Use Your Illustion (Is This What Love Is?)

first mix some md with a little ma. then stir together with girls who you cannot communicate with beyond physical gestures or an occasionally comprehensible grunt. be sure to serve somewhere that is open from the third to the twelfth hour of the day after you've secured the ingredients (preferably 24 hours), and has private rooms with a bathroom, strobe lights, and a stereo system loud enough to shake the dish until it has the mushiest possible consistency. finally, let bake for about 5 hours (8 hours if you double the serving size), and try your best to remember what happened afterward. 3 straight weeks on a day that begins with a fr and ends in an ay, and now i think i've strayed from the fray far too way to become fried mat fillet.

the first time was never supposed to have happened. late into the night and just hours after i'd returned from hanoi, i met a girl, or rather a girl was asked to meet me, and bla viet bla na bla mese she and her friend came back to my house along with a bunch of my friends. now because it's so difficult to turn down the suggestions of a girl crying on her birthday (not sure exactly why her friend was crying...), the two girls, dave, and i hop in a taxi on a journey to find this girl her self-prescribed tissue, the dish described above, and $7 later we're outside nothing. (note: a $7 cab ride here is about the equivalent of a $30 cab ride in new york, and later i found out that the place was actually less than 5 minutes from my house.) from there, we're led inside a building that from the outside appears to be closed, but inside appears to be very very open... about what goes on.

3 of us drop, but the girl i'm with doesn't want to, pretending to while her friend secretly doubles up. this made gettin with what's-her-face more difficult than it shoulda been, so i dropped a few L-bombs on her, by accident at first... kinda like the first time you touch yourself or shit your pants. you know like, you've crossed some threshold of decency and what's done is done, so you might as well keep going. i think maybe if i knew more vietnamese i wouldn'ta said it (repeatedly), but she didn't speak a drop of english, and it's one of the very few phrases i know how to say... well that and "you're cute" and "the most beautiful girl." hey these things just kinda come out when you feel the love nah mean? ask dave the rave. at one point he comes to me and asks, "mat, is this what love is?" "...yeah, yeah it is." classic, i mean what else could it be?

anyway, aside from the exploits of my casual tongue, nothing much happened and around noon, we headed back home with empty stomachs, seratonin, and wallets that despite their depletion, didn't require a refill until some time after we'd said "good god, evening..." ("good morning" on e). and then it wasn't until days later that i realized i'd never see my jacket again - the brand new one i myself had not yet even worn, but let crybaby birthday girl "borrow" for some stupid reason... known as the day after. damn, i gotta stop doing that. i've lost more jackets to girls than girls whose snatches i've borrowed, honestly.

i tell ya, nice guys always finish last, which is one reason why the following weekend i was up for another debaucherous friday night, except this time i was mateless so i transformed from mateo the loverboy to automatic the dancing disco robot, complete with vibrating torso and detachable brain. i blame the nature of dancing, that is that it may be fun at the time but rarely if ever a truly memorable experience, on the fact that i don't remember shit about this night. like what else could it have been?

well, i do remember patty o'nguyen's girl 631-ing not one, but two glasses in succession earlier in the night because the club we were at dissed us by telling us to move from the sofa we were chillin on when she wasn't looking (she's a semi-famous mc in saigon). then, while several workers were cleaning up the mess, she made the manager come over to us and apologize to everyone. in fact, i thought that was so hot that later, when i was rolling, i told her i wanted her, but i'm not sure if that was before or after i hugged her jugs. i really don't remember doing this by the way, but later pat said he had told me to, and i of course obliged because i highly value my friends' advice. anyway, the next thing i remember is drinking tomato juice because i thought it would make me feel better, and then getting my ass kicked in pool. "damn," i thought, "i gotta stop drinking tomato juice."

well wouldn't you know, it happened again this past friday, except this time i swore i wouldn't be nice or drink any tomato juice. see there's this girl i know. ok so i don't really know her in the sense that i know anything about her as a "person," but i do know what club she works at... and what she looks like, and i think that's all i really needed to know. now i'm sure you're gonna think this is fucked, but the only reason i wanted to get with this girl is because she reminds me of a girl i thought i was in love with in college. never told her, never shoulda, but i still think about that one... nothing more to be said about that, but this girl looks similar minus her bad complexion, no doubt from dipping her face alternatively in paint and turpentine everyday. oh and her nose looks mad smushed, like maybe her boyfriend punches her in the face every night after the make-up comes off. but not me, i was nice to her. nicer than most i'm sure. so nice i invited her to roll with us.

but what happened to not being so nice? i think this may be a story either best forgotten or told in person so i'll refrain from details. all i'm sayin is this one was a bit wilder than the rest, and she needed some discipline. i spent over 30 straight hours with her: an experience that fluctuated between sweet caresses, warm smiles, and me searching for the right angles to gaze at her from so that she most resembled that girl i may have loved; and us literally at each other's throats, smacking her hand from mine when she tried grabbing it in public, and me disgusted with the poor quality of my replica illustion, particularly her raspy voice and overuse of the phrases "same-same" and "troi oi" (oh my god). oh yeah, and her cunt tasted better than her mouth, which was a pleasant surprise after spending so much time on that stink hole of a yapper, but really just shouldn't be.

Lucky F

at my school every 4 weeks the students are given final grades that determine whether or not they move onto the next level. the past session i taught two different classes, one of which focused on reading and writing. despite a lazy work ethic among the students, several incidents of plagiarism, and one major cheat-for-all near-disaster of a final exam, i succeeded in introducing them to the idea of an essay and teaching them how to organize their ideas within this structure, and overall i felt quite satisfied with my job. those students were a lot of fun and i'm happy i now get to teach most of them again in my slang class, which has thankfully been resumed for the new session.

there was one student who almost didn't make it though. his grammar, for lack of a desire to state this more professionally, was all fucked up, and he couldn't even manage to arrange these mangled sentences in a logical sequence half the time. lucky for him that grading essays is subjective and i just don't have the heart to give someone an F if they at least put in the effort, especially when there are other students who hand in essays entirely cut and pasted from the internet; and that all the reading tests were curved, because he technically failed them all. i felt i could look past all that because he seemed to work hard, but this one really pushed the limits of my goodwill. check out his journal entry for day 1:

This is the first day i meet my teacher. His name is M, he teachs us about R/W intermediate. The First time, I think he maybe handsome, Funny, Friendly. But If I see him again, I can see his teeth maybe don't straight with other teeth. I like it. It's a lucky teeth. Maybe, It's make him better...

i started laughing when i read this, and then abruptly stopped because i didn't want anyone seeing my 'lucky teeth.' i consoled myself with the thought that maybe it was unlucky to smile without fear of someone seeing my scraggle tooth, and then flipped through the rest of the journal to see if he had written anything about my 'lucky eye' or 'lucky height,' and i wondered if he had taken notice of my 'lucky haircut' - the one with the fucked up fade where the lady must have thought it was 'lucky' to have the hair on one side of my head be noticeably longer than the hair on the other side.

so my parents must have been bursting with joy when they first saw my foot which, fortunately for me, was twisted inwards because having both feet point in the same direction, particularly forward, must be extremely unlucky. and then i realized shit, all these blind, amputee war vets and deformed orange babies wandering around the streets of saigon must be the luckiest fuckers on the planet. in fact before, i had felt this student was lucky to pass this class, but then i thought maybe the little bastard would prefer a lucky f. ...but instead i decided i'd just post his most embarrassing, i mean luckiest, confession:

My past was very beautiful. When I was a child I used to sleep with my parents. I used to cry all day...

lucky childhood, eh? gayboy.

I Do... (Want To Phuong You)

"mat, can you help me?"

4 fucking weeks, and 4 fucked up fuck overs later, she turns to ask me this while leaning against the railing we'd been looking down from at the continuous shuffle of people with static purposes and starving purses on the street below. my first thought is of course, "what? help you have an accidental fall? no problem..." but my rational side wins out over my gut reactional side and i decide that that it'd just be way too quick and not nearly painful enough.

it was the day after valentine's day. she'd phuonged me both the day before and the day before that, saying she'd come to the house at a certain time but just never showed up... or called. in fact, that very day she had said she'd be over at 5, so around 5:15 when it appeared she had phuonged the shit outta me once again, i called her. "oh, you were sleeping? yes, ok. i'm sure you'll be here in half an hour." 20 minutes later she finally showed her face again, and we walked up to the roof to talk.

i had so many questions but with so few words to use to formulate these inquiries, i felt like a prosecutor examining a 4-year-old defendant. needless to say, i didn't get far. she refused to admit she had a boyfriend, a fact so obvious by this point i could hear all the jurors coughing "bullshit" everytime this sexy, walking automatic lie dispenser opened her mouth. "no, i don't have boyfriend. why don't you believe me?" "do you understand the word 'reason'? because i have no reason to believe you." i then proceed to explain to her why the last 4 weeks have left me without an ounce of trust for her. by the way, i know she's not stupid, she knew how i felt and why... but i wanted her to see my look of utter disbelief when she insisted that she loved me.

well, 'love' with a catch. "yes. yes mat, i love you... but only if you believe me, ok? then i love you." hmmmm... isn't that a catch 22? if i say i don't believe her (and i don't), then that means she doesn't love me (the truth). but if i say i do, then instantaneously her conditional-dependent love for me transforms from a hypothetical postulate into truth, or what should be interpreted as truth, but what is of course a lie... and then my brain explodes. actually, this isn't a catch 22 at all, except if i say i don't love her then there's no way i can phuong her, in either interpretation of the word. hence "ok, i believe you." then i tried explaining to her how important the concept of love is to me, an impossible task given the limitation on vocabulary and verb tenses, but i knew she understood the basics, namely, that love is indeed important to me.

this had been maybe a 30-minute conversation, and in that time i don't believe she looked me in the eye more than 4 times, not counting the quick scans of my face and incidental eye-contact every time i fake-believed any of her make-believes. we stood side-by-side but it felt as though we were on different sides of the planet: me, back in new york and she, there, as she's always been. i asked her if she wanted to go to america, or if she'd rather stay in vietnam. her responses suddenly picked up a reinvigorated sense of conviction, lacking the hesitation that had made me ouright reject the veracity of every word prior. she said her grandfather owns a nail salon in houston. in fact, her family in america is quite well off and apparently supports both her and her divorced mother, along with some other family members here in vietnam. she didn't say this exactly, but i believe it was implied. oh and she hates it here. "why?" "viet nam xao." (in an earlier post i incorrectly wrote 'sao,' instead of xao, which means 'lies'). so she tells me the reason she doesn't like vietnam is because of all the lies... just after unloading a heap of'em on top of my head which only hurt because of all that heavy-ass irony. then she says she'll go to america with her mother in about 3 years, but she doesn't want to wait that long. "what'll you do in america? you can't speak english." "i work do nails." and for the first time she'd told me something that actually made sense. or perhaps if that doesn't work out for her she can fall back on her other career, asking people what size shoe they wear.

while i found all that to be informative and, to a lesser extent, interesting, my experience with this one told me not to believe everything she was saying. however i knew at least some of it had to be true because of the question she asked me next - a question that in itself answered most, if not all, of the questions she had left me to ponder since i first met her:

"can you help me?"

that lone question echoed inside me, bouncing off a million of my own questions, even manifesting new ones, and answering each of them on contact, the most important being, "what's the best way i can phuong this bitch?" when i realized that this avalanche of echoes was superceded by silence in reality, i asked her to clarify, not because i didn't understand what she was asking, but because i wanted to make sure it sounded as fucked up in the vibrations in the air around me as it did in my head.

"you want me to marry you? ... so you can go to america."

she could only manage a nod.

so what did i say? oh man... you know, one day i'm sure i'll be sittin around drinking a beer by myself and say, "hey myself, remember that time you agreed to marry a girl out of pure vengeance?" "well, actually it was pure vengeance and because i wanted to do her." "oh that's right. man you sure phuonged that one, eh?"

for the record though, i didn't really agree to marry her, just to 'help' her. ahhhhha yes, now watch as this one blows up in my face.

Phuong Me Once, Shame On You. Phuong Me Again... Please?

phuong {v.}
1. to fuck over
ex: i'ma phuong that stupid bitch.
2. to fuck, especially over and over again
ex: i wanna phuong that bitch stupid.

she fucked me over not once, but twice. i'd like to say that it was my fault i let it happen again, as i don't harbor any delusions about how she managed to phuong me even better than she had the first time (christmas present and a 2 week hiatus compared to an L-bomb and over 3 weeks MIA), but i think that's giving me too much credit. she's a professional phuonger with impeccable technique and deadly efficiency. i had no idea what i was getting into - i was just lookin for someone i could phuong with no emotional baggage, y'know? i mean shit, i'm only human. ok, fine... i was asking for it.

To be honest, the distance didn't bother me all that much at the time for two reasons: one, i was mad busy the following two weeks, both with work and looking for / seeing other girls. and two, on top of the usual communication issues, i knew she had lost her phone so of course it would be more difficult arranging dates and whatnot. then, once she finally (claimed she?) got a new phone, i left just a few days later for hanoi which extended the void into nearly 4 weeks.

it was a cold void for sure, but one in which i couldn't avoid calling her friends a few times to get in touch with her and stopping by the shoe store twice to try and figure out exactly what her deal was. pitiful? mahhh, you don't know what it's like out here. despite my search for phuongable replacements, i've simply been unable to find a girl as ummmm loose as her. and remember, by loose, i mean first base... well that and sexual innuendo that would make most american girls cringe at her unnuanced naivete, but many vietnamese girls balk at her carnal curiosity. i knew she was my best shot at a phuong, so i couldn't give up on her.

oh and in that time she phuonged me alright. she phuonged me good. as if her utter lack of effort to contact me by phone or otherwise, such as stopping by the house she was at almost everyday the 2 weeks prior, wasn't a loud enough slap across the face, she then proceeded to employ a wicked campaign of terrorist threats in which she said she'd come over, even promise me repeatedly that she'd come, and just never show up - about 4 different times, including valentine's day. by then i had received quite an assortment of shit-flavored excuses covered in cheap chocolate lies, but you know what? when you're hungry, you eat feces and pretend it's godiva.

so at some point, my appetite for vengeance had surpassed even the incessant cravings of my crotch, and i vowed to phuong her in the worst possible way, in whatever way i could. suggestions included asking her to meet me somewhere and then not showing up, and having dave translate a barrage of disses. of course i laughed these off and told linda that she doesn't know her ass from her elbow when it comes to revenge. i tried thinking of a way i could contract chicken flu, pass it onto her, get better, and then watch as she cock-a-doodle-dies an excruciating death. so i started eating chicken everyday.

but i've since discovered the nastiest way i could possibly phuong her, and it might even be too mat for me. check it tomorrow...

Gaseous Love/Liquid Dignity/Solid Vengeance

rewind...

after new year's phuong was stopping by the house almost everyday, and with one man on whatever base tickling and throwing make-outs in my bedroom is, each day i was inching closer and closer to the next base, waiting for my chance to advance the eager and, by some accounts, desperate runner. she had nearly caught me with a move to first (ok, second in vietnam), that began when i passed one of my bi-weekly pathogens to her, and then her thanking me with a text message that read, "maybe if you make love to me i stronger" (to which i wittily responded "if my kisses make you sick, then i think if i make love to you i will kill you." fuckin you know it).

my pants at this point, being both metaphorically and literally around my ankles, left me practically sintactically unprepared to respond when she turned and threw a laser in the form of another text message in the direction of that suddenly debased runner: "do you love me?" ...without thinking i retreated, dove back to the base and came up safe, but now stood phased with a dirty shirt and a muddy face. then before i could get signals from the third base coach, she pulled out a pitch i hadn't seen in a long ass time: a split thumb-index finger L-bomb, the very next day face to face.

"matt, i love you."

"wow, ummm..."
strike one
"i love kissing you"
strike two
"i love, uh, being with you?"
strike three

(mat mat haaaa?)

there's only one swing that can hit that pitch and fuck it, you know what? i forgot i was a free-agent playing in a no-contract league, and when all those flashes went off expecting to capture that spectacular turning point in the game, i lost sight of the ball while looking for "love" like a little leaguer.

i'll leave both the analogy and alliteration here, and just give it to you straight. despite her being thoroughly unimpressed with my stammering, but "dignified," response to her passionately and obviously incorrect conviction, at the time i felt comfortable with my honesty, foolishly gripping my last remaining ideal with the kind of righteous arrogance that make the justifiedly jaded use quotation marks on words most people still romanticize about.

the following day, she came again to my house, this time without her phone (and perhaps a chunk of her "dignity"?), as someone had presumably stolen it (her phone that is) because how could anyone possibly lose a $500 phone? ya got me. for the sake of sequence, let's just say it was the day after that when she was again at my house, and in neither a particularly talkative mood (but when you're with someone who has a vocabulary of no more than 100 words... well, you know) nor a looking-in-my-general-direction kind of mood. granted i wasn't exactly going out of my way to see what her problem was but regardless, she and her friend got up and left without saying where they were going, and i took the opportunity to do the drunken karaoke thing with the friends i'd been neglecting for just a phuong too long. before i ended up losing my phone that night (a far less expensive coincidence for me than her), i get a message from her asking why i didn't ask her to stay when she got up to leave... errrr because i was busy saying good-bye? man do i miss having a girlfriend so that i can answer these kinds of questions.

next thing i know, it's saturday morning and she ain't got a phone, and i ain't got a phone or a clue how i'm gonna get in touch with her. oh wait, i know where she works and her friends' numbers. meh, no rush. i'm sure she'll find a way to get in touch with me.

...

fast forward to today, the first time we've hung out in almost 4 weeks. love or rather its lucid veil has evaporated, and though i've temporarily sacrificed my dignity, a pride that rises and falls with the tide, i feel that what i've gained, an opportunity at ultimate revenge, is most definitely worth the weight of its hefty reality in gold.