by Eddie Huang
“Well, Mr. Fusco, I can tell you that I specifically picked Hakka Homes because it’s only two blocks from the United States Embassy.”
“Get outta here! Two blocks? That’s great, Eddie. That’s terrific.”
“Yup, two blocks to freedom, no big deal, anything happens, we run with the briefcase down the hall like Tom Cruise and we’re at the embassy.”
“Oh, geez, Eddie, don’t say that, ha ha. God forbid, but that’s good you’re near the embassy. That’s great.”
“All right, well, I’ll pick up Dena at the airport when she comes. We’ll call you immediately and maybe we’ll even get you a photo of us in front of the embassy.”
“Awesome. All right, thanks, Eddie. Listen, I just want to make sure my baby is OK, so it’s good to hear from you, big guy. I’m glad you’re doing well. What do you think about the Wolverines this year?”
“I like Gardner. I think he’s athletic, but he can actually throw the ball. Shoelace was a third-down slash QB that they tried to make a fulltime starter. He should have been Percy Harvin, not Tim Tebow.”
“I agree, I agree, Eddie, gotta be able to throw the ball these days. All right, well, you have fun, and we’ll talk soon.”
“Take care, Mr. Fusco!”
I hung up the phone, headed to the spa’s movie theater, and tried again not to judge parents until I’d been one myself.
—
Noah’s Ark sprawled on and on. Beyond the super buffet, pool, hot tubs, and saunas, there were a movie theater, racquetball courts, arcade games, La-Z-Boys with satellite television, and massage rooms. Evan and Emery had been watching a movie, so I sat outside on the steps until they finished.
“How was the movie?”
“Eh, we fell asleep,” Emery said.
“Sound system was good, though. They just play action films to show off the surround sound,” Evan said.
“So it’s like watching a movie in the backseat of a college drug dealer’s ES 300?”
“LOL. Pretty much like your old car but with foreign films,” Emery said. And he really did say “LOL.”
“What you guys wanna do now?”
Before they could answer, two early-twentysomething girls walked over in a different uniform than the others.
“Ni hao, shui gu!”*7
“Ni hao, ni hao,” Emery responded.
“Hmmm, what is this, dope spice?” said Evan.*8
“Would you guys like a massage?”*9
Emery looked around excitedly.
“Yes! Yes, I would like a massage. How do we do this?” he said.
“Well, we have many price ranges depending on how long you want the massage for. We also have many nutritious healthy benefits, treatments, and oils if you like.”
“Eddie, this is a medical expense. I’m pretty sure you can write this off.”
“Evan, if I get us all massages, will you push through and knock out the 2011 taxes for Baohaus tomorrow?”
“Man, I’m trying! You can’t just give me half of Baohaus or buy me a massage and expect the taxes to be done miraculously. It takes time.”
“I could give a lot of people half of Baohaus and they would definitely do the tax audit.”
“I kind of agree with Eddie, Evan. The value of what Eddie gives you is definitely worth dealing with the tax audit. Plus, he paid for us all to come out to China. You need to finish the taxes.”
“Fuck you guys. Emery, you worked with Eddie, too. He does all the ‘fun’ shit and we get stuck with the paperwork.”
“That’s your choice, Evan. You could go open your own restaurant, but this is Eddie’s restaurant. He put up the money, he made the food, he created the brand, he’s the one responsible when Sam Sifton doesn’t like it, and you’re responsible for the taxes!”
“Thank you, Emery. And the taxes are due in October, Evan. Get it done.”
“IT’S JULY!”
Instead of reminding him once again that the taxes were already overdue, already being audited, and on an extension, I bit my tongue and thought about how nice a massage would be. There’s nothing better than a straight-up medicinal massage in China. Chinese masseurs find muscles you didn’t know you had, eviscerate old scar tissue, pop your ankles, cure old basketball injuries, and leave you smelling like the illest stripper this side of Jamaica, Queens. I’m pretty sure they can fix anything short of LeBron’s toes.*10While most men in the U.S. can’t say “massage” without daydreams of happy endings, massage in East Asia actually stands at the intersection of art, culture, and medicine. There are your $10 boardwalk gypsies practicing the craft badly, your $50 red-light-district hot-towel extraordinaire, and the $100 top-of-the-mall lifestyle massage practitioner where you bring clients instead of taking them on a golf outing. But my favorite version is the medicinal massage.
The best massage I ever received was in Kentin, Taiwan, a beach town with a massage parlor set up like Katz’s Deli, flooded with bright halogen lights. If you were drunk after a night of karaoke, you’d grab a few grilled squid sticks outside and stumble in for the world’s best medicinal massage. That night, I walked in with an old shoulder injury from fighting Emery, a chronic sprained ankle from basketball, and giant welts on my back from falling on rocks surfing. Two out of three were injuries I’d seen doctors for and paid deductibles on without any progress or resolution. Without any real expectation of solving my problems, I lay down on the cot that should have had a sign demarcating that Meg Ryan once sat there.*11
“What kind of problems you got, kid?” screamed the old woman in a dishwasher’s shirt with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.
“I hit some rocks surfing and my back hurts.”
“OK, flip over, face down, let me take a look.”
She poked and prodded my lats, felt the welts, and then ran her fingers over my spine.
“You have old injury! Disc is crooked.”
“How do you know that without taking an MRI?”
“Ha! MRI. I use MY HANDS. Anyone can tell you have herniated disc.”
Just as I started to respond, she shut me down.
“Stop talking! I’m checking the rest of you out. I don’t need any more description from you leaving out all the good information! I use my hands and figure this out myself.” She laughed.
For the next five minutes, I just lay there like a stupid piece of bologna trying to hide its olives and peppers.
“Labrum has scar tissue.
“Ankle dislocated before.
“Stomach is out of place. You must have puked recently.”
As she moved around my stomach, I thought the next comment was going to be “Your FUPA is crooked.” But luckily she spared any commentary on my fat upper pussy area.
“OK, give me your arm. Bend your elbow and stay loose.”
I tried to follow her instructions as best as I could but failed miserably.
“Eh! Eh, I told you to stay loose. How am I going to fix this if you’re stiff? Let me rotate your arm. If you keep being stiff, then I have to use more force.”
Quickly, I told myself to make like badly cooked glass noodles and let loose.
“There you go. OK, stay loose, I’m going to put this muscle back on track.”
There was a hot sensation, followed by a crack in my shoulder like the sound of a bike chain catching onto a new gear, and then an explosion of relief like the last day of school.
“What the fuck did you just do?”
“I fixed you! Gimme a second, then I fix the rest of you,” she said as she lit a new cigarette.
For forty-five minutes, she worked her way around, listening to my body and exorcising it like the scar tissue whisperer. The constant shifting between acute pain and physical release was confounding. She hovered over me, plucking the fibers of my muscles, flicking the crevices of the bones, bringing peace to the region of my spine that had been warring with my hamstrings for years. When she was done, I lay there buzzing with blood rushing through my fascia in steam-table purgator
y like a giant side of beef set aside for resurrection as a Reuben sandwich in the “world to come.” But before I was allowed to pass into the next realm, someone shook me back to this life.
“Do you want a spa massage, too?” the Noah’s Ark girl asked me.
I looked up at her and blinked.
“Hey! Hello? Sir! Do you want a massage? Your brothers already left,” she said as I stood there in the middle of my Kentin day trip.
“Oh, hey, my bad. Wait, my brothers already went?”
“Ha ha, yes, they are doing massage.”
I really wasn’t into spa massage because there were no real benefits. Most of these girls don’t know how to cure a side of beef with the art of tui na,*12 so you’re paying for a terrible hour-long facedown fake date with a Chinese girl from a rural town where she humors you about how charming you are as she haphazardly elbows at vertebrae. Then again, the conversational massage is better than a shitty real date that involves an entire meal of food and eye contact. Plus, I hadn’t seen my girl in a month.
“I’ll do the massage.”
“Great! Come this way, shui gu!”
We arrived at the room, and I lay facedown into the table without saying too much, my mind still considering Mr. Fusco and his interpretation of China. What is it that kids do to people? In all other facets, Mr. Fusco was seemingly liberal, open-minded about others, albeit conservative in his own business, but with Dena he was an autocrat. I tried not to take his comments about China and communism personally, but they had me bugged out.
“Where are you from?” asked the massage girl.
“New York,” I answered, trying not to engage as I stayed in my head thinking about the Fuscos.
“Wow! Big city. I always want to go.”
“Chengdu is a big city, too.”
“Yes, but America different. It just seems so…easy, relaxed.”
Her insistence caught me off guard.
“How so?”
“It just seems magical, romantic, and easier. China is so hard.”
“Ha ha, I can’t relate. I understand you, but I can’t relate.”
“Why not?”
“Because I live there. Every person, every city, every country has its own struggle. We just have better marketing.”
“I don’t think so….How much do you make?”
“You really want to know?”
“It’s not hard to see, da gu. You just look expensive,” she said, laughing.
“I’ll probably do three hundred fifty K before taxes and commission this year so, take-home a hundred and fifty K.”
“WOW! What do you do?”
“I write books, cook food, host some shows.”
“You must have a girlfriend, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Wa sai,*13 I figure you would have a girlfriend because you are cute in a chubby big brother way, but now when you talk about money…You must have MANY girlfriends.”
“Ha ha, it’s not like that. I just got one.”
“Chinese girl?”
“Irish-Italian.”
“WA SAI! You really have kung fu. That is not easy.”
“Usually the other way around, right?”
“Exactly. American men come here and love us, but white women bu shuai ya zhou nan ren.”*14
“What’s your name?”
“Xiao Zhen. You are Xiao Ming!”
“How do you know?”
“I heard your brothers talking to you. We were watching you three running around earlier.”
“Why’s that?”
“You guys look interesting. Definitely not from here, but also not like other American Chinese. You seem bad!”
“Bad? Why bad?”
“Not baaad, but like bad boy. Very exciting to girls, you know.”
She laughed. I liked her, even though I knew she was at least partially gassing me.
“I guess.”
“Let me see photo of your girlfriend.”
I pulled up my phone and showed her a photo of Dena and me goofing off on a sidewalk on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Dena was wearing a leather jacket and Ray-Bans, with a Based FOB hat perched on her head.
“Oh! You must be a good person. Your girlfriend is very nice. You can tell a lot about a person by their girlfriend.”
“You can.”
“How did you meet?”
“I gave her drugs at a bar.”
“Ay-yah! You are a bad person.”
“She asked for it!”
“You are not bad person, you just troublemaker, but it’s cute. What is she like?”
“She’s my best friend. I know it’s what everyone says, but she’s really just my best friend. I can’t explain why, I’m just comfortable with her. We fit.”
“That’s the most important. Everything goes away except friendship and family.”
“Yeah, must be hard in China. No one has brothers and sisters.”
“I have a sister!”
“I thought you could only have one in China?”
“Yes, but in rural area like I’m from families can have more than one. I just came to Chengdu to make money and send home.”
“So how much do you make?”
“I will make you cry!”
“How much?”
“I work twenty-eight days out of every month in these stupid heels and take home forty-five hundred RMB.”*15
“Cot damn….So when I tell you that ‘everyone has their own struggle,’ you’d still say it’s harder in China?”
“Absolutely. America is easier. China is growing, changing, people at top making money, but very very hard for the rest of us. We all want a better life, but we don’t know if this is better.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I definitely prefer drinking water in America, living in America, working in America, but seeing what I saw growing up, I feel like you get further and further away from what makes you happy, the more you chase it. I know many Chinese people that come to America because it’s a ‘better life,’ but in their old age go home. Home is always home.”
“I agree. Being daughter of farmer, it is easier back home but everything around you changes and you have no choice but to join in. China, you know, had very tough last hundred years. Right now, China needs all of us to pitch in and catch up, but it is very hard on the little people.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You massage dudes all day, you don’t find any you like?” I joked.
She slapped my back.
“See! Bad boy! So mean! I don’t have time for dating. I have friends here, but we are all working.”
“What do you do when you’re not working?”
“Da gu, when am I not working?”
“What’s your schedule?”
“We come in at twelve P.M. and leave at midnight twenty-eight days a month. I live at Noah’s Ark!”
“How long does it take you to get home?”
“No, you don’t understand. I live at Noah’s Ark.”
“You live here?”
“Yeah, the building next to Noah’s Ark is to house employees. Most of us work here because we can send all the money home. We get housing, food, uniforms; most money can go home.”
“What does your sister do?”
“Same thing. My parents are getting old, and we want to save up enough money to keep our house.”
“Wa sai….”
“Ahhh, don’t sweat it, da gu, not your fault.”
“I’m lucky I was born in America, but it just shouldn’t matter as much as it does.”
“At least you can see it. Many Americans come and you can tell they can’t see the difference.”
“What do you mean by difference? My Chinese isn’t that good.”
“Your Chinese is fine. I mean the difference between you and me. We are both Chinese, but so much in between, so much changed because you were born in America. I have lots of things I want to
do. I have dreams, too, but I will never get to see them happen because I am born here with the parents I have.”
All this time, I was still facedown in the massage table unable to look at her face as she said these things. But I felt my eyes watering into the towel. Everything was wrong. I literally wanted to switch positions and give her a massage, but I couldn’t. That’s not what she wanted. I could have given her money, but it would have been insulting. I was engulfed in guilt, but instead of making it about myself, I got my shit together and remembered it was about her.
“You have to make time for yourself. No one will make you happy but yourself.”
“Not true! Your girlfriend makes you very happy, doesn’t she?”
“She makes me happy because she makes herself happy.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. I like her because she likes herself. She expects things for herself. She wants to do things for herself. She knows herself.”
“That is very strange. Don’t you want a woman that takes care of you? Why do you like her because she takes care of herself? She should already do that.”
“She should, but a lot of girls don’t take care of themselves. They take care of their families and boyfriends, but who takes care of them? My mom is like that. She spent her whole life taking care of my dad and the three of us but didn’t take care of herself.”
“I don’t know. I think it is important that woman take care of man. You are exceptional person. Whoever your girlfriend is must know how to take care of you.”
“She does. But if I wanted a maid or a nurse, I’d get one. I want a partner.”
“Wow. You are a very rare man….I never hear a man say these things. Your girlfriend is very lucky,” she said again as she rearranged my towel.
