Bad Star

We weren't always so different from others, we thought. That is to say, how we got to where we are now might not be so incredible, but maybe it's interesting, depending. Maybe it means something. When it's late and we're standing on the balcony looking out into the night because we can't sleep, it seems to mean everything. Or it's the moon that makes us think we're close enough. Or some oblivion come familiar and all we want is to swallow stars. To live somewhere neutral between memory and absence.

________

It felt like I was the only Asian in Kentucky, so of course I left running long and hard for college, my mind half-fucked from trying to live a round life in a square ditch. And no, my parents don't count because they tried hard enough to fool themselves into thinking they fit, went ahead and mazed themselves into Kentucky's endlessness. My father taught biochem at the University, and yes, I could've gone to school there for free, I know he wanted me to, but what kid wants to stay? Even that nice state school was merely a big block of whiteness and I was just shaded enough to be called other and feel shame. And I cared enough about that to go looking. I only got as far as Illinois, not so far really, just another block, but I did my four years and they figured I was smart enough to do more. So when that study abroad scholarship was announced I snapped at its heels until I had it in my teeth.

When I called my father to tell him, I knew he was alone, because he spoke sharp in his native tongue. Translated to English without modification, what he said was, "girl, you got real far out." As if I was only ever meant to stay in the place he called home, that my journey somehow negated his. His accusatory tone sounded out that I was ungrateful. But how could I know what exactly he needed me to be thankful for?

________

There were ten of us in Barcelona, all graduate students in art history, our housing shared with Swedish exchange students studying engineering, in a newly renovated building in a neighborhood called Gràcia. All bright, swirling graffiti, and everyone on the streets dressed like musicians. Soon as we got off the bus from the airport it was all vale vale vale and I'm not sure I'd ever been happier to hear a language I barely understood. In the apartment building everything was sleek, modern, white and we thought the Swedes probably felt right at home. Almost all the furniture was built-in to remind us we were visitors, that this was a temporary allowance. We were all two to an apartment, and they were true apartments, but everyone had their doors open while they unpacked and chattered, reminiscent of those years living in the dorms.

And then there he was, my José – though back then, to strangers, he was James, because, in his own words, "I got tired of telling people I'm not Mexican." As if that was the thing to do. As if that changed anything. Still, they knew he was something. And wasn't that good, wasn't that permissible there? He was sitting in a plastic replica Eames chair, in his white apartment, door wide open, humming and playing a guitar. And he was hot as hell, as I stood, staring over my shoulder, half-turned into my own little apartment across the hall. The way his eyes sloped down just slightly at their corners, soft, his lively curls.

"Qué guay," was all I could think to say, all my little phrase book had prepared me for.

"Vale," he said. His voice like milk.

And I let my hair fall, pulled out the loose tie and brushed it behind my ear, tilted my head and lifted my chin at an angle, because I knew how good that looked. Our black eyes all stirred up by each other. Front teeth...