Don Lee - The Collective

I was surprised by her disclosures, but they didn’t scare me. If anything, they made me respect Mirielle even more. I had never known anyone with a history of substance abuse of such magnitude, nor anyone who had tried to commit suicide and been institutionalized. Suddenly my problems — my entire life — felt, in comparison, benign. She seemed so strong and self-possessed now. I admired the fortitude it must have taken for her to piece her life back together, and the fact that she was comfortable enough with me to make these admissions drew us, in that moment, immeasurably closer, I thought.

We walked back to the house and decided to turn in early. It’d been a long day. In my bedroom, I undressed her — completely this time.

“What’s going to happen now, Eric?” Mirielle said, smiling impishly.

We made love.

“Don’t look so proud of yourself,” she said afterward. “It’s just sex.”

“No, it’s not just that,” I said. “I have a confession to make.”

“What?”

“You’re the first Asian woman I’ve ever slept with.”

“Really? That’s surprising. Why haven’t you before?”

“Maybe I was a Twinkie, I don’t know. But sometimes it seems Asian women aren’t, in general, very interested in Asian men. Sometimes it seems they prefer going out with white men. Is that true?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Is it because they’ve bought into all those clichés about Asian guys?”

“Well, I’d never say this to the 3AC, but some of those clichés have a basis in reality. A lot of Asian men are kind of nerdy and wimpy and boring. They can be very traditional.”

“You’ve dated a lot of Asians?”

“Not many,” Mirielle said, then allowed, “Okay, I’ve gone on a few dates with Asians, but I never fucked any. You’re my first. You popped my Asian-boy cherry.”

“I’m honored.”

“I am, too,” she said. “Although I’m Japanese, you’re Korean. If I had any ethnic pride, I wouldn’t be consorting with you at all. God, this futon. I swear, I’m not coming over here again until you get a new bed, an actual bed. Having a mattress on the floor is bad feng shui. And sheets. You need better sheets.”

They were cheap knockoffs from Filene’s Basement — so cheap, they hadn’t advertised a thread count on the package, just that they were one hundred percent cotton. “Any other complaints?” I asked.

“No, I’m pretty impressed with you,” she said. “You can make perfect omelettes, and you’re a hell of a kisser.”

“There’s something else I can do pretty well,” I told her, and slipped down the futon.

Later, she said, “Do you have this effect on all women? Make them crumble?”

“I think your libido’s back from Tahiti.”

“You may be right,” she said.

The next day, I went to Big John’s Mattress Factory in Lechmere and ordered a new mattress, box spring, and frame for delivery.

Joshua, never one to be outdone by me, had started his own romance the night of Leon and Cindy’s wedding. He had gone home with Lily Bai, another new 3AC member who was a ceramic artist.

“I tell you,” he said in his attic room, “this chick, she’s a little pistol. She gives unbelievable head. She could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.”

“Isn’t that a line from an old movie?” I asked, but laughed nevertheless.

He had been spending the past few days at the Ritz-Carlton. Lily was from Ann Arbor, her father a geneticist who’d developed several patents that had made him a fortune.

“Room service!” Joshua said. Lily lived in a two-bedroom condo attached to the Ritz, and the hotel’s services were fully available to the condo residents. “I’ve been fucking this hot little kumquat and eating room service the entire time! You can’t ask for much more in life.” He was going back; he’d just come home for some clothes.

“You’re able to write there?” I asked.

“Sure. She’s at her studio most of the day.” Joshua had long ago abandoned his Murakami regimen, and ever since the 3AC had formed, he had become more susceptible to distractions, far less disciplined.

I told him about Mirielle, about her going to AA.

“Fuck, man,” he said, “that pious, sanctimonious twelve-step shit bores me to tears. It’s just an excuse for self-absorption. Oh, poor me, poor me. Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with this girl. I know you. You’re a complete sap when it comes to women. Will you promise me you won’t fall in love with her?”

I broke my promise to Joshua almost immediately. For the next two weeks, I helped Mirielle unpack and set up in her new apartment in Winter Hill. She was sharing it with two PhD students at Tufts who were a couple, and her room was small, without much closet space. We went to hardware and furniture stores. I installed shelves for her, and miniblinds. I hung up photos. I assembled bookshelves and storage carts. I bought her a garment rack on wheels.

Still, we spent nearly every night back in Harvard Square. She liked my new bed. I’d pick her up after one of her AA meetings or from Casablanca, and I’d walk her back to the house. “Are you living with that Chinese guy now?” a fellow waitress asked Mirielle.

I made breakfast for her every morning — omelettes, poached eggs, French toast, pancakes. I gave her massages. We went to movies and poetry readings at the Blacksmith House and the Lamont Library. We ate in the Porter Square Exchange, where she ordered food in Japanese. We stopped by Toscanini’s each night for ice cream, a weakness of hers. We ran on the Esplanade together. That path at sunset, coming down Memorial Drive toward town — the water on the Charles blustery and whitecapped, the gold dome of the State House gleaming above Beacon Hill, the skyscrapers in the Financial District orange-lit — was glorious. With Mirielle running beside me, my chest would squeeze, and I’d love the city.

The 3AC kept meeting on Sundays. The glassblower Jay Chi-Ming Lai had just returned from giving a lecture at a university in butt-fuck rural Missouri. He hadn’t wanted to go, but they had persisted, saying they had found more money for him from the minority scholars initiative. He had pictured this group of minority scholarship kids marooned in the Midwest, and thought they’d appreciate having an artist of color visit. At the lecture, there was not a single nonwhite student in attendance. It turned out he was the minority scholar. Insult to injury, for dinner the hosts drove him deeper into the country to a restaurant called Jasmine Cuisine, where the menu was not Thai or Chinese or Japanese, just generically Asian. The food was terrible.

“Why do they always assume if you’re Asian, you’ll want Asian food?” Jay said. “I’d really been looking forward to some barbecue .”

The entire staff at Jasmine Cuisine had been white. One of the waitresses had a tattoo of Chinese letters on her arm, which she proudly displayed to Jay. She thought it read, “Life won’t wait.” Jay didn’t have the heart to tell her it actually spelled out, “General Tso’s Chicken.”

“No shit?” Trudy Lun said. “I’ve heard of that happening, but I always thought it was an urban legend.”

“The thing is,” Phil Sudo said, “whenever I go out with a bunch of Asian friends, even in Boston, we get stares. You know, getting asked if we’re a tour group or an MIT reunion. So I’m more comfortable going to Asian restaurants, even though I’m sick to death of eating Asian all the time.”