First Gen (Excerpt)
I see you.
Jamie had just started to text Mai back when another message came in. This time it was a picture of him in the moment. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked around until he saw Mai waving at him. She was sitting at a high-top table in front of a dive bar window.
Fuck it. I could use a drink.
Walking in, he flagged a waiter, ordered a PBR, and took a seat next to her. She had ordered a basket of nachos and the two sat side by side quietly, absentmindedly dipping their chips in guacamole until she broke the silence.
“So why are you drinking tonight?”
“What? A guy can’t have a drink on a Friday night without it being a thing?”
“Normally, but you look like you’ve got some heavy shit on your mind.”
Jamie hesitated. Did he really want to get into everything with Mai?
“I don’t know if you remember, but the night of the reunion, my girlfriend was pretty pissed off at me.”
Mai nodded.
“So I had proposed the week before and she turned me down. We also fought the day of the reunion, so things were pretty tense. And then—” he took a gulp of beer, “—I decided to move back here to patch things up, but she just wasn’t interested.”
Mai looked at him as if he had three heads.
“You moved here to patch things up with a woman who told you she didn’t want to marry you? Why?”
A small voice in the back of his head told Jamie to stop talking, but the beer told him to keep going.
“Well, in my defense, I thought I could change—,” noticing Mai’s face, he backtracked, “I thought she would change her mind.”
“Why do men always assume that women don’t know what they want?” Mai’s face was already turning red. Jamie wondered how long she’d been drinking for. Mai noticed him staring and a look of irritation briefly crossed her face. She unpursed her lips, unfurrowed her brows, and tried to assume a more neutral look.
“So she said no. And then what happened? Wait, is that why you’re back at your mom’s house? Did you think what’s-her-face—”
“Heather.”
“Heather would let you move in with her?”
Now Jamie’s face was turning red. He took another sip of his drink.
“Oh my God. So your mom thought you were being a good son, but you were really chasing a white girl—”
“Why do you say it like that?”
There was an edge to his voice and he looked like he was getting upset, but Mai was three gin and tonics in and spoiling for a fight. She suspected that Jamie would make a decent sparring partner and dove right in.
“Well, if you must know, I think it’s hypocritical that Asian guys get upset at Asian women for dating white people but drool over the most basic white girl.”
“That’s not fair—”
“Oh come on! Did you even look at any of the Asian girls in our grade when we were in high school? You’re telling me that if we went over your dating history, I’d find more than one (and that’s being generous) non-white girl?”
Jamie got quiet, but Mai wasn’t finished.
“Asian guys are so obsessed with competing with white guys to get to the top of the food chain. You think you should be able to get any white girl and any Asian girl. When I’m out in public with my partner, it’s always Vietnamese men who give us dirty looks.”
“Partner?”
Now it was Mai who fell silent.
Damn, she really is good at keeping secrets.
She still didn’t say anything, so he decided to press. Just to confirm.
“So you’re... gay?”
“You got a problem with that?” She snapped.
He shook his head and stared at his drink. They fell silent again, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. She wondered if he had secretly been a homophobe this whole time. He wasn’t sure how vulnerable he felt like getting right now. A waiter asked if they needed to be topped up, but they didn’t hear. The tension was unbearable.
“Are you a homophobe?”
“I have a crush on Trevor.”
They stared at each other, mouths agape, eyes wide open.
I can’t believe I just said that.
I can’t believe he just said that.
* * *
Jamie felt terrified and exhilarated at the same time, as though a weight had been lifted.
I have a crush on Trevor.
“Wait, so are you gay? Bi? Pan?”
“I don’t know what pan is, but I’m pretty sure I like guys and girls. I mean—” Jamie hushed abruptly as Mai flagged a server and asked for two whiskeys on the rocks.
Good call. Jamie took a deep breath and continued, this time in a tone so low that Mai had to strain to hear him.
“I’ve never been with a guy. In college, there was this one guy that I liked, but I never made a move and I never told anyone.”
Jamie stopped talking once again as the server reappeared with two glasses of liquid courage in hand. They sipped their drinks before Jamie started again
“I thought it was a fluke.”
Jamie waited and waited for Mai to respond but she just kept sipping her whiskey.
“Jesus Christ, will you say something please?!”
“So white girls and Black guys. Us Asian chicks have no chance, huh?” She smiled wryly and Jamie felt relief. He swatted her arm and the two shared a laugh for the first time that evening.
“Hey! I bared my soul to you, so now it’s your turn to tell me a secret.”
Mai protested, pointing out that she had already told Jamie about her partner, but he wasn’t having it.
“That doesn’t count because I just remembered that I saw a picture of you and your girlfriend—sorry, partner—on instagram. Tell me a real secret.”
Mai was secretly pleased, since she actually did have something she wanted to get off her chest.
“I never graduated college. I was one course away from finishing but stopped. Now my dumb ass is back in class with fucking 22 year olds.”
Jamie looked at her thoughtfully. “At least you’re finishing it now. Man er wen zhe sheng.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
“Say it again, slowly.”
“Màn ér wěn zhě shèng”
Mai repeated the phrase with almost perfect intonation. Jamie was shocked.
“Tai hao le! Your pronunciation is so good!”
“My adoptive parents wanted me to be ‘connected to my heritage’ so I had to go to Vietnamese school every weekend.”
“I took Chinese lessons for years.”
Mai raised her almost empty cup and Jamie did the same. “To pan-Asian solidarity,” she said sarcastically.
“Gan bei!”
* * *
By the time the two friends — and they were friends at that point — stumbled out of the bar onto the street, Jamie was drunker than he’d been in years. At first glance, they just looked like two Asian millennials celebrating Thirsty Thursday. But they were dressed for two totally different occasions. Although he had loosened his tie, the suit with matching belt and loafers suggested that Jamie had come from a professional affair — work or an interview. Mai, on the other hand, was wearing keds, ripped jeans, and a crop top. She looked young enough to be a teenager, which was admittedly her goal for days when she had school. Anything to detract from the fact that she had spent more years out of college than some of her classmates had been in college.
“Dude, where’s your car?”
“Dude, where’s my car?! I’m like Ashton Kutcher!” It might have been the booze or the uncharacteristic honesty, but both felt light if not positively buoyant. The two nearly fell over laughing at the movie reference before Jamie remembered that he had left it parked in the garage next to the building where his interview had been. He hoped that his sober self had put the ticket they gave him in his wallet but his drunk self couldn’t quite remember.
“Forget about the car.” Mai stood up a little straighter. “Are you going to ask him out?”
Jamie got serious. He hadn’t told Mai that he had seen Trevor on a date with another guy. It hadn’t even occurred to him that that meant he had a chance. He contemplated telling her but figured that outing Trevor might put a damper on any future relationship.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t even know if he’d be interested.”
Mai nodded knowingly, assuming that Jamie didn’t know if Trevor was interested in men in general. She had certainly fallen for her fair share of straight women.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll figure it out.”
Mai declined the offer to share Jamie’s Uber and promised to text him when she got home.
