Post Category → Life’s Awkward

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 31.

This past weekend, I turned 31 years old in the way that I am now accustomed to – with little fanfare, a bit of reflection, and too much ruminating about all the things I could not accomplish since my last anniversary of birth.

I know that the societal expectation for birthday celebrations is to have some raucous soiree where I throw up between 2 vehicles on Market Street. Having done that on my 29th birthday and ending up with the acid reflexivity of an old Asian grandmother, my birthdays have transitioned into a quieter affair – heavy on the thinking, light on the festive puking.

I’m not sure what it is about birthdays that send my brain into a checklist manifesto of the broken promises I made to myself – all the incomplete pieces of writing, missed deadlines, an imbalance of work relative to hanging out with family and friends.

I don’t know what it is, but here’s my attempt to balance the narrative with moments of gratification – a reminder that although things don’t always as planned, there’s always some unexpected joy along the way.

So here’s 14 things – cool things, weird things, random things – that are bringing me joy on this 31st year of life:

  1. I chose “14 things” because 31 could be 3×1, which, if you change to 3+1, equates to 4. 4 is the equivalent of 1×4, which could be written as (1)(4). If you remove the parentheses, this is 14. Thus, I chose 14 because it’s my blog and I’m too old and tired to write 31 things and you’re too busy and prone to boredom to read 31 things.
  2. I’m 31 years old and yet almost all my Pandora stations somehow turn into Pitbull stations.
  3. I’m 31 years old and when I see a trampoline, I’m going to fucking jump on it…as gracefully as a 31 year old would:

 

  1. In my adolescence, I always thought that my adulthood birthday gifts would become more refined over time – you know, Swarovski crystals, Celine Dion perfume, really tiny silver forks to eat with tiny finger foods or whatever else I believed sophisticated white people got for their birthdays. Instead, my 31st birthday gifts were BETTER including:
  • A donut shaped, travel-sized portable fog machine.
  • A plastic goat that screams like this when you push it.
  • Abraham Lincoln Bandages (“I will heal your wound as I healed a nation.”)
  • GIF(TS) featuring otters playing basketball:

You otter play basketball.

  1. Instead of reading things like Camus or Dostoyvesky (or whatever else 31-year-old people read), I have revisited my love for the Ann M. Martin Series The Babysitter’s Club because why the hell not? As a kid, I was absolutely smitten with the character of Dawn – a staunch environmentalist from California who doesn’t eat junk food and is kind of obnoxious about sustainable culture and…
  2. …OMFG, I’M MARRYING DAWN IN REAL LIFE.

My California Girl.

  1. Speaking of sustainable living, check out my dog in a sweater that my mom made out of her old leg warmer.
  1. In reference to my mom, I found it beautifully coincidental and poetic that construction on her hurricane damaged home began on her birthday in December and ended near my birthday in January.
  2. Sometimes it takes difficult circumstances to remind me of how lucky I am to be surrounded by friends and family who contributed to our rebuild efforts – through financial contributions, countless hours of labor, and so much emotional support.
  3. During Hurricane Harvey, I lost almost all of my books, photos, and physical manifestations of childhood, high school, and college memories. As an exceptionally nostalgic person, it’s still devastating to think about this. Luckily, just two months prior to the hurricane, I went home and felt compelled to bring some of my favorite items from childhood back to San Francisco – fatefully salvaging some of my memories that are still important to me at the age of 31 (like my bomb ass 6 year old bangs):

Salvaged Memories.

  1. I saw this brilliant drawing by the 9-year-old child of a family friend and thought, “THAT’S ME.”

Self-Portrait @ 31.

  1. On my birthday in 2018, I had a chance to watch the movie I, Tonya, and relive Tonya’s moment of glory – being the first American figure skater to land a triple axel in competition.  But, really, the point of me telling this story is to tell you that Kristi Yamaguchi is still a stone cold fox.
  2. Kristi Yamaguchi lives in the Bay Area.  This means I still have a chance, right?
  3. 31 is 3×1, which, if you change to 3+1, equates to 4, which is the equivalent of 1×4, which could be written as (1)(4), which is 14.  Really, that’s all I want to be at the age of 31 – a 14-year-old teenage kid at heart.  So, my hope for this 31st year of life is to preserve that adolescent wonder, optimism, and dreaminess that’s been essential to my moments of joy.