As she is my Mum, I suppose she knows me best. But yeah, I really am an 8-year-old boy at heart, aren’t I?
Mum has the biggest crush on Park Yoochun, who is a singer in the Korean boyband JYJ (formerly of DBSK) and emailed me this drink commercial he’s in with the following:
It’s funny and he’s really dorky but cute^^
JYJ boys make ma laugh~
Say what you will, but at least I came by my tendency to obsessive fangirlism honestly.
Ah, the joys of a multilingual parent and a bi-cultural heritage.
Dear internet, I don’t believe I had adequately acquainted you with my mother. Like any mother-daughter pair, we’ve gone through some strife, but thankfully we managed to survive my melodramatic teenage years with our relationship intact and stronger than ever. It probably doesn’t hurt that the older I get, the more I realize we’re pretty much the same person. We even look like clones.
Like mother, like daughter.
Also, she is funny. And smart. And quite possibly a spy. (I’m not kidding about that. And no, I still don’t know to this day.)
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
- Oscar Wilde
Stylish, snarky, vivacious, beautiful, and intelligent, I want to be this woman when I grow up. Some hilarious exchanges beneath the cut.
New post at Running Roommates!
Don't be fooled; this is not snow. It's ice.
I’ve read MAGIC UNDER GLASS and I’m itching to discuss it, but I shall postpone that blog post for another day when I have more time. Things are picking up around here–good for business, bad for my sanity. Also, this Friday is Masquerade Prom and I have to figure out how I’m going to get ready for it when I have a full work day. Can I curl my hair on the New Jersey Transit, do you think?
Mum is in town and I’ve subjected her to a healthy dose of icky snow. Too bad she couldn’t bring southern Californian sunshine with her. I am so over February. Hell, I’m so over winter it’s not even funny.
If I could write poetry (I had an ill-fated foray into pretentious neo-classical poetry in high school but thankfully I have since then recovered my senses), I would compose rapturous odes to the glory that is my hair. Why did I wait 22 years before chopping all of it off? Why did no Korean hair dresser think it was a good idea? It takes a good twenty minutes of out of my morning routine (shower, vigorously towel dry, leave) and according to Bex and my mother, it makes me look older and “more sophisticated.”
JJ’s Mum: I like it! Now you look like you’re 17 instead 12.
Ah, my eternally youthful face. I suppose it will hold me in good stead when I am older. And as if my mother can talk; at 47 she looks like she’s 35. I like to play Guess My (Mother’s) Age with my friends and get vicariously smug. The general consensus is “mid-30s.” (Although my mother’s youthful appearance used to get on my nerves when I was younger because men would think she was my older sister and hit on her first.)
Reading through my old entries from high school, I have to laugh at how melodramatic I was about my relationship with my mother, especially at my hyperbolic statements about how she was ruining my life or how she didn’t think I was mature enough or how I was beating my heart out trying to please her when she wouldn’t be, would never be pleased. Perhaps I’ve gained a sense of humour since then but the fact that we are friends now in addition to being mother and daughter is wonderful and slightly disorienting.
Last night my mother took Bex and me out to dinner in Korea Way (because she is predictable that way) and the three of us gabbed about everything. It’s a pity that my mother is so morally conservative (“You know I don’t approve of alternative lifestyles,” she said) because she would make one of the best faghags ever. She’s beautiful, shallow, bitchy, witty, charming, judgmental, and loves shopping and beauty and fashion. Sir Gay would love her. It isn’t as though she doesn’t like my gay friends as individuals, but her generalisations about homosexuality, transgendered peoples, and other queers tends to make her less open-minded about meeting them.
On the train ride home, my mother picked apart the features on my face and offered beauty tips, but I think now I’ve come to realise that her remarks are not personal but stem from what Camille Paglia would call an Apollonian aesthetic or “the Western eye.” She views my appearance as though I were an objet d’arte. There is truth to what my mother said about my teenaged self: that I was overemotional and sensitive because I was with regards to her.
Doesn’t mean she isn’t still slightly insane, but it’s in a good way.
The building in which I work has hired cleaners this clean the windows this morning. Ordinarily I don’t mind (aside from the very great fear I may witness one of them falling 26 floors to his death), but today they are using what looks like a chainsaw and sounds like 1000 fingernails scratching chalkboards mixed with a dentist drill to scour away the accumulated grout in the cracks.
I think this may very well constitute torture.
This morning I trimmed my hair somewhat unevenly to get rid of what I’d dubbed my “mullet tail.” It looks much better now (despite the slight unevenness) and I’ve gotten many compliments on it at work. I may never grow out my hair again, even if it I have to go back to the salon every six weeks to maintain this because, my god, having short hair is really amazing.
A cigarette fast is easy to maintain when your mother is in town, who so heartily disapproves of them to the point that she almost disowned you when she found out you smoked, and you are staying with her at the Hilton New York this week in order to escape The Hovel Where I Live.
Despite my decreasing desire for a cancer stick, the fact of an oral fixation isn’t as easy to break.
Mum: Stop biting your fingernails.
JJ: I can’t help it! I can’t sm—I have an or—I just—ARGH!
I can’t exactly tell her that I am trying to quit smoking when I assured her that I quit months and months ago nor can I exactly say that I have an incurable oral fixation, which would probably have her jumping to kinky (and most likely justifiable) conclusions about my sex life. If I had, one of the following three scenarios could have occurred.
Mum: Stop biting your fingernails.
JJ: I can’t help it! I’m trying to quit smoking and I have an oral fixation.
Mum: YOU HAVEN’T QUIT SMOKING YOU LIED TO ME WAH WHY ARE YOU SO IRRESPONSIBLE GET OUT OF THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW I AM NEVER GOING TO TALK TO YOU AGAIN AND DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT HAVING FREE FOOD ON MY TAB!
Mum: Stop biting your fingernails.
JJ: I can’t help it! I’m can’t smoke and I have an oral fixation.
Mum: OMG YOU LIKE GIVING HEAD????? WHY ARE YOU HAVING SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE???? IT’S SO INAPPROPRIATE! IF YOU AND TEDDY BEAR DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN EXCHANGE CHASTE KISSES GOODBYE I WILL KILL HIM!
(My mother blissfully believes that I am pure and virginal as the snow/a unicorn/an untainted damsel-in-distress because sex does not exist in my family. I will not disabuse her of that notion because it means I have to acknowledge that my parents have sex and I really don’t want to think about that. Also, my mother’s Church is a direct descendant of the Puritan faith while my dad comes from a family of Mormons.)
Mum: Stop biting your fingernails.
JJ: I can’t help it! I can’t smoke and I have an oral fixation.
Mum: You know, if you want, you should perform/ingest/imbibe some mystical Korean remedy that I will find for you which will miraculously cure you of that problem.
(Since my grandmother’s mystical Korean remedy for allergies really did miraculously cure me I am not one to scoff at such things. I love how my Asian family’s usual initial reaction to situations is to offer Oriental medicine as panacea. We shall see how well the magical mushroom powder from Jeju Island my mother brought with her this time will work on making me thin.)
Mum made me cry again today. I seem to cry far too easily about the most trivial thing. I really wonder sometimes if I have a skewed vision of myself. I hear things like I am a type-A personality, that I’m far too driven, that I’m truly accomplished, etc. but I believe none of it. Mum tells me I’m lazy, I’m a slob, I lack any motivation, and that I’m fat and ugly. I find myself seeing myself through puce-coloured lenses, seeing myself only as my mother sees me, not as the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder if hating my Mum would make things easier, but I cannot. As much as she hurts me, she’s still my mother and I love her. Within me, there is that little abandoned child, crying out for a mother’s unconditional love. I hate the fact that I’m too emotional about things and she hates that about me too. But as if I could help it. If I could put an end to my tears at will, I would. If I could check my laughter and not bray like a donkey, I would. If I could calmly express my opinion about anything without swearing, I would. But I always feel restrained if I do so, trapped. I’ve never sworn in front of my mother. Somehow, she found my journal from junior year and read through a few entries. She confronted me about how disappointed she was that I should have grown up to be a vulgar young woman with an “unclean mouth.”
It’s at times like that that I wish I could slap her. Or yell back.
But I find myself unable to. I wish that I could have yelled at her for reading through my journal, “spiritually raping” me (as my sophomore religion teacher would have put it), destroying my privacy, but I can’t. I’m seventeen years old, but I am seven whenever I am in my mother’s presence. I am seven, wanting so much for her to hold me, wanting so much for her to praise me, tell me she’s proud of me.
But she doesn’t. And she won’t. I’ve grown too old, and that window of unconditonal love has closed.
© 2012 Uncreated Conscience. All Rights Reserved.
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