Yes, My Accent Is Real (12 page)

I accepted I was not a good actor.

And I resolved one thing:
I need to get better.

ALLISON WAS STRONGER THAN ME.
A really strong girl. Muscular.
A jaw like a linebacker. She had calluses on her hands and feet. She played soccer. She wore a cross. She always smiled. And she had eyes that were a shade I had never seen in my life. Gray. Gray eyes. I loved those eyes. I loved those calluses and those triceps. She was nice to me, too. We would take walks on campus in the evening. Sometimes she would wrap my arms in hers. I would later go home alone and . . . you know . . . I was alone. I asked her to be my date to the college dance. It was on a boat. Why are all college socials on boats? I wonder what they do when schools aren't near a lake or the coast. Hmmm. I borrowed a black jacket from my brother. It was a nice black jacket, way too big for me. He is a few inches taller with broad shoulders, so all his hand-me-downs were like wearing a blanket.

On the bus to the college dance, Allison and I were sitting together. She was always a close talker. Always. I never minded. Her breath always smelled like mint. We were close talking, and I was telling her about India, and she was so interested in it all. Not “Do you have camels?” interested, more like, “Wow, how many cousins do you have again?” The more we talked the closer her face got to mine.
She asked for a mint. I thought I had some in my left pocket, but I didn't. What I did have in my left pocket was something that my brother had left there “by mistake.”

“What's this?” I said, holding it up. A condom. A ninety-nine-cent condom. She was aghast. My mind racing, I searched for the right thing to say, but I think what came out was one big “Uhhhhhh.”

“What kind of girl do you think I am, Kunal?” (You know you're in trouble when they use your name.)

“Um, it's my brother's jacket. I had no idea. I'm so sorry.”

“We're not even dating! How could you think of me like that?” And then she said those dreaded words, “You're like a
brother
to me.”

A brother? A brother? Was she about to tie a Rakhi band on my wrist? What about the close talking? And the loving-India thing? And the asking for a mint? Of course I said none of this. I just apologized. Truth is, it wasn't my condom. I didn't actually think I was going to get laid. I just wanted someone to treat me like I wasn't this weird skinny Indian guy aimlessly navigating his way through social etiquette. Someone to treat me
like a person.
I had found that person. And her name was Allison. But I pulled out a condom and showed it to her. She went and sat in an empty seat on the bus. I was surprised how upset she was. I mean, seriously, what's the big deal? So I thought you were beautiful and loved you and wanted to make sweet love to you (apparently). Why create such a fuss? Just accept the apology and move on.

I sat on the bus contemplating whether to go on the boat with the rest of the group. I tried making an excuse about getting seasick. But the bus driver wouldn't allow me to sit on the bus during the dance. Some policy about safety, he said. Plus all the guys and
their dates were looking at me weirdly. So I just got on that stupid boat, and I went to that dance alone.

“Would you be willing to go to Mass with me?” Allison asked me a few weeks later. She said that she had prayed about it and that she was willing to forgive me. I thanked her and apologized again. Yes. Of course I would go to Mass with her. I would have climbed Everest naked for her.

We went to Mass. It was lovely. I find pretty much all religion lovely. After the service, everyone was asked to speak about something positive in their lives. I spoke about this “angel” in my life. About how she had saved me. I made most of it up on the spot but it felt true in the moment. I was on a spiritual high, plus I really wanted her to like me again—friend, brother, lover, whatever she wanted, I just wanted her back. It was a nice way to encapsulate my long-winded apology. After Mass ended, we were allowed to hug everyone. I specifically stole some hugs from a few people so it would work out that we hugged last. And then we did. We hugged, and for me it was the hug of a lifetime. Then, involuntarily, I whispered breathily in her ear, “Finally.” I meant it. It was creepy, but I meant it.

Allison transferred colleges a year later. Next time she came to town, she seemed different. Everything was different. I was more acclimated to the United States, more confident, more myself. I took her out for a couple of drinks to catch up. A few drinks turned into more, and some more after that. We ended up making out.

It was awful. The entire fantasy I'd imagined for so long was replaced with what seemed like two high school students fumbling
in the dark. Something just didn't feel right. We stopped. I looked away, embarrassed. Confused.
Was it me?
As she gathered her things to leave, she said she was sorry. “Because,” she said, “truth is, Kunal, I'm a lesbian.”

Apparently throughout the two years we were friends, she was fighting through the confusion, the pain, the . . . whatever you go through when you realize that what your body is telling you is against everything you've ever been taught as a child. I thanked her for her honesty. I told her she could call me anytime she needed someone to talk to. This angel. This prophecy. This goddess on a pedestal. She seemed to be exhausted from wrestling with this perceived “sinful sexual orientation,” her religion versus her desire, and I felt bad for her.

After she left, I went to eat a bacon cheeseburger. It was a really good burger and it made me think about my own religious beliefs. About religion versus desire. Was it right to eat beef when doing so was so completely against everything I was taught as a child? Did that make me a sinner? And if so, should I too be as morally conflicted as Allison? And then it hit me. I just really liked beef. Allison just really liked women. And if God really gave a damn he would have struck us both down with lightning for our sins. You see, in my opinion, God didn't care if I ate beef, or if Allison ate . . . was a lesbian. He only cared that I tipped the waiter who brought me my burger and that Allison lived a life that made her happy and let her find love. To this day every time I eat a bacon cheeseburger, I think about Allison the Lesbian.

I'm a
horrible manager of pee. I always hold it till the last moment. I'm not sure why. I'm not someone who is usually a procrastinator. But something about peeing . . .

THE SUMMER BEFORE MY SENIOR
year I decided that I was done
working outdoors or collecting garbage. I wanted something indoors, preferably work you did while sitting on a chair, in a room with an air conditioner. I flipped through the student paper and saw an opening in the computer lab.
Perfect
. Except for the fact that I knew nothing about computers, everything about this job was appealing. I mean, I could turn one on, but I didn't know how to code. Or how to program. Or how to troubleshoot. All I knew was that if something goes wrong, you should probably unplug the computer for thirty seconds. But I thought,
Hey, I'm Indian, maybe I can just say that and they'll trust that I know what I'm doing.

I interviewed with this quiet guy who wore glasses, named Dominick. He was from China. His hair was perfectly parted to one side, polo buttoned all the way to the top, and he wore light brown khakis and Nike running sneakers.

“Hi, Kunal, nice to meet you,” he said, in a soft, high-pitched voice that sounded like an adorable old lady. I could tell right away that the poor guy must have had a rough childhood.

“I am looking for some people to be computer lab managers. What are your skills?”

“Troubleshooting, programming, Excel, PowerPoint,” I said, dropping
in every piece of jargon I could think of.

“Mac or PC?”

“I can do Mac, I can do PC, I can do all Cs,” I said, laughing.

“Can you give me more specifics?”

“You know how it is. I grew up in India. I've been taking apart computers my whole life. I know how the computer
thinks
. I know how it moves. I'm always one step ahead of it.”

He nodded. The Indian thing really impressed him. “I like you. I'm going to hire you.”

We shook hands. Bingo!

“Given your advanced skill set, I'm going to give you a very special project.” He turned to the computer and opened up a software program I had never seen. “The school is trying to integrate this new voice recognition software. I want you to figure it out, dissect it, and write an entire instruction manual based on what you've learned.”

“Cool, I'm on it.”
Kill me now.

So three days a week, four hours each shift, my job was to sit at the computer and become an expert in this software. Given my advanced-skills status, Dominick gave me my own computer lab—just one room with one computer—so that I wouldn't be disturbed from my task. My job was to write a thirty-page manual for software that made utterly no sense to me.

The program, essentially, was an early-early-early version of Siri. Except that it didn't really work and it had all these complicated menus and options that I found insanely baffling. The first day I took the job very seriously. I spoke into the microphone and compared what I said to the words that appeared on the screen:

“The cat drank the cow's milk,” I said.

On-screen:
Kangaroos in Australia are part of the binary world.

It probably didn't
help that I had an Indian accent.

I just sat there for hours, carefully repeating sentence after sentence, watching as the monitor butchered every word. I would click menu options and the cursor would just keep blinking, confused. Maybe Raj could have solved this puzzle if he'd existed then, but it was too much for Kunal.

I spent an entire day just getting the program to say my name correctly.

“Kunal Nayyar.”

Kumar. Ran. A. Car.

Whatevs. I basically gave up on the project after a few days, and each shift I would spend fifteen minutes on voice recognition, then the rest of the afternoon in Yahoo! chat rooms. Those were big in 2000. I loved that you could explore all these subcultures and just start chatting with people anonymously. My screen name was “Tan_Skinned_Man.” I chatted with women all over the world and told them I was a professional tennis player.

“Kunal?” Dominick asked from outside the door. I always kept the door locked.

“One minute,” I said, alt-tabbing from the chat rooms and opening the software.

“Why do you lock the door?”

“You know me. I can only focus when no one's disturbing me.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “I understand. Keep up the good work.”

I felt a little bad for deceiving Dominick, and I also felt bad that he was the butt of many of my jokes. I'm sorry to say, I made fun of
his voice a lot. He also had something of a reputation as a mean boss, and I wasn't the only one doing imitations of him behind his back.