Cause I'm just a girl, little ol' me

Last weekend, as the Celtics were wrapping up another nail biter against the Knicks, my mom hosted Bible study at our house. One of the parents brought along her teenage daughter and I was tasked with taking care of her and making sure she wasn't bored. Two seconds after meeting her, I was already impressed with her poise and absolute lack of teen fear. Having been in this situation many times -- my Mom telling us we had to take care of a guest -- I was used to younger kids who were either shy or disinterested. Instead, Sam totally just looked at people in the eye, let her big personality fly, and spoke and acted like an adult. If anything, a few minutes after meeting me, she was wondering how I was an adult. I mean, after giving her a brief overview of Celtics history from 1950s to present (just kidding), we settled into the real task of talking about Glee, middle school, and hair curling.

Turns out Sam is an aspiring Broadway singer who already has a career going, and balances school, lessons, and performing. Upon request she will belt out Les Mis or any song in her extensive repertoire. Again, she struck me as very different from the other Chinese children I was used to. Usually you have to cajole kids into doing something. They'll hem and haw before finally getting up to give a half hearted performance. Sam wasn't like that at all. She warned us she was gonna be loud and then stood up and started belting out "On My Own."

I've already booked her as an act in my wedding.

On Sunday I went over to Sam's house for a combined Bible study and birthday party. I didn't realize there would be so many people over, enough for a hired taco stand in the backyard, and dozens of parents and little kids milling around. I don't usually make an appearance at these things because there's nobody my age around, but here I was, a guest of a thirteen year old. Before heading over I had run out to get Sam a copy of Clueless because it was a movie that I thought she needed to see. When I looked at when the movie was made, the release date was two years before she was even born. In EC, I had put a reference to Clueless but my editor had subbed it out because nobody would get the reference. Clearly, she was a hundred percent right.

Movies released two years after I was born: The Empire Strikes Back, Fame, American Gigolo, Friday the 13th, Mad Max, Airplane, Raging Bull, Popeye, and something called Stir Crazy that grossed over a hundred million dollars and starred Craig T. Nelson, Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor. I was trying to figure out my relationship to those movies versus how Sam would intake Clueless. I guess I'll find out when she watches it. I was also trying to figure out if Cher, Dionne, and Tai were age appropriate. I would make an awful parent because I'd continually push media on children before they were ready for them. "You really need to see Blue Valentine, it's so good!"

When all the singing and Bible stuff started, we went upstairs to Sam's room to hang out with her friends. A couple of girls, probably only a little bit older than me in combined age. One of them was doing a school project where she couldn't talk. We communicated via whiteboard as her younger sister enthusiastically spoke up for her at every opportunity. "She's doing this invisible children thing for child soldiers in Africa!" It reminded me of a link my cousin had shared on her Tumblr, about a high school senior who had faked a pregnancy most of the year as a school project. Kids, they do the darnest things.

I asked them about what sort of books they read, what their hobbies were, and if they were popular at school -- and why. I called all this research but really it was just sort of hanging out with my peer group. I showed them my bubble gum blowing skills, impressed with my hair braiding, and beat them all at Clue ("Professor Plum, with the knife, in the conservatory"). They showed me what sorts of sites they surfed around to online and asked if I had ever cheated on a girl. They also asked why I was living at home with my mom. Ha, good questions ladies. It was like a pint sized Chinese Inquisition.

All of this gave me flashbacks to my childhood. Basically I grew up with George and a whole gaggle of girls. All of our family friends only had daughters for some reason. I've played more house, done more fortune telling with playing cards, and painted more nails than most males have _______. Whatever little boys did from the ages of six to eleven, I didn't do them.

At the end of the night, my mom came upstairs to tell me that we had to go because it was nearing Sam's bed time. Before I left, we exchanged Silly Bandz, my Justin Bieber heart notes one -- courtesy of Des -- for one of Sam's elephants. It was nine thirty.

Someone to Call My Lover

I thought I'd use the occasion of everyone up in the Bay going to the Janet concert to reminisce about my Janet experience. Not that I'm jealous or anything.

May 2001, back in Ann Arbor to see the new seniors graduate. After a long night of Mafia, it had been decided that it would be a fantastic idea if everyone came out to New York to watch Janet's All For You tour in August. Three of us were going to stay up in order to get the pre-sale tickets at the break of dawn. A few hours in, there were only two of us still awake and after experiencing one of those getting to know everything about you all nighters, Marie and I set off across campus to the computer lab after picking up coffee and bagels. We sat there hitting refresh on Ticketmaster and trying to buy as many tickets as possible. In ten minutes we ended up with four seats in one closer section and twelve in another, slightly further away.

Lynn and I had been living in Jersey City for about a year already, in a luxury waterfront community with a pool, tennis and basketball courts, and a rumored member of the Wu Tang Clan on a top floor. With all the excitement of a New York trip and a concert, we convinced even more friends to come through. Even a handful of San Diego friends flew in, and we were so kind as to leave them waiting at the airport for two hours as we finished up at Cheesecake Factory. I still bring that incident up now and again, to apologize profusely. Only in true friendship can you say "Hey, we're at dinner, pick you up in a few hours. Just chill out for awhile."

Fully assembled, we crammed twenty or so people into our two bedroom apartment. Someone slept in my little walk in closet. The living room was packed in sardines style. We spent the weekend singing, dancing, Dr. Mario-ing, BBQing, attending a friend's housewarming, and finally going to see Janet live. That was the fun part of it all.

The not so fun part. My girlfriend, Angela, lived across the street in a highrise but she wasn't there for a lot of the hang out times at our house. Part of it was because she wasn't entirely comfortable around everyone, even if they were all nominally familiar. Part of it was me. From May till August, I had been in constant contact with Marie and even though we hadn't ever talked about it, Angela had been well appraised of our mysterious friendship by our mutual friends and she wasn't very happy with the particulars. When I chose to sit with Marie at the concert instead of with Angela (justifying that we had bought the tickets together so we should sit in the closer seats), shit hit the fan and it was the last straw in a relationship defined by fighting and the constant specter of break up.

A week after Janet we officially ended the relationship. A week after that I was back in Ann Arbor to celebrate my birthday. A few days later, back in Jersey City, 9/11 happened. With the World Trade Center going down, it was no time for being apart from anyone. Angela and I drifted back together for another few months of denouement, finally cutting things off when I moved away from the East Coast. I just so happened to have started my journal this particular Janet weekend. Here's the first entry:

"I'm trying to collect my thoughts from the past few days together and it's really hard. I feel like I hit this rational and emotional wall and I really want to explain and organize things in my head but I can't."

I'm making progress on my Top Ten Janet songs. So far the list looks like this:

1. Control
2. Again
3. That's the Way Love Goes
4. Got 'Til It's Gone
5. Black Cat
6. Let's Wait Awhile
7. Rhythm Nation
8. Miss You Much
9. Someone to Call My Lover
10. Love Will Never Do (Without You)
11. What's It Gonna Be?

Today Is Our Life

Being back in San Diego is grinding me down. I feel the familiar sink of last summer coming back. With the weather not quite hot enough to go to the beach -- although I did manage to get lobster fried the other day falling asleep at the pool -- I've been a shut in all week. Someone asked if when I do my four or five days of being at home all day, if I get depressed or antsy. I answered that I generally don't, because I'm more social and interactive online anyway. But somehow a tipping point happened and right this moment my answer would be different. I'm just wanting to sleep all the time, waiting for the next event to happen. Luckily things are happening soon so this feeling can only last a few more days.

My lips haven't touched a burrito yet.

At dinner the other night I told my friend about my no settling policy in 2011. She came at me from the opposite perspective. Her recent experiences have taught her that everyone just wants a little bite of everything, and people are constantly feigning for and piling too much on their plates. "You can't have it all," she said. Then she gave me some more food for thought about whether or not our socially networked generation is just too easily tempted toward something else. Following that she challenged the idea of me judging other people's "settling." Without a whole lot of pre-constructed defenses available, I said I'd have to think about it and get back to her.

I realized a big difference between how recent friendships have formed versus past ones. Before, the majority of my friends were formed through massive hanging out. Like we'd hang out all.the.time. You'd get to know someone by being around them for days on end, over years and years. Or at the very least I'd have a period of some months where we'd be on call every day. Now when I think about who I look to connect with -- especially back home -- it's a handful of friends that I've only seen maybe a few times in our shared history.

We get together for boba or coffee, a theater movie, dinner, some mutual event we both have an interest in. We connect through catching up and conversation. While that's great and all, there's also a lot that gets lost in the knowledge department with just quickie interactions. I was trying to recall the last time I sat around with a new friend and just watched television and fell asleep. With one exception, it's been awhile. It's dawning on me that this is how it could be from here on out. People don't have time to just sit around and hang out. Even recently, with friends I've known for years, I've only gotten a brief glimpse of their domestic life. It felt weird not to know, even if it kept things new. It's like being inexperienced in a particular friendship even though you feel like a veteran.

Related/unrelated: I used to take note of what people ordered at restaurants so that I could predict their food choices in the future. Just a little game I played with myself to stay sharp. Somewhere in there I stopped paying attention. Now I have no idea what people are likely to eat and I keep asking non-vegetarians if they're okay with meat. "Rachael can't eat that. Oh wait, you can? Nevermind."

"So, I realize now that I don't know that much about you and vice versa. It's like we opened books about each other at a random page somewhere in the middle and started from there."
-Friend's email from 2005-

Take Me Somewhere

A really good friend of mine just gave birth to her first child the other day. I believe the baby was a month early and it was induced. Just a few weeks ago I had gone by to visit her in Los Angeles and she'd told me about the Chinese tradition of not bathing for a month after the birth. And then on Slate today I was reading about the postpartum customs of women from around the world. Not washing your hair or brushing your teeth for a few weeks seems gross but I guess if it's tradition it's defensible. My friend says she's loving it so far, and she's a Virgo and a total germaphobe like me.

Originally they had been told that they would be having a girl, and my friend and her husband had decided to name their daughter "Chloe," which would have meant that the child's name would have been "Chloe Yang." Just add a "Grace" in the middle of that and call it a day. Unfortunately, the doctors messed up and the baby turned out to be a boy. Now the baby's named after a French designer instead of an obscure young adult heroine. Too bad.

Speaking of children named Chloe, a friend who I named and modeled a character after in the book named her kid "Chloe," and now that kid is so cute she's actually a baby model and was recently in a Target ad featured on a Times Square big screen. Little people, making moves.

I was reading this article about Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. I'm fascinated by any Chinese Americans around my age who have made it big time. "Look at this guy," my brain says, "he could be a family friend (or me)!" Aside from Hsieh's drive and success, the part that struck me about his story was how even his closest friends don't know anything about his romantic life. "Close friends and employees either giggled nervously or balked outright at queries about it."

Mr. Hsieh, who professes fascination with dating guides like Neil Strauss's "The Game" and pontificated on his theory of the evolutionary futility of sexual jealousy, said he does not date. "I don't usually define dating or not dating, together or not together," said Mr. Hsieh, nursing another tall shaker of wine at the Downtown Cocktail Room. "I prefer to use the term 'hang out.' And I hang out with a lot of people, guys and girls. I don't really have this one person I am dating right now. I am hanging out with multiple people, and some people I hang out with more than others."

A Ms. Lim, who may or may not have dated him in the past, says: "It's kind of a gray area. I think of everyone I know in my life, he's the best at not feeling jealousy," she added. "But I think he's human, whether anyone believes that or not."

I love how this multi-millionaire has a mysterious dating life that the journalist had to dig into. I love how Tony is basically just another unable to commit male but isn't tagged as a playboy or womanizer. Neither of which he is probably, but part of me wonders if a profile on another single and young CEO -- a non-Asian one -- would have pegged him as such a sweetheart. Then again, they basically compare him to a robot so maybe I'm just reading a little too much into it. Either way, for my next pair of shoes I'd like to purchase them through Zappos. And I'm gonna work on having my friends believe that I'm human.

Here's a 2009 article about Zappos' customer service and corporate culture. And the possible real key to their success: free shipping.

Door hanging off the hinges

On the plane ride back from San Francisco, I was going to answer emails but got caught up in Octavia Butler's Clay's Ark, which a friend had given to me last night. Butler is the sort of scifi author that actually gets respect in the wider world of literature, and any self respecting fan of the genre should know her. Of course, I was only exposed to her a few years ago, and have only read two of her novels since.

I'm an inveterate re-reader, which is kind of a waste if you think about it. Case in point, I re-read half of Ender's Game again as I sat on Ameer's couch the other day. I've only read that book twenty times or so, another quick pass couldn't hurt anything right? But it's another hour of reading that could be used elsewhere. I think I'm going to stop re-reading for awhile.

Oftentimes I feel like I read something already because I've been exposed to so much of the talk around it. The reviews, the debates, the podcasts. I need to actually read the real thing and fight this regurgitation intake -- even if it's easier. Without taking in original content for yourself, you're really just talking bullshit right?

This entire year I've begun five books, finished three (pathetic), and only gotten something out of one. Today's book was a slim 213 pages and I finished it before we landed. It's not like I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow here. I just need a few hours alone and away from a computer to zip through something. I should do it. It's like this with books. You only have time for so many and it's time invested that may not necessarily be positively returned. But without new ideas, new inspiration, I'm going nowhere.

Clay's Ark is about an alien disease that infects humans and then makes them monsters. In my Twilight addled mind, the monsters were pretty much grittier vampires and werewolves. The book seemed uneven but the ideas were interesting. Most importantly it got me thinking and that's useful as I need to be translating thoughts to writing this month.

I signed up to do a e-pub short story for this summer, and I have to try to work out some ideas for books that are owed and books that I need to sell. The other night we talked about goals (briefly, before I passed out). My goals have always been hazy to near non-existent, but they're there.

As a friend emailed to me recently:

"Glad to hear your projects are moving forward. I was a little worried for you. Most of my writer friends are of the highly-determined variety. [Adam], whose hours are pretty similar to you, worked night audit for a hotel in college and after just so he'd be able to stay up all night and write -- and get paid for it -- without being interrupted by real work all that often. And now he's a #1 NYT bestseller, so I think it worked for him. I'm really impressed by you getting as far as you have without that, but good work habits can't be a bad thing for a good writer."

This House is Falling Apart

I have known intimately and looked after depressed people, and have no illusions about my ability to understand the real nature of that illness. The sort of blues I occasionally suffer through compares to real depression like a broken fingernail compares to being shot in the head and then set on fire and drowned. But it seems to me that the victims of that terrible disorder are often trying all their lives in vain to figure out why this must be so. Why them. And maybe there really is just no reason, or the reason is completely random, a cluster of neurons misfiring one day by accident, a bad thing that happens and could not be helped.
-Inside David Foster Wallace's Private Self-Help Library-