matter how many strange afternoons he spent watching the doctor’s sad, red-rimmed eyes and listening to the old swivel chair squeak. He knew, also, that there would be very few more sessions like this, and so he tried to enjoy the feel of the burnished leather and the quiet click of the wall clock behind him. The nods began to come rapid-fire now, each more exaggerated than the previous, his chin jackknifing off his chest with a dull, hollow thump. His hands were splayed, slapping the sofa cushions, eliciting a loud popping noise, double-time.
“Motherfucker!” my father fumed joyously. “Ass-biting, shit-loving son of a bitch!”
Sidesplitter
T he only roller coaster in Houston is a tiny one in Koreatown, a teeming two-block-square neighborhood north of downtown. It is crowded. At least, it is on this Saturday early evening. I am several inches taller than almost everyone here, but my aerial view does not help me navigate the bustling sidewalks and plazas; I keep tripping over children in bright purple and green parkas and zigzagging old people and wheelie carts filled with bulbous vegetables and bottled tea in pink plastic sacks. Finally, in the midst of a ring of colorful shops and markets, there is a parking-lot sized clearing, and I look up to see something even taller than myself: the Kukwa-dan.
The Kukwa-dan, a roller coaster with gleaming, compressed humps and dives, is barely more than tot-sized, and is painted fire-engine red. But no tots, apparently, are allowed to board the Kukwa-dan. There is no YOU MUST BE TALL sign, but I notice that the orderly queue is filled with poker-faced adults. I appear to be the only non-Asian in the zip code.
I scan the crowd around the ticket booth for Buffy, the teenager that Betty arranged through Houston Craigslist to be my ersatz tour guide. Betty didn’t give me a more detailed description, and somehow I’d assumed Buffy would be easy to spot. How many Korean American teenage girls can there be in Houston, Texas? Ha! Betty liked the idea of my treating Texas as a foreign country, with a cultural interpreter in tow, but I’m starting to realize as I look down at the sea of shiny black heads that Koreatown is the real enigma. I check my watch, and notice that it’s not seven o’clock yet; I’m a couple of minutes early. To pass the time, I lean down to the elderly man in the ticket booth and ask him what “Kukwa-dan” means. He stares at me and holds up his hand, fingers spread like a starfish. “Fife,” he says, and nods to the sign above his head: $5 per ride. I re-form my question. “No,” I say, pointing to the roller coaster and shrugging dramatically. “Kukwa-daaaaan?”
“It means ‘Sidesplitter,’” says a cute girl with a blue fauxhawk and a Peggy Hill accent. She is almost as tall as I am, thanks to red patent-leather boots with towering platform heels. I thank her, but she shakes her head to show that her translation duties are far from over. “You’re Jan?” she says, and reels off a string of lilting syllables that makes the man in the booth open his lips, suck on his teeth, and chuckle asthmatically. Then, glacially, he pulls two red tickets from a giant roll on the side counter. Handing me a ticket as we turn away from the booth, the girl says, “I’m Buffy.”
“Nice to meet you,” I squeeze her daintily proferred hand. Her cupid’s mouth is lined with purple, an orchid laid against the white backdrop of her face, and her fine eyebrows streak across her forehead to her temples. Her eyes are long black fish, flipping their tails as they swim.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she says, “but, like, what the hell are you doing here?” Before I can answer, she goes on, “I mean, I answered that ad because my grandpa works in the ticket booth, and I hang around here anyways because, like, sometimes he needs a break or an iced coffee or something. Plus, my parents are afraid he’ll keel over and croak if no one is here to
“Motherfucker!” my father fumed joyously. “Ass-biting, shit-loving son of a bitch!”
Sidesplitter
T he only roller coaster in Houston is a tiny one in Koreatown, a teeming two-block-square neighborhood north of downtown. It is crowded. At least, it is on this Saturday early evening. I am several inches taller than almost everyone here, but my aerial view does not help me navigate the bustling sidewalks and plazas; I keep tripping over children in bright purple and green parkas and zigzagging old people and wheelie carts filled with bulbous vegetables and bottled tea in pink plastic sacks. Finally, in the midst of a ring of colorful shops and markets, there is a parking-lot sized clearing, and I look up to see something even taller than myself: the Kukwa-dan.
The Kukwa-dan, a roller coaster with gleaming, compressed humps and dives, is barely more than tot-sized, and is painted fire-engine red. But no tots, apparently, are allowed to board the Kukwa-dan. There is no YOU MUST BE TALL sign, but I notice that the orderly queue is filled with poker-faced adults. I appear to be the only non-Asian in the zip code.
I scan the crowd around the ticket booth for Buffy, the teenager that Betty arranged through Houston Craigslist to be my ersatz tour guide. Betty didn’t give me a more detailed description, and somehow I’d assumed Buffy would be easy to spot. How many Korean American teenage girls can there be in Houston, Texas? Ha! Betty liked the idea of my treating Texas as a foreign country, with a cultural interpreter in tow, but I’m starting to realize as I look down at the sea of shiny black heads that Koreatown is the real enigma. I check my watch, and notice that it’s not seven o’clock yet; I’m a couple of minutes early. To pass the time, I lean down to the elderly man in the ticket booth and ask him what “Kukwa-dan” means. He stares at me and holds up his hand, fingers spread like a starfish. “Fife,” he says, and nods to the sign above his head: $5 per ride. I re-form my question. “No,” I say, pointing to the roller coaster and shrugging dramatically. “Kukwa-daaaaan?”
“It means ‘Sidesplitter,’” says a cute girl with a blue fauxhawk and a Peggy Hill accent. She is almost as tall as I am, thanks to red patent-leather boots with towering platform heels. I thank her, but she shakes her head to show that her translation duties are far from over. “You’re Jan?” she says, and reels off a string of lilting syllables that makes the man in the booth open his lips, suck on his teeth, and chuckle asthmatically. Then, glacially, he pulls two red tickets from a giant roll on the side counter. Handing me a ticket as we turn away from the booth, the girl says, “I’m Buffy.”
“Nice to meet you,” I squeeze her daintily proferred hand. Her cupid’s mouth is lined with purple, an orchid laid against the white backdrop of her face, and her fine eyebrows streak across her forehead to her temples. Her eyes are long black fish, flipping their tails as they swim.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she says, “but, like, what the hell are you doing here?” Before I can answer, she goes on, “I mean, I answered that ad because my grandpa works in the ticket booth, and I hang around here anyways because, like, sometimes he needs a break or an iced coffee or something. Plus, my parents are afraid he’ll keel over and croak if no one is here to
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