The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life

by Amy Tan

  At the end of each dance, Terry did her best to console me: “Did you see that creep who asked me to dance? The one with the great big zit at the end of his chin—I was freaked he’d drip it all over my shoulder. And then I could feel his boner pressing into my hip. God! I’d rather die a virgin. . . .”

  Over time, at other parties, a few boys asked me to dance. You know the ones I’m talking about: guys who belonged to the United Nations Club, whose attempts at shaving left them with bleeding pimples, who always raised their hands in class, smug that they knew the answers. In other words, they were dorks like me, and through natural selection we, the dregs of the school, had found one another.

  More often, I stood alone, unasked. Well, a girl can go to the bathroom only so many times before she has to concoct another reason why she’s not dancing or otherwise thoroughly occupied. I pretended to be fascinated with the band, which was always a bad version of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, or The Lovin’ Spoonful, and sometimes all three rolled into one. I fantasized that the lead singer would finally spot me and beckon me with his surly lips—“Yeah, you, the Chinese girl with the moon face. Come up here and do primitive movements with me onstage.”

  That would show them, all those guys who asked the other girls to dance.

  And then reality would set in. That would never happen, not in a million trillion years. The lead singer? Singing to me? No way.

  It’s now May 1993, on a dark road somewhere between Northampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m in a van with Barbara Kingsolver, Ridley Pearson, Tad Bartimus, and Al Kooper. We’re sprawled out over rows of bench seating. Bob Daitz, our road manager, is at the wheel. It’s probably close to one in the morning, and we’ve just finished performing to a thousand screaming middle-agers. We should be exhausted. But instead, we’re pumped full of adrenaline, steaming up the windows. Bob turns the air-conditioning on full-blast to reduce the body-odor factor.

  Al slips a tape into the deck. The music is a compilation of his favorite oldies, including “Short Shorts” from his days with The Royal Teens. The song baits us: “Who wears short shorts?” Barbara, Tad, and I answer back: “We wear short shorts!” Forget napping on the way back to the hotel. Our teenage hormones are surging now.

  Another song comes on and Al turns up the volume. I don’t know the lyrics, but magic and miracles are floating in the air, and my voice somehow finds the harmony. A third above lead, a third below—I can switch back and forth effortlessly. Or perhaps I can’t do either, but I’m so elated I believe I can sing with the best of them. Ooh-wah, ooh-wah. I could do backup for Carole King. Another song comes on. Al is singing lead and clapping. Ooh-wah, ooh, wah. I could do backup for Aretha Franklin. As if on cue, all of us place our feet on the ceiling of the van and begin to dance. Hot damn, I could be an Ikette. I’m dancing. I’m dancing to the moon. I’m bebopping the night away. I’m putting dirty footprints on the ceiling of a rental van. At last, finally, I’m doing primitive movements with the lead singer.

  Come to think of it, on a couple of songs, I was the lead singer.

  It was Al who suggested I sing lead on “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” When I first saw my name written on the song list next to the title of this Nancy Sinatra classic, I was filled with the same sort of outrage I felt seeing my high school yearbook picture defaced with a mustache.

  I called Kathi. “Tell Al to forget it. Of all the songs in the world, I hate that one the most. It’s a joke. I wouldn’t sing it in a million years.”

  Kathi, ever so diplomatic, broke things to me gently: “Actually, I think this could be a great song for you. You know how you always worry about whether you can really sing? Well, with ‘Boots,’ you don’t need a great voice, just a lot of attitude.”

  “Attitude?”

  “Yeah—you know, a bad-girl attitude. You could look cheap and sexy. You could smoke cigarettes and have guys fall all over you. Then again, you could do ‘Bye Bye, Love.’ That’s always cute.”

  For my “Boots” outfit, I combed through a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue and found a pair of zip-up patent-leather booties that would transform an ordinary pair of black business pumps into awesome, man-stomping thigh-high intimidators. At a local S&M shop, I bought a biker’s cap and a leather dog leash, as well as studded cuffs, collar, and belt. Like any girl vying to be prom queen, I fretted over which of three outfits I should wear. The see-through leopard leotard? The tawdry fishnet lace? Or how about the classically simple little black bustier?

  At the risk of sounding maudlin, I must confess I felt like Cinderella going to the ball. And like the birds and squirrels who dressed Disney’s Cinderella in garlands of flowers and such, various well-wishers bestowed finishing touches upon me.

  Lorraine Battle, the roadie who helped me do my two-minute costume change every night, thoughtfully gave me temporary tattoos, a dragon on my right biceps, a heart and dagger on my left shoulder. In Atlanta, Tabitha King handed me something in a plain brown wrapper and in big-sister fashion told me no respectable dominatrix should ever be seen without two essential fashion items: a choke chain and rubber titties with erect nipples. The manager of a lesbian bar where we played asked for my autograph shyly and, as a token of her appreciation, bequeathed a slightly frayed bullwhip that had seen a lot of action at a recent B&D ball. Each night Barbara found me cigarettes, which I smoked in dark stairwells to help put me in the proper politically incorrect mood.

  And then the boys provided moral support onstage. Roy Blount, Jr., went down on bended knee and in wimplike fashion flinched as he tried to flick my Bic. When I growled, “Are you ready, boots? Start walking!” the other Remainder boys would fall supine and quake. Dave Marsh was especially sweet. As I started to stomp on him, he begged me—to no avail—not to stub out my burning cigarette on his chest; the hotel ashtray he had purloined and placed strategically was not visible to the audience. And each night the guys unselfishly volunteered to feature in the coup de grâce of my number.

  “It’s just not fair,” Stephen King groused one night after the show. “Dave Barry got the whip jammed into his mouth two nights in a row! When’s it going to be my turn?”

  The roadies and ringers boosted my confidence in similar ways. I remember in particular what happened on a flight to Miami. Hoover, Mouse, and Jim were sitting in first class, while we band members had been relegated to coach. Hoover (a.k.a. Chris Rankin) must have been flirting outrageously with a flight attendant; after takeoff, she swept through the first-class curtains and handed me a Virgin Mary. “Compliments of Mr. Rankin, who is begging you please to whip him tonight,” she said in honeyed tones. “If I were you, I’d whip him good, whip him till he bleeds.”

  Recalling this outpouring of friendship brings tears to my eyes. It also reminds me that I forgot to tell the boys where the butt of that whip had probably been before it was given to me. What a bad girl am I.

  Around my fifteenth birthday, I truly became a bad girl. My forays into wickedness began with some low-grade sins. I started reading forbidden books, including Catcher in the Rye, which I had to buy twice because Christian family friends confiscated it from me. When a busybody caught me reading Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, he told my mother that the contents of the book would corrupt my young mind and possibly cause me to go insane. My mother, not wanting to see me go insane, called in the minister. The minister, whose son had turned me down when I asked him to a Sadie Hawkins Day dance, came to our house to give me good counsel. He said, “If you can just be patient, if you can keep your virtue, one day, God willing”—here he swept out his arms, envisioning the heavenly promise—“hundreds of young men will be lined up around the block, waiting to ask you out!” And I thought to myself, Exactly what kind of fool does he take me for?

  Cut to 1993, Washington, D.C. I am standing in my dominatrix costume, and outside the nightclub hundreds of young men are lined up to see me. All right, so there were hundreds of women as well, and they were there to see Stephen
King. The point is, the minister’s words came true. Oh, if only he knew how.

  Soon those folks poured in to attend a preshow reception, and the band members had to go into the bar area to meet and greet the fans who had bought hundred-dollar tickets. For the reception, we Remainderettes donned wigs that Tabby King had bought us that day to give us a new look. Kathi had a long black Morticia style, Tad a Diana Ross afro. Mine was a perky blond number à la Carol Channing. And then Kathi and I put on sunglasses, exchanged laminated passes, and entered the dimly lit lounge.

  We were sitting on barstools, sipping rum-and-tonics, when a woman approached Kathi and inspected her backstage pass. She gasped, her hand pressing her chest in pledge-allegiance fashion. “Amy Tan! I’ve loved all your books.”

  “Thanks,” Kathi grunted, swishing the ice cubes in her drink. We waited for the woman’s eyes to adjust to the dark and recognize her mistake, but instead, she took a seat and continued to lavish praise on me—or rather, Kathi.

  “Really,” she gushed, “your books are so wonderful they inspired me to write my own story.”

  Kathi gestured toward me. “By the way, did you meet Kathi Goldmark? She also sings with the band.”

  The woman gave me a perfunctory hi, then turned her full attention back to Kathi. “I have my manuscript in the car,” she said. “I was wondering if maybe you could give me some advice—you know, about getting it published. If you’d like to read it now, I could go get it. . . .”

  After a few minutes, I stood and said to Kathi, “I’ll see you around.”

  Later I found out that Kathi gave her good advice: how to find a writers’ group and an agent and so forth—the same suggestions I would have offered. But we both felt guilty, knowing that when the show started, the woman would instantly understand that we had fooled her, and then become angry. While changing in the dressing room, Kathi and I felt like teenagers who had let a silly prank go too far, not quite knowing how to retrieve it. I was thinking specifically about Stephen’s book Carrie and how hurtful girls can be.

  Then again, as Kathi pointed out, I had had to endure being ignored while sitting next to someone more in demand—rather like being back at the high school dance. Not that this social oversight on the woman’s part justified what we did.

  Just in case the woman we wronged is reading this, Kathi and I would like to say that we are very, very sorry. It was Tabby’s fault for buying us wigs in the first place.

  Right about now, I can hear my parents lecturing me: “You see? Having fun is bad. More important is family.” And in a way, I discovered they were right. Because ultimately, the best part about being a Remainder was the fact that we became a family. We had family fun. . . .

  Our life together included getting neck cramps while sleeping on the bus. Waking up and seeing how haggard we looked without coffee, without makeup. Teasing Dave Barry, who seemed to be perpetually sixteen years old. (I’m referring to his wrinkle-free skin, not his immature behavior.) Going to truck stops for $1.88 breakfasts, cheese-and-bacon hash browns plus grits. Propping food into Ridley’s half-open mouth while he was sleeping. Taking a picture of same. Swearing on an oath of humiliating death never to reveal to anyone’s spouse who among us had taken up smoking again. Opening our laptops, then not writing a single word. Mischievously telling the angst-ridden among us who had missed book deadlines how many novels, collections, essays, and movie scripts we had finished last year. Buying postcards of roadkill, and other trucker paraphernalia. Standing in line at the movies and noting how many people thought Stephen King looked so much like Stephen King. Getting Tabby to name all the slang and literary words for vagina. Spreading rumors that Mouse had legally changed his name to Mouse. Trying on clothes with Barbara and assuring her she really did look cheap and tawdry. Listening to Bob Daitz on the phone, as he schmoozed nightclub owners into turning over a higher percentage of the take to us. Reading stories aloud from the Weekly World News, including the one about Chinese illegal aliens digging tunnels through the center of the earth.

  On tour with The Rock Bottom Remainders in Miami, 1993.

  Among the most memorable moments, I count those laced with pulse-surging terror. Our first day of rehearsal, for instance. Also our second day. As well as our third. Not to mention our first show. Our second show. Every show. The capper was my doing what I feared I would do all along: forget some of the lyrics to “Boots” one night, an omission that all the Remainders were kind enough to say I covered with absolute grace.

  As to the most fun moments: Going to an Atlanta disco and learning Tina Turner dance steps from Bob and Lorraine. Dancing cheek to cheek with Joel Selvin during sound check in Northampton. Flinging hash browns in Dave Barry’s face. Listening to everyone singing oldies at two in the morning on the bus, especially that rocker classic “Catch a Falling Star and Put It in Your Pocket.” Posing vixenlike with Kathi on Al’s waterbed in Nashville. Watching Tabby demonstrate transcolonic massage, her surefire method for eliminating constipation on tour.

  And the special moments that bound us together as Remainders forever: Gathering around Tad when she confessed she was a bit off-key because she had to go in for scary medical tests the next day. Hearing Steve’s recollections about his single mom and the fact that she knew before she died that his first novel (Carrie) would be published. Attending Roy’s fancy college reunion in Nashville and assuring him afterward that he hadn’t turned into an old fart. Receiving before each show a huge floral arrangement and personalized cartoon from Matt Groening. Closing our eyes and holding hands as Ridley’s cousin Dodge, a chief of exhibitions at the National Gallery in Washington, led us to a room containing a Matisse masterpiece. Walking through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with Tad, a former war correspondent, crying as we all sank lower into the valley of death. Listening to Dave Marsh talk about his love for his daughter Kristen. Hugging Barbara when she thought she had lost a piece of jewelry I had lent her. Hugging Tad after she called her mother in intensive care. Hugging and being hugged by everybody in moments of sadness and triumph, because hugging is something that never came naturally to me, and now it does.

  When people ask me why I joined a rock-’n’-roll band, I tell them this: I wanted to have fun. I know the answer sounds superficial. But how else should I explain this irrepressible urge shaped by my childhood? Should I confess I wanted to waste my time and money? To be with friends who were purveyors of shame and corruption? To believe once again that miracles could happen?

  No, this is the only logical answer: I simply wanted to have fun. And I finally learned how.

  • arrival banquet •

  These are excerpts from my journal kept during a 1990 trip to China with my mother. It was our first trip there since the events at Tiananmen Square the year before.

  Our plane is still on the ground in San Francisco, but there are already signs that we are in another country. A middle-aged woman sitting behind my mother clutches her meditation beads and prays aloud in Chinese that no one will take the seats next to her. The video instructions for fastening our seat belts are delivered in soothing Mandarin, albeit out of synch with the on-screen woman clicking a buckle in and out. The passengers in front of us converse loudly, discussing how to make a huge boom box fit into the tiny space under one of the seats in front of them.

  “How many more hours to Shanghai?” one man shouts.

  “Thirteen,” comes the answer from a woman two rows away, “maybe thirteen and a half. If there are no more delays.”

  We are on a China Airlines flight, part of a planeload of people who will soon share dry mouth, stiff legs, and constipation. For most of the passengers on board, this is a return trip home. We, on the other hand, are among a small number of Americans going to visit China.

  To be more precise, my mother and I are going to visit family: my two sisters, my aunt and uncle, and people connected to them by blood or marriage, which adds up to around fifty. And we are staying not in a tourist hotel, but in Auntie Elsie’s apar
tment in Shanghai and in my uncle and aunt’s apartment in Beijing. We have agreed ahead of time not to talk about politics.

  Robert Foothorap, the only non-Chinese within earshot and eyesight, has come along as family friend, friendly photographer, chief baggage handler, and unbeknownst to him, American fall-back position. If things become uncomfortable—my mother’s biggest complaint about China is rampant filth—the “foreigner” will suddenly develop a need to stay in a hotel where he can take a hot American bath.

  Eleven hours to go and my skin is already flaking off. Ma is knitting a pair of white pants for Melissa. She holds them up for me to see. The pattern is her very own, with lacelike cuffs at the bottom. In her mind’s eye, her two-year-old granddaughter is the size of a six-year-old. Robert has his laptop on his tray table and is reading the instruction manual for his flight simulator, the adult version of a kiddie car wheel. And now dinner is served, a concoction of grays and browns: chunky beef atop a bed of noodles, sliced bamboo shoots and soggy snow peas decorating the sides.

  “I guess this is a Western version of Oriental food,” Robert says to Ma.

  She peers at her meal. “This Chinese idea of American food,” she corrects him. “This what I ate in China long time ago when we go to restaurant eat foreign dinner.”

  After recalling this, Ma decides to forgo her meal. She tells me in English that she is going to offer it to the man three seats away. I am about to stop her—explaining that no one would want to eat her leftovers—but it is too late. The man three seats away has happily accepted her offering. And now they are chatting animatedly in Chinese.

  Our family in Shanghai apparently did not get our letter, the one explaining that we would be arriving at eight p.m. It is now eight-thirty Shanghai time, and they are lunging forward, two or three at once, hugging us, calling my mother “Ma” and “Grandma,” and me “Auntie” and “Baby Sister.” Hongchong, my brother-in-law, explains that they have been waiting at the airport since four in the afternoon, all seven of them: he and my sister, my nephew and his wife, my niece and her husband and their son.