It’s 6:12 AM. I stepped outside to get a CD from the car, and the moon is still out – full. It looks like a beacon. There are only a few clouds in the sky, transparent and passing it by. I’m remembering yesterday – the talk with Mom. She told me about the 12-year old that lived across the street had shot out the front window with his BB gun. How when the police came, he pointed his rifle at the officer, only to put it down when the officer drew his taser gun. She said, “I miss the old neighbors.”
Then we started talking about marriage – not as it pertained to me, but how it pertained to others, specifically women that we both knew. I had a friend. She was older, like a big sister, and I turned to her for everything in regards to advice. She was brilliant, and when people ask me for my advice. I think her – what would she say? We had these talks about religion, how we could be Buddhist, and because of that we could be Catholic [Christian in a sense]. But it didn’t work in the reverse, meaning being Catholic [Christian] didn’t leave room for anything else. She said she was lucky enough to be born that way. She and I believed Buddhism was about the now, doing good for its own sake, instead of gathering good deeds like dollar bills to buy yourself into heaven. Do this, do that, don’t do that – it will be a demerit. At the end, have you garnered enough good deeds on the checklist to be near God? These were the types of talks she and I had – just over coffee and cake.
She had endured a lot. She dated a Mr. Universe contestant for nearly ten years. Looking at her, you’d understand – she was strikingly beautiful. You’d have to stare, and it was beyond human – creature like. As if you were there to bare witness to something mythical like a unicorn. Even after years of knowing her, becoming accustomed to how she looked – I still found myself in awe, staring from time to time. But her father didn’t agree with her dating someone white, someone American. The older Vietnamese generation is afraid of integration, and I don’t blame them. They are afraid we’ll lose the ideals, the customs, but more importantly – the language. But what do they expect – we live in America, grew up with Vietnamese ideals at home, but we were taught American ideals in the classroom. We don’t live home forever.
I digress. She couldn’t marry him, so she they parted ways but secretly they dated for ten years, and then he told her the truth. He was married. She was older and had money. She was a woman that he worked for as a physical trainer. She was devastated and began dating a man that either sounded like a gigolo or a male dancer. They saw each other at night, but eventually she broke things off with him and began dating another man. White and an independent businessman, who at first she didn’t like but maybe like most of our relationships – we grow accustomed to, and that is what we like, then we learn to love it. She married him. It was a small service. And now, now – she and I don’t talk. Not because she’s married, but because she is so very different. The talk isn’t insightful anymore. They’re about yachts and country clubs. It’s about her moving away and not working, because he doesn’t want her to. It’s about quoting him and being obedient. When I ask her if she is happy, she hesitates, and guesses that she is. Marriage made her retarded.
I remember a quote, as off base as it sounds, it’s from Spiderman 2. Aunt May tells Peter Parker, “I believe there’s a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most.” Marriage, the union of two to become one, and the question is sacrifice. What do you give up? I say time. I say dreams, but your character? When I think of her, I think of a how someone took a hacksaw to the unicorn and turned it into an ordinary horse. I’m disgusted. But I try not to think of her as she is now. I think about what she used to be.
