Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

Open-plan offices are conceptually cool, but they do not work cool. Everyone is visible to everyone. Just another way to breed competition, plus worry, disturbance, and procrastination.

“It’s not a lack of confidence in oneself preventing people from going after jobs where they don’t meet all of the qualifications, but a lack of confidence in other people’s abilities to view them as capable of doing the job, and therefore hiring them,”

So many people wearing jerseys. Penguins. Pirates. Steelers. Sounds like a fantasy novel to me.

J has long wanted to cure my Asian glow. He says he’ll make a compound that can activate alcohol digestion in the stomach rather than letting it travel straight to the bloodstream, which is what it currently does in my body. I am missing the necessary enzyme to break alcohol down, although “necessary” doesn’t seem quite like the right word. The

Then I realize there are no black men or women on our editorial staff. Not one. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Am I stupid?

“It’s total bullshit,” she says. “Same shit all the time, all the places. White man does something shitty and racist, and who apologizes publicly? The person of color. I can’t believe Mo fell for that.”

“You worry so fucking much about what they think of you,” she says, “when they’re not even worth it. And they don’t give a fuck about you.”

It is somewhat comforting to encounter these young “all-American” men, in their baseball uniforms, mistaking one famous white woman for another.

Sometimes I think that I need to be more interested in what the powerful people are saying about the other powerful people. Then I look in the mirror and shrug. Statistically, it’s very unlikely that I’ll ever become a powerful person, so why bother?

“I never said I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he says, slower. Sometimes I imagine he treats my outbursts like he does the angry mice he works with. With care, with gloves.

Have I made myself this accommodating? A harmless vessel for their confusion and rage? They must see me as soft and small and unthreatening, because I have never suggested otherwise.

The first use of “trailing spouse” appeared in print in the 1981 Wall Street Journal article “Problems of Two-Career Families Start Forcing Businesses to Adapt,” written by reporter Mary Bralove. (An amazingly strange last name.) “By far the majority of those ‘trailing spouses’ are women. The Catalyst report finds that wives tend to relocate for their husbands’ careers. In most cases, such moves are decided by whose salary is higher,” she wrote.

I’m fairly certain I would be among the first to go in an apocalyptic situation. I don’t know how to do anything except think and talk. I am legally blind without my contacts or glasses. I can walk relatively fast for extended periods of time, but I can barely run.

There are so many Asian-woman-white-man couples, and it’s like, why? Are all of the white men fetishizing the Asian women? Or are Asian women more prone to dating white men, and why? Or something else? Why don’t we ever find ourselves in a place with all Asian-man-white-woman couples? Or Asian-woman-black-man couples? Or black-woman-white-man couples? Or Latina-woman-Asian-man couples? Or—”

Somebody once asked me to identify the emotions that most strongly affect my life and the actions I do or don’t take. I couldn’t name them at the time, but now I’ve thought more about the question. Here is the answer I’ve come up with: revenge and regret and fear and guilt.

“I want to say nice things because it’s your birthday, but I’m never living in Montana.” “Why not?” “How many Asians do you think there are? Like none?”

Why is it bothering you now? One, you have the time. Two, traveling into unknown parts of the country is giving you raw skin and fresh eyes. Like a newborn with sensory overload, but what you’re overloading on is this sense of race, the colors that stand out against an increasingly white background. And all you can feel and see is this difference, wary and on edge of what could happen wherever you go. And here beside you is somebody who does not understand.

White/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000).

“Today, 39 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth, although most don’t grant it full ‘holiday’ status.” “Huh, never heard of it before,” says J. “Wonder why we didn’t learn about this in school.”

“No, no. I’m trying to get a job at a museum, so hopefully I’ll meet people there. And here’s another positive: I went downtown the other day and had a full conversation with a stranger and she was really friendly.” “Who?” “Well, she was a barista—” “Oh my god. Baristas are paid to be nice to people!”

J also sings “Ebony and Ivory” to the cat and dog. This, however, makes me uncomfortable. “Why?” he asks. “They aren’t races,” I say. “They’re pets.” “I just meant that they’re literally black and white,” he says. He starts to sing again. “And they live, dog and cat, in perfect harmony.”

“How do you feel about the lack of Asians in town, though? The last time I visited California, I noticed there were so many Asians everywhere. I was like, wow! It almost felt like traveling to a different country.”

“I just wish you would try. Or maybe you’ll never understand and that’s fine. Just trust that I’m upset for a real reason and support me.”

I just don’t get why you’re arguing with me, your girlfriend, and defending some random person you don’t even know, after I tell you that she made me feel weird and bad. It feels to me like you’re defending her because she’s white and so are you.”

She says she used to think the mixed-race white and Asian girls in high school got along better with the popular white girl crowds. Maybe it was simply because they were white passing. Their proximity to whiteness gave them white privileges.

It’s as if being white is the one thing that defines me, J said. But not all of us are lucky enough to get to choose how the world defines us.

Without the black community we’d have no civil rights movement. Asians in America followed their lead. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We wouldn’t have what we have today without the black movements. We owe a lot to them. Remember that.”

What was it like to be with a white woman in the ’70s? “People used to be so upset if they saw an Asian man with a white woman. But by the time Sharon and I were together it wasn’t a problem.”

It is the nature of relationships that they are impossible to fully understand from the outside, their inner workings built both from memories and habits and histories made up from the exterior world, and from those known only between the two involved, that exist only through them and are lost when they are lost to each other.