Kipworld

So, I told this story on Tuesday at Uncommon Ground… It went over better than I expected. See, there was no featured teller that night, so all open mic. The first half was pretty light hearted and then I started off the second half with this one. As I told Jim, it was a bit different than what I usually tell.

Afterwards, he told me he liked it.

“It’s not so different. It was real and it was from the heart. That’s what you do.”

Spiffy…

Anyway, to preface this… I wrote this 30 minutes before I left for storytelling, so the arc isn’t as good as it could be. And during the actual telling, I fleshed out some sections since we didn’t have the 8 minute time limit I was expecting.

I started rereading Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian this week, and it’s amazing how the book lays out what this story was getting at. I guess that’s why he has a book and I just have a website.

My Asian Day

When the day started, I was a fine and well adjusted human being who didn’t think a lot about race relations in America. When it ended, I wasn’t.

I grew up in Milwaukee. I went to a small private school, 30 kids in my class. I was the only Asian one. My best friend was half Japanese.

Up until I was 8, I thought that my family was white, because the books I read had white people and black people. I figured out that we weren’t black. My siblings told me that we were considered yellow.

There was only one incident of racism that I can recall the entire time in grade school: when I was in third grade, I got tormented by two fifth graders. They asked me if I was Chinese, I said I was Malaysian, then they chased me around the playground calling me “Oleysayian”, which sounds like some fat substitute, now that I think about it. A girl in my class ran and got a teacher and man, those kids were toast.

That night, my parents let me know that my family actually was Chinese, but that our extended family lived in Malaysia (hence my confusion). Everything was so clear.

My town actually had a lot of Asians in it, but I never really felt a part of it. I didn’t speak Chinese, because my parents spoke different dialects. I didn’t go to Chinese school. Once a year, at Chinese New Year, my mother would come and talk to the class and hand out fortune cookies and lucky red packets. That was the extent of my heritage.

When I hit high school, I was more aware of stereotypes. My high school was so much bigger and so much more diverse. By that time, I’d decided that I wanted to be… an actor. I wanted to be the first breakthrough Asian actor, who’d get mainstream parts without doing one high kick or having an accent. I did every production that I could.

It was in high school that I became more comfortable joking about race. I’d call myself the “token Asian” in my group of friends. i wrote satirical pieces on affirmative action for the newspaper. My first job was a program for minority students learning more about health sciences. I squeaked on as by checking the “Southeast Asian” box on the application.

When I got to college, I told myself that I wasn’t going to join an insular Asian American clique. No, I was going to do choir, drama.

By sophomore year, I was living in Plex, and most of my friends were Asian. Oh well… I was OK with it.

I tried out for M. Butterfly. I made Asian jokes during improv shows. People laughed.

I went to see an Asian American comic on campus. His name was Eliot Chang. He talked about how he was proud he’d never sold out his ethnicity for a laugh. I was moved.

I stopped making Asian jokes during shows. People still laughed.

This is how well adjusted I was.

And then came the day.

It was after graduation. I was planning on taking some time off and living in Evanston with some friends who were also staying in town for one reason or another. We had decided to make our apartment a not college apartment, so we were painting it. But nicely.

The four of us were slogging through the living room when I got a casting call. Turns out that this guy who’d seen me in an improv show wanted to screen me for a commercial. It would pay $300. “Ee need an Asian,” he said.

This was it. Breakthrough dramatic movie role to follow.

I cleaned off and drove to the studio, which was out in Schaumburg. I’m sure many major movie stars started out the same way.

The commercial was for a tool called THE CRANK. It was a socket wrench with a doohickey. Screening consisted of me posing with all the manliness I could muster saying things like, “I use the Crank on my car… to reach those tough spots.” and “The crank is like 6 tools… in one”.

The other guys there seemed much more likely to get the role. They were bigger and they looked like they knew about cars and cranks and stuff.

The director liked my look, however, and he told me he’d call me for stuff more… comedic.

I drove back, visions of Hollywood glory diminished, but not destroyed.

On the way back, the road cut down to one lane. I was driving back from the screening, trying to make it in time for my 3:30 meeting. A little east of Woodfield Mall, the road went down to one lane. Like most people, I merged to the right early. This Nissan Axxess minivan came screaming up on the left, trying to cut in. I hate those people. Anyway, the passenger of the Axxess had his visored head out the window, flicking off all of the conscientious drivers in the right lane. I finally let him merge, because he was coming dangerously close.

Soon, the road went back to normal, and he went flying from lane to lane, trying to get by. He never got very far before having to slam on his brakes. About a mile down the road, I came level with his car.

The passenger was looking for people to heckle and I tried to avoid his eye. My face was burning, almost as if I was the asshole here. He saw me anyway and started yelling and giving me the finger. I shot it right back at him glared. Visorboy was delighted to have an audience.

“Hey, chink boy!” he yelled, while making one eye slanted with his finger.

A button in the side of my had got pushed. I was aware of the summer heat in the car, yet there was an icy coolness on my temples.

I rolled down my window and said, “Pick an intersection up there, so I can stop and kick your ass.”

He started to get out of the car, which suited me fine, since I wanted to run him over, but then cars started moving. I drove with him, wishing he really would stop. Vision of Hollywood success, now a dim rage.

I could see it, in my head. The car in a parking lot. I’d take the Club I kept in the back seat, get him in the knees. And then in the head. And by doing so, cure racism!

I was boiling mad the entire way back. I took down his plate number on my phone, as I had no paper or pen in the car. 279-6606 and I saved the entry as “Asshole.” All of the good feelings of the morning were forgotten. I don’t think I could have really beat him up, but I would have put up a good fight.

And that’s the thing, really. I had a knee jerk reaction, that was just purely violent.

When the day started, I was a fine well adjusted human being who didn’t think a lot about race relations in America. Most days I still am. But I don’t forget that Visorboy and racism are still out there. But I don’t let it stop my joking. Maybe if we can laugh, we can stay ahead and above it.