by Vanessa Hua
As a result, I was uneasy around dogs and cats, never quite sure what to do with myself or their sentience, and nervous around goldfish, wondering if I should tap the glass tank or leave them alone. Peter bonded with animals, extending his curled hand to their noses, getting on his knees to play with them, and letting them lick his face. “You’re too easy,” I once said, teasing him about his loose affections. “You’re too cautious,” he replied.
We took careful steps on the creaking staircase to our third-floor room, the Hedgehog’s Nook, dominated by a huge four-poster bed, hung with watercolor sketches of the misty English countryside, and scented with lavender. A pair of stuffed hedgehogs, kissing, sat against plumped pillows. One was wearing a lace dress and a bonnet, the other wore a checkered cap and short red velvet pants on its stubby legs. A magnet held their lips together.
I set the pair on the mahogany nightstand, turning their heads to the wall. I didn’t want them to see what we were up to. When I turned around, Peter was sprawled on his stomach, wearing only his boxers. Like Clark Kent, he could shuck off his clothes in a single bound. Tall and lean, he had curly brown hair starting to thin that we were debating whether to shave off. I was shorter, stocky and strong from lifting weights.
He was more comfortable than me stripping down in strange places. In locker rooms, I kept a towel wrapped around my waist when I changed. At clubs, when men tore off their ribbed undershirts while dancing, I kept mine on.
“Calvin, I wonder how many couples have put this to use?” He tested the springiness of the bed with his hand, his query both scientific and flirtatious.
I slid in next to him. “Is that including the hedgehogs?”
At sixteen, he came out to his mother after his car broke down in the Castro. He’d spent the evening groping strangers in a club he’d entered with a fake ID. Although she picked him up with no questions, he told her over fries and a Coke at the Baghdad Café. She had suspected, she said, but was waiting for him to tell her.
With me, Peter worried about dating someone still coming out, and that he served as a training wheel that I would cast off when I came into my own.
“You’ll marry a woman to please your parents,” he had said as we drifted off to sleep one night. I held him tighter, but said nothing. I did not want to promise what I could not predict. In three years, I had revealed myself to my sister Jeanne, to my friends, to co-workers, and to our neighbors in Berkeley. All dry runs for when I would tell my parents.
Last year, my family had watched an evening newscast that featured the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. Drag queens, dykes on bikes, and so on. Then an Asian Pacific Islander group walked by waving rainbow flags and beating drums.
“Those are Thai and Filipino.” My father walked to the television and scrutinized them, inches from the screen. “Not Chinese.”
Behind him, my sister had smirked. My mother glanced at the ancestral shrine on our mantelpiece, piled with oranges and fragrant with incense. “Their poor parents.”
~~~
A thin shaft of light through the heavy velvet drapes meant it had to be morning, probably early. Peter stirred beside me. I envied how he could immediately plunge into deep sleep, and then awaken ready to go, no matter where we were or how late we had stayed up.
His hand drifted across my stomach and down my thigh. Mornings used to be our specialty, a quick romp before we headed out. We fell into each other. Afterwards, I listened to the sound of water running somewhere in the house, and footsteps through the walls and the floor. Very soon, we would no longer have the whole place to ourselves.
“Let’s go for a walk.” Peter bounded over to the window and pulled open the drapes, letting in blinding light. I turned my head toward the wall.
“I think we’re in a historical district. We don’t have to go far.” Whenever we traveled, Peter was out the door first, headed toward whatever looked interesting while I trailed behind with tour-books and maps. I was in no mood to explore this morning, preferring to curl in bed with Peter, and try to reclaim a little lost sleep. “I don’t feel like getting lost before breakfast,” I said.
“Come on—live a little.”
I pushed off the covers, willing myself to get out of bed. Peter flipped through a magazine on the coffee table, and then threw it back down.
“Never mind. We have all weekend.” He disappeared into the bathroom and started the shower.
He was the only person I had ever been with, and I was still learning how to act in a relationship. My teenage years passed by without the usual sexual fumbling and confusion. Studying was enough for me, and for my parents, and in college, I continued as a sexless engineer, seeking comfort in the cold order of circuits.
As a graduation requirement, I took a biology seminar on animal behavior. I wrote a paper on homosexuality in animals, about rams that butted heads, male monkeys that rubbed one another, and boy dogs that licked each other. There were fags everywhere in the animal kingdom, exhibiting similarities that looked like the truth.
It had been obvious that I was struggling with myself. Peter had been amused at my awkward attempt to understand, but also had admired my logic, my drive to think through the matter. He hoped to see how I would turn out, he told his friends. He could want the kind of man I would become.
We ran into each other a year after graduation and only then did I admit to myself I was attracted to him. Even then, I thought it was because I found his field of study, biomechanical engineering, interesting. Later, when he kissed me, the years of calculus and physics fell away under the simple proof of his lips.
“In the animal kingdom, geese mate for life,” I told him on our one-year anniversary. We were parked in a turnout in the Berkeley hills, looking at the dark water of the bay and the glittering lights of San Francisco.
“Yes, but they also lay eggs and fly south for the winter,” he said. “They’re birds, instinct is all they know.”
~~~
Peter had seen my childhood home only once before, last month when my parents were visiting my aunt in Los Angeles. He wanted to see where I grew up. I agreed, but only on the condition that we wore baseball hats and sunglasses. Lavenida was a small town, and we risked running into people who knew me.
“Why do I need to hide?” Peter had asked. “No one knows who I am.”
“But then I’ll look out of place, if I’m the only one covered up.”
On the tour of my childhood, we first stopped by my elementary school, where the metal play structures had been replaced with a fancy climbing wall, and the sand with rubber mats. Then we visited the library, where I found a haven of science fiction books as a teenager. At my favorite novelty store, Peter bought sour apple bombs and a handful of green army men, one of which he marched over my arms and shoulders as I drove.
After we turned off the main strip of small shops, I followed the road to my neighborhood, passing through a tunnel of trees. I kept an eye out for deer, whose population flourished here with no predator but car bumpers. Many houses were set back from the main road, glimpsed over hedges and through lush trees. Peter twisted around, looking in all directions, as if we were on an African safari instead of a ride down a suburban street.
“Did your parents change the house much?” Peter asked. “After I left for college, Mom turned my bedroom into a guest room.”
My mother took over the closest space, but kept the same twin bed and plaid comforter. “She left my Academic Decathlon trophies. Jeanne calls it ‘the shrine.’”
“Impressive. The same posters, too, on the walls? Let me guess. A black-and-white shot of Einstein, with his tongue sticking out? A map of the solar system? Or maybe an Oakland A’s player you were fascinated with, but didn’t know why at the time. You wanted to know all his stats.”
The soldier lingered on my ear, circling, toying with my lobe. I took my right hand off the steering wheel and ruffled the back of his head.
“If you already knew everything about me, why did you want to
come?”
“You might surprise me,” he said. “There’s a small chance.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“Not predictable, Calvin. Just transparent.”
I swatted away the toy soldier, machine-gunning against my ear. “I’m trying to drive.”
I was turning onto my street when I spotted a familiar blue station wagon—my next-door neighbor’s car—coming from the opposite direction.
“Get down, get down!” When he hesitated, I reached over and pushed him below the dashboard. He complied, hunching, his eyes level with the radio dial. I rested my hand on the back of his neck, where I could feel the tiny hairs and our sweat pooling beneath my fingers.
I looked away as I drove past the Volvo, and then back onto the main road into town. Not until we were back on the freeway did I tell Peter he could sit up. He rubbed the back of his neck, glaring at me.
“I’m sorry, but I thought I saw the neighbors.” I punched up the AC.
“How would they even know we’re together?”
“They would tell my parents they saw me, and my parents would ask why I came by when I knew they weren’t there and who I was with. Questions I’m not ready to answer now.”
“Or maybe ever.” He was not asking me to come out, only pointing out a possible truth. In this potential future, I would never acknowledge him, or myself, to my parents. And that would be the end of us.
~~~
Downstairs, the Mistress greeted us with a plate of cranberry scones. Wearing a striped dress that buttoned up to her throat and a frilly white apron, she told us buttermilk waffles and homemade sausages were on today’s menu. She curtsied good-bye and stepped backwards into the kitchen.
I broke apart a scone and gave Peter half, hoping that breakfast could help us start the morning over. He wolfed his share and held his hand out for more, smiling. He curtsied, imitating the mistress before we took our seats at the long polished table across from an older couple. Tom and Diane were scouting Napa and Sonoma as a potential place to retire, maybe to raise alpacas or angora goats on leftover land no good for vineyards, they said. The fleece was soft, warm, hypoallergenic—all natural. “It’s a better investment than emu.” Tom resembled a gunslinger, with his bushy gray mustache, scar over his right eye, and battered cowboy hat. “They have a bad temper.”
“Alpacas don’t bite but they do spit.” Diane was tanned and wiry as a leather whip, with ropy muscles in her arms and neck. “When they get angry. Or agitated. You never know what might set them off.”
Were people also one way or another in terms of temperament? Some were rude, some polite, some flamboyant, others bookish—it was in their nature. Biology was fate. If being gay was a trait like eye or hair color, then ancestor after ancestor had passed this inheritance down to me. It couldn’t be helped. I could accept who I was if I had no say in the matter, and in this way I hoped my parents would understand, all of us released from responsibility.
I was pouring syrup on my waffles when Mr. and Mrs. Woo, my parent’s favorite karaoke partners, walked into the dining room. The top fell off the miniature jug, and blueberry syrup flowed off the waffle and onto the plate. Peter took my hand and righted the jug. Looking where I was looking, he took his hand off my knee.
Why were they here? Middle-class Chinese immigrants stayed at glitzy hotel towers in Las Vegas, not at quaint bed and breakfasts. They didn’t drink wine, comparing vintages, they sipped Remy Martin at Chinese banquets. They wanted their own spacious suite, with a view, a luminous pool, and buffet piled high with King crab and jumbo shrimp.
They were looking through brochures about wineries, hot air balloons, and couple massages spread out on the antique sideboard. I wanted to slip out of the room or slide under the table, but it was too late. I couldn’t hide.
“Woo Tai Tai, Woo Xian Sheng,” I called out, using the Chinese titles of respect.
Mr. Woo looked around the room, confused at who was speaking to him in this unfamiliar place, before he recognized me.
“Xiao Hu!” He used my childhood nickname, “Little Tiger.” My reserved parents, and their generation, showed rare affection to their children with such endearments.
“How are your parents?” he said in Chinese. “Your sister?”
He wore an argyle sweater vest, dress slacks, and wingtips, a banker even on weekends. He and my father were not the sort to wear shorts and sneakers and play basketball in the driveways with their sons. He and Mrs. Woo sat kitty-corner across from us.
“I’m having dinner with them tomorrow night,” I answered in English. I didn’t introduce Peter.
For years, I had attended Chinese school on Saturdays with their sons, learning stick fighting and how to cheat on tests. Victor was married to a filial Chinese daughter, a pharmacist, and Ernest was dating one, my mother reminded me at dinner each Sunday.
My parents were 0-for-2, in terms of arranging the proper relationship for either of their children. They match-made with friends over karaoke and at Chinese wedding banquets, but their schemes never worked. My sister and I begged off dates, with busy schedules as an excuse, or consented at most to one dinner. My parents adhered to strict Chinese traditions that we learned to circumvent. Over the years, we shared the responsibility of deceit, the big and little secrets that oiled the machinery of family expectations.
Peter and I lived together on the second floor of an old house. We alternated between the two bedrooms, depending on the mood—to bask in either the glow of a tropical fish tank in his room, or to snuggle in my feather comforter and flannel sheets. I kept the doors to the bedrooms shut when my parents visited. Ever polite, they never asked to look inside.
A year ago, my sister had moved in with her boyfriend, Phuoc, whose parents were refugees from Vietnam. They lived in San Jose, more than an hour away, too far for my parents to drop by unannounced. As far as they knew, her roommate was a medical student always at the hospital. Phuoc was a hard-working line cook bursting with ideas for artisanal dishes, farm-to-table-to-pun—but not Chinese.
“Victor and Ernest sent us here for our 30th anniversary.” Mrs. Woo beamed beneath her permed hair and gold-rimmed glasses, much like my mother’s. She was proud that her sons, a doctor and a software engineer, were successful enough to pay for the trip.
“They’re making it tough for the rest of us,” I said. “My sister and I will have to send our parents to a place like this, on their anniversary.”
Mrs. Woo laughed. “Where’s your girlfriend? My sons said, very romantic.”
“Big beds,” Mr. Woo said. “Comfortable.”
“I’m here with my roommate.”
The conversation halted at the inadequacy of the title. Mr. and Mrs. Woo looked at Peter, me and then at each other as if to say, we’ll continue this later, in Chinese. As oblivious as my parents and their immigrant friends were to pop culture or social revolutions, they knew that male roommates did not spend weekends together in wine country.
“They told us you had a good friend,” Mrs. Woo said after a minute. Her husband busied himself by pouring a glass of cranberry juice, not a drop spilled.
“We met in college,” I said. “We like traveling together.”
“You’re just like Victor. Always liked to go out with his friends. Go to ski, go to Vegas, go around everywhere,” Mrs. Woo said. “Finally he settle down.”
She was giving both of us an out. She did not have to recognize what was before her, if I did not. It would have been easy. I had done it many times before, putting just enough distance between us when I saw someone I was not ready to out myself to. On guard in public, putting Peter on edge all over again. He had already settled on who he was, but I had forced him again into hesitancy. I hung my head and closed my eyes, trying to relieve the pressure building.
Looking up again took an immense effort. Exhausted from last night, and from pretending, I put my hand on top of Peter’s. He rubbed his thumb along my pinky, on display next to the butter dish. Our
hands splayed together looked like a strange species of crab, one half pink and hairy, the other smooth and tan.
The Woos glanced down and kept talking about their plans for the day. Golf, Mr. Woo said. Mud bath, Mrs. Woo said. Wine tasting for us. Maybe they did not understand our precise relationship, or they disagreed with who we were, but they kept chatting with us. Small as the talk was, it left me hopeful.
I also knew that dealing with me was easier for the Woos than my parents. I was not their son. When I was nine, my paternal grandfather, my Ye-Ye, had died after wasting away in our spare bedroom for several months, and I came to associate the smell of herbal brews with decay and decline. My father cried that afternoon, standing over the body, choking gasps from a quiet man. I hid in my bedroom, covering my head with a pillow and scratchy Star Wars comforter, but I could not escape the sound.
Soon after, he was on the phone, arranging for motels and airline tickets for relatives. I understood then that sons repaid their fathers at the time of death. And that sons had to have sons to carry on the family line.
At the funeral, taped Buddhist chants played on a portable stereo. Incense drifted from the brass pot in front of the casket. The family took turns, each person bowing at the waist three times, then kneeling on the ground and touching their head to the floor, starting with the eldest son, my father, and ending with the youngest male grandchild, my cousin Louis. After my turn, I sat next to my mother and put my head in her lap, something I had stopped doing a year earlier, because it seemed too babyish.
