“What Are You?”: Let’s Talk About Asian-American Encounters

by B.C.

[to] customer service guy, fun fact: my race is not a conversation starter and I don’t care that your ‘best mate’ is getting married to an asian girl.

When I posted this status on Facebook about how a customer service rep unnecessarily remarked on my race, I was kind of surprised by how it blew up with ‘likes’ and comments — but also not that surprised. 

Among my friends, including those on social media, it’s pretty common knowledge that these types of comments are unwarranted. But I was reminded that it’s not common knowledge for everyone.

To backtrack, I was at a Verizon store getting a phone upgrade. This guy was helping me along and we were making typical small talk. Then, out of nowhere, he asked if both of my parents were Asian. I was unsure of where he was going with this but answered, yes, only to have him tell me he was surprised I didn’t have an accent.

As those words left his mouth, I felt myself cringing. Really? Did you really say that? I told him, politely, that there are lots of Asian-Americans like me without accents and that his comment was a little offensive.

He seemed taken aback, shocked, even; he immediately apologized and said he didn’t mean offense. Okay, I thought, well good. Glad that’s over. But then he continued the conversation by telling me that his best friend was marrying an Asian girl, as if that were a way to redeem himself.

As it to convey, hey, I’m a nice guy. I didn’t mean any harm. My best friend likes your people, so I can relate and it was okay of me to say what I said. I wasn’t so much upset as I was flummoxed by his cluelessness. He was only making things worse without even realizing it.

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Boys in Cafés

 

Edouard Manet, Chez le Pére Lathuille

More or less true vignettes from the lives of E.L. and S.A.

Waiting for your drinks in a crowded café, the man next to you pulls a dog-eared copy of High Fidelity from his pocket, angling the cover toward you. You wonder if his bad haircut is a self-conscious attempt to emulate John Cusack, or is simply a happy coincidence.

 

 

He – stocking cap, linen pants, bemused smile – approaches the table where you are preparing for class with a volume of Kant only to say that he, too, once read continental philosophy before he discovered the true “embodied philosophy” of yoga. From now on, you read all books in public with the spine flat on the table.

 

 

On your first date he asks you what kind of soul you think you have. He’s a romantic soul, he says. A lover, like Jim Morrison.

 

 

He uses a $1 bill as a bookmark in his copy of Infinite Jest. This he keeps casually on his nightstand, though you’ve never seen the bookmark move.

 

 

Your seatmate on a flight to L.A. watches The Seventh Seal on his laptop. He makes a production of turning the subtitles off.

 

 

Before you have sex he tells you what all his tattoos mean.

 

 

A barista once told you that he decided to get a masters degree in Medieval literature because it “shares a lot of resonances” with Men’s Rights literature. You don’t tell him what motivated your graduate degree.

 

 

He finds your taste in music really impressive.

 

 

His okcupid profile begins with two quotes, one by Adrianne Riche and one by Ernest Hemingway.

 

 

Your neighbor invites you to a party that he calls a “salon” where you play surrealist party games. He tells you how much it would mean to him if you read Death in Venice. The copy he gives you is the one he borrowed from you months ago.

 

 

What a shame it is, he says wistfully, that he wasn’t raised more like Thomas Jefferson, who could read and write Latin by age 10. What he couldn’t have done with an eighteenth century education.

 

 

He says he wants to write a novel about the Human Condition.

 

 

You discover years later that all those profound aphorisms he used to write in your notebook were actually just unattributed Weezer lyrics.

 

Things You’ll Encounter in a Midtown-Uptown-Downtown Coffee Shop on a Thursday [Atlanta Edition]

• A businessman in a navy blue suit who studies the menu for about ten minutes before announcing his coffee order like he’s closing The Most Important Business Deal of All Time.
• Sharp-looking older woman in a Chanel suit, eating an organic steel-cut oatmeal and drinking black coffee. Earlier, you saw her go to the bathroom and not wash her hands, thus confirming something you always vaguely knew about women who wear full-on Chanel suits.
• Start-up meeting! Suddenly you look up, and they’re all there. Just a group of puppies shouting about optimization and, occasionally, synergy.
• Korean-American couple looking straight out of Ceci magazine, wearing slightly coordinated skinny-jean fits and drinking iced Americanos.
• Old men reading the NYT and Wall Street Journal, grumbling softly to themselves and eating bagels.
• Older woman wearing Naturalizer sandals and thoroughly enjoying a large-print Robert Galbraith novel. (As do I, Auntie. As do I.)
• A curated collection of young men sporting carefully-groomed beards shining with expensive, artisanal beard oil.
• Me.