I'm the One That I Want (17 page)

The days at the studio were not very long, but they seemed to extend into the night and weekends because of the heavy press schedule and the fact that most of the cast members came over to my house after work. B. D. Wong did his laundry, and Maddie Corman and Judy Gold came over to watch television. I didn’t see anybody not directly related to the show. My old friends and I saw very little of each other. When I pressed one of them for a reason, she said it was because it seemed I did not need her, that I had all my other Young Hollywood friends now, whatever that meant. There is much truth in the statement, “Fame does not change you. It changes the people around you.” I was famous, and it made the people that I had been hanging around with resentful. Even though I don’t think I had behaved that differently, I was regarded in a totally new way.

The show’s premiere garnered huge ratings. There was an audience out there for us, which I did not anticipate.

Being suddenly well known was bizarre. Strangers would come up to me and start yelling what they didn’t like about me.

“How come you are so fat on TV and so skinny in person?”

“How come there are non-Korean people playing Korean people?”

“How come your stand-up is funny but your show is not funny?”

I wanted so much to control what other people thought of me. One of the hardest lessons to learn was that it is not possible to do that. The problem was that I sought approval from others because I sought
definition
from others. I had virtually no opinion of myself that was not given to me by somebody else. I fought so hard to be loved because I did not know that it was possible to love myself.

A couple of Korean journalists I had befriended informed me that an older Korean woman, a colleague of theirs, had been saying that I had a clause in my contract that did not allow other Koreans onto the set of my show. She was telling people that Koreans who had been employed by the studio were immediately fired when I found out about our common heritage. I don’t know why she had said this. It certainly was not true. It did not make any sense to me. Those guys may have been lying, but I don’t think they were. Why did this woman have so much against me? I now understand that it is a frighteningly common thing. People of color making strides in a field run by the dominant culture tend to persecute others of their own background, because anyone else’s success makes their own achievement seem unspectacular. It is a way to perpetuate the idea that race is unimportant, that it means so little that one attacks one’s own kind to prove it. This is incredibly racist in itself. It is also the way we keep ourselves from really becoming strong and banding together. Worst of all, it is insidious; even accusing this woman of it, I am questioning my own motives. Am I guilty of it myself? If so, how can I stop it? Where do we stop internalized racism as far as we are aware of it?

I can only tell my story as honestly as I can.

After the journalists told me what she had said, I could not let it go. I should have let her say whatever she wanted to. I should have recognized what she was doing, but I was a different person then. These were “eye for an eye” times. Getting her phone number from the guys, not listening to their warnings, I called the woman. I left a very threatening message on her voice mail about what I had heard and told her that as a journalist, she should know better than to spread lies. I said that if she wanted to discuss it with me further she should call me. She called back almost immediately. She was furious and wanted to know who had given me that information. She was breathless with rage, and I countered her anger by making myself as condescending and controlled as possible. I told her that a woman of her age should not be so upset, that she should get a hold of herself or she might give herself an aneurysm. She hung up on me.

I was scared by how mad I could make her. I was also scared at how really fun it was, yet I felt instantly sorry. I was sure that I had really crossed the line somewhere.

A few minutes later, she called me again. I didn’t pick up the phone, so she left a message demanding a written, signed apology. She spelled out her name very slowly, “in case you cannot understand the Korean.” She called again and said that if she did not receive a written, signed apology within twenty-four hours that I would be “very sorry.”

I spoke to the Korean journalists later. They told me she had called, demanding to know exactly who had told me what she had been saying. As far as I know, they did not stand by me. They were too afraid of her and did not want to get on her bad side.

I began to feel very alone. Part of why I had done such a thing was, in a strange way, to win their approval. I wanted them to see that I fought for what I believed in. Unfortunately, without their backing me up, it had all just seemed like a thoughtless prank.

I sent her flowers the next day, with a written, unsigned note of apology. It was not accepted.

Over the next few months, the woman used her seniority at the newspaper to compile a huge piece about the negative impact I had on the Korean community. She did not write for the entertainment section, she worked on the city news section, but she was determined to ruin me.

She interviewed many people, and I don’t even know what was said because I never read it. I don’t know what damage she did. Who was to say at that point? It really didn’t mean anything. I already felt hated, so this just restated that painful fact. It saddened me that this was what it came to, that somebody like her would put so much work into seeing me punished, and that ultimately it was my fault for fucking with her in the first place.

It is awful that the two of us, accomplished Korean women, in worlds we had to fight so hard to get into, would use our strength so readily to cannibalize each other. I am sorry, too, that in a way, she might think I am doing it right now. I did, after many years, send her the written, signed apology.

I told her that I was a different person back then, and that I did not know who she was or who I was. I should have had the deep respect for her that I do now, a respect I gained not because of what she did to me, but because I see how much she is just like me.

I stand by her now, and I finally can say I understand the Korean.

Rejection from the Asian-American community was hard to take, mostly because the show had been universally panned by critics, panned by every major publication. It seemed like we had no fans at all, so to be deserted by the audience that we were trying to represent was almost too much to deal with.

I did not react gracefully to any of the criticism.

A friend of mine wrote a piece for a big alternative newspaper that was about how insulted he was as an Asian-American to have his life lampooned by
All-American Girl
. He felt that the show did a great disservice to multiculturalism, and that we were doing much more harm than good by our efforts. It cut me to the bone because he happened to be somebody I cared about, and my desire for revenge got the better of me.

I called him, and in as innocent a voice as I could muster, I asked him to fax me a copy of the article. He nervously asked if I had seen or heard anything about it, and I replied sweetly, “No, I haven’t, but I just want to make a scrapbook of all my press, and it has to include your piece, especially since you are
such a good friend
.”

To his credit, he did fax the article, then immediately followed it with a letter of apology. I did not speak to him again for a number of years. Not long ago, I called him and told him I was sorry I had put him through that. I explained that I had felt betrayed, and wasn’t able to express anything but anger at that point. He told me that the newspaper had pressured him into being far more critical than he really was, for the same reasons the Korean woman felt such malice toward me.

It’s interesting that at the time, I found it very easy to call up and rail against all the Asian-American critics, whereas I would never think about doing the same thing to the “mainstream” critics. I thought it was a family affair.

I read in yet another article about the Asian-American backlash to
All-American Girl
that a Korean media action leader said I was “dangerous” and that he would be monitoring the show and would be protesting at the first opportunity.

I reacted like a Korean Courtney Love. I called him and screamed totally unintelligibly about how stupid he was. This was very exciting because he got flustered right away. I went on and on about how much I had done for the “community” (nothing really at that point) and how I was being repaid with his idiocy. I hung up on him, but he kept calling me and leaving messages after that about events I could help him out with because I allegedly “cared” so much about the community. His messages were always tinged with sarcasm and a carefully concealed hatred that we reserve only for our own kind.

The most painful part of the backlash was a letter written to the editorial section of my newspaper at home. It had been submitted by a twelve-year-old Korean girl who wrote, “When I see Margaret Cho on television, I feel deep shame.”

Why?! Why?! I realize now this was because they had never seen a Korean-American role model like me before.

I didn’t play violin.

I didn’t fuck Woody Allen.

I was just me, or actually, I wasn’t even me, because
All-American
Girl
was so far away from being me it was ridiculous. The first episode’s story line had me doing stand-up comedy, and publicly embarrassing my family. At the end of the episode, I learn my lesson, and vow never to publicly embarrass my family again.

Quentin Tarantino, who I was dating at the time, called me up screaming, “They took away your voice! Don’t let them do that! You fucking live to publicly embarrass your family!!!”

The backlash was not against me, but it felt like it. The show was not me, but I thought it was. I was not me, not by a long shot. The sudden fame, the criticism, the backlash, the diet, the schedule—it started to make me go insane.

13

CRUSH CRASH

I fell for one of the writers of the show. It was rather unexpected, but I was in a state of serious distress. The show had been on for two months, starting very strong, but with ratings that dropped week after week. The headaches and nausea from the diet pills were slowly killing me. The bad reviews and backlash from the Asian community left me heartbroken and enraged at the same time. Having no friends anymore outside of work made me question what was real and what wasn’t. Finally, with the situation in North Korea continuing downhill and with no word yet on the future of the show, I needed something or someone to take my mind off it all. I found Jon.

I decided that I was gonna have a crush on him. Crushes allow us to step outside ourselves and view ourselves as we believe the crush might.

Very often, a crush is not about the other person, but about us and how we think we are in the world. By looking at this reflection of ourselves through another person, we find a way to achieve self-love without actual self-esteem, a way to admire oneself without admitting that is what you are really doing.

Crushes are about fantasy colliding with reality, the fantasy of who we think we are matched against the reality of who we are. Other people have little to do with it.

When I set off on a crush I spend a lot of time on my appearance: buying clothes, working out, immersing myself in the crush’s perceived culture. I imagine I can be closer to the crush if I surround myself with the things he likes. I feel that it will rub off on me, making me more attractive in the glow of the familiar. It also serves as a way to get to know him without actually having to speak to him and risk rejection, or having him say something that might not coincide with the imagined life I have given him. I take a spare collection of facts and trivia, mix it with things he has said, fortify it with my own personal research about him, throw in a bit of profiling for good measure and there we have it—crush!
Here’s one I made earlier . . .

I needed that escape more than anything. Maybe Jon did, too, although I have trouble distinguishing what really happened with what happened in my imagination. This was not only the craziest I ever got over a guy, it was the most insanity I have displayed ever. That is saying a lot.

Jon was not handsome or sexy or particularly attractive in any way. He was having a hard time in his personal life. His mother and his uncle were both dead of cancer in the space of a week. Jon traveled on weekends back and forth from the East Coast, and he looked sad and tired on Mondays when he returned to the set.

He wanted to talk to me about things. He was leaving his job. He needed the time. His family wouldn’t stop crying, he said. Maybe we could get together and talk. Maybe.

He came over to my newly rented Hollywood Hills house and sat on my red couch and didn’t have much to say about anything. He felt sorry that things were going so wrong for me, too. He had the most understanding expression on his face. I don’t know what he was trying to do. I hoped he had come to save me.

I was alternating between depression and denial.
All-American Girl
was on the verge of being canceled. I hated the show, and so did the rest of the world, it seemed. I had to stand behind it, because to abandon it would mean I’d have to leave myself behind in the wreckage.

It was a dark time for both of us, and the last nail in my coffin was Jon and my obsession with him. I see now that it wasn’t him at all—I just needed to be rescued and he was the frog I kept kissing. I was drowning in quicksand and he was the dry twisted branch that I held onto, even as it broke off and splintered in my hand.