese is basically like eating dim sum in San Francisco or Alhambra or Flushing, except for two major differences that immediately shattered my illusions:

1. Nobody shows up until after noon. (”Latinos eat late,” someone explained to me, waving a hand dismissively. “They’ll all show up at two, just watch.”)

2. Everyone speaks perfectly adequate English, because—and I cannot stress this enough—there are not a lot of Asians in Miami compared to California or New York. We’re like exotic birds down here. Rare sightings.

(Evidence: There’s a signed headshot on one wall of the restaurant. Some telenovela star I don’t recognize, salutations written in Spanish. I secretly hoped she’d addressed it to Los Chinos, but no. She used the actual restaurant name like a normal person.)

But here’s where my brain—my stupid, overachieving, people-pleasing brain—made a critical error: Even though everyone in the restaurant speaks workable English, I decided to flex with Mandarin. Partly out of respect. Partly to show my boyfriend how linguistically gangsta I am.

(Spoiler alert: I am not linguistically gangsta.)

And thus, my downfall. My Icarus moment, except instead of flying too close to the sun, I flew too close to a rice dumpling.

THE INCIDENT
(Mandarin in italics, because I’m fancy like that)

Me: I’ll have a zongzi.

Old Cart Lady: [squints at me like I just asked for a unicorn] What?

Me: You know. That. [points desperately at the rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, the international gesture of “please help me”]

Old Cart Lady: [with the energy of a disappointed grandmother] That’s nuo mi ji. Zongzi is only eaten holidays. YOU ORDER WRONG THING!

My Boyfriend: [barely containing his glee] Nice.

Me: [dying inside] Thanks.

She comes back fifteen minutes later. I can see her approaching our table. I know what’s coming. It’s like watching a car accident in slow motion.

Old Cart Lady: [grinning like she just won the lottery] You enjoying your zongzi? HA HA HA.

Me: [contemplating whether it’s possible to dissolve into the restaurant floor]

My Boyfriend: [absolutely delighted with my suffering]
Me: Don’t.
My Boyfriend: If you’d like…
Me: Don’t say it, I beg you.
My Boyfriend: If you’d like, I can speak to her in Spanish.

Me: Die. Just die. Get hit by one of those dim sum carts. Perish.

This is why I’m a bad Asian.

When I go to dim sum with friends—and god help me if I’m the only Asian guy at the table—I’m the caller. I’m the one pointing at dishes and ordering in Mandarin with fake confidence, never mind that 90 percent of the dim sum places in the Bay Area actually speak Cantonese. Never mind that the linguistic gulf between Mandarin and Cantonese is roughly equivalent to the difference between Spanish and Portuguese—similar roots, completely different execution.

Never mind that I’d be infinitely better off just asking in English whether pork or chicken is hiding inside those dumplings, like a normal person who isn’t trying to prove something to everyone at the table.

But I nod and smile and recommend dishes and basically just fake that shit, because as the Lone Asian at the Table™ (trademark pending), this is my duty. My burden. My cross to bear.

Even if—and this is the kicker—I know as much about authentic dim sum as that telenovela star knows when she signs autographs to Los Chinos.

Which is to say: absolutely fucking nothing.

(The zongzi was delicious, though. Even if it was technically nuo mi ji. Even if I’ll never live it down.)

(Like most posts, spoken Mandarin is in italics. And for this particular post, ALL CAPS means they’re not just yelling, but yelling in ENGLISH.)

• Ernie’s cell phone:   ring, ring.

• Ernie:   Ma.

• Mom:   My game broke.

• Ernie:  Your game broke?

• Mom:  Yes, the one you bought me a long time ago. BOY GAME.

• Ernie:   GAME BOY, Mom. It’s called a GAME BOY.

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(By the way, for people who haven’t really read my blog for an extended period of time: Mandarin is in italics.)

Mom, on the phone: Ernie, I want to come to your house and help clean up while you’re at work. How do I get into your condo gate?

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“So self,” you ask yourself. “I wonder how Ernie met his DJ guy that he’s exclusively dating right now.” And I would say something like, “It’s a really interesting story, but to make a long story short, we met on the Internet.”

To which you would say, “Uhm, you guys met on the Internet? That’s pretty, uhm, not interesting.”

And then I’d say, “Let me tell the whole story, buckeroo.”

A couple of months ago, I responded to an online personal ad. I e-mail him, and we exchange the typical introductory e-mails. So far, so good. “Do you have any photographs of yourself?” he asks. Sure, I do, and I send a photo as an attachment. Now, when I send a photograph to someone I meet on a personal ad, I usually get one of the following responses:

• “Oh, you’re Asian. Sorry, not interested.”

• “Oh, I’m attracted to Asians, but you’re too fat. Sorry, not interested.”

• “I AM REALLY INTO ASIANS THEY ARE SO SMOOTH. CAN YOU PLEASE COME OVER? MY WIFE WILL BE BACK IN 2 HRS!!!!!”

I imagined this guy would be no different. So imagine my shock when the guy responds with this:

“Hey, you look familiar. You didn’t graduate from El Cerrito High School in 1994, did you?”

Random tangent time, for all you video gamers out there: Does anyone out there play Metal Gear Solid? You know that moment where Solid Snake tries to sneak up on a guard, but if he fucks up and makes a sudden noise, a giant exclamation point pops up over the guard’s head, with that sound of sudden alarm?

That was me. I was the exclamation point guy.

Anyway, back to the story. We trade pictures and figure out that, yep, we went to the same high school, although we didn’t talk much. And hell no, we didn’t know the other person was gay. This, however, made for the world’s best first date conversation:

Mike: You know, we went to the same junior high, right?
Ernie: Sure.
Mike: You wrote in my yearbook, too. Shattered my dreams of becoming a baseball player.
Ernie: Bullshit.
Mike: Nope, I’m serious! You signed my yearbook in junior high. Take a look.

(Mike, out of nowhere, pulls out our JUNIOR HIGH YEARBOOK from 1989. 1989, for the love of god! Paula Abdul was gushing her love to an animated cat instead of wannabe male popstars half her age.)

Mike: (reading out of yearbook, in mocking tone) “Dear Mike! You actually think you’ll be playing for the Oakland A’s?! GET REAL!!!”
Ernie: …
Mike: Yep. And you drew a computer right next to your name. See?
Ernie: Foreshadowing. Fan-fucking-tastic.

So yeah. I scoured the internet for a possible boyfriend, and he ended up living ten minutes away from me. Life is weird like that.

I’m still on hiatus.

But in the meantime, it’s California election season, and I’ve been fairly disgusted with all of the negative campaigning that’s been going on in the gubernatorial race between Steve Westly and Phil Angelides. “Westly promised no negative campaigns!” “Angelides started it! And he’s corrupt!” “Westly is more corrupt!” “Angelides hosts MySpace orgies with thirteen-year-old girls!” “At least they’re girls!”

I’m so over it that it’s not even funny. Sure, I have my issues that are near and dear to my heart, but if someone asks me what political party I am, I just tell them I’m in the “Apathetic Asian.” Instead of a donkey or an elephant, our political mascot is a fucking report card littered with Straight A’s.

One political commercial that I HAVE taken notice of is John Chiang for State Controller. I have taken notice, of course, because the dude is Asian, and because his political commercials are totally awesome: John Chiang, talking to underage minority school children! John Chiang, looking at the scenic Marin headlines! John Chiang, slamming a law book SHUT! YEAH, SLAM that fucking law book shut, John Chiang!

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Working in an industry where job security isn’t a strong suit, I’ve been picking up some freelance work on the side.

Now, there are two types of web developers. There are web developers who attend conferences to create social software, speak at conferences on the advantages of web standards, and are an active voice in the fusion of technology and society. They almost always write books. Always.

The other type of web developer? They develop gay porn sites.

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Ten years ago, when I was staying at my parents for Christmas for the week, we were shuffling through trashy reality shows on cable and landed on the local late-night news station. There was a segment on the death of James Brown.

“I didn’t know the King of Atmospheric Pressure was black,” my older sister Angela says out loud.

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