Permanent Record

by Mary H.K. Choi

How racism is a wave and a particle since we also get followed around in stores as if we’re going to steal something. I guess shoplifting’s an inside job?

“Is there a mansplain deluge in my forecast?”

don’t even know what we’re arguing about at this point, but it’s clear that being locked in an idiot’s arms race of saying ignorant things is easier than having a real discussion.

When we board, we’re met with ostentatiously creamy leather seats that strike me as flashy in a doomed way—the Titanic’s chandeliers to lifeboat ratio.

“Families are a trip,” says Lee. “You think you know them so well that you stay wrong about each other.”

It’s not my responsibility to get to the bottom of why my mom’s so unhappy. Nor is it on me to teach my dad how to parent. I love them and I forgive them, but I don’t go to the hardware store looking for orange juice and I don’t expect them to give me things they don’t have. I give myself permission not to spend time with them.

guess not a whole lot of people think to worry about you.” “Exactly,” she says, turning her head to look at me. “It’s so lonely when no one worries about you. Not even your parents. You start to wonder what’s wrong with you.”

You’re trained to batch process a celebrity. As if they’re diagrams of livestock with dotted lines to indicate cuts of meat. Portions dictated by price. A face in a cosmetics ad, hair in a shampoo commercial, arm in billboards for watches.

“So, what’s the distance between your true self and how people perceive you?”

“I asked you to rehearsals to see if maybe the theater would inspire you,” says dad. “And it’s fine if it doesn’t, but we can’t help you until you actually engage in your life. How do you want to leave your mark on this world?”

She’s going through the clinical depression checklist in her head. I can’t burden them with my shit. Mom will absorb it all as a personal failing. Neither of them has the tools to deal with this. I’ll have to figure it out on my own.

Believe me, not all children with terminal illnesses and disabilities are magical beacons of inspiration and hope for us typicals. Some are mean as snakes. But, man, Setsuko specifically was cool as hell.”

“Your faith in school and discipline borders on superstition,” I tell her. “ ‘Direction’ is not the answer for your shortcomings as a parent. And reform school, even the really nice kumbaya ones, will ruin Rain. But if you think sending him away isn’t you making the same mistakes with him that you did with me, you’re wrong. What you’re calling a

You’ve got to let people mess up and you’ve still got to help them.

You have to talk to them and support them while they make decisions, even if they’re the wrong ones. That’s how people learn, mom. ...

“But you can’t make a sadist with a god complex raise your child because you feel guilty about not being available. I know being a tyrant is exhausting, but you don’t get to shut down.”

consumed the entire Internet in search of what I was supposed to want to do.

“Do you think emotional support animals get enough from us?” Lee’s arm is linked in mine and she squeezes it. “Please elaborate.” “Just that . . .” I think about it. “I get the mutual benefit. If I’m a dog, I try to be cool so that my owner will feed me. But emotional support? That’s above and beyond. That yawning vacuum of human need with an anxiety whirlpool in the center of it. I wonder if they get stressed out.”

He was so happy I realized I had to get my shit together. That’s what made me want to move out. I stopped smoking weed, started eating right. I work out every day now. Life’s hard, man. Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating. You think what I do isn’t challenging? You think it’s not humbling to try to be an actor in New York? It’s corny as hell. I know I’m that asshole trying to make it. Sometimes worrying about what you’ll think actually sets me back.

Do the next right thing and don’t worry about anything else coming down the pike. You don’t have an audience. No one’s judging you. Do the work.”

“Pablo,” he says, as if he’s an uncle or something. “Don’t be afraid of sincerity. Let people in. Let your fans get to know who you are. I know you have abandonment issues. I mean, look at us. There isn’t a member of this family who isn’t messed up, but intimacy’s the shit.”

is honestly so terrifying—so intolerably humiliating—to want anything and to declare it.

“What is modern society’s obsession with wiping out all diversity and nuance in favor of cheap, shoddy monoliths?”

want to be happy,” says dad. “I want to be interested and challenged by whatever verb I elect to noun in any given moment of my life. If I am healthy, my family’s healthy, and I am of sound enough mind to sustain curiousity around my work, then I’m blessed.”

“Nothing that is a manifestation of your creative energies is stupid,” he says. “Doing nothing is the only stupid.”

You were always so anxious about any kind of audience as a child. And children these days seem to believe that fame is a birthright. What a blessing that it passed.”

“It’s too emotionally expensive to be famous,” he says.

“Do you enjoy doing anything for the sake of doing it? Life isn’t a destination. It’s the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier. Someday I hope to make perfect sourdough bread. I want to learn the piano. I’ve made peace with the fact that I won’t ever make a lot of money, but I make enough to live and eat. The rest goes to your mother.

It’s just one of those New York mysteries, akin to how you never see baby pigeons.

And that expectations are nothing more than planned resentments.