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trhu · 4 years

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For the Love of an Unworthy White Man

In October 2018, I finally saw Miss Saigon, after deliberately boycotting it for almost thirty years. When it first opened in 1989, between the tired rehashing of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and the yellowface casting controversy over Jonathan Pryce as the Engineer, there was nothing about this show that appealed to me, especially when I had already seen M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang’s groundbreaking, Tony-winning play that turned the submissive Asian woman trope on its head. M. Butterfly literally changed my life at a time when I was just learning to navigate being an Asian woman in white America, and everything I read about Miss Saigon seemed to be in direct opposition to the lessons I learned from M. Butterfly: resist stereotypes, claim your heritage proudly, never let a man control the direction of your life. So, despite my love of Broadway musical extravaganzas, and my hunger to see Asian performers onstage, I never went to see this blockbuster hit. Whenever a production of Miss Saigon rolled into the Bay Area, people who knew how I loved theatre would ask if I was going to see it, and I’d have to explain once again why I found the basic premise of the story offensive and refused to support it. I got the distinct impression that a lot of people were internally rolling their eyes at my futile protest, but I didn’t care. It was a matter of principle. Until now. So...what changed my mind? Well, first and foremost, Soft Power. That was the Asian American musical extravaganza I’d been waiting for. David Henry Hwang’s absurdist semi-experimental comedy--about Hillary Clinton’s influence on a Chinese entertainment mogul that cast Asian American actors in whiteface and stands American cultural hegemony on its head--had me laughing and crying like nothing else I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was incredibly uplifting--especially in Trump’s America--to see so many Asian faces on the stage, dancing and singing, poking fun at clueless, self-important, white Americans, subverting stereotypes and challenging expectations. That was in July. Then, I saw Two Mile Hollow by Leah Nanako Winkler at the Ferocious Lotus. And Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee, the first play by an Asian American woman ever produced on Broadway. And then To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix. And finally, Crazy Rich Asians on the big screen in August. In one glorious and unprecedented summer, I saw more Asian American representation on stage and screen than I had in my whole previous American life. Because I had always watched Chinese films and television shows, I had thought I was OK on the representation front, but really, it’s a totally different experience. Seeing Asian American representation, finally, fed my soul in a way that I hadn’t realized I needed, like I was starving and didn’t even know it until I feasted on all these wonderful stories about people like me. So when I was offered free tickets to Miss Saigon, I was surprised to not feel the visceral anger that had always bubbled up when this show came to town. I decided to go see it, in order to understand it better, and in the hopes that this new revival would have addressed some of the more problematic parts of the story. Also, the tickets had already been paid for, so why not? I wasn’t supporting the production, they already had the money. To be fair, I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t like it. I did try to look for positives: the set was well designed and efficient; the big helicopter scene was pretty epic, as promised; the whole flashback to the fall of Saigon was powerfully choreographed, and once again, I loved seeing so many Asian faces on stage. The kid who played Tam was adorably cute, too. He melted my grumpy heart a lot, for sure. But that story! It was agonizing to watch it unfold, yet again, knowing that the Asian woman we’d been coerced into sympathizing with was going to negate herself, disappear conveniently, so everyone else would get to have everything they wanted. It’s the lesson this world has been forcing down my throat for my entire life, and I’m tired of puking it back up in their faces. And that doesn’t even begin to address all the other tired old tropes: desperate Asian prostitutes clinging to American johns as their only chance at a better life; smarmy, abusive pimps-of-color who are still, somehow, the most practical and clear-eyed counselor for our heroine; conflicted, guilt-ridden white saviors confronted with the limits of their power and privilege. I’d seen it all before, so many times, and it was exhausting to sit through yet another iteration of this sad, incomplete, stereotypical story. Even worse, sitting there in the audience next to my white American husband, I felt embarrassed. I imagined the other playgoers--mostly older, mostly white--seeing us and thinking, “Oh how nice for them. What a lucky girl that one is, unlike poor Kim, to have won her white knight in the end.” If you think I’m being melodramatic, I assure you, I’m not. I’ve encountered that condescending attitude from way too many people--including members of my own family--for three decades now. Because my husband is a conventionally handsome white man from a wealthy family, a ridiculous lot of people assume that he ‘rescued’ me, or ‘lifted me up,’ or was somehow my ticket to a ‘better’ life by conferring upon me proximal access to his privilege and power. They see his love and commitment as an asset that I’m fortunate to have added to my portfolio, as if our relationship was an investment and I’m getting a higher return than he is. The implication, of course, is that he doesn’t gain as much from being with me as I do from being with him, because I don’t bring anything as systemically powerful as white male privilege and hereditary wealth to the table. Instead, his love for me is viewed as beneficent, charitable, a gift I should be eternally grateful for, and so many people are puzzled that I am not. In short, they think he is better than me, because he is white, he is a man, and he has money. What they don’t see, or acknowledge, or recognize as valuable, is the emotional strength and intellectual clarity that I possess, and the very traits that my husband fell in love with, back when he was a troubled young man. What they cannot grasp--because these stories are rarely told, which is why I’m telling it, now--is that in reality, I rescued him from an empty, directionless life of dead-end work and weekend debauchery, and earning my love is what gives his life meaning. When we met (in 1989, the same year Miss Saigon premiered in the West End, the same year I saw M. Butterfly for the first time), my husband was a twenty-three year old college dropout, working construction, drinking to excess, without a plan for the future or hope for a meaningful life. Sure, he came from a comfortably affluent family, but you’d never have known it from the way that he lived. He had rejected most of the trappings of privilege that he was born into, as well as its conventional, materialistic values, but had not yet formulated a coherent set of values for himself or discovered a purpose in life. He also espoused some really off-putting political views, half-jokingly idolized horrible, evil men like Richard Nixon and Charles Manson, and was prone to loud, obnoxious rants about things he clearly didn’t understand. I found nothing remotely attractive about him in our first few encounters. For his part, he didn’t even notice me for the first eight months we were in each others’ social orbit. It wasn’t until we were thrown together in a booth at La Rondalla that he even remembered me for the first time. But for whatever reason--and in thirty years, l still haven’t gotten a clear answer about his reasons, introspection is not his strong suit--that night he decided that I was what he needed in his life, and he set about wooing me despite my initial rejection of his advances. I did not take his courtship seriously at first. The trajectories of our lives were not in sync, and I had no intention of deviating from my goals. So far as I could tell, he had no goals, and I was reluctant to engage with someone who seemed so lost and unclear on his purpose in life. He was, quite simply, not worthy of my time or attention. Luckily for him, he made his move at a time when I was bored, waiting for my life to start--I was taking a gap year, working as a bike messenger in San Francisco, and had just been accepted to my dream college, with four months to kill before heading off to Berkeley--so I agreed to go out with him, figuring it would be a summer fling that would end when I went to Cal. Much to my surprise and consternation, by the time school started, we were in love. This was not what I’d expected, and I tried, repeatedly, to break up with him during my freshman year, to no avail. Every time I worked up the courage to break his heart, I felt terrible and took him back a few days later. I hadn’t counted on that. I’d never been in love before. One thing I’ve learned over the years...assuming there’s nothing fundamentally repulsive about them, it’s really hard to not love someone back who loves you wholeheartedly, without reservation. Chemistry is a mysterious thing, not always logical or rational, and what happens between two people can be hard to understand from outside the relationship. Even though I loved him, it was not easy to live with him. The trollish, aggro behavior that initially turned me off took a long time to for him to unlearn. He was often blind to his own privilege, and harbored deep insecurities that he refused to address. It took years to convince him to seek help, to confront his demons, to become a better man, and it was exhausting to be the constant voice of reason in the household, holding everything together because he hadn’t figured his shit out, yet. Over many years, he did slowly work through most of his issues, ultimately winning me over with his unwavering commitment and devotion, and most importantly, his willingness to change and grow in order to keep me in his life. After over three decades together, through many turbulent times, we’ve finally arrived at a relatively calm harbor in our relationship. It took a long time--a lot longer than I could have ever imagined when I first agreed to go out with him--but he has become worthy of my love. But this isn’t what most people see when they see us. What they see is a tall, handsome, successful, wealthy white man and the lucky immigrant Chinese girl who had the good fortune to snag him, lifting herself and their children into affluence in one generation. What they refuse to consider is the simple fact that falling in love with me, and working hard to become a man worthy of my love is the best thing my husband has done with his life. What they expect to see is 150 years of western imperialism in China played out in human form. What they don’t see is who we really are. Anyone who actually knows us, who understands the dynamics of our relationship, knows better. While my husband’s status and wealth is infinitely helpful in maintaining our materially comfortable lifestyle, and there is no question that he is a loving husband and father who works hard to provide for us, the entire construct of our lives is built upon my deep reserves of emotional strength, confidence, and resilience. I hold everything together, sometimes through sheer strength of will, fighting his self-destructive neuroses every step of the way. I suspect this is true in a lot of long-lasting relationships, but women are conditioned not to let people know this, lest it makes their man look weak. It’s time for strong women to break the silence, to stop hiding their strength in order to make men look stronger. Not too long ago, someone whom I’ve never met, who doesn’t know us and only knew that his wife was Asian, asked him, “Does your wife even speak English?” When he reported this exchange to me, laughing at the absurdity of other people’s assumptions about us, he was very surprised that I was furious that he thought it was funny. To him, and many other people, the fact that I am highly English proficient should take the sting out of these insulting assumptions about my language abilities. What they don’t understand is that the real assumption, the true insult, is that I am fundamentally less than he is, and there’s nothing fucking funny about that.

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trhu · 6 years

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Hu I am

By Teri Roah Hu It’s funny to think that the name by which most people know me, the name I think of as my identity, is not the name I was born with, nor the name my parents chose for me. It is a uniquely American concoction, if the internet is to be believed. No one else shows up in a Google search of my name. Other than links about me, the main things that show up when you google “Teri Hu” are a ridiculous lot of Hindi love songs. Apparently, “teri hu” means “I’m yours” in informal Hindi. There is another “Teri Hu” on Facebook, who coincidentally lives in Taipei, where I was born. But obviously, “Teri” is not her legal name there, it’s just an English name that she uses on social media. It’s weird to think I might be the only person on the planet with this name, officially. Of course, back in 1970 when I was born in Taiwan, my parents did not give me an English name either. At birth, I was named 胡柔柔, or Hu Rou-rou, because in Chinese, surnames come first. The meaning of Hu is complicated. Except as a last name, it is never used as a stand-alone word, so far as I know, but only as part of a phrase that can mean a lot of unrelated things: hutong (胡同)=alley, huzi (胡子)=beard, hutu (胡涂)=confused. There seems to be no relationship between these words and the use of “hu” in them. Hu is the 13th most common surname in China, but in 43 years, I’ve never known another Hu in the United States that I wasn’t related to. That tells you a lot about how becoming an American has fundamentally changed everything in my life. Would I have been such a misfit if I’d stayed in Taiwan? Am I intrinsically weird, or just weird compared to theoretically “normal” white Americans? I’ll probably never know, because now, when I travel back to Asia, I’m the weirdo that looks Chinese, but is American on the inside. Misfit on two continents, that’s me. My mother chose my Chinese name, Rou-rou (柔柔), long before I was born. Ever since she was a teenager, she had visions of a daughter who was soft, tender, and delicate...a princess of her very own. So she latched onto “rou” and doubled it for emphasis. Needless to say, she did not get the daughter she hoped for. Instead of the Sansa she had always dreamed of, she got an Arya. Rou-rou wasn’t even supposed to be my legal name, just a pet name. My mother assumed my father would come up with a more official sounding legal name based on his family’s generational poem, per Chinese tradition. Had he done that, my name would’ve likely been “Hu Sirou” (胡斯柔) which at least sounds like a grown-up instead of a toddler. But daddy--being somewhat literal-minded and not caring too much about tradition in the first place--just put her pet name down on the family register when I was born, and there I was, saddled with a ridiculously squishy baby name that would never fit my skeptical, hard-nosed temperament. This miscommunication about what to name their firstborn child was a harbinger of my parents’ impending divorce. The two of them never really learned how to talk to each other, and the pained, awkward silences of my childhood taught me how important it was for a family to be able to say anything to each other, even if it meant fighting it out instead of keeping the peace. Peace and quiet is worth nothing if everyone is seething with unspoken resentments inside. The miscommunication only got worse when we came to the United States in 1975, and the English name they gave me then is a perfect example of how unprepared either of them were for American life. Mother asked daddy to find an English name that meant the same thing as “rou,” so he looked up “tender” in the dictionary, and found it was based on the Greek word, “teren” or “τέρην.” Without any real understanding of English names--even though they picked perfectly normal names for themselves, “Fred” and “Tina”--they settled on “Teren” for me, with no idea of the hell they were about to unleash on a five year old. So, “Teren Rou-rou Hu” was the name on the roster when I started kindergarten two months after arriving in this country, which probably confused the heck out of my teacher. She was a very old white lady, called Mrs. House, and I think it was actually her last year teaching. It was also a very white school, and I was the only Asian kid, so there was literally no one on campus who could speak to me for the first few weeks, before I started to pick up English. In that horrific time, before I could really talk back, I was targeted for being different in incomprehensible ways. Even though at first, I literally could not understand what people were saying to me, I knew they were being cruel; that I was being singled out and tormented, and it infected my first few months in America with a fear and anger that has essentially never gone away, even as I got better at standing up for myself and fighting back. That’s the nature of trauma. What I remember: *Random boys I didn’t know following me home from school yelling “flatface” and “flatnose” while throwing the occasional dirt clod at me. *Random boys from my class running up to me making rowing motions with their arms while singing “Row, row, row your boat.” *Being asked if I was a boy, because “Teren” sounds like a boy’s name. Sometimes, even adults would ask this. I was a tomboy, but I had long hair and wore dresses, so I don’t really understand WHY there would have been any confusion about my gender. I was visibly female, no matter what my stupid name was. *All sorts of kids chanting “Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees, Look at these!” at me on the playground, pulling the fronts of their shirts out as if they had boobs. *Kids coming up and saying, “Knock-knock.” And when I would say, “Who’s there?” They’d just run away laughing. As you can see, a lot of the bullying involved my odd, foreign name, and I grew to hate it with a passion. But I never thought about changing it, somehow, until sixth grade, after we had moved from Fremont to San Francisco. It was just a burden I thought I would have to carry for the rest of my life. Middle school is a different type of hell, but at least in San Francisco, no one paid any attention to my name. That’s the nice thing about a city full of oddball weirdos, you learn to live and let live. When we were twelve, all my friends decided that we would pick cooler names that made us seem older. Ingrid became Ziggy, Laura became Ally Cat, Stepheny became Kaya, and I became Jackie...for Jack Daniels, which was considered cool back then, even though we didn’t actually drink it. Nasty stuff. Clearly, Jackie didn’t stick. I think we used these silly nicknames for maybe six months before it got too confusing to remember and most of us went back to the names our parents gave us. Except Ziggy. She stayed Ziggy well into her twenties, but last I heard, is back to being Ingrid and lives in Vermont. But adopting a different name, even briefly, made me realize that I had options. Something completely different from “Teren” might be hard to sell, but why not something closer? And the obvious choice was “Teri.” It stuck. Normally, Teri is a nickname for Teresa, which means “reaper” or “harvester,” but I don’t think that really applies in my case. People occasionally assume my full legal name is Teresa, but it’s been less of an issue than you’d think. I’ve been Teri, now, for 36 years, and it fits. It’s a comfortable name that no one has ever been able to twist into something hurtful. The worst I’ve heard was “Scary Teri,” but honestly, I’m fine with being a little scary. Scary is better than soft, right? There was still the problem of my stupid middle name, though. Rou-rou just sounds awful in any language. It took a few more years to figure that one out. At the end of senior year in high school, a few weeks before graduation, we had to submit our full, legal names to be printed on our diplomas. My high school diploma meant a lot to me, since I had to really struggle to earn it, having failed four classes in my sophomore year, which cost me three semesters of night classes and summer school to make up. I hated the idea of seeing my awful Chinese name printed on something I’d worked so hard for. A friend of mine also had a Chinese middle name, which should be spelled “De-Fen.” I’d only heard it, never seen it, so I just assumed she spelled it the “normal” way, according to the rules of pinyin. But when I saw it printed on one of her graduation announcements, I was shocked. She’d spelled it “Derphine,” which looked SO MUCH BETTER!! I thought, I didn’t know you could do that! And Rou-rou became Roah, which means nothing. (Well, technically, there is an acronym, ROAH, which means “Restraining Order After Hearing,” but that doesn’t affect me at all.) It was so easy, once I realized that I didn’t have to follow the rules of romanization or anything else, to create an identity that actually suits me. And that is how I wound up with a name that I chose for myself as a child, that no one else in this whole world has. Teri Roah Hu, is, so far as I know, a singularly unique name in the universe. And I’m perfectly happy with it.

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trhu · 9 years

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Peter the Dick

The shadow moved furtively through the trees. It was mid-afternoon, but overcast, and in this part of the park, where the redwoods grew so close together that their roots pushed up out of the soil, it was easy to trip over the knots that jutted up into the path. He stepped carefully. The shadow was lean and gangly, but the man who cast it was not. Tall, broad-shouldered, but softening around the middle, he had the build of a former athlete slowly going to pot. Actually, he was literally going to pot. Going to score some pot, that is…weed, maryjane, chronic. He wasn’t sure what the kids were calling it these days, but it didn’t matter. He had a connect. He didn’t look like a pothead. The white button-down shirt and department store tie screamed middle management. In fact, he was the principal of Lincoln High School, just a few blocks away from this damp, shadowy redwood grove in Golden Gate Park, and until last week, he had never bought illegal drugs in his life. Booze was more his speed. As an SAE at ASU, he’d been a champion beer chugger, and downed bottles of Jack on a daily basis. While he did drink illegally between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, he had never tried any illegal drugs, largely because he never needed to. Drunk was good enough for him, and booze was easy to get. But not anymore. The insomnia was brutal, and nothing else helped, not the booze, not the pills, not the herbal crap that his wife got from the hippie grocery store. For almost a year, he would wake up in a panic, snapping out of troubled sleep and unable to return. He was averaging three and a half hours a night, and it was eating away at everything else in his life. Finally, in desperation, he'd asked his cousin Jim--who played sax with a jazz band in Oakland--to get him some pot, having read on the internet that it was a very effective soporific. It worked like a charm. He got a full night’s restful sleep for the first time in nearly a year. That was two months ago. He’d gotten a second baggie of bud from Jim a month later, but it occurred to him that scoring off of family might be a bad idea. Who knew who else would hear about it? He certainly didn’t need his dad to find out. Captain Law and Order would not be amused. Besides, Jim had refused to take any money, so he felt constrained from asking for as much as he wanted. Stretching the pot out over a month meant not smoking it every night, holding off until the sleeplessness got unbearable before finally lighting up and getting the sleep he so desperately craved. So, a couple of weeks ago, he’d decided to buy his own. But from where? Who could he trust? The sad fact was, at the age of fifty-three, he had no idea how to score. The whole thing was kind of ridiculous, since he could easily go to one of the “doctors” that advertised on the back of the Bay Guardian and get a medical marijuana card. Then, he could go to any perfectly legal cannabis dispensary and buy as much as he wanted with no worries. But he couldn't do that. Not when he was a high school principal and pillar of the community. Not when his dad used to be the captain of Southern Station. Not when he’d always told his kids that drugs were bad, m’kay? To find himself suddenly dependent on marijuana just to get some fucking sleep after a lifetime of moralizing against it was galling. And he had no intention of giving anyone else the satisfaction of calling him a hypocrite. So, last Wednesday, he called the biggest pothead he knew into his office. Ramsey Loft shuffled in warily. While he was a middling student, going through his day in a foggy daze, he was relatively docile and had never been called to the principal’s office for any disciplinary action. This was new to him. “So, Ramsey. How’s it going?” “Um…okay.” “Graduating?” “Yeah, I think so.” “Really? You’re passing all your classes?” “Physics might be borderline, but Mr. Dowe always gives a few extra credit assignments at the end of the semester in case we need points, so I think I'll get through it." “Uh huh," he paused, "What if we looked in your locker today? Would that cause a problem?” “Wha…what?” “Your locker. Is there anything in there that shouldn't be?” “I don’t know what you mean.” “Oh, I think you do. It’s not really my business what you do on your own time when you’re off campus, but if you’re bringing illegal substances into my school, you make it my business.” “What are you talking about? I don’t do that.” “I’m sure you don’t. I’m sure you take the bus all the way back to your house in Ingleside at lunch for your mid-day toke, then bus all the way back here in time for fifth period. It must be a really mellow ride.” Ramsey was silent. He glared, lips pressed together, slouched against the back of the too-small plastic chair, hands jammed into the pockets of his gray hoodie. “It would be too bad if you got busted now, wouldn’t it? Just a month from graduation, and ten days before your eighteenth birthday. I’m sure you would’ve gotten your pot card all squared away by then and no worries. Though you still can’t bring it on campus, with or without a card.” “Why are you doing this?” “What am I doing?” “You’re just fucking with me. If you wanted to bust me, Officer Rapp would’ve searched my locker already.” “You’re smarter than you look. Yes, you’re right, I’m not looking to ruin your life. But I wanted to remind you that I could. Keep that in mind.” “I’ll never forget.” “Good. I want you to bring me what you have, right now.” “Why?” “Not your business. Just do it.” Still scowling and suspicious, Ramsey Loft slouchshuffled out of the office. Seven minutes later, he returned. He pulled a baggie out of his hoodie pocket and threw it down on the desk. There were two green brown buds inside. “Excellent! Thank you, Ramsey.” He picked up the baggie, held it up and peered at it over his glasses. “What is this, exactly?” “Whaddaya mean?” “What variety of marijuana is this? It looks quite crystalline.” “Um…I dunno. It’s good stuff, though. Why?” “Oh, I just like to know, in case I want more of the same. Can you get more of the same?” “What?” “Can you get more of this?” “Is that a trick question?” “No, I’m completely serious. I want to know if you can get more.” “Do you want more?” “I might. If it’s good.” “This is crazy.” “Just answer the question.” “Yeah, sure, I can get more, but it’s not cheap.” “How much?” “For this?” “Yes.” “That’s about thirty bucks worth.” “But you can get more?” “Yeah.” “How quickly?” “What?” “When can you get more?” “I dunno, it’ll take a few days.” He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a handful of bills. “Here…one hundred dollars. I’m going to keep this baggie, and I want you to buy at least twice as much as you have here and bring it to me. Keep the extra ten for yourself.” “Are you nuts? You want to buy weed from me? You want me to buy weed for you?” “Look, I could get a medical marijuana card myself, but that would go into a state database, and I’d rather not have that. This way, I figure everyone’s happy.” Ramsey’s face did not look happy, but he didn’t argue. “Fine. I’ll get it. How do I get it to you?” “Just bring it to my office.” “No way. I’m not bringing it on campus ever again, I’m not stupid. You’ll have to meet me somewhere else.” “Fine, where?” “I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know.” “Fine. I’ll check in with you in three days, we can finalize the arrangements then.” “That’s a Saturday.” “Oh, right. Monday, then?” “Sure. Is that all?” “Yeah, let me sign your pass back to class.” On Monday, Ramsey had shuffled back into his office and told him to come to this grove in the park an hour after school let out. But there was a staff meeting on Monday, and he had a dentist appointment on Tuesday, so he told Ramsey to put it off until Wednesday. But Ramsey said he wasn’t coming to school on Wednesday at all, his cousin who lived in Germany had a long stopover at SFO, and the whole family would be going to have lunch with him at Bertolucci’s near the airport for the few hours he was in town. So they set the meet for Thursday. And here it was, Thursday, after school, in the redwood grove, and where was Ramsey? He wandered through the trees, not wanting to call out, but getting increasingly annoyed each time he stumbled over a root. Finally, the trees thinned out, and he saw Ramsey, standing at the edge of Mallard Lake, tossing redwood pods into the murky water. “There you are! Why are you out here in the open? Wasn't the whole point of this to be discreet? Get back in the trees!” “I got bored, man. Thought I’d go see the turtles. Chill out.” They retreated to the tree line. “Just hand it over. Sooner we’re done here, the better.” “I found out what it’s called.” “What?” “You wanted to know the name of the strain, right? It’s Papaya Kush. Supposed to taste kinda like tropical fruit. Did you notice that when you smoked it?” “Um…yeah, I guess. It was a little fruity. Good stuff. Thanks.” Ramsey pulled a baggie out of his pocket and handed it over, without making any effort to hide it or its contents. There were four buds in it this time. “Good work, Ramsey. ‘Preciate it.” “We good?” “Yeah.” He put up his fist for a bump. Ramsey paused, side-eyed his hanging fist for a second, then reluctantly brought up his own fist and tapped knuckles briefly. He turned and headed to the other side of Mallard Lake. Tucking the baggie into his own pocket, he retraced his steps through the trees, less furtive now, almost relaxed. He had enough for at least a month! A whole month of restful sleep. And by then, it would be the end of the school year, and his insomnia would no longer be an issue. It might even resolve itself once the stress of the job was lifted off his shoulders. At least until August. A faint frown crossed his face. What would he do when school started up again? Pushing the thought aside, he decided he’d worry about that when the time came. Emerging from the redwood grove, he walked briskly along Lincoln towards his car. He pressed the unlock button when he was two car lengths away, and saw his lights flash in response. He almost ran the last few feet, he was so eager to leave the memory of this afternoon behind. As his hand reached for the door handle, a hand fell on his shoulder. “Mr. Norman?” “Huh?” “Are you Mr. Peter Norman?” “Uh…yes. Who are you?” The unsmiling man flashed a badge in a leather billfold. “Detective Lu, Taraval Station. Mr. Peter Norman, you’re under arrest.” He placed his hand on Norman’s elbow. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you do not have an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?” His heart stopped. His mouth dropped. For a split second, he thought he was going to pass out, the world flashed white in front of his eyes. Then he remembered. “Get your hands off me!” He jerked away from the cop. “Are you joking? I’m the principal of Lincoln High School! We work with Taraval Station all the time. This must be a mistake. Who’s your superior officer?” Lu’s demeanor didn’t change. “No joke, we’ve had you under surveillance since you parked your vehicle. You need to come with me.” “What? Why? I haven’t done anything wrong, I just took a walk! Exercise! My dad’s a cop, for chrissake! He was captain at Southern for fifteen years!” “Yes, we know. That’s not material to this case. We have surveillance video of you in a drug transaction with a minor.” “You should’ve just gotten a pot card, Pete.” He spun around at the familiar voice behind him. Blinked at the familiar face for a second before a name floated to the surface of his brain. “Paul? Is that you? What are you doing here?” Paul Simmons, still short, but a lot sturdier than he was as a scrawny, big-eared benchwarmer, stood between the cars, with an expression on his face that Norman couldn’t quite read. “I’m the supervising officer on this arrest, Pete. The kid came to see us, yesterday. His cousin talked him into it at lunch. What were you thinking? Coercing a minor that had no priors into selling you pot? He even gave us currency with your prints on it. The video we shot today pretty much clinches it.” He couldn't think of anything to say. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything. He’d been mirandized. He never thought he would be mirandized. Behind him, he heard a clacking noise, and then cold metal bracelets circled his wrists. Lu had cuffed him. This was a bad dream. No way this was actually happening. What would dad say? This last thought released the desperate words from his brain and sent them out of his mouth. “Paul! You can’t do this! Come on, we go way back, there’s gotta be something you can do to help me out here.” Simmons looked at him with that odd expression again. “Yeah, we do go way back, Pete. You spent a lot of years yanking my ears and throwing shit at my head. It’s not like we were friends. It’s not like I owe you any favors. Even if we were friends, there’s nothing I could do. The report was filed last night, and this whole operation is on the books. Can’t make it go away, now.” His face hardened. Norman recognized the expression now, it was spite. “I gotta say, though…last night, I thought about it. I thought about calling you up and warning you not to go through with the meet. I don’t know why it would’ve occurred to me to help you at all, since what you did—bullying a harmless kid like that, threatening his future—that’s a dick move, Pete. But you were always a dick. And stupid, too. Don’t you know that there is no state database for medical marijuana cardholders? It says so right on the website. You couldn’t even be bothered to do your research properly before resorting to your usual dickishness. Because that’s your default position, every time. Dick. Which is a synonym for Peter, so at least your dad named you right, even if he didn't teach you a damned thing about being a decent human being.” His voice was rising. Simmons checked himself. “But I did think about helping you out, just for a minute, because, God help me, there’s still a bit of that bullied kid inside me who thought that maybe, if I helped you out, you’d be my friend. As if your friendship—being friends with a dumb, bullying oaf—was worth anything, anyway.” Simmons turned away, disgusted…with himself or Norman, it was hard to say. Lu, who had stood quietly behind Norman this whole time, pulled him away, leading him by the elbow toward the unmarked car parked behind his.

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trhu · 11 years

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Hotel Stories

When I was younger, my family owned a hotel in downtown San Francisco. It was smack dab in the center of town, on Market Street at Polk, and attracted a pretty diverse clientele. We had borderline homeless men on disability, a smattering of young European backpackers, and every year when the Grateful Dead played at the Civic Center, the Deadheads took over the building.

But, we also had more…casual guests. Just down the block was a disco where the young, upwardly mobile would shop for companionship. It was 1981, the last gasp of the swinging seventies, before AIDS struck hard. And we were the closest hotel. On weekends, we would always get a handful of couples-without-luggage, if you know what I mean.

My mother used to let me hang out with her when she worked the front desk, so I’d see a lot of what went on with the guests. One night, when I was about eleven, around eight or nine o’clock, we saw a very attractive, well-dressed woman in stilettos walk down the stairs, very casually, not in any hurry. She even smiled at us as she passed the desk, then sauntered out onto the street.

Three minutes later, a chubby, bald guy, wrapped in a towel, still wet, came running downstairs. He asked us if we saw a woman that looked like her, and when we told him she’d just gone out the door, he yelled, “SHE STOLE MY WALLET!” and ran out after her. Came back a minute later and asked to use our phone to call the cops.

This was my first lesson in self-delusion. What on earth made this guy believe that woman wanted him enough to trust her alone in the room with his wallet while he took a shower? Any reasonable person in his shoes should’ve been suspicious, and careful with his personal belongings in that situation. But I guess his ego wouldn’t let him consider that she had ulterior motives for going to a hotel room with him…and that wallet was the price he paid for indulging in his fantasy.

As I became a teenager, my friends and I often had sleepovers at the hotel. Instead of staying in my room, I would just tell the front desk that I was taking over one of the guest rooms downstairs. They’d stick a note in the room’s slot so as not to rent it out. We’d do the usual sleepover things…hair, make-up, watch movies, read magazines. Once we watched The Outsiders seven times: backwards and forwards at regular speed and fast forward. Don’t ask.

One night, when I was thirteen, the desk clerk must’ve forgotten—or maybe he stuck the note on the wrong room—and at three AM, while we’re asleep, the door opens, and two silhouettes appear.

One of them says, “By the way, my name is Vicki. What’s yours?”

The other one was Dave.

Then, they walk into the room and see us in the beds. Confused, they close the door, and head back to the lobby to get a different room. My friends and I, understandably freaked out, ran upstairs to my room.

But what I learned from that experience was that I didn’t want to be the girl introducing herself at the hotel room door.

When I was about fourteen, my mom decided that the hotel needed repainting, so she hired a live-in crew of painters. They stayed at the hotel and painted vacant rooms as they became available. One of the guys was a twenty-three year old Brit with the cutest accent, and I developed a huge crush on him. I’d hang around while he was painting and offer to help…it was pretty obvious, what can I say? I was fourteen, that’s what fourteen-year-old girls do.

One night, the painting crew invited me and my friend to their room and they gave us some beer. It wasn’t the most exciting party, we mostly sat around drinking warm Buds and watched TV, but as it got late, my cute Brit pulled me aside and asked me to spend the night.

With that, my crush immediately evaporated. Instead of being an unattainably attractive older guy, he suddenly became a lecherous pervert, propositioning a kid.

What could he have been thinking? He knew I was only 14, he saw me in my Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform, my mom was his boss!

Of course I refused, and I don’t think I saw him again after that.

When I told my friend what happened, though, her response was, “Why didn’t you?” I didn’t even know how to respond to that question.

And thirty years later, looking back, I realize that her incomprehensible bizarre response was a harbinger of the many poor decisions that friend would make throughout her life.

There are people who believe that the way to raise, or educate, “good” kids, is to expose them to good examples and shield them from bad influences. These people don’t want kids to read challenging literature, see edgy films, or learn about the darker side of human nature, as if just knowing that bad things happen in the world will make young people court danger and destruction.

I’ve spent many years arguing against this ideology. To me, it seems patently obvious that part of how you show kids how to make good choices for their own lives is to show them the consequences of bad decisions. I have faith that children are smart enough to read a story where the protagonist does horrible things, or has horrible things happen to them, and not run out to replicate the plot in their own lives.

In my own life, I have seen many adults make poor decisions. At no point did I watch them suffering the consequences and think, “That’s what I want to do, too!”

In fact, I credit all the poor role models and foolish people I’ve encountered throughout my own life—both in fiction and reality—with my own ability to make good choices for myself. Seeing what not to do has taught me better than any of the didactic, moralizing lessons that “good” role models think are so important.

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