I’ve been seeing M during the Pandemic, and I know it’s probably not the best idea to break quarantine, but I really like her, and I haven’t been hanging out with other people. A month ago, I drove up an hour from Northern VA to Eastern Maryland and I brought over a bottle of Rosé, two small blueberry pies, salsa, guacamole, blue corn tortilla chips, and an assortment of multicolor toy mice for her cat Roosevelt. I used to live with four cats and four roommates back when I was living in East New York in a decrepit apartment building. It was a terrible living situation, having to deal with eight different personalities, and the cats never really liked me, scratching me and toppling over my books in my room on any given day.
So, I was a bit hesitant to meet Roosevelt, but he warmed up to me after I dangled a green toy mouse in front of his face. He purred and pounced on it. He has one eye, I’m not sure what happened to the other eye, but despite his disability, he’s a normal cute black and white cat who likes to curl up beside me on the couch. M loves to read books and the first book she talked about was Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, which I hadn’t gotten the chance to read, but I do like reading essays. She liked the book, but didn’t love it, and I was hoping to put her on to some authors I adored, keeping in mind that I didn’t want to mansplain and curate a book selection for her. I gave her my copies of Scott McClanahan’s The Sarah Book and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have given her two books by two white guys, but I loved the books and hoped she’d find them enjoyable.
She hugged me after I handed her the books, and it was nice to be held and wanted. I hugged her back and we shared a kiss. I forget about social distancing and staying 6 feet apart from other people, and I felt in the moment a little guilty for breaking these rules. When I’m in public I wear a blue mask and sometimes latex gloves, trying my best not to touch my face. I go for walks on the nature trail a mile away from my neighborhood, and sometimes I walk in the other direction when I see another person approaching me, and sometimes I keep walking, hoping the other person gets out of my way.
There’s all of this tension and danger immersed in COVID-19, and I feel at times when I’m in public that I’m representing the entirety of the Asian American experience, even if I’m just going to the Giant across the street to buy some seltzer water. I’m not sure why I feel like that, but it’s a feeling that has become exacerbated as Asian Americans are being ridiculed and ostracized for simply being us. I’ve seen microaggressions online via Twitter or Facebook, and sometimes I’ll see overt racism in IRL when I’m shopping for groceries. I wish Asian Americans had more younger Asian American writers who can speak to their experiences during COVID 19, but it’s interesting and helpful to see older Asian American writers talk about their experiences as well.
I guess I’ve just been thinking a lot about Asian American writers in general. Right now, I’m reading Alexander Chee’s How To Write An Autobiographical Novel and Vi Khi Nao’s stories in NOON. I feel seen and heard when I read both writers, and I feel as though they understand me, that they know who I am. M is white, blonde, blue eyed, and I’m Vietnamese American, black haired, brown eyes. Sometimes I wonder since I’m dating a white person, if I have the right to be speaking out on Asian American inequality and about the nuances we have to go through when we navigate white and black spaces. Like does that make my opinion less valid? I have no idea what it’s like to be white or black, but I do know what it’s like to be Asian American and seeing the different perspectives of my white and black friends. I remember when M and I were talking about May Ling in Little Fires Everywhere and we had a disagreement about whether Linda or Bebe should be May’s mother. At first, we were just teasing each other and joking, but then I got frustrated when M didn’t see Bebe as a responsible parent, and she could see that, and she felt bad. And then I realized M and I have never really talked about race in a real way, even though we’d been seeing each other for more than a month now. I appreciated that M could listen to me as I explained my reasoning for siding with Bebe.
Then we watched Dave to lighten up the mood, as I tried to advocate for Lil Dickey’s rapping career, even during the episode where he humps a sex doll while staring at a Drake poster. Later on, we saw PEN15 and M and I both loved that show, and I was particularly fond of it because one of the main actors is Asian American. The actor plays a middle schooler named Maya and she’s awkward and funny and kind of reminded me of my younger sister. I remember seeing this one episode with M where Maya uses a heavy Asian accent and hunches over as she carries a plastic tray of milk cups for her white friends, essentially acting as a servant. At the time, I wasn’t aware of it, but I know now that I was experiencing some trauma from seeing those scenes where Maya had to cater to her white friends. It reminded me of the times I acted as a clown for the entertainment of white friends in middle and high school, all for some brief fake laughs.
Before we watched PEN15, I read the short story Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu to M, and when I got to the scene where the narrator is reading a letter from his mother, I cried like a little kid. There’s racism in that short story as well, and I wonder sometimes why the media and literature I’m consuming is tied up in race, and I think it’s a good thing to unpack and discuss, but also it gets daunting and overwhelming, and I don’t know how to digest and process all of it.
M and I are still seeing each other, and we get along and have fun spending time in her apartment. I’m still reading books and watching Hulu TV shows. She’s still cuddling up with Roosevelt on her couch and reading. I wish this Pandemic would end and that we can go outside without masks, and let the sun touch our faces. And I wish these weren’t such difficult times for Asian Americans, and I know wishing doesn’t really do much good to make actual change. But here I am, writing this essay, wishing for tomorrow to come once again, to be better than the day before it.
