Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture

305 Pages·2004·0.934 MB·English

by  Jeffery Paul Chan

the scott and laurie oki series
in asian american studies
the scott and laurie oki series
in asian american studies
From a Three-Cornered World: New and Selected Poems
by James Masao Mitsui
Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple
by Louis Fiset
Storied Lives: Japanese American Students and World War II
by Gary Y. Okihiro
Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories
by Russell Charles Leong
Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography
by Kip Fulbeck
Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress
by Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro
Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview
ofWorld War II Japanese American Relocation Sites
by Jeffery F. Burton et al.
Judgment without Trial:
Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II
by Tetsuden Kashima
Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets
in Northern California
by Alfred Yee
Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans
Remember Their World War II Incarceration
by Stephen S. Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez
Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture
by Jeffery Paul Chan
Eat Everything
Before You Die
A Chinaman in the Counterculture
JEFFERY PAUL CHAN
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
SEATTLE AND LONDON
This book is published with the assistance ofa grant from the Scott and
Laurie Oki Endowed Fund for the publication of Asian American
Studies, established through the generosity of Scott and Laurie Oki.
Copyright © 2004 by University ofWashington Press
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University ofWashington Press
P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, U.S.A.
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chan, Jeffery Paul.
Eat everything before you die : a Chinaman in the
counterculture / Jeffery Paul Chan.—1st ed.
p. cm.—(The Scott and Laurie Oki series
in Asian American studies)
ISBN 0-295-98436-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 2. Asian American gays—Fiction.
3. Counterculture—Fiction. 4. Brothers—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction.
6. Gay men—Fiction. 7. Cooks—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.
PS3603.H3558E23 2004
813'.6—dc22 2004012534
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and recycled from 10 percent post-
consumer and at least 50 percent pre-consumer waste. It meets the minimum require-
ments of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Excerpts from Eat Everything Before You Diefirst appeared in Asian Pacific
American Journal3, no.1 (1994).
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the help, support, and encouragement of
friends, patient and dear, who lent themselves with no other expectations
than to see this work done—most especially Alfred Wong, Leslie Fried-
man, and Scilla Finetti. I also want to express my gratitude to my editor,
Kerrie Maynes, for her scrupulous attention and her witty, insightful
remarks.
I wish to thank the California Arts Council and the Marin Arts Council
for their timely and generous awards in support of this work.
And, finally, to my wife, Janis, loyal companion, helpmate, thank you.
For Alice, for Esther
Eat Everything
Before You Die

1
The fourteenth of June, 18:56 PDT, mid-Pacific. Seven hours down and
seven more miserable hours to go for Hong Kong International. In the
economy class of a United Airlines 747, we are packed like galley slaves
momentarily freed by a fretful wind filling the sails with illusory choices.
I shop the in-flight magazine, watch the movie, numb myself with the
music channel loop, one eye following the unraveling seam that fastens
the antimacassar to the seat in front of me.
I admit to no one seriously my gratitude for, my addiction to manu-
factured foods. I love airplane chicken, that unthreatening loaf of breast
meat in a non-lactose cream sauce with four karats of peas and a diadem
ofmushrooms. I mash the separate grains ofsalty pilafinto the jus blanc,
then prize strands of chicken into soft knots. I sweeten the potage with
the cobbler’s fructose as time passes like magic. Very tasty. I follow with
a Pepcid and a Zocor, a daily act of contrition, these small but necessary
prophylactics acknowledging my mortality that, in turn, inspires such sweet
nostalgia for events in the past as well a confidence in the future that this
hour, this minute, this flight will end. Such minutiae serve me when I
fly—or, rather, when I’m flown. Despite the physical inconveniences, these
cramping constraints, I feel oddly joined in this environment. We are fel-
low passengers hurtling through space, sharing the same physical needs,
the same end; we invent a social order, an etiquette that varies only fraction-
ally, by class, by seat order. And food—food we manipulate to suit what-
ever illusory appetite we fancy—sustains us. What more can I ask?
I should have ordered the vegetarian alternative. It’s big brother’s recipe,
Peter’s pan-Asia surprise, his WokTalk curry wrap or our corporate fac-
simile. But I didn’t; sibling spite, ofcourse. We’re family. Everybody’s imi-
tating us now that we’ve learned to imitate everyone else. Our made-up
family offacsimiles, ofuncles and aunts, oforphans and secrets, ofinven-
tions, of disguise, is rock solid. We’re incorporated. So much hard work
3