Brutal Honesty (hold the Brutal, please)

“Brutal honesty,” he called it. “A person can learn so much more about himself through brutal honesty. None of this pussyfooting around with how-do-you-do’s and if-you-don’t-minds. F@ck that sh*t.” My brother had always been a bit on the coarse side. Having spent the last twelve years of his life in the army, his coarseness has only become more – how shall we say – brutal. This was his third tour in Iraq and having him back home – even only for a few short weeks to meet his newborn son for the first time – was refreshing, if not jarring. From the not-so-subtle reminder of how abrupt and straight to the point he could be, with each conversation we had – whether it be about politics, social issues, or how we disagreed on whether or not Quentin Tarantino movies would leave a mark in the history of filmmaking – I was reminded of my decision I had made in 1997 to do everything I could possibly do to not contribute to the continual onslaught of negativity that was being force fed to the world on a daily basis, through all channels of life.

Growing up Asian American in Northwest Arkansas gave me many reasons to be angry – many reasons to feel hate and to carry the biggest chip on my shoulder that my skinny little 11 year old frame could support. When you are a Vietnamese/Korean boy in a school where the ratio of Caucasians students to ethnic students was 100 to 1, and the ratio of those students who made slant-eyed faces and “ching chong” noises to you every day was 10 to 1, you learned to harbor some hateful thoughts and think the most destructive ideas your unlimited childhood imagination could conjure up, most of which involving laser neutralizers and/or chainsaws, and three quarters of the students on the playground. I even remember many of their names: Grant, Tommy, David, Eddie, Sally, Danny, Todd, Tim, Denise, Jason, Lissa, Carol, Tammy, Dawn, Geneva, Missy, Denver, Stephen, and I could go on and on. Best I don’t. It’s bad enough that these names have stuck in my mind after all these years. No need to bring back the negative thoughts and painful memories that were once suppressed but more importantly, were finally released from the deep recesses of my childhood mind when I came to the realization during that trip back to Saigon in 1997 that negativity – hate, guilt, anger, self-pity, revenge – would only plague my heart and could only lead to defeat in the grand scheme of life.

Even though I cringed every time Grant called me “gooky boy” and blushed each time Denise would tell me that the cutest girl in school liked me because “she likes Chinese food”, the childhood tauntings weren’t as bad as the insults and sneers that I got from adults. Looking back, I, to this day, cannot imagine how a grown man – let’s say in his mid to late 30’s – could be driving down the road in his blue and primer grey colored pickup truck, with his two buddies, and see a 11 year old Asian boy on his red Raleigh Racer dirt bike riding down the side of the road, and decide to honk his very loud, obnoxious horn at the young boy – shaking up the boy causing him to nearly fall off the bike and into traffic – then speeding by (while the boy’s ankles fumbled to regain footing on the pedals as he cried that no one would kill him) and laughing and calling to the child, “Go back where you came from, you yellow-skinned chink!” One of many incidences in my life that added insult to injury to my already hate-stained mistrust for adults and Americans in general. One of many moments that told me that in order to make it in this world, I would have to toughin’ up and attack first before anyone else attacked me.

In my teens, I became more sure of myself (at least, at the time, I thought I was). My yellow skin stayed yellow but became thick, my attitude even thicker. The insults didn’t stop coming. The only difference was that I now could throw them back at the assailants, only more quickly and even more brutally. With every “What kind of a dog did you have for dinner last night, Chihuahua or Poodle?” I would immediately quip back with, “I'm sorry, I missed dinner. I was too busy paying your mom for the h@ndj@b she gave me last night.” Most of the time, this would be enough to get them off my back. Other times, I ended up on my back instead, bruised and hurting but feeling proud inside that I did not back down. Eventually my reputation for holding my own granted me amnesty and I was no longer the target of ridicule and actually became accepted in many circles. The only thing was that in doing so, in order to obtain this acceptance and place of honor with all sects of high school social ladders, I lost my heart and tainted my soul. I had become cynical and hateful and this plagued my behavior all through my college years. I found that as I got older and as more ethnic groups began migrating to Northwest Arkansas, the racism faded away and that chip on my shoulder eventually fell off, but it was replaced by the naïve idea that I was untouchable and that I could do no wrong.

As I got bored with college and even more bored with myself, I branched out for other ways to express my cynical feelings and to make it more known how much contempt I had for the world. I found my release in a band called the Soda Pop Gods. Made up entirely of old schoolmates, all of which who shared the same ideas about life that I had developed and had gone from loser high school slackers to A-list cool guys due to the explosion of grunge and the acceptance of that who-gives-a-flying-flip lifestyle that we all lived, SPG became the biggest local band to hit Fayetteville since, well, whoever held that spot before we did. Our rock-stardom made us huge, ours egos a hundred times that. With such a captive audience for me to take advantage of, I wrote songs that pushed how terrible life was and how if you weren’t working your ass off to do your part in society, you were better off dead. And eventually the songs no longer tried to rally the troops for our cause but focused more on how if you weren’t a Soda Pop God, you weren’t spit. I was getting out of hand and it took a three-day tour with fellow ska/punkers Gals Panic for me to realize that I was way out of my league and it was about time someone slapped me across my headstrong yellow cheeks and wake me the hell up.

On the tour, internal fighting spawned by inflated egos began to tear the band apart. The biggest egos in the band, Billy the drummer and yours truly, spewed venom at each other between gigs and with neither of us willing to back down, eventually, after the end of the tour, I called it quits, with only guitarist Bob on my side, the Soda Pop Gods were no more and I was left questioning what the hell I had been preaching all this time.

It was between the years of 1995 to 1997 that two events changed my life: I was asked to front the band Kung-Fu Grip and my mother asked me to take a trip back to Saigon, Vietnam with her. The first of which, the easier of the two, put the wheels into motion. The latter sealed the deal.

My experience with the Soda Pop Gods left a bad taste in my mouth and since I was about to be singing again with that very same orifice, I decided it was time to take a dose of two bars of soap orally and clean up my act. The guys of Kung-Fu Grip agreed to my terms of writing only positive, fun songs and I agreed to my own goal to only stay in the band as long as it remained positive and fun-driven. This I did and during the five years with KFG, we were able to surpass the popularity of the Soda Pop Gods with the idea that life was too hard to be wasting worrying about tomorrow and more importantly, that life was already too angry as it was so why add to the hate when you can actually fight back with positivity and eventually overcome all the hate. A good start indeed but my newfound philosophy in life was incomplete and it wasn’t until I set foot on the other side of the planet that I realized what that missing piece was.

1997, Saigon. I had hesitated returning to my birth place for many years out of a disillusioned idea that in order to make it in America, I would have to become more Americanized. And in order to do that, I had no need for my family’s heritage and no use for reconnecting with the land that I had left as an infant some 23 years prior. Of course, time has told and that telling was the clincher that tore through my cocoon and let my new improved self free.

I had felt like life had dealt me a bad hand (a three, a seven, two jokers and the rules of play card) up to that point and that if I hadn’t been so stubborn, I would only have lived in misery. But all the things in my life that had contributed to the misery – the racial tauntings, the bad relationships with former friends and girlfriends, the boring life I had in Northwest Arkansas – suddenly became ludicrous and meaningless when I saw how the citizens of Saigon, Vietnam lived their daily lives. Although there were improvements to the country since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 (the year my mother, older brother and I fled the country), they were still not well-off. The Vietnamese people still struggled for food and shelter and worked hard, long hours doing very manual labor earning in one week about a tenth of what the average American earned on an hourly basis. The streets were dirty, the people were poor. Sanitation was horrific, medical was a joke. Politics confused. Police corrupt. All this on a daily basis and most of the citizens that touched my life there still had enough dignity to greet me with a broad smile and a genuinely heartfelt, “We love America”. Those three words reminded me that I, too, loved living in America but was not feeling so good about myself. I had bitched and moaned in my early teens about the cheap shoes that my mother had bought for me every other year for school or hid my face in shame as my father drove up in our old beat up van each day to pick us up at the high school. And even into my college years, I complained about having to work 32 hours a week to pay for college and that many other students’ parents paid for everything for them and why I couldn’t have that luxury. Each incident that flashed through my head as I took that last step back onto the plane my final day in Vietnam that year stuck deep into my heart and it was then that I decided to see that every one of those spikes were removed from my soul before I stepped foot back onto American soil.

It hasn’t been easy – still isn’t – but now each morning when I have to stare back into those deep brown eyes that anchor my round face, as I wash off the night’s dreams and clear the sand out of my eyelids, I can see clearly into my own soul and know my place in this world. As I put on my pants and put one leg in at a time (just like everyone else), I remember that God has been telling me something every day of my life, something about who I am and who I am meant to be, and although it has taken me many years to understand that message, I now know that the negativity will always remain here on this Earth but that is no reason why I have to be a contributor to it. And although one person cannot take away all the hurt and pain, even the most minute effect a single kind gesture or polite nod can produce is more than anyone can ask for and means a whole lot more to someone out there, and if I can be the one to offer that, I gladly accept the challenge. Brutal honesty can indeed teach us all a lot about ourselves but just imagine how much nicer it would be if that learning process could do without the brutal and simply be more honest.

Epilogue: I think we all pretty much go through some kind of spiritual journey each day of our lives. Whether it be religious or merely just rediscovering ourselves (for the fourteenth time that day) the things you go through, the thoughts you think of, the very actions you choose to make (or accidentally make) – are part of this spiritual building. As a Christian, I can only hope and pray that what drives a person to bettering himself by bettering others’ lives is Christ in them, but if one without Christ can begin their palate by wanting to bring happiness in this world then that is a great start. Whether or not anyone else reading my essay changed their views on Christianity after reading this is not the point (although I try to lead by example so if this did make a difference in the right direction, I would be ecstatic). If at least one person walked away from this feeling better – feeling more positive about life – then my work here is done. But it’s not over yet. I can’t ever say, “I made one person happy, I can now rest.” This essay has been very beneficial in helping me remember my path here and adds yet another building block to my goal.