I don’t know if this is called anything. I don’t know if it’s some kind of disorder—maybe they can call it: anticipatory grief.

I honestly don’t give a shit about the label. I just miss you. I miss trying to be a better writer than you. I miss the way you made me laugh myself to sobs and choking. Those laughs always felt so good. They broke up my depression for hours. For hours, I just felt normal.

I love you for that. I love that you made me feel normal. That was the magic for me.

Only you could make me feel that comfortable with my own thoughts. Every idea was accepted, poked fun at, and altered. I don’t know what to do now. Only you could make me laugh that hard.

What are you crazy! I can’t answer that, I thought. Then I made something up. I didn’t want to disappoint. I wanted him to like me. I couldn’t believe that someone so smart wanted to be my friend.

I don’t know, love. I guess love would make me happy. I stammered. Sang scoffed. You guess love? Are you serious? He shook his head and smiled. Love doesn’t make you happy. Love is work. Love is exhausting. Happiness is what you feel when you want to do the hard work of loving someone.

He took another pause for more meditative smoking. He was waiting for me to respond. He sat. He stared. He smoked. He basked in the silent tension. Tension and awkwardness were part of his conversational art.

Sang Theory: If you throw people off balance—if you mess with their perspective, just a little bit—you can really open them up. Most people will love you for really talking to them. They will all love you for listening.

That was our practice, and people really enjoyed it. You see,  we’re dramatic men. We perform our conversation for you. We worked on it. We used to criticize the sentence we spoke. We used to hone our delivery and body language.

That doesn’t sell the point enough, and when you emphasized that word with your arms…eehhh…a tad cliché.

This was our friendship. I was the student. Sang was the master. I was always trying to overthrow him. He was always trying to get me to leave his school.

But I’ve been quiet for too long. Sang’s about to start talking again. He’ll mess with my perspective to get me thinking. Just you watch.

See the problem with thinking that love brings you happiness is that humans are loving by nature. It’s part of our survival instinct. So if you just work at being a good human, you will love and be loved in return. It’s that simple. Oh and if you aim for just love as a source of happiness, you forget that living is what really fulfills you and leads to love, but you don’t want to talk about love anymore, do you? No, I didn’t.

No, I don’t. I don’t know what I want to talk about. I was anxious. I felt like I had done something wrong. In my childhood, stammering led to an angry father, yelling, and hitting.

Sang noticed my tension and inhaled more smoke. He exhaled in a long deep sigh. I don’t know. His voice softened. Maybe we should talk about why neither of us knows how to be happy.

Yeah, I nodded, maybe we should….

I do not want to hear about your prayers for me. If it soothes you to wish in whispers to yourself, whatever. That’s your way, my friend, and I respect that. So, please respect me when I ask you to, please, for the sake of my sanity, keep your religious practices to yourself.

Also, I do not believe that Jesus or God ever existed, so please don’t try to soothe me with the fictional love of these characters.

Never tell me that my dead friend is in a better place! He was a staunch atheist, as am I. And just like anyone who takes the time to appreciate the true grandeur of the Universe, Sang and I always agreed: the fairy-tale of heaven is too mediocre to be true. Everything that was Sang—his DNA and the energy of his thoughts—will be recycled. The Universe has no garbage.

And, finally, please don’t feel the need to say anything at all. I am responsible for my own mourning. I do appreciate your concern, though, sincerely.

Afterthought: if you still feel inclined to help me, just ask me about Sang. I love telling stories about him. I remember him so clearly.

Thank you for your thoughts.

Charles Bivona
http://charlesbivona.com

Who the hell would paint a car yellow? I commented. What an ugly color!

Sang took a drag off his cigarette and asked me with the driest of tones:

Is that some kind of an Asian crack? Yellow is an ugly color. Fuck you, man!

I froze. Sang cracked up as he exhaled his smoke. I went to my knees laughing, holding my sides.

We laughed about that moment for ten years. We had hundreds of moments like that.

What are you crazy, man? Sang had this thing he did.  He made me see things logically, instead of romantically.

Dude, do you know what it’s like for a male writer to fuck his childhood crush? I say shit like this all the time.  I don’t know how he stands me. It’s almost necessary for me to fuck her, I cried. THEN our story comes full circle: I wanted her when I was twelve.  I couldn’t have her because she was older.  I go into the world and become a man.  I return and ravish you. Fantasy stuff like that!

He laughed. He guffawed. Not that Sang wasn’t a romantic himself. He saw my point. I see your point, he said. I get that you had all that in your head.  That’s your imagination, and that’s great. But did you have to tell her all of that fantasy shit on the first date?

I fell silent. Sang continued. Don’t you think you could’ve eased her into the writer fantasy?  Maybe?

Damn it.  He’s right.

That was probably a little intense, I sighed.

Ya think? He mockingly replied.

This was the moment he always gave me—a logical realization.

He has always paraphrased what I already knew and gave me all the credit for knowing it, but in all the years I’ve known him he has taught me one core thing: to cherish my imagination, to harness it, to discipline and hone it. Use your imagination in every moment, really play with it.

Sang had always done this.  His parents, incidentally, gave their son exactly what he needed.  Time alone to think and imagine.  My parents owned a restaurant. They worked all the time. I practically raised myself. But I always knew I was loved. I’ve heard that story a hundred times.  I’ve watched him tell it to a hundred faces.  Everyone who meets my friend Sang is usually, initially, perplexed.

My friend Sang is coming, I announce.  I’m happy.

Saaang? They whine. What is he?

He’s this dude I met at a poetry cafe. He’s an awesome guy.

I get the usual response. Come on, you know what we mean.

I hate that I know what they mean.  I hate that I was raised to think like them.

No,  I say calmly, I do not know what you mean. What do you mean?

You racist assholes.

Your friend, Sang, what is he? They ask.

Fuck you, you assholes, racist, motherfuckers, I think. I’m not giving in.

He’s my best-friend.

No, man,  where’s he from originally. What country?

Korea, I finally answer.  But he came here when he was very… Too late.  I can see the assumption machine running behind their Caucasian eyes, already.

Oh a Korean, I knew a Korean once, my father hired one to mow our lawn when I was a kid…

…or some such ugly objectifying shit. They reduce him to a thing. They label and tuck him away in their minds.  I bring my best friend into the most awkward situations, and I hate it every time. I want to protect him, but, really, I don’t have to. See, here’s the thing: the assumption machine in the Caucasian mind can never process Sang in real time.

They expect shyness and mouse-like docility.  My friend brings assertive conversation and strong opinions with facts to back them up.  They expect a push over; Sang pushes back—hard. He draws boundaries that no one crosses.

I once watched him shut down his boss with nine obvious words. Excuse me, don’t talk to me like that. His boss immediately apologized.  He understood that Sang meant it.

By the third hour of hanging with Sang, most of my old friends are silent.

He speaks so well.  He seems so smart.  I didn’t know they could be like this.

He knows they are thinking this.  We joke about it afterwards.

They reacted to you like a they would to a cat that suddenly recites Shakespeare, I puzzle.

Whatever, he laughs.

He knows it bothers me.  He wishes it didn’t.  I know that for sure about him.  He will never be a burden to anyone—because, fuck that, he would say.

It’s about integrity.  I get that.  I learned that from him. I learned that, a lot of the time, alone is better. I learned that being true to yourself and defending yourself is more important than being liked. Your honor is all you own.

In the end, we have a symbiotic relationship.  He gives me logic and reason, I steep him in a pool of raw emotion.  I mimic his control.  He mimics my release.  We make each other work better.  That’s friendship.

And things have gotten better.  Fewer people whine when I mention his name, and things have improved with women, too.  See, it used to be that when Sang approached them in the past, females often treated him like a talking bar stool. He was a great conversationalist, really funny and sweet, but he was still a bar stool. That drove me even crazier.  Asian sexual assumptions are racist to the bone.  Stop that shit already!

Ahem.

Anyway, these days women approach him.  They see that he carries himself with confidence and control.  They hear an intelligent man making witty conversation. They are responding, of course, at last.  Maybe Americans are on an upswing.

As for me, I’ve got my best friend, some women to date, a cute kitten, a career, and readers.

Now go give some readers to Sang.  He deserves them.

Yellow Son: the Western Thoughts of an Eastern Mind

Yours Truly,

Charles Bivona

No, dude, I’m really not. I’m using our friendship as my subject. You always said I didn’t know what I wanted to write about. That I needed a focus for my talents. Our friendship was my focus all a long. I never realized that until this morning. I never realized that our story needed telling: two abused little boys who found each other in the post cold war nightmare, and worked to make each other stronger.

We spent the last year of our friendship together, grieving for our lost childhoods, writing and mourning. We cried together. We were rare friends. People have to know who you were. The world needs to know about the man it has lost. Ok, fine, I want a public grieving. But you deserve it. You deserve to be famous for the man you were. You were an example.

Ok, it’s a little wallowing, but fuck you. I’m doing it anyway. Get mad if you want to.

I love you, man.

Chuck

P.S. Yeah, I did see that Paul Rudd movie. You were right. It was a pretty good flick.

–Sang Lee, The Sang Recordings

–Sang Lee, The Sang Recordings

Sang: Oh, I Love That. I’m like, Awesome! I don’t ever have to fucking pretend with this guy. Oh, you hate me? Good, because I hate you too. Fuck you!

Chuck: Haha, yeah, and then you almost like each other because you have the hate in common.

Sang: No. I stay away from him completely.