[At Friendly Lounge on 2/11/17, Vietnamese “Jack” in his James Dean jacket. In the background is Johnny AC, an air conditioner repairman.]
Note: The editor of the California based Việt Báo is the poet Trần Dạ Từ. He and his wife, Nhã Ca, were key literary figures in South Vietnam. Each Tet for four years, Trần Dạ Từ asked me to contribute a Vietnamese language article, so I wrote the below in 2014. The translation is as close, line by line, as I can make it. Bits of it may be a translation of a translation, since I’d converted English dialogues, thoughts or writing into Vietnamese, so now must trick them back into English. In tone and focus, my Viet writing can’t be all that different from my American grunting and jiving, but a linguistic switch always reveals some new aspects, if not an entirely alien character! How many have received such a shock at seeing or hearing, for the first time, their foreign spouse being his or her native self?
In 1998, I was in a van going from Nội Bài Airport to Hanoi. Sitting on the back row was a pale, thin woman who spoke with a Hue accent. Her blouse was buttoned to her throat. Her weak voice quavered, as if coming from some dark, windblown distance. Learning I had just arrived from the US, she asked, “Over there, do Vietnamese live together?”
“Anyone can live anywhere.”
“They don’t make us live apart?”
“There are Vietnamese neighborhoods in the US, but anyone can live anywhere.”
“How odd.”
American neighborhoods are also unlike Vietnamese ones, because houses tend to be detached, with everyone minding his own business. Due to this indifference, it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, a slut or if your kids are in a gang or addicted to drugs. Sometimes a stiff corpse can go unnoticed for a month. No one knows about the sex slaves you keep in your basement.
As an immigrant you must more or less assimilate, naturally, but some are so eager, they deny their Vietnamese roots. In Philadelphia, I witnessed a bizarre scene at a Viet eatery. Starting a conversation with the owner, an American war veteran said, “Back then I fought in Quang Tri and Khe Sanh.”
Chubby with squinty eyes, the owner just froze.
The old soldier continued, “You’ve heard of Khe Sanh?”
“No.”
“You’ve never heard of Khe Sanh! You must have heard of Quang Tri?”
“No.”
“You’ve never heard of Quang Tri either! So are you Vietnamese?”
“No, I’m Canadian.”
“You’re Canadian! You weren’t born in Vietnam?”
Looking annoyed, chubby with squinty eyes answered with that genuine Mekong Delta accent, “I emigrated from Canada to the US.”
Smiling, the old soldier turned around and left the banh mi joint.
Though rarer, there are those who become extreme Orientals in the Occident! In Saigon before 1975, Phước wore slacks and dress shirts like millions of other young men, but in Philly, he gradually became a sifu. With his hair long, moustache wispy and dressed in traditional Chinese clothing, Phước seems like a chopsocky character, but is in fact a master of Seven Mountains Spiritual Kung Fu, so whoever dares to be flippant, snarky or confrontational, Sifu Phước can, with a mere flick, make him hack up blood, fall backward and bounce straight to Sam Mountain! Thirty years ago, Phước opened a dojo. Performing katas everywhere, he’s won hundreds of prizes, so has filled his home with trophies.
Americans often mispronounce Phước as Fuck, but he just laughs it off. The spiritually cultivated mustn’t be petty. Who cares if it’s fuck you or phật du. (Phật is Buddha, so phật du means traveling Buddha.)
Overseas Vietnamese bring glory to the race. A few months ago, the Viet gang Born to Kill tortured, stabbed then tossed three dudes into Philly’s Schuylkill River. Thirty-one-year-old Huỳnh Vũ and 28-year-old Huỳnh Việt were well dead, but Vương Thành survived, thanks to his ancestors’ intercession, despite being stabbed dozens of times. (In the Vietnamese, I use fuck lành for phước lành. Phước means luck, so he’s fucking lucky. Wordplays are impossible to translate.) The main suspect, Lê Minh Tâm, has still not been caught. “Born to Kill” was a slogan used by American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
The more destitute, uneducated and adrift are more likely to become thugs. The US has roughly 33,000 gangs with 1.4 million tattooed scarfaces. I have never sold drugs, committed armed robbery, extorted or trafficked in, ah, intercourses, but when I was fumbling around at night 20 years ago, some black guy almost fiscally liberated me. Though waving a hammer, he refrained from chopping, so my skull wasn’t cracked open. Though buzzed, I was sober enough to raise my voice so someone could call the cops. At court, the mugger said he had to carry a hammer for self defense, since he had been jumped by Asian gangsters! As proof, he pointed to some ancient scar on his face. Thankfully, the judge, also black, didn’t buy this. Done, the cop, black also, thanked me, “You gave a clear statement. We’ve caught him seven or eight times, but this is his first conviction.”
Seen from Vietnam, the US is just California and Vegas, so bright lights and festive streets. Plus, returning Viets are boastful and extravagant. Since only those with cash can fly back and forth, people don’t see poor Viet Kieus. There are many in Philly. They live in troubled and dangerous neighborhoods, such as Kensington. Here, they don’t do nails but cut hair, at only $5, cheapest in the city. Their customers are whites, Latinos and blacks.
American poverty is much different from Vietnamese destitution. In the US, you’ll always have something to stuff into your mouth no matter how poor you are. Each evening in Kensington, more than 350 people eat at Saint Francis soup kitchen. After 5PM, you can see they lined up outside the gate. Slovenly and stinky or neatly dressed, they’re the homeless, old, young and mothers pushing babies in strollers. In the US, everyone’s biggest worry is paying for housing each month. Unable to handle this, roughly 1.5 million must sleep outdoors or inside a tent or car for at least a few days each year. Each American city has hundreds if not thousands of people sprawled on sidewalks. Sometimes they claim an entire neighborhood, such as the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or Skid Row in Los Angeles.
There aren’t many homeless among Vietnamese-Americans. Perhaps we’re more flexible, meaning more willing to live in tight quarters, all bunched up, anything to not freeze on sidewalks. Many Viets are also adept at cheating the system, so they would dodge taxes while collecting welfare. In November of 2014, there were news of a Viet who hoodwinked everyone. Mrs. Sandy Nguyen collected donations for her son’s fake cancer. Receiving $25,000, this broad spent $16,000 on a family trip to Disneyland. Found out, Nguyen was jailed for three months.
In 1995, a 28-year-old Vietnamese homeless made headlines when he killed Thích Hạnh Mãn, a monk at Bodhi Temple, just a ten-minute walk from me. Escaping Vietnam alone, Nguyễn Ngọc Lân joined a gang in California before drifting to Philly. Though many worshippers felt uneasy around Lân, the monk gave him shelter. Thích Hạnh Mãn often preached, “To open the temple door is to close the prison gate.” To thank this monk, Lân stabbed his head, face, neck and body about 40 times. Done, he turned himself in. Lân claimed the monk had raped his sister, except Nguyễn Mai wasn’t his sister, and she hadn’t been raped by anyone. Plus, 18-year-old Mai had no inappropriate relationship with the 43-year-old monk. In court, Lân’s public defender insisted he was insane, since he had grown up in a menacing and chaotic environment, without anyone to guide or protect him, but the government argued Lân was sane enough. He ended up with a life sentence.
In Kensington, Vietnamese just duck inside their homes after work. Loitering, you might get hit by a stray bullet! In 2010, I met Tùng. Escaping in 1982, he spent a year at an Indonesian refugee camp before landing in Louisiana. Tùng worked at an offshore oil rig, so three weeks out there, then a week on land. Twenty-seven men surely got sick looking at each other. After each shift, they fished. Since they could pig out for free, and had no chance to spend, Tùng managed to save quite a bit, but unfortunately his company went under, so he drifted to Seattle, Spokane, Kansas City then Philly. In Kensington, Tùng sweated at a steel plant for 13 years until this, too, went tits up. Now, he does odd jobs at a private school. Three of his kids actually study there. One has just graduated. Tùng declared, “They only go to school then straight home. This neighborhood is super scary!” His oldest was an outstanding student so got eigh-year scholarships from four universities. She’s at UPenn. Her tuition alone would have been $48,000! On top of that, there’s the cost of books, housing and food.
Kensington’s hottest merchandises are heroin and, at night, skanky prostitutes. Way back, it was an Irish neighborhood. Their gang had a cute practice, the Kensington Mouthwash. After forcing an unfortunate to bite the curb while lying face down, a thug stomps on his head. “A Kensington Mouthwash” is when his teeth and blood squirt out. Every so often, I head to Kensington, not to care for my teeth but knock down a few beers. On Christmas Eve, I dropped in Jack’s.
Vietnamese booze at tables among friends, with food served usually. Americans prefer to knock them down at the bar, with each man on his high stool, so no table is needed. Though this way of drinking may seem lonely, it also gives strangers chances to chat. Next to me was a 57-year-old Dominican, Pedro. He philosophized, “There are chihuahuas, greyhounds, German shepherds and bulldogs, but everyone is a dog, you understand, so we must unite!”
After a few more mugs, he further offered, “There’s a head, two hands, two feet, a body and an asshole, but everyone wants to be a head, no one wants to be an asshole, so they throw the asshole into a river. Backstroking, like this, the asshole was also yelled at, 'Fuck you, asshole!' When they needed to take a shit, they were fucked, because where’s the asshole? You can be an asshole, I can be asshole, but everyone has a job to do, get it?”
When I said I was 51, Pedro shouted, “Congratulations!” Bill the bartender jumped in, “You congratulate him for being 51?!”
“Yes, because not everyone can live that long!”
“How old are you?” I asked Bill.
“52.”
“I congratulate you also!” Pedro roared, then turned to me, “The other day, I said hello to these young guys on the street, but they just gave me this look, like they wanted to kill me! One guy said, 'What are you looking at?' I just looked down and walked away. In this neighborhood, you can get shot for no reason, just like that!”
Just hours before Christmas, the bar was reasonably merry. A sock seller stopped at each patron to hawk a bit. Another peddling pirated movies was chased away. Behind the bar were all these lottery tickets with Christmas images in lurid colors. The cheapest was a dollar, the most expensive 20 bucks. I saw all these people buying then scratching, but no one won anything. Suddenly, several people barged into the bar to give each drunk a plastic bag printed with crucifixes in blue, red, purple and yellow. Inside was a packet of instant noodles, a bag of potato chips, a bag of peanuts, a bag of faintly cheese flavored crackers, a bunch of the cheapest candies, two Christmas cards and five proselytizing booklets
At Christmas in Saigon, people spill onto streets to stroll around Notre Dame Cathedral. For our first US Christmas in 1975, my father drove my brother and I into downtown Tacoma. Excited, we thought it would be super festive, but found it desolate. Christmas in the US is a day for cozy family gatherings, not a public fair. Driving around, my father noticed a hitchhiker, so picked him and drove him to his house, at least three miles away. After saying thank you, he just shuffled away. “We drove him so far but he didn’t even invite us into his house!” my dad complained. In Vietnam, people drag new acquaintances home to yak or eat, but in the US, there are friends of many decades who would only meet at public places, like a bar.
Just like that, I’ve been away from Vietnam nearly 40 years, though as an adult, I did come home to live for 2 ½ years. A few months ago, I met an American Vietnam vet in Kennewick, Washington. He said, “Since I was in Vietnam, Vietnam will always be a part of me.” Living in the US for 35 years altogether, I’ve clearly become an American, but in moments like this, when I’m blathering, entertaining and cracking bad jokes in my mother tongue, I can pretend I haven’t been uprooted by history, like too many on this earth, including those who have never left Vietnam. Having lost nearly everything, we must shake or laugh it off, because that’s all there is, all there is.
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