Remember the massacre.

Photo: Oded Balilty/Associated Press

[New York Times] Anniversary ceremonies for the Nanjing massacre, long known in the West as the Rape of Nanking, brought the city to a standstill. During the massacre in 1937, Japanese forces killed 300,000 Chinese civilians and raped tens of thousands of women.

Asian penis, the new object of your affection.

I'm a forum troll, I admit... usually when I'm at work or lacking something to do I look around the local chat forums to see what's up with people. In a recent exploration into the dating forums, I've come across what seems to be a significant enough presence to be considered a phenomenon: Asian guy/white girl.

I myself have developed an automatic reaction to the Asian girl/white guy couple. If the guy seems to have nothing to offer to the girl, I'm filled with skepticism. However if the white guy is hot (smart, goodlooking, whatever) than well... hey a hot guy is a hot guy, right? In honesty, on the few occasions I've had with white women who seemed to be interested or at least open to dating an Asian guy, I was quite shocked.

Looking back on my life, I see now that I might have had a shot with several non-asian girls (if I liked the vag), but the first time it really hit me was quite late into my college years. I was working a restaurant in Oakland and my co-worker, a really cute, nice, caucasian girl found out I was gay... she then said something along the lines of "Too bad, when I first met you, I thought you were cute". I responded "really?"... she confirmed... I turned around and thought to myself, "freak".

One of my friends in Shanghai, an ABC, has recently been the victim of an ABC fetishizer. Blogger is clear to remind me that "fetishizer" is indeed, not a word. Anyway, this girl has a thing for specifically ABCs. Several girls on the sites are hunting down local boys (steering clear away from overseas chinese) for dating and maybe a relationship. They cite similar features that I myself would... and I am generalizing... smooth skin, cute faces, nice (I'm a total bitch now, btw), slender and toned.

On one hand I want to say, "go Asian men!" and on the other I just want to step back and wonder if this is the fetish of the 21st century. With the rise of China, is it possible that Chinese men (and people that look like them) will become the new "it" thing? In 30 years, will my kids see half-Asian/half-white kids and think, not another product of white girls fetishizing Asian guys?

And then I twist it around to another angle: the gender angle. And I realize that even the creepiest white girl would never reach the level of creepy I get from a wrinkly old potato sack of a white man trying to get with little 24 year old me. Does the glass ceiling extend from women's offices and limit their potential fetishizing creepiness? After all, isn't it always about power and how you use it?

Maybe it's not a fetish at all. Maybe they're just trying something different. Maybe they're getting away from the stereotype of the overly masculine American male and running into the arms of the gentler, softer skinned stereotype. Maybe this means I have more friends to hunt down helpless little Asian boys with... I have no answers for you. Only questions.

Revolutionary.

I am not a prophet, but sometimes I have prophetic dreams. - Huey Freeman

I'm sitting here in my apartment with Maro curled up next to my feet wondering about the world again, and how my life has taken so many strange strides to bring me where I am. Since I was little I believed that I would be a force of change... though I didn't really understand what exactly needed changing.

In college I began to understand a little more about what was wrong with the world, largely because I was incredibly guilty of this sin.

Now, I find myself stuck in the real world, where the people who have power to make a change do very little if anything at all to make a difference... and the people with the great ideas, the revolutionaries, fall flat because the revolution hasn't figured out how to lift the shackles of the 9 to 5.

And I'm finding why everyone talks about how college was the best time of their lives. 95% of the population is struggling through their daily toils to make it through the weekend. Everyone wants a better job, more money, someone to settle down with, a new house... security. And the search lasts your entire lifetime and in many cases never really produces any satisfying results.

To my fellow university graduates, we will all end the same. We will afford a house and own it by our mid to late 30's. We will find someone we either love or like a lot and settle down with them. Some of us will divorce, but only after we have kids. Our kids will go to good colleges because we went to good colleges. And we will die at a hopefully old age in the little homes that we built for ourselves.

I will die this way as well. Not only do I know it, I also hope for it. What I hope to do along the way is get over myself and my troubles. To feel the need to write less about men and why/how they suck because they've been doing it for several millennia. To not only identify things that need to change around me, but to actually change them.

And when I'm done, maybe a few less people will feel lonely. People will listen more to the topics that need to be listened to. The world will open its eyes just a little bit wider to the plight of the gay, the lesbian and everything in between (but mostly the latter two). Small business won't come to underdeveloped countries to take advantage of low wage standards and charge the same goddamn prices - popping up like a bunch of boutique Nike sweatshops.

It may happen or it may not. And if it does happen, it may not be enough. If you want change, maybe it just needs to happen in yourself or your house or your town. You don't need to end segregation. You don't need to stop the War... but you do need to do something.

Some kind of habit.

I took a pack of cigarettes out to store with me today when I started to feel a bit lonely. I bought a bottle of Heineken and waited on the corner as a street vendor cooked me some chicken wings. Earlier this week I had ordered a pile of crayfish cooked in a way that reminded me of southeast Asia. Chinese food really does start to open up once you get past Canton.

Anyway, I bought this pack back in March on a drunken walk home from a club. I flipped a cigarette upside down and put it back in to save it for luck, as Sam had taught me, since the Marlboros reminded me of him. It's still there and it comforts me that I haven't had to use it since then.

See, I'm not really a smoker. Perhaps for this reason, the act of smoking brings up a lot of vivid memories. The smell reminds me of lonely summers in Berkeley. I had really bad luck in my love life during the summers. To be honest the semesters only got slightly better. I was reminded of my crushes on Brian and Antony, who so easily dismissed me... and then also of the beginning of my relationship with Arthur.

I used cigarettes to comfort me in my loneliest of times. They didn't actually do anything, but I'd always smoke with someone who I considered to be equally messed up. It became ritual... sitting on the windowsill overlooking Haste, standing out near the bushes just barely acknowledging people walking up to the party overhead... Smoking for me and certain friends was the formal acknowledgment that we were damaged.

Misery loves company and I guess we did really love each other, but for me it's kind of weird to not have those people around anymore, and it's even stranger that I haven't found them here. Where are all the cynics? The jaded lovers? The disenfranchised would-be revolutionaries? My friends here are either happy or focused... what the fuck is up with that? I want someone here who I can call in the middle of the night and cry to, but I don't need to cry right now.

I'm sad that the sadness is gone for some reason. What a strange kid I've turned into. The cigarette has a little bit less than half left over, but I flick it onto the floor anyway and smother it with my chewed up sandal. Smoking is bad for you.

Hand over your wallet and your legs.

I'm not sure if I wrote about this already, but several years ago I developed a height complex. I liked this guy, and he seemed to be my type... and some "friends" of mine knew it and kind of in a very "mean girls" way happened to let me know that he thought I was too short to date. You know the kind of mean, where you can see that glimmer of happiness as they tell you something they know is going to crush you, through the facade of hesitation. "I really didn't want to bring this up, but [it's going to be so fun to say]"...

It's quite embarrassing to admit how much that little incident still haunts me. Before that summer, I had been learning since I came out to love myself. And I had even began to feel comfortable about my body. I had never believed that I would miss a chance with someone because of my height... I'm 5'8".

Which brings me here... 3 years later. More mature, more knowledgeable yet still plagued with a dangerous cocktail of insecurities. Sometimes I look in the mirror, and I still see the boy 6 years ago in Boston... who came home from work at 2 am, looked at himself and cursed his appearance. He called himself names: a fucking runt, ugly piece of shit. Told himself no one would ever love him.

It doesn't make sense to me now, and I don't realize why I would have thought about myself that way and why I still think of me that way sometimes. Maybe I found a set of reasons to explain why I was lonely. And maybe somewhere along the line, I just naturally started attributing my rejections to those things. So everytime I feel even slightly dismissed, my brain immediately goes to my height as the culprit.

Today I went to a sketchy (but fun) sauna and met a guy who in my opinion was beautiful. He was really cute and he seemed interested in me as well. The only problem was that he came with a man in his mid-40's attached, which incidentally is a huge problem. They were a couple who were picking up a third because obviously someone (hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, slap) wasn't doing it for the other person I imagine.

I came home not too long ago feeling dejected... but also realizing an important lesson. That besides for my being too short for some people. There are a hundred more reasons why someone wouldn't like me. Some of them are just repulsive or stupid; others are simply infuriating. And I don't have time to react to all of them, nor do I have the strength to internalize them all and get out of bed in the morning.

I thought to myself as I glanced at him with hopeful eyes. If only I could free you from your shackles. Is it money? I'm not rich but I'm sure I have plenty to make you happy. Is it security? I promise to love you for at least three months. Do you like old, fat and wrinkly? Can't help you there.

Like an idiot, I've been drinking milk for the past three years solely for the hopes of growing another inch or god-willing, two. But I'm 24. It's not going to happen (though I should keep drinking to make sure I don't shrink when I'm older). So I can't keep walking with this crutch of self pity. I can't keep feeling sorry for myself when in reality I have relatively little to feel sorry for.

But what's really interesting is... now that I think about it. Maybe it's not the insecurities that plague me. I'm actually quite confident outside of gay communities. I only get nervous when I'm at a club and I start thinking about all the things will contribute to me not getting laid, or not meeting a boyfriend.

The things is... I kinda stopped believing in love. I don't know how it happened. It just faded away gradually, like your insistence that Santa Claus exists or your belief that your parents were completely in control. You grow up and you realize the truth. But I desperately don't want it to be true.

And that's why I tortured Arthur back in Berkeley. I hadn't had feelings for anyone for a long time at that point... not since the beginning of my first relationship. I wanted him to save me by showing me love still exists. That I could find someone who was wrong in so many ways, and want to give him the world. That things like height, and money, and muscles and popularity didn't matter. That you could break apart into pieces and it wouldn't matter, since they already know what you look like in whole. Because when you're in love, you're drowning in a sea of in inconsequence... and the lack of oxygen feels really, really good.

Damn, I want to believe again.

Love fucks. (Part one)

Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide...

My grandma passed away last month while I was in Thailand. It was weird that I had been told she would be passing soon and that it happened in the middle of my vacation. I don't remember anything about her, since I've only met her once before Alzheimer's took over.

In Phuket, a family friend told me and the next day we were riding a speedboat through the neighboring islands. Even on a massive engine-powered hunk of steel, it feels close to nature. I remember looking at the clouds with their silver-linings and dark underbellies and thinking about matriarchy... a word I find fitting to use with the mother of 13 children.

In the coming days, her children and grandchildren would be coming to a temple to pray for her around the clock. My dad and my brother would come the furthest from Los Angeles to see her. It was interesting to see everyone together and the levels of "relatedness" with her sons and daughters wearing a burlap dressing, while her grandchildren were dressed in white cloths. Her immediate descendants, totaling over 100 persons at last count have about the same relationship as kids who went to class together... and probably even less of a relationship with the grandmother herself.

Being in Thailand this time really made me realize a lot of things about my privileges. In the room next to ours at the temple, where 50 or so guests came each of the three nights that we worshipped my grandmother and sent her gifts and money and cars and houses and televisions and servants... a small family sat quietly in front of a picture of an old man. The coffin looked like that of a small child, and seemed like he had either never really grown very much or had shrunken towards his later years.

My cousins and I occasionally poured out of our space, and only when we realized that we had encroached on theirs, did we attempt any modesty. Everyone made a big deal about having paid the monks so much to have such a good service. It seems strange to get so much larger an allotment in heaven, because your kids have more money.

In Phuket, I tried to balance the aspect of vacation and the acknowledgment of her death. But as I went for a massage in the gay district of Patong Beach, and gave the masseuse a tip that covered a little under a month of his living expenses, I couldn't help but think how far this apple has fallen from the tree.

The next weekend I visited the village of my grandfather in Chaozhou (潮州） and realized again how I've come to receive the privileges that I have. It was just another town with a lot of nameless cousins, all of whom will make a poor living for the rest of their lives. That sounds really miserable, I know... but there is a good chance that they will find love and happiness and raise children who will take care of them well, also. Still it seems, that my grandfather and then my father have both made huge migrations to give their kids a better life. My grandfather left Chaozhou to go to Thailand during the Japanese invasion. Over the next few decades he would rendezvous with his brothers in Hong Kong and give them money to support the family. My father left Thailand for Los Angeles, and while he works hard everday, he had allowed me a comfortable lifestyle, and an education which has led to me giving myself a comfortable lifestyle (even though I may bitch about what a Berkeley degree can actually do for me).

What's sick about this blog is that it's been all about money. Death and money. Offspring and money. Sex and money. Sometimes you get so occupied trying to get out of your debts and financial troubles you forget about the important things. I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life at the funeral. It was awkward. But I guess it was also important.

Who'd have thought.

Meet Mashimaro.

The Shanghai shuffle.

A great many things have been attributed to this city. I've realized that you could point out any anomaly or even a commonplace thing that occurs in daily life, and easily--somewhat justifiably--say "that's Shanghai".

I had a conversation the other day with a lady I met at an adoption agency. She was telling me how you were only allowed to walk dogs before 7 am and after 7 pm. That's Shanghai. (the agency actually just told her that to avoid getting the animal taken away by police because she was fostering the pet and therefore unlicensed)

You tell the taxi driver to take you to a new place and ask them to look for a certain building when you get to the street. The driver says "I drive, you look". That's Shanghai.

The drinks that you order a restaurant rival the meal in price. That's Shanghai.

And the job that you thought you had down before is replaced by a job that's totally opposite in almost every way within a 10 day period... yep, that's Shanghai.

I called my mom yesterday to chat with her about some things. My brother had been telling me that she's been really upset at my dad lately, and one of the first things she asks me is "are you still working at that place?" Considering it was only about a week since I left the company and three days after I received my offer at Monitor, I found this a bit unnerving. Had she been waiting for me to leave the company for a while now, or does she just have some kind of freaky motherly sixth sense thing when her sons feel uneasy about their current employment.

I was expecting her to make a big deal out of it. What is this company about? What's in it for your future? How is the work permit going to be handled... blah blah blah. But she didn't really ask much except for what industry it was in. I think I may have worn her down when it comes to nagging me for my decisions, and I also think that maybe she's begun to accept that I may not return to Los Angeles to settle down for a long while. Because the thing that I most expected her to ask me was, "So when are you going to come home then?"

For those of you who don't know, Monitor Group is an international consulting company. I... will not be doing consulting as I do not trust my business sense enough to ask a client to pay for it, but instead I'll be doing the design for Shanghai office. The location is great. The people seem relaxed. The money is livable. Again, the exact opposite of my last job.

I've been a bit overwhelmed by the amount of change that has occurred over the past 10 days. For a 23 year old recently out of college, in a foreign country, with an ever-so-slowly improving language ability... a dramatic career change can be a bit disorienting, albeit... also welcome.

One of the things that draws me to this city is the amount of change that occurs in such a short amount of time. People come and go. Buildings fall and rise. New restaurants pop-up every month. While not perfect in any sense and imperfect in a very many, Shanghai seems to serve as a drug dealer for those addicted to change. It's one of the few interesting cities in the world that has a "future" whether it be good or bad.

But stability in forms is also welcome: I'm getting a puppy soon. I've decided it's time for me to make the investment. The cashflow is good. I'll be able to afford to import an animal back into the United States should I need to, and well... it'll be good to have something in my life that grounds me... that I can take with me to other places... if that makes any sense at all. I mentioned earlier that I went to an animal adoption agency. I'll be taking care of two kitties for a couple weeks until they find a permanent home and hopefully within a month I'll be providing the permanent home for a small black puppy.

I really can't remember the last time I was this excited about something. Having another being that will become a part of my life and go with me wherever I go makes me feel like... I'm growing up. Like, I'm finally capable of taking care of something other than myself--financially, emotionally and otherwise.

I wonder what it'll feel like to have a baby.

Letting go.

I made up my mind sometime last week to quit my job. The pay sucks, as does the commute... I hate my boss... and there's a good chance that the company is going nowhere. But I was waiting--being polite, because she had just returned from looking after her ill father in Kuala Lumpur. Finally last week, I got a chance to sit down with her when I picked up my salary. She started, "Sun, I've been thinking about whether to keep you on or let you go..." and I thought damn. I should've went first.

It's like the boyfriend you couldn't break up with, because next week was his birthday and Valentine's was in a month, just to find that the little hussy was cheating on you.

I am definitively bitter over the circumstances, but I can't say I'm not relieved. I have four more days to come in and train a replacement before I get to leave and start again. Recently, I've realized that my life can be arranged by the times I've been desperate to get out of things: LA to Boston to my first job to UC Berkeley to San Francisco to LA and now to this wretched production house, which is basically the non-organic extension of this harpy of an employer.

I've been in Shanghai now for about a year, and thankfully not sick of it yet. But as fuzzily defined anniversaries go, I guess this can be said to be a big one. A year ago, I ran away from another place... and now I realize it's not really a bad thing to run away from some problems. Had I had a reason to stay in California, I would have. But I didn't, and I would just be fighting for nothing if I was there today. And besides, the problems I really needed to face... I knew they would follow me no matter where I went.

It seems like recently I've learned to stop feeling sorry for myself. I still get angry and frustrated and sad, but I never really consider anymore that I'm not worth it.

A year later, though, I'm still not really over it. Mike has asked me a couple times within the last couple of months if I still loved my ex-boyfriend. I used to believe that you could never really love someone who didn't love you back... maybe more of a protective logic than an actual one. Like you can't hit a ghost so it can't hit you. I think at one point in the future, it might be nice to hear his voice again.

I got a message from Sam yesterday talking about how he didn't want to meet up with me in Shanghai because he didn't want to bring back my troubles in Berkeley to this new place. I think I've gone through many different emotions towards him: from hate to jealousy to a now somewhat mitigated resentment, but it's pretty safe to say that I never faulted him for what happened. In actuality, I learned to resent a lot of the people in my life a year ago--anyone who had a connection to my ex. At the time that I wanted to be with him the most, I also started to believe that he would find kindness for everyone around me but me.

I've excommunicated a lot of people because what happened. And I guess most people would probably read this and think that I have some serious attachment issues... and they're probably right. But it's probably in my disposition to obsess. How do you stop caring, when you just do? If you could just flip a switch, doesn't that mean that you never really cared in the first place?

Why haven't I learned to let go? According to popular relationship knowledge, it's supposed to take half the time you were together to get over a person. So I should've been over it about 11 months ago. But I guess I don't want to ever forget, and I don't want to write off my feelings as "I was young".

There was a morning back in Berkeley that I came to drop off his books that he had left at my apartment. We were in that ambiguous stage of our relationship, where a brush of the arm could result in 3 hours of dialogue spread over the next four weeks. And I came into his basement level room, put his books down and nudged him awake. He sat up completely dazed and kissed me on the lips for a second. And in that second, my brain registered about a hundred different memories: how the bed felt as I sat on it, how bright and pale white the light seemed to be seeping through the curtains at 9:30 am, the slight woody smell of the room and the temperature of his body, the warmest I had felt it in all our time together. Half in shock, I watched expressionless as he mumbled "hi" ... and collapsed back onto his bed... When I wonder today if I had ever really loved him, I consider that morning.

In the future, I will try to make amends. I will try to show less anger towards those who are undeserving of it, and I will heal as I have done tremendously over the past year. But I'm not going to let go, at least not completely. If I do, then a year of my life loses a lot of meaning, and that morning and that second is just a paragraph in my memory which loses the appendixes of emotions that tie into it. By letting him go, I also let go of that morning. I guess you could call me obsessive, naive or foolish, but honestly... it just isn't worth it.

Happy golden pig year, everyone.

For the sake of sleep.

Recently, in seedy gay news, I was again harassed in the men's locker room of my gym. I don't try to hide the fact that I'm gay, because well... too much eye candy... but someone crossed the line today by walking into my shower stall. I told him to go away, but he was like, "no, it's ok".

Hmm, yeah... I began to wonder if that's what it feels like to be a woman sexually harassed in straight society. It's like it doesn't even matter that I wasn't attracted to him, I didn't want him to approach me or that I don't feel comfortable sharing public shower space with other people. I wasn't afraid of him, but at the same time I felt hopeless. There was really nothing short of punching in the face I could do to have made him go away... so I did.

Just kidding. I'm like Ghandi, remember?

In other, disturbing news... I've woken up the third night in a row from a nightmare I had of work. The first one, I sent the wrong e-mails to the wrong production houses. In the second one, I was rushing to meet a deadline and in the last and final one, my boss took away my right to a break while I was eating potato chips. I'm going fucking nuts.

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to chat with her about my salary increase. So I guess now it'll go up to $3/hr from $2/hr. I'm exaggerating yes, but sadly not by much. I guess in the end, whether or not I decide to stick with film production, this time will be a good way to figure out what I really want to do with my life.

I've been thinking about my musical goals, and how I'm so far off from achieving them and at the same time not really doing anything about them. Been thinking about the rate at which my Chinese is improving. Although, it seems like every time I complain to my peers about not knowing what I'm doing, the response is "join the club".

But I guess I don't want to join the club. I've always believed that performing is the only definite option for my life that would keep me happy. But I wonder if I have enough talent for it, and if I have enough talent if I'm in the right place. After all, I can't really act in China if I can't speak fluently, and the theatrical options here are somewhat bizarre anyway.

My main hesitation with this job is... well I wonder if I'm on the wrong side of the camera. Not many people have enough talent to be a performer, but then again not many people have the skills to be a good producer. Do I fall into either of those categories?

I'm cracking my head over my future, because for me every month I'm not doing something I should be doing, is a waste of my life. At one point in my life, I used to think I was talented but maybe that was just because I was practicing. I need to rethink my goals--figure out what I'm good at. But I guess for the time being I can revel in my new pop star hair and karaoke fan base.

November to December

I've been holing a lot of things up in my brain for the past three months, so I figured I should get it out in writing before I start to forget things. We'll start with Mike. Some of you already know about him, but in a large part I've kept kind of quiet about this new person in my life. Part fear of announcing a relationship that wasn't concrete, part determination to not make the first news heard from me always about another guy.

Sometime back in October I got so bored I started replying to random responses on craigslist. I got tired of dating random people off the internet that I could barely communicate with, and in my search for a hetero male language partner, I came across an ad by some socal chinese american guy looking for more friends to hang out with. A couple weeks later, I finally met this guy, Max over at what is now our little group's favorite late-nite hangout, Guandi (the club with what I have now come to consider the highest concentration of good-looking asians below 30... yummy straight boys, hehe). As it turns out in my quest to distance myself from falling into the routine of living only to find a man, I end up finding one. A friend of Max's, fellow Harvard alum, Mike, shows up. And I'm back to square one.

We hit it off. And the past couple of months have been my favorite in this city. To be honest, my favorite couple of months in a lot of cities. Watching ripped off DVDs of American TV shows while waiting for our pizza to arrive. Dining at one of the 100+ fun restaurants in the city, always admiring the design and smirking at the varying standards of service in this confused third world country, first world city. Shuttling between our apartments via taxi in the middle of the night. Warm hugs for morning wake-up calls...

I had always said that I would tell my family about my sexual orientation when I found someone to tell them about. So when my brother visited from November to December, it was Mike I told him about when I walked into his room drunk off of who-knows-how-much sake. My brother replied while riding on a cat in World of Warcraft, "Yeah, I know".

We had taken a trip to Beijing while he was here... my brother that is. The city frightens me. In the center, monolithic in size and symbol, in a straight line from south to north lies Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Living in Shanghai, I had almost forgotten that China was communist. But Mao is far less hidden in the capital. But that's not really what scares me. In the middle of the night I took a walk through the streets to see the nightlife, and on the way I walked across a drive-thru fast food joint. It reminded me of LA and then of how much I missed it. Five years ago all I could think about was leaving but I find myself thinking more and more lately, if in the end it is the right place for me.

In the morning we rode a taxi to the nearest section of the great wall. Mao said once that you're not a great man until you've climbed the great wall. And at the top, the wall is littered with souvenir salesmen and tourist traps--vendors selling pictures and fake medals exclaiming "I climbed the greatwall". And though everyone knows it's a sham, because everyone took the same cable car to get them up the first 80% of the hike, there is still pride in reaching the top for most chinese. That day I thought a lot about what it meant to be a great man, a 好汉.

When we came back to Shanghai, I was supposed to meet someone that night... an old fling of mine. But he cancelled and late at night, Mike called asking to come over. Already feeling guilty, I let him and with him in my bed I cried that night, but never really told him why. All he did was keep apologizing to me, thinking he had done something wrong. I guess that night I realized I wasn't a great man, and that I wasn't going to be happy with him... at least not completely.

I broke it off with him a couple weeks ago, but we see each other as if nothing had happened. A big part of me prefers it that way, because as I'm typing this, I crave his presence... and how safe I feel when I'm around him. And I miss him a lot, even though he's just a taxi ride away.