It seems like everyone has a blog these days and now I do, too. That was both easy and free. Hold on, now my screen is covered with pop-up ads. Now there are more. I’m going to upgrade to a premium account.
Okay, I’m back. The boxes are gone so that was worth twenty-two dollars.
First post. This is actually a little intimidating. I’m under a lot of pressure from myself. I read other people’s blogs when I’m bored (which is all the time) and I’m always aware of how much better I could have written whatever I’m reading. I guess that’s nothing to brag about. The Huffington Post has published Jermaine Dupri.
I feel compelled to justify why I’m starting a blog only because I’ve often wished others would. I'm not writing this because I secretly believe I'll become some sort of online celebrity or more popular at school or to collect comments. Actually, I'm going to disable those things right now.
There. Now I'll never feel tempted to bait people into commenting. I loathe internet comments in general anyway. They are nothing more than appended idiocy. I also can’t stand comment whoring; those blatant cries for attention like posting pictures of your new swimsuit or old suicide notes. I'm not writing this to validate my ego and I don't need compliments from strangers about my looks. I get those on Facebook. I'm writing this for me and because I am bored. Also, I don't have any unread novels in my backpack now.
I’m setting this thing to private and password protected.
There. Now I feel safe saying: My name is Susan Ching and I started tenth grade today. There wasn't any homework.
September 7, 2008
God, school can be so boring sometimes. I don’t want to say that I have a love/hate relationship with school, because I could never hate school! It’s more like a love alternating with a sense of complacency about something you’ve come to take for granted. It’s kind of like the relationship my parents have with each other. I have never understood why TV and movies portray high school as exciting or entertaining. High school is not some sex-soaked dramatic soap opera like Dawson’s Creek, nor is it particularly funny like Clueless, and it’s not a thrilling, bullet-riddled warzone like on the evening news. (I’d have more to write about if it were but I would probably be so entertained I wouldn’t be writing this in the first place.)
I think list entries are a lame excuse for a blog update but I only have three interesting things to write about:
1.) I joined the volleyball team. This is a big deal because I am among the least athletic non-handicapped Asian girls at school. Looking at my transcript, I worried that it seemed intellectually lopsided as well as calculated to appeal to an admissions officer. (For example, I joined Hindu Alliance. I don’t go to meetings; I just pay dues and hold the statue of Ganesh in the yearbook photo.) So I decided to join a sport. The sports at my schools are dominated by groups. The baseball team is white, the basketball team is black, the football team is fat, etc. For girls, the blacks tend to dominate basketball and track. Softball is for lesbians. Asians stick to golf, volleyball, and tennis. I think these sports appeal to Asians because they reward intellect and agility equally and you can keep your clothes relatively clean while playing them. I chose volleyball. Tennis and golf are solo sports and I feel much more comfortable being bad at something if I can do it in a group where no one will notice me. A volleyball team full of other Asians is almost perfect, although it would be nice if we could also wear football helmets to cover our faces. I knew I could pretty much walk onto the team without any problem. It's on life support after last year's season and they were going to cancel the sport if they couldn't get something together this year. I couldn't ask for a lower-pressure scenario. I guess it's ironic that I chose such an empty activity to balance the empty activities on my transcript. Wait, no it's not, because I planned it that way.
2.) I began "Humanitas." It’s our school's signature liberal arts program. It focuses on providing students with an education on Western culture and classics with critiques of both from a multi-cultural and pan-sexual perspective. It takes up two periods in the middle of the day and is taught by four revolving teachers. It's a little crazy by public school standards but I'm in the magnet program. We're treated with a level of sophistication and maturity beyond that of regular school students. For example, Mr. Bullard's first question on the first day of philosophy class after he took roll was, "Why haven't you killed yourself yet?" Everyone in class had to answer. (He used the roll call sheet.) I said, "I don't know" and he said, "Think about it" before moving on to the chubby Goth girl next to me who answered with, “They pumped my stomach."
3.) A great girl fight broke out between two regular school students in full view on the quad at lunch. From what I could discern from their screams, both brawlers compete for the affections of the same father to their sons. It was a lot of heated shoving and ungrammatical promises as the kids chanted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Finally, one smacked the other, who then drew her eyebrow pencil from her clutch as kids screamed, "Shank! Shank! Shank!" Our assistant principal broke it up and the girls sat on opposite ends of the quad like boxers between rounds. The one closer to us started smoking a Parliament and the assistant principal said, "Young lady, tenth graders are not allowed to smoke cigarettes" and she responded with, "So? Eighteen-year-olds are."
I think list entries are a lame excuse for a blog update but I only have three interesting things to write about:
1.) I joined the volleyball team. This is a big deal because I am among the least athletic non-handicapped Asian girls at school. Looking at my transcript, I worried that it seemed intellectually lopsided as well as calculated to appeal to an admissions officer. (For example, I joined Hindu Alliance. I don’t go to meetings; I just pay dues and hold the statue of Ganesh in the yearbook photo.) So I decided to join a sport. The sports at my schools are dominated by groups. The baseball team is white, the basketball team is black, the football team is fat, etc. For girls, the blacks tend to dominate basketball and track. Softball is for lesbians. Asians stick to golf, volleyball, and tennis. I think these sports appeal to Asians because they reward intellect and agility equally and you can keep your clothes relatively clean while playing them. I chose volleyball. Tennis and golf are solo sports and I feel much more comfortable being bad at something if I can do it in a group where no one will notice me. A volleyball team full of other Asians is almost perfect, although it would be nice if we could also wear football helmets to cover our faces. I knew I could pretty much walk onto the team without any problem. It's on life support after last year's season and they were going to cancel the sport if they couldn't get something together this year. I couldn't ask for a lower-pressure scenario. I guess it's ironic that I chose such an empty activity to balance the empty activities on my transcript. Wait, no it's not, because I planned it that way.
2.) I began "Humanitas." It’s our school's signature liberal arts program. It focuses on providing students with an education on Western culture and classics with critiques of both from a multi-cultural and pan-sexual perspective. It takes up two periods in the middle of the day and is taught by four revolving teachers. It's a little crazy by public school standards but I'm in the magnet program. We're treated with a level of sophistication and maturity beyond that of regular school students. For example, Mr. Bullard's first question on the first day of philosophy class after he took roll was, "Why haven't you killed yourself yet?" Everyone in class had to answer. (He used the roll call sheet.) I said, "I don't know" and he said, "Think about it" before moving on to the chubby Goth girl next to me who answered with, “They pumped my stomach."
3.) A great girl fight broke out between two regular school students in full view on the quad at lunch. From what I could discern from their screams, both brawlers compete for the affections of the same father to their sons. It was a lot of heated shoving and ungrammatical promises as the kids chanted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Finally, one smacked the other, who then drew her eyebrow pencil from her clutch as kids screamed, "Shank! Shank! Shank!" Our assistant principal broke it up and the girls sat on opposite ends of the quad like boxers between rounds. The one closer to us started smoking a Parliament and the assistant principal said, "Young lady, tenth graders are not allowed to smoke cigarettes" and she responded with, "So? Eighteen-year-olds are."
September 10, 2008
I hate lunch. Not “lunch” itself, like when you eat in the middle of the day. Just lunch at school. Students aren’t allowed off-campus lunch passes until their junior years. This means that I have to eat what Mom packs for me. This means something rice-based or something that tastes like squid. It’s a good thing the yogurt drinks she buys from the Asian marketplace have so much sugar in them (335% of the RDA), since they’re my primary energy source. (It’s the one thing I never throw in the garbage.)
Today was a lunch like any other. I sat with my best friend Karen on the quad. The quad is like a sea of tenth grade Asian magnet students during lunch. (The white kids sit in the drama room or hang out in the open classrooms and the non-magnet kids are somewhere tagging or have already dropped out of high school.) I had lunch from home. Karen had lunch from the cafeteria, which was a bowl of something approaching chili. And an apple. She poked her sludge with her spork and said, “What is this? I’m honestly asking.” I said, “It looks like a poultice.” She said, “What?” I said, “A poultice. It’s a soft mass used to treat wounds.” She stared at me so I added, “It’s an SAT word. I was reviewing my flashcards yesterday.” Karen said, “I hate learning those stupid words. When are we ever going to use them?” I wanted to point out that I just did but then I realized I probably shouldn’t have used it to begin with. I guess it was a pretty egregious sciolism.
I’m starting to think that a boy named Sung has a crush on me, because his homiez always try to clown on him when Karen and I sit near his group at lunch, like saying, “Hey, Sung, why don’t you tell Susan about your plans to become a dope MC?” or, “Hey Susan, I bet you weren’t aware that our boy Sung here is campaigning to rename our clique Playerz United!” That is embarrassing because their name is already Tha Remarkable Crew. That’s the best name ever!
Tha Remarkable Crew consists of the cutest and coolest Asian boys in tenth grade. Sung is best described as an unofficial ancillary. I don’t know why they allow this because he is profoundly unremarkable. He’s always trying to be funny or gangster or a funny gangster but he’s not any of those things. There’s an aesthetic disconnect, too. While everyone else in Tha Remarkable Crew is always dressed in perfect Polos and CK khakis and smells like Hugo Boss cologne, Sung always looks like his Nikes just got dirty or that his fade just stopped forming right angles.
Lunch sucks. If only I could beat the system. But how? How?
Today was a lunch like any other. I sat with my best friend Karen on the quad. The quad is like a sea of tenth grade Asian magnet students during lunch. (The white kids sit in the drama room or hang out in the open classrooms and the non-magnet kids are somewhere tagging or have already dropped out of high school.) I had lunch from home. Karen had lunch from the cafeteria, which was a bowl of something approaching chili. And an apple. She poked her sludge with her spork and said, “What is this? I’m honestly asking.” I said, “It looks like a poultice.” She said, “What?” I said, “A poultice. It’s a soft mass used to treat wounds.” She stared at me so I added, “It’s an SAT word. I was reviewing my flashcards yesterday.” Karen said, “I hate learning those stupid words. When are we ever going to use them?” I wanted to point out that I just did but then I realized I probably shouldn’t have used it to begin with. I guess it was a pretty egregious sciolism.
I’m starting to think that a boy named Sung has a crush on me, because his homiez always try to clown on him when Karen and I sit near his group at lunch, like saying, “Hey, Sung, why don’t you tell Susan about your plans to become a dope MC?” or, “Hey Susan, I bet you weren’t aware that our boy Sung here is campaigning to rename our clique Playerz United!” That is embarrassing because their name is already Tha Remarkable Crew. That’s the best name ever!
Tha Remarkable Crew consists of the cutest and coolest Asian boys in tenth grade. Sung is best described as an unofficial ancillary. I don’t know why they allow this because he is profoundly unremarkable. He’s always trying to be funny or gangster or a funny gangster but he’s not any of those things. There’s an aesthetic disconnect, too. While everyone else in Tha Remarkable Crew is always dressed in perfect Polos and CK khakis and smells like Hugo Boss cologne, Sung always looks like his Nikes just got dirty or that his fade just stopped forming right angles.
Lunch sucks. If only I could beat the system. But how? How?
September 14, 2008
Daniel told me how to beat the system. Daniel is my brother. I love him, but he’s complicated. First he’s fine, then he’s angry and defensive. It’s better to avoid prolonged eye contact in the first place.
Daniel is in a crew. It’s not a gang. I know this because Daniel screams, “I’m not in a fucking gang!” if you ever use that word. He’ll even scream it if he thinks you’re suggesting it, like the time I asked why he has two Xbox 360s. Daniel is more accurately described as part of a small group of close friends that have a lot of nice things and angry dispositions. I usually say either “homiez” or “crew” or change the subject when someone asks.
Daniel has an off-campus lunch pass (he’s a senior), and yesterday he walked past Karen and me on the quad. He had an extra taco left over from Taco Bell and offered it to me. I split it with Karen. We shoved our halves into our mouths and ate it in two seconds. Then we ripped the wrapper in half to lick the bean grease. I asked Daniel if the bag contained lettuce scraps and he asked if I had just gotten out of prison. I let him smell my Tupperware. Then he said he understood. He walked away and came back with a member of his crew named Digital Sam.
In Daniel’s crew, everyone has a special skill. Digital Sam’s special skill is having taken a community college class in Photoshop. Since the off-campus lunch pass is just a junior or senior student ID with a special sticker on it, Digital Sam can take our IDs, scan them and print a tweaked replica. Then we can keep both and use the fake pass when needed. Daniel explained all this to us (I think one of his special crew skills is public relations) and Karen and I immediately pulled out our student IDs and handed them to Digital Sam. Digital Sam took our IDs and shook our hands and introduced himself. Karen said, "Hi, I'm Karen," and I said, "Susan. We've met four times." Then we gave him ten dollars each.
Daniel is in a crew. It’s not a gang. I know this because Daniel screams, “I’m not in a fucking gang!” if you ever use that word. He’ll even scream it if he thinks you’re suggesting it, like the time I asked why he has two Xbox 360s. Daniel is more accurately described as part of a small group of close friends that have a lot of nice things and angry dispositions. I usually say either “homiez” or “crew” or change the subject when someone asks.
Daniel has an off-campus lunch pass (he’s a senior), and yesterday he walked past Karen and me on the quad. He had an extra taco left over from Taco Bell and offered it to me. I split it with Karen. We shoved our halves into our mouths and ate it in two seconds. Then we ripped the wrapper in half to lick the bean grease. I asked Daniel if the bag contained lettuce scraps and he asked if I had just gotten out of prison. I let him smell my Tupperware. Then he said he understood. He walked away and came back with a member of his crew named Digital Sam.
In Daniel’s crew, everyone has a special skill. Digital Sam’s special skill is having taken a community college class in Photoshop. Since the off-campus lunch pass is just a junior or senior student ID with a special sticker on it, Digital Sam can take our IDs, scan them and print a tweaked replica. Then we can keep both and use the fake pass when needed. Daniel explained all this to us (I think one of his special crew skills is public relations) and Karen and I immediately pulled out our student IDs and handed them to Digital Sam. Digital Sam took our IDs and shook our hands and introduced himself. Karen said, "Hi, I'm Karen," and I said, "Susan. We've met four times." Then we gave him ten dollars each.
September 16, 2008
Weekends can be so boring. I can’t believe it, but sometimes on the weekend I actually look forward to Monday. At school I have friends and tests and studying. All I have to look forward to on the weekends is studying.
I need a car. And a license. And to turn sixteen. Right now, my leisure activity options are limited to the stops made by the bus that I can walk to from my house. These include: downtown, which is full of drug dealers and homeless people; the park (the same and gay sex); Karen’s house; and the mall.
On Saturday, I went to the mall (with Karen). We walked around and looked at the new fall fashion lines which were underwhelming because I don’t care about fashion. We eventually settled in the food court where we picked at a shared Cinnabon and commiserated over the monotony of our lives. We sat around and waited for someone to call and propose some fun activity that would make us feel young and alive but all I got was a spam text and eventually it started to get dark outside which makes the mall more depressing. (You can’t see that it’s dark outside but you know it is and then when you finally see it, it’s so much darker than you imagined.)
I need a car. And a license. And to turn sixteen. Right now, my leisure activity options are limited to the stops made by the bus that I can walk to from my house. These include: downtown, which is full of drug dealers and homeless people; the park (the same and gay sex); Karen’s house; and the mall.
On Saturday, I went to the mall (with Karen). We walked around and looked at the new fall fashion lines which were underwhelming because I don’t care about fashion. We eventually settled in the food court where we picked at a shared Cinnabon and commiserated over the monotony of our lives. We sat around and waited for someone to call and propose some fun activity that would make us feel young and alive but all I got was a spam text and eventually it started to get dark outside which makes the mall more depressing. (You can’t see that it’s dark outside but you know it is and then when you finally see it, it’s so much darker than you imagined.)
September 18, 2008
Today was so satisfying!
I was sitting on the quad with Karen at lunch when Digital Sam came up and handed me the current New Yorker. I said, “Thank you, but I already read it at the library.” He said no, to look inside. I did, and inside was an envelope taped to a caricature of a terrorist. Inside the envelope were our student IDs…and lunch passes! I looked up and thanked Digital Sam profusely. He said, "Just remember where you got it" and I said, "I'm pretty sure I’ll only need one. I’m really good at not losing stuff like ID cards and sunglasses" and he said, "I mean for referrals" and I said, “Oh.”
Digital Sam left. Karen and I looked at each other, leaped to our feet, threw our lunches into the trash (mine: seafood paste and kale; hers: slop) and bolted for the main gate. I was giddy with excitement on the run over but as we approached I started to get a little terrified. Getting caught with a fake lunch pass at our school is really serious: you can lose your lunch pass privileges for when you’re actually a junior. That’s why the last person to get caught transferred schools. We were extra nervous on top of that because Mr. John checks the passes. Mr. John is widely considered the worst faculty member. He’s always angry at something petty or everything in general. I think it’s because he checks lunch passes for a living. For this reason, he really goes nuts when he catches a kid with a fake one because those rare moments validate his existence. We were also nervous because we’re sophomores and look younger than the juniors. So to look older we went to the bathroom first to put on orange lipstick. Well, I did. Karen just put on more.
To get out at lunch, you get into a quickly moving single-file line with Mr. John at the helm. I was so nervous when we got to the front that I couldn't bear to make direct eye contact but I thought looking away would attract more attention, so I looked just over his left ear and hoped he would think I was autistic. I don't know if he thought that, but I got through. I walked outside and looked behind me to see that Karen had put her ID in the picture window of her Sanrio wallet. That was clever because it’s like, Oh, my lunch pass? Here it is, where it always is. Yawn. Mr. John waved her through with an annoyed grunt. She joined me outside. Then we hugged. Then we jumped. Then Mr. John said, “Stop that!” Then we realized we don’t have cars.
Just then, Karen’s cousin Trina walked through the gates and over to us. Trina is in 11th grade. She’s a lot like Karen in that she’s sassy and sarcastic but a little less like her in that she’s not as smart and often drunk. But today she wasn’t, so we got in her car to go with her to Taco Bell. We put on our seatbelts, cranked the radio, pulled out of the lot, turned onto Roscoe Boulevard, and fifty seconds later, we were there! (Taco Bell is three blocks away.)
I’ve never ditched, so being outside of school during the afternoon was a really odd experience. When we entered, I noticed Daniel sitting at the back table with his crew. We ordered our food. I got three tacos. I normally get two, but I had that prison/Great Depression hoard mentality from never having eaten non-Mom food at school. After we had collected our trays, I waited for Trina to pick a seat. She went to sit at Daniel’s table. It was a weird situation. Daniel’s a senior and I’m a sophomore. Also, we’ve never hung out together once in fifteen years. But when we sat down, Daniel said "Sup" with no discernible hostility. I think he was being nice to me either because I was with Trina or because we're related.
Trina sat next to Jack. Jack's real name is also Sam but he's called Jack because that's his special skill: he jacks stuff and sells what he jacks. And he occasionally runs receipt-based credit-scams with Digital Sam's handiwork. And Trina's dating him. So I was sitting there next to Karen who was next to Digital Sam on one side with Trina and Jack and Daniel across from me on the other. Daniel looked at me and said, “So the pass works.” I said yeah. He made a motion like, Let’s see it, so I handed it over. Then he spoke to Digital Sam for the duration of our lunch without looking at me again. They discussed the intricacies of forging those anti-counterfeiting holographic stickers used on the lunch passes. Digital Sam said, “Oh, it’s not that hard. I just use tin foil.”
I was sitting on the quad with Karen at lunch when Digital Sam came up and handed me the current New Yorker. I said, “Thank you, but I already read it at the library.” He said no, to look inside. I did, and inside was an envelope taped to a caricature of a terrorist. Inside the envelope were our student IDs…and lunch passes! I looked up and thanked Digital Sam profusely. He said, "Just remember where you got it" and I said, "I'm pretty sure I’ll only need one. I’m really good at not losing stuff like ID cards and sunglasses" and he said, "I mean for referrals" and I said, “Oh.”
Digital Sam left. Karen and I looked at each other, leaped to our feet, threw our lunches into the trash (mine: seafood paste and kale; hers: slop) and bolted for the main gate. I was giddy with excitement on the run over but as we approached I started to get a little terrified. Getting caught with a fake lunch pass at our school is really serious: you can lose your lunch pass privileges for when you’re actually a junior. That’s why the last person to get caught transferred schools. We were extra nervous on top of that because Mr. John checks the passes. Mr. John is widely considered the worst faculty member. He’s always angry at something petty or everything in general. I think it’s because he checks lunch passes for a living. For this reason, he really goes nuts when he catches a kid with a fake one because those rare moments validate his existence. We were also nervous because we’re sophomores and look younger than the juniors. So to look older we went to the bathroom first to put on orange lipstick. Well, I did. Karen just put on more.
To get out at lunch, you get into a quickly moving single-file line with Mr. John at the helm. I was so nervous when we got to the front that I couldn't bear to make direct eye contact but I thought looking away would attract more attention, so I looked just over his left ear and hoped he would think I was autistic. I don't know if he thought that, but I got through. I walked outside and looked behind me to see that Karen had put her ID in the picture window of her Sanrio wallet. That was clever because it’s like, Oh, my lunch pass? Here it is, where it always is. Yawn. Mr. John waved her through with an annoyed grunt. She joined me outside. Then we hugged. Then we jumped. Then Mr. John said, “Stop that!” Then we realized we don’t have cars.
Just then, Karen’s cousin Trina walked through the gates and over to us. Trina is in 11th grade. She’s a lot like Karen in that she’s sassy and sarcastic but a little less like her in that she’s not as smart and often drunk. But today she wasn’t, so we got in her car to go with her to Taco Bell. We put on our seatbelts, cranked the radio, pulled out of the lot, turned onto Roscoe Boulevard, and fifty seconds later, we were there! (Taco Bell is three blocks away.)
I’ve never ditched, so being outside of school during the afternoon was a really odd experience. When we entered, I noticed Daniel sitting at the back table with his crew. We ordered our food. I got three tacos. I normally get two, but I had that prison/Great Depression hoard mentality from never having eaten non-Mom food at school. After we had collected our trays, I waited for Trina to pick a seat. She went to sit at Daniel’s table. It was a weird situation. Daniel’s a senior and I’m a sophomore. Also, we’ve never hung out together once in fifteen years. But when we sat down, Daniel said "Sup" with no discernible hostility. I think he was being nice to me either because I was with Trina or because we're related.
Trina sat next to Jack. Jack's real name is also Sam but he's called Jack because that's his special skill: he jacks stuff and sells what he jacks. And he occasionally runs receipt-based credit-scams with Digital Sam's handiwork. And Trina's dating him. So I was sitting there next to Karen who was next to Digital Sam on one side with Trina and Jack and Daniel across from me on the other. Daniel looked at me and said, “So the pass works.” I said yeah. He made a motion like, Let’s see it, so I handed it over. Then he spoke to Digital Sam for the duration of our lunch without looking at me again. They discussed the intricacies of forging those anti-counterfeiting holographic stickers used on the lunch passes. Digital Sam said, “Oh, it’s not that hard. I just use tin foil.”
September 24, 2008
I had my first day of volleyball practice today. I am so sore and tired, by which I mean cranky and exasperated.
I had been wondering when the team would begin practicing but last night we received a mass email titled “This is your captain speaking!!!” exhorting us to meet after school and not be late. It was our team captain, Nikki, introducing herself. To clinch victory, team captains must ignite a fire in their charges with superlative abilities and measured discipline. Nikki had already done the opposite of this in me by spelling so many of those words incorrectly. She also sounded pompous.
Certain leadership positions are highly coveted among narcissists in high school. The classic example is the editor of the high school newspaper. Nikki is the classic example of someone who strives for that but isn’t good enough. She’s lucked into a perfect set-up because she can claim the speciously prestigious team captaincy without any real work. The school is so uninvolved we’re practicing on the tennis courts right now. (The only volleyball-equipped space is the small gym and the football team is using it as a lounge.)
She shushed everyone although no one was talking and said, “Good, I wanted to make sure I greeted everyone at once! OK, listen up ladies. I’m going to introduce myself. I’m your captain. Nikki. Nikki your captain. Let’s talk about last year. Not our best year. But our worst year. And almost our last year. Some of you are new. I see six fresh faces. Some of you are coming back. I see four tired faces. I see something else but I see it inside you. I also see the blind drive needed to win in life. Maybe I’m just projecting. I hope you’ll show me which.”
Nikki isn’t particularly demanding when it comes to form or technique or teaching the rules of the game to girls who don’t know them. We just hit the ball back and forth and she encouraged our rallies by saying, “Nice! Keep it going!” which would cause one of the Asian girls to ruin it when the pressure was on. Some of the boys’ JV tennis players were practicing next to us and watching which was embarrassing. And some of the softball players from across the fence were leering which was flattering. I normally wouldn’t care about what a bunch of dumb jocks think about me (I’m back to talking about the tennis players now) but one of the boys was Asian and I hate looking bad in front of other Asians. (They expect so much.) We made eye contact and I think we had a moment. Like, we both appreciated how lame it was.
I had been wondering when the team would begin practicing but last night we received a mass email titled “This is your captain speaking!!!” exhorting us to meet after school and not be late. It was our team captain, Nikki, introducing herself. To clinch victory, team captains must ignite a fire in their charges with superlative abilities and measured discipline. Nikki had already done the opposite of this in me by spelling so many of those words incorrectly. She also sounded pompous.
I met the full team for the first time after school. I’ve grown adept at spotting people who have joined a club for no reason other than credit because we’re all the same. We’re always slightly out of place among people who obviously belong. No one here belonged. There were only four white girls and they didn’t seem athletic or gay or even to be friends with each other. (They were sitting on the ground reading when I arrived.) The other five new girls were all Asian sophomores.
I couldn't understand how volleyball hadn't been canceled yet because every club at school has at least a few members who believe in whatever they’re meeting about. But there weren’t any here. Then Nikki arrived (late) and introduced herself as the captain and I understood. Everyone who plays volleyball does it to pad their college resume.
I couldn't understand how volleyball hadn't been canceled yet because every club at school has at least a few members who believe in whatever they’re meeting about. But there weren’t any here. Then Nikki arrived (late) and introduced herself as the captain and I understood. Everyone who plays volleyball does it to pad their college resume.
Certain leadership positions are highly coveted among narcissists in high school. The classic example is the editor of the high school newspaper. Nikki is the classic example of someone who strives for that but isn’t good enough. She’s lucked into a perfect set-up because she can claim the speciously prestigious team captaincy without any real work. The school is so uninvolved we’re practicing on the tennis courts right now. (The only volleyball-equipped space is the small gym and the football team is using it as a lounge.)
She shushed everyone although no one was talking and said, “Good, I wanted to make sure I greeted everyone at once! OK, listen up ladies. I’m going to introduce myself. I’m your captain. Nikki. Nikki your captain. Let’s talk about last year. Not our best year. But our worst year. And almost our last year. Some of you are new. I see six fresh faces. Some of you are coming back. I see four tired faces. I see something else but I see it inside you. I also see the blind drive needed to win in life. Maybe I’m just projecting. I hope you’ll show me which.”
Nikki isn’t particularly demanding when it comes to form or technique or teaching the rules of the game to girls who don’t know them. We just hit the ball back and forth and she encouraged our rallies by saying, “Nice! Keep it going!” which would cause one of the Asian girls to ruin it when the pressure was on. Some of the boys’ JV tennis players were practicing next to us and watching which was embarrassing. And some of the softball players from across the fence were leering which was flattering. I normally wouldn’t care about what a bunch of dumb jocks think about me (I’m back to talking about the tennis players now) but one of the boys was Asian and I hate looking bad in front of other Asians. (They expect so much.) We made eye contact and I think we had a moment. Like, we both appreciated how lame it was.
September 26, 2008
I have been attempting to keep my lunch pass a secret since nothing good can come of people knowing that I have one (and I’m no braggart), but of course Sung and Tha Remarkable Crew noticed that Karen and I hadn’t been on the quad for lunch in over a week. I’m guessing Sung overheard Karen talking about something funny Trina said at Taco Bell (she’s so good at making fun of poor people) because today in class, before Humanitas started, he came right up to us and said, “How are you getting out of school for lunch?” I don’t want Sung knowing about the passes so I was going to tell him that Karen and I found a secret gate but before I could, Karen said, “We walk right through the front door, Sung. What did you think we do, walk through a secret gate?” Sung went wide-eyed and said, “That’s so gangsta! So you just front like a senior and roll through? Don’t they check for your pass?” and Karen said, “Yep” and just let it sit there and it slowly dawned on Sung that we had passes. He demanded to see them and Karen was happy to oblige. He held Digital Sam’s piece of masterful forgery in his hand. “You have an orange border!” (The student IDs at school have differently colored borders for each of the grades. The juniors have orange.) He demanded to know where we had gotten them. I didn’t want him to know about Digital Sam, so I was going to tell him that we have connections in the CIA, but that’s when Karen said, “We have connections in the CIA. Just kidding, you moron, we got them from Digital Sam.” Sung said, “Who’s Digital Sam?” and Karen said, “You know, Sam” and Sung said, “Oh, you mean Sam!” and Karen said, “Yeah, Digital Sam.”
September 27, 2008
I’ve come to think of Taco Bell as a sanctuary away from the immaturity of my classmates, a place I can get away from the loud, childish behavior of my fellow sophomores and dine with my brother and his senior friends while they calmly discuss life and theft. But I have a feeling that will be coming to an end soon.
I was standing by E Hall today before school with Karen, Sung, and assorted Remarkable Crew members when Digital Sam walked by. Sung screamed out, “Yo, D!” and he didn’t turn around so he said, “Digital! What’s really good, player?” and that didn’t work either so then he said, “Sam!” Digital Sam turned around and came over and Sung said, “What’s good with lunch passes?” Digital Sam said, “I don’t know what you just asked but I sell lunch passes” and Sung said, “I like that. We’re on the same page.” Sung gestured to Tha Crew and said, “You gotta do all my homiez, too. No homo.” Digital Sam collected the IDs of Sung and all present Crew members and told them to start getting ten dollars together. Sung asked “Each? Or collectively ten dollars?” Digital Sam said “Each.” Then the five-minute bell rang for first period so Digital Sam left for Starbucks.
September 28, 2008
My suspicions have been confirmed. Taco Bell has been transformed from a dignified oasis into a screaming hell hole.
Sung and his “crew associates” received their IDs and passes back today. (Digital Sam passed them out in Garfield “get well soon” cards from Hallmark, which I think were counterfeit but he might have stolen them.) At Taco Bell during lunch I was sitting and chatting with Karen and Trina and that’s when the door opened and Sung and Tha Remarkable Crew came in holding their passes over their heads and cheering. The sense of calm I had been enjoying evaporated. They were even ordering their food rowdy, like, “Fuck yeah, supreme! Supreme all day! Supreme for life!” and being so absurdly jubilant. Then Sung looked over and saw me sitting at the back table with everyone and he cupped his hands around his mouth and said, “Shout to Susan!” After they got their food, they came and sat in the booth nearest to us. Daniel looked at me and scowled and I felt horrible even though it isn’t my fault. Thankfully everyone in Tha Remarkable Crew has the common sense to be afraid of Daniel so they just sat down and started playing nacho football but Sung thinks that he has an “in” to my table so he was hovering by the side and awaiting acknowledgement. He didn’t receive it so he said, “Sup, D,” and Digital Sam grumbled without looking up from his Meximelt and then Sung said, “No, not Digital! D!” and looked at Daniel. Daniel looked up and said, “What?” and Sung said, “He’s Digital! You’re D!” Daniel said, “Sit there” and pointed at Tha Crew. Sung said, “Always clowning!” Then he did as told.
Sung and his “crew associates” received their IDs and passes back today. (Digital Sam passed them out in Garfield “get well soon” cards from Hallmark, which I think were counterfeit but he might have stolen them.) At Taco Bell during lunch I was sitting and chatting with Karen and Trina and that’s when the door opened and Sung and Tha Remarkable Crew came in holding their passes over their heads and cheering. The sense of calm I had been enjoying evaporated. They were even ordering their food rowdy, like, “Fuck yeah, supreme! Supreme all day! Supreme for life!” and being so absurdly jubilant. Then Sung looked over and saw me sitting at the back table with everyone and he cupped his hands around his mouth and said, “Shout to Susan!” After they got their food, they came and sat in the booth nearest to us. Daniel looked at me and scowled and I felt horrible even though it isn’t my fault. Thankfully everyone in Tha Remarkable Crew has the common sense to be afraid of Daniel so they just sat down and started playing nacho football but Sung thinks that he has an “in” to my table so he was hovering by the side and awaiting acknowledgement. He didn’t receive it so he said, “Sup, D,” and Digital Sam grumbled without looking up from his Meximelt and then Sung said, “No, not Digital! D!” and looked at Daniel. Daniel looked up and said, “What?” and Sung said, “He’s Digital! You’re D!” Daniel said, “Sit there” and pointed at Tha Crew. Sung said, “Always clowning!” Then he did as told.
October 3, 2008
I’m beginning to dread our first volleyball match. I got into this knowing I’d be losing a lot but I thought I’d get competent enough to have fun losing because that is how high school sports are enjoyed by 85% of the people who play them. But Nikki never learned enough about volleyball last year to pass it on to us. I asked one of the white girls for the backstory, and she said that after last year’s dumb bitch captain finally got into USC, everyone assumed the sport was over and they were fine with it. Then Nikki launched a bid for captaincy and the four white girls decided to stick around because volleyball is a pretty chill way to get credit for college.
Nikki’s never coached before but she’s watched a lot of movies about sports because she doesn’t have many friends. Her style is a mish-mosh of the coach archetypes gleaned from those films. Her two favorites are tough love taskmaster and sarcastic ringleader of a band of misfits. The least effective one is pretending that she’s the only one with faith in a group of underdog minorities because it doesn’t work with Asians.
Nikki’s never coached before but she’s watched a lot of movies about sports because she doesn’t have many friends. Her style is a mish-mosh of the coach archetypes gleaned from those films. Her two favorites are tough love taskmaster and sarcastic ringleader of a band of misfits. The least effective one is pretending that she’s the only one with faith in a group of underdog minorities because it doesn’t work with Asians.
October 4, 2008
This lunch pass thing is getting out of hand. I was hoping the lucky few to receive one could keep it to themselves but Tha Remarkable Crew have now occasionally started referring to themselves as Tha Remarkable Lunch Crew. I’ve also noticed the presence of many more sophomores at Taco Bell. Digital Sam’s business is presumably thriving because I’ve noticed a pronounced gaiety in his comportment, which is something I would never say to him.
I, however, have grown almost complacent about having a pass. While I cherish it, I’m no longer in awe of it. My hands don’t even shake that much when I show Mr. John my pass. “Cool Hand Luke.” That’s what Sung calls me. I don’t know why, though. The chaos at Taco Bell has abated somewhat thanks to Daniel’s strict enforcement of a no-sophomore radius of three booths. So now at lunch Taco Bell looks like a sea of children in the front and a small cluster of dignified young adults in the back. And Karen and myself.
Daniel doesn't seem to mind that I sit with him. In fact, he's a completely different Daniel at lunch than at home. Well, maybe it's not that extreme. It's more like a 20% different Daniel. He's quiet at both, but at home it's because he's trying to race through his food and get back to his room before Dad engages him in conversation. At lunch with his friends, it's more like he's silently observing or calculating. It's nice to see that side of him.
I, however, have grown almost complacent about having a pass. While I cherish it, I’m no longer in awe of it. My hands don’t even shake that much when I show Mr. John my pass. “Cool Hand Luke.” That’s what Sung calls me. I don’t know why, though. The chaos at Taco Bell has abated somewhat thanks to Daniel’s strict enforcement of a no-sophomore radius of three booths. So now at lunch Taco Bell looks like a sea of children in the front and a small cluster of dignified young adults in the back. And Karen and myself.
Daniel doesn't seem to mind that I sit with him. In fact, he's a completely different Daniel at lunch than at home. Well, maybe it's not that extreme. It's more like a 20% different Daniel. He's quiet at both, but at home it's because he's trying to race through his food and get back to his room before Dad engages him in conversation. At lunch with his friends, it's more like he's silently observing or calculating. It's nice to see that side of him.
October 5, 2008
I love kids but I can’t stand the sound of a child coughing. It’s just so high pitched and gross-sounding. I worry that this means I will be a bad mother because I will avoid my children when they are sick rather than giving them medicine. This sounds like it’s coming out of nowhere but there was a kid coughing through lunch today at Taco Bell and I’m still upset about it.
Even Nikki has had to concede that volleyball practice has become somewhat of a joke. We’ve basically just become a little better at playing tennis with a volleyball. Yesterday someone even referred to the score as “thirty – love.” So today she marched us over to the exterior wall of the large gym, drew a chalk line at regulation net height (Nikki didn’t know what that was; we checked on someone’s iPhone) and attempted to demonstrate serving. She stepped back to what she estimated to be the serving line (we couldn’t check because the girl with the iPhone had started using it to torrent the Bone Thugs discography), threw the ball up, stiffened her right arm, pivoted her upper body, brought her flat palm down in direct contact with the ball, which flew at the wall, struck above the chalk line drawn there, bounced off, and smashed into the face of the smallest girl on our team. All the white girls laughed. (They never stifle it.)
The cute Asian boy from the tennis team saw all of this. Not from the courts - he was practicing a little further down the wall from us. (The exterior wall of the large gym is pretty long. The farthest edge is used by non-magnet school kids for handball and graffiti.) I got a little nervous when I saw that he was playing near us and I tried to look at him without him noticing, but every time I tried to steal a peek, I would end up making eye contact with him and he would immediately look away. Then I realized it was kind of weird that someone on our JV tennis team would be practicing by hitting against a wall, especially on the day that the team had a special guest come by to give a workshop on serving (Lindsay Davenport has dedicated a lot of time to volunteering since the birth of her child), and that’s when I had to wonder if maybe he had come over specifically because he wanted to watch us. Or someone.
I didn’t want to flatter myself by thinking it was me, but by process of elimination I realized it might not be that far-fetched. There are eleven people on the team. Nikki shrieks and would not be found attractive by a timid Asian boy. Four of the girls are juniors and no sophomore boy (I hope he’s a sophomore; I could never date someone older than that on a JV team) is going to waste his time going after a junior girl. That leaves me and the other five girls on our team. If you exclude the one with blood on her volleyball-smashed face, that leaves me and the other four girls on our team. It’s hard for me to objectively gauge my own attractiveness in comparison to them because of my personal bias (I think I’m more attractive), and asking a disinterested third party sounds really indulgent.
I don’t know. I think he was looking at me.
Even Nikki has had to concede that volleyball practice has become somewhat of a joke. We’ve basically just become a little better at playing tennis with a volleyball. Yesterday someone even referred to the score as “thirty – love.” So today she marched us over to the exterior wall of the large gym, drew a chalk line at regulation net height (Nikki didn’t know what that was; we checked on someone’s iPhone) and attempted to demonstrate serving. She stepped back to what she estimated to be the serving line (we couldn’t check because the girl with the iPhone had started using it to torrent the Bone Thugs discography), threw the ball up, stiffened her right arm, pivoted her upper body, brought her flat palm down in direct contact with the ball, which flew at the wall, struck above the chalk line drawn there, bounced off, and smashed into the face of the smallest girl on our team. All the white girls laughed. (They never stifle it.)
The cute Asian boy from the tennis team saw all of this. Not from the courts - he was practicing a little further down the wall from us. (The exterior wall of the large gym is pretty long. The farthest edge is used by non-magnet school kids for handball and graffiti.) I got a little nervous when I saw that he was playing near us and I tried to look at him without him noticing, but every time I tried to steal a peek, I would end up making eye contact with him and he would immediately look away. Then I realized it was kind of weird that someone on our JV tennis team would be practicing by hitting against a wall, especially on the day that the team had a special guest come by to give a workshop on serving (Lindsay Davenport has dedicated a lot of time to volunteering since the birth of her child), and that’s when I had to wonder if maybe he had come over specifically because he wanted to watch us. Or someone.
I didn’t want to flatter myself by thinking it was me, but by process of elimination I realized it might not be that far-fetched. There are eleven people on the team. Nikki shrieks and would not be found attractive by a timid Asian boy. Four of the girls are juniors and no sophomore boy (I hope he’s a sophomore; I could never date someone older than that on a JV team) is going to waste his time going after a junior girl. That leaves me and the other five girls on our team. If you exclude the one with blood on her volleyball-smashed face, that leaves me and the other four girls on our team. It’s hard for me to objectively gauge my own attractiveness in comparison to them because of my personal bias (I think I’m more attractive), and asking a disinterested third party sounds really indulgent.
I don’t know. I think he was looking at me.
October 6, 2008
Tha Remarkable Crew is all abuzz because someone they know is about to procure a driver’s license.
Sung.
Sung won’t be sixteen for four more months but he’s a really good driver already. He’s had his permit for eight months and he’s gotten a ton of driving experience in that time because his mother made him her personal chauffeur the day he got it. He has to drive her to the dry cleaners and supermarket and to see her mom at the assisted living center and her dad at the mausoleum. Not only does he have a lot of road experience, but it’s all been under the auspices of a very cautious and responsible driver. (Sometimes he’ll do impressions of his mom yelling at him, like, “I SAY SLOW DOWN!” and “Always disappointing!”) So Sung thinks he’s ready to enter the world of licensed driving now.
Digital Sam agrees. This has less to do with whether Sung can drive or not and more to do with the positive word of mouth he thinks will be generated by the production of a high-quality fake license. They discussed it at Taco Bell yesterday. Sung came over and said, “Digital, I need to talk business” and Digital Sam, “I handle business all times except lunch” and Sung said, “Are you done eating? Or do I wait outside?” and Digital Sam said, “Just tell me” and that’s when Sung said what he was looking for. It’s fortuitous for Sung that Digital Sam has already been planning to get into that specific industry because otherwise he probably would have told Sung to fuck off right away rather than right after.
Digital Sam has been talking about getting into fake IDs because that’s where the real money is. He speaks freely in front of me at lunch, and he’s growing dissatisfied with the earnings from lunch passes. “I’m getting ten dollars a piece off of those things. I could probably buy a nice LCD television soon but I want a house.” California fake IDs are expensive. They are among the most difficult to counterfeit because of the high number of illegal immigrants in our state. But the fact that they all drive trucks in broad daylight has convinced Digital Sam that faking them can’t be that hard.
He’s charging Sung a hundred dollars.
Sung.
Sung won’t be sixteen for four more months but he’s a really good driver already. He’s had his permit for eight months and he’s gotten a ton of driving experience in that time because his mother made him her personal chauffeur the day he got it. He has to drive her to the dry cleaners and supermarket and to see her mom at the assisted living center and her dad at the mausoleum. Not only does he have a lot of road experience, but it’s all been under the auspices of a very cautious and responsible driver. (Sometimes he’ll do impressions of his mom yelling at him, like, “I SAY SLOW DOWN!” and “Always disappointing!”) So Sung thinks he’s ready to enter the world of licensed driving now.
Digital Sam agrees. This has less to do with whether Sung can drive or not and more to do with the positive word of mouth he thinks will be generated by the production of a high-quality fake license. They discussed it at Taco Bell yesterday. Sung came over and said, “Digital, I need to talk business” and Digital Sam, “I handle business all times except lunch” and Sung said, “Are you done eating? Or do I wait outside?” and Digital Sam said, “Just tell me” and that’s when Sung said what he was looking for. It’s fortuitous for Sung that Digital Sam has already been planning to get into that specific industry because otherwise he probably would have told Sung to fuck off right away rather than right after.
Digital Sam has been talking about getting into fake IDs because that’s where the real money is. He speaks freely in front of me at lunch, and he’s growing dissatisfied with the earnings from lunch passes. “I’m getting ten dollars a piece off of those things. I could probably buy a nice LCD television soon but I want a house.” California fake IDs are expensive. They are among the most difficult to counterfeit because of the high number of illegal immigrants in our state. But the fact that they all drive trucks in broad daylight has convinced Digital Sam that faking them can’t be that hard.
He’s charging Sung a hundred dollars.
October 8, 2008
Well, this weekend certainly wasn’t boring.
Digital Sam came over with Jack and Trina on Saturday so Daniel could drive them as a crew downtown together. Digital Sam was going to make a "pilgrimage to Mecca," by which he meant a trip to the super-shady part of downtown where you can commit check fraud and other entry level felonies. (He calls it "Mecca" in reference to the many halal butcheries.) Digital Sam didn’t want to roll solo in case some stress went down so he asked Daniel and Jack to come with him. Jack brought Trina because they're pretty inseparable these days and also because I don’t think he took it as seriously as Digital Sam.
While they were at the house, Trina came up to my room where I was practicing my handwriting. We talked and looked at the pictures she had taken on her cool digital camera (a present from Jack, and, by extension, Best Buy) and we were just having a really fun time when the boys came to get her. She turned to me and said, “Come on, come with us!”
Eating with Daniel at Taco Bell is one thing but I really didn’t think he’d want me tagging along on a crime jaunt so I tried to beg off and Daniel was saying, “Let’s just go” but then Trina said, “I don’t want to be the only girl on some thuggish road trip. If Susan doesn’t go I’m just going to stay here” so Jack said, “Fine, let’s all go” and Daniel said, “I hate driving with five people in the car” and Trina pointed at me and said, “She weighs eighty pounds!” and then Digital Sam said, “It is a minivan” and I was silent and while Daniel was deliberating Jack said, “Come on, man. I know this is serious business but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be a fun road trip with friends. Just take her to keep my girl company.” Then Daniel looked at me and said, “Fine.”
We drove downtown in Mom’s Odyssey. Daniel can borrow it when Mom’s not using it and he doesn’t ask.
Downtown is in a perpetual state of failed gentrification. When we arrived, we parked in front of a decrepit warehouse covered in scaffolding with a giant banner that said, “Coming soon! L’Oceanique! Units available from $650,000!” A black man with fresh lesions approached us and said, “Bonjour a L’Oceanique, monsieurs and monsieurettes. I will watch ze car for you.” Daniel said, “If you touch this thing you die. And let’s get this out of the way now: no, you may not have a quarter.” The guy said, “And with that, I bid you adieu. Get raped.”
Downtown is normally difficult to navigate. It’s a warren of one-way streets and tall buildings and you can’t ask for directions because Digital Sam said, “Don’t anyone ask anyone for directions. That’s a signal to these people.’” Luckily, Digital Sam had mapped the route online and memorized it. (He certainly didn’t want to walk around looking at a print out. “That’s like requesting to get jacked.”) We walked along a row of diamond dealers’ storefronts and turned onto a major thoroughfare where the sidewalks were thronged with vendors. I looked down and some of the people were selling DVDs of movies currently in theatrical release! I almost purchased one but Daniel wouldn't allow it, saying, "No, Susan, someone taped that off their cell phone." We kept moving and eventually arrived at our destination: a non-descript storefront with mailbox-lined walls and nothing for sale. While everyone else entered, I lingered momentarily to read the services listed in the window: "PO Box Rentals, Check Cashing, Payday Advance, Money Transfer, U-Do Legal Documents, Debt Consolidation and More!" Via process of elimination, I pegged Digital Sam's business as “More!"
I walked in and joined the group. Behind a large pane of bulletproof glass, a girl sat on a stool. “What?” I heard her ask. Digital Sam said, “I’m saying, if I wanted to make hundreds of IDs instead of buying one, could we work something out?” She said to hold on, left her desk, walked up some stairs, and a guy came down holding a gun at arm’s length. I opened my mouth to scream, and that’s when Daniel wrapped his left hand around my mouth and his right arm around my body and held me there really tight. Digital Sam just looked at the guy and said, “You’re still behind bulletproof glass.” Then the door on the left opened and another guy stepped out into the lobby holding another gun. Digital Sam raised his palms in a placatory gesture and said, "Whoa, let's not get off on the wrong foot. I'm a businessman; these are my associates and their girlfriend and sister." The guy holding the gun said, "You came down to make an introduction and you brought half of karate class with you?" then he grabbed Digital Sam by the arm and took him behind the door. We all stood there waiting for the gunshot and I could barely breathe because Daniel still had his hand clamped over my mouth. I reached up and tapped twice and he let go. After a few minutes, the door opened, and Digital Sam stuck his head out and said, "Daniel? You wanna come in here? It's cool." So Daniel walked inside and Jack and Trina and I stood there awkwardly. The girl behind the counter stayed sitting on the stool and eyed us with the mild contempt that anyone who works behind glass seems to exude. A few minutes later, we all sat down on the one bench in the place. Ten minutes later, I asked for a magazine. Thirty minutes later, I put down Sunset as the door opened and Daniel tossed the Odyssey’s keys to Jack and asked him to bring the car around. Thirty-seven minutes later, I put down Sunset again (finishing an article in a waiting room is always difficult) because Jack had pulled up outside with the engine running and the hazards blinking and slid the door open. One of the gunmen opened the door wide for Daniel and Digital Sam as they emerged from the back carrying a large printer. They each held an end of the bulky machine and quickly loaded it into the trunk. Daniel said, “Everything’s cool. Just get in the car.” Before I did, I peeled something from the passenger side of the windshield. It was a rave flyer Jack had neglected to remove in his rush.
As we drove away, Digital Sam began explaining how we ended up there in the first place: “I wanted to find someone who already had a professionally printed ID and trace it back to the source, like how I’m guessing you find a coke wholesaler." So he went to one of the hottest 21-and-over Asian clubs to stand by the door and wait for someone to get turned away for using a fake ID. "That way, I could catch him at his lowest point of pride." Then Digital Sam would offer him five dollars to tell him where he got the ID. At the end of the night, the four rejectees had all given Digital Sam the same address. “I told the guys this and they seemed impressed that I had gleaned information without using violence. That’s when they put their guns down.” Digital Sam pitched them on a consignment deal for the machine that would involve no work on their end and steady cash flow from Digital Sam’s. “Their eyes lit up when I told them I’m still in high school.”
As we rode, I studied the rave flyer. It was the size of a small poster and depicted a giant party under the ocean attended by happy, anthropomorphized sea life. It looked like a Pixar movie about fish who do drugs. They swam against a wall of speakers as a happy crab DJ’ed. I started to read the info printed on it and then I looked up because reading in the car for longer than two seconds makes me sick to my stomach.
The rest of the ride back from downtown was so jovial! The wary tone that kept the car quiet on the way down was gone. I sat alone on the back bench behind Jack and Trina as Daniel and Digital Sam discussed tactics in front. Trina and Jack turned around to peer over the bench and talk to me. Jack and Trina are so funny together and Jack is un-thuggy when Daniel isn’t listening. They were asking me a ton of questions about my life and if I have a boyfriend and stuff like that. I said no and Trina said, “You’re gonna do fine. I did.” She’s being extra sappy because Jack is going to drive her to the outlet stores this weekend for a romantic jacking spree.
I have to admit it. I want what they have. This does not mean ten iPods. I mean…ugh, I was going to type “love” but that word is so mawkish and melodramatic. It shouldn’t be, but it’s never uttered on any of the teen dramas I watch without cheesy music playing in the background and two people staring a hole through each other’s head. Thanks, Gossip Girl.
Digital Sam came over with Jack and Trina on Saturday so Daniel could drive them as a crew downtown together. Digital Sam was going to make a "pilgrimage to Mecca," by which he meant a trip to the super-shady part of downtown where you can commit check fraud and other entry level felonies. (He calls it "Mecca" in reference to the many halal butcheries.) Digital Sam didn’t want to roll solo in case some stress went down so he asked Daniel and Jack to come with him. Jack brought Trina because they're pretty inseparable these days and also because I don’t think he took it as seriously as Digital Sam.
While they were at the house, Trina came up to my room where I was practicing my handwriting. We talked and looked at the pictures she had taken on her cool digital camera (a present from Jack, and, by extension, Best Buy) and we were just having a really fun time when the boys came to get her. She turned to me and said, “Come on, come with us!”
Eating with Daniel at Taco Bell is one thing but I really didn’t think he’d want me tagging along on a crime jaunt so I tried to beg off and Daniel was saying, “Let’s just go” but then Trina said, “I don’t want to be the only girl on some thuggish road trip. If Susan doesn’t go I’m just going to stay here” so Jack said, “Fine, let’s all go” and Daniel said, “I hate driving with five people in the car” and Trina pointed at me and said, “She weighs eighty pounds!” and then Digital Sam said, “It is a minivan” and I was silent and while Daniel was deliberating Jack said, “Come on, man. I know this is serious business but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be a fun road trip with friends. Just take her to keep my girl company.” Then Daniel looked at me and said, “Fine.”
We drove downtown in Mom’s Odyssey. Daniel can borrow it when Mom’s not using it and he doesn’t ask.
Downtown is in a perpetual state of failed gentrification. When we arrived, we parked in front of a decrepit warehouse covered in scaffolding with a giant banner that said, “Coming soon! L’Oceanique! Units available from $650,000!” A black man with fresh lesions approached us and said, “Bonjour a L’Oceanique, monsieurs and monsieurettes. I will watch ze car for you.” Daniel said, “If you touch this thing you die. And let’s get this out of the way now: no, you may not have a quarter.” The guy said, “And with that, I bid you adieu. Get raped.”
Downtown is normally difficult to navigate. It’s a warren of one-way streets and tall buildings and you can’t ask for directions because Digital Sam said, “Don’t anyone ask anyone for directions. That’s a signal to these people.’” Luckily, Digital Sam had mapped the route online and memorized it. (He certainly didn’t want to walk around looking at a print out. “That’s like requesting to get jacked.”) We walked along a row of diamond dealers’ storefronts and turned onto a major thoroughfare where the sidewalks were thronged with vendors. I looked down and some of the people were selling DVDs of movies currently in theatrical release! I almost purchased one but Daniel wouldn't allow it, saying, "No, Susan, someone taped that off their cell phone." We kept moving and eventually arrived at our destination: a non-descript storefront with mailbox-lined walls and nothing for sale. While everyone else entered, I lingered momentarily to read the services listed in the window: "PO Box Rentals, Check Cashing, Payday Advance, Money Transfer, U-Do Legal Documents, Debt Consolidation and More!" Via process of elimination, I pegged Digital Sam's business as “More!"
I walked in and joined the group. Behind a large pane of bulletproof glass, a girl sat on a stool. “What?” I heard her ask. Digital Sam said, “I’m saying, if I wanted to make hundreds of IDs instead of buying one, could we work something out?” She said to hold on, left her desk, walked up some stairs, and a guy came down holding a gun at arm’s length. I opened my mouth to scream, and that’s when Daniel wrapped his left hand around my mouth and his right arm around my body and held me there really tight. Digital Sam just looked at the guy and said, “You’re still behind bulletproof glass.” Then the door on the left opened and another guy stepped out into the lobby holding another gun. Digital Sam raised his palms in a placatory gesture and said, "Whoa, let's not get off on the wrong foot. I'm a businessman; these are my associates and their girlfriend and sister." The guy holding the gun said, "You came down to make an introduction and you brought half of karate class with you?" then he grabbed Digital Sam by the arm and took him behind the door. We all stood there waiting for the gunshot and I could barely breathe because Daniel still had his hand clamped over my mouth. I reached up and tapped twice and he let go. After a few minutes, the door opened, and Digital Sam stuck his head out and said, "Daniel? You wanna come in here? It's cool." So Daniel walked inside and Jack and Trina and I stood there awkwardly. The girl behind the counter stayed sitting on the stool and eyed us with the mild contempt that anyone who works behind glass seems to exude. A few minutes later, we all sat down on the one bench in the place. Ten minutes later, I asked for a magazine. Thirty minutes later, I put down Sunset as the door opened and Daniel tossed the Odyssey’s keys to Jack and asked him to bring the car around. Thirty-seven minutes later, I put down Sunset again (finishing an article in a waiting room is always difficult) because Jack had pulled up outside with the engine running and the hazards blinking and slid the door open. One of the gunmen opened the door wide for Daniel and Digital Sam as they emerged from the back carrying a large printer. They each held an end of the bulky machine and quickly loaded it into the trunk. Daniel said, “Everything’s cool. Just get in the car.” Before I did, I peeled something from the passenger side of the windshield. It was a rave flyer Jack had neglected to remove in his rush.
As we drove away, Digital Sam began explaining how we ended up there in the first place: “I wanted to find someone who already had a professionally printed ID and trace it back to the source, like how I’m guessing you find a coke wholesaler." So he went to one of the hottest 21-and-over Asian clubs to stand by the door and wait for someone to get turned away for using a fake ID. "That way, I could catch him at his lowest point of pride." Then Digital Sam would offer him five dollars to tell him where he got the ID. At the end of the night, the four rejectees had all given Digital Sam the same address. “I told the guys this and they seemed impressed that I had gleaned information without using violence. That’s when they put their guns down.” Digital Sam pitched them on a consignment deal for the machine that would involve no work on their end and steady cash flow from Digital Sam’s. “Their eyes lit up when I told them I’m still in high school.”
As we rode, I studied the rave flyer. It was the size of a small poster and depicted a giant party under the ocean attended by happy, anthropomorphized sea life. It looked like a Pixar movie about fish who do drugs. They swam against a wall of speakers as a happy crab DJ’ed. I started to read the info printed on it and then I looked up because reading in the car for longer than two seconds makes me sick to my stomach.
The rest of the ride back from downtown was so jovial! The wary tone that kept the car quiet on the way down was gone. I sat alone on the back bench behind Jack and Trina as Daniel and Digital Sam discussed tactics in front. Trina and Jack turned around to peer over the bench and talk to me. Jack and Trina are so funny together and Jack is un-thuggy when Daniel isn’t listening. They were asking me a ton of questions about my life and if I have a boyfriend and stuff like that. I said no and Trina said, “You’re gonna do fine. I did.” She’s being extra sappy because Jack is going to drive her to the outlet stores this weekend for a romantic jacking spree.
I have to admit it. I want what they have. This does not mean ten iPods. I mean…ugh, I was going to type “love” but that word is so mawkish and melodramatic. It shouldn’t be, but it’s never uttered on any of the teen dramas I watch without cheesy music playing in the background and two people staring a hole through each other’s head. Thanks, Gossip Girl.
October 10, 2008
Sung should be getting his “license” soon. I would normally never ask Daniel about crew business dealings but I figured since I was there for the acquisition of the machine I may as well ask what it was and what they’re doing with it.
The machine is an outdated model of a real license printer. They also gave Digital Sam a box of genuine blank California DMV cards. The two together should be enough to create infallible cards but the downtown guys lack the graphic design sophistication necessary to mock up convincing licenses. (They showed Digital Sam their set-up and he immediately suggested several improvements, like using Photoshop instead of Word.) They're going to let Digital Sam have complete creative control over the process as long as he kicks up regularly. Sung’s license is his prototype. And business card.
We’re doing volleyball practice in the small gym now. Nikki went in there during the day and photographed the chairs arranged around a coffee table strewn with magazines and took it to the faculty and argued the football team doesn’t need it because they’re already allowed to sleep in class. So we got the gym. Practice with a real net is different. (The ball is always hitting the net.)
Our first game and loss is this Friday. I'm blasé about the impending drubbing. I simply don't have the level of emotional investment necessary for failure to really hurt, like when I find out that I did slightly less well on a chemistry quiz than I had anticipated. Nikki has been giving us little motivational speeches while we gather our backpacks to leave after practice. I usually ignore them but once I called Karen to let her listen. When Nikki screamed, “Let’s hear it!” Karen screamed, “Kill yourself!” but only I heard it. I’ve begun to wonder if volleyball will help or hurt me. It might be one of those things that people pretend to respect but actually think less of you for, like an Alcoholic’s Anonymous chip.
The machine is an outdated model of a real license printer. They also gave Digital Sam a box of genuine blank California DMV cards. The two together should be enough to create infallible cards but the downtown guys lack the graphic design sophistication necessary to mock up convincing licenses. (They showed Digital Sam their set-up and he immediately suggested several improvements, like using Photoshop instead of Word.) They're going to let Digital Sam have complete creative control over the process as long as he kicks up regularly. Sung’s license is his prototype. And business card.
We’re doing volleyball practice in the small gym now. Nikki went in there during the day and photographed the chairs arranged around a coffee table strewn with magazines and took it to the faculty and argued the football team doesn’t need it because they’re already allowed to sleep in class. So we got the gym. Practice with a real net is different. (The ball is always hitting the net.)
Our first game and loss is this Friday. I'm blasé about the impending drubbing. I simply don't have the level of emotional investment necessary for failure to really hurt, like when I find out that I did slightly less well on a chemistry quiz than I had anticipated. Nikki has been giving us little motivational speeches while we gather our backpacks to leave after practice. I usually ignore them but once I called Karen to let her listen. When Nikki screamed, “Let’s hear it!” Karen screamed, “Kill yourself!” but only I heard it. I’ve begun to wonder if volleyball will help or hurt me. It might be one of those things that people pretend to respect but actually think less of you for, like an Alcoholic’s Anonymous chip.
October 11, 2008
God help us all. Sung has a “driver’s license.”
This morning before school started, Karen and I were walking away from Sung when we heard Digital Sam call out to him. Curiosity got the best of me and I walked over because I knew what was coming and I just had to see it. Digital Sam pulled out a small white envelope and handed it to Sung in broad daylight. Then Sung handed Digital Sam a small white envelope and said, “There’s one-tenth of a stack. Hella allowance, yo!” Digital Sam pocketed the envelope then climbed over a wall to leave. Sung tore open the envelope and there it was: his driver’s license. He held it aloft in the sun’s direct glare. We all gazed upon it with reverence and curiosity. Then we were forced to turn away. (We were staring directly into the sun.) “Check it,” said Sung, as he handed us his card. We made no effort to hide how impressed we were, and Sung made no effort to hide his satisfaction. The card was truly indistinguishable from a real license. He didn’t have to wait long to use it.
Sung actually drove to school today in anticipation. His mom rarely leaves the house during the day and doesn’t particularly understand the difference between a permit and a license so she didn’t say anything when Sung told her he was taking the Toyota Avalon. He demanded to drive Karen and me to Taco Bell for lunch. I normally would have demurred, and Karen would have said “Hell no!” but Trina, our normal ride, had ditched school that day because Urban Outfitters was having a huge sale and she wanted to go steal some stuff before the bargain hunters got them. (Of course, I could just walk the three blocks, but they’re really long blocks, and lunch is only thirty-five minutes, so if you walk, a really big chunk of your lunch is devoted to just getting there. Then you have to leave earlier to make sure you get back to school on time. This is why Tha Remarkable Crew show up, sit down, shovel food into their mouths and leave. That’s a rather classless way to enjoy a Gordita. Asking Daniel to drive me and Karen along with his homiez seemed presumptuous. I looked at Karen. She looked back and I could tell that she was making these calculations in her head as well. We accepted.
At lunch, we headed out the main gate and looked around the parking lot for Sung. “Over here!” he screamed. We glanced across the street, and Sung was leaning against his car with his arms folded across his chest and his legs crossed, peering over a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses worn on the tip of his nose. His calculated effort at hip nonchalance was destroyed when he announced, “I can’t park in the lot! I don’t have a parking pass! Hey, maybe Digital can whip up one of those for me, too!” and then Karen screamed, “Jesus, shut the fuck up!” and he said, “Oh, right, I mean I have nooo idea how I would go about getting one of those!” and Karen said, “No, I don’t want everyone to see you talking to me.” By then we were in front of the car so everyone stopped shouting. Sung beamed with the pride of a recent parent as he showed off his mom’s car. “V6 engine: standard. Anti-lock brakes: standard. Alloy wheels: standard. Sunroof: optional. My mom didn’t get it, though.” Sung opened the door to the backseat and went on: “In-dash CD player and six speaker system – standard. I went ahead and added a little kick.” I figured that this meant Sung added the obnoxiously loud subwoofers that all teenage Asian boys fetishize, and it did, but not in the standard sense. Most of them devote the entire trunk to the system. In Sung’s car, the subwoofer is on the floor of the backseat. And it’s not the kind designed for a car. I’m pretty sure he took it from his living room stereo system. He said, “One of you will have to sit in the backse—” and Karen said “I WILL!” so I got in the front and we drove out of there. Sung asked me to reach down to where my feet were and pick up his CD wallet to flip through and find something I wanted to listen to. It had about 50 CDs in it but I don’t like Tupac so there was nothing to choose from. I suggested we just put the radio on the oldies station. “Baby Love” came on and the windows rattled. I tried to make eye contact with Karen in the backseat but the rear-view mirror was blurry from vibrating.
I will give Sung credit for one thing: he is actually a very good driver. All of the countless hours of driving his mom around coupled with the fact that Sung, despite frequent proclamations of gangsterness, is a typically obedient Asian boy, mean that he’s a very courteous and cautious driver. Of course, I only had three blocks to discern this, but I’m comparing him to rides from Daniel, who never does the speed limit, and Trina, who always does but only because she swerves below it.
This morning before school started, Karen and I were walking away from Sung when we heard Digital Sam call out to him. Curiosity got the best of me and I walked over because I knew what was coming and I just had to see it. Digital Sam pulled out a small white envelope and handed it to Sung in broad daylight. Then Sung handed Digital Sam a small white envelope and said, “There’s one-tenth of a stack. Hella allowance, yo!” Digital Sam pocketed the envelope then climbed over a wall to leave. Sung tore open the envelope and there it was: his driver’s license. He held it aloft in the sun’s direct glare. We all gazed upon it with reverence and curiosity. Then we were forced to turn away. (We were staring directly into the sun.) “Check it,” said Sung, as he handed us his card. We made no effort to hide how impressed we were, and Sung made no effort to hide his satisfaction. The card was truly indistinguishable from a real license. He didn’t have to wait long to use it.
Sung actually drove to school today in anticipation. His mom rarely leaves the house during the day and doesn’t particularly understand the difference between a permit and a license so she didn’t say anything when Sung told her he was taking the Toyota Avalon. He demanded to drive Karen and me to Taco Bell for lunch. I normally would have demurred, and Karen would have said “Hell no!” but Trina, our normal ride, had ditched school that day because Urban Outfitters was having a huge sale and she wanted to go steal some stuff before the bargain hunters got them. (Of course, I could just walk the three blocks, but they’re really long blocks, and lunch is only thirty-five minutes, so if you walk, a really big chunk of your lunch is devoted to just getting there. Then you have to leave earlier to make sure you get back to school on time. This is why Tha Remarkable Crew show up, sit down, shovel food into their mouths and leave. That’s a rather classless way to enjoy a Gordita. Asking Daniel to drive me and Karen along with his homiez seemed presumptuous. I looked at Karen. She looked back and I could tell that she was making these calculations in her head as well. We accepted.
At lunch, we headed out the main gate and looked around the parking lot for Sung. “Over here!” he screamed. We glanced across the street, and Sung was leaning against his car with his arms folded across his chest and his legs crossed, peering over a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses worn on the tip of his nose. His calculated effort at hip nonchalance was destroyed when he announced, “I can’t park in the lot! I don’t have a parking pass! Hey, maybe Digital can whip up one of those for me, too!” and then Karen screamed, “Jesus, shut the fuck up!” and he said, “Oh, right, I mean I have nooo idea how I would go about getting one of those!” and Karen said, “No, I don’t want everyone to see you talking to me.” By then we were in front of the car so everyone stopped shouting. Sung beamed with the pride of a recent parent as he showed off his mom’s car. “V6 engine: standard. Anti-lock brakes: standard. Alloy wheels: standard. Sunroof: optional. My mom didn’t get it, though.” Sung opened the door to the backseat and went on: “In-dash CD player and six speaker system – standard. I went ahead and added a little kick.” I figured that this meant Sung added the obnoxiously loud subwoofers that all teenage Asian boys fetishize, and it did, but not in the standard sense. Most of them devote the entire trunk to the system. In Sung’s car, the subwoofer is on the floor of the backseat. And it’s not the kind designed for a car. I’m pretty sure he took it from his living room stereo system. He said, “One of you will have to sit in the backse—” and Karen said “I WILL!” so I got in the front and we drove out of there. Sung asked me to reach down to where my feet were and pick up his CD wallet to flip through and find something I wanted to listen to. It had about 50 CDs in it but I don’t like Tupac so there was nothing to choose from. I suggested we just put the radio on the oldies station. “Baby Love” came on and the windows rattled. I tried to make eye contact with Karen in the backseat but the rear-view mirror was blurry from vibrating.
I will give Sung credit for one thing: he is actually a very good driver. All of the countless hours of driving his mom around coupled with the fact that Sung, despite frequent proclamations of gangsterness, is a typically obedient Asian boy, mean that he’s a very courteous and cautious driver. Of course, I only had three blocks to discern this, but I’m comparing him to rides from Daniel, who never does the speed limit, and Trina, who always does but only because she swerves below it.
October 12, 2008
I’ll now recount my first loss. At volleyball.
We played Taft. When we found out that we would be playing them we had no idea what to expect. While some high schools have a reputation for having a killer football team or a violent basketball team, no volleyball teams have a reputation beyond lame. (Being good at volleyball does not affect this distinction one way or the other.)
Bus transportation was not provided. This was somewhat insulting because I’ve seen the football team ride faculty golf carts from the field to the locker room. Taft is the school closest to ours so it wasn't that big of a deal anyway. I had planned on using city transportation, but Trina offered to drive. Actually, she insisted. I had spent so much time complaining about volleyball to Karen that Karen had spent time complaining about my complaining to Trina. When Trina heard that I was doing something physical, she demanded to come to watch and laugh. I couldn't refuse her attendance and if I didn’t go with her I’d just be turning down a free ride. Karen came, too. Actually, it was nice to have some allies there. (I know your teammates are supposed to play that role but I think of them more as "work friends.")
When school ended, Karen and I got in Trina’s car and made the ten minute drive over to the Taft campus. When we got there, we parked in the athletics lot. I got out of the car and started walking towards the court with Karen but Trina said, “Come on, aren’t we going to tailgate first?” She lowered her windows, blared the radio, and opened her cooler of Rolling Rock. She said, “You gotta get amped first, Susan!” but nothing was going to amp me for this. Not even Fergie. Another car parked in the lot and some people got out and started walking into the school and Trina said, “It’s V-Day motherfuckers! Hope you got FDIC ‘cuz we’re gonna break the bank with this ch-Ching!” but they weren’t sports fans, they were janitors, so thank god they didn’t speak English. Karen seemed to be having a good time.
We finally made our way over to the volleyball court, which was on the concrete behind the indoor swimming pool complex. (It’s technically called a natatorium, but that word’s a bit much, even for me.)
Nikki called a team huddle, which means that we came to stand nearer to her. (We never do that arms-over-the-shoulders thing. We don’t like each other that much and Asians just aren’t big huddlers in general.) She told us who she was starting in the game. I realize I haven’t ever said the names of any of the other girls on the team other than Nikki and that’s because it took me so long to learn them myself and also because, really, who cares? There’s Nikki, four juniors, and six sophomores. A volleyball team has six people on it so Nikki started herself and all of the juniors. The she put her hands on her hips to survey the sophomores and said, “Room for one more. Fresh meat…” Then she lowered her eyes to scan the line twice before announcing: “Susan.” I stepped forward and Nikki said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought she was Susan. I meant [Sophomore #2].” Sophomore #2 stepped forward. Then I stepped backward. The game started soon after that.
The juniors’ experience at the game, never evinced during practice, came to the fore when they were playing a real game, because they would yell things like, “Oh shit, I remember how bad you were at this!” and “Oh shit, I remember how bad I was at this!” Volleyball games go to fifteen points and you retain the serve when you win a point. The other team had the serve for the first point so they had the serve for the first game. At least a volleyball match is scored in games and not points because 0 – 1 is easier to take than 0 – 15. And 0 – 3 is much, much easier to take than 0 – 45. We lost 0 – 3.
When the game was over, I turned to Karen and Trina and gave them a look that said, Happy? But I already knew they were because they were smiling and had laughed a lot and were obviously happy. I asked Trina to drive me home and she said, “Are you kidding? I’m going to take you out for ice cream like your dad would after a game if you were white!” We went to P.F. Chang’s (the novelty of ice cream wore off on the walk to the car) and when the waitress took our order, Trina ordered sake! After the waitress asked for ID, Trina just opened her wallet and took out her driver’s license and handed it to the waitress, who looked at it, looked back at Trina, looked back at the card, then rubbed her thumbs on the picture and address before handing it back smiling and saying “Thank you!” Karen and I remained calm until the waitress walked away. Then Karen said, “I can’t believe that worked!” Trina said, “Why wouldn’t it? It’s a real ID” and I said, “It is?” and she said, “I mean, it’s printed on a real card on a real machine. It’s real in every sense except its legal authority.”
It’s Digital Sam’s handiwork. He expects to be flooded with orders soon but he gifted one to Trina free of charge. Everyone else has to pay a hundred. “That’s like me getting a free hundred dollars!” said Trina because she had had some sake by then. Digital Sam did Trina another favor by making her one that says she’s twenty-one. He’ll only allow sophomores to buy IDs that make them eighteen because even that’s pushing it with an Asian fifteen-year-old. That way they can only buy porn, cigarettes, movie and Lotto tickets, and entrance to certain clubs before 10:00. I guess they could also attempt voter fraud and attract enough attention to bring the heat on Digital Sam but he’s much more worried that will happen if someone tries to buy Hpnotq.
We played Taft. When we found out that we would be playing them we had no idea what to expect. While some high schools have a reputation for having a killer football team or a violent basketball team, no volleyball teams have a reputation beyond lame. (Being good at volleyball does not affect this distinction one way or the other.)
Bus transportation was not provided. This was somewhat insulting because I’ve seen the football team ride faculty golf carts from the field to the locker room. Taft is the school closest to ours so it wasn't that big of a deal anyway. I had planned on using city transportation, but Trina offered to drive. Actually, she insisted. I had spent so much time complaining about volleyball to Karen that Karen had spent time complaining about my complaining to Trina. When Trina heard that I was doing something physical, she demanded to come to watch and laugh. I couldn't refuse her attendance and if I didn’t go with her I’d just be turning down a free ride. Karen came, too. Actually, it was nice to have some allies there. (I know your teammates are supposed to play that role but I think of them more as "work friends.")
When school ended, Karen and I got in Trina’s car and made the ten minute drive over to the Taft campus. When we got there, we parked in the athletics lot. I got out of the car and started walking towards the court with Karen but Trina said, “Come on, aren’t we going to tailgate first?” She lowered her windows, blared the radio, and opened her cooler of Rolling Rock. She said, “You gotta get amped first, Susan!” but nothing was going to amp me for this. Not even Fergie. Another car parked in the lot and some people got out and started walking into the school and Trina said, “It’s V-Day motherfuckers! Hope you got FDIC ‘cuz we’re gonna break the bank with this ch-Ching!” but they weren’t sports fans, they were janitors, so thank god they didn’t speak English. Karen seemed to be having a good time.
We finally made our way over to the volleyball court, which was on the concrete behind the indoor swimming pool complex. (It’s technically called a natatorium, but that word’s a bit much, even for me.)
Nikki called a team huddle, which means that we came to stand nearer to her. (We never do that arms-over-the-shoulders thing. We don’t like each other that much and Asians just aren’t big huddlers in general.) She told us who she was starting in the game. I realize I haven’t ever said the names of any of the other girls on the team other than Nikki and that’s because it took me so long to learn them myself and also because, really, who cares? There’s Nikki, four juniors, and six sophomores. A volleyball team has six people on it so Nikki started herself and all of the juniors. The she put her hands on her hips to survey the sophomores and said, “Room for one more. Fresh meat…” Then she lowered her eyes to scan the line twice before announcing: “Susan.” I stepped forward and Nikki said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought she was Susan. I meant [Sophomore #2].” Sophomore #2 stepped forward. Then I stepped backward. The game started soon after that.
The juniors’ experience at the game, never evinced during practice, came to the fore when they were playing a real game, because they would yell things like, “Oh shit, I remember how bad you were at this!” and “Oh shit, I remember how bad I was at this!” Volleyball games go to fifteen points and you retain the serve when you win a point. The other team had the serve for the first point so they had the serve for the first game. At least a volleyball match is scored in games and not points because 0 – 1 is easier to take than 0 – 15. And 0 – 3 is much, much easier to take than 0 – 45. We lost 0 – 3.
When the game was over, I turned to Karen and Trina and gave them a look that said, Happy? But I already knew they were because they were smiling and had laughed a lot and were obviously happy. I asked Trina to drive me home and she said, “Are you kidding? I’m going to take you out for ice cream like your dad would after a game if you were white!” We went to P.F. Chang’s (the novelty of ice cream wore off on the walk to the car) and when the waitress took our order, Trina ordered sake! After the waitress asked for ID, Trina just opened her wallet and took out her driver’s license and handed it to the waitress, who looked at it, looked back at Trina, looked back at the card, then rubbed her thumbs on the picture and address before handing it back smiling and saying “Thank you!” Karen and I remained calm until the waitress walked away. Then Karen said, “I can’t believe that worked!” Trina said, “Why wouldn’t it? It’s a real ID” and I said, “It is?” and she said, “I mean, it’s printed on a real card on a real machine. It’s real in every sense except its legal authority.”
It’s Digital Sam’s handiwork. He expects to be flooded with orders soon but he gifted one to Trina free of charge. Everyone else has to pay a hundred. “That’s like me getting a free hundred dollars!” said Trina because she had had some sake by then. Digital Sam did Trina another favor by making her one that says she’s twenty-one. He’ll only allow sophomores to buy IDs that make them eighteen because even that’s pushing it with an Asian fifteen-year-old. That way they can only buy porn, cigarettes, movie and Lotto tickets, and entrance to certain clubs before 10:00. I guess they could also attempt voter fraud and attract enough attention to bring the heat on Digital Sam but he’s much more worried that will happen if someone tries to buy Hpnotq.
October 15, 2008
Sung loves his license. As planned, his popularity went from none to somewhat after acquiring it. He spent this weekend shuttling Tha Crew to the movies and the mall and one of them to the dry cleaners. He’s happy to do so because they can’t ditch him in the car. That’s not technically true if you consider that when they arrive somewhere they have him drop them off first before he looks for parking.
Being social makes Sung expansive. I have to listen to it. He started recounting his entire weekend this morning before school started but only got up to Saturday afternoon (he drove his cousin to a dental appointment) so it started bleeding into class time. He leaned over in Mr. Yick’s class to say, “You know that ‘Cosmic Bowling’ thing where they turn on hella black lights and play bugged-out space music like Daft Punk and Nelly and it’s just like bowling on Star Wars? I rolled with the Crew there on Saturday night. There were so many girls waiting to be macked on. I played wingman all night. My boys ended up with more digits than the national debt! If you hear someone say that, tell me, because I think I made it up.” Then Mr. Yick yelled, “Susan! Stop listening to Sung!”
Tha Crew are not at all subtle or abashed about their opportunism. Today, they were talking about what they want to do this weekend and one of them knows about a house party on Saturday where it’s four dollars for a cup, there’s going to be a DJ spinning Miami bass music, and it’s in this part of town that’s all houses and no apartments but still only poor people live there. They agreed that it sounded “just ghetto enough to be perfect” and then one of them turned to Sung and said, “Hey, Sung, how about at eleven for all of us?” Sung lifted his chin in assent. Then he turned back to me and said, “A little thing at the one-one-oh-oh. No biggie.”
Digital Sam is the happiest of anyone, though. Business is flourishing. Sung is free advertising. He’ll show his card to anyone who asks and sometimes he’ll even intentionally let it drop out of his wallet so he can say, “Oh snap, my undetectably fake driver’s license fell on the floor.” Of course people will ask where he got it and then he’ll say “Digital.” The other person will look really confused and then there’ll be a back and forth and eventually Sung says “Digital Sam. You know him. Sam. Daniel’s friend. Him right there. Yo, Digital!”
Being social makes Sung expansive. I have to listen to it. He started recounting his entire weekend this morning before school started but only got up to Saturday afternoon (he drove his cousin to a dental appointment) so it started bleeding into class time. He leaned over in Mr. Yick’s class to say, “You know that ‘Cosmic Bowling’ thing where they turn on hella black lights and play bugged-out space music like Daft Punk and Nelly and it’s just like bowling on Star Wars? I rolled with the Crew there on Saturday night. There were so many girls waiting to be macked on. I played wingman all night. My boys ended up with more digits than the national debt! If you hear someone say that, tell me, because I think I made it up.” Then Mr. Yick yelled, “Susan! Stop listening to Sung!”
Tha Crew are not at all subtle or abashed about their opportunism. Today, they were talking about what they want to do this weekend and one of them knows about a house party on Saturday where it’s four dollars for a cup, there’s going to be a DJ spinning Miami bass music, and it’s in this part of town that’s all houses and no apartments but still only poor people live there. They agreed that it sounded “just ghetto enough to be perfect” and then one of them turned to Sung and said, “Hey, Sung, how about at eleven for all of us?” Sung lifted his chin in assent. Then he turned back to me and said, “A little thing at the one-one-oh-oh. No biggie.”
Digital Sam is the happiest of anyone, though. Business is flourishing. Sung is free advertising. He’ll show his card to anyone who asks and sometimes he’ll even intentionally let it drop out of his wallet so he can say, “Oh snap, my undetectably fake driver’s license fell on the floor.” Of course people will ask where he got it and then he’ll say “Digital.” The other person will look really confused and then there’ll be a back and forth and eventually Sung says “Digital Sam. You know him. Sam. Daniel’s friend. Him right there. Yo, Digital!”
October 19, 2008
Jack’s business is booming on campus. His jacking skills are now such that he will take orders for things that people want and sell it to them for half of the retail price at school a week later. His most popular retailers are Best Buy (“that’s like going to the corner store for me”), Barnes and Noble (“it’s nice to steal from a place with such a friendly staff”), and Costco (“the stuff costs less but I make up for it in volume”). Trina is his proverbial and literal partner in crime. She attends all of his sprees wearing her Prada purse because it’s a great place to stash stuff but it draws attention if Jack wears it. She’ll also distract employees with inane questions like “How does the music get inside the iPod?” or fake flirting like, “Meet me outside. I’ll blow you in my car.”
I think they're cutest when they work together. They have to pretend they don't know each other when they're stealing on the weekends but they'll team up when it comes time to sell at school. Jack will approach a sophomore with something he stole on spec but can’t move, like the Oliver Stone DVD collection, and ask if he wants to buy it. The sophomore says no. Then Trina walks up and says, “Oh my god, The Doors and Wall Street are my two favorite movies! I’ve never seen the remastered DVD transfer” in a coquettish, hinting tone. Then the kid buys it. Then he tries to invite Trina over to watch Platoon and she says “I’m not going to watch that nonsense with you” and then Jack puts his arm around Trina and says, “Hitting on my girlfriend right in front of me. That’s not too respectful, now is it?” and then the kid runs away and then Jack and Trina look at each other with burning passion and make out. Watching them, I get the intrigue and romance of outlaw couples like Bonnie and Clyde or Amy Winehouse and the crackheads who sleep with her.
I think they're cutest when they work together. They have to pretend they don't know each other when they're stealing on the weekends but they'll team up when it comes time to sell at school. Jack will approach a sophomore with something he stole on spec but can’t move, like the Oliver Stone DVD collection, and ask if he wants to buy it. The sophomore says no. Then Trina walks up and says, “Oh my god, The Doors and Wall Street are my two favorite movies! I’ve never seen the remastered DVD transfer” in a coquettish, hinting tone. Then the kid buys it. Then he tries to invite Trina over to watch Platoon and she says “I’m not going to watch that nonsense with you” and then Jack puts his arm around Trina and says, “Hitting on my girlfriend right in front of me. That’s not too respectful, now is it?” and then the kid runs away and then Jack and Trina look at each other with burning passion and make out. Watching them, I get the intrigue and romance of outlaw couples like Bonnie and Clyde or Amy Winehouse and the crackheads who sleep with her.
October 22, 2008
Oh my god, I went to that house party and Tha Remarkable Crew was right! It was the perfect amount of ghetto!
A Remarkable Crew member gave Karen one of the photocopied flyers for the party. It was a small, yellow, rectangular piece of paper with hand-drawn pictures of a house, several kegs, a disco ball, a treble clef with ascending semiquavers, and several face-down dead cops in a pool of blood. The only words on it were the address and “$4.” (I know “$4” is not a word but it’s two when said out loud.) Karen brought it to Trina who glanced at it and said, “Fuck yes!” and volunteered to drive Karen and me.
I’m so glad that Karen is my best friend. I appreciate her initiative in finding and scheduling leisure activities for us on the weekends. I’m much more complacent than she, so I’m generally resigned to my boredom, but Karen will say, “Fuck! I’ll have to kill myself if I spend another weekend with my parents. And them.” And thank god that Trina has her license now. Karen attempted to plan fun weekend activities when we were both freshman but we didn’t know anyone with a car last year, so examples of our “fun times” included going to the park to complain about hanging out at the park and going to the library to read about parties.
Trina told Karen that she would pick her up around 11:00 and then come get me but I said no, Dad would never let me start my night out at that time, so instead I told Dad that I was sleeping over at Karen’s that night, but Karen actually had to go to dinner with her parents so I sat in Karen’s backyard and practiced texting by typing the Miranda rights warning and sending it to myself repeatedly. Karen got home around 9:00 and let me in and we got ready for the festivities. I’m not one of those girls that spends an hour getting ready to go out; it’s more like a half-hour. I just shower and blow-dry my hair and put on make-up to fit the occasion. This was a full-on party, so I applied some ultra light powder (for shine control) and nude lip gloss.
I don’t have a lot of clothes because I don’t really care and I don’t have the money to care even if I cared (but I don’t care). I usually just buy things at Forever 21 if Karen or Trina says it looks cute on me because I trust their opinions more than mine. I wear the stuff until it disintegrates which is usually after washing twice. (Sorry to hate on the quality. I know Forever 21 is Asian-owned.) Karen is a little more concerned with her appearance. Her thing is to look cute and approachable and like a potential liaison without looking trashy or eager or like an anime porn character. She also goes for the natural make-up look, although with a heavier application and with more expensive cosmetics. (She laughed at me when I bought the Jessica Simpson line, but I don’t care if it comes from a drugstore! It smells good! Sometimes I’ll even eat a little out of the bottle.) Karen also has her eye out for emerging trends. Like if the Mexican girls at our school all start wearing something, she won’t.
Trina pulled up outside the house right around 11:00 and pressed the horn without taking her hand off of it and there was just this steady HOOOOOOOOONK and on the way down to the car I started to wonder if maybe she had passed out with her head on the wheel. But she hadn’t. She was sober and indignant about the prospect of paying for alcohol. I think being with Jack has started to warp her concept of the real value of products, because she said, “If they’re only charging for the cups I hope they’re serving Grey Goose.”
Trina had the directions printed off of MapQuest and they involved using a freeway I had never been on before. It took us to a run-down section of town. It was pretty shady for an area with no trees. (Sorry.) We drove along quiet streets to a neighborhood where the houses were huge but really old. Most of them looked empty except for the one packed with hundreds of drunk teenagers. (This was where the party was.) We couldn’t find parking within five blocks, which was a good sign. If you can park quickly when attending a house party, don’t bother parking. (Daniel said that. It’s so pithy I wanted to use it but I felt guilty about not admitting he said it so I came back to write this half-way through writing the following paragraph.)
We walked to the front door where an average-looking guy flanked by two huge hulking guys was collecting admission. We all gave him four dollars each. (I had emailed Trina and Karen earlier that day to remind them to bring exact change.) He handed the bills to the hulking guy on his left and then the hulking guy on the right gave him three plastic cups. He asked us our names and wrote them on the cups with a Sharpie. Then he gave them to us and said to have a great time. He opened the door.
It was a rager, all right. The foyer of the house opened into a massive living room, undecorated except for the cheap, trashed couches lining the walls. The hardwood floors were thronged with revelers holding their cups and grinding. A DJ booth was set up in front of the old, dusty fireplace with two turntables (and a microphone! j/k) on top of a folding desk. I’ve never been to a party with an actual DJ before. I guess they’re relics these days. They’re sort of purposeless in today’s digital world. When you have access to every song ever recorded for free, why would you pay someone else to go online and steal it for you? But this DJ was actually spinning vinyl, so instead of Danity Kane and Timbaland, this was real, instrumental dance music, like what plays when they go to any gay bar on any television show, except instead of a diva going “ecstasyyy! I feel it, yeaaah” it had some black guy chanting what I thought was something tribal until I realized he was exhorting the crowd to bounce it to the left. They did.
I walked with Karen and Trina through the kitchen, out the back door, and down a small staircase into a huge sunken back yard. The music from the living room was pouring through the open windows of the house, but at a tolerable level you could talk over. It was a mob scene out there. In the corner, people formed a huge line to get to the kegs. Trina and Karen said we should go get in line, but I hate beer. It’s disgusting. People say you have to force yourself to drink it until you like it but that’s what they say about coffee and that’s also disgusting. The only bitter drink that I like is plain green tea and I’ve only developed a taste for it because for the first ten years of my life Mom used to tell me it was Kool-Aid. Trina asked if she could have my cup (I think she wanted to do the “two fists of victory” - this is the phrase I’ve coined for drinking two drinks at once; “double fisting” is just too unseemly to say out loud) but I told her I still wanted to use it.
There was no line at the kitchen sink to get water, so I filled my cup pretty quickly. Then I turned around and I’ll give you three guesses who was right there. No, one guess. No, I’ll just tell you. It was the cute Asian boy from the tennis team.
We stood still for a moment. I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for sink access so I stepped aside and waited for him to approach the faucet and but he didn’t and then when he realized what I was waiting for he said, “Oh, no, I’m fine” and gestured to his beer and that’s when I remembered that he was a boy at a party and wanted to drink beer and not tap water.
He said, “How’s it going?” I was a little thrown by this because he didn’t begin by introducing himself. Technically, we hadn’t yet met, so this offhand familiarity was a tacit acknowledgement that, yes, he had been looking at me during volleyball practice. I smiled and said, “It’s good.” Then we were both silent and I was glad we were at a party because the music (a looped female vocal was moaning “I’m cumming” over a Duran Duran sample) filled in what would have been an otherwise awkward pause. (The great thing about repetitive music is that it makes it hard to gauge how long it’s been since someone said something.) Then he asked how my first game went and I said, “We lost zero to 45. I mean zero to three” and he laughed so I had to re-adjust on the fly and pretend I had intended that to be funny. So I smiled. He extended his hand and said, “My name is Ryu, by the way.” I shook his hand and refrained from commenting on his name. Ryu is a Street Fighter Two character. Sometimes Asian parents who name their children before moving here give them unfortunate names (there’s a kid in our class named Lumpee) but he volunteered, “Yes, I am named after the Street Fighter character. My dad thought it conveyed strength and the courage to laugh.” Then the conversation died again but it was my fault because I forgot to say my name. Ryu reminded me and I said, “Oh!” and then right when I was about to say my name I thought of a joke and said, “Sub-Zero” and he laughed! I was ecstatic (on the inside, quietly) because I almost never make jokes so to chance one during a crucial first impression was a big gamble on my part. Then I said, “It’s Susan, actually.” And he nodded and sipped his beer and the music filled the silence and right then (or we may have just stood like that for fifteen seconds, the music was throwing me off), a white kid came to the top of the stairs leading down to the backyard and said, “Ryu, come on, man! Kevin brought a beer bong! And a bong!” He said he should get back to his friends and I think we were both secretly thankful to have a clean break on a high note.
That was the peak of the party for me. I rejoined Karen and Trina outside where they were still in line for the keg, although much closer to the front. They asked what I was doing in the house but I didn’t feel like subjecting myself to a two-on-one inquisition so I just said, “Getting water.” I was drinking water at the time, so they bought it. Karen said, “I wonder what kind of beer they have here” and Trina said, “It smells like Budweiser but it might be some other cheap lager, like Coors or Molson.” Eventually they got their beer (“Bud Light,” according to Trina) and we were scanning the party and doing a lap when we heard “Yo! Susie Q and Karen Carpenter and Trina, like Trina the rapper! Holla at ya boy!” and it was Sung. He was with Tha Remarkable Crew and they were just chilling in the less hectic far corner of the backyard drinking from their cups. We walked over and Tha Crew seemed happy to see us and we all hugged. The music where they were standing was still pretty loud and I hate raising my voice so I was going to listen to Karen for a while but Sung pointed to my cup and yelled, “What you got there?” I said, “Water” and he said, “Beer?” and I nodded and he pointed to his cup and said, “I’m sippin’ on that purple drank.” I thought that meant the stuff Sunny Delight is better than but Sung said, “Naw! There’s straight codeine in this! Purple drank is soda with cough syrup.” Later I asked a Crew member if he feared Sung driving him under the influence and he said, “No. You’re supposed to use prescription cough syrup. That’s Musinex.”
For the duration of the party I stood and talked to people I knew and enjoyed it. Karen wanted to break off and mingle with some of the hundreds of new people surrounding her but she didn’t want to do it alone and I didn’t want to do it at all. I’ve never understood why meeting new people is considered a leisure activity to begin with (it’s so much more serious than that) and even if we met someone truly interesting it would only result in a frustrating long-distance relationship.
We left around 2:00am. I was practically falling asleep with my eyes open because I’ve usually been asleep for four hours by then. I probably would have napped lightly in a sitting position on the couch but it was covered with people doing nitrous balloons. Also, the music was still going “move it ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho” which was rhythmic enough to be somewhat soporific but still too loud to sleep over which was really disorienting. Trina took Karen and me back to Karen’s house and we slept until noon on Sunday. Then I took the bus home and when I walked in my parents were none the wiser about my evening because I didn’t see either one until dinner that night anyway.
A Remarkable Crew member gave Karen one of the photocopied flyers for the party. It was a small, yellow, rectangular piece of paper with hand-drawn pictures of a house, several kegs, a disco ball, a treble clef with ascending semiquavers, and several face-down dead cops in a pool of blood. The only words on it were the address and “$4.” (I know “$4” is not a word but it’s two when said out loud.) Karen brought it to Trina who glanced at it and said, “Fuck yes!” and volunteered to drive Karen and me.
I’m so glad that Karen is my best friend. I appreciate her initiative in finding and scheduling leisure activities for us on the weekends. I’m much more complacent than she, so I’m generally resigned to my boredom, but Karen will say, “Fuck! I’ll have to kill myself if I spend another weekend with my parents. And them.” And thank god that Trina has her license now. Karen attempted to plan fun weekend activities when we were both freshman but we didn’t know anyone with a car last year, so examples of our “fun times” included going to the park to complain about hanging out at the park and going to the library to read about parties.
Trina told Karen that she would pick her up around 11:00 and then come get me but I said no, Dad would never let me start my night out at that time, so instead I told Dad that I was sleeping over at Karen’s that night, but Karen actually had to go to dinner with her parents so I sat in Karen’s backyard and practiced texting by typing the Miranda rights warning and sending it to myself repeatedly. Karen got home around 9:00 and let me in and we got ready for the festivities. I’m not one of those girls that spends an hour getting ready to go out; it’s more like a half-hour. I just shower and blow-dry my hair and put on make-up to fit the occasion. This was a full-on party, so I applied some ultra light powder (for shine control) and nude lip gloss.
I don’t have a lot of clothes because I don’t really care and I don’t have the money to care even if I cared (but I don’t care). I usually just buy things at Forever 21 if Karen or Trina says it looks cute on me because I trust their opinions more than mine. I wear the stuff until it disintegrates which is usually after washing twice. (Sorry to hate on the quality. I know Forever 21 is Asian-owned.) Karen is a little more concerned with her appearance. Her thing is to look cute and approachable and like a potential liaison without looking trashy or eager or like an anime porn character. She also goes for the natural make-up look, although with a heavier application and with more expensive cosmetics. (She laughed at me when I bought the Jessica Simpson line, but I don’t care if it comes from a drugstore! It smells good! Sometimes I’ll even eat a little out of the bottle.) Karen also has her eye out for emerging trends. Like if the Mexican girls at our school all start wearing something, she won’t.
Trina pulled up outside the house right around 11:00 and pressed the horn without taking her hand off of it and there was just this steady HOOOOOOOOONK and on the way down to the car I started to wonder if maybe she had passed out with her head on the wheel. But she hadn’t. She was sober and indignant about the prospect of paying for alcohol. I think being with Jack has started to warp her concept of the real value of products, because she said, “If they’re only charging for the cups I hope they’re serving Grey Goose.”
Trina had the directions printed off of MapQuest and they involved using a freeway I had never been on before. It took us to a run-down section of town. It was pretty shady for an area with no trees. (Sorry.) We drove along quiet streets to a neighborhood where the houses were huge but really old. Most of them looked empty except for the one packed with hundreds of drunk teenagers. (This was where the party was.) We couldn’t find parking within five blocks, which was a good sign. If you can park quickly when attending a house party, don’t bother parking. (Daniel said that. It’s so pithy I wanted to use it but I felt guilty about not admitting he said it so I came back to write this half-way through writing the following paragraph.)
We walked to the front door where an average-looking guy flanked by two huge hulking guys was collecting admission. We all gave him four dollars each. (I had emailed Trina and Karen earlier that day to remind them to bring exact change.) He handed the bills to the hulking guy on his left and then the hulking guy on the right gave him three plastic cups. He asked us our names and wrote them on the cups with a Sharpie. Then he gave them to us and said to have a great time. He opened the door.
It was a rager, all right. The foyer of the house opened into a massive living room, undecorated except for the cheap, trashed couches lining the walls. The hardwood floors were thronged with revelers holding their cups and grinding. A DJ booth was set up in front of the old, dusty fireplace with two turntables (and a microphone! j/k) on top of a folding desk. I’ve never been to a party with an actual DJ before. I guess they’re relics these days. They’re sort of purposeless in today’s digital world. When you have access to every song ever recorded for free, why would you pay someone else to go online and steal it for you? But this DJ was actually spinning vinyl, so instead of Danity Kane and Timbaland, this was real, instrumental dance music, like what plays when they go to any gay bar on any television show, except instead of a diva going “ecstasyyy! I feel it, yeaaah” it had some black guy chanting what I thought was something tribal until I realized he was exhorting the crowd to bounce it to the left. They did.
I walked with Karen and Trina through the kitchen, out the back door, and down a small staircase into a huge sunken back yard. The music from the living room was pouring through the open windows of the house, but at a tolerable level you could talk over. It was a mob scene out there. In the corner, people formed a huge line to get to the kegs. Trina and Karen said we should go get in line, but I hate beer. It’s disgusting. People say you have to force yourself to drink it until you like it but that’s what they say about coffee and that’s also disgusting. The only bitter drink that I like is plain green tea and I’ve only developed a taste for it because for the first ten years of my life Mom used to tell me it was Kool-Aid. Trina asked if she could have my cup (I think she wanted to do the “two fists of victory” - this is the phrase I’ve coined for drinking two drinks at once; “double fisting” is just too unseemly to say out loud) but I told her I still wanted to use it.
There was no line at the kitchen sink to get water, so I filled my cup pretty quickly. Then I turned around and I’ll give you three guesses who was right there. No, one guess. No, I’ll just tell you. It was the cute Asian boy from the tennis team.
We stood still for a moment. I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for sink access so I stepped aside and waited for him to approach the faucet and but he didn’t and then when he realized what I was waiting for he said, “Oh, no, I’m fine” and gestured to his beer and that’s when I remembered that he was a boy at a party and wanted to drink beer and not tap water.
He said, “How’s it going?” I was a little thrown by this because he didn’t begin by introducing himself. Technically, we hadn’t yet met, so this offhand familiarity was a tacit acknowledgement that, yes, he had been looking at me during volleyball practice. I smiled and said, “It’s good.” Then we were both silent and I was glad we were at a party because the music (a looped female vocal was moaning “I’m cumming” over a Duran Duran sample) filled in what would have been an otherwise awkward pause. (The great thing about repetitive music is that it makes it hard to gauge how long it’s been since someone said something.) Then he asked how my first game went and I said, “We lost zero to 45. I mean zero to three” and he laughed so I had to re-adjust on the fly and pretend I had intended that to be funny. So I smiled. He extended his hand and said, “My name is Ryu, by the way.” I shook his hand and refrained from commenting on his name. Ryu is a Street Fighter Two character. Sometimes Asian parents who name their children before moving here give them unfortunate names (there’s a kid in our class named Lumpee) but he volunteered, “Yes, I am named after the Street Fighter character. My dad thought it conveyed strength and the courage to laugh.” Then the conversation died again but it was my fault because I forgot to say my name. Ryu reminded me and I said, “Oh!” and then right when I was about to say my name I thought of a joke and said, “Sub-Zero” and he laughed! I was ecstatic (on the inside, quietly) because I almost never make jokes so to chance one during a crucial first impression was a big gamble on my part. Then I said, “It’s Susan, actually.” And he nodded and sipped his beer and the music filled the silence and right then (or we may have just stood like that for fifteen seconds, the music was throwing me off), a white kid came to the top of the stairs leading down to the backyard and said, “Ryu, come on, man! Kevin brought a beer bong! And a bong!” He said he should get back to his friends and I think we were both secretly thankful to have a clean break on a high note.
That was the peak of the party for me. I rejoined Karen and Trina outside where they were still in line for the keg, although much closer to the front. They asked what I was doing in the house but I didn’t feel like subjecting myself to a two-on-one inquisition so I just said, “Getting water.” I was drinking water at the time, so they bought it. Karen said, “I wonder what kind of beer they have here” and Trina said, “It smells like Budweiser but it might be some other cheap lager, like Coors or Molson.” Eventually they got their beer (“Bud Light,” according to Trina) and we were scanning the party and doing a lap when we heard “Yo! Susie Q and Karen Carpenter and Trina, like Trina the rapper! Holla at ya boy!” and it was Sung. He was with Tha Remarkable Crew and they were just chilling in the less hectic far corner of the backyard drinking from their cups. We walked over and Tha Crew seemed happy to see us and we all hugged. The music where they were standing was still pretty loud and I hate raising my voice so I was going to listen to Karen for a while but Sung pointed to my cup and yelled, “What you got there?” I said, “Water” and he said, “Beer?” and I nodded and he pointed to his cup and said, “I’m sippin’ on that purple drank.” I thought that meant the stuff Sunny Delight is better than but Sung said, “Naw! There’s straight codeine in this! Purple drank is soda with cough syrup.” Later I asked a Crew member if he feared Sung driving him under the influence and he said, “No. You’re supposed to use prescription cough syrup. That’s Musinex.”
For the duration of the party I stood and talked to people I knew and enjoyed it. Karen wanted to break off and mingle with some of the hundreds of new people surrounding her but she didn’t want to do it alone and I didn’t want to do it at all. I’ve never understood why meeting new people is considered a leisure activity to begin with (it’s so much more serious than that) and even if we met someone truly interesting it would only result in a frustrating long-distance relationship.
We left around 2:00am. I was practically falling asleep with my eyes open because I’ve usually been asleep for four hours by then. I probably would have napped lightly in a sitting position on the couch but it was covered with people doing nitrous balloons. Also, the music was still going “move it ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho” which was rhythmic enough to be somewhat soporific but still too loud to sleep over which was really disorienting. Trina took Karen and me back to Karen’s house and we slept until noon on Sunday. Then I took the bus home and when I walked in my parents were none the wiser about my evening because I didn’t see either one until dinner that night anyway.
October 23, 2008
Today Sung brought a taco into Mr. Yick’s class during algebra so he could eat it in full sight of everyone. When Mr. Yick said, “Sung, what the hell are you doing?!” Sung said, “Oh, me? I’m just eating this taco. But I’m done now.” Then he gently dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin. Later, Mr. Yick asked if anyone in the class could solve the problem on the board and Sung said, “Ay yo, Yick, I got this one, baby.” Then he stood up and took his cell phone out of his pocket. Then he turned to the class and said, “Got to set this on vibrate. It’s called manners, people.” Then he strode to the board with gangsta swagger. Then he got it wrong.
Daniel hasn’t been coming home too much recently so dinners have been pretty quiet. I mean, they’re always quiet but when Daniel’s at the table the silence is palpable because it's the sound of Daniel and Dad refusing to speak to each other rather than everyone simply running out of things to talk about after ninety seconds.
Dad and Daniel don't get along. My father expects a level of near-unattainable obedience and scholastic achievement that he'll never get from Daniel. He gets it from me, but that’s not enough. I'm the girl. Dad says that Daniel has to shoulder the responsibility of carrying on and dignifying the Ching name. I think that’s an absurd expectation, because there are about 25 million Chings in the world. You would have to kill hundreds of thousands of us to even make a dent.
Daniel is intractable. It’s as simple as that. He does what he wants to do and threatening doesn’t work and neither does bargaining or pleading because my dad doesn’t know what those things are. I’m Daniel’s opposite in many ways. (I’m not saying I’m a pushover – I’m tractable.) It’s odd that we’re related, but I guess that’s a perfect example of biological determinism vs. the tabula rasa. (We just studied that topic in Humanitas while comparing George W. Bush to Hitler so I’m probably doing that thing where you use a phrase just because you heard it recently, but I really think it’s apt.)
It’s almost always been like this. From what I can discern from my parents’ elegiac remembrances, Daniel was pretty agreeable for the first few years of his life but that’s because he couldn’t talk for a year and between the ages of two and four he had yet to develop thug mentality. That didn’t happen until he started kindergarten.
The first aspect to emerge was Daniel’s profound hatred of any structured compulsory learning environment. In kindergarten, that meant refusing to paint. At home, Mom and Dad were shocked that their son would balk at the things they worked so hard for in this country to provide him, like cello lessons. Back then, Mom and Dad would mete out traditional punishments to Daniel, like a “time out” in the closet overnight or banning television for six months. It succeeded in tamping down some of Daniel’s more outlandish behavior because Daniel learned his lesson: don’t get caught. By the time Daniel started middle school, he stopped stirring strife. He got good (enough) grades and stopped talking in class. Then he stopped talking at home. Dad thought that perhaps Daniel’s grades and taciturnity indicated a new pliancy of character. They did not. Daniel decided to fly straight at home and school because he had started thugging and wanted the heat off him.
The upshot of all this is that I live a life of unique freedom for a teenage Asian girl. Most of us have to contend with doting parents but my parents don’t have the energy to raise both Daniel and me. I’m not saying that I’m neglected or unloved. I know they love me (I almost started to type “unconditionally” before catching myself) and provide me with everything a parent should by law. But I’ve never been subjected to stereotypically strict and oppressive Asian parenting because there’s none left over after Daniel gets it all. Not that I need any. I think a big part of the way I turned out comes from seeing how much Daniel’s antics truly upset my parents when I was young and realizing that if I simply didn’t do that stuff, they would leave me alone. I started testing my theory that day and I’ve been right since.
There haven’t been too many fights at the house these days anyway. They’re laying off him during senior year as he applies to college. That’s why he can get away with little things like not coming home for dinner five nights in a row. To be honest, it’s a nice respite from tension. But I wonder where he is.
Daniel hasn’t been coming home too much recently so dinners have been pretty quiet. I mean, they’re always quiet but when Daniel’s at the table the silence is palpable because it's the sound of Daniel and Dad refusing to speak to each other rather than everyone simply running out of things to talk about after ninety seconds.
Dad and Daniel don't get along. My father expects a level of near-unattainable obedience and scholastic achievement that he'll never get from Daniel. He gets it from me, but that’s not enough. I'm the girl. Dad says that Daniel has to shoulder the responsibility of carrying on and dignifying the Ching name. I think that’s an absurd expectation, because there are about 25 million Chings in the world. You would have to kill hundreds of thousands of us to even make a dent.
Daniel is intractable. It’s as simple as that. He does what he wants to do and threatening doesn’t work and neither does bargaining or pleading because my dad doesn’t know what those things are. I’m Daniel’s opposite in many ways. (I’m not saying I’m a pushover – I’m tractable.) It’s odd that we’re related, but I guess that’s a perfect example of biological determinism vs. the tabula rasa. (We just studied that topic in Humanitas while comparing George W. Bush to Hitler so I’m probably doing that thing where you use a phrase just because you heard it recently, but I really think it’s apt.)
It’s almost always been like this. From what I can discern from my parents’ elegiac remembrances, Daniel was pretty agreeable for the first few years of his life but that’s because he couldn’t talk for a year and between the ages of two and four he had yet to develop thug mentality. That didn’t happen until he started kindergarten.
The first aspect to emerge was Daniel’s profound hatred of any structured compulsory learning environment. In kindergarten, that meant refusing to paint. At home, Mom and Dad were shocked that their son would balk at the things they worked so hard for in this country to provide him, like cello lessons. Back then, Mom and Dad would mete out traditional punishments to Daniel, like a “time out” in the closet overnight or banning television for six months. It succeeded in tamping down some of Daniel’s more outlandish behavior because Daniel learned his lesson: don’t get caught. By the time Daniel started middle school, he stopped stirring strife. He got good (enough) grades and stopped talking in class. Then he stopped talking at home. Dad thought that perhaps Daniel’s grades and taciturnity indicated a new pliancy of character. They did not. Daniel decided to fly straight at home and school because he had started thugging and wanted the heat off him.
The upshot of all this is that I live a life of unique freedom for a teenage Asian girl. Most of us have to contend with doting parents but my parents don’t have the energy to raise both Daniel and me. I’m not saying that I’m neglected or unloved. I know they love me (I almost started to type “unconditionally” before catching myself) and provide me with everything a parent should by law. But I’ve never been subjected to stereotypically strict and oppressive Asian parenting because there’s none left over after Daniel gets it all. Not that I need any. I think a big part of the way I turned out comes from seeing how much Daniel’s antics truly upset my parents when I was young and realizing that if I simply didn’t do that stuff, they would leave me alone. I started testing my theory that day and I’ve been right since.
There haven’t been too many fights at the house these days anyway. They’re laying off him during senior year as he applies to college. That’s why he can get away with little things like not coming home for dinner five nights in a row. To be honest, it’s a nice respite from tension. But I wonder where he is.
October 26, 2008
We had our second blowout game. (I wonder if that phrase ever gets used by the winning team because it sounds kind of gay coming out of the victor’s mouth. That sentence sounded gay, too.)
When I found out we were playing against El Camino I wanted to prepare myself. I don’t mean that El Camino has a roundly feared volleyball team. No high school does. I mean that I went to Google and gleaned as much information as I could. (That’s what I normally mean by prepare.)
I found the MySpace profile of every teammate inside of sixty seconds. This is pretty quick even by the standards of my impressive internet skills (which I try to stay humble about) but particularly impressive because I didn’t know El Camino was also a high school until Monday. It was also easy because they had all filled their top 8s with their teammates. At first I thought they might be a truly dedicated team because that’s the type of thing real teammates who don’t get paid money for sports do but I noticed that not a single one of them had a picture in their profile of them playing volleyball together. Or separately. All of their photo captions were in lower case and misspelled (“umm yeah lets take it easy on the goldschlager shots for now!!!!”) and I started to suspect something when I went back to their front pages and noticed that every one of them had an embedded song blaring: these girls were stupid. Of course, I should have realized that immediately. They still had MySpace profiles. (People think MySpace is dead, but they’re wrong. It’s still popular with bands, whores, and a certain type of teen with no ambition in life beyond pimping her profile.)
My assumption was confirmed when we met for the first time. (You can always just tell immediately that someone’s stupid. Well, I can.) But they were the affable and lively kind of stupid, and as they batted about their inside jokes that I doubt were ever funny in context, I had to commend them for having hijacked a meaningless activity so they could waste time and gain academic credit at the same time. (I was going to take the word repetition out of that last sentence but I think I may have just stumbled onto a genuine paradox.) They seemed so light and carefree and I actually found myself envying their untroubled lives but only because Nikki was making unnecessary trouble.
Junior #1 was sitting on the ground and texting and Nikki was getting mad about it. I know it sounds like Nikki was justified but the game hadn’t even started yet. (The entire other team was just sitting on the ground and stretching.) Junior #1 wouldn’t turn it off or save it to draft so Nikki crouched in front of her and began clapping her hands between her face and the screen. That’s when Junior #1 shot up off the ground to grab her backpack and announced, “Fuck this then.” She began walking off but Nikki said, “Come back here! Fuck this then what?” so she walked back and said, “I only joined this team because I thought it might help get me into Sarah Lawrence. But now my girlfriend is transferring to NYU at the end of the semester. I figured I’d ride the team out for another season but now I’m taking orders from a 16-year-old when I’m dating a post-doc? It’s just silly, that’s all.” Then she left.
Nikki only had three juniors left so she had to start two sophomores. She chose #3 and #4. (I’ve titled myself #1. That sounds arrogant but it’s not. I’m not ranking my ability, it’s just my number, and starting yourself at any other number on an imaginary list in your head is obsequious.) The other team remained friendly during competition and became solicitous when they saw how bad we were. Then they started offering advice.
That’s what made this 0 – 3 loss a little more stinging.
When I found out we were playing against El Camino I wanted to prepare myself. I don’t mean that El Camino has a roundly feared volleyball team. No high school does. I mean that I went to Google and gleaned as much information as I could. (That’s what I normally mean by prepare.)
I found the MySpace profile of every teammate inside of sixty seconds. This is pretty quick even by the standards of my impressive internet skills (which I try to stay humble about) but particularly impressive because I didn’t know El Camino was also a high school until Monday. It was also easy because they had all filled their top 8s with their teammates. At first I thought they might be a truly dedicated team because that’s the type of thing real teammates who don’t get paid money for sports do but I noticed that not a single one of them had a picture in their profile of them playing volleyball together. Or separately. All of their photo captions were in lower case and misspelled (“umm yeah lets take it easy on the goldschlager shots for now!!!!”) and I started to suspect something when I went back to their front pages and noticed that every one of them had an embedded song blaring: these girls were stupid. Of course, I should have realized that immediately. They still had MySpace profiles. (People think MySpace is dead, but they’re wrong. It’s still popular with bands, whores, and a certain type of teen with no ambition in life beyond pimping her profile.)
My assumption was confirmed when we met for the first time. (You can always just tell immediately that someone’s stupid. Well, I can.) But they were the affable and lively kind of stupid, and as they batted about their inside jokes that I doubt were ever funny in context, I had to commend them for having hijacked a meaningless activity so they could waste time and gain academic credit at the same time. (I was going to take the word repetition out of that last sentence but I think I may have just stumbled onto a genuine paradox.) They seemed so light and carefree and I actually found myself envying their untroubled lives but only because Nikki was making unnecessary trouble.
Junior #1 was sitting on the ground and texting and Nikki was getting mad about it. I know it sounds like Nikki was justified but the game hadn’t even started yet. (The entire other team was just sitting on the ground and stretching.) Junior #1 wouldn’t turn it off or save it to draft so Nikki crouched in front of her and began clapping her hands between her face and the screen. That’s when Junior #1 shot up off the ground to grab her backpack and announced, “Fuck this then.” She began walking off but Nikki said, “Come back here! Fuck this then what?” so she walked back and said, “I only joined this team because I thought it might help get me into Sarah Lawrence. But now my girlfriend is transferring to NYU at the end of the semester. I figured I’d ride the team out for another season but now I’m taking orders from a 16-year-old when I’m dating a post-doc? It’s just silly, that’s all.” Then she left.
Nikki only had three juniors left so she had to start two sophomores. She chose #3 and #4. (I’ve titled myself #1. That sounds arrogant but it’s not. I’m not ranking my ability, it’s just my number, and starting yourself at any other number on an imaginary list in your head is obsequious.) The other team remained friendly during competition and became solicitous when they saw how bad we were. Then they started offering advice.
That’s what made this 0 – 3 loss a little more stinging.
October 29, 2008
It was a pretty boring weekend. I didn’t do anything, and in light of having “partied hardy” (I heard someone use that phrase in reference to subprime mortgage meltdown on 60 Minutes) last weekend it felt especially disappointing. On Saturday, Karen came over so we could be bored together. We got around to talking about how jealous we are of Trina because she’s always having some exciting night out on the town charged with sex or crime or both. Karen said she was jealous of Trina’s having a boyfriend. “I wish I even had a crush on someone. It’s not that there aren’t any cute boys at school, it’s just that there’s no one I get nervous around. You know?” And I knew what she meant but I didn’t agree with her because I don’t feel that way anymore. Karen caught my hesitancy and said, “What? Say it. I can tell the difference between your silences and hesitations” so I told her about Ryu.
There wasn’t much to tell but I described him looking at me on the tennis courts and recounted our party conversation near-verbatim. She asked what I had done since then to progress the relationship and I said nothing and she said, “You’ve got to create opportunities.” I know she’s right. I can’t just wait for it to fall into my lap. I’ll admit I’m intimidated. What’s really annoying about this is that in high school, when someone likes someone else, they’re usually already in the same clique so their friends can find out if the feelings are reciprocated by asking the other person leading questions and hypotheticals and all that other stuff that’s so juvenile and lame but at least makes it so much easier than having to deal with it yourself. My situation with Ryu is the total opposite of that because we don’t have any classes together and he’s not down with Tha Remarkable Crew or Daniel’s homiez. It’s such a headache. (The best case scenario is if someone tells you that a boy likes you and then you just assent to go out with him. It’s like the high school equivalent of arranged marriage without the beatings or forced labor.)
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore so I changed the subject to lining up something cool for us to do the next weekend. Karen agreed. She sat there for a moment and then her eyes lit up and she pointed at the wall and said, “Oh my god! That!” I turned and looked at my N’SYNC poster and said, “I barely like them anymore. I should take that down but I like the pastel color scheme” and she said, “No, THAT!” and I realized she was pointing at the rave flyer from when I went downtown. I had put it on my wall because I thought the graphics were so cool. It never occurred to me to actually go, but I looked at the date on it and saw that it’s this weekend. I turned to Karen and said, “We have to!”
We planned. I was excited. I had finally found a great weekend activity. (I also enjoy planning.) We knew that Trina would be down to drive, so that wasn’t an issue. And I could easily say that I was sleeping over at Karen’s. We looked at the poster and wondered what the rave would be like. There’s no address printed on it. It advertises five rooms and each one is dedicated to a different kind of music I’ve never heard of. I’m most intrigued by “happy hardcore” yet most apprehensive about “hardcore.” “Drum and bass” sounds like the lame half of a band and “jungle” sounds racist. I guess I’ve heard of “house” music, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it is. I only know that’s what’s playing when you walk into Abercrombie and Fitch. And the whole time you’re in Abercrombie and Fitch. And when you walk out of Abercrombie and Fitch because you’re getting a headache.
There wasn’t much to tell but I described him looking at me on the tennis courts and recounted our party conversation near-verbatim. She asked what I had done since then to progress the relationship and I said nothing and she said, “You’ve got to create opportunities.” I know she’s right. I can’t just wait for it to fall into my lap. I’ll admit I’m intimidated. What’s really annoying about this is that in high school, when someone likes someone else, they’re usually already in the same clique so their friends can find out if the feelings are reciprocated by asking the other person leading questions and hypotheticals and all that other stuff that’s so juvenile and lame but at least makes it so much easier than having to deal with it yourself. My situation with Ryu is the total opposite of that because we don’t have any classes together and he’s not down with Tha Remarkable Crew or Daniel’s homiez. It’s such a headache. (The best case scenario is if someone tells you that a boy likes you and then you just assent to go out with him. It’s like the high school equivalent of arranged marriage without the beatings or forced labor.)
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore so I changed the subject to lining up something cool for us to do the next weekend. Karen agreed. She sat there for a moment and then her eyes lit up and she pointed at the wall and said, “Oh my god! That!” I turned and looked at my N’SYNC poster and said, “I barely like them anymore. I should take that down but I like the pastel color scheme” and she said, “No, THAT!” and I realized she was pointing at the rave flyer from when I went downtown. I had put it on my wall because I thought the graphics were so cool. It never occurred to me to actually go, but I looked at the date on it and saw that it’s this weekend. I turned to Karen and said, “We have to!”
We planned. I was excited. I had finally found a great weekend activity. (I also enjoy planning.) We knew that Trina would be down to drive, so that wasn’t an issue. And I could easily say that I was sleeping over at Karen’s. We looked at the poster and wondered what the rave would be like. There’s no address printed on it. It advertises five rooms and each one is dedicated to a different kind of music I’ve never heard of. I’m most intrigued by “happy hardcore” yet most apprehensive about “hardcore.” “Drum and bass” sounds like the lame half of a band and “jungle” sounds racist. I guess I’ve heard of “house” music, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it is. I only know that’s what’s playing when you walk into Abercrombie and Fitch. And the whole time you’re in Abercrombie and Fitch. And when you walk out of Abercrombie and Fitch because you’re getting a headache.
October 30, 2008
I can't wait for this week to go by. I've been thinking about the weekend all day and I even got distracted in Mr. Yick's class, which never happens, because I haven't been excited about the weekend in six years. (I was nine; Halloween was that Sunday.) Karen and I pitched the rave idea to Trina on the way to Taco Bell, and she, of course, said yes.
When I got home, I researched raves on the internet. What I learned was: raves are not very popular anymore. Most of the websites are ghost towns with broken links and missing pictures and a forum where people are talking about when Daft Punk will release their second album. It’s hard to find a well-written site written by actual ravers because the internet was in its infancy when the scene was at its peak and also because ravers can not write well. I finally found an informative site written by someone who goes by the raver name BaGz oF cANdY. It was written in 1997 on a personal AOL page so the graphics are cheesy and the links were never formatted correctly to begin with and it’s a little dated but it’s authentic. I’m going to excerpt a passage here with my mad cut-and-paste skills:
BaGz oF cANdY’s GuIDe 2 dA ScEnE! By BaGz oF cANdY! cOpYRiGHt BaGz oF cANdY, 1997!
Hey, everyone! It’s ya girl, BaGz oF cANdY! I’ve been going 2 parties for 3 years now and I’m starting 2 notice a whole lot of new people out there in da scene. Now a lot of dese people are posers who just saw da Chemical Brothers on MTV and are jumping on da bandwagon. I’m not writing dis for dem! Posers will come and go but electronic music and raves will be popular 4ver! Dis is da guide for da real peeps who want to know what’s real!
PLUR – Dis is da code of da scene. It stands for “Peace Love Unity and Respect.”
Peace means just dat, dat we want to have a good time and go to parties and not to war. So you have 2 keeps it peaceful in da scene! Dis means you don’t create drama, you don’t start fights, and if someone steps on your foot when ur dancing, you just say, “Dat’s kewl!” and den hug. Don’t bring gunz to da parties! Don’t even own gunz!
Love is da most special feeling in da world and da scene is about spreading it and feeling it. You can show ur love for da scene in many ways! You can make bracelets and give dem to people or volunteer to pass out water to da kids or share your ketamine or do what ya girl does and pass out BaGz oF cANdY!! Just spread da love! Da scene is cool like dat, like even if you see someone from school dat you don’t like you can just give dem a hug and hold hands and trade massages and feel each other’s shirts for hours!
Unity means dat we are all in dis together and is also a song by Queen Latifah. Da person dancing next to you is your brother or sister (sometimes it’s hard to tell) and you should treat dem as such. Don’t be cliquey or exclude people from da scene just because dey were still listening to grunge a year ago!
Respect means having respect for da things dat make us different. Like if you meet someone new and start talking and den dey say dat Paul Oakenfold is better den Armand Van Helden you just have to respect dem even tho dey are obviously wrong! Also, have respect for da older people in da scene! You will be 20 years old someday, too!
Ok, so dat’s PLUR. Now on to…
Drugs – Da most important thing to remember is dat you don’t need to do drugs to have a good time at a rave. I know dis because I have read it on so many other rave websites on Geocities.
Choosing a rave – I have found dat a good rule of thumb is dat da cuter da flyer, da better da rave. Da best rave I ever went to had a flyer with a bunch of characters from Willy Wonka and da Chocolate Factory! When I got to da rave dey had da cutest decorations and da friendliest people and da strongest ecstasy ever! Da worst rave was da rave that turned out to be a Soundgarden concert. It seems like a dumb mistake but “Soundgarden” sounds like a rave! But it’s my own fault for breaking my own rule – da flyer wasn’t cute! (It had Soundgarden on it.)
Da day of da rave – You should meet up with your homiez at the house of whoever’s parents are out of town or neglectful. Remember dat you may be doing drugs so you should designate a driver who can drive good on drugs. Da promoters of da rave will not put da location of da rave on da phone line until a couple hours before it starts. And even den, it’s not da rave, it’s da map point! Da “map point” is where you go to get da map to da real rave. It’s a safety thing so dat if a cop shows up dey can be like, “What rave?” (Ravers is smart!) When you get da map you will probably be getting on da freeway and driving somewhere dat you are normally afraid of.
What to do when you get to da rave – Rave.
Dat’s basically it! I hope dis helps da new peeps to da scene. I want to give a quick shout to my homiez CuDDlefLoWERZ and MEthAbuSEr and everyone out dere I have ever matched bowls with!
When I got home, I researched raves on the internet. What I learned was: raves are not very popular anymore. Most of the websites are ghost towns with broken links and missing pictures and a forum where people are talking about when Daft Punk will release their second album. It’s hard to find a well-written site written by actual ravers because the internet was in its infancy when the scene was at its peak and also because ravers can not write well. I finally found an informative site written by someone who goes by the raver name BaGz oF cANdY. It was written in 1997 on a personal AOL page so the graphics are cheesy and the links were never formatted correctly to begin with and it’s a little dated but it’s authentic. I’m going to excerpt a passage here with my mad cut-and-paste skills:
BaGz oF cANdY’s GuIDe 2 dA ScEnE! By BaGz oF cANdY! cOpYRiGHt BaGz oF cANdY, 1997!
Hey, everyone! It’s ya girl, BaGz oF cANdY! I’ve been going 2 parties for 3 years now and I’m starting 2 notice a whole lot of new people out there in da scene. Now a lot of dese people are posers who just saw da Chemical Brothers on MTV and are jumping on da bandwagon. I’m not writing dis for dem! Posers will come and go but electronic music and raves will be popular 4ver! Dis is da guide for da real peeps who want to know what’s real!
PLUR – Dis is da code of da scene. It stands for “Peace Love Unity and Respect.”
Peace means just dat, dat we want to have a good time and go to parties and not to war. So you have 2 keeps it peaceful in da scene! Dis means you don’t create drama, you don’t start fights, and if someone steps on your foot when ur dancing, you just say, “Dat’s kewl!” and den hug. Don’t bring gunz to da parties! Don’t even own gunz!
Love is da most special feeling in da world and da scene is about spreading it and feeling it. You can show ur love for da scene in many ways! You can make bracelets and give dem to people or volunteer to pass out water to da kids or share your ketamine or do what ya girl does and pass out BaGz oF cANdY!! Just spread da love! Da scene is cool like dat, like even if you see someone from school dat you don’t like you can just give dem a hug and hold hands and trade massages and feel each other’s shirts for hours!
Unity means dat we are all in dis together and is also a song by Queen Latifah. Da person dancing next to you is your brother or sister (sometimes it’s hard to tell) and you should treat dem as such. Don’t be cliquey or exclude people from da scene just because dey were still listening to grunge a year ago!
Respect means having respect for da things dat make us different. Like if you meet someone new and start talking and den dey say dat Paul Oakenfold is better den Armand Van Helden you just have to respect dem even tho dey are obviously wrong! Also, have respect for da older people in da scene! You will be 20 years old someday, too!
Ok, so dat’s PLUR. Now on to…
Drugs – Da most important thing to remember is dat you don’t need to do drugs to have a good time at a rave. I know dis because I have read it on so many other rave websites on Geocities.
Choosing a rave – I have found dat a good rule of thumb is dat da cuter da flyer, da better da rave. Da best rave I ever went to had a flyer with a bunch of characters from Willy Wonka and da Chocolate Factory! When I got to da rave dey had da cutest decorations and da friendliest people and da strongest ecstasy ever! Da worst rave was da rave that turned out to be a Soundgarden concert. It seems like a dumb mistake but “Soundgarden” sounds like a rave! But it’s my own fault for breaking my own rule – da flyer wasn’t cute! (It had Soundgarden on it.)
Da day of da rave – You should meet up with your homiez at the house of whoever’s parents are out of town or neglectful. Remember dat you may be doing drugs so you should designate a driver who can drive good on drugs. Da promoters of da rave will not put da location of da rave on da phone line until a couple hours before it starts. And even den, it’s not da rave, it’s da map point! Da “map point” is where you go to get da map to da real rave. It’s a safety thing so dat if a cop shows up dey can be like, “What rave?” (Ravers is smart!) When you get da map you will probably be getting on da freeway and driving somewhere dat you are normally afraid of.
What to do when you get to da rave – Rave.
Dat’s basically it! I hope dis helps da new peeps to da scene. I want to give a quick shout to my homiez CuDDlefLoWERZ and MEthAbuSEr and everyone out dere I have ever matched bowls with!
October 31, 2008
I saw Junior #2 walking to class today and she asked how the team’s been. That’s how I learned that she had quit, too. She told me that after Junior #1's defection she had gone to see Nikki about altering the practice routine: she either wanted the team to get a lot better or spend a lot less time practicing. “She said that she didn’t appreciate my attempted usurping of her captaincy and to stop fermenting unrest. She meant ‘fomenting.’ I told her so and she said I was usurping her conversational authority. And she didn’t use the word ‘captaincy.” So Junior #2 quit on the spot because she wanted to go get another meaningless credit quickly before it got too late into the school year when it would seem suspicious. Or she might just volunteer at a soup kitchen to feed the homeless. “Colleges respect it and it’s much less of a time commitment – you don’t have to go to practice and it’s only a few times a month and after you sign in you can just take some soup and go home.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole thing during practice. I had been thinking about approaching Nikki myself and suggesting a reexamination of our training but not if it’s going to result in drama. And I’m not going to quit, either, because I’m no quitter! Actually, I did quit playing the piano on my fifteenth birthday. But that’s only because I never wanted to start in the first place and when Dad signed me up for lessons, he made me a deal: if I really hated it, I could quit after twelve years.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole thing during practice. I had been thinking about approaching Nikki myself and suggesting a reexamination of our training but not if it’s going to result in drama. And I’m not going to quit, either, because I’m no quitter! Actually, I did quit playing the piano on my fifteenth birthday. But that’s only because I never wanted to start in the first place and when Dad signed me up for lessons, he made me a deal: if I really hated it, I could quit after twelve years.
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