Puberty Sucks

I barely had any dates in high school and they all turned platonic after the first two anyway. I had heard the “you’re more like a brother to me” line almost every year. I had never really thought of it as anything to do with my being Korean in a predominately white town until my friend Mateus pointed it out. Mateus was Portuguese and his ability to straddle that world between his deep roots in his culture and also blending in as another white kid from the East Side, made him way more perceptive to the subtleties of racism.

“It’s tough for girls to imagine themselves with you,” he said.

I don’t think I had much of a reaction to this. I think the truth of it was too painful for me to even acknowledge. But I knew it was true. Somewhere deep down I knew that no girl in school ever had fantasies about me as the guy that asks her to the prom, or showing up to their house with a bouquet of flowers. I had to accept my fate as the high school eunuch. The friend to girls. The funny but non-threatening buddy to the guys. A supporting character in my own life.

I know what non-Asians (and maybe some Asians who have much better self-image than I do) are thinking -- “Get over it. It wasn’t because you were Asian, it was because you were a loser.” Yee who got poontang in high school are probably right. I don’t want this to be a book about me boo-hooing my Asianess and blaming it for my inability to touch enough boobs during high school. I am fully to blame. I was a loser. I had no self-confidence. And that was the bottom line.

I knew plenty of non-white guys who were getting plenty of play in high school. Byron Benton my childhood buddy from down the street was a mulatto kid that went to the experimental high school, joined a band, sang badly and got plenty of pussy. Kipper, my former twin, dated more girls than I had crushes on. Tommy Ribiero had gotten his little brother Joey laid for the first time (though I think it might have been to a prostitute), but in high school, that still counts. I think even Alvin Chong was getting some.

And it can’t be said that the town wasn’t progressive enough. Just six years before me, my brother had a steady girl in the same high school -- a really beautiful girl named K. who lovingly handed over her secret flower to him before he graduated.  If the laws of probability had any say, it should have been there for me too.

(to be continued)