Fan’s Complaint

I’m driving around in Queens–windows open, listening to the Ramones–when a bug flies into my eye and I lose control of the car. Through one eye I can see the car going through a stop sign, getting on the sidewalk and narrowly missing an SUV backing out of a driveway.

I manage to grab the wheel and regain control. I slam on the brakes. For some reason, I’m not wearing a seatbelt, and I pass out after the car comes to a stop.

When I come to, my car is full of Asian girls, who are delighted that I am okay.

“I was so scared that you were dead. I’m sorry, it’s all my fault,” one girl says to me.

Huh? I think to myself. I look around, and all these girls are dressed for the club. I hear thumping bass coming from the house in front of which I’ve stopped. I’m blinded by the headlights of an SUV stopped behind me when I check the rearview. I piece together that these girls were leaving the house party in the SUV, the one that I almost hit, and now they’re worried I might blame them, or specifically, the driver–the hot girl talking to me with booze on her breath.

“It’s nothing. I was able to swerve away. You should be more careful next time though. You might hit a white guy who’d press charges.”

Somehow, they never noticed that I was driving on the sidewalk, and the girl is really grateful that I won’t call the cops or press charges. She gives me a kiss and a wink, and asks me to call her. I nod.

“Oh, what’s your name?” I quickly ask as she’s walking away from my car.

“It’s Louise. What’s yours?”

“Call me Jim.”

Click here

On that page, the building in the background is my high school. I used to wonder about the inhabitants of that crazy boat. Some mornings I would see a man paddle to or from shore, sometimes with groceries. I had all kinds of wonderful ideas about who he was and why he lived on a crazy boat. My favorite one was that he was an advance scout for an invading mongol horde.

There was a building by my school that was tall and sinister looking, with no windows. I let my imagination run wild with that one too. It was an advanced robotics laboratory, or a missle silo, or a giant computer. Why else would a building not have windows? One day, I decided to walk over to that building, and actually find out what it was. To my dismay, I learned that it was just some AT&T thing.

Just last week, I thought about that crazy boat by my school, and I googled for half an hour without any luck. Just today, I was down in the old neighborhood with Dave, and we drove by the miniature golf course, and I thought again about that crazy boat.

It was still there when I graduated from Stuyvesant, but already gone by the time I came home for summer. I had hoped that maybe the guy decided he had had enough of the rat race in New York and just up and left.

When I started reading the New Yorker article about this Poppa Neutrino guy, I thought he was really cool, and then when they started describing his raft, a light went on inside my head, and I jumped out of bed and found the page above. I am so happy that the truth was, for once, not some horrible mundane thing that destroyed the ideal I had in my head.

I know this post sucks. I will add links and try to actually write something (as opposed to typing) tomorrow, when I have some energy.

I’ve just graduated from college, and I have a feeling in my bones that I’ll never see any of these people again. We are all by a gas station. It is not a ceremony of any sort. We are all going through the crowd looking for each other, to wish each other luck in our future endeavors, to say our “see you agains,” to say our “goodbye forevers.”

Everyone I know is here. Some say goodbye to me, some wave, some hug, one guy throws a paper airplane with a message written on the wings. I catch a glimpse of the girl I really want to say goodbye to, as the airplane is launched. By the time I pick it up off the ground, this girl has disappeared.

I woke up feeling incredibly sad, even though I expect to have a nice, relaxing sunday.

Oh, I neglected to mention that the girl in this dream was E****a.

Fan’s Complaint turned three today. The day is almost over, and I haven’t gotten any presents, care packages, cards, e-cards, e-mails, or even a pat on the back.

Sometimes I think you people want me to stop gracing you with my genius. You bunch of lousy ingrates.

Fine. Be like that.

…

Aw baby I didn’t mean none of that. I was drunk.

What? Aw baby I didn’t mean no harm by any of that. I love you baby. Don’t go. Please! Don’t go!

I swear I’ll make it up to you, baby. Whatever you want! I swear on my own grave!

That? Are you sure? It’s been years!

No no no! I’ll do it, just don’t go! Here, look!

(more…)

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

Yes, it’s the very South Bronx that had a reputation for grinding poverty, rampant arson, runaway crime and as the starting point of Tom Wolfe’s race-relations nightmare, “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” which chronicles what happens to a Master of the Universe driving with his mistress in his Mercedes-Benz on a creepy Bruckner Boulevard.

Goodbye South Bronx Blight, Hello Trendy SoBro - New York Times

It would appear that the South Bronx, or “SoBro,” is now over. Maybe I’ll be lucky and Eastern Queens will be hip by the time I’m ready to move out–that way I won’t have to move out at all. We could call it EasQu or FluBa or something, and have a jolly old time downing PBRs and discussing the cultural relevance of electroclash. Oh right, that was 2003…

Flushing will never be “up-and-coming,” it’s just solidly boring and middle-class. I think that would probably apply to most of Queens, except maybe South Queens. SoQu?

OMG IT’S AN UPDATE!

Things are slowly settling back into place here at Fan’s Complaint. Nagging Self-Doubt has his music all queued up on the stereo. Guilt is checking the fridge to see if there’s any beer with Anxiety looking over his shoulder. Once Failure gets here, the party can get started!

I must’ve seen too many episodes of Herman’s Head (5 or so) when I was a wee lad.

***

I had brunch with the parents on Father’s Day. My father was telling me how he had to show some interns around Chinatown for his job. He said that there were a few girls there, and that he could maybe introduce me.

I’m through with Chinese girls, I told him. Which was a lie, because I’m actually through with Asian girls.

When I started telling Mr. XS this story, he asked, “When did you actually get anywhere with an Asian girl?” Which brings up a valid point, that Mr. XS is an asshole.

My parents took this pronouncement rather well, to my surprise. There was no “aiiyaah!” My mother calmly asked me why I made this decision–which, in retrospect, was less a decision I made than an adaptation I was forced into–to which I replied:

a) I have nothing in common with most of these girls, especially the ones that will be interning at a bank.
b) They tend to have nebulous political beliefs, which means they are susceptible to suggestion by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
c) Da Vinci Code.
d) They’re after white guys anyway.

My parents agreed with my assertions, and the issue was put to rest. My parents rock.

Of course, I know there are Asian girls out there who read, have good politics, and perhaps even have a tolerance for dreamers, but I cannot compete with a white guy.

I hate to play the race card like this, but indulge me for a few more paragraphs, and I think I won’t come off as such a big jerk, because (get ready) “It’s not them, it’s me.”

I’m fat and angry and have low self-esteem. The latter two are because of my unresolved Asian American Identity Politics Awareness Issues. There’s the whole class thing (I was mortified that my father decided to stop going to the laundromat and instead hand-washed our clothes, and hung them on a clothesline [FOR ALL TO SEE] to dry). And the whole money thing, which is really tied in to class and connections.

So your average white guy in a striped shirt at a bar on a Saturday night is probably going to feel better about himself due to his having a job, a “normal,” (whatever that means) family, etc, even if he is fat. And as we’ve all been told, confidence attracts girls.

There’s also the insecurity from past failures, but to get into that would make it a whole thing…

SO, in conclusion, I don’t think my declaration makes any difference in the long run. I’ll be lucky to meet any girl who can tolerate me AND interest me. My statement was more like a theory: I won’t meet an Asian girl any time soon that can both tolerate and interest me.

If you are an Asian girl and feel I have erred, send pics plz!!!!!

The Era of Good Feelings was a time in American history when there was just one political party, and there was no partisanship. There was a story about how Madison, if I remember correctly, was almost elected unanimously, but for one elector who felt that Washington was the only man who deserved such an honor, and therefore cast his vote for the Vice President.

This has nothing to do with that. All I wanted to say was that the old Fan’s Complaint will (probably) be back in a week’s time.

If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s fucking up–missing windows of opportunity or jumping through seemingly open windows and cutting myself to ribbons on the broken glass.

What a horrible metaphor… I’m really back.