I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (2 page)

We were threatened by a local conservative group that said it would picket the show unless I was taken off the bill and fired and replaced by someone else. Sorry. Now I'm more excited than ever to meet y'all. Personally, if you are going to picket a show, fine, but the fact that you are picketing my show means you are stepping up to me, which means some very bad things could possibly happen to you. Which is why we decided to show up early, to make a human barricade between the protesters and the audience coming to the show, people who had purchased the tickets months in advance, who were closing up their shops early to have time to get ready, who had hired babysitters, who had their nails done, who got highlights in their bangs, who the night before planned out a whole outfit to wear, then totally ended up changing their mind and wearing something completely different.

Protesters, please be warned. Fans of my work are not the nicest people in the world. If you're into me, you've been through it. And if you don't know what being through it means, then you just don't know me yet. The great fan base I have built up over many years in the
business comes to see me with a lot of anticipation, and they have a lot invested in what I might have to say. And they can fucking fight. They will throw down in a fucking split second, and I really don't want to see any of you protesters get hurt. Queens do not play. They will fucking kill you. Lesbians know how to throw a punch that will leave a very large bruise, and they aren't opposed to kicking men right in the balls. The underrepresented, unvoiced, ignored part of our population, the great many people who make up the Cho Army, are something you are unaware of, and they're pretty much the gang not to fuck with. We are the baddest motherfuckers on the block. I don't want to see anyone get injured, emotionally or physically. I don't want to see a drag queen make you cry. Which will happen if you show up with all your picket signs and pamphlets.

Personally, I don't think you will. If you do, I want to hear what you have to say, but before you have your say, look me in the eye and tell me your name, what your mother called you when you were little, what you do for a living, if you are married, who your children are, if you are truly happy in this life and what your family is like, then, word for word, repeat the e-mails that you have written to this figurehead in cyberspace that you don't consider a human being. I also want you to hold my hands when you do it. You can say all the things that you have already told me I am—shall I remind you? Chink, dyke, hole, whore, pig fucker; telling me to go back to where I came from, even though I am an American and was born here; fat, ugly, et al.

Bruce is also available. You can call him a nigger and a faggot! Our only wish is that you do it on camera, looking deeply into our eyes,
holding our hands, never losing contact with our hearts. In return, we will love you for your courage in standing up for free speech.

We come in love. We come to love. We do love you.

flags

I
must eat Lebanese food several times a week, preferably at dinnertime, if I can persuade my eating companions. I adore a coarsely chopped fattoush, with crisply toasted wedges of pita tossed with the lemony radish and parsley, alongside a creamy mouhamara, walnut paste infused with pomegranate and red peppers, and an earthy shanklish to round out the lavish but healthy repast. I love the flavors and the textures, the bite and the crunch, the sweetness of the olive, the rich depth of goat's cheese. Then the inevitable and auspicious slice of baklava, flaky and honeyed, which brings to mind ancient pleasures, biblical decadence. Everything is luscious and fresh, what food should be always.

There is a place we go on occasion, a bit far from home, but all the more worth it for the distance and the increase of longing that accompanies the lengthy drive to the suburbs. The dishes there are excellent, absolutely authentic, with an on-site bakery for toothsome sweets, and big belly dance extravaganzas on the weekend. They have an extensive catering service, where you can order an entire roast lamb for any event with just twenty-four hours' notice. I love the
patio, where you can sit with Middle Eastern families, women in hijabs smoking shishas, the big hookahs that the waiters fill up with water, burning charcoal and fruit-scented tobacco. The music is Egyptian pop, and you can't help but bounce your shoulders and sing along, even though the meaning of the words remains a mystery.

Just as we pull up to this place I get to go to when I beg enough, for the first time I notice two very large American flags draped across the entrance. It's a strange sight, incongruous with the modest and humble decor. The flags nearly block out the windows, they are so big. Not just one but two flags. It's as if there was a need to emphasize the Americanness of the place. "We are American," says the first flag. "No, we
really
are!" says the second. It struck me as enormously sad, somehow awkward and tragic. Had something happened that would make the flags, the statement, necessary? Had this Middle Eastern eatery become the target of misplaced anger because of the situation in the Middle East? Or were the flags put up in order to deflect racial tension, as if to brace for the worst, akin to Floridians nailing boards over their windows before the hurricane hits. Were people dumb enough to actually vent their frustration over Iraq on a restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley? I'm sure that they are, and that makes me cynical and sick. What do they think that American is, anyway? If America is for Americans, then we must remember America as being everything that lies between its borders. Nothing can be thrown out because, according to our philosophical underpinnings, nothing is exempt. America is free; America is brave. But having to remind others of your American status, fear of being connected to the enemy
because of ancestral ties, the threat so prevalent that it makes you put not one but two giant flags outside is not right. It shows how deeply un-American America has become. We have allowed alarmist and racist attitudes to take us hostage, and if these impulses are not kept in check they will behead us all.

andy rooney's got to go!

A
ndy Rooney's got to go! Who cares about what he thinks? I have been listening to his boring-ass opinions on the stupid things that rich white folks think about because they have the luxury of basking in the glory of his whiny, creaky "Did you ever notice?" Because they are not worried about being called "fag" at school, or having the courage and strength to press charges against a rapist, or whether the rent check is going to bounce, or the INS is going to come knocking at the door, or whether you are subtly discouraged from growing up to be what you want to be, because you never saw people that look like you doing what you want to do and you don't know if you are going to be able to be the "first," or whether your lover just died of AIDS and you're not eligible to be the beneficiary on his pension plan because you were not his "spouse," even though you had been together for twenty years, and it is likely that without his support, financially and emotionally—damn, just without his love surrounding you, enveloping you every day—you will lose your home and possibly the custody of
his daughter, or whether your stepdad is molesting you but you can't really say anything to your mom because he is supporting you and your brother and your mom and you are scared she will have to work even harder than she already does, or whether whenever you hear the words
chink, nigger, beaner, paki, sissy, bull dyke, faggot, cunt, bitch, ho, jap
—unless that word is a term of endearment for you and is called out by someone who happens to be one of you—your face burns hot with embarrassment and shame because, through no fault of your own, you happen to be you, and apparently to the person saying it something is wrong with that.

No, I never "notice," motherfucker, because I don't have time to notice. Because there is a war that is going to happen whether the people of this country want it to or not. Because I have this concern that I may somehow lose the right to choose what I can and cannot do with my body. Because even though there is all this talk about multiculturalism in the television and movie industries, I have yet to see any evidence of it. Because the young girls try to emulate the stars they see on TV, with their big ignant heads and too small, too skinny-looking bicycle body, and die in the process.

The quiet messages that affect and alter the way we view ourselves are controlled by an elite group of ignant men just like Andy Rooney, and Jerry Lewis, and all of them who need to tell the ladies to stop talking about sports and stay on the sidelines, because we are just baby-making machines trying to be sports commentators, trying to do comedy. For that, I would like to knock their heads together like coconuts.

These are the extreme examples, the obvious ones that people can get mad about—like when Jay Leno made jokes about Koreans eating dog—but the hidden messages, our invisibility, is more harmful to us than any of those fools on the "board." I loved the slogan "Silence = Death" that Act Up used for the fight against AIDS in the '80s. If we don't talk about this epidemic, we are going to die. I want to take it further. For all those aforementioned people who might not understand what I'm talking about, silence is worse than death. When we never see who we are, never hear what we think about things, what we are doing as a group or what we are doing individually, then it is as if we were never there in the first place. Silence = Nonexistence.

"Blue-collar" pundit, assaholic blowhard Bill O'Reilly = another old white man I wish I could pop the head of.

"Done went on the Atkins Diet" Rush Limbaugh = I'm glad he is deaf, because finally maybe he'll shut up and hopefully = silence.

That Motherfucker Tucker on CNN's
Crossfire
, always with his bow tie and running his mouth like he's a mug of smug root beer = my foot in his ass when I go on that show.

That is,
if
I ever get to go on that show, because whenever they ask me to be on any kind of news program to comment on something, it is always about something Asian. I know some other shit too. I have a lot of opinions about things. But that's not important to segment producers. They need me to validate them by being some sort of authority on whatever Asian thing they need help with. That justifies my reason for being there, and being allowed to have an opinion, because
somehow there is this notion that since I share the same skin color as a quarter of the earth's population I've got to know everything about it. This attitude
=
ignant.

All I ask for is a chance to have the same kind of forum, the same right to speak, the same credibility as these (in my opinion) wrong-ass, ignant fools. But the producers of these types of shows think that I will talk only about tai chi, where to get the best sushi on the West Side, how to feng-shui your office—and then, coming up after the break, our special guest, Martin Yan! And I think he brought his cleaver. Stay tuned!
Gong!
The fact that the media at large, both liberal and conservative, look at my race before they hear my voice = fucked-up shit, I've had all that I can take, things are going to change because they just have to. Because I said so. Because we exist. Because all of us together = Power.

All I ever saw after September 11 was old white man after old white man on CNN talking about what happened. Theirs were the only opinions that seemed to count, because, when the shit hits the fan, the old white men are the only ones who can deal with it. They are the only ones who get to speak during a crisis. Like these guys are saying, "Okay, let's get serious here. We gotta take care of business." No women, no people of color, except for a precious few Muslim and Arab Americans talking about how this event has fucked them up because everybody is blaming them just because they have a similar skin color as the perpetrators of this terrible crime. All the stupid violence that was aimed at their community would be like arresting
Emmanuel Lewis when it was Gary Coleman who punched that lady, which equals blindness, fear of other cultures, misplaced rage, racism, making up our own definition of who is really "American." And, of course, do I even have to say this one more time? Ignant.

We need to wake up. It's time to start some shit. Alarm clock = Revolution.

let's roll

W
e are a nation divided, which is obvious. The problem is, the division is keeping a monarchy in place. We are supposed to be ruled by ourselves, but I have yet to see evidence of it in my lifetime, the turbulent teenage years of this still very adolescent country.

I can't believe Bush won, either, but there's no time to despair.

What is needed now is action, not hopelessness. What is important is the tremendous progress that has been made in mobilizing people to bring about change. Remember, more voters turned out in 2004 than at any time in the last three decades. Although it might be said that we can't expect change overnight, there really was a very rapid shift in the way we view politics. We are no longer afraid to voice our opinions, to use our power, to pool our resources, to allow our differences to unite us instead of keeping us apart.

These new ways of looking at ourselves politically redefine what it
means to be an American. It took our, until now, very passive identity and turned us all into revolutionaries. In a short time, we became activists, something that lay dormant in many of us and had not been awakened until now.

The polarizing of the population has produced the wondrous gift of debate, and we are more aware and politicized than ever before. There is very little ambiguity as to which side you are on. And while conservative views may be the order of the day, that could change at any moment.

Politics used to be shrouded in mystery, and was considered the elusive territory of the elite, but this, too, is changing rapidly. Americans nowadays live with the immediacy of politics, politics directly affecting the way we live more drastically than ever. Yet the powers that be haven't quite considered the strength of our sheer numbers. We are watching politics with an educated and cynical eye, which as a generation we haven't done at all until now. With all this caution and attention focused on our "elected" officials, we have a moment where we can grasp the brass ring of self-government. In the immortal words of DMX, "They don't know, who we be." But they will, and they will be sorry.