At night I’d drink blue cough syrup and lie downto listen to Boy George croon, “Do you really want to hurt me?”That year I was sixteen and had his poster of “Kissingto be Clever” tacked to the wall of the room I sharedwith my sister in the Sunset district where Chinese familiesmoved after doing their time in Chinatown. Every morning I’d pack my school bag with spray-on fuchsiahair color, jeans from Goodwill, and Dad’s sweater vest,and wait on 19th Avenue for the 28 Bus to take me to schoolwhere I could make my transformation and escape my lifeof being a good Chinese girl who carried chickens for Momwhen she went shopping in Chinatown or translated for herand her friends at the unemployment office. At Lowell High School I was a disaster—the weird girlwith a ski slope on her head held up with a pound of V05.Peer pressure from the very, very cool Chinese-American girlsin their wavy wedge platforms and Members Only jacketsdidn’t stop me from wearing Dad’s ratty avocado sweater vest.In the girl’s bathroom every morning, I drew in my black eyeliner. My family realized God had found the ultimate way to tormentthem in America. The first love of their precious pearl’s lifewas Boy George, a man with perfect make-up wearing a dress.Late that spring, my extended family called a conferencefor an intervention. Uncle Bing said, “That’s how it all starts.The funny people will recruit her, thinking she’s one of them.”Dad wondered why couldn’t I be normal, put up a picture of Mick Jagger.My sister chimed in, “The kids in our science class think she’s a misfitand don’t know we’re related.” Auntie Agnes was concernedthat the Emporium might not let her exchange the sweater she got meat half price. It was the eighties. They didn’t know. I was just the first kidto grow up in my family in a time before Chinese men started wearing pink.
Paterson Literary Review; later reprinted in Poets 11.
© Priscilla Lee. All rights reserved.