Graduation

Graduation was pretty mindblowing. A positive attitude is all that is needed to start the day and to make it last positively and optimistically. I can't say exactly what aspect of graduation made me alight with laughter and joy but a part of me was touched and I was sincerely moved by the speeches and the friendship that I struck up with Patricia. The day began rather slow and unassuming when Dad chastised me not to wear my glasses because it makes me look older and then people would chee-siew me, which means to ridicule me. My Dad keeps praising his own aesthetic eye and skills for drawing. Yes my Dad did draw this amazingly award-winning mural during my fourth grade for the library poster display, my Dad seizes every opportunity to make his skills known to me. I pleaded with him that I wanted to be able to see when I walk down the street and he was not moved by this. He always despised glasses (he wears glasses himself) and said that it ruins your eyes more if you keep wearing it. He says that every year the degree only gets worse and jat gnun wai lok hew, which means your eye only gets worse. He also said that black frames make me look younger and he chastised me some more for liking silver-rim glasses and strange author/hipster glasses that only make me look old. Dad always hated society for liking tall, masculine men because he did not consider himself to fit into that archetype. Though he praises himself for being the ladies-man ("Ho aw nui dai sik gnau" which means a lot of girls knew me) during his educational years in China and in Baruch and BMCC, I fail to understand how someone so popular as he makes himself out to be turned out to be a recluse who doesn't other social networks. I also tend to think that my pimpish side or my tendency to flirt with women comes from my Dad. He doesn't hit on women in public or anything but I know that he has a thing for ancient-style Asian women in the opera halls and in the Chinese operas/ballads/music videos. Perhaps he bestowed on me the taste for Asian chicks, particularly Taiwanese singers, like Sarah Chen from her 1980's music video. So yeah my Dad decided against me wearing glasses out of the house because he thought that I would look like a jook-kuck meaning a gnarly old man because I had the body of a frail small boy but with glasses he thought I looked like an old man who aged terribly and especially I had on a purpleass eye-catchy gown it would signify something not pleasant but rather derisive. But I ended up leaving with a book and my mortarboard disguised with a douchy statement "4.1 GPA" which I hid from my parents because I didn't want them to know that I was being nun-sai again which means ostentatious and show-offish. My parents know me as a walking billboard not of advertisement but of anything flashy just to get attention. They know that I have a thirst for attention especially from strangers. I cherish this strangerly visibility that can only be asked through activities that are crazy and stupid---doo nay gnew yeah, haw men, which means doing crazy things to get face (get attention).

Graduation was enticing because I found my graduation buddy to be incredibly pleasant and bubbly as he calls herself. I didn't meet her through my four years but she said that we might have met in a club or maybe had a class together. At first Patricia looked like Stephanie from my philosophy class but she was not as tall as Stephanie. She smiled at me in passing when we were lining up in the basement of Jacob Javits Center North. I thought to myself, why was she smiling/laughing towards me? I sensed that she wasn't laughing at me because this laughter seemed to start when we met eyes, well, when I met eyes with her. So it couldn't have been anything personal. Besides her incredibly bubbly nature and incredibly close/physical aura brings a rather charming and intense space of interest between me and her. I ended up leaving Tony and sitting beside Patricia for the entire ceremony which was exactly two hours long and without hiatus. I had expected graduation to be incredibly boring and extremely tedious and full of loathsome speeches that were cynical and incredibly loaded with self-serving bullshit. But graduation turned out to be shorter than I thought for some reason. For some reason time passed by rather quickly. I actually had the intense pleasure to sit up front, three rows in and be near the podium which held nearly one hundred students and faculty and deans and trustees. The amplification and sound system was amazing and that was partly what kept me awake. I was also awake because of the damn atmosphere. The walk towards the Hall entrance was rather uplifting because there was a sudden sense of exhilaration that "we were doing it," we were all walking down the aisle and this was the only chance to walk and perhaps see our parents clinching their cameras and staring at us. This walk signified something larger than us and larger than our goals that we could not see just yet. I was riled up by the staff as well but they seemed to be underprepared and incredibly confused with their own directions which didn't bother me. As long as I walked down the aisle for a good minute then I am a happy camper. The energy was so warm and the music was incredibly surround sound which obviously made sleeping or dozing off hard to do. I was also riled up by Ada who breakfasted with me. She is responsible for setting the tone of my day and then finishing it off by seeing me after graduation ceremony (by chance we found each other in the packed hall).

Ada met me in Union Square DSW first floor space before the pair of escalators began to soar. We began our morning of graduation day by eating at Silver Spurs which is a diner I always pass by but confused it for incredibly upscale place that was disguised by venetian blinds on the windows. It turns out that the atmosphere was not bad though we sat directly next to the counter where the waiters and cashier girl waited to take orders or for when backup was necessary. It made me feel like we were being supervised especially because they were standing above us to some degree and we were cowering at our tables, eating our breakfast which was pretty delicious though a tad overpriced. But if this was overpriced then what would Ihop be considered? Then again I don't know the prices at Ihop but I assume that cracking one single egg would not cost me as much as $1.50. Then again maybe the egg is amazingly good, which it turned out to be ok because I think that eggs are similar in taste regardless of what kind of chicken laid it. There we caught up and Ada told me about her mother and her boyfriend and how his car got towed away but he saved it but he still has to pay the ticket. She also told me that she's glad her english class is over because her classmates were incredibly strange and awkward. Throughout the day we received compliments from passersby young and old congratulating us and asking if we were from NYU. I wanted to nod my head and pretend to have prestige for those few seconds/people. It was a rush to get compliments and instinctively smile at strangers, though I found that it is easier for me to smile at women than at men partly because my homophobia rears its ugly head. Even in Chelsea I feel like smiling at men is wrong and twisted because it doesn't conform to heteronormativity. It was fun to be able to get compliments from strangers. Ada was able to make me smile throughout the day and I was able to be highly alert; she woke me up and trained me to attain stamina for the rest of the long, lethargic day, which turned out to be incredibly exciting and uplifting more than lethargic. It wasn't until the evening when I saw Shawn that I had tired out and all my energy was fleeing from my body.

Our guest speaker Soledad O'Brien was still a stranger to me when I saw her rise from her seat and give a very light-hearted, jovial speech laden with indirect emotions and subtle passion. She shared a tiny anecdote about her parents' immigrant tale and she claims that she knows the seats in which we were sitting. She says that she can still identify with us as students because she not only has gone through schooling but she also rears children of her own. Her speech was perhaps the most applaud-worthy. Our President Jennifer was the least liked because she was applauded the least. Perhaps I immediately expected the protestors to swarm the auditorium and demand the board of trustees to step down. I had expected words like trustee to become unpleasant and words like chancellor to become a symbol of dislike and hatred. But protestors did not show up and the atmosphere was preserved immensely. Soledad was able to garner such an applause maybe because she was the featured guest speaker or maybe because people do watch CNN and they do favor her. I do not watch CNN so I will not make any ready assumptions concerning her channel which leads to making assumptions about her and her allegiance to the network which I know zero information about.

Opening the morning with Ada, Tony, and this white girl from a few clubs I've seen her was incredibly uplifting and carefree. They slowly urged me into a sense of ease and a sense of comfort in a place which encouraged imagination and headspace. It was not claustrophobic to be inside the Javits Center and this was the reward of four years---being able to enjoy the space and listen to emotional speeches and anecdotes about how fellow students endured hardships left and right. My Dad complained that the speech was not geared towards the masses but instead towards individual feats. I wanted to argue that Dad, graduation isn't always about you [me] and it is through singular achievements that we become inspired and we become motivated. We end up living vicariously through each others' endeavors and that should be enough to serve as impetus for onward action. But my Dad always believes in something and he always has something to say about what he expects society to deliver. Perhaps I also get the judgmental side from him too. I get that scrutinizing tick from him to eyeball everything in society and expect it to treat me a certain way simply because I'm me.

Now that graduation has passed I feel incredibly indifferent, distant and almost in denial that I have actually graduated maybe because I depend on a physical piece of paper to tell me that I have graduated magna cum laude because my GPA has been fabulous so far from five grades of straight A's. I cannot tell you how nervous I was waiting for my grades and logging onto eSims sporadically and seeing my undergrad transcript. But I was elated to know that I once again received straight A's, but not enough straight A's to be sitting on the stage and to be called Saluditorian or Valedictorian. Clearly my efforts were not good enough by numerical standards. Graduation feels like a lengthy span of time in which the idea of liminality hit me like a rock. I was in the middle of nowhere until the Power in State invested in me or something something allowed us all to rise and say that we have graduated. But no one threw their mortarboards in the air; I was the only one to turn my tassel from the right to left. It seemed that Jennifer and the rest of the faculty/board has forgotten what to do. But maybe that is actually not the ritual. Just because Mr. Fried from high school said we should turn our tassels to the left doesn't mean Hunter College believes in this micro-action either. Being out of school and without a job leaves me feeling denuded of confidence in a way. I end up having to make-work and pretending that I am busy by writing my breakout novel and by doing other creative things that I "did not have enough time" to do during my semester. This claim probably rests on the fact that the semester has caused a built-in or prepared schedule for us to conform to, whereas there is no schedule for me to deal with now, therefore we can do anything we want because it allows us to make our own rules and not play by anyone else's. Ada agreed with me that she has more time to read her novels now and not feel like someone wants us to find certain facts or answer questions where we read something.

That night I celebrated by allowing Shawn to treat me to dinner at the Grey Dog in Chelsea where our philosophy professor chills out. I met him at around 7:25PM and Julianna joined us a bit after. The rain became the soundtrack to our night for a few minutes and the meal became incredibly pricy after I saw the menu. Also the lack of real waiters at the restaurant caused Shawn and I to become repudiated and disinterested. We felt that the waiters were incredibly fake and lazy in that they didnt serve us but just delivered us plates of food. They dallied with customers when they took orders at the counter but otherwise they called out names and blindly searched for customers when the food was prepared. This felt incredibly strange to Shawn and he became annoyed at the restaurant, also because the music was too loud overhead. The restaurant was simply too much for Shawn and I to take. But I am glad that Shawn paid for me. I allowed him, I use the word allow because I originally felt a bit violated that he crossed the line in terms of how fast we are going with our friendship. It seems like Shawn is moving along my female-friendship spectrum more than on a guy spectrum but then again my guy spectrum should be more relaxed and eased because I don't give a shit around guys given the very notion that we are guys and we are comfortable with really anything anything (some gus are uptight around their bros though). I seemed to measure Shawn's friendship and the fact that he already wanted to pay for me. This act seemed intrusive because it not only set an expectation on me in return because I expect that any favor done for me becomes a favor in return lying dormant. It wasn't that I did not want to pay for his lunch in the future, but it was more because I felt like my masculinity was threatened if not taken away. For some reason I attached the act/occasion of dining with heterosexual relationships and apart from friendships. I felt like having dinner with a guy was strange and undesirable, but my initial reaction to dinner with Shawn was pleasant so I don't understand how I can make these associations instinctively. For one thing I enjoy Shawn's company because he is insightful and poised in outgoing fashion of saying what is on his mind and voicing it in a tender way. Mostly this is achieved through his mild-deep voice and quality of his speech. Perhaps that is why Shawn is successful with the women that he was dallied with on and off his taxi route. I had the pleasure of riding in Shawn's cab on the eve of Memorial Day. We shot past traffic in a brisk empty night and picked up two fares that were incredibly boring. Shawn let me keep the ticker paper which attaches to the ticking meter hub. He also allowed me to ride around and tailgate a few cars while he entertained me with stories of how this one gay guy from the airport wondered if he had two taxi drivers (Shawn had brought his friend along with him on that occasion as well).

Shawn was able to offer me some positive advice: "No, don't do that Ken. Only do something that YOU want to do, not because other people ... [tell you to do it or you feel like you should do something for someone else]. Shawn also said that I deserved this dinner because my graduation marked my accomplishments which he thought amazing and worthwhile. He had left his small town of Illinois and absconded to New York City for a new beginning. He left with literally a bag and the clothes on his back. He told me that he spent a few nights awake and wandering the cold streets just to figure out how he would make it in New York City. His escape is also embodied in his choice of driving a taxi. The taxi becomes a metaphor for liminality, this space of nothingness and this zone of nowhereness. The taxi allows him to be nowhere when he's driving his fares and it allows him to deposit himself in their realm for no more than a few minutes when they pay their fare, otherwise he doesn't really remain anywhere or is at anywhere at all. As a newly added transplant to NYC Shawn is a struggling artist in a way as well. Just like me. We both have dreams and we are thwarted by something in NYC. But his hardships were more physically manifest than mine. I was gifted everything in my life but when he hit the streets of NYC his old life dissipated and he had to rebuild from scratch. This I will never understand or be able to empathize with fully.