This is how I’ll remember you.

Eyes wide, hands weathered yet clasped. You are modest but glowing. Your children are safe in your hands and there’s hope in your faces. You survived oceans and uncertainty, gambling with war and destruction so that I wouldn’t have to. It paid off. In your one-mattress apartment, you slept soundly with your family huddled around you, despite the sirens and the stones rattling against the iron bars as they hit. But poverty was a challenge more than it was an incarceration.

You had dreams. Big ones. And these dreams kept you afloat as you struggled through America without a word of English in your mouth or a dollar to your name, even when they came to harass us for looking like the Commies.

But things changed as time went on. When stable money and a safe place to live became less of a worry, other priorities set in. You turned your gaze from the family to somewhere else. And for the longest time, I remember you sleeping in separate beds more than together. In the time you weren’t there, things decayed. It became too painful to live there and you couldn’t keep up that things were okay. Every time I came back, things got worse.

So you left.

I understand your decision. It’s not like we all didn’t see it coming. I can understand. It was time. But while I do forgive you, I will not forget. I will not allow you to rob me of my anger. I’m pretty pissed off at what you did and what you’re doing. You can’t even tell me to my face about what happened. I really want to ask you now: was it worth it?  Are you happier? Do you ever think about us? Do you wonder who will be there next to you on your death bed, and then regret?

You always taught me that loyalty always run deep, to ride or die for me and mine. So it fucking sucks to see you go back on that.

Thinking about post-grad life hasn’t been difficult for me lately. I have a guarantee of where I’ll be in the summer, where I’ll be in the fall, and hopefully where I’ll be for the two years thereafter.

And the back up plan was to always go home. East Side San Jose. Where a room was there for me for the last 20 years. Where there was family.

Things have taken a different course in the last few weeks and post-grad life seems much more daunting. That home is no longer there. It’s a strange feeling knowing that I no longer have an anchor to the place I was born and raised. There’s nothing stable for me anymore. And as much as I know I have extended family in San Jose, I was never close to them. I wonder how they know me.

A lot of things are running through my head. Is this adulthood? Did I grow up too fast? Did I not spend enough time with the family when they were there? Where do I go now? And who will be there for me?

The last question is starting to scare me more and more, especially coming from a refugee background. My family line here in the states extends back only one generation — all I have are my parents. I don’t know any other family. And now that’s not quite there anymore, I feel so so alone.

I am lost.

Something I wrote for the most recent issue of Non Song. Intersections between being Vietnamese-American, second generation, and gay. Enjoy!

Picture Son: How to Love Yourself and Your Gay Vietnamese Children

By Trung Nguyen

I kept watch at the mailbox every day for the first two weeks of May during my Senior year of high school, memorizing the exact window of time the mail carrier approached our home. He would come between three to four in the afternoon, right when I got out of school. I would rush home at a frenetic pace, keeping an anxious eye out for his white truck and blue uniform, a feverish prayer on the tip of my tongue that I wouldn’t miss him. On the days I managed to bolt home before he arrived, I would wait from my living room with a view of our front yard, straining to identify the envelopes and packages that he would unload from his satchel.

I was on the look out for any oversized envelope, larger than most letters with the dimensions of a manila folder but slender enough to fold to the curved half-circle of our mailbox. Each time that the envelope didn’t arrive, I could breathe for a second, being relieved for the day. But it wasn’t for long – I mentally prepped myself for the next day of waiting and anxiety. It had to come soon. And I had to get it before anybody in the family did.

I wasn’t out to my family. Inside the package would be our prom pictures: my then boyfriend and I, two boys, hands clasped and suits matching. My parents wouldn’t be ready to see this picture, especially because one of them was their only son.

My patience paid off. A day later, the photos arrived and I let myself melt after secretly peering into the envelope. When I looked at our photos, all of the anxiety and fear was worth it. I kept them hidden in my room most of the time, only bringing it out whenever I was feeling particularly lonely or needed something to cheer me up.

One day, I got a call from my mom while I was out. “I cleaned your room today. I just wanted to let you know.” Searching for a reason why she would call me for something so simple, I thanked her and let her know I’d be home for dinner.

The realization only came later. My heart stopped. I forgot to put away our prom pictures. I rushed back home.

***

I was my parents’ many firsts. I was their first born (and only) son, the first to be surrounded by an entire family who had spent the last twenty years resettling from Vietnam, the first to graduate high school with a 4.0, and the first to go to a UC school – these were some of the highlights of many other firsts.

While more these firsts than I could count were met with anticipation and celebratory welcoming than with unease and tension, my parents never expected that I would also be their first gay child.

I grew up in East Side San Jose, an immense Vietnamese-American enclave and Southeast Asian refugee haven. It was nearly impossible to be alone as a child: our entire extended family lived within three blocks of one another, my schools offered Vietnamese bilingual education, and my friends didn’t question why I brought out fish sauce instead of soy sauce to the dinner table. I had a strong sense of my history and my heritage. Yet despite being affirmed in my Vietnamese identity, I couldn’t shake off a chronic sense of immense loneliness and crippling fear I had growing up. It was a fear I couldn’t escape, one that I was reminded about day to day: the fear of being who I was and loving who I wanted to love. It was paralyzing.

This same fear propelled me home the night my mom called me. Would my key work or would the locks be changed? If I had five minutes to stuff my belongings into a bag, what would I take? How much of a physical or emotional beating could I take before I made a run back out the door?

I was terrified — mostly, of losing my family. I lingered on the sidewalk of my house, carefully observing the lights in every room, as if staring at the flickering yellow glow would magically show me what everyone was doing. I talked to my then boyfriend and made back-up plan after back-up plan in case I would get kicked out. After assuring me a warm place to sleep and food to eat, I worked up the courage to enter the house.

My keys worked. I stepped inside. It was quiet. My mom was watching TV with my dad. I snuck my way past them, still fearful. As I entered my room, I couldn’t have prepared myself for what I saw.

At the front of my desk was my prom picture, neatly framed in new black wood.

***

We don’t speak of it much but small actions have liberated me over the years. They no longer bother me about girlfriends. They invite my “friend” over for family celebrations. They leave out two plates for breakfast when my boyfriend stays for the night. In the process of letting go of fear and allowing myself to love without fear of losing my family, I have become an active member of both the Vietnamese and LGBT community, working with youth and advocating for a stronger future. I would have never done any of this had I continued to live in fear.

Like many Vietnamese families, there wasn’t much my family could offer by way of support, but what they did have was their love. But this was all I could have asked for and this is what I ask of all my readers: continue loving your sons, daughters, little brothers and sisters even if they love somebody of the same sex. You have the power to transform and empower a life and I urge you to use it for the better.   

There are photos of my family at church which are older than I am. Looking through the albums, the church book-ends one era to another for my family: my parents in front of the church that sponsored them here, my middle sister’s baptism ceremony, my oldest sister’s confirmation ceremony, my own baptism, marriages of my uncles and aunties. There are even a couple of photos of me dozing off in the pews when I was four that my dad thought would be particularly funny.

Looking at the pattern of images taken of my older sisters and relatives, I watched them grow up as they were documented during their first baptism, eucharist, confirmation, marriage, funerals and the cycle begins again but with their own children.

There are lapses as time passes, however. One nephew wouldn’t have a baptism, another aunt wouldn’t have a marriage. Eventually, examining my own memories in front of me, I realize I don’t have a confirmation memorialized. 

It was no coincidence though; I left the faith a long time ago when I realized I was gay. The contradiction in my parent’s faith and my sexuality was only the cherry of the reason; the bulk of it built up from years of understanding my own sense of existed. I always hated being given instructions.

There were fights. There were long nights and dreadful car rides. Yet I was stubborn and fiercely committed to what I believed was right. I remember my dad telling me he left monastery training as a teenager to be with the woman he loved — my mom — and I’m essentially doing the same. Eventually, they gave up. I haven’t been inside of a church since early high school. 

Though looking through the album again, I see there are less photos of these life events in general (aside from my own) even though I know there are more little nieces and nephews who go through them. Hell, there are less family photos altogether. These eras are lost.

Perhaps they no longer felt it was significant to document every precious moment and the novelty of comfortable luxury of the United States in comparison to their war-torn Vietnam had worn off. New realities were terrifying though exhilarating at first but soon became tomorrow’s drudgery. However, even if it was partially that, I also realized my parents haven’t gone to church in the last four years. When I used to come home for Christmas, they would tell me, “Meet you at Midnight Mass, we are going to go first to get seats and you can catch up” and I would intentionally disappoint their expectations. But now, not even that happens.

I didn’t notice for the longest time. As I’ve gotten older, however, I begun to wonder why they stopped going. I stopped going because I lost my faith and I know why. But I wonder what they lost to make them stop. For once, I felt uneasy about the situation.

Knowing that something they did for over 50+ years, across war, violence, devastation, oceans, continents, jungles, trauma, resettlement, life, and death was suddenly stopped worries me. It must have been something quite catastrophic and lately, I’ve noticed my family crumble apart particle by particle from the inside out. The rooms are cold. The walls echo. Things are dead here. We’re hollow.

I’m starting to see this, and I’m starting to mourn it.

I can’t lie. Looking at the photos, I felt a familiar warmth emanating from them that was long extinguished and its comforting glow reignited what I hadn’t noticed was even missing in the first place. I remember seeing my first Nativity scene and the excitement that came with it, I remember watching my first Lion Dance show and my eagerness whenever January came to an end, I remember sitting in envy as my older sisters got to take part in the Eucharist alongside my parents and awaiting the day I no longer served to save their seats.

How will I hold on to these feelings when they’re gone? When they’re gone, will they be comforted? Or will they thrash through everything in a journey of fear until the very end?

The second scenario terrifies me. The only thing terrifying than experiencing their loss is experiencing their loss without having the warmth that we had in those photos.

Was it my leaving the church that my parents stopped going as well? Or what was it which made them stop?

Sometimes, I begin to think I should believe again, if only for the comforting fact to know that my family will be taken care of with just as much love as they took care of me. Then, perhaps, I could not fear loss as much as I do now.

I never use this word, but damn my parents were swagalicious.

Me: Hey Mom, I’m taking Vietnamese at school right now.

Mom (in viet): LOL REALLY? I’m gonna text you instead of calling you from now on and you have to respond back in Vietnamese.

—

And then she tells me that she’s gonna go to bed smiling tonight.

There are a series of photos that I’ve been thinking about a lot more lately. They’re in a water-damaged faux-leather burgundy photo album in the corner of my parents’ bedroom back in San Jose. There’s about eight of them in the bunch and they’re falling out of their pages because the adhesive is gradually transitioning into its next stage of life, which seems to be a crumbly earwax yellow.

My middle sister is about six years old which makes my parents sometime in their late thirties. They’re at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with the rest of the extended family. It’s windy because my mom’s perm is all up in her aviators and they’re having trouble keeping the wind from furling napkins from the ice cooler in the air. There’s two towels that they’re sitting on, but most everybody is wearing those matching 80’s windbreaker combination jacket and pants. Old school pepsi cans, hot dogs in their hands. There’s a picture of a nonplussed seagull. What I didn’t notice until much later was that there was nobody else around in those pictures; the boardwalk was empty and aside from their presence, the sand was bare.

Probably because it was a really windy day.

Lately, these photos have made more noise in my memory precisely for that reason. I wondered, what compelled my family to organize a trip with the extended relatives and drive nearly an hour south in order to go to the beach on a cold, almost frustratingly windy day (as evidenced by my mom’s displeasure at a ruined perm and my dad’s attempt at holding down those coolers)? They must have missed a memo, because no other families were present at the beach.

For me, I began to understand these series of photos as my immigrant family’s attempt at constructing American-ness. What’s an essential aspect of the American lifestyle, especially during the 80’s? The “freedom” to leisure. And a camera to capture it. By going to the beach, they engaged in this activity and forced themselves to do so in order to do what, I feel, they felt was American — even if they didn’t enjoy it as the pictures seemed to suggest.

Not to say the beach was a foreign, solely American thing, of course. My parents grew up around the beach, in the Central Coastal Provinces of Vietnam. Rather, what I found to construct the American-ness in the series of photos was the fact that it was a “trip”. There was some sort of planning around this — the coolers of food, the beach towels, and the outfits. There was an intention to drive all the way down to Santa Cruz in order to spend some time at this beach, which was now a “trip”, a “vacation”. The windy, inopportune timing of the trip was the true highlight in my mind: I believe it was an awkward interpretation of where and when “trips to the beach” are supposed to happen.

What a concept. And there’s this longing I have to jump into those photos and place myself alongside them, confused but smiling because the camera’s there.

I was born in a time period where my family’s attempts at crafting this cultural citizenship were largely halted. Around the time I was born, these trips to the beach stopped along with the photos to the lake, the photos in the mall, and the photos in front of the large vanity mirror in the two-bedroom apartment for eight.

My family, around the time I was born, had settled in a place where they could feel comfortably situated in America with their Vietnamese skins and Vietnamese children.

Though I can see and argue that that isn’t completely true today and they are still negotiating this situation, I still would have liked to have gone to the beach with them.

wednesdays in grade school were the once a week that i’d go to my best friend’s house. from 2:30 to 4:30, we’d check out the library with her ma who kept us involved inside so that we wouldn’t get involved outside — keepin our hands familiar with the spine of a novel rather than with the spine of an equally empowering but more physically dangerous object. and from 4:30 to 6, i’d come over, we’d sit and watch pbs in the outside room while grandpa watched his cambodian dramas inside. though it was routine, i was always on edge during these times, one eye on the screen while the other was kept on that inside room. i anticipated the moment when i’d have to sit up straighter, tuck my hands in more properly, pay closer attention to the tv, essentially make sure i wasn’t making any wrong movement or noise — i didn’t want to offend grandpa, for my very being would offend him, i had known.

he hated the vietnamese — i was covertly prefaced this information behind closed doors and with hushed voices the first time i came over. so i had to pretend i wasn’t. whenever i entered this household, i became cambodian.

while this was my one of my first acknowledgments of the war as a child, it’s not my encounter with “that war” which i want to write about. rather, it’s the development of my shame of being vietnamese which i want to point out. and, at 8 years old, i believe the question began around there. (though it’s not to say those two discussions are mutually exclusive — it’s just the full answer to the other question deserves a discussion on its own)

it was no overt fault of the family, i feel. it was simply my friend tellin me to heed caution in the event that grandpa ever attempted interaction with me — which he never did. he had experiences of the war which colored his perception of vietnamese people — a lens he, understandably, carried over. in the event he ever asked what my name was, i could never say “trung”, a clearly vietnamese name. rather, i was to borrow a cousin’s name.

the development of shame didn’t end there either. in middle school as my friends began to develop some sort of consciousness of their asian-american identities (though through the misguided but well-meaning “aZn prYdE” culture), the urge to claim and categorize themselves and each other’s ethnic identities were at a height. certain physical features and cultural expressions were valued and identified as being one aspect of asian or another. while i myself was wary of this movement and what it meant, i was nonetheless subjected to it being that it was my social environment.

one particular incident took place during some downtime in class as i sat with my group of aZn pRyDe friends. in this conversation, the question of ethnic identity as expressed through physical features came up. each in turn around the table, we were immediately assigned alternate ethnicities. though we were mostly and in large part vietnamese, some of us were assigned to be more “Chinese”, “Japanese”, or even “White” because of our physical traits and, in some few cases, mixed heritages/upbringings. these alternate badges were carried with pride and even a sense of hierarchy as these alternate badges also carried with them a “westernized” cultural product — music, film, and history in the american textbooks. nobody wanted to be purely vietnamese but at the same time, it was having this alternate badge which made them vietnamese.

though when it came to me, they were stuck. i didn’t look too much like any of the other ones, given my darker complexion, flatter nose, thicker growth of hair. so what did i get? “i don’t know what you are so you can just be ‘other’”

i was denied my own identity — the feeling that my own people didn’t want me, that i didn’t look vietnamese enough and thus wasn’t vietnamese enough. it was ironic that the thing which was meant to be a source of pride was manipulated into a reproduction of shame, and funny that they even used the option that the census used.

so the question now is where am i in terms of my vietnamese identity? truth is, i don’t know. i feel like i’ve traveled such a warped road at such an early age that it’s kinda difficult to figure out where the hell i am now. and when you factor sexuality and college revelations into the question, the situation gets even more messy. interesting how the realization falls right after having marched with the lgbtq contigent in the tet parade in westminister. i’m sure i’ll have more to say on that soon, when i have time to sit down and articulate it out.

what i can say now is that i am proud to be vietnamese-american. but sometimes i wonder if the community can say that they’re proud of me.