Post Category → Humor

I am talking to my dad.

Having a conversation on the phone with my family is something I never had to do until I moved away from home.  Actually, truly talking to my parents in general was a rarity — a symptom of what happens when people live and co-exist together.

As soon as I moved, the telephone became to the primary conduit for engagement between my parents and I.  I was initially shocked at how much conversation actually occurs when two people are talking to one another without distractions and filters — no places to go, no food to eat at the dinner table, no dogs running around/licking themselves, no television.  Just two people trying to fill transmitted sound waves with words.

In 2005, my conversations with my dad struggled to reach the 1 minute mark.  Yesterday, in 2018, I finally broke the 5 minute mark.  To celebrate this critical moment, I have mapped out a typical conversation with my dad from minute 0 to minute 5.

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Next Week:  A map of a conversation with my mom.  Oh boy.

I am gluten free Jen.

I am that person now.

I’m that girl you invite to dinner, but question whether she’s that interesting enough to make this endeavor worthwhile. You know, the person who you start exerting effort over the stove for and then think, fuck, fuck, fuck in the middle of roasting a giant cheese and breadcrumb stuffed leg of lamb because you remembered that they can eat neither lamb nor cheese nor bread nor giant things nor, for that matter, cooked food.

You know, the kind of person whose diet prevents them from eating anything except, perhaps, a single carrot that grew in a sterilized vacuum, free from the influence of microbes, pesticides, and controversial opinions about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Carrot lightly spritz with salt water, please.

I’m that person now. Don’t invite me to dinner, because I wouldn’t want to invite my food sensitive ass either. Besides, I won’t be listening to you. I’ll just be looping a montage of the Cheetos, fried chicken, and beer I can no longer consume – like a gastronomic In Memoriam set to the painful, yearning melody of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”.

You may call it dietary restrictions or “gluten sensitivity”. I just call it nihilistic dietary sadness.

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Some people forget who they are amid tragic circumstances like war or natural disaster. Such circumstances reveal the fragility of being human – that, free of societal comfort and constraint, we sway dangerously between savagery and humanity.

My experience of near-humanistic loss was not in a war zone or amid scorched earth. I wasn’t imperiled by flood rains or famine. I was in the exceptionally well-lit frozen food section at Whole Foods.

There I stood, amid dozens of other young professionals with pansy ass nutritional preferences, choosing between the infinite number of frozen pizza options. I had narrowed it down to 2 products – an organic version of the Tostino’s Pizza Roll1 and an item that purported to be a gluten-free, dairy free pizza.

As I held the glass door of the freezer ajar, I felt the physical whoosh of circulated, refrigerated air hit my face and the psychological gust of question after question:

Who am I?

Who is Jen?

Is this Jen now?

Is Jen me?

Is this me?

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The Jen of yore is a chubby kid whose childhood diet was almost exclusively Vietnamese. By virtue of the cuisine, I defaulted on a life that was gluten-free – rice noodles, rice dishes, rice-wine vinegar, rice paper.

When you raise children with little money, the strategy is to bribe your brood with cheap, empty things. My brilliant parents withheld what they considered “American food” unless I gave them what they wanted – Arby’s for A’s, Egg McMuffins for exemplary handwriting, curly fries for a clean room. Gluten became an elusive privilege.

Like a fat Pavlovian dog, I associate the thick, greasy air surrounding a Jack-In-The-Box with nostalgia and American success. Today, nothing feels more satisfying than eating a Sourdough Jack with a side of chili cheese curly fries.2

Do you think the child in me cared about multiplication tables or knowledge or the inherent goodness that is learning for the sake of learning? NOPE. Just give me the McNuggets and don’t you dare forget the sweet and sour sauce.

In gluten, I see the hunger of youth – the luminous energy of a girl who could write a story in one-night, run to the local campus pub, and down an entire pitcher of Blue Moon. I taste the countless bagels I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – a decision born of collegiate poverty and caring not of body, but of creating, writing, and imaging.

And I remember the people all around me who devoured the same glutinous, gluttonous shit with me. The companions who stared into a dark midnight sky with me, dreaming of a day we would drink better than Keystone Light. The dirty café on Wisconsin Avenue that served the best 3 AM french fries with friends. The pizza shop on Haight Street that always rectified a disappointing Friday with slices covered in whole gloves of garlic. All the people I texted reminding them that it was Two-Dollar Thigh Tuesday at Popeye’s.

That’s who I am.

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I’m also the girl who, months ago, went to my fourth doctor in 10 years to resolve long-standing skin issues. For much of my life, I have itched, scratched, and itched, resulting in cycle so tumultuous that it would jolt me awake in my sleep. It became so entrenched in my sleeping habits that my partner learned to unconsciously scream No! No! No! and slap my hand away if she heard scratching in her sleep.

Anyone who has had an itch that never goes away knows that the sensation becomes both a physical and emotional irritation. The most infuriating part of insatiable itching was that I could never figure out why the urge existed. It became a part of me.

Through 20 years and a half-dozen doctors, I never had a diagnosis – only conjectures that blamed my dogs, Houston (the entire city, its polluted airspace and its climate), San Francisco (the entire city, its cold airspace, and its weird ass people), dryer sheets (???), and a confounding, physiologically-impossible claim that I had chlamydia3 (which ended up a false positive, thank you STD Jesus).

Dog-less, dryer sheet-less, and STD-less, I still itched. The more I itched, the less I slept, the less I felt like myself. Hazy-eyed, mildly desperate, and on the suggestion of doctor number 4, I did something that I never thought Jen would do. I went on an elimination diet. Out went the bread, then the pasta, then those delicious Red Lobster cheddar bacon biscuits, and then, worst of all, the beer.

“I can’t imagine you without a beer,” said my friend after inviting me, to all places, a brewery towards the finale of my elimination nightmare. I hate my life, I thought as I drank the only thing I could: non-alcoholic kombucha.4

There went most of the carbs – donuts, cookies, French bread – I consumed burning my candle at both ends in a dreamy, ardent desire to write. There went the dream of one day living an Asian version of the King of the Hill opening credits. And there, on the other side, went the itching.

Like a phoenix that cannot be feathered, dredged in breadcrumbs, and deep fried – I rose, a new gluten-free me.5

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I’m that person now. I hope you’ll still invite me to dinner.6

I am traveling.

In response to the confounding internet phenomenon of over-romanticizing travel, below is my interpretation of the “Stages of Cultural Adaptation” chart:

 

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Pre-Departure Phase:

  • (1) Futile, apocalyptically stressful attempt to do 2 weeks worth of work in 3 days.
  • (2) Anxiety about Zika and Dysentery.

Arrival Abroad/Honeymoon Phase:

  • (3) “Fuck yeah, this bag of indeterminate fried things is 4 cents.”

Culture Shock Phase:

  • (4) “Someone is slowly and systematically stealing my underwear from this Vietnamese laundry.”

This is a true story. Please see what I wrote in 2008 about my experiences with underwear theft during my study abroad experience in Vietnam:

Two weeks ago, I became very disillusioned with my inability to maintain a steady, reliable supply of underwear in Vietnam.  I had just washed my clothes at the giat ui – a place which will now be referred to as the black hole of Jen’s multi-colored floral undergarments.  In my confusion, I decided to count my underwear, a rather awkward scene in and of itself since I was both counting them and folding them into little squares because I am an awkward person.

As it turns out, currently walking the streets of Saigon is a small Vietnamese woman adorning my pink and blue speckled cotton fruit of the looms.  On one hand, I am an advocate for Vietnamese people wearing underwear.  It is a good thing.  On the other hand, I am not a fan of Vietnamese people wearing my underwear – and if they do, they should at least ask before deciding to put them on, thereby allowing me to stare at them for being nuts and, to an extent, very Vietnamese.

According to the inventory of my folded square underwear (it saves room), the giat ui has been stealing underwear from me.  This has been a consistent trend since they have also stolen underwear from the other Americans on this trip.  Not socks, not shirts, not pants.  Underwear.  The best part of this story is that none of us know where else we can possibly go to wash clothes and thus drop our clothes off every week at said giat ui knowing that we will suffer further underwear depletion due to the underground world of pastel panty trade in Vietnam.

Adaptation Please:

  • (5) “I found a trusted supplier of new underwear, but my American body only fits size 6XL.”

Here is the second part of my harrowing tale of the underground underwear theft circa 2008:

Facing a shortage of underwear, I ventured into the supermarket to purchase more.  Complicating the process is the fact that my American, calcium fortified diet has afforded me, in the words of my sister, Asian J-Lo-esque “Bronx booty magic”.  Yay calcium!  Although this bodes well for long motorcycle rides, it makes things infinitely harder when one must purchase underwear, resulting in situations like stretching underwear in the middle of Vietnamese supermarkets or, as I would like to call, a typical Sunday morning.

Vietnamese people at the check-out counters have a tendency to judge people for their purchases.  On one particular Sunday morning, I was in need of underwear, water, and crackers.  This story ends with the check-out lady looking at me with amusement as she scanned my underwear, my Aquafina, and my saltine crackers.  If I had enough Vietnamese in me, I would have looked her in the eye and said, “Why yes, I eat saltines and drink water in my underwear.  Thanks.”

Pre-Return Ups and Downs Phase:

  • (6) “Oh!  Meat on a stick.”
  • (7) Shitting in a literal pile of Chinese garbage.

Also a true story:

After a long hike through southwest China’s Tiger Leaping Gorge, I hastily consumed a very greasy, satisfying bowl of fried rice. I proceed to a tour bus en route to our hotel nearly 2 hours away. Within 5 minutes of sitting, I develop painful, debilitating pains – the kind of pain one obtains when you ravenously consume dubious bowls of fried rice. I can best describe the pain as feeling as if a wild, rabid raccoon was stuck in my bowels and desperately clawing it’s way out – and down.

My partner, who is fluent in the Chinese dialects of Cantonese and Toisan, knows approximately 10 phrases of Mandarin. She somehow strings together a few of these phrases to successfully halt the bus so that I can scamper to a bathroom stall in the middle of a rural market. In my anxiety about holding up a bus full of Chinese people, I am too nervous and ultimately fail to go to the bathroom. I return to the bus. The pain returns. I teeter on the edge of exploding.

A sweaty, painful hour and 45 minutes later, I cannot hold it anymore. My partner convinces the driver to let us off in middle of a street, in an unknown town, in the middle of China with 10 phrases of Mandarin known between the two of us. I desperately search for a bathroom. There are no bathrooms, but there is most definitely a field of garbage.

End of story.

  • (8) Hella fluids.
  • (9) “I feel like I am going to die of dysentery.”

Return Home/Missing Other Culture Phase:

  • (10) “Life was so care-free abroad, except that time I almost died of dysentery.”
  • (11) Full-blown travel superiority complex.

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Editor’s Note:  I will be traveling, developing new materials, and intensively working on a new digital and audio project in the months of July and August.  This blog will be back in weekly form on Monday, 8/28.  I’m looking forward to sharing more then!