asian, baby, girl
things I learned on Urban Dictionary (and in preschool; again in middle school; yesterday, too)
There’s a memory I have.
I’m undressing Barbie dolls.
The same memory, in my first best friend’s house, the one my life has all but forgotten: we pulled, gently, the clothes off the dolls, and tied them together with yarn, hand to leg, then strung them across the room like some gallery installation. It was art (in the same way we learned to scrutinize ourselves), and we laughed under our canopy of bodies all afternoon, wondering about the faces they had that weren’t ours, the lumps and gaps and joints.
My first best friend was the one who showed me Miyazaki, and her embroidered-by-the-day underwear collection. Monday. Tuesday. I couldn’t tell you where she is now, except that her Instagram handle has something to do with enjoying beer, which is genius, and evidence of all the ways we grew apart. On second look, her username now is “@nothing.turns.itself.inside.out”, so maybe she’s a poet.
When I think about it now, I wonder if our moms set up playdates because they sensed something kindred in the presence of another Asian woman, if we gravitated towards each other because we saw something of ourselves, or if we really did just become friends, the way children do, before we learn about the things we owe each other and the things we don’t, before we had anything to owe, or even knew there were inherited debts to be paid.
Asian, baby, girl. Oh, how we were children, and that was the order it was. The order I became. First, I was Asian, then I was baby, and finally I was girl, and I would meet myself in that order again and again, and this would be the boundary of my life: the way I am seen and, more truthfully, the way I disappear and disappear and disappear into myself, relentlessly.
. . .
There was another Asian girl at my preschool. Her name was Zaza and I remember being four and knowing I couldn’t stand too close or else they’d mix us up. I remember being four and knowing everything (I knew I was different, I knew she was too, and I knew we were different in very different ways, and that was everything). I knew I was lucky and I knew if I could just get close enough to the Sawyers and the Emilys in the room that I could blend in. I knew I had to blend in. I don’t remember anything from preschool except don’t eat sand, yet somehow I still ended up with rocks in my throat. Somehow: I turn every experience I have into a metaphor someone else has already written, somehow: metaphor makes it easier for me to say what I mean.
. . .
There was an Instagram account in middle school. And I didn’t have Instagram so I’d ask my friends to tag “@julia” just so people knew I was invited, and then they’d send me screenshots that I’d look at on my iPod Touch later at home, to prove to myself that I mattered. Somehow: this made me matter. I remember resenting my parents because I was the one kid without a phone, and I remember yesterday when I thought my kids will never have phones or the internet or an escape from my eyesight because what if they fall? What, when they fall?
The Instagram account was called “@wms.crush” and it was run anonymously and it paired my fellow classmates up based on who would be cute together like digital MASH, if you remember that game. My friends would snicker from the sticky brown seats of the school bus every time a post featured them, and we’d wonder if they were going to end up with one of our classmates, and we had no idea we’d forget most of each other’s names by the time we’d be old enough to really think about ending up with someone. We thought cuteness was the key to endings, and we thought everything worked out.
The only time I made it in a post was with the other Chinese boy in my grade, and he actually made it twice, because there was another Asian girl in our class, so it became a who will he choose but what if he didn’t want either of us? Something you learn when you are never chosen is that eventually you have to choose yourself. Isn’t that what you wanted me to write? No, something you learn when you are young and aren’t chosen is that you’ll get fucked up perceptions of desire when you’re older and by old I mean twenty and you’ll settle for people who make you feel less than because it’s easier to affirm the ideas you already have about yourself than it is to learn new ways of looking in the mirror. Somewhere: sand compressed to glass; somehow: a mirror became a rock in my throat.
So, we were a glorious Asian love triangle, and we wouldn’t speak of it, and I don’t know where either of them are now. Something you’ll learn when you were never chosen is that there are so many more important things in the world than whether or not you got picked in middle school, and there will always be more important things in the world than whether or not you felt picked in middle school, yet somehow everyday it still hurts a little that you felt alone in middle school: like first words, you will always remember the things that showed you you were unlovable from the youngest age; you will always cherish those things; they will hurt to hold; you won’t want to let them go. Somehow: reverence is the perfect disguise for someone who is disappearing.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I think about sixth grade. What I mean is I think about the ways I learned to turn myself inside out, the ways I begged to be molded out of plastic, the ways I’ve been treated like a doll, the ways I’ve learned to play the part. Sometimes, I hear the word “baby” whispered between closed teeth and it’s the kind of hiss that makes it hard to sleep at night. It’s the kind of coo that makes sure: if there are three things that I know it’s that I’m a baby and I’ll never grow up, and I’m a girl and I will always have to explain myself, it’s that I am Asian and not the right kind, and there is a right kind, and you can never be it.
. . .
There was the night that I became the racist in the college bar. I sat in the dark on a stool mildewed with sweat, smushed next to my two Asian girl friends and a few random guys, and this was all my fault for only having two Asian friends. This was all my fault. Someone mentioned that a couple we knew adjacently was coming, and my friend leaned over to whisper “the one I was telling you about from my class, she’s the international girl, that one the professor said the thing to.”
And when they walked in, arm in arm, catalog white boy and very tiny Chinese girl, it was muscle memory for me to tilt my head and whisper “Oh, she’s Asian,” and I emphasized her otherness the way I learned to.
I named her as different from me the way I learned to; I set myself apart the way I was trained, the way that wouldn’t be visible to anybody else, but would make me feel one step closer to the blonde hair and white skin I convinced myself would make me qualify as pretty and desirable and worthy. And that was all I wanted: pretty, desirable, worthy. I used distance as a scalpel and I carved myself clean; if I am further from you, I am closer to them, I’ll hate myself dutifully; sometimes I don’t know if it’s my Asianness that started the cycle, or my baby-ness, or my girlhood; sometimes I know they’re the same, sometimes I run from Asian, baby, girl, and sometimes names follow me, sometimes people like to chase.
. . .
There is a feeling that creeps up on me, and it’s that there’s someone behind me at all times. They want to hold me by the waist and call me baby, they want to pin my double eyelids, they want me to be taxidermied. They want to mock a Mandarin accent when they walk past an elderly Asian man, then turn to me and continue a conversation in the same breath, and this stings like paper-thin radish steeped in vinegar, the way it molds on the tongue and burns behind the eyes, just a little. Yes, I remember, just a little. Yes, you erase me, just a little. Come closer. Baby. They forget.
. . .
2009, Urban Dictionary, User: @thedarkguy1: An asian girl that spends her days hanging with gangsters and her nights partying and doing drugs. also wears makeup that makes them look like clowns. They also have big puffy hair. Ex: dude look at that asian baby girl, she looks like a clown.
2021, Urban Dictionary, User: @grrr.heyy: a badass woman who is independent as she should be and lives for herself did I mention badass. Ex: look at her she is a badass Asian baby girl.
. . .
Look at her, she is a badass Asian baby girl.
Look at her;
look at her;
user.
Question to ask your mom: Who was your first friend?