How a Game Changer Became My New Normal
“Let me tell you about Asian girls: you can get them eating out of the palm of your hand.” This from the 60-year old bald white guy, in a grandpa sweater, at my one and only speed dating experience. I jump up with my empty wine glass, nothing to throw in his face and tell him “us Asian girls are gonna f*** you up”. I hadn’t used the F word on anyone since Greg Evans in sixth grade gym.
Dating is hard. Even your computer knows you’re single when your sidebar ad is: “Wanted: Asian. Rich Men Looking for Asian Women. Join Now. It’s Free! Warning: these men are very wealthy.” I’ve been called China doll, Asian Princess, a California Japanese. I get messages from “Pantherpawz”, “Vicious, Delicious, Nutritious”, and “Getitdone2467”. I’m good at pretending I don’t speak English, but when really annoyed I say “I don’t speak English.” In English.
Growing up with white parents and a white last name makes meeting people challenging. They don’t understand that I’m white inside. I shrug my shoulders and say “it’s just me” and they hide their confusion with a sympathetic head tilt.
I marry a Scotch Irish guy who’s glad I’m not “too Asian” so he doesn’t have to deal with foreign in-laws, date an Italian Jew who thinks I’m more Asian than I’ve ever felt. Get a new haircut, makeup, clothes, shoes, jewelry, fragrance: anything to make me more Asian. Even with all the expense I still don’t feel like I can compete with the flawless girls in Korea-town wearing mini skirts in winter and stilettos in the snow.
But then there’s the delicious food and wild movies in a language I can’t understand, but that sounds beautiful. It feels good to be Asian, even cool. I can walk in 6” heels and wing my eyeliner out the right way. But I still wish I didn’t need so much stuff to fit in.
Changing my last name to Kim is empowering, but still not enough. I need to talk to people like me, who know what it’s like to field questions like “what are you?”, “human, what are you?”, “where are you from?”, “New Jersey”, “no, where are you REALLY from?”, “NEW JERSEY”. And the more personal: “why haven’t you found your birth parents, haven’t you looked hard enough?”, and from my 8-year old cousin: “did they put you in the orphanage because you cried too much?” And the always classic “why don’t you speak Korean?”
A friend asks “why do you care about adoption so much, it happened so long ago, it isn’t who you are anymore.” But another friend suggests I go on Facebook to look for other adoptees and I find thousands telling their stories and sharing their experiences and thoughts. Thousands. Where have these people been who knew exactly what I was feeling?
We call ourselves KADs: K for Korean, AD for Adoptee. I submit this to Urban Dictionary, but it isn’t accepted over definitions like “slang for kid”, or “short for Kadimoto, an Imperialistic Japanese term for a ninja death squad.” But I don’t need to explain myself to these new friends. They know what it’s like to feel Korean and White and both and neither.
So it’s 2014 and I’m rushing down from my office to meet a friend-of-a-friend fellow KAD visiting from out of town. I have a free ticket for him to the museum where I work and I don’t even know what he looks like but it doesn’t matter because I’m not into Asian guys anyway. The lobby’s so crowded with visitors I can’t even see in front of me until I get to the Information Desk and: BAM. It happens.
My KAD girlfriends call it The Switch, and in that moment I’m attracted to an Asian guy for the first time. I curse myself for not putting on heels or reapplying lipstick but it’s too late, it’s just me here. And suddenly he’s standing there above me with the sunlight coming in, tall and handsome and a little shy, but he looks very kind.
You know when you hold someone’s eyes just a little longer than usual and you’re wondering what’s happening here? I’ve heard chemistry defined as perceiving similarity and it’s just like that: I feel like I’m looking back at myself. I was not expecting this. I want to know everything about him in the five minutes before I have to go back to work.
Downside? He lives in the mid-west twelve hundred miles away. Stalking his profile I comment on his Korean fried chicken recipe and we start messaging, then texting, then phone calls.
We joke about my dating disasters and the more we talk, the angrier I get at guys in the past who haven’t liked me for me. And then it isn’t about the other guys anymore, it’s just about us.
And we wonder: can you really fall in love with someone over texting? He says: maybe this is the whole soul mate thing and we were past lovers and best friends.
When he visits again he sees me with no makeup in lumpy pajamas with morning breath and says I’m just as beautiful. That night is perfect, summery warm with just enough of a breeze to blow my hair back. There’s an Italian festival by the river with rides and live music and sausage sandwiches and I’m proud of my family’s Italian heritage.
We talk about the future, what kind of engagement ring I’d like, how a wedding in his area would be less expensive, moving closer together and babies…until the rain starts pouring down. There’s thunder and lightning and it’s all around us so sudden and exciting and we run for cover laughing. He blocks the wind and holds me with my bare face and flip flops, no perfume or adornments and loving me just for me.
And he gives me the ring that his birth mother placed on him before she gave him up for adoption. It’s precious and irreplaceable and I’m amazed to be trusted with it.
But we aren’t a “we” anymore. The distance grew, the ring was returned, and there was no moving, no babies. We’re still friends and when I say I’ll always love him, he reciprocates in kind. So maybe there’s a difference between loving someone and being with them.
Now I can love the Asian side of me on my own terms and not someone else’s ideal vision. I used to shrug my shoulders when people expected an Irish girl with red hair and freckles, but now I tell them my Korean name is Kim Hyun Hee, 김현희, and show them my tattoo that says: “na man / just me”.
And it says it in Korean.
Previously performed live as part of The Moth Community Program with Also-Known-As, Inc.
