Todd Bridges' Ghost

This dream becomes a nightmare every time.  It always unfolds as follows:

I’m in a mobile home with Dana Plato, a couple of days into a speed binge, and it’s hot.  Curtains are drawn across all of the windows, but the sunlight and the heat are pouring in just the same.  The air-conditioning unit is chugging away valiantly.  The calendar on the vertically grooved faux-wood wall paneling says it’s 1990.  We’ve been in there for days, talking and fucking and smoking cigarettes and drinking Gatorade to stay hydrated.

I feel as though Dana is my soul mate.  In the hours upon hours of conversation, punctuated with sex, we seem to have become boundlessly, inextricably intimate.  We’ve plotted crimes together, sworn secrets, and expounded on art, ethics, class, gender, race, family, God, globalism, humanism, liberalism, and pretty much everything else.  I feel as though I know every crevice of her psyche as well as I know the contours of her body, and I love everything that I’m seeing.  Dana is my world; she is everything to me.  And she seems totally into me, too.

She’s in the bathroom, peeing.  I’m naked, on my stomach, lying breadthwise on the bed.  She comes out of the bathroom, naked, and she jumps onto the bed.  Then she settles into the bed, lengthwise on her back, atop a crumpled sheet, with her calves resting on my back and buttocks.

“I wanna try umami,” I tell her.  “You ever tasted umami?”

“What’s that?” asks Dana.

“It’s some new flavor.  Scientists in Japan discovered it.  It’s the fifth flavor, I guess.  It’s supposed to be delicious,” I explain.

“The ‘fifth flavor’?” she asks.  “Aren’t there, like, a billion flavors already?”

“Supposedly there are basic flavors – elementary flavors, like how blue and red and yellow are primary colors.  There were four basics: sweet and salty and sour and…something else.  But now they’ve discovered a fifth basic flavor: umami.  They say it’s the tastiest flavor.  I think umami means 'deliciousness' in Japanese."

“That sounds like bullshit,” protests Dana.  “Deliciousness isn’t a flavor.  At least, it’s not a particular flavor.  It’s any flavor that’s found extremely pleasing.  It’s not even the flavor, really; it’s the pleasingness, the pleasingousity.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “it does sound like bullshit.  I still want to try it, though.”

I roll out from underneath Dana’s legs, and I rest my head on her belly and I stare up at the broken ceiling fan.  My gaze is broken when Dana flops her hand and arm down past my face and onto my chest.  On her inner forearm, near the wrist, are two bright red bug bites, about an inch and a half apart: the mark of the bedbug.  With my left pinky finger, I trace figure eights (figures eight?) around her bug bites.  My figure eight is an infinity symbol – two zeros, one slightly bigger than the other, joined together in an eternal embrace.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” Dana asks.

“Hell, yeah.”

“No, I mean really pretty.”

“Hellz-ya, baby.  You Playboy-bunny pretty.”

“Featured model,” she concedes.

“How could you not know you’re pretty?” I ask.  “You were Diff'rent Strokes’ cheesecake.  You must be in the top one percent of people on the planet who are known for being good-looking.  Remember that one episode when you were in leotards and leg warmers?  Who wasn’t jerking off to that episode?”

“I never felt pretty on Diff'rent Strokes.  I wanted to look like Farah Fawcett, but my cheeks were too full and I was too freckly and pale.  I looked more like Melissa Gilbert.”

“Who’s that?”

“The daughter on Little House On The Prairie.”

“The blind one?”

“No, the other one.  Half-pint.”

“Oh.  But she’s hot, though.  I mean, she got hot, later, when she got older.  She’s hot now, not when she was Half-pint.  I saw her recently on a magazine cover…she’s super attractive.”

I think about how good-looking the actress who played Half-pint is.  The blind sister was really hot, too.  Even the mom on that show was sexy.

“Listen, Dana,” I say, “I’ve only known you for a few days, but I’m perfectly qualified to verify that you are absolutely gorgeous.  You're exquisite.  If Lanny couldn’t see that then he was an idiot.”

“Todd always used to tell me that I was the cutest girl on TV,” Dana tells me.  “I wonder what might have been, what could have been, had I fallen in love with Todd instead of with Lanny?” she asks, sighing wistfully.

Dana’s sigh for Todd Bridges unleashes a monstrous ghost, a ghost from Dana’s past who knows her as I have never known her and whom she understands as she will never understand me, a ghost who will vanquish me and reclaim its place by her side.  Everything – the walls, the bed, the floor, the ceiling, everything – shatters and crumbles and swirls up in great waves of soot that crash down upon me, propelling me downward into the abyss that’s below me, a black oblivion as vague and as vast as Hades.  When I land I will die, and as I fall I am dying.

And then I wake up, palpitating and disoriented and a little bit sweatier and more traumatized than I was when I fell asleep.  I lie there, growing ever colder and more brokenhearted, and I ponder my aloneness and the bitter taste that life has left in my mouth.  And then I remember: bitterness.  The fourth flavor is bitterness!  There is no umami, and the fourth flavor is bitterness.

I don’t know what this dream means.  It doesn’t mean that I’m a racist, if that’s what you’re thinking.  True, there is some black imagery in my dream, but the fact that Todd Bridges happens to be African American has nothing to do with it.  Bridges and his ghost could be Eskimos, Swedes, Aborigines, Basques, whatever the fuck…I don’t care.  I just don’t want Dana thinking about them while we’re all naked in bed together, that’s all.  The dude’s ghost’s race is totally irrelevant.  The whole thing is ridiculous.  Nothing’s really haunting me anyway.  I don’t even think Todd Bridges is dead yet.

Once A Tough Guy, Always A Tough Guy

My youth and early adulthood were badass, no complaints, but middle age hit me hard.  It was as though my mojo glands stopped functioning the day I turned 40, and suddenly I was not a confident man.  I became less than a man, a hint of a man.  You might say that I became a pusillanimous mouse whose greatest ambition in life was to avoid conflicts and confrontations wherever possible.  But then about six months ago I discovered Ageless Male, a testosterone supplement that I saw being peddled on TV.  I was skeptical the first few times that I saw the commercial, but I eventually called.  And it changed my life.  You see, I don’t take any shit anymore…not from you, not from anyone.  I will fucking destroy you.

You know that old maxim, “all for one, and one for all”?  Well, I got a new motto: “me first, so fuck you and everybody else.”  I yield for no man.  That’s my new thing.

Every morning, the first thing I do when I wake up, even before I do my piss/smoke/shit routine, is take my supplement.  I pound it down with a Red Bull.  It’s a great way to start the day.  https://www.tryagelessmale.com/  True, there are some side effects.  I think these pills are making my hair fall out and I have an erection almost all the time (definitely not the pleasant experience one might expect it to be!), but it’s all worth it.  I’d rather be a bald man with an inappropriate boner than a comfortably flaccid and handsomely coiffed shadow of a man.

Six months ago, my morning commutes were ordeals.  Taking AC Transit isn’t an option (gross!) and riding my motorcycle hurts my back, and so I BART to work.  At the ticket machines and at the turnstiles I’d wait as everyone and his brother cut into the line, shoving their way past me as if I didn’t exist.  When I’d finally make it to the train I’d cringe and shrink, contorting my body to squeeze into tight spaces so as to signal to onlookers that I was making an effort to create room for others on the crowded train car.  I struggled to avoid making eye contact with my fellow travelers because I didn’t want to invade anyone’s space psychically or physically.  I walked on eggshells.  Meek deference drove me, and I felt it was my duty as a citizen to be careful to stay out of everyone’s way.

But now…now I stand my ground, tall and proud.  Well, actually, I sit whenever possible.  I like to try to take up two seats on the train, one for me and one for my bag, and sometimes I laugh out loud at the folks who are standing while I’m occupying two spaces.  Sheep!  I like to stare at everyone, especially after they’ve caught me staring at them, and I think, “The only things between this and my utter dominion over all of you people are (a) the scruples that I’m choosing to keep and (b) my lack of a handgun.  Not even an automatic…just a hundred-dollar twenty-two and, like, one or two bullets.  It would take so little to crush you, to pluck you as a weed…Il Vermicello, the gardener, pullin’ weaklings like weeds…time to clean up this lawn, you sons o’ bitches.  You think you’re so great.  You’re nothin’!"

And my morning crucibles weren’t over once I’d reached my office building, either; oh, no, there was always that goddamn elevator.  I’d get into the elevator and then, as the elevator doors were taking forever to close, some straggler would invariably gesture urgently for me to hold the door.  Of course, politeness compelled me to oblige.  I swear, some of those fuckers would see me reaching toward the “open door” button and then they’d stop hurrying.  They’d smile thankfully as they lazily waltzed their ass on board, as if we’d just shared some wonderful joke together.  “Oh, what a happy and amusing coincidence that you were able to delay the elevator for me just when I needed someone to do so; isn’t it funny how fate takes its turns?  What a special moment this is that we're sharing.”  I’d silently endure the hatred that swelled and burned in my chest, and I’d die a little bit in that elevator each morning.

But now, just as soon as I’ve boarded the elevator and pressed my floor button, I immediately start hitting the “close door” button.   I don’t give a shit who sees me trying to close the door as they’re trying to catch the elevator.  If I win, great.  If I lose, my argument is (a) why should I give a shit whether anyone else makes it to work on time? and (b) if you’d’ve been Plastic Man then you could’ve been pushing the “open door” button all the while and you wouldn't hear me whining about it.  And if the person is clearly less powerful than me, I suggest that we settle our dispute with fisticuffs.  That usually shuts ‘em up.

Ageless Male has made my commutes much easier, but my new ‘tude is causing me some difficulties at the workplace.  Interpersonal friction on a BART car is one thing, but friction at the office can be problematic.  When one works as a member of a team, one must be diplomatic.  Unfortunately, the testosterone coursing through my bloodstream is making it hard for me to relate to my colleagues in a collegial manner.

For example, yesterday I was in the kitchen at work waiting for my noodles, and my co-worker was going at it hard with the lunchtime chitchat.  I bobbed impatiently by the microwave and nodded while he blathered on about the weather and sports and how the weather was affecting sports.  Finally, the microwave bell rang.  I got my noodles and tried to wrap up the conversation so I could get back to my office and watch porn.  “All right, then, “ I said, “I gotta get this status report in.  Take it sleazy.”  And this guy chuckles knowingly and says, “Hey, I’ll take it any way I can get it.”  And he said it so smugly, as if he might know of ways of taking it that were even sleazier than I could imagine, like he was more worldly than me or something.  He was definitely trying to one-up me.  His punk attitude enraged me.  I wanted to take the handle of my plastic spoon and start stabbing him in the neck.  Stab, stab!  “How’s this, motherfucker?  Huh!?  Will you take it like this?  Do you like it like this?"

So there are still some wrinkles to iron out but, still, these supplements have given me a whole new lease on life.  Honestly, these hormone treatments have had a significant impact on both my physical and mental health.  And I figure that the best way for me to adjust – physiologically, emotionally, and spiritually – to the higher testosterone levels is to introduce even more testosterone into my system so that my body can develop a higher tolerance.  So a couple of weeks ago I increased my dosage.  Now I wash down an additional supplement with another Red Bull each night.  I take it right before bedtime, and then I teach that erection of mine a lesson or two before I go to sleep.

Something Wrong With This Trajectory

I suppose the people whom I knew as a child found my real name to be somehow cumbersome…too many syllables perhaps, or maybe it sounded too formal.  In any case, most everyone called me Tom when I was a youngster.  And my elder brother, 13 months my senior but slightly shorter than me, was nicknamed Ted.

In 1980, when I was ten, my maternal grandmother finally managed to emigrate from Vietnam to America (she’d been trying to do so for years, since before the Vietnam War – or rather the American War, as it was and is known in Vietnam – had ended).  Both my brother and I had known our maternal grandmother as babies, but we had no recollections of her and it was as if we were meeting her for the first time when she flew into Los Angeles that summer.  (Embarrassingly, I can’t even remember the woman’s name…chances are that her name consisted of three words and that the first word, which would be the family name, was Nguyen.)

Vietnamese Grandma was ancient as fuck and she looked a lot like a tree stump, and she died a few months later (of some sort of cancer, I think).  I’d only visited with her a handful of times before she disappeared entirely into her hospice, and since we had always needed an interpreter to communicate (she spoke no English; I spoke no Vietnamese) we had never gotten to know each other much at all.

Vietnamese Grandma wasn’t just Vietnamese, she was also a Buddhist, and so the funeral was a Buddhist funeral conducted in Vietnamese.  Vietnamese Grandma had had a whole boatload of children, most of whom had been able to leave Vietnam, and many of them were there in attendance with their families, and so it was a pretty big crowd (though not a particularly Buddhist one).  My brother and I were among the very few present who weren’t 100% Vietnamese.

Now, apparently, part of a Buddhist ceremony for the departed involves the priest singing out a list of the names of all those gathered – presumably the deceased’s family and friends, the people who are going to mourn and remember her.  And it just so happens that tom is the Vietnamese word for “big shrimp” and that Ted is extremely homonymic with the Vietnamese word for “little shrimp.”  When the priest read, “So-and-so will be missed by her beloved friends and relatives, including…Ted, Tom…” a wave of titters (including some from my mom) swept through the congregation.

I didn’t speak or understand a lick of Vietnamese, and so I wasn’t completely partaking of this mirth when it occurred.  I understood that folks were laughing, of course, and I even felt a vague sensation of being implicated in the laughter, but I wasn’t privy to the joke.  I hadn’t even noticed that my name and my brother’s name had been mentioned among all of the Vietnamese names.

After the fact, my mother explained to me what had happened, and I remember being amused that Ted had played the little shrimp to my big shrimp (it seemed so appropriate…Ted was, after all, perceptibly shorter than me and he had always been such a sniveling little bitch, a total weakling who thought he was hot shit just because he got good grades and because he was White Grandma’s favorite and because he got more allowance than me simply because he was older…what a dick!).  But although I didn’t understand the crowd’s pleasure as it was happening, I’ve always been delighted to have been the source of that pleasure.  Why wouldn’t I want to bring some levity to what might otherwise be a strictly somber affair?

I mention all of this because I’ve been thinking a lot about race in recent weeks.  I suppose the big story has been the acquittal of George Zimmerman re his killing of Trayvon Martin, the demonstrations in protest of that verdict, and the federal government’s reaction to the public’s response.  (Btw, I thought last week’s unannounced speech to the White House correspondents was President Obama at his best, sober but passionate, down-to-earth but eloquent…I wonder if/how his message might have differed were he a descendent of slaves.)  But the story that’s been capturing my imagination even more lately, perhaps because I’m Amerasian, has been KTVU’s mishandling of the story of the Asiana Flight 214 crash and the aftermath of that mishandling.

You’re probably aware of the plane crash a couple of weeks ago at SFO (why the heck is San Francisco’s int’l airport called "SFO" when "SFX" would sound so much cooler?).  A flight from Asia, maybe Korea, came in flying too low and too slowly and therefore hit some embankment that separated the bay from the runway.  Some people died (although a surprisingly and encouragingly high percentage of the 300+ aboard survived, many unscathed).  The crash made national news and was quite a sensation locally.  Everyone believed (and, I think, still do believe) that pilot error was involved, but for the first day or two none of the news agencies knew the pilots’ and crew members’ names, let alone whether authorities had gleaned any information from them.

Then KTVU purported to break the Asiana pilots’ names.  But all of the names were joke names, such as Ho Lee Fuk and Sum Ting Wong and Wi Tu Lo.  KTVU printed the names out on the screen for the viewer to see, and the anchorperson read the names aloud.  I think Bang Din Ow was one of them (it struck me because Din sounded more Arabic than Asian and didn’t sound enough like “then” and because Ow didn’t look particularly Asian...although I've since learned that Ow is a variant spelling of Ou, which is a fairly common Asian surname).  Within seconds of the anchorperson’s reading of the names it was apparent that the names must have been gag names and, of course, they were.

There was immediate public outcry.  I didn’t have time to read or watch the news in the next few days, but I think that KTVU’s explanation, which everyone accepted as truthful, was as follows: (1) some intern, presumably with unprofessional intentions, generated the names and passed them on to a KTVU supervisor, (2) the supervisor fact-checked the names with an official federal aviation bureau of some sort, (3) the federal aviation bureau, whether due to negligence or to mischief, confirmed the names as accurate, (4) the supervisor passed the names off to the news department’s line staff, who added the names to the newscast’s graphics and teleprompter, and (5) it was only after the anchorperson read the names aloud during the live broadcast that the gaffe was discovered.

In any case, the intern was promptly let go, as were three of the news departments’ senior producers.  I’m not going to apologize here for the intern (what a jerk…thousands of people were anxiously waiting to find out what had happened to their dead and injured loved ones…not cool, dude), but I think that the firing of the producers was something of a small tragedy.

As anyone who’s ever worked in a face-paced environment knows, professionals must rely on procedures (and the other people in positions responsible for implementing those procedures) to prevent and rectify errors.  Perhaps better managers would have identified a need for some extra layer of quality control, but this was an honest mistake and I don’t think that multiple heads toward the top of KTVU’s totem pole needed to roll.  Indeed, I think that these senior producers’ careers were sacrificed at the altar of political correctness.

I guess the specific principle that I’m railing against here is the principle that a captain is necessarily to blame whenever something bad happens on his or her watch.  But there’s another principle against which I’d be willing to rail – namely, that it’s necessarily wrong to make a mockery of foreign-sounding names.

Honestly…think of that Northern Alliance warlord named Mullah Abdullah.  Are you gonna tell me that that’s not funny?  And how about that Egyptian general, El-Sissi?  C’mon!

Let me tell you one more story.  It was the late 80s, it was the first few minutes of the first day of Astronomy 101, and I was not happy to be there (I’ve always suspected science to be bullshit…I think I was taking astronomy only in order to avoid having to take physics).  The professor was looking down at the class roster on his lectern, taking the first day’s roll, and he had gotten to the Ds: “Carla Dang?  [“Here.”]  Jason Dang?  [“Here.”]  Philip Dang?  [“Here.”]”  The professor looked up from his roster, deadpan as a motherfucker, and said, “It seems like the whole Dang family’s here.”

I thought it was absolutely hilarious.  It literally filled my day, hitherto wearisome, with joy.  25 years later, it sometimes still makes me laugh.  And I worry that, today, an astronomy professor could never make that joke or other similarly funny jokes.  And this makes me sad.  And I’ll tell you something else: it’s terrible that people suffer and die in plane crashes, but “Sum Ting Wong” is still pretty funny (the other phony pilot names weren’t nearly as good).

Making fun of foreign-sounding words and names has enriched my life on numerous occasions and it is part of my heritage and culture.  It may not be sophisticated, but it’s not necessarily overly mean-spirited and I think that people tend to get way too bent out of shape about it.  Can we fully appreciate diversity if we aren't able to make fun of diversity?

The Lord Is My Escort

You’d think that if all you wanted your escort to do was to give you a hand job while dressed in a nun’s habit (clean and provided by you) while reading Psalm 23 and other verses (from a large-print Bible provided by you) then she’d charge you less than the usual rate.  After all, it’s just a hand job.  How gross could it be?  I don’t want to wear a condom but she can always wear gloves…I got a box of gloves.

But, no, it costs extra, a lot extra!  Apparently, it’s called “the Sunday-school experience.”  Personally, I think it’s bullshit.  I think they just gave it a name so that they can charge more.  I’ve been to Sunday school…nobody ever gave me a hand job.  Granted, I’m not Catholic.

Playing My Race Card

I work at a nonprofit and so I’m undoubtedly a fundamentally good person.  My fundamental goodness (and, I’ll be honest, others’ recognition of that goodness) gives me some considerable satisfaction but, still, I feel as though I’m not reaching my full potential, career-wise.

These days, the typical employer (like society generally, I hope) sincerely appreciates diversity, particularly racial diversity, as a value to be embraced, and this is especially true in the nonprofit sector.  As a person of color, I’ve never fully exploited this premium on diversity, which I could be using tactically to more fully impose my will at the workplace and/or to stay out of trouble with all of my various bosses and rivals.

I’m an American, living in America (Oakland, CA…hellz-ya!) and born in Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and a Caucasian, American father.  (I didn’t want to insert a comma into “Caucasian American” but I suspected that those words placed together so closely as one term might, illogically but understandably, seem redundant, and my purpose was to present my dad’s citizenship and his whiteness as discrete criteria.)  This makes me Amerasian.  I suppose that one could accurately describe me as being hapa or as being Asian American, but “Amerasian” is definitely the most specifically accurate term for what I am.  There aren’t that many of us, although there are certainly enough of us that we’re a thing.

So I’ve decided to start actively using my status as a racial minority to my advantage.  I could be using my ethnicity to get me out of all kinds of jams.  For example, say that white lady from Accounting comes at me with some problem:

Finance Manager:  your Regional Center invoice doesn’t match your monthly billing reports.

Me:  oops.  My moms was Vietnamese, so, you know, what do you expect?

Finance Manager:  I thought the stereotype was that Asian Americans were good at math.

Me:  what makes you assume that my mother’s an Asian American?

Finance Manager:  I was thinking that you were an Asian American.

Me:  actually, I’m Amerasian.

Finance Manager:  what’s the difference?

Me:  maybe HR can explain it.  Let’s go see.

Finance Manager:  nevermind; just get your reports right next month.

Me:  will do.

Or say that I’m at an all-staff meeting…there’s one last slice of pizza, and the black guy from Human Resources and I are both reaching for it:

HR guy:  score!  Last piece.  Sorry, dude.

Me:  what are you sorry about?  There’s no dog on this pizza anyway, right?

HR guy:  what?

Me:  there’s no dog on the pizza.  That’s what Amerasians like to eat, right?  Dog.

HR guy:  I never said that.

Me:  you didn’t have to.  What if it were anchovy pizza?  Would that be okay, or would the anchovies have to have their little heads still on ‘em?  What if this pizza were made out of rice flour and soy sauce and had fish heads all over it?  Would that be okay?  Could I have it then?

HR guy:  dude, just take the fuckin’ pizza.

Me:  will do.

This could be a real game changer for me.  If I play my cards right, this could take me to the next level of my professional development.  Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be on the lookout for business situations in which I might be able to leverage my racial heritage.

Good, Oldfangled Love

I just had a wonderful idea for a ballet: Romeo ‘n’ Juliet in caveman times, the Homo sapiens versus the Neanderthals. I’m assuming, probably only because I’m a modern human who’s ego[t]istic and male, that Romeo would be one of the Homo sapiens. This, in turn, got me thinking about what it would have been like to have had opportunities to have sex with Neanderthal women.

First off, let me say that if I were up in some communal cave somewhere living with some people and none of the human-being ladies were giving me any play but close by, maybe down in the valley, there were a bunch of Neanderthal chicks wandering around looking for some hot sex action then I’d be thinking of a thousand reasons why I needed to go down into the valley for a bit. You see, sex is my thing, y’all, and I gotta be me. I realize that Neanderthals, while of our genus, are not of our species and so humping on them is bestiality, but I don’t give a shit. First of all, I’m not so sure that bestiality was even taboo thirty thousand years ago. More importantly, I think it’s important to always err on the side of not being a bigot. Plus I’ve always loved animals.

So the question isn’t whether I’d’ve humped a Neanderthal in a pinch but, rather, whether I would have preferred humping Neanderthals. And I might have. Their reputation for uncouthness wouldn’t have bothered me, not at all. The less graceful they seem, the more charming I seem (and whenever I’m pitching woo I like to feel as charming as possible, like I was Prince Charming, confident and sophisticated like Cary Grant). And I like slouchy girls; good posture, like all couth, is greatly overrated. I can't really say that I'm crazy about the receding forehead (we can call it a “prominent brow” all day long, but it’s still a receding forehead), but whatever…maybe with the right kind of haircut, bangs or something.

Ten Easy Questions

1.  Would you prefer an iPad, or would you rather have a big section of a muddy, rotting ox carcass?

2.  Is it possible that, deep down, Kim Jong Un is a nice guy, or is he just a jerk?

3.  Which Cypriot bankers are sleazier, the Greeks or the Turks?

4.  Does the pope poop in the woods?

5.  If a man has sex with his male friends and acquaintances but always (or at least usually) assumes the role of a "top," is he still gay?

6.  Can Governor Christie lose enough weight to run for President in 2016?

7.  Beatles or Stones?

8.  Which city is more westerly: Reno, NV, or Los Angeles, CA?

9.  Why did so-and-so stick a jar of strawberry jam up his/her proverbial butt?

10.  Most plausible superhero?

Answers: iPad; it's possible that he's a nice guy; equally sleazy; the pope does not poop in the woods; still gay but not as much; absolutely not...way too fat; Stones; Reno; it was his/her favorite flavor; Superman (who's to say what aliens can do?).