The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  “What’re you doing here?” Lindsey asked, wondering if Auntie Shirley had been deeply stoned during their phone conversation and had maybe forgotten completely that Lindsey had canceled the aura portrait session.

  “I’m here to feed you!” Auntie Shirley said. Lindsey noticed that her aunt was indeed carrying a large Crock-Pot.

  “What is it?” Lindsey asked, fearing the worst.

  Shirley set the stoneware pot on the kitchen counter and said, “For centuries the druids concocted delicious recipes mixed with love potions to be eaten before evening rituals of group copulation. I made this all for you, so eat up.” Auntie Shirley lifted the lid of the crock and smiled with giant owl eyes that, frankly, scared the hell out of Lindsey.

  “But…but I’m not hungry,” Lindsey said.

  She knew she was trapped. She had refused her aunt’s cooking so many times, and now there was no way out. If she had eaten just one soy-dolloped yam at Thanksgiving, perhaps she could decline now, but today, it seemed, was payback for all the misshapen pakoras, chickpea cheesecakes, and bluecorn dirt waffles she had ever refused.

  Lindsey looked at the steaming concoction and beheld the treasured recipe of the ancient druids. It was purple with chunks of brown. She saw something that looked like burned, mushy cherries, but with kidney beans, too. And baby marshmallows. Or were those human teeth?

  Lindsey began to whimper as Auntie Shirley scooped a heaping portion into a bowl for her.

  “Secret ingredients. Wiccan aphrodisiacs.” her aunt whispered, scrunching up her face like one of those craft dolls made from a dehydrated apple.

  Auntie Shirley wasn’t moving an inch until she witnessed her niece take several bites. Lindsey thought to herself, “The faster I eat these rat tails and warlock teeth, the faster she’s outta here.” Resigned to her fate, she held her breath and swallowed, nodding when Auntie Shirley asked, “Is it fabulous?” and “Are you feeling the power?”

  Lindsey finished the bowl.

  Delighted, Auntie Shirley performed a dance that looked like she was dog-paddling through pudding. When she finally left, Lindsey breathed a sigh of relief, then went back to her room to select an outfit for the evening.

  Around nine o’clock Lindsey was waiting outside on the sidewalk in a lilac sweater set and slim white pants when Michael pulled up in a light blue Toyota circa 1975. She climbed in and he said, “I know she’s old, but I just can’t bear to let her go.”

  “I like it,” she said, slamming the door. “It’s cute. Kinda like you.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” he said. “It’s just dark in here.”

  Michael explained that the party was in the Western Addition, given by a friend of his brother, who actually wouldn’t be there because he lived in Chicago. Lindsey remembered that Kevin’s friends were having a party tonight, too, and when she mentioned it in passing, Michael suggested that maybe they could stop there later. Lindsey shrugged, not really caring either way as long as she and Michael would be together.

  They found parking and walked up to a shabbily painted gray Victorian with rounded Queen Anne windows and Doric columns. Several old Vespa scooters were parked outside, and they could smell clove cigarettes as they climbed the tall staircase. Inside, there weren’t too many people, or maybe it just looked that way because the room was so cavernous. The sixteen-foot ceilings swallowed everyone, and a big spooky chandelier sprouted from an overhead plaster rosette like an electric blooming dahlia.

  Lindsey was glad to see that she had entered a sort of 1980s new wave, ska-inspired time warp. Everyone was wearing two-tone vintage cardigans, Creepers with thick soles, and skinny, black pegleg pants. The stereo was playing “I Confess” by the English Beat.

  It was eighties heaven. Except that no one talked to her. Michael got led off somewhere in search of his brother’s friend, and all the people slouching in the corners, leaning on the banister, and sinking into the couch with their wedge hairdos couldn’t care less that Lindsey was there.

  She made her way into the kitchen to find something to drink. Still nervous to be out on a real date with Michael, she poured herself a plain seltzer water to settle her stomach. That Hobbit stew Auntie Shirley had fed her was not sitting well. She sipped the soda and tried to appear like she was having a reasonably good time.

  Whenever Lindsey was at a restaurant or party, she had a habit of scanning the crowd and taking a mental tally of how many other Asians were present. She was used to being in situations where she was the only Chinese person, and she wondered if she blended in almost as easily as any other brunette. Tonight, as she surveyed the partygoers, she saw no other Asians but counted seven black turtle-necks, two berets, and one cigarette holder that seemed at once sophisticated and ridiculous. She walked down the hall in search of a bathroom, and overheard conversations about beat poets and the record stores in Manchester, England. She felt she had actually stepped into a Smiths song.

  She pushed open the bathroom door and saw two short blond girls wearing Chinese cheongsams with chopsticks stuck through their chignons. Lindsey suddenly had that sick feeling she sometimes got. Were they paying homage to Chinese culture or mocking it? She took a deep breath. Should she just lighten up and accept the dresses as a matter of fashion, or should she be bothered that Chinese clothes were considered campy costumes? The girls’ backs were to Lindsey and they did not see her as she watched them tending to a white powder on the sink ledge. Their red lipstick against their sallow skin made them look a little like vampires.

  Now Lindsey wasn’t exactly naive, but she was a complete virgin when it came to drugs. She had never tried any of them and had never smoked anything, not even a cigarette. Hence, here in the bathroom, watching these two girls, drugs never occured to her. Instead, she wondered why they were bleaching their mustaches now instead of having performed this regimen in the privacy of their own domiciles.

  “Don’t forget to mix the activator crystals with the creme solution,” Lindsey said, startling them. She was equally startled when she watched one of the girls take a bit of powder in her fingernail and snort it.

  “Oh,” she said, feeling like an idiot. “Sorry.” She turned and practically ran down the hall. She really had to use the bathroom, but she was too embarrassed to go back.

  Lindsey joined Michael in a gathering of guys in bowling shoes and gals in sleeveless shifts. Michael introduced her, and they nodded at her with sullen mouths. After a while she excused herself to see if the bathroom was free yet, but the girls were still in there, now adjusting their chopsticks.

  The party was more crowded now. It seemed that at least twenty people had shown up in the last five minutes. Lindsey made her way back under the chandelier, but Michael had moved and she had temporarily lost him. She didn’t want to act pathetic and clingy, so she didn’t run off immediately in pursuit of him. She gazed up at the ornate lights, which sparkled like flickering candles, and admired the old plasterwork of the wall cornices and picture molding.

  As Lindsey scanned the decorative paneling, she could feel someone looking at her, and she turned to see a group of young women with slicked-back Elvis hair and mechanic jackets. One particularly short and childlike girl was staring at Lindsey with misty-eyed, Haley Joel Osment intensity.

  Oh, yes. Hoarders of All Things Asian could also be lesbians.

  The girl smiled, and Lindsey sort of smiled back and looked away. Lindsey knew she was considered a valuable commodity to lesbian Hoarders, especially because she was a total femme compared to most Asian dykes who, with their Patagonia shorts and polar fleece vests, rocked that pro-volleyball player look.

  Being more Nancy Kwan than Charlie Chan, Lindsey attracted a lot of attention, and as a result, she’d been disappointing dykes for years. By now she had become fairly comfortable brushing off their advances. Lesbian Hoarders could be just as lumbering and clumsy as heterosexual male ones, but when they stared at her breasts just like gross guys did, Lindsey was more flattered than repulsed. Maybe because
she felt a kinship with them as women, she likened the situation to someone driving a Mini Cooper pulling up alongside an Austin Mini to admire the mutually sleek headlights. However, despite their attraction to her, Lindsey knew in her heart that the only way she would ever beat off lesbians would be with a stick.

  When the girl sauntered over, Lindsey noticed her jacket had an STP logo and a name badge that said Troy. Lindsey talked to Troy for a while and complimented her on her boots, which were more massive than Lindsey’s. She knew lesbian Hoarders trawled for Asian flesh, too, but at least they did it with a modicum of style.

  Spotting Michael across the room, Lindsey excused herself and caught up with him.

  He put his arm around her and said, “I hardly know anyone here. You want to go to that other party you mentioned?”

  Lindsey shrugged, and they made their way to the exit. They got held up in the hallway when Michael bumped into his brother’s friend, who wanted them to stay a bit longer. They all three chatted a while as Lindsey scanned the ever-growing crowd of partygoers. There was now a line for the bathroom.

  She was surprised when she spotted a little beatnik Asian girl with a mushroom cap hairdo and artsy glasses. Their eyes met, and the girl looked somewhat stunned to see another Asian face as well. The girl seemed suddenly embarrassed and kept looking Lindsey’s way with more and more unease each time. She moved farther from Lindsey, who wondered to herself if the girl was deliberately putting distance between them. She wondered if the girl worried that any proximity might make their cumulative Chineseness unavoidably noticeable.

  She understood if Mushroom Head was uncomfortable. When there was just one other Asian person around Lindsey, too, felt awkward. She felt obligated to talk to her simply because they had this obvious one thing in common. However, she dreaded an excruciating exchange such as, “So, you’re Chinese,” answered with, “Yeah, so are you.” Complete silence would then be followed by, “Well, so long.” End of conversation.

  Just then someone over her shoulder recognized the mushroom-headed Asian and yelled, “Ellen! Hey, Ellen!” A guy made his way through the crowd toward her, and Lindsey watched the whole interaction very closely. Michael’s friend suddenly turned to her and said, “Oh, Lindsey, do you know Ellen?”

  “No, why?”

  “Oh, I just thought you would,” he said, taking a gulp from his drink.

  “Really? How come?”

  “Oh, because you’re both…from around here.” He seemed to hesitate, but Lindsey could have imagined it. A redhead behind them turned and said, “Dude, you know Ellen’s from Tennessee. You went to high school with her, Moron.”

  Lindsey and Michael exchanged glances, and the friend changed the subject. As he and Michael debated the merits of the Specials, Lindsey kept her thoughts to herself. She wondered, if two obese people were at a party, would anyone assume they were friends just because they were both fat?

  Of course, she had no proof, but she could have sworn the guy assumed she knew Ellen because they both happened to be Chinese. But even if she was brave enough to call him out on it, she was sure he’d deny it and she’d end up looking paranoid and confrontational. She told herself it didn’t even matter, but these weird moments happened with enough frequency in her life, in various situations, that she knew she couldn’t have imagined them every time.

  A few moments later they were finally leaving, and Lindsey looked over and caught sight of the lesbian Hoarders huddling around Ellen like a butch Girl Scout troop welcoming a prospective recruit. She stepped down the stairs and followed Michael out the door.

  Back in the car, Lindsey gave Michael the address of the other party, which was, luckily, not too far away. She still had to go to the bathroom.

  “How ’bout that guy thinking you knew that girl from Tennessee, like there’s some Asian pipeline,” Michael said. “What a dope.”

  Lindsey thought Michael was quite perceptive to have noticed the very thing that she worried existed only in her own head. But still, she was embarrassed, as if the friend’s assumption was partly her fault, and she tried to make a joke out of it. “Well, we do all look alike,” she said.

  This self-deprecating remark was a small defense, although in all probability she did not need to defend herself against Michael. Hers was an automatic comment, or maybe a test to see how Michael would react. Maybe she wanted to see if he had any self-loathing regarding his own Chinese blood. She was giving him the chance to air his true feelings in case a small part of him did think that all Chinese looked alike.

  She was underestimating him, but her way of insulting herself was something she had learned through osmosis from thousands of other Chinese who had made an art form of not making trouble. Even her Gung Gung had sometimes referred to himself as “just a Chinaman,” either to take the edge off a situation or to shrewdly get exactly what he wanted by letting his opponent assume a false sense of superiority.

  “You don’t look like that girl,” Michael said. He placed his hand on hers and squeezed it tight. Hesitantly, he added, “You’re stronger…than you might think.” Looking over at her, he slid his hand above her wrist and forearm, then held his warm palm firmly against her shoulder.

  Lindsey looked at him expectantly. She knew his next words would be something tender and sentimental, something she could savor for days to come, maybe even cherish forever.

  Michael squeezed her bicep. He said, “You could totally kick that girl’s ass.”

  With that, he let go and deftly whipped the car into a parking space. They both jumped out and made their way up the sidewalk.

  Inside the newly constructed condo-loft, the crowd was a marked contrast to the group they had just left. This group was all Asian, and Michael stood out rather obviously. Lindsey wondered if he felt self-conscious.

  She scanned the crowd for her brother, but Kevin was nowhere to be seen. As her eyes panned from one corner to the next she noticed segregated groups within the Asian whole. A large contingent of well-groomed business guys with silk shirts and shiny beltbuckles were comparing their various cell phones and handheld digital cameras. They drank shots of Blue Label Johnny Walker, and she assumed they all had MBAs, like Kevin.

  The other main group was the Super Christians. They were less flashy, the guys all wearing high-buttoned shirts that left just enough space to prominently display their tastefully plain gold crosses. The girls wore non-designer jeans or long skirts, and little or no makeup. As Lindsey and Michael made their way through to the center of the room, Lindsey recognized Karen from Thanksgiving over by a lamp, and then she overheard a guy say, “I ask myself every morning, ‘What would Jesus wear?’ And then I put on my khakis.”

  Aside from the roaring laughter that periodically erupted from the Johnny Walker drinkers, the only excitement at this party surrounded a quintet of girls with bleached hair, tinted eyelashes and bare midriffs. They caught everyone’s attention and provoked whispering, as well as stares of both admiration and scorn. Lindsey had seen their type before. In college she and Mimi had dubbed them the SLABS, short for Sleazy Asian Blonds.

  The SLABS flirted with anything wearing pants. The Christian girls eyed them nervously, the MBAs stood up straighter, and the pious guys tried to concentrate on their nonalcoholic beverages while stealing glances at their cocoa-buttered skin.

  Karen and a lanky friend walked over to Lindsey and Michael. The guys started talking about basketball as Karen barraged Lindsey with questions about her brother. Where’s Kevin? He coming? Your brother so smart! And so on.

  Lindsey peered around in search of the bathroom, but when she spotted it she could see two of the SLABS were already occupying the space. The door was half-open, and she could see them touching up their makeup, adjusting brastraps, and, she imagined, practicing come-hither looks.

  Lindsey rocked on her heels and took in the scene. Some nerds by the sofa were kneeling and harmonizing a happy-clappy church hymn. One of the MBA’s cellphones was ringing out an electron
icized “America the Beautiful.” The SLABS looked like Baywatch babes, but their coloring was all wrong, their sunny locks clashing with the yellow-orange undertone of their complexions. No one else seemed to notice their dark roots, because their bare underarms were sexy and their nipples like wasabi peas were peeping through their camisoles. The Christian boys sipped Squirt and sweated at the sight of temptation in the form of high heels and hairless gams.

  Lindsey noticed some of the business guys unwrapping small, foil-encased pills and swallowing them. She drifted a short distance from Michael and Karen, and her curious stare caught the attention of a guy with amazingly smooth skin. She wondered if he used Bioré facial strips to achieve such poreless perfection, and she was even considering asking him when he spontaneously introduced himself as Harry Poon. What an unfortunate name, she thought.

  “Want one?” he asked.

  “What is it?”

  He washed a pill down with a shot of Patrón tequila and said, “It’s Pepcid AC.”

  Lindsey asked why everyone was taking it, and he explained that it helped prevent turning crimson while drinking.

  “You know,” he said, “Asians are missing some alcohol-processing enzyme. That’s why we all get bright red when we drink. See those purple guys? They waited too long.”

  Lindsey was ignorant of this phenomenon. “Well, I don’t turn red,” she said.

  Harry Poon didn’t believe her, and they went back and forth arguing about it. All Asians turned red, he insisted. He had never seen anyone who didn’t. She contradicted him until he finally said, “Wanna bet? Let’s see you prove it, and if you’re right I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

  Lindsey looked across the room at Michael, and he was so damn handsome her stomach did a little flip.