“So, what kind of South Asian are you?” the bartender asks coolly. Actually, it’s more of a statement than a sincere question. He’s leaning against the bar, his arms outstretched with a cocky smile playing on his lips. His head slightly cocked to one side.
A cock, indeed.
I have a knee-jerk reaction on my barstool and pinch my friend Ariel’s thigh. Ariel and I—both women who are ambiguous Asian-blends—are slightly taken aback at his blatant accusation disguised as a question. Yet, we are no longer surprised. We eye each other, our brains pinging in unison: “Woohoo, here we go again!”
It’s become routine.
“Excuse me?” I say with not-so-subtle contempt.
“Oh, I mean, like, I lived in China for a bit, so I speak some Chinese even though I’m white,” the bartender laughs, “and I’m interested in knowing where you ladies are from.” He says this last part in a, what I assume he assumes, low sexy growl. He thinks he’s being charming.
Fetishizing someone’s race? Not too high on my list of panty-droppers.
“I live here in New York. My friend lives in Atlanta.”
“Cool, but like. . . where were you born?”
Sly.
“Uhh, we are originally from Hawai‘i,” I relent.
“Oh! So, Japanese then? Nice. I was going to guess Taiwanese, but, I don’t know, something was off.”
I nod sharply while Ariel tries to diffuse the situation by reluctantly adding, “Yeah, sometimes people think I’m like, Thai.”
“Yeah, I totally see it. But you-”, he winks at me, “you don’t look completely Japanese. What else are you?”
“Well, We- I’m mixed. Japanese, Spanish, Russian-”
“Wow, so that makes you even more exotic!” he beams.
Exotic.
My favorite word to dissect. Am I an ancient rug? A vintage lamp? Maybe a cool kind of fruit like a Kiwano!
“Uh, yeah, sure. So, can we get our check?”
***
The previous year, I visited Ariel in Atlanta over Thanksgiving break. As I packed my bag for the trip, Ariel joked over FaceTime, “My town is already in shock when I say that I’m mixed. I don’t know what they’re going to do when they find out there are two of us. The town is going to shut. Down.”
On my first night in Atlanta, we decided to play a fun little drinking game at a club: take a shot every time someone asks us if we are related, simply for being some kind of Asian. Together.
We almost died of alcohol poisoning. Ariel lost her purse. I lost my voice and my will to live.
Cause of Death: Ignorance.
Well, not our ignorance, but other people’s ignorance. It’s become all too familiar.
Seemingly innocent barrages of loaded phrases are slung at me whether I’m in a club in Atlanta or at home in Brooklyn. But I think that I’ve developed a magic trick for this kind of ignorance: when a man tells me, “Omygosh, you look just like my favorite anime character!” while breathing heavily and sporting a semi, I have learned to instantaneously disappear in a poof of “buh-byes!” and eye-rolls. Maybe an involuntary lip curl. Riding off into oblivion—tranquility at long last!
I’d like to think that nothing could surprise me anymore. I’ve been told that I have “beautiful almond-chinky eyes,” by a woman who believed she was bestowing grace and poise upon me. I’ve had an old man rub up against me at a cafe while exhaling, “I love Japanese girls,” down the back of my neck. I’ve been asked if my pussy is horizontal instead of vertical because apparently, that’s some kind of horrific myth about Asian women (and in case anyone is wondering—yes, yes it is).
I’ve heard it all. Every lewd, sexualized, racist thing that I could possibly imagine.
But while my experiences with racism and fetishization are at times vicious, valid, and all my own, there are things that I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to walk into a store in Kansas and have two old white women recoil in anger and fear. I don’t know what it’s like to wonder if I’ll be shot sitting in my own home or savagely beaten for picking up a cellphone. I don’t know what it’s like to gasp “I can’t breathe” while in a NYPD officer’s illegal chokehold. I don’t have to live with that kind of fear.
My boyfriend does. And the stories of our weirdest racial experiences have become our love language.
He has narrowly escaped transforming into a petting zoo animal, ducking as a stranger reached out to pat his hair. He’s been told over and over, “I would’ve totally voted for Obama for a third term,” which is usually followed up with a swift, “So, why can’t I say the n-word? It’s in all of my favorite rap songs!” He has heard it all—words meant to belittle and demean, cast casually and made to detonate on impact. Every racist, demoralizing thing that he could possibly imagine.
We have heard it all.
Like a guy, unprovoked, announcing on the train, “I don’t believe in interracial relationships!” Dickhead, I don’t believe in you. Yet, somehow you still exist. And damn, can’t we, a gorgeous man with the body of a taut little action-figure and an adorable miniature shiba-inu ride the subway in peace?
Not to say that we never find peace or solidarity. It’s there, in little pockets of New York, unassuming and delicate. We find ourselves nodding towards other interracial couples that we spot in restaurants and cafes, silently wishing them well. Each, I’m sure, has a long history of loaded battles with loaded words, wounds from the fallacious failings of others, the careless combustion of a comment carried too far.
The world can be stupid. And scary. And downright ambiguous. Horizontal instead of vertical.
But at least, for now, we can all die (or perhaps learn to thrive) by ignorance. Together.