Being a Korean-American 4

After the Hill School, I was not quite sure how I would continue with school. My family had moved South to Charlotte, North Carolina and my sister was going to school at Charlotte Country Day, an elite private school. When I moved down to Charlotte, I was rather bored. While working with my father in his beauty supply store, I was a little disturbed when a young boy asked his father "what I was."

The Korean-American church community also bored me. I wanted to fit in, but I found the people different from the Philadelphia Korean-American society. In short, there was no real joy in being with God, in living and loving the world he created. There were also no KAP's (Korean American Princesses) and no sassiness. I've always loved the sassiness and intelligence of Northeastern girls.

Once I was in a supermarket and someone remarked that she did not know that Asians argued. I was arguing with my mother.

The Dean of Charlotte Country Day drove me home from school one day. He was a nice and sincere man. I really liked him. I had been such a snob about Charlotte Country Day. He was right. I had been negative. They were going to let me in despite the fact that I had not finished ninth grade. What was the matter with me? I had made prejudgements about the South without really getting to know it. Still, I did not like Charlotte.

There was something strange about the South. After a month of school, there was a rumor that I was a genius. Of course, I wasn't. I did well in school, but I still felt a great tension in my soul, between the primitive and the cultured. Sometimes, I wanted to be like Native Americans, loving and enjoying nature. Other times, I saw how sinful and self-indulgent my nature was and tried to fight against it. There were people whom I genuinely liked. Johnny Miller was a good friend. I joined the teenage Republican club and felt at home. I do not know why I became a teenage Republican except that it looked more fun than being a democrat.

I did pretty well as a tenth grader, but in eleventh grade, I had a great desire to be popular. I wanted the new charm that I felt at Welsh Valley Middle School. I wanted Phil COllins and Duran Duran and UB 40. I wanted the Romantism of the early and mid- nineteen eighties. I wanted Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles. None of that was present at Charlotte Country Day. The only thing present was the country club atmosphere of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Culture. There were things to like about it. It was a plesant, smiling nice culture, but I just did not know where I fit in in such a culture.

There was a good, black kid who was an excellent basketball player and he constantly hung around an attractive blonde. They were always hugging or being cozy with each other. Some of the jealous whites called him a "man." I became friendly with some freshmen girls and there was a rumor going around that I was their pimp. I wasn't exactly amused by this culture, just confused. It's not like I wanted to fuck these girls although puberty did hit late for me. It was more like I really really wanted attention. Why did I desire popularity so much? I just don't know. I was not getting enough attention at home. I felt that I was special for one reason or another. I just don't know. But I was deeply jealous of the black guy. Perhaps I was just as captured by the sterotype of the American woman as blue-eyed, blonde beauty. By fucking her, I could be authenicated as an American? Certified?

My grades suffered the more popular I wished to become. Moreover, I found myself doing intensely stupid and crazy things at parties, pretending to be drunk and doing stupid, stereotypical Asian imitations of people in movies like Sixteen Candles or other John Hughes movies. I found myself acting like a clown on edge, walking a tightrope. I wanted so much to be watched... I wanted so much to be a celebrity.

It all had to come to an end though. My friend, Johnny Miller, had made copies of my parent's house in Matthews, North Carolina. He, among others, had invited people for a party at that house. It was horrible. No party can last forever. They had had two parties at that house, that empty unoccupied house that no one was using, that house which was no one's abode. They told me that they wanted to have a third party there and I agreed. I agreed because I wanted to be popular, I so desperately wanted to be accepted by this culture and I don't even know why. I just wanted to belong somewhere. I was so excited to go to my own party, but I could not attend. My mother stopped me. All the others who attended were arrested by the police. They were having a party at an empty house in which the owner was not present.

So the party came to an end. Everyone knew that Southern teenagers drank and smoke, but it was like a dirty secret no one really talked about. Now there were police records on their sons and daughters. Students at school looked upon me differently. Some of them openly called me a "chink." I did not know that I had elicited such animosity for just wanting to be one of them.