In the psychiatric ward, I talked to another patient covered in scars, all over his arms, neck, and face. In my paranoid state, where everyone in the ward was an actor, I didn’t believe the cuts were real, that he had caused them. They looked drawn on, like a gaudy Halloween costume. I stared at them inappropriately, surely causing him discomfort.
Another patient kept asking
me, in circular fashion, “You’re so pretty. Will you be my girlfriend? On the outside? Why not? But will you be my girlfriend? On the outside? You’re so pretty.” She didn’t stop following me, asking the same questions on a loop. An unfortunate coincidence, given my initial fears that angry queers were after me. She was released many days before I was.
* * *
I often ponder what one can hide—for some of us, one’s sexuality, for example—and what one can’t. Emotional damage, you can hide. Still, I have a theory that those who’ve been abused can nearly always recognize others who’ve been abused, because somehow it does manifest itself in visible ways. It’s similar to queerness—if you so desire, you can try to hide your own queerness; straight people will likely fail to detect it. Other queers on the lookout will probably guess, regardless.
The scars, you can’t hide. The scars raise questions. Worse when you can’t even see them yourself, because of where they’re placed on your body, but others can.
When I sit laughing with her, joking about silly and insignificant things, I can’t imagine sharing details of my hospitalization. The beginnings of a relationship feel so innocent and fresh—one hopes to protect that innocence from harsh realities, like confrontations with death, without misleading a person. Those memories feel a world away.
Yet intellectually, I wonder what is accomplished by hiding. I wonder if, and why, these particular details matter. We all have our own traumas, but certain ones, society seems to fear discussing. We joke about suicide, but we don’t discuss its realities.
The more important questions seem to be, can I guarantee that I can be a stable partner, or a stable person? Can any of us guarantee this? That we will remain healthy, in body and mind? Can we tell others that it’s safe for them to care for us? Can we guarantee that we won’t harm them? Or is the universal truth that we will, in fact, hurt those we care about, and be hurt by them, regardless of the specific circumstances?
At what point do you disclose and say, It’s out of my hands, think of me what you will, scars and all? At what point do you say, See me nakedly, and decide what you will?
2 THE BODY, THE MIND
At seventy-two years old, my father still plays tennis with thirty-year-olds, still rehydrates with beer afterward. When I think of him in his most natural state, I imagine the dull green of the tennis court, him glaring into the sun, face stern. Filmy sweat darkening his blue cotton shirt, almost from shoulders to navel, salt stains setting in, and him darting effortlessly across the court, his movement uninhibited.
His face and body can be characterized by juts and hollows—sharp cheekbones, knobby knees, accompanying concavities. He is wiry and strong. He once clocked in at 3 percent body fat on a scale. Beneath his shirt lies a washboard six-pack. His forearms, his calves, are ropey; each muscle individuated.
All those hours in the sun have given him a farmer’s tan. My mother used to tease him about his dark skin. As elsewhere, in Korea, skin tone connotes class. Unlike my mother’s pale visage, my father’s exterior reflects a life lived outdoors.
The twin peaks of athletics and academia are constants in my father’s life. His career, as a professor at a small private university on the outskirts of Seoul, centered on engineering and computer science. Yet his bookshelves are filled with books ranging from philosophy to theoretical math manuals to the latest Mary Karr, written in Korean or German or English. It’s all interchangeable, as though George Eliot and Leibniz somehow speak to each other. This, in tongues I can’t begin to understand. I envy him his mind. I hope, too, for his longevity—his health and vibrancy.
I understand this divide of interests, because my own life is following in parallel tracks, in which the world of the body and the world of the mind are of equal importance. And yet they’re held separate from each other.
* * *
In a fiction workshop, writers always push for the scene. Where were you? What happened? Place us, they urge. I, too, give this advice. When I think of my father, of our interactions, I think mostly of the phone.
He is in an apartment I have never seen, in South Korea. I am in an apartment he has never seen, in Manhattan or Queens. One of us is in my mother’s home in Colorado, in a quiet cul-de-sac. One of us is elsewhere. Our paths are elliptical—we avoid each other, even in those brief moments when we occupy the same structure.
When I called my father, from Queens to Colorado, to let him know I was going to graduate school, his first question was, “For what?”
“I’m getting an MFA—a master’s in fine arts—in creative writing. In fiction,” I told him. I was nearly thirty. We hadn’t spoken in years, and though in the interim it had become part of my identity, he didn’t know that I wrote. But he responded knowledgeably, anyway.
“Oh, Marilynne Robinson. She teaches somewhere—the University of Iowa. I just picked up Lila.”
This response startled me. I had only learned about MFAs once I began writing in earnest; in many ways, they strike me as a distinctly American concept. And I hadn’t gotten around to reading any of Marilynne Robinson’s books. I knew my father was well read, but the degree to which he is still surprises me. It would shame many a writer.
“What school?” he asked. And a minute later, “Oh, that’s a good school.”
He knew it by its reputation for engineering, I assumed. He had studied physics—nuclear fusion—in graduate school. His reaction to my undergraduate education had been different. He liked to collect my sisters’ university mugs—UC Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton. And that of his own alma mater, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, too, sat on his desk. When I brought him a translucent mug encrusted with NYU’s seal, he asked, “What am I going to do with this?” and gave it back to me.
A few minutes later, we hung up. But not before he offered to pay tuition. His one steadfast offer, throughout my and my sisters’ lives, has been his desire to pay for our education. He sounded relieved when I told him it was fully funded.
“Oh, that’s good. That’s good,” he said. After a pause, he clarified. “It’s not the money that matters, though that’s good. It means that you’re competitive. To be able to teach afterward, you need to have been competitive enough.”
Despite myself, I was pleased. I’d been on scholarship at NYU; I’d graduated in three years. Still, for reasons unclear but palpable, I knew he hadn’t viewed that university, that choice, as anything but failure. I heard the difference in tone now, perhaps due simply to lowered expectations for my future. I had accomplished something that he recognized as worthy, even if it was as simple as returning to my education.
That conversation with my father is the most pleasant one I can recall. In our estrangement, I had pushed aside my awareness that the world I was re-entering was a world he knew intimately. Still, there was some relief in that connection. For just a moment, we could understand each other.
* * *