Several months had gone by. It was the fourth of July. The Summer was in heat - the sky, clear and empty as stars twinkled in the heavens like bits of star dust fragments floating above wispy pilowsacks. The night illuminated into noise and celebration of better things to come. Off the main roads, the streets turned into childrens playgrounds; a cornucopia of imagination running wild as far as 41st avenue all the way down to Main Street.

The noises off the street in the neighborhoods were eclectic. Cars roamed and tore at pavement as they passed by; rows of cars would be parked bumper to bumper under the irridescent pagan yellow glows that came from overhead street lamps in crowded corners - their beacon a sign in smokey bars and unlit rooms from afar.

As crickets chirped and fireflies danced on warm breezes, the kids would run in the streets with mason jars or on other people's lawns catching bugs to light up their make-believe lanternS; some would play jumprope, doubledutch, hide and seek, or simply hang around with friends by their apartment buildings, sitting on the steps engulfed in whimsical conversations over new-found crushes, styles, or trendy
fashions of the moment.

Parents would hang out sometimes; talking about adult stuff; their fashion statements like a throwback from the fifties, with their weird slang and khaki bermuda shorts and floral printed polyester gowns. It always seemed serious when they talked, and that is probably why most kids back then just never got their parents all that well.

No paternal bonding experience required.

With the way they looked who could blame them?

I had just gotten my cast off sometime in June. It felt good to be able to once again feel my leg and eventually I would be totally off the crutches; the doctor said, just a few more weeks would do and I would be running like the rest of them. As I got used to walking again, my father would let me stroll around the block; it seemed like each block had it's own resident red-brick apartment building surrounded by houses that had lived and breathed far longer than the average adult - it was unusual then to see as other blocks would look almost exactly the same; another apartment building; kids in front waiting for the Mr. Softee ice cream truck to roll around, or heading for the fire hydrant to dowse themselves in the cool rush of water; and in the summer, this was like common tradition.

My father would occasionally give me small errands to run. I would head to the small grocery store around the corner to pick up a pound of Boarshead ham, muenster cheese, a pack of smokes and a loaf of bread. If there was money left over, I would get an italian ice and a chocolate yoohoo drink slurping it down on the way back to the apartment.

Since my initiation into the building I had met Erik, the super's third son, the youngest of the three. He was the same age as me. He was Puerto Rican and supposedly, part Italian from what he told me. He had a fair complexion, dark olive skin, and wavy black hair. At first, for a while we had hit it off pretty well getting to know each other. He would come to the apartment and hang out. Around the same time, I
had met another kid named Frankie. He was nine years older than we were and alot taller. My father didn't like either of them and they were both scared of him.

* * *

As July became September and September became December we were heading toward another end of the decade. Jimmy Carter was on his way out of the office where the new year would bring Republicans back into the whitehouse with Ronald Reagan becoming the next president. The punk scene in Greenwich Village and in lower east side of Manhattan was declining and the rising sons of Punk culture were now heading toward
things all New Wave. whispers of the eighties was hitting hard like a bolt of lightning. New words started popping up, as counter-culture made demands for change in aesthetics and lifestyle; a new generation beginning to form in the ways that would be marketed as MTV.

During Christmas, my father had got our first Christmas tree for the apartment. It was not real. It was the kind that came out of a bag basically. What should of been the color of pine
green on a brisk Autumn day was replaced by silver tinsel and an ugly green cylinder that formed the pedestal to the four foot rod that went in. The silver tinsel branches went into the holes on the rod that formed the shape of a tree. After adding the red bulbs and lights for decoration, my father put the tree on a cardboard box closest to the window by our TV. And there it stood until February 1980 mocking tradition for imitation which I had silently hated.

My father was invited to Bob's Christmas party and even to the New Year's celebration as 1980 came in with a huge bang. I stayed in the apartment in an almost bare room watching television; Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Honeymooners, The Odd Couple, I Love Lucy, Kolchak, the after-midnight specials which featured all the Hammer horror classics with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I would stay up late as
a kid almost frightened by the fact I would actually miss something.

The roaches never slept.

My father worked day shifts at the post office as a maintenance guy who fixed machines and mail processors that handled large deliveries for bulk mail and machines that sorted the mail to different locations and zip codes. He had been doing it since I had been born. My father had always been the silent and reserved type, and mostly, he never talked from what I could remember. When we sat at the table there was no conversation, when he took me out, there was no conversation, when we went to the movies or drove in the car to visit my mother, there was no conversation.

There was no conversation ever.

The only noise that ever came to me back then, was in hurt, disgust, resentment, agression or jealousy; the outside world was my only vehicle to vent and retaliate. And in finding a voice to me and my world that needed to grow I found more retaliation and resentment. A brutal onslaught of choices and demands that would start to shape my very being.

I could only guess there was something wrong with me then.

I was different.

I was half Asian. Half Irish.

Back then, there were not many like me; hardly any. I was too white to be Asian and too Asian to look white - only somewhere in-between was my self in question the whole entire time. As far as I could remember, everyone always had some reason to ask me what I was, where I came from, why did I look the way I did. After a time I would just flinch back in embarrasement or resentment and not answer anything at all. I felt like a weird experiment that couldn't be sent back by my parents. My father used to say how beautiful my mother was when he had met her in Seoul; a raving beauty, gorgeous in every respect with her long flowing raven hair; her stride in her hips, her velvet almond eyes that would pierce a man's soul and cry for mercy. A complete Asian doll for a young G.I who was only five years older than the girl of his dreams; she was fifteen at the time.

By age eighteen she was pregnant. And her family hated her for that. she disrepected their authority. She did not marry a Korean gentleman as they had wanted. And she could hardly speak the english language at all by the time she left her country for the home of the braves and land of the free. It was with that purpose my father had to show responsibility and marry her which he would of gladly have done on any other term anyhow. And while Nixon was still in office, that I came to be.

* * *

Here I was in the present. Erik asking me the same question that I came to find caustic and annoying like brillo on a frying pan. He asked me in front of my father, I had hesitated, not trying to answer the question. My father had answered for me not knowing just how humiliating this was already getting.I continued to ignore it as if nothing happened; pretending to be more interested in the new presents I had gotten for Christmas that day. I played with my new Casio synthesizer; the size and width of a large
school pencil box; a minature sized key-board with a small LED.

In September I would be enrolled in public school. Since I had almost the full use of my leg again, it would be time to start hitting the books again. I dreaded the thought of meeting new people. I had wondered if there would be any kids like me, and wished I would just be able to make it through without getting noticed too much. Erik was in the same school and I relaxed a little thinking I would know someone there and not feel so isolated. As September rolled quickly in I was driven by my father for the first few weeks; after that, he said, I would have to take the bus or walk and that was that.

* * *

The school was P.S.21. It sat on two long blocks and resided in a relatively quiet and well maintained community. Across the street you had Memorial Park which was shrouded in hedges and willow trees that were slowly dying and some monument in the middle where most teenagers had already grafitti'd and threw beer cans when they were done partying there. Across from the school was the junior high school which was called JHS 185. All I could ever see was the vast courtyard and the bee-hive windows peering from the backgrounds. The courtyard was gated. From outside it looked ominous; and as for the colors, they were hideous prison colors much like the school I was entering on the opposite side; pastel blue, greens
and yellows against a cold concrete grey.

In orientation I met the principal and vice principal. They had introduced me to my second grade teacher: Mrs. Eisen who almost resembled an older version of Julie Andrews and Shirley Mclaine. She had a way with children and I had got to like her immediately. The classroom was in the basement of the building. It smelled like mildew and baby powder most times. There was about thirty kids in the room; most of them white looking. I sat next to a kid named Paul which everyone hated; he looked sick and pale, but he was overly plump, but not fat, just big-boned for a kid his age. He sweated alot through his clothes which looked like they came from a thrift store. All the girls would make fun of him holding their noses as they did.

These were the type of girls that would follow behind me all the way up to High school in my junior year. Paul would eventually drop out. A few of the other kids were already known for being tough and all they ever did was get in trouble and hang out with kids that were just like them; they would run their own gangs and they would have a reputation that would follow them right to their deaths or to the state
penitentiary. And I had admired them for that.

On Fridays it was mandatory for every boy to dress up in white shirts and ties while girls were told to wear white blouses and skirts. In the morning we would be herded to the Auditorium to listen to our principal or vice principal speak on school matters. Sometimes there would be recitals or plays done by other classes that we got to watch in the morning. It was like Catholic school but without the penguin suits.

As early as the second grade you had your typical bullies, geeks, cliques and outcasts already decided by the time you entered. And all the same, if you pissed off someone, it was always: "I will see you after school."

This was a normal thing growing up in New York City. You had to get tough or just stay out of the way. There was no grey line. It was just as simple as that. And it reminded me so much of my father's mantras bleeding into my forehead: Fucking Grow up!

As weeks progressed the girls had always looked at me funny and would make gestures by slanting their eyes and then show their two front teeth much like a woodchuck. "CHINK, CHONG, CHANG!" "CHINK, CHONG, CHANG!"

Though I knew what all this meant. I didn't think I should be different. They had never teased the Asian girl Mona who hardly ever spoke more than two words and would just smile normally as if not a care in the world. Their eyes were on me because I was new; I was new and unusual. The only words clinging to my head in those classrooms;"What the Hell are you?!"

I stood silent and never responded. The next twenty years would continue on just like this; just like a recurring waking dream.

* * *

Next: The Wasted Years