The Moth Presents All These Wonders

by Catherine Burns

  This story was told on September 23, 2014, at Club Nokia in Los Angeles. The theme of the evening was You Are Here: Stories of Rights and Lefts. Director: Meg Bowles.

  The first time I fell in love, I was in the first grade and it was with this girl named Janice.

  I went up to her on the playground, and I said, “Janice, I love you!”

  And she said, “You’re the color of poop.”

  I grew up in a small town called Davis, California, and I was one of the few brown people there.

  All I wanted as a kid was to fit in. I remember we had this assignment in the third grade.

  The teacher said, “Write down what you want to be when you grow up.”

  So all these kids said, “I want to be an astronaut” or “I want to be an NBA player.”

  I wrote, “I want to be white.”

  The teacher said, “Honey, what do you mean?”

  And I was like [points to the palm of his hand], “I want this part of my skin to be all of my skin.”

  My father had emigrated from a small town in India called Aligarh during the early eighties, and he was the only brother from his entire family to make it here to the States. He felt it was his duty to establish the American dream here in America by securing a financial future for his family.

  I was his first and only son. So that means the rules were very, very strict. That meant no fun, no friends, no girls. Go to school, come home, study—you can have fun in med school.

  The simplest things became this huge debate with my dad.

  “Dad, I want to go to the movies.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see Lethal Weapon 4.”

  “Hasan, humnay Aligarh se nay aye Lethal Weapon 4 ke liye! I didn’t leave Aligarh for Lethal Weapon 4.”

  My dad was willing to forsake my fun to secure the American dream.

  Now, by the time my senior year of high school had rolled around, I had been cut from the basketball team for the third year in a row, I had just gotten off of Accutane, so my skin was slowly peeling away, and I had yet to go to a football game or school dance. So I was just killin’ it. I was just like crushing high school.

  But there was one bright spot, and her name was Bethany Reed. Her family had just moved from Ohio to Davis, and her father was a very successful cardiologist. So they had this gorgeous house with a beautiful white picket fence. Her family looked like it had been cut out of a J.Crew catalog.

  She was small, cute, and dainty; she had this curly hair that bounced up and down when she would walk; and she always smelled like Big Red cinnamon chewing gum, even after PE. It was incredible.

  We had AP calculus together, and she didn’t know about the Davis High social hierarchy and where I stood on it; she just thought I was funny and charming, and she really liked my AIM game. My AOL Instant Message game was so tight. Whatever I lacked in real-life game, my online persona was on point.

  So we’d have these study groups together for AP calc, and for the most part they were always at her house. And I just remember going over to her house, and we’d be sitting at the dinner table, and it was just like, “Hahaha! Have more mashed potatoes.”

  And I’m like, Oh, this is tight. You know? This is so cool.

  One day Bethany says, “When are we gonna study at your place?”

  And I was like, “Ugh.”

  I had this cardinal rule. I would never invite school friends over to my house, because I didn’t want to open myself up to ridicule. You know, have a person come over and be like, “Why do your parents talk like that? What language are they speaking? What’s that smell?”

  I just didn’t want to be embarrassed. But by the end of the school year, I felt really close to her. So I broke that rule, and I invited her over to my house to study.

  I remember I told my parents, “Everyone, please be normal.”

  And my dad was like, “Hasan, we’re normal….Samosa?”

  I’m like, “Jesus.”

  So we’re at the dining-room table doing integrals. You can hear the hiss of samosas frying in the kitchen and Hindi playing on Zee TV. My mom and dad are arguing in Hindi.

  I’m looking up from my textbook, looking at Bethany, thinking, Please don’t say anything, please don’t say anything, please don’t say anything.

  And she looks up and says, “Wow, this seems really nice.”

  And I was like, I’M IN LOVE WITH THIS WOMAN. I am going to marry you, YOU ARE MY WHITE PRINCESS. When can we get married? Can I put a ring on it right now?

  She kept coming over, and we kept doing integrals on the dining-room table. One night I walked her back to her car, and as I was walking her to the end of my driveway, before she got in her car, she turned and just kissed me, right on the lips. No tongue, but…it was amazing. Fireworks, the whole thing. It was incredible.

  Then she got into her car and drove off.

  And I loved her for that. She knew the rules. She knew—no fun, no friends, no girls. And definitely no girlfriends. She knew that my father would never allow us to be boyfriend and girlfriend, at least while we were in high school.

  She didn’t say, Hey, can we hold hands at school? When can I see you again? Nothing. Finally, someone who gets it.

  Now, by the time spring quarter had rolled around at my school, my AP calculus class was a pretty tight-knit group of overachievers, and Mr. B, our calculus teacher, really wanted us to try to have a semblance of a normal life.

  So he got in front of the class that seventh period and he said, “All right, you guys are all killin’ it academically. You’re gonna go to the country’s best institutions. But I want you guys to have normal lives, which is why I’m making it mandatory for every single person in this class to go to prom.”

  One of the kids was like, “Are we getting extra credit for this?”

  And Mr. B’s like, “No, you’re getting life credit. There’s no extra credit. You’re going to prom.”

  I was sitting in the back, and I’m just like, Yeah, right, Mr. B, there’s no way you’re gonna get the kids in this class to go to prom. That is just not happening.

  The Jehovah’s Witness girl, she’s not going to prom. There’s the Korean exchange student, he’s definitely not going to prom. You have to be able to speak English to say, “Can you go to prom with me?” He’s not gonna be able to do that.

  They used to sell Cup O’ Noodles at my high school, right? There was this kid named Meelan, and kids would eat the Cup O’ Noodles, then leave the broth on the lunch tables. Meelan would go to the lunch tables and drink people’s lukewarm broth.

  I was like, There’s no way Broth Breath is getting a date to prom. Impossible.

  But Mr. B was focused. He pulled down the whiteboard, and there was this bracket with all of our names on it. It led to prom. The big dance. This was like March Madness for nerds.

  But I thought, Look, no one’s gonna go, I’m fine, I don’t have to address this problem.

  But the weeks went by, and slowly, one by one, everybody got a date to prom.

  The Korean exchange student managed to ask somebody to prom. The Jehovah’s Witness girl, her parents all of a sudden became cool. She was able to go. Even Meelan popped an Altoid and asked someone and got them to say yes. It was crazy.

  Three days before prom, Mr. B pulls down the whiteboard, and the last two names on the board are Hasan Minhaj and Bethany Reed. And the whole class goes crazy, hooting and hollering, you know?

  I was so embarrassed. I looked down at my calculus book, ’cause I couldn’t handle the pressure, but again Bethany was so cool; she didn’t say anything in front of everybody. And then the bell rang. Seventh period was over.

  We walked to my locker, and as I was putting my calculus book away, she turned to me and said, “Hey, you’ve been my best friend ever since my family moved here from Ohio, and my senior year wouldn’t be the same without you. So will you go to prom with me?”

  And I said, “Yes. Yes, I will go to prom with you, my white p
rincess.”

  (I didn’t say white princess, but in my mind I said that.)

  Now, I’m not a bad kid. I love my parents. I love my dad. We had a tumultuous relationship, but I really did love him. And I had seen a lot of sitcoms. I’d seen Full House. I know the drill. Go upstairs, talk to Danny Tanner, pour your heart out, cue emotional music, hug, and we’ll figure it out.

  I go home, and I say, “Dad, can I go to prom?”

  He says, “Hasan, me tumara mou torthunga” which translates to “Hasan, I will break your face.”

  Duly noted, Father.

  So I go with Option B. I call up Beth, and I tell her, “Look, here’s the deal: I’m gonna have to sneak out to go to prom with you. It’s too late to get a limo and tux, so I’m just gonna wear a normal suit, and I’m gonna sneak out of the window, and we’re gonna take your dad’s car, and we’re gonna go to prom, and then I’m gonna sneak back into my room, and if I get beat up and I die, well, YOLO, you only live once, you know what I mean? So this will be the night of our life.”

  And she says, “Cool, let’s do it.”

  So the night of prom rolls around, and I’m getting ready in my room. I put on my JCPenney suit, put my Geoffrey Beene tie on, I spray two puffs of Michael Jordan cologne on, you know? I’m ready.

  I live on the second story of our house, and I climb out the window, and my trusty Huffy’s to the left of the house. I get on my bike, and I’m balancing the corsage in one hand.

  I made sure I was biking fast enough that I’d get to her house on time, but slow enough that I wouldn’t get pit stains. And I was riding extra wide with my knees out—that way my slacks wouldn’t get caught up in the chains. I made it to her house in time.

  I got to her door, and I was like, “Man, I did it. I’m going to prom with Bethany Reed. This is the American dream.”

  And I knock on the door, and her mom opens the door….

  …And over Mrs. Reed’s shoulder, I see Erik Deller, the captain of the water-polo team, putting a corsage on Bethany.

  Mrs. Reed looks at me and says, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Did Bethany not tell you?

  “See, we have a lot of family back in Ohio, and we’re gonna be taking pictures tonight, so we don’t think you’d be a good fit.

  “Do you need a ride home? Mr. Reed can give you a ride home.”

  I said, “No, it’s okay. I got my bike.” I rode home, and I climbed up on the roof and into my room, and I played video games the rest of the night in my suit. It was the best I’ve ever been dressed playing Mario Kart.

  The next day at school, Bethany stopped me at my locker before first period and said, “Hey, listen, whatever you do, please, please don’t say anything. Please. Okay? My parents are good people. The rest of the class, they wouldn’t understand. Please don’t say anything.”

  And I said, “Okay.”

  Seventh period rolled around, and Mr. B, in front of the entire class, said, “So, lovebirds, how was prom?”

  Everybody turned and looked at me, and I said, “Yeah, you know, I decided not to go. I just wasn’t really feeling it.”

  And everybody looked at me, and they were like, “Wow, you dick. You stood up the new girl from Ohio. You’re a jerk.”

  And there it was—I got socially crucified for this girl that I love in front of the whole class.

  Bethany and I never spoke after that. We just went our own separate ways.

  But the hardest part about it was that as I stood there on her porch that night, I felt like her family was right. It wasn’t just some toothless yokel yelling “Camel jockey!” from the back of his truck. I could let that roll off my back. Her father was a respected cardiologist. They were a well-to-do, successful family. So I just accepted it as true that I wasn’t good enough. Who was I to ruin their picture-perfect American prom? After all, prom wasn’t an event for people that look like me.

  It really kind of messed with my notions of self-worth, for a long time.

  A few years passed, and my father suffered a heart attack—a quintuple bypass. When he was lying in his hospital bed, I drove up from L.A. to come visit him, and he was the most vulnerable he’d ever been in his entire life, emotionally and physically.

  I told him the story. And he said, “Hasan, I’m mad at you.”

  I said, “Why? ’Cause I snuck out? ’Cause I lied to you?”

  He said, “No, because you didn’t forgive Bethany.

  “See, when I first emigrated from Aligarh, I was scared. I was scared of everything that America had to offer. I was afraid that you were gonna get caught up in the wrong crowds. I was afraid that you were gonna get into drugs, which is why I tried to protect you from everything.

  “And see, Bethany’s family, they were scared, too. They were scared of people that looked like us for whatever reason. And you were scared of me, and Bethany was scared of her parents. Everybody was scared of everybody. But, Hasan, you have to be brave, and the courage to do what’s right has to be greater than your fear of getting hurt.”

  There are days where I feel like I can forgive Bethany, and there are days where I feel like I can’t. I’m working on it.

  But I’m gonna try to be brave. I’m gonna be brave for me and Dad.

  HASAN MINHAJ is a comedian, an actor, and a writer in New York. He is a correspondent on the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning program The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. His critically acclaimed one-man show, Homecoming King, recently returned to Off-Broadway after a sold-out run in 2015. A 2014 Just for Laughs “New Face,” he was selected by the Sundance Institute to develop his solo show and feature film at the prestigious New Frontier Storytelling Lab. He hosted the documentary special Stand Up Planet, produced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His viral web series, The Truth with Hasan Minhaj, has been featured in countless publications, including the Huffington Post, Gawker, and the New York Times. He has been seen on a variety of other television programs, including Arrested Development on Netflix, HBO’s Getting On, and @Midnight on Comedy Central.

  This story was told on March 8, 2014, at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The theme of the evening was Coming Home. Director: Sarah Austin Jenness.

  In our little house on the north side of Pittsburgh, we had one television. It was black and white. We kept it behind the couch, and I was never allowed to watch it. Most nights it was my mother, my father, me…maybe some wooden blocks.

  It was very Little House on the Prairie, but in the 1980s. One day, though, when I was about four years old, I snuck across the street to my neighbor’s house, and she let me watch The Love Boat.

  It blew my mind. When I think about it now, I can just picture Gavin MacLeod dressed in a captain’s uniform, making out with all of these beautiful women with perfect perms. I loved it.

  When I came home, I asked my mother why they kissed in that crazy way. That was a really difficult thing for my mother to explain, but finally she was like, “Well, um, when people love each other, like, a whole lot, that is the way that they kiss.”

  So when she came in that night to put me to bed, I grabbed her head and I smashed it up against mine, and I moved my head back, and I said, “I’m giving you Love Boat kisses.”

  I was obsessed with my parents.

  When our friends were getting pets, they would get a guinea pig and name it Punky Brewster or a Chihuahua and name it Sting. I got two goldfish, and I named them Paul and Lisa, after my parents, because they were my rock stars.

  When my sister was born, they named her Alice.

  We would go to parties, and they would introduce us, and people would laugh and say, “Oh, yeah, like Kate & Allie.”

  And we would be like, “Uh-huh.”

  We didn’t realize that Kate & Allie was a show on everyone else’s color TVs. It was like naming your kids Will and Grace.

  But the rest of the world existed outside of our family, so much so that when my parents divorced, I didn’t get angry, I didn’t get mad. I was like, Oh, this is the nex
t thing we’re doing together. I wrote my college essay on how my parents’ divorce made them my two best friends and took us on to our next adventure together. (I did get into college, though, despite that.)

  The day before I was leaving for college, my mother and I were having lunch. She confessed to me that she had seen a doctor, and she was sick. And it wasn’t a big deal, she was just going to have some chemo, and she would be fine.

  And I really did, honestly, believe her.

  But I couldn’t unhear that. And I felt like I suddenly had to start considering a world with this big hole where my mom should be. I would go for months and months, and I wouldn’t think about it, and then I would be reminded of it.

  We’d be spending time together, and it’s like my brain would split. And part of me would be completely present, and the other half of me would be taking all of these notes, so I could sear all of these specifics about her into my brain in case I ever needed them when she wasn’t there.

  After college I moved to New York. Sometimes on Friday afternoons, I would drive from New York City, across the state of Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh to her apartment, and I’d get in really late.

  She’d open the door, and she’d say, “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  I would say, “Yes.”

  And we both knew that it wasn’t a glass of wine, because it never was. We’d go into the kitchen, and she would have laid out all these mismatched blue-and-white plates, with homemade hummus and white cheeses and salty olives, and these huge globes that she’d fill with red wine.

  Somehow we would sit at the table and talk, and we would drink a lot of wine, but miraculously the glasses would never be empty.

  One night we’re sitting and we’re talking, and she’s laughing. She has just confessed to me that the hardest thing she ever had to do as a mother was to give me ipecac to induce vomiting, because when I was little, I accidentally ate a bunch of her asthma medicine. They were these little red-coated pills, and she could see the red in my mouth.