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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #49 (December 4, 2007), page 7.

You just need to get out of here," a woman said the other day. To me.

"You need to go," she said, and not kind. You need to listen when a sister talks like that. We need to know why she’s gazing off, maybe left or maybe right, meaning either east or west, but whichever way she’s staring, it’s clear she’s not looking your way when she says it. "Get out of here."

A woman’s eyes — while not everything, because a woman’s closed eyes say a lot too — count for so very much in our wobbly little world. Sure they do. Only dopes don’t calculate into every important equation what’s in a woman’s eyes. Only dummies and despots like Talibanis, those dopes demanding women keep their eyes covered or inside their homes. Eyes tell it all. "You need to go."

She meant I should leave here, N.E. Portland, not leave her. This woman was not mine, that’s another story. No, this one was thinking of me. My need. This place. What Oregon does to orang like me, and why that’s no good. "You just need to get out of here."

I held on to what she said about what I needed while I travelled east, deeper into America’s dense continent. Then I thought about her eyes as I went west to America’s farthest flung state, Hawai’i. Then again as I sailed so far west that I got to The East. The Far East: where our father’s fathers’ bones are buried; where my bones were made. Bones of Bumi Ibu’s red soil, her blessed suriya sun, our sudden rains. Oh al’hamdu’lillaah.

I saw what she meant to tell me. I saw it in men’s eyes, what happens to us when we come here. Come West. It’s in the looks, those glances, their gaze, when our guys go from Asia to Hawai’i to America, from Pacific Coast to Midwest. We change. Often not in a good way. You need to note what’s happening in men’s eyes.

Khmer eyes and Viet eyes are all right, back home. At ease. Thai eyes are best, probably because no one ever colonized their land, their streams, their women. Filipino eyes are earnest but not always honest. "Adaptive," some would insist, though duplicitous may be more true. Adjusted to overwhelmingly offensive odds, might be a more neutral attribution for many Filipinos and for most Americanized Asians.

Asian eyes are still fine on O’ahu, halfway across our deep blue Pacific. Koreans can still be Korean. Chinese are still full-tilt boogie. Indeed, in Hawai’i rice eyes may even be brighter, cacao skin is tighter, Asian manners and movements are more muscular. Maybe it’s aloha. Open-heartedness. More ohana makes more better.

But something bad happens when we make it to America’s edge. And this is what that sister was talking about. "You need to get out of here."

Some of our men’s eyes harden. Headed for trouble. Some soften up, even round up. These guys smile and nod way too much. For white folks. Both types become über-ethnics, either at the stubborn macho end or at the appeasing-Oriental end. Most of our fellas fall somewhere in between their extremes. Unsure, for sure.

And faces follow eyes. Expressions are pulled into relaxed lines or drawn into tight ones. I often wish I had photos of our transformation. A Seoul civil engineer pictured there, then in Honolulu. A Kane’ohe local boy relocated to Tigard. A Hong Kong guy back home, now in Portland. A Hmong freedom fighter, first in his Xiangkhong highlands, then in a Madison suburb. I would like to see what happens to our faces. More to the point: We need to know what happens to our women’s eyes when we do those changes men do.

We need to know.

I did what my sister said to do — get out of here. And I got how much effort Asian-ness takes in America. How much this effort takes, from us and from our familia. I got how easy Asian is, back home. How nice Asian is, in Hawai’i.

The funny part is that I can’t even say what that means. What "Asian" is. Where’s the definition?

Guangzhou, I get. Nihon, I know. Korean or Khmer Khrom, of course. But about being Asian, I know not a lot, except it hurts so much, so often in overcast Portland, Oregon. And this strain wears me out. Makes me negative. Even mean. And these are the kind of eyes that get our ladies looking elsewhere.

* * *

al’hamdu’lillaah (from Arabic): all gratitude to God.

aloha (Hawaiian): love. Loving island spirit.

Bumi Ibu (Malay, Bahasa Indonesia): Earth Mother.

ohana (Hawaiian): family, in traditional ethos of all contributing to reciprocating, interdependent familial responsibilities.

orang (Mal., Bahasa): man. Orang-u-tan is a man of the forest, as well as a beautiful big red ape.

suriya (Mal., Bahasa): sun.

Talibani (Pashto): someone belonging to Taliban tribe, a predominately Pashtun Sunni Muslim ultra-traditionalist culture.

über (from German): super or over.