Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

the world is full of people you know little about,

The brave go first into battle. But that makes them the first to go down, too.

I naturally mistake the fist bump for a high five, and the whole thing becomes this strange gearshift pantomime: the awkward greeting ritual of male nerds everywhere.

LOL!

Laughter is the music of the deep cosmos connecting all human beings that says all the things mere words cannot.

“Humanity’s greatest strength—and also the reason for its ultimate downfall—is its ability to normalize even the bizarre.”

Saying I love you is the cry of the helpless. All you can do is confess it and hope it shows you mercy.

“Me and my family,” mumbles Q, “we get shit all the time just for the crime of being ourselves. None of our DC relatives think we’re black enough. We got shit when we moved from black Baldwin Hills to white Playa Mesa for Dad’s job. At the last gathering, my uncle made fun of my bougie accent and said he’d have to take away my black card.” Q lifts his arms to make air quotes each time, but with just his middle fingers facing out. He calls them his fuck-off quotes.

Fuck-off quotes. I hereby declare that a thing!

People who let themselves learn new things are the best kind of people.

The point is being able to say I have no idea. Without apology. With confidence, even.

A girl who can make you laugh is worth laughing with forever.

OMC THAT link, says Joy. The C stands for Cthulhu.

Goddamnit, I love these characters.

The first hard part is crossing that ridge. It’s also the simplest. The other hard part—learning how to actually live life on the green windward side, well. That’s more complicated.

I hope he had a fixed finish line that he one day crossed and stopped running because that’s just his kind of happiness.

We’re all part of it whether we want to be or not. Everyone is part of the problem, and everyone is part of the solution, and that’s what makes everything so infuriating.

If you have the will to do something, and you keep at it, and you don’t give up, you can do anything. And there’s no greater will than the will to love who you want.

“Oh man,” says Q. “Get serious now, really hug it all out.” When I’m done, Q’s tee shirt is all wet. “Sorry,” I say. Q looks at the tearstains with an odd sort of pride. “Don’t be sorry. You’re lucky.” “Jyeah right, so lucky, look at me.” “You love hard enough to cry,” says Q. “I admire that.”

Gaps in time, gaps between generations. Money creates gaps. City mouse, country mouse. If there are that many micro-tribes all over the place, what does Korean even mean? What do any of the labels anywhere mean?

“Go do you,” I holler, before she heads toward the bushes again. Joy looks back. Her smile glints in the dark. “What the hell else is there, right?”

Then the wall ends and I continue on.