Fresh Off the Boat (29 page)

One of the most influential texts I read was Emerson’s “American Scholar.” The one passage that really stuck with me was his line about young men in libraries:

That was the answer. You can’t idolize and emulate forever. At some point, you gotta cut the cord and go for dolo. I thought of Locke and his idea of tabula rasa. I realized that I needed to build arguments, philosophies, and a style grounded in my era and experiences.

Dr. Henton taught me to fight without hesitation, but Prof O taught me to box. He gave me a lesson on discipline. I remember he called me a shotgun: “You have all this energy and it’s unruly, but like a shotgun, you need the barrel to direct the buckshot just enough.”

Those professors changed my life. I went from a punk kid that fought
without a true understanding of the who, what, when, where, and why to a contrarian with a cause. I’m probably the only student on felony probation that won college awards for women’s, African-American, and English studies. I won the Zora Neale Hurston and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Award in 2004. By all accounts, it was the year of the Rotten Banana. I had all them cats quoting Biggie, Lao Tzu, and Nas by the time I was gone.

Finally, after three years of learning, I got my degree but not without a hitch. The last lesson came from Professor Papay. At first, I hated Professor Papay. She kept picking on my grammar. I always had a voice, heart, and now a mind to my writing, but no grammar. Up until my last year in college, I didn’t know what semicolons were for so I just didn’t use them. Whether it’s cooking, basketball, or writing, I was like Latrell Sprewell. If I couldn’t go left, I just got really good at going right until someone stopped me. That person was Professor Papay. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get passing grades on my papers in her class because my grammar was so bad. If Prof O was my first title fight, Prof Papay was my first title defense, and she came southpaw.

I basically wrote in slang and had all kinds of fucked-up syntax, subject-verb agreement, and run-on sentence issues. While the other professors overlooked my grammar and credited me for my content and perspective, Papay focused on my weaknesses. She made me a deal. I could pass her class and graduate if I went to the writing workshop. It was worse than probation ’cause I cared about my writing, yet here I was walking with my head down into the writing center. I never wanted to admit I didn’t know how to speak or write English properly, so I avoided it. For years I figured it was like video games. Some characters don’t have any defense or hit points, but they compensate by being really ill in other categories. Luckily, Professor Papay didn’t let me slide.

The kids at the center were really cool. My tutor was this girl Emily. She didn’t judge me, she liked my writing, and I could ask her anything without being laughed at. We literally had to start with capitalization because I didn’t understand what was supposed to be capitalized and what wasn’t. Even to this day, I can’t spit out the rules, but intuitively I can “feel” what is proper grammar. I remember asking her shit like:

“Yo, so, if semicolons break up complete sentences, why don’t we just use periods?”

“Because they are complete sentences, but not separate thoughts.”

“Oh, like ‘My Melody’?”

“Huh?”

“You know, Rakim: ‘I say one rhyme and I order a longer rhyme shorter; a pause, but don’t stop the tape recorder.’ ”

“I guess that’s it …”

“Word! I get it. Use a semicolon when you want people to think about the shit together, right?”

“Ha, ha, yeah, exactly.”

That was my thing. I learned enough from class and books that I wanted to see their thoughts, rules, and concepts at play in the modern art that I related to. No matter how much Shakespeare I read, it wasn’t my era. The classics gave me a foundation and skill set, but now it was my turn to write some new shit.

I started applying to English or film schools. I figured, with good grades and two major awards from Rollins, that schools might overlook my felony but it wasn’t so. There wasn’t one grad school that I got into.

About six months later, I was chillin’ at home with my family watching the Pacers play the Pistons at the Palace. With less than a minute left in the fourth quarter, Ben Wallace drove to the bucket and Ron Artest took a hack at him. Wallace wasn’t feeling it so he came back hard at Ron and threw him back a good twelve to fifteen feet. As Ron fought to keep his balance, both benches cleared, mayhem ensued, and it was Reggie Miller in a two-piece jawn fencing off Ron Artest from the Pistons. Behind Reggie, Artest lay down on the scorer’s table and even put on headphones at one point just to stunt on Wallace. Things started to calm down and you figured the dust would settle, but some fan threw a large soda from right field meant for Artest. Luckily, Reggie was able to keep Artest at the scorer’s table, but then more fans threw drinks at the Pacers. Within seconds, Artest ran into the stands with Stephen Jackson and started whompin’ the fan that threw the drink. Or at least someone close to the fan that threw the drink.

As Artest and Jackson started walking out of the stands, another Pistons fan ran up on them and took a swing. Artest sidestepped, dodged the punch, and then stuck the dude right in the face. Meanwhile, down on the floor a fan rushed Jermaine O’Neal and he had to defend himself, too. As the whole scene unfolded, my brothers and I got mad hyped. I was always an Artest fan from his St. John’s days but I couldn’t stand the Pacers. After watching the Pacers dismantle these punk-ass Pistons fans, I was a fan. For years, we’ve seen fans in Cleveland, Philly, and now Detroit throw shit at players from the stands. Who the fuck else goes to someone’s work and thinks it’s OK to just make it rain with fountain sodas and beer bottles?

You hear people spit that backward logic, “Athletes make tons of money, we bought tickets and have a right to throw shit!” Bankers make money, too, but I’m not running up into Chase and throwing milk shakes at the homie selling subprime mortgages. If anyone did that and then got the shit beat out of them, there would be no question whose fault it was. But here people threw shit at the Pacers and expected them to just take it. Typical American hypocrisy in action. The incident went a good eight minutes before the first semblance of security showed up.

The next day, David Stern suspended nine Pacers without pay for 146 games and a total of $11 million in lost wages. I understood why the Pacers were suspended, but Stern not only didn’t protect his players, he took no responsibility for what ensued and buried his players. It was one of the most disloyal moves I’ve ever seen in my life. I always hated Stern. From changing the hand-check rules to his legislation of culture to his failure handling Malice at the Palace, Stern has proven to be one of the coldest, most heartless individuals I’ve ever seen.

I always listened to 740 AM Sports Talk Radio in Orlando. Everyone calling into the station placed blame on Artest, Jackson, and O’Neal, but as you listened to them you could literally hear the racism oozing out of their comments. Using code like “animals,” “gorillas,” “punks,” “no class,” “ghetto,” “un-American,” etc., people tried to tie the incident to a deeper cultural chasm. It was 100 percent horseshit. Look, if it’s “hood” to hit someone for throwing a drink in your face, move me to the projects
because that’s me. I wasn’t raised to take a shot in the face and curl up in a ball. I wrote a letter to the
Orlando Sentinel
, making that point.

IT WASN’T ONE
of my best works, but what was meant as a letter to the editor became an article on page two of the sports section on November 28, 2004. My dad freaked out. “That’s my son! Eddie! You’re in the paper!”

Two minutes later he came back with the newspaper and asked, “Eh! Did you get paid for this?”

“Naw, it was just a letter to the editor.”

“Ohhh, so you’re still not professional?”

Typical. I didn’t care, though. Later that day, I got a call from the
Sentinel
. After years of writing my own mock drafts and goofy pick ’em articles in the college newspaper, the editor of the sports section wanted to offer me a job as a beat writer. I couldn’t believe it. Six months after college, still on felony probation, I was about to be a beat writer for the local paper. I put on my only suit, got a haircut, did push-ups, and got into my car as fast as I could.

You opened the doors to the
Sentinel
and the first thing you smelled was fresh ink. Huge machines thirty feet long, nine feet tall, with endless sheets of newspaper running in and out. Instantly, I could see how “newspapermen” fell in love with the life, worked over these desks for decades, getting next to nothing in return. Running around Orlando for years without a purpose, I felt like I finally found one. For the last eleven years of my life, my dad and I had read the
Sentinel
every morning despite its conservative bent. He was addicted to the sports section and here I was. It wasn’t just me that arrived, it was my father, too.

I was interviewing for a lowly beat writer position covering high school basketball, but we didn’t care. The whole family bugged out and it was the most important interview I’d ever have. They led me to a conference room with a contract on the table. It was a standard contract for writers that I scanned quickly and signed. About fifteen minutes later, a big white guy
standing six one and roughly 230 pounds came walking in with glasses on. I’ll never forget the first words he said.

“Oh, wow, that face …”

“My face?”

“I mean … your face. You know … you look young, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know, but you don’t put the beat writers’ photos in the newspaper, do you?”

“No, but no one is going to talk to you with that face. I’ll try to get you some work, but I just don’t know how we can make this work.”

Just like that, it was over. All because of “that face.”

That face … What the fuck did he mean by “that face”? I could go on for pages trying to unpack everything he meant by that, but I won’t give this cracker the satisfaction. I knew what he meant, my family knew what he meant, and you know what he meant. That was it for me. I wanted power, I wanted respect, and I never ever ever wanted anyone to tell me about my face again.

A
fter my interview at the
Orlando Sentinel
, I was forced to face a few realities. Although professors at Rollins gave me a chance and saw through the surface, other people were still going to judge me based strictly on appearance. No matter what I did in Florida, there just wasn’t a critical mass of progressive liberals who’d seen more than rednecks on John Deere ride-ons. The only thing I had in common with most people is that I watched the Chappelle show and even then we laughed for different reasons. I decided to do something so no one could ever look down on me again. I went to law school.

I didn’t even want to be a lawyer. I had no idea what the law was about, but I did know that when you passed the bar, you got an Esq. at the end of your name. My other options were M.D. or CPA so I went for the J.D. I remember the
Black Album
had come out the year before and Hov’s verse kept ringing in my head:

People always fucked with me ’cause they assumed I was a quiet Asian that wouldn’t say shit or know any better. I spent my life bitin’ back, but I was tired. I didn’t want to keep proving myself so I figured devote three years to this bullshit degree, to show people I can do something most people couldn’t, and be done with it.

You figure getting a professional degree can’t possibly put you in a shittier place than you were in previously, but that’s a misconception. It’s like having kids. In theory they cool, but the motherfuckers will shit on your life mad quick if you’re not ready. It’s a gamble. If you don’t have a scholarship, you spend about $200K for three years’ tuition, room, board, and books. Most people take out loans so that’s another 7 to 13 percent interest over twenty to thirty years paying it all back. By the time you factor in three years of lost wages, you’re just glad New York City got free condoms and 3-1-1.

Stats will show 70 percent job placement after graduation, but they’ll count people that got temp, paralegal, or any ancillary work. If you are one of the lucky 15 percent of students that get a big firm job, you have to bill 1,800 hours a year at minimum. If you worked Monday through Friday fifty-two weeks a year with no holidays, that’s 6.9 hours a day. It doesn’t sound bad until you get to the firm and realize billable hours means actual hours that they can charge to a client. Eighteen hundred doesn’t count the hours you spend sitting in Brooks Brothers
^*
waiting for old heads to give you billable work to do. It doesn’t count the hours you have to spend at “optional” networking, mentoring, circle-jerking events. It also doesn’t count the hours spent avoiding passive-aggressive dickheads who want to compete on everything from doc review to how much starch you have in your shirt. For most first- to third-year associates, you have two days of waiting for every one day of billable work so when you do get it, you’re staying till 3 or 4
A.M
. to do the best job you can and hope you get more.

By my count, if you finished in the top 15 percent of your class, nailed the interview, made it through the summer associate phase, billed 1,800 hours a year for six to seven years, saved enough to pay off loans, then you
most likely lost your hair, your friends, and any sense of dignity, happiness, or meaning in your life. On the upside, you probably got really ill at fantasy sports waiting for billable work. I used to give myself haircuts or download porn onto an external drive, and I once told a senior associate that my secretary was lactating when he asked why there was a stain on the memorandum of law I wrote for him. Not only was the J.D. a bad investment, but the law wasn’t anything I thought it would be. It wasn’t about justice. All those courtrooms with Lady Justice holding scales are just pitching propaganda. If courtrooms had a statue of Justice Scalia with the inscription “Most People Fux Wit Us,” that’d be closer to the truth. Not very inspiring.