in the wintertime when i met you

you were gentle and i was rough
i didn't know what to do so i kissed you
in the wintertime
you picked me up on the corner so i wouldn't get lost
in your house, dark with red christmas lights
and those yellow lanterns in your room
i didn't know what to do so i kissed you
in the wintertime
everything was warm
and that's how it was when i met you

sadness in the new, sadness is the old

you know i come here to listen to sad songs and think about how to say whatever it is that i can't say

it's not words it's physical

enough talk let's fuck

our hearts out our stomach top of the roller coaster i'm going down

to the bottom


to lie here and think about

why bon iver's first album is still so good

and winter in a minnesota cabin

between the trees some frozen tears


i could feel them fuck between the walls

remembered what it's like to reach through and grab nothing

press yourself against the wall

like a magnet from a distance


how many ways to say whatever it is i can't say

i can't say but i know now

i mean i think i know     you guys    i think i know

i didn't choose this but i want it


nostalgia 101 - a hundred different things about love

Chaos / Accidental Physical

I never thought I'd ever know -- you know --

life --

I never thought I'd have it all figured out.

I never thought happiness was a thing that would come to me.

I never thought I'd ever know -- you know --

just knowing, like, absolutely,

any one thing.

I never thought I'd ever be quite sure.

I mean, this is just to say, I still think this way.


It rained the day I went to Alcatraz. Not real rain, more like mist. Everything was wet and foggy. Well, that's San Francisco for you. Sometimes. I took pictures in black and white.


There was a time when my feelings were directly connected to my fingers and it would all come pouring out. There was a time when I wrote without my own critical eye. And it was good. Remember. Now it's a journey through a checklist of metaphors, narration, imagery, concrete imagery, quantity, point of view, conceit, no abstractions, and sense, does it make sense. And the words don't quite make their way out.


Summer is a time for getting drunk. But I want to get drunk in October. And I want it to be cheap and easy. I want to shiver. I want to be looking for a good time do you know when I last looked for a good time. I don't know when. I want to get drunk in October and I want the sky to be black and I want the beer to be disgusting because it's two for $6 Boreale and I want to dance in a dirty hipster bar with young dirty hipsters wearing neon tights and neon sunglasses to dirty hipster DJ playing LMFAO before LMFAO was cool I want to dance like I don't give a fuck that I'm dancing with my backpack on like I don't give a fuck that I'm dancing like I don't give a fuck like I don't give a fuck like I don't give a fuck 'cause I don't give a fuck.


And the words and the words and the words. They're never ending. And they don't quite make sense. There's no need to try and piece them together.


Always sitting there trying to name the feelings. Separate them, label them, explain them. And always the questions when I'm not ready. I don't know yet. And I might not ever know. Maybe leave me alone forever. Maybe leave me alone indefinitely. I can't articulate. I'm not ready.

And I am so spent. And I am so exhausted. And I can't see anymore. Beyond myself. I can't say just what I mean. I don't mean anything. I can't articulate.

And now I shrug my shoulders. And now I am alone. Why articulate?



All we want, baby, is everything.


This body grew like a tree from the earth. This body wants food. This body wants water. This body wants touch. This body wants space to stretch its legs. This body is sorry about some things but not about others. This body is sorry for pushing Tino in first grade gym class but not sorry about being angry. This body is physical. This body and other bodies. This body and the accidental physical. This body is full of insides and outsides. This body is full of spaces for the metaphorical abstract. This body is science. This body is art. This body bleeds every 27 days. This body has a literal heart. This body remembers some things but not others. This body remembers the taste of another body that had just consumed beer and marijuana. This body does not know what it has forgotten. This body and the accidental physical. This body cannot make sense of what is not part of it. This body can count. This body is not sure if it's put its feelings in the right place. This body cannot actually see inside itself. This body does not know what's going on inside itself. This body can see outside. This body can't see in the dark. This body is protein. This body is carbohydrates. This body is vitamins. This body created itself. What is this body but a tree grown from the earth, and every spring there is rebirth.







What happened to the days.

What happened to the things I had to say and then forgot.

Today is the day I listened to "Good Woman" by Cat Power for the 121st time.

The moment when "Infinite Jest" finally began to make sense to me

"No one single instant of it was unendurable. Here was a second right here: he endured it. What was undealable-with was the thought of all the instances all lined up and stretching ahead, glittering. [...] He could just hunker down in the space between each heartbeat and make each heartbeat a wall and live in there. Not let his head look over. What's unendurable is what his own head could make of it all. What his head could report to him, looking over and ahead and reporting. But he could choose not to listen; he could treat his head like G. Day or R. Lenz: clueless noise. He hadn't quite gotten this before now, how it wasn't just the matter of riding out the cravings for a Substance: everything unendurable was in the head, was the head not Abiding in the Present but hopping the wall and doing a recon and then returning with unendurable news you then somehow believed."

- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

i'm so happy i have my friends

me: do you ever worry that you are actually an insane, irrational person

n: i pretty much talk myself off of that cliff daily.

//

me: if i go to topman and buy things what kind of person does that make me

r: a sophisticated one

a cold sky, drunk and crawling

all my stories started outside in the middle of the night. it was always cold. i was always drunk. they were always about other people and how i would crawl home at night, drunk and cold, needing people but needing loneliness too.

i'm not anywhere tonight. there is no moon. there are only christmas lights and a dim lamp in this cold room.

i imagined a perfect stranger and let it be perfect. i buried my face in her shirt. i let the sun stream through white curtains onto her back in the morning. i let myself kiss her shoulder blade and i let myself out the door. 

perfection is painful. happiness is the worst. i could make it all up, i could put it all in there. secret desire. that's what the writer does. the writer causes two people to bump their lips and stumble through the streets at night when it's cold and they're drunk. the writer writes the answers for two people. the writer creates warmth and places it in between two bodies. the writer makes the bodies sweat, the sweat slightly sticky and odourless. the writer makes sure the bodies stay warm.

am i a writer? the writer inserts themselves under the covers. the writer chooses the person next to them.

am i a writer? but the writer is alone. i'm not anywhere tonight.

the writer is just sad. the writer is unhappy with the world so she creates another one. the world is a room, rectangular in shape, with painted white walls. the window faces south. the world has a large closet and a double bed and a TV and a night stand with an alarm clock. inside the world is a woman with staticky brown hair which sticks to her wool shirt and her cheek.

but the writer hates what is not real. she apologizes to the woman with brown hair and lets her sleep peacefully and then she closes the door on that dream.

a writer is a dreamer.

all my stories are my dreams.

all my stories are my desires.

i imagined a perfect stranger and i kissed her on the mouth and i told her i never wanted to know her. i told her no matter how much i beg, to never love me, never ever let me bury my face in that favourite place, never lift my shirt and kiss my spine, never let me touch the skin which is as smooth as i make it which tingles when i make it, never let me feel what will consume me from the inside; the desire to touch again, to taste again, to kiss again and again and again, to be kissed again again again.

there was a real girl, once, who i wanted to kiss in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in front of the mountain under the cross under the moon and the moon shining off the just rained on street with my hands in my pockets and my heart kind of warm and i wanted her hands on my face and i wanted it to feel like how i imagined it feels to be in love but it didn't feel like that it felt like going home alone at night underneath a cold sky drunk and crawling and needing someone but needing loneliness too and needing to keep the illusion that love is out there somewhere, and it is real.

i'm not sorry for what i did. i'll rewrite it someday.

I Enjoy To Write Posts About October

My general feeling about October throughout the rest of the year can probably best be summed up as "ambivalent". It's sort of this nothing month that disappears between the final warmth of September and the cold of November as "another month of school".

But when I get to October -- when I'm actually in it -- I really love this month.

First of all, September sucks so whenever October comes around it's like a huge breath of fresh air. September = stressful. October = not September, therefore October = something better. That may be a fallacy but still, I can't help but think that October means things are settling down, a normal schedule has been established, and I can breathe again without panicking.

Secondly, I feel like fall fashion is in full swing, and I can't wait to buy a new scarf and some socks and maybe even some new shoes.

Anyways, I've been listening to a lot of new music since I got back from my trip that I haven't been posting here (four months with no new music made me feel kind of deprived so I've been downloading new stuff at an abnormal rate).

Neko Case's "Middle Cyclone" is still on high rotation, but I'm also listening to Andrew Bird's 2009 album "Noble Beast".

Here's a really cool live version of my favourite song off that album "Nomenclature".



I'm also really into Yukon Blonde again. I saw them play in September when they were visiting for Pop Montreal and I picked up a sweet tank top and a renewed appreciation for how fun they are live (the first time I went to see them I was actually seeing The Wooden Sky -- but I walked away a Yukon Blonde fan). My favourite song off their latest album "Tiger Talk" is "Iron Fist" mostly because of the lyrics.

It feels like the very first time
anybody's hurt you so much
you could just die
but you will get over it.
You will get over it.

(via)

Also listening to: Destroyer, Devendra Banhart, The Mountain Goats, The New Pornographers, Okkervil River.

look at what i did now

in an airport hotel
so i touch your bones for the last time

the sun rises through the window

planes lift their heavy wings
fly over our heads

this balcony gives an excellent view of sky

so at four in the morning i pack my bags
and dive right in

sweet blue tastes like sugar sticks and nescafe

asphalt tastes like clean sheets soft mattress all alone

so i guess what i'm trying to say
is that i'm home

The Year in Review: Sometimes I Disappeared, But I Want To Come Back

It's that made up time of year when I decide to look back at everything that has made me who I am up until this very point of writing. These times come for me usually in that gray area when one thing ends and another begins; right now it's school ending and summer beginning. In a week I'll be on a plane to China. I think that maybe this is important because it's the exact same thing I did last year.

I'm sitting in my parents' kitchen right now, drinking tea and eating stale raisins. The weather is cloudy and I think it rained this morning. I just got back from A-Camp on Sunday night and I don't really know what to do with myself. It's a lot quieter here.

The thing is, this year, I don't need to ask myself "how did you get here?" because I already know that inertia got me here. Does that make sense? What I mean is that I didn't do anything at all to get me anywhere. In September I thought to myself that I was a whole new person with realness, tangibility, and form and I stepped outside of my brain and decided I was going to crash into life.

But it turned out that life was just work. And I threw myself into that with all the force I could muster because it made me feel like a real person. It made me feel needed and important and like I was really doing something, even if it wasn't actually important at all. I could say to people "I'm working" and it could be a thing that people understood. You know? It felt normal. Like, God, I'm just so normal, going to normal work all the normal time. And I felt all the normal feelings, which is to say, I really didn't feel anything at all.

What really happened is that everything else in my life fell away. I wanted time to "focus on myself" but it turns out that that meant ensuring that I got the proper amount of sleep every night. Everything was just fine in that fine way, where I didn't cry I just sort of despaired when things were sad and then did whatever it was that I had to do. I believe they call this "going through the motions" and Buffy Summers sang about it on her hit TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

I feel proud of myself because I made + saved enough money to pay for my entire trip to China all by myself. All the money that I'm using is entirely mine that I worked for, and financial independence is something that I've always wanted so this feels like a big step for me. It's okay to feel good about that, right? Money makes me so uncomfortable and I wish that everybody had a lot of it or that nobody had any at all. But I guess this isn't really about money.

It's about how I closed up and disappeared and became a non-entity. I worked a lot but it was only about money in the sense that I needed just enough to pay rent and keep some in my bank account. I worked a lot so I could hold on to something that seemed to make sense to everyone else ("work") and I didn't let myself think about the other things that I wanted. It felt good to have a team at work, to be known and to feel solid. That was sufficient.

But before this year, my life wasn't about sufficiency. It was an overflow of feelings all the time and I cried a lot and that was a good thing. I wrote words and people read them and the words came from a real place in my heart. I stopped writing this year. My blog is almost empty and so is my journal because I just didn't have anything to say. There were no feelings that were pounding on my heart's door, demanding to be let out.

It's kind of the worst thing, to stop wanting. I don't believe for a second that I've ever stopped wanting, but I took desire and covered it up. Every time it knocked it was a faraway sound that I could shut out so easily, pretend it belonged somewhere else. I muted my desire to be anything, to be even a person. Was I a person who wrote? I had no beliefs, no identity, no passion. I didn't want to participate in anything, go anywhere, meet anyone. There was nothing for me to write.

I don't know if it was fear. I don't know what it was. I think it was just a mistake I made about myself, which I am okay with admitting. I think if I could go back I would love everyone a little harder, because I wasn't a very good friend, and I'm sorry about that.

Going to A-Camp reminded me of the person that I was when I first started working for Autostraddle. And everyone remembered me as that person, which made me want to be that person again. I miss her, that girl who was scared but brave, in love with everything and everyone. It reminded me of a time when I really lived, or something, whatever living is. I mean, it was living with other people, being comfortable in my own skin, and letting things hurt. Life doesn't have to hurt if you don't let it, but then I don't think you'll feel any feelings at all. I mean, you have to let them all in.

by Robin Roemer
this is a weird picture of me and I don't even mind

This is what A-Camp did, what Autostraddle does: it gives you confidence to be who you are. If there's anything I learned from Autostraddle for the past 3 years it's that you have to let yourself feel. Your feelings are beautiful and you're beautiful and god it sounds so corny, but that's what it is, you are beautiful and you need to let yourself feel things because I'm going to start feeling things again and it's all going to be okay if we have feelings together.

I think maybe the whole point of this blog was my weird way of trying to tell you who I am, even though I don't know who that is. I'm figuring it out piece by piece, and the Autostraddle team has been a big part of that. Sometimes I disappeared, but I want to come back. I don't really know what that means, sorry.

I don't know. I guess this is just my life and these are the things that have happened to me and the things that I have done. I'm not going to say that I'm not going to hide anymore because I will probably still hide sometimes. But I know a little better now what I want and who I want to be and I think I can be that person.

by Robin Roemer

I know you can't see these people's faces, but I want you to know they are among the most beautiful faces you will ever see.

I am humbled, once again, by the magic of Autostraddle. I want you to know that I knew these things about myself before, I knew that I had disappeared this year and become a blank slate of nothingness. But I guess A-Camp filled me up again, reminded me of there's a rosy complexion to my cheeks.

I think the idea that I can't have everything infuriates me

I think the idea that I can't have it all drives me insane. Why can't I take 18 credits and have a job at the same time? Because that's insane. Why can't I learn the things I want to learn? What did I come to university for? To be a writer. Oh yeah, to be a writer. That's what I said before I came here. I said I would be a writer with or without university. But aren't I writing right now? Isn't anyone who writes a writer? Oh, but to be a good writer. Ah, well.

Here I am. I want everything. An apartment with a living room for fuck's sake. A job that doesn't take everything I am for minimum wage plus 10cents. It's nothing. It's something. I feel broken.

If I don't like it why do I do it? If I demand better what does that make me? Insolent, maybe. Ungrateful.

Can I get some quiet? I know, I know, I know. It's just this day. But I can't be quiet. I can't turn me off. There's always someone in there, knock knock knock, right, she says, why can't you have it all. And then another, you have too much. Oh, help. You'll never have enough.

Oh, and I want and I want and I want it all.

[the temper trap - fools]

thoughts

so peel peel peel back the layers to find the same thing. it took four years to grow backward, to say look i did the circuit and now i'm back, look

look, i climbed the mountain and it was just as lonely on the other side.

world collision

i cut myself in half. i split myself in two and i said, "i can be whoever i want to be. and i can still be happy." i can make this part of me disappear, i can make this part of me appear. i can wear a new skin every day. i can be in love i can be out love. with a snap of my fingers i need you/i don't need you.

i am -

i am -

inside this room i wear these boots and i am in charge.

outside this room i am -

i am undone. where do you find people? how do other people

find

other

people?

i am falling off the face of the earth i think. i have split myself in two and fallen right apart. i have torn myself open for nobody. i'll spill my guts for you, you don't even have to ask.

to change or stay this way?

hey love.

touch you here or there?

kiss your head or go away?

because go away i might.

if you want me to i might.

if you said,

"go away."

i might say,

"okay."

i might say okay

and heart crush like dust.

just a touch, love.

'cause love i just might.

remember thursday night?

quiet love or loud?

'cause whisper i just might.

if you want me to i might.

if you say,

"please stay."

i will say,

"okay."

i will say okay

how'd it get this way

hey, love.

secret in the way.

tell you now or later?

because later i just might.

if i find the words i might.

i might say,

"you're okay."

and i might say,

i love you.

"don't become the thing you hated" or how to be a giant asshole

[destroyer - don't become the thing you hated]

what if the thing you hated becomes the thing you love? what then? do you love it or hate it? what if doing the thing you love interferes with the reasons why you love it? what then? do you still love it?

you like the feeling of being good at something. you like familiarity, you like feeling important, and most of all you like the idea of something perfect and tangible, and you know if you have it all away it would be fine and you wouldn't cry. but you can't destroy the desire for that which isn't possible and accept what you get with a smile. because then who would you be? would you be who you wanted to be? who is who they want to be? if you love the thing you hated and then became it does that mean you're who you wanted to be? if you love the thing you hated and then became it and then you ate it... does that make you full? of shit? 'cause you lied to all your friends, and you can't look them in the eye. so you hide underground in the metro and they never see you anymore, and you never see them. you lied to everyone and you can't admit you changed and you'd rather be used and wasted than nothing at all. and you hate yourself for being the coward who lied, the lying coward who lied and lied and lied and became the thing they hated. in the end, it turns out, you're just an asshole.

(via)

disposable myths

"don't you ever for a second get to thinking you're irreplaceable." - beyonce

i've seen you before. don't worry, we are all children looking up for validation. i know you don't want to feel special, you want to be special. you are so helpful. you are always there. you are so kind, so loving. you want equality so long as you are the equal one. i've seen you before. don't worry, you always get what you want.

here's what i think, though. you are completely disposable. we are all completely disposable. one body is replaced with another (how absence is easily replaced by another body that makes the same motions, and then it's fine i guess) is replaced with another is replaced with another. how the giant world makes us feel so small, and the tiny world makes us feel so small. you are in denial about your dispensability, 'cause it hurts doesn't it. all we wanted was to feel like someone needed us. i mean, me. wouldn't it be nice to feel like someone needed you, but actually you, you you you? turns out nothing needs us. you're flushed.

but don't worry, because it's completely alright. see, here's the thing. you are not the first nor the last to do the thing you're doing. someone will most certainly accomplish the same things as you, and don't worry because someone already has done it before you. someone has already made your mistakes, and someone will make them again when you're gone. so that's it. you are not the first and you are not the last. you are a cog in the machine, you are not a cog in the machine. you are free.

and absence ate the year

october 21 2010

now, now, it's broken now. all of it, all of us. i am up late again, waiting for a bus. the sky is a worn midnight wash, i mean, that's a real colour. i felt i knew it all along, and now i feel it, painful, hungry again, lonely on the way home from work.

i would like an invitation, would like to stop dreaming about a white shirt i've never seen you wear. would i even go? no, no, no. can't stop dreaming. would like to say, i like your smile. just saying.

no, wait, wait, yes. it's still pretty. would like to ask permission to kiss you outside but i'm too shy. ok, go, i am sure, this is a bad idea. lean. leeeeean.

the man asleep doesn't know when he's missed his stop. is he dreaming of you like i do, no, is he haunted by a ghost, hungry for something real. no. i am tired and i know, i shouldn't kiss you on the mouth, shouldn't accidentally touch your blouse. but, i know. i am hungry for something real. i am cold on the way home from work because it's windy and that's how the world works.

++

stephen dunn: "from the start all i wanted to explain was how things go wrong, how the heart's an empty place until it is filled"

i can never say how we got here. how i became me and you became you. how we believed that no one would leave before we were ready, until they did. how i learned that absence can grow or diminish, and nothing is for sure. how absence is easily replaced by another body that makes the same motions, and then it's fine i guess. how absence is actually just nothing over again against the side of your brain, saying there is nothing now where there once was something.

i remember sitting on that bus thinking about jeans, and absence ate the year, and i brushed against your shoulder.

today my body trembled a little bit when i thought of you. that's a whole other beat. it's a whole other hole.

why is everything so weird

i wrote this thing in october 2010 about the landmarks that were approaching in my life. it was called 'why is everything so weird'. instead i posted this. reading this right now makes me feel weird.

Late November, early December

Around this time I started working at American Eagle, which was supposed to be a Christmas job, and yet I'm still here even though I live far away from where I work. I also don't know how I feel about this. In the past 2 months American Eagle has been the only thing keeping me sane because it's the only thing in my life that's remained familiar. I genuinely like everyone I work with and I'm writing it here even though I don't think any of them read this, which is totally fine. I don't know if I'm good at my job.

If I didn't work at American Eagle I probably would never have talked to any of the people I work with, and I don't think they would have talked to me. And that's okay, because we're different, kind of, and I would never have applied if I hadn't already been friends with someone who worked there. I'm glad I get to work with people I wouldn't have otherwise met.

I've been thinking about my job lately, and people keep asking me why I don't get transferred since I live in the city now, and I can't really explain why except that it's become kind of comforting. I've even (sort of) come to enjoy being the janitor on Sunday mornings. I don't know. They should pay me more to clean the light fixtures, I probably have 5 pounds of dust in my lungs or something.

++

Everything is so weird. I guess this is called "growing". Why do things have to mean something? None of these dates are really important, except maybe my birthday which is important to society and possibly my grandmother. I don't know what life will be like this time next year, I don't want to know, don't tell me. I wouldn't believe you anyway.

i think i remember having a dream around this time about someone in a white cotton shirt. i think my life is the same but different.

Life Lessons I Learned This Weekend

1. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

I feel like you can try and be really prepared for things but life is just going to happen anyway, and it doesn't care what you planned for. I think you kind of just have to lie in the middle of the road and hope that cars don't hit you. Or maybe that is really stupid.

2. I am in a false world

These are not my pants. Where the fuck am I? This is not living. I think possibly this "living" thing is just "dying really fast".

3. Everything in my life is completely and totally dramatized

4.We are not the people
Who are the people? I don't know, but we are not them.

5. Dreams are not real

Is it Sunday already? I had a good dream last night.

You Are A Tourist

Apparently Death Cab for Cutie's new single "You Are A Tourist" has been out for a month now, but I just heard it today. I have to say, I'm really, really liking it. It brings me back to the good old days of Transatlanticism, which is a relief because I was worried they would continue in the direction of Narrow Stairs. Not to say that Narrow Stairs was a bad album, just not one of my favourites. Anyways, check out the video for "You Are A Tourist". It's pretty cool too.

So I know if I ask questions probably no one will answer, but I'll ask just the same: has anyone heard DCFC's new album? Is it good? Do you like this song? Do you have feelings about it? Do you have feelings about other things? Don't be shy.

Identity Crisis #3: Am I White?

This is a better written off shoot of one of my other identity crises. Despite being Chinese/having an "Eastern" background sometimes I still feel like I'm an Orientalist/appropriating other cultures.

++

When I look in the mirror I don't see a Chinese person. I don't see a Jewish person or a lesbian. I don't see a boy or a girl. I don't know what I see. I think I see someone who is just scared of being anything.

I was born in Canada to immigrant parents but to immigrant parents who themselves had been raised in Canada. My dad's family moved to Toronto when he was around 10 and my mother's family moved to Montreal when she was around 5. They were educated in Canada and have not lived outside of Canada in over 20 years or maybe ever (since they moved here)?

I was raised in the suburbs in a fairly white neighbourhood in a middle-class family. There was enough money for me to play sports and have toys and have food everyday and also pay medical bills because my mother was ill (though I didn't think of these things when I was a kid). I went to high school and there were, like, 3 black kids. I think there was one other Chinese kid in my grade. The "biggest" minority were the Jewish kids, about 5 or 6 in the sports program my dad had enough money to pay for. Everyone else was white. This is not to say "I'M SO OPPRESSED" this is actually to say I grew up in an extremely white setting -- so much so that I accidentally let slip "other white people" in reference to myself to Laura in February and she asked me if I considered myself white. And I've thought a lot about it since then.

This is the opposite of "I'm oppressed". When I fill out job applications and they ask me if I'm part of a minority group and list a bunch of options, I feel like I'm exploiting something when I mark off "Chinese" (I don't, however, feel bad about marking off "woman"). Being Chinese has, luckily, never limited my options, at least not that I know of. I don't think I've ever not gotten a job for being Chinese, though once I didn't get a job because I don't speak Cantonese.

I've lived my life in white neighbourhoods, gone to school with white kids, played sports with white kids, had as much money as the average white person, have been taught mostly the same values as non-religious white kids. If you went into my house without knowing who it belonged to, you would probably never guess "Chinese". You might guess "Jewish" if you search really hard and find our menorah, but then you would probably be confused by my step-mom's Christmas decorations. The Chinese food we usually eat is take-out. Just like other white people and Jews on New Year's eve (JKKK).

I have had the opportunities that white, middle-class people my age have had. If asked who I identify most with, between a Chinese person from China and a white person from North America, I would choose a white person from North America. But in some situations among non-asians I can't help but feel extremely Chinese. I've gotten weird questions like "Do you have statues of Buddha in your home?", or people will say something about China and might add in a "no offense" in there (what even?) or ask me if I know the answer (I don't). Someone once told my friend that she thought I was "pretty for an Asian". It used to bother me that people assumed I knew things about China because in my mind I was so clearly not Chinese that I just couldn't understand why people would think I would know. I understand better now (but that doesn't make it right). When the subject of China comes up I suddenly feel extremely conscious of looking like a Chinese person.

But I feel like an impostor in a half-Chinese person's body. I know very little about China. Before I took a class on China last semester pretty much all I knew about Chinese culture was that General Tao chicken is not an authentic Chinese dish. I didn't even know which city my family was from or which dialect of Chinese they spoke.

When I look in the mirror I don't see a Chinese person. I definitely don't look Jewish. I don't even consider myself a real Jew, in fact, my half-assed attempts to celebrate major holidays are probably an insult to real religious people. I consider myself more "queer" than "gay" or "bisexual" because I'm still trying to figure myself out, but queer people can look like anyone.

I don't see a white person either though. I know I'm not white, I just have white privileges, for the most part, right now. What does that make me? (Answer: confused).