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.