"I never dreamt that I would get to be The creature that I always meant to be But I thought in spite of dreams You´d be sitting somewhere here with me." Being Boring by the Pet Shop Boys (1990) Broken. Damaged. Humpty Dumpty. Realized. Pick up the pieces. To reassemble what once was. An incomplete puzzle. And a constant desire to make the pieces fit. An exhaustive process. For those with (C)PTSD often wake to the nightmare that is life. Our very existence. Navigating this condition is akin to traveling with a map for a different destination. You asked for a map of New York City and a map of San Francisco is received. We are often left in a dubious state abandoned by loved ones. Too much to handle. Our actions constantly questioned. Our questions unheard. Our grievances ignored. Stasis. Inertia. An immense sense of loss and feelings of emptiness. Like a tank running on empty begging to be refueled in order to operate, our needs unmet. We seek and rarely find. I've been searching for normalcy ever since I was a toddler. The clinging to a perpetual chaos over peace and silence instilled a great sense of fear and wonder as a child. Many photographs showcase the dazzle of my eyes. The wonder. The wondering of why. The family practice of humiliation, fear, distrust and hate suppressed any blossoming of love. A very strict upbringing characterized by impossible tasks and chores combined with a laissez-faire attitude about my personal aspirations and accomplishments resulted in a "Mr. Fix It" mentality that carried onto adulthood. As a young adult, I was denied blossoming sexually for I was taking care of my grandparents until they died. Hence death was always at center stage. Climbing out of the darkness, I attempted to realize my desire only to receive the "friend-zone" and unrequited love. Working in the HIV/AIDS industrial complex did not help. I was emotionally dead starving for love. Looking back, I can see how my desire for love has always been tenuous. As the song by Foreigner goes, "I wanna know what love is!" My first love was in kindergarten. Her name was Katie Greaves. We kissed multiple times a day like spouses departing for work. Our lips inseparable. My relatives would inquire how many times I kissed Katie at family gatherings. I would exclaim, "one hundred!" Then something happened. She no longer kissed me and I became an object of ridicule. I was heartbroken. On the first grade playground Katie would get excitable and scream in my face, "Darren Brown." I would collapse further into myself paralyzed by wonder. Strangely enough our innocent relationship set the stage for future unrequited love adventures. The record repeating its groove. Acceptance is a cornerstone of my existence. As a young student classified with disabilities (speech impediments and colorblindness), I became aware of my difference within the elementary school complex. Furthermore, I was different. Mixed. The first generation of "legally" mixed race offspring born after the dismantling of anti-miscegenation laws despite my birth certificate claim that I am "Oriental." As news of my mother's bipolar disorder and suicide attempts spread throughout the school halls, I was placed in a group for troubled children. I was not aware what the group was for. We were corralled by a social worker with good intentions, sat in a circle and talked. I knew everyone there. They were my friends. During group we discussed the popular music videos of the time. I vividly recall Pleasant exclaiming, "what's up with that Eurythmics video with that lady holding a lamp?" to an eruption of laughter. These were good times. And then it ended. My friends moved and the feelings of loss set in. During those formative k-5 years, I coped with loss and the lack of love with creative endeavors. At an early age I received accolades as a budding artist that continued into adulthood. I created a Snoopy mask out of an empty gallon of milk and two liter bottles that received the best prize for Halloween. Circumstances dictated my resourcefulness. Lost in war comics and captivated by 1970s Japanese Anime, I took to drawing comics starting in Kindergarten. My father would by reams of paper for me to draw on. I would spend hours recreating WWII battle scenes crouched on the floor with my pencils or ballpoint pens. I would show them to my father and he would encourage more creative carnage. My dad raised me to be a "man." During these years, he took me to see every Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger film that was shown in the theaters. He would also wake me up when he came home from the graveyard shift to watch reruns of Combat or Rat Patrol. He made me wear a Hitler Youth (blood and guts) belt to school to accompany my beret and camo fatigues and laughed about it. Mein Kampf and the Little Red Book sat side by side on the bookshelf. I paraded around the neighborhood with the best toy guns and a Spanish Civil War helmet that looked similar to those worn by the Nazis. The result? Hypermasculinity and the world view that life is war. There was no such thing as love for love was for wimps. And men don't cry. Ever. 1984. The year that my mother disappeared after downing a bottle of pills. Visitations. Crying. My mother behind a door - solitary confinement - the rubber room. Shock treatment. Meds. The woman who gave birth to me caught in a quagmire of grief and system of gross mismanagement. I powerless. Wonder. Wonder why. Graveyard shifts resulted in neglected children being bounced household to household and instilled a stinging sense of dislocation. On my many stays at friend's houses, I would revel at the marvel of cable TV, Solid Gold, Dance Fever and music videos longing for joy. During a stay at my grandfather's in Oakland's Chinatown, I would stare at the hundreds of crayfish in the claw foot bathtub. One night my father came over and said he was going to the Castle - a video game amusement center adjacent to the Oakland Coliseum. Excited and wanting to go for ages, I jumped up and down. Then he left. With my friend and his mother. My dad the philanderer. I looked out the window as they left wondering why. Soon I found my parents porn stash under the mattress: swinger newspapers, Polaroids of my parents having sex, Penthouse calendars, anonymous porn novels and a vibrator. Physically I was excited. It was a familiar feeling since I already was on the receiving end of abuse. Nevertheless, I wanted to share this discovery with my classmates. I took the hand sized calendar girls to school and my friends and I looked at them while in the bushes. This led to going to the corner market after school and leaving the centerfold spreads of Playboy open for customers to see. At home, we now had cable and to my father's delight the Playboy channel. Multiple nights were spent in the seclusion and safety of our rooms as my parents and guests would watch sexy television. Black Entertainment Television (BET) became my dad's preference since they showed "more skin." Soon as I entered my pre-teen years my father took me on a car ride down Oakland's San Pablo Avenue. As he drove, he pointed towards the prostitutes and said, "if you ever have sex, use a condom." That was my sex education - the birds and the bees. My father would drive in the seedier parts of Oakland after his shift to share stories of the "mean streets." He did share it with the entire family, although unintentionally, by being assaulted by a pimp with a kitchen knife. My father - "Captain Save a Ho" - as Vallejo rapper E-40 would say. The tyranny of middle school sent me spiraling into a pit of despair. My core teacher - Mrs. Nakazawa - was a cruel stern and publicly humiliating teacher who made my life a living hell. She would announce in class how she was going to call my parents as I sank deeper into depression. Soon I would speak to more therapists and wonder why. Nobody ever told me why I was going. Perhaps they knew more about me than I did myself. Then came another test. This time for MS. As I stood there, the Dr. kept insisting that I stand straight. I found out I have a crooked hip and also a deviated septum. An experiment gone awry. The feeling of brokenness intensified after surviving a fractured skull from a skateboarding accident on my thirteenth birthday. My father instead of taking me to the nearest hospital choose to drive me from the accident site (Hayward) to Alameda. I vividly recall my head pounding with a myriad of colors and intense sensations as I lay in the backseat with my neighbor and friend as my dad fumed and hissed on the freeway as if I was some burden. I watched as he begged for people to see me while I was in the waiting room staring at the forest wallpaper in a stoic haze. The aftermath was brutal. I returned home after weeks at Children's Hospital to immerse myself in masturbation to numb the pain as I reclined on a lawn chair in front of the TV. I lost most of my friends. I became a science experiment at school. I had a cyst-like bubble on my head at the point of impact that curious classmates would press in amazement. I couldn't participate in physical education. So I retreated into my headphones and Radio Shack cassette player listening to INXS, New Order, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane among others to alleviate the pain. High school became the field of discovery. As a freshman at Encinal, I found myself. Enrolling in JROTC taught me self-respect, working in concert, loyalty and wolf pack mentality. People had my back. And then it happened - punk rock entered my life ten years after the Sex Pistols broke up. The resultant impact on my family life was quite expected - we were forced to adhere to a family contract as demanded by my dad and the crazy family therapist at Gladman in Oakland. If we broke any of the rules, our punk rock records would be tossed out. If we broke any of the rules, we would be kicked out. I broke down in tears exclaiming, "why is our family coming down to a contract?" I was at my limit. Control. Denial. Fear and the absence of love. After another suicide attempt, my sister and I hovered over my mother cocooned in blankets - another overdose. I cried in James Dean fashion, "you are tearing me apart!" to indifference. Then it happened. I would go to a chiropractor weekly to address issues in my spine due to my accident. The receptionists were cool - punky goth girls who connected with me on a stylistic level. My doctor however was not. Once upon the stretch table, she massage my back seductively and asked, "do you read?" I replied, "yeah, science fiction." Her squeezing and gripping became heightened as she asked, "do you read fantasy?" I got an erection. She told me to stand, my erection pointed towards her Amazonian frame. She said, "I've been thinking of you" with come hither eyes. Perplexed and confused by my inaction (I was still a virgin), she left. I later told dad. He brushed it off and said, "yeah, she also has a private practice at her home and all my buddies see her." Thanks, dad. Filling the void became a obsessive game. Throughout high school I became with obsessed with unattainable people. As the Smiths song goes, "I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad." Sadly, I matched this habit by pushing away those who attempted to love me, because I didn't know what it was. However, I could imagine. This imagination led to fostering relationships with gay men as we tried to construct our identities without a compass beside pop culture celebrities. For the first time I felt love but also exclusion and control. The gay club at Berkeley's Aquatic Park (the Mix) had a vote on whether or not bisexuals should be allowed to attend the club. Gay friends claimed bisexuality was just a phase. I was caught in between. Enter college and the activation that is surrogate activism. I had a new calling - Asian American Studies and organizing - and it kept me busy for twenty plus years. Obsessions would come and go, but the reality of college being a "sex fest" did not apply to me. I did not have a blossom period. I was not an "ethical slut." Every woman I dated during undergrad either had herpes (this kept me a virgin) or "friend-zoned" me. I would attend the Asian Queer club nights only to return home alone to Chinatown. I would pick up a can of spray paint and go on late night prowls leaving my marks. I needed to be seen. I needed someone to acknowledge my existence. I briefly found community within the queer Asian group (CALBGAY) and Hapa Issues Forum at UC Berkeley but felt these groups perpetuated essentialist identity politics. Nevertheless, I was thankful for the aforementioned despite commuting to meetings as a San Francisco State Student. The grim reality of HIV/AIDS and its resultant holocaust draped a huge cloud of despair over the future of queer lives. Despite efforts, I felt like a monster - unlovable and always searching for acceptance. Entering into the HIV/AIDS industrial complex resulted in self-hate: alcoholism and an albeit brief flirtations with crystal methamphetamine, GHB and ecstasy. During one decadent party, I declared "in moments like these I feel alive!" And so set the stage for ten more years of killing myself alongside "friends" who also did the same. I am grateful for I am awake from my self-loathing slumber and am in process of transforming habits that I have been grappling with for years. To reconfigure the focus to myself rather than others. To end "Mr. Fix It." To be me. To love myself. Throughout all this, I have come increasingly adverse to labels, boxes and categories. How can one word encapsulate one's being? If anything being defined by one's experience(s) seems more appropriate. And here I sit writing as a curious "creature." I type alone ever wondering where you are, losing you and dying alone. When all I longed for was someone to be by my side.
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