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Kyung, he used to be my writing partner. I met him back in my first-ever screenwriting class at Santa Monica College. We only did it a handful times, in his dank little room, that narrow apartment off Olympic and Alvarado. Outside his bedroom window you could hear MacArthur Park. The ghosts moaning. I was drunk off Chamisul, as usual. The Decemberists singing something, something. We knew it was a bad idea to touch, all the things they say about sex ruining friendship and so on, but it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and we were both so lonely.
We blamed the soju the first time but had no excuses the next couple times. His mouth tasted like menthols burned to the filter, and the whole time I was thinking, He’ll never leave this apartment, this neighborhood. This is where he’ll die. Inhaling the asbestos, slow and steady, or else shot or stabbed. He’d already been mugged twice and started carrying a knife around, but I knew he wouldn’t ever use it.
I was wrong, though. Years later, after all the drafts of our suburban vampire romantic comedy went nowhere, he chose law school over the Asian American Studies program at UCLA. A few years back he got married to a German woman. On Facebook I see their camping trips to Yosemite, Zion, places even farther than that. He seems happy.
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My first real boyfriend, Danny Chung, I met when I was twenty-two. His friends called him Casper because he was so pale. After his parents died of cancer, one after the other, he and his addict brother went their separate ways. He didn’t ever want to do anything fun. Couldn’t sleep for shit. Couldn’t talk about the sadness. That was fine by me; it was the year my dad died and I didn’t have much to say, either. He got stoned twenty-four-seven and stuffed his face with junk. King Taco carne asada fries, Shin ramen with ripped-up Kraft singles, Sourdough Jacks and jalape?o poppers picked up from the drive-through. Not that he was in great shape before, but he really blew up after that. He still had those dark mean eyes that got me, a softness in his face. I was with him the night he got arrested. He insisted he was fine to drive. Idiot. When the blue and red lights flared behind us, he pulled over to the shoulder and turned down the music. Drew out a cigarette from the pack resting in the cupholder. We were almost home, just one more stop on the 91. He told the cops it was my fault. She was hitting me—she made me swerve!
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If you really want to know the truth, Won Kim was the only Korean boy I’d ever really loved, just don’t tell him I said so. Back in high school we were both closeted as hell, but maybe some part inside each of us sensed it in the other and that was why we clung together. We watched out for one another. He came out first, then me, a few years later. No, we never kissed, had sex, nothing like that. He’d kissed Fiona one time, though, back in high school—the only blemish on his Gold Star status. I’d kissed her a few times back then, too; practice, we called it. The three of us used to be in love with one another. We were so innocent—its own kind of power—before you got to be so scared of things, labeled it growing up. We thought we knew it all, didn’t we?
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And then there was Paul, the pastor’s son. We were both twelve. He said he wanted to show me something behind the church, and I followed. In the stairwell of the parking structure, he unzipped his Levi’s and pulled his dick out—swollen, purple, lifted. I stared at it. The stiffness seemed almost mechanical. He asked me to touch it, and I said no. Just a little, he said. Please?
His dad scared the shit out of everyone, talking about the rapture. Gnashing teeth, fire and brimstone. Koreans worshipped with a fervor far and beyond Mah and the First Chinese Calvary. I believed it all. Thought for sure I was going to hell. I was sure Paul was going to hell, too. I don’t care, Paul said. I love you, he said.
The next week, he told everyone at school about my mouth, my tight wet pussy. One of my older cousins, who claimed Wah Ching, got wind and kicked his ass. Paul shut up after that.
Later on, my cousin was caught in the cross fire at a pool hall shoot-out in El Monte. Seemed he was in and out of jail for years after that. Eventually, they hit him with the third-strike rule, locked him up in Calipatria, middle of nowhere. He would’ve hated Dr. Park. He would’ve said: I told you to stay away from Koreans. I know, I’d say back. I know, I know.
Doppelg?ngers
Over brunch at Clinton Street Baking Company on Sunday, Fiona debriefed Tish on what happened after they parted ways last night. His name was Gabriel, she said. They scarfed down cheese slices from Ray’s, and then she’d climbed the stairs to his place in Alphabet City, swishing her hips in his face up the three flights. About his penis: average length, but thick enough so that her thumb didn’t touch her fingers when she wrapped a fist around its base. A notorious size queen, Tish made a gesture kissing her fingers, then opened her hand in the air like flower petals blooming.