Hot:

“No, thank you. I have no need for your services,” I said.

“May I ask how much you pay for your long distance service, Mr. Lee?”

“I really couldn’t tell you off the top of my head.”

“Well, I’m sure we can reduce your monthly phone bill if you have a moment.”

“I really don’t have a moment. I’m sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but I really do need to get off the phone.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Lee. And may I say your English is very good.”

“You’re welcome… wait… I’m sorry… did you just say that my English is very good?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what prompted you to say this, may I ask?”

“Well, it’s just that your name is obviously foreign. Were you born here?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”

“That’s what I mean. You don’t have any kind of accent.”

I sank back into my chair, all my bodily energy bleeding out of me. Was she serious? She couldn’t be that stupid. I couldn’t be talking to a sitcom character.

No, she couldn’t be serious. This was a sales technique. She just wanted me to stay on the phone longer, right? But what kind of sales tactic starts off by insulting your mark? “I’m sorry, but are you serious?”

“…I’m not sure what you…”

“You don’t see how someone might be incredibly offended by what you just said?”

“I’m so sorry, but I meant no offense.”

“That’s what makes it so outrageously offensive.”

“…I was just complimenting you, Mr. Lee. I wasn’t…”

You “wasn’t” what? You didn’t mean to imply that Asians who don’t speak like Mr. Myagi are the exceptions? You didn’t mean to sound like someone who just discovered life on Mars? Will you be telling this amazing anecdote to all your hillbilly co-workers over your chicken-fried steak lunches?

“May I ask where you’re calling from?”

“Where?”

“Yes, in what area of the country are you located?”

Please, don’t say you’re from the South. Please.

“South Carolina.”

Fuck. She assumed, because of my name, I would have an accent. I assumed, because  she was an idiot, she would be from the South.

The rage building inside me dissipated. The monologue of righteous finger-wagging I was about to lay on her suddenly felt hypocritical.

She made an observation. An innocent one, as far as she was concerned – or maybe she was a wry hater who was just fucking with me. Who knows. All I knew was that after my own flash of stereotyping, I didn’t have the justified indignation to tell her off. I had strayed from the high road. No, I didn’t have the ammunition for this fight.

“You have a nice day, miss,” I sighed and hung up. And I wondered how the “recorded conversation for training purposes” review would go for my saleswoman from the South.

Hot:

A small ribbon of water ran down the side of a hill, past a well near my grandmother’s house. I was playing with my cousins. Their callow hands roamed over snow-blown bark, frozen grass and packed snow.

Fish were jumping up from the stream like polished greetings. Trying to catch one, I reached out with both hands as it arced through the slow, biting air. The fish hovered over the black water of the well and glistened. And when I looked into the well, it looked back at me — like a shark’s eye before it rolls over.

Gravity let go for a moment and I was flying. Then the water slapped my face like a sheet of wet glass. I shattered it. My fingers clawed at the wet stone; my legs kicked against the sucking threshold. I shut my mouth tight to keep the air in.

I heard my cousins shouting, wondering, panicking, crying. I swallowed the water — maybe I could drink enough of it away. I felt a shoe come off my foot as I kicked against all the things waiting for me at the bottom.

My mother had bought me an oversized coat with a hood and cotton stuffing. It was brown and it was supposed to keep me warm. It was drowning me.

She meant well. Like the time she sent me out to play in the snow and a dog chased me into a dead end. The glare of his teeth was brighter than the snow. Something demonic pulled his lips back to a jagged line of fangs. Panic set my legs in motion until I reached the closed alley and the rusted-shut door.

I heard the dog around the corner and time turned slippery – like a fish jumping from a stream. But there was time enough for fear to rot inside my stomach like buried flesh. It shot out of my nose when the dog stopped barking and growled.

She meant well. She said I spent too much time in the house, too much time drawing and daydreaming, not enough seeing, not enough living. She didn’t let me out alone for months after the stitches.

The water filled my lungs — I kicked at the shark’s eye. It pulled me down and twisted me through its cold stomach. And for a moment I thought I could breathe down there. I’d done it before; I’d done it for nine months.

I was clinging. To stay awake, to stay thinking, to embrace the terror that was pumping through me like liquid fire. I had to swim, stay afloat. It didn’t matter if I never learned. I had to swim. It didn’t matter if I wanted to give up or not. My body wouldn’t let it happen. I would struggle until I seized, twitched until my blood froze.

Though everything burned I couldn’t stop shuddering. My arms were heavy. I couldn’t feel my legs. Something told me to sleep – like a warm bed on a cold morning. It’ll stop burning if you go to sleep, it said. I stopped kicking. The fear ebbed. I let go.

In the black water, I saw my father’s face. Across a room made from rice paper screens, smoke from incense like a newborn ghost. He was talking to my grandmother. Something about my birthday. My first birthday.

I was like a stone inside my mother – two hundred and twenty of them if I’d been born in Liverpool. My sister came six years before me and almost killed our mother. You can’t have a girl born first; it’s bad luck. Everyone said so for six years.

They put me in front of a pile of coins, a piece of string, a book and a bamboo brush. They stepped back and watched me with smiles on their faces.

Someone else was there, wearing a silk costume and clown makeup on her face. She was waving burning sticks and chanting in flat pitches. My mother clapped in rhythm and said something to me.

If I grabbed the coins, I would be wealthy in my coming life. The string would mean I’d have a long life; the book would mean a life of scholarly pursuit; the brush would mean artistic gifts from the spirits.

I reached across the table and grabbed all of it. My parents looked at the lady in silk. She told them I was greedy. She told them the spirits weren’t happy. How could she read my life when it hadn’t written it yet?

My father put money in her hand and walked her to the door. My mother held me and hummed a song about good fortune traveling with a lonely journeyman.

Echoes of the song played softly behind my ears. The dark water took my memories, pulled their weight from my bones, and let me drift.

Hot:

I registered for the draft.

I have a social security number.

I know that the greatest thing about our constitution is that it was drafted by men, who knew their collective wisdom was not complete.

I have paid taxes since the age of 18. I have paid into the unemployment fund, paid into the social security fund, owned my own business, voted in every presidential and gubernatorial election since Clinton’s first run, served jury duty five times.

I have a better grasp of the English language than most of the Americans I have met.

I have a better understanding of American history than most of the Americans I have met.

Major corporations hire me to design marketing materials that will capture the sensibilities of my fellow Americans.

The names Rosey Grier, Tennessee Tuxedo, Mills Lane and Tommy Tutone mean something to me.

Like most of the Americans I know, I didn’t have to take a test or an oath of allegiance to gain citizenship – my parents were sworn in together before I turned 16.

I am a naturalized citizen. I don’t need citizenship papers. I have a passport.

I share the same burdens, responsibilities, aspirations, Super Bowls, pop-culture regrets and embarrassing haircuts as my born-and-raised counterparts. But not the same rights.

Because I was born in South Korea, I can’t run for President of the United States.

Because I spent the first 6 of my 43 years in another country, I can’t be trusted with nuclear launch codes. I can’t veto a pork-barrel buffet, throw the first pitch on opening day; know the truth about Area 51, have the public pay for my limo; wage war against countries we supported yesterday, owe China money, get a BJ in the Oval Office, totally screw over a covert CIA operative, interrupt regular programming, pick Supreme Court justices that track well with my base, get a library named after me.

Because I was born in South Korea, I can’t run for President of the United States.

I know the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

I know the words to The Star Spangled Banner.

I have read The United States Constitution.

I live in a country where “anyone can grow up to be President.”

Hot:

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight…

The cassette player hissed and clicked between electronic beats. Pyung lit a cigarette and killed the headlights. The stars lit up the road ahead. I eased back into my seat and listened.

We had walked around the Lower East Side all night, looking for a bar that only cared how old we looked. Didn’t find one.

Barry’s parents were home that weekend. No basement poker. No weed, no tequila, no fucked up stories about muling drugs across the border from his sister.

Between semesters, between jobs, between adolescence and adulthood, we wandered the streets in silence. Then, without any plans or discussion, we got in Pyung’s car and just drove.

“How far to DC?” he asked.

“About 250 miles.”

“We can get there by four.”

We were born with wanderlust. From Korea to Chicago to Virginia to New Jersey – all before I was twelve – home was never anything but a concept to me. Pyung’s history was the same. We never had to deliberate much when it came to road trips. We counted gas money and hit the road.

Washington DC this time, Boston the next, maybe Baltimore after that. The destination wasn’t important. Ten hours of music and conversation inside the bubble of a Camaro; the world slipping by at our pace.

Nothing could touch us in that car. There was no future, no past, no pressures, no worries, no obligations, no categories, just a web of roads anchored to nothing.

The empty highway and the rushing asphalt; the gentle rock of the suspension and the building music flooded our senses and washed away the uncertainty that comes with accepting manhood.

Reagan and his cowboy diplomacy, the threat of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, El Salvador and the Middle East had led to post apocalyptic depictions of a looming future. We would inherit this.

And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life… oh Lord… oh Lord…

The veil of night kept it hidden, the darkened lanes and reflecting lines gave us direction from moment to moment. Nothing to commit to, nothing to hold us.

We got to Georgetown and slept for a few hours in the car. Breakfast at an Ihop before the sun came up. A joint in the parking lot and then hours touring through The Smithsonian. It was a way to focus on something besides our lives and all the expectations of family.

There’s always something liberating about being away. It’s amplified when you get there on a whim. For a few hours we were free.

We stocked up on soda, munchies and headed back at dusk.

“You going to Barry’s for Christmas?” asked Pyung.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

We lit up cigarettes and watched the sun go down. The road was crowded on the way back. No portent, no possibilities, just the familiar trappings of home waiting for us.

Back to school, back to our lives, back to being ourselves. But the wanderlust was still there – smoldering, waiting for oxygen, waiting for the next time.

Pyung turned on the cassette player. And I can feel it coming in the air tonight…

Hot:

“The Korean War was not technically a war,” said Mr. Harrison in his usual Ben Stein drone. “It was a police action. The effort to push back the Chinese-backed forces was led by, who? …who? …who?”

His daily impression of a Tourette’s owl made me twitch. It made everyone twitch. “MacArthur!” Mercifully, someone was able to finally free themselves from Mr. Harrison’s paralyzing cadence.

“Right, General Douglas MacArthur… MacArthur,” he said, scrawling the answer on the blackboard. “Now, had we not gone into Korea, it is generally believed that the Soviet form of government known as… what? …what? …what?”

Communism? MacArthur? Wait… we? Yes, American history. I’m sitting in a New Jersey classroom. But it feels strange somehow – for me to think it. We?

English may as well be my first language. I grew up on Mighty Mouse, Sesame Street and The Little Rascals; Cocoa-Cola, Chef Boyardee and McDonald’s; The Cubs, The Bears and The Bulls. I get it, Mr. Harrison.

But – we?

Mr. Wein, he taught us about Native Americans in seventh grade. We learned about slavery and the 29th amendment; about the railroads and Viet Nam. I can’t say we to that.

I’ll pay my taxes, stay out of jail and defend these borders but I’m not going to be a cheerleader. I’m going to say we fucked up as many times as I’m going to say we were awesome. It’s only fair.

I’ll slide into it eventually. This place will become my home. After all, Nikes and Pentiums – like so many things American – are made in Korea aren’t they? But for now Home is still back there, halfway around the world.

I still can’t say, we. Not yet. For now, you are they. And we are altogether.

Goo goo ga-joob, Mr. Harrison.