Love Like Hate (2 page)

“Not really. I’ve only been to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.”

“That’s three more countries than I’ve been to,” Kim Lan remarked before changing the subject. “Has your mom met Huyen yet?”

“They’ll meet for the first time at the wedding.”

Kim Lan smiled a tight smile.
If I were this Viet Kieu’s mom
, she thought,
I wouldn’t settle for such a plain girl
. She still couldn’t believe that Huyen was marrying a Viet Kieu. She looked at the couple as they leaned across the table to kiss each other, their tongues sticking
out, their faces glowing. Kim Lan had never seen Huyen so happy. Wearing a pair of expensive jeans, she already looked like a Viet Kieu.

After they had left, Kim Lan kept thinking of the Viet Kieu. Although Vietnamese, he didn’t resemble any of the men in her life. The Viet Kieu seemed purposeful, unlike Sen, who spent his days playing chess and going to the whorehouses. The Viet Kieu exuded a quiet confidence, unlike her husband, Hoang Long, who seethed with wounded anger. The Viet Kieu made himself completely at home in a strange environment, unlike her son, Cun, who could barely talk to a stranger. Although they were contemporaries, the differences between the Viet Kieu and Cun were outright shocking.
If only we would drink fresh milk and eat a piece of cheese occasionally
, Kim Lan reflected,
we wouldn’t be a country full of stunted bodies and rotting teeth, living in vast malarial swamps where the streets are paved with oil slicks and dog shit
. The Viet Kieu’s teeth were even and white, while Cun’s were crooked and brown. The clincher, however, was that the Viet Kieu seemed totally happy, and he had made his girlfriend totally happy. After Hoa came home from school that day, Kim Lan gave her daughter a thorough appraisal and firmly concluded:
My beautiful girl deserves nothing less than a Viet Kieu
.

2
WHATTUP?

T
he Viet Kieu’s name was Jaded Nguyen and he was a manager-trainee at a McDonald’s on Passyunk Avenue, a street of sooty row houses cutting diagonally across South Philadelphia. Geno’s and Pat’s Steaks were on Passyunk, and so was Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar, famous for a disused ankle-high pissing trough hugging the length of the L-shaped bar. Jaded’s salary was $16,000 a year, before tax, which forced him to live in Grays Ferry, one of the dumpiest neighborhoods in Philadelphia. He rarely went out and when he did, he rarely allowed himself more than three beers, either Rolling Rock or Yuengling, the two cheapest brands available. Like all losers, he alternated between meekness and aggression, and could only relax when he was totally drunk. These traits did not endear him to many women—of any race or shape—and he could not hit on the girls at work, for fear of being laid off for sexual discrimination.

Jaded was also Asian, which meant that he was smaller. If he were Yao Ming or Dat Nguyen, it wouldn’t have mattered, but he wasn’t even Ichiro size, more like Apolo Ohno, except not that good-looking, and he didn’t have Michael Chang’s born-again faith to rock himself to sleep each night. (If there was one guy who annoyed Jaded more than Michael Chang, it was Jackie Chan and his stunted sexuality. The guy clowned and kicked ass, but never got laid. About the only Asian guys to get laid in Western movies were the ones conjured up by the feverish mind of Marguerite Duras.) Being boy-sized and
without facial hair, Jaded was regarded by other people, if only subconsciously, as an incomplete man or even a boy trying to act like a man. During a good year, when all the stars were lined up right, he could bed a woman maybe five or six times, but Jaded had also gone through many months without even a cheap feel, unless he went to a go-go bar. He endured these dry periods by ogling amateur blondes flashing on the streets of Prague at nakedinpublic.com. He also subscribed to nastycheerleaders.com, republicanbabeswithguns.com, sexykitchens.com, innermostdreams.com and even youngpee.com. Upskirt, downskirt, dominatrix, hog-tied, slaves, elderly nuns in combat boots, elementary schoolteachers made to kneel naked then spanked, infants, corpses—he sampled them all with his eyes. He couldn’t help himself because they were always available. The coolest website, however, was nakedmcbabes.com. Thousands of real McDonald’s workers worldwide posed on the Web with only parts of their uniforms on. Nothing gross or tacky, no ketchup or mustard smeared in unlikely places, no showers of pickles, just crew members disrobing into artistic poses. It was terribly exciting. Jaded could recognize Lakeesha and Tina from his very own McDonald’s.
Dang, you gurls are real fine, I’m loving it
. There were even gay and lesbian sections. It seemed like everyone and his grandmother were posing naked on the internet. Jaded envisioned a day, very soon, when one could google any name whatsoever and find nude photos of that person on the internet. Perhaps one should call it the idternet. Jaded never sneaked into stables or pens, however. He didn’t go there. “That stuff’s sick.”

The only lasting solution to his dilemma, Jaded finally figured, was to cut his dick off, or go overseas. If he were French, he would have booked a flight to Bangkok. Italian, he would have gone to Romania or Cuba. Since he was a Vietnamese American, Jaded suddenly discovered a deep love for his ancestral homeland. Logging in to Vietnamese chat rooms as —both and , his first choices, had been
taken; he dismissed as too crude—he attracted many girls inside Vietnam. They promptly emailed him their photos. Each morning, he opened his inbox to find it overloaded with girls posing in
ao dais
, prom dresses, pajamas and bikinis. Smiling, grinning and puckering their lips, they swiveled, bent over and arched their backs, to feature good sides and hide defects. They peekabooed behind beaded curtains, palm trees and potted cacti, then reemerged glistening from oceans and swimming pools. They sat cross-legged on swings and moon slivers in photo studios, stood shivering in front of Swiss chalets and Norwegian fjords. Some posed with musical instruments, most often a guitar or a koto. One girl in horn-rimmed glasses sat stiffly at a piano; an extra-gifted one blew into a flute, a clarinet, an oboe and a saxophone. Taking his time, he chose a dozen semifinalists and invited them to video chat with him. Five girls had to forfeit since they didn’t have a computer or a webcam at home. That didn’t bother Jaded since he didn’t want to marry a poor one—her family would be too grabby, he figured. Three girls soon eliminated themselves by allowing their moms to pop onscreen to say hello. One mom even had her hair streaked blonde, as if she herself was auditioning. Among the finalists, only Huyen had a computer in a private bedroom, which allowed them to chat late into the night without interference. Neither was shy—whatever Jaded did, she matched—and that’s why he finally picked her. They were both naked when he proposed. It went without saying that Huyen was also good-looking. Like most mothers, Kim Lan devalued other people’s daughters, overvalued her own. Landing at Tan Son Nhat Airport, Jaded felt like a winner at last. He was the rich and ugly American come home to conquer.

For Huyen to be chosen by Jaded was like winning a beauty contest. To score this trip to paradise, and not for a two-week vacation but a lifetime, she had to compete with as many girls as Jaded had the stamina to weed out. Though she had outclassed the competition, Huyen was not enamored with her own beauty. She
considered it a useful tool, of course, but not to be taken too seriously. It was a physical thing after all, something easily soiled and degradable. She was actually well educated. A third-year architecture student, she had to interrupt her study because she didn’t dare make Jaded wait. If he changed his mind, she would lose the chance of a lifetime.

Before coming to America, Huyen’s only knowledge of the country was through the movies. She had seen hundreds of American films in which smiling, beautiful people lived in vast houses with slick, space-age appliances. Even the dogs and cats appeared gorgeous. American gangsters dressed better and were better looking than Vietnamese ones. The rare American bums also had a sense of style. They were all professional actors, after all. The American films that made it to Vietnam were wet dreams of glamour concocted by Hollywood. These, more than anything else, were the root cause of America’s immigration problems. John Cassavetes and David Lynch were not on the rental list.

The day Huyen left Vietnam was the happiest of her life. Feeling like an astronaut before liftoff, chosen and feted, she waved at her family standing outside the terminal, blurry through the smudgy plate glass, and thought,
This is too good to be true, they will stop me from leaving
. Going through the exit formalities at Tan Son Nhat Airport, she was frightened into stuttering by a grim-faced customs officer. As an instrument of escape, the plane itself felt forbidden. Boarding behind a wide-shouldered tourist, she entered the Boeing 727, her first airplane ever, looked around at the cozy cabin and knew she was already in an improved universe. Sitting snugly beneath her private spotlight, she felt like an undeserving extra in a Hollywood movie.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, Huyen noticed food carts being wheeled out. “Do white people get to eat first?” she asked Jaded.

“What are you talking about?”

“See those people? They’re eating before us.”

“They’re vegetarians!” Jaded shook his head and sighed. “You must stop thinking of yourself as inferior. We’re equal to everyone here.”

But she did feel inferior. The trained courtesy of the Singapore Airlines stewardesses moved and embarrassed her. She felt undeserving of their gentle attention. How different they were from the surly Vietnamese nurse who had forced her and five others to stand naked together at the medical exam, a process she had to endure before being allowed to emigrate. She was also embarrassed that there was a whole world out there she knew nothing about.
So this is how people really live
. During a layover, she went into downtown Singapore for a quick look and was stunned that any city could be so clean and orderly, with so many nice cars on perfectly paved roads, and everyone dressed so well. A public bathroom she entered felt positively luxurious, with no trace of mess, smells or mildew—no biology, in short. An uplifting experience, it was a sharp contrast to the dispiriting ordeal of Vietnamese shithouses. Arriving in Philadelphia, she was impressed by the airport, freeways and skyscrapers, but as the taxi dropped them off in Grays Ferry, she suddenly found herself on the set of
Eraserhead. We live here?!

Unless you’re living in the best neighborhoods, Philadelphia is indeed everything David Lynch claims it is: a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent and decaying place. Huyen was so shocked, she wanted to go back to Vietnam immediately. Only pride prevented her from doing so. Grays Ferry was sullen and desolate and everyone seemed paranoid. Saigon is often squalid but it is never desolate. Vietnam is a disaster, agreed, but it is a socialized disaster, whereas America is—for many people, natives or not—a solitary nightmare. If Americans weren’t so stoic and alienated, if they weren’t so cool, they wouldn’t be so quiet about their desperation.

Huyen could handle poverty, but she had no aptitude for paranoia, the one skill you needed to survive in Philadelphia. In Saigon
you dreaded being cheated or robbed; in Philadelphia you feared getting raped and killed. In the end, Philadelphia was even worse than
Eraserhead
, because it didn’t last for 108 minutes but went on forever. As in Vietnam, Huyen sought comfort in American movies to escape from the real America she could see just outside her window. Every American home was its own inviolable domain, a fortress with the door never left open. The rest of the world could go to hell as long as there was enough beer in the fridge and a good game on TV. And utopia was already on the internet, why go outside if you didn’t have to? In the morning, Huyen kept the door locked, bolted and chained, and watched Jerry Springer—in his glasses and tweed suit the image of a college professor—to learn more about Americans and improve her colloquial English. In the afternoon, she took a bus to the YMCA to attend an ESL class. At night, the couple barely screwed in the land of bountiful screwing. His wife was so tense, Jaded went back to masturbating.

There was one girl on an amateur site, Cindy, who looked at Jaded—and Jaded alone—with such tender longing that he felt sure there had to be some mystical connection between them. Such openness, such generosity, such nice breasts.
Pornography is the mildest form of adultery
, he figured,
and nearly blameless
. Huyen almost caught him kneeling in front of the computer with his pants down a few times. Huyen herself was not above self-pleasure. She enjoyed seeing tall, muscular men run up and down a hardwood floor. Home alone, she liked to clog the lane as Allen Iverson wheeled to the rack for another monster jam.

Jaded said to her, “You have to be tough to survive here. It will get better. Things will definitely get better when I’m promoted to full manager.” Working overtime, he always returned home exhausted. “Americans work for real,” he explained. “How do you think they get so rich?”