Funny ethnics, p.11
Funny Ethnics, page 11
‘What can I help you with? It’s Sylvia, right?’ he asked. I was surprised he even knew my name.
‘Yes, I’m Sylvia. I-I’m having t-trouble p-participating in the tutorials. I have s-social a-anxiety.’
Warwick’s face slackened like soggy dough. His eyes kept hovering between my eyes and lips. I blinked. Was he watching the sweat roll down my nose bridge or something? He tilted his head to one side.
‘You remind me so much of my wife. You look exactly like her. She is also very shy but perhaps not as shy as you. She’s Indonesian,’ he said, fiddling with one of his chains.
‘Lovely,’ I said, looking Warwick in his watery eyes. ‘But I bet your wife hasn’t got a wonky smile. I chipped one of my front teeth eating pretzels. Wanna see?’ I leaned in, hitching the right side of my upper lip over my gum.
Warwick took a step back and blinked like a goanna. In his Oriental-flavoured fantasy, I was meant to blush and stay silent. I wasn’t meant to lean in and show him a chipped tooth. His hand dropped from his chain and smoothed the white cotton of his shirt over his belly. He cleared his throat and told me not to worry about participating in tutorials but that he expected more effort on my assignments. I thanked him and smiled, showing off my chipped tooth in all of its glory.
~
When Cousin Đức had got in to a double commerce and law degree at UNSW, he’d swapped out the poster of Tupac on his wall for one of Elon Musk. But that wasn’t as ridiculous as the time he’d changed his name to Michael Jordan. He still kept a giant steering wheel in front of his computer monitor for racing-car games, and an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s from his twenty-first on the bedside table. It was hard to imagine him graduating soon and becoming a solicitor or banker.
After uni that evening, my parents and I went to visit Đức’s family. He sat cross-legged on the wheelie chair at his computer desk, a thin patchwork quilt made from squares of silk scraps sewn together by our Bà Ngọai, our mothers’ mother, draped around his bony hunched shoulders. Đức’s mum was my mother’s older sister. I called her Dì Hai.
I said hey. He responded with a grunt. The rest of his energy was conserved for keeping his index finger on his computer mouse and moving it from side to side. Mẹ thought Đức’s long and tapered fingers with perfectly oval nails were more feminine than my square nails and popcorn knuckles. She also thought playing the piano would help slim my fingers down. She was wrong.
I moved closer to Đức and saw that he had Photoshop open. He was using the blur tool to obliterate a spot of pigeon poo from the windscreen of his second-hand yellow RX. The first time he’d parked that car in our driveway, Ba had remarked, ‘That looks like the type of car gangsters drive.’ Cousin Đức had adjusted the Burberry scarf he’d spent a whole month’s worth of Woolies shelf-stacking pay on so that it covered his Lowes shirt. ‘Not true, Uncle. Gangsters wouldn’t drive yellow cars because the police can spot them too easily,’ he said.
Now, he was the real Đức, sitting in front of his computer in a hoodie, sweatpants and his grandma’s blanket. He moved his head towards the screen and the hood slid off. The static made his hair stand out in strands like one of those silky chickens that went on display every year at the Easter Show. His index finger kept clicking the mouse.
‘’Cha doin’, Đức?’ I asked, knowing full well what he was doing.
‘Look how sick this photo came out. Took it last night out in Wetherill Park wit da boyz,’ he chuckled.
I shoved aside a maroon textbook on his bed and sat down. There were murmurs of our parents’ conversation from the living room and I could hear shuffling on the carpet. They were probably getting out the box with all the Vân Sơn DVDs – their version of The Footy Show. I waited for Đức to ask what I was getting up to these days. The question did not materialise.
‘Đức, what would you do if a tutor said that you looked like their wife?’
‘My hands or my face?’ Đức glanced in my direction. He tucked both of his hands deeper into the sleeves of his hoodie so that only his nails poked out.
‘That’s not the point,’ I told him.
‘Mehhh.’
He was now playing around with different filters. His rapid clicking made the car on the screen flash from black and white to sepia to Gaussian-blurred. It made me dizzy so I focused on the back of his head as I told him about the exchange I’d had with Warwick.
Đức turned away from the screen. A thick vein running down his forehead throbbed. One of his eyeballs was bloodshot. Uneven bits of stubble clung to his chin. His skin was ashy. I wasn’t sure if he looked that way because his double degree was demanding or because he’d been out all night taking dumb pics of his car.
‘Could you imagine me batting my eyelashes and getting free marks? Get outta here.’
It was ironic because his eyelashes were longer than mine. He turned back to his computer and pressed Save on the photo of his car parked in the middle of some empty road in Wetherill Park – except the background was so muted you couldn’t even tell it was Wetherill Park. It was a photo of a glossy Passiona-coloured car floating in space with its headlights on full beam.
12
IDC
After a year in the Put Women in Power group, I got promoted to secretary. My main duty was scraping the brown layer off the top of the guacamole that was served at the weekly meetings. I made the mistake of telling the girls I was seeing a comedy show called Funny Ethnics on the weekend. Tahir, the guy who played Habib on Fat Pizza, was hosting.
‘Fat Pizza is a crass and racist show that makes all wogs look dopey! I prefer 60 Minutes.’ Kelly’s face soured in a way that made me feel like I wasn’t going to be secretary for much longer. The more involved I became in PWIP, the more I tired of seeking Kelly’s approval. She’d brought in all her friends to be Board members. The meetings were an opportunity for them to talk about their weekends spent in places with weird names like Milk Beach.
~
That Saturday evening, Tammy and I were waiting for the train at Yagoona Station, shivering in the cold under the sign that read ‘This area is under constant 24/7 surveillance’, when a Vietnamese lady approached us. Her black foam platforms slapped against the bitumen and you could see her gold tooth when she smiled. ‘Hai cưng đẹp quá! Muốn làm má-sa không?’ You two darlings are so pretty! Would you like to do massaging? She was a southerner. Her Viet was blunt at the edges and she sounded like my mother. She pointed in the direction of the Hume Highway towards the Golden Phoenix, an apartment on top of Al-Rabih Butchery. Its grimy windows were covered with pink curtains, a cardboard sign and fairy lights. If she had said ‘dam bop’, it would have literally meant your hands slapping and kneading flesh. But no, she had said ‘ma-saaaa’. The word slithered like a slimy snake into dirtier territory – where hands offered happy endings.
I felt my cheeks heating up and my upper lip get sweaty. Did she really think all Viet girls were Little Miss Saigons who would be happy to give hand jobs? The madam’s eyes gleamed like bottles of Coke. She only knew two ways to survive: you either exploited others or you were exploited by others.
‘We don’t speak slimy syphilis ’round here!’ Tammy said in a loud voice.
We boarded the train and didn’t talk the whole way. I looked outside the window and was confronted by my reflection. Maybe we did look like baby prostitutes. Me with my hair down in a blue off-the-shoulder top and wax-coated jeans that bit into the flesh of my hips;
Tammy in a tight black dress and thigh-high boots, her bleached ash-blonde locks gathered into an Ariana Grande–style ponytail that rested high on her skull. I was tempted to colour my hair like hers but all the girls at PWIP warned it was crucial to maintain a professional image if you wanted to get hired at a big company.
We got off at Marrickville Station and walked past warehouses and brick shoebox houses until we saw the glow of the Factory Theatre. On the corner of Rich Street under the hazy street lamps, we stopped to touch up our lips. I stared into the ring of blue light in my compact mirror and spread a layer of Mac’s mauve Lipglass in Cultured along my top lip. I rubbed the candy-scented goop onto my bottom lip, the granules of glitter coating my whole mouth like glue. Tammy did the same, except she wore Oh Baby, a shimmering bronze colour. We were ready.
There was a courtyard with rainbow fairy lights and a bar area where a couple of stylish hipsters were drinking low-carb beers. The girl had on blue lipstick, a septum piercing and the word ‘struggle’ tattooed in delicate cursive along her collarbone. She was talking to a guy in a tartan shirt whose red beard sprouted like pubes from his chin.
Funny Ethnics was on at 7 but we got there at 7.15. The room was warm and damp with human breath. It smelled like Australia Day: beer, Chiko rolls and Lynx deodorant. Along the rows of red seats, people clutched sweating VBs and takeout food. Tahir’s raspy voice boomed throughout the room and there were camera crews on either side of the stage. As we searched for our seats in Row B, a camera crew shone their lights in our faces and several people in the crowd also turned to look at me and Tammy. They were laughing at us.
Tahir’s gobbling voice wobbled across the theatre like a clown on a unicycle: ‘That’s the thing about ethnics – they love to be late. You tell ’em 7 and they read it as 7.30.’ Tahir pointed his microphone in our direction, eyeballs bulging out of his potato head. The rest of the crowd jeered. Beads of sweat squeezed through the pores of my upper lip. I thought about the madam of the Golden Phoenix asking if I wanted to give hand jobs for a living.
‘Girls, just relax, okay? I know you’re Asian but this is not Border Security,’ Tahir continued as the audience laughed.
I squeezed past the knees of the people sitting along the row. A blonde woman with a skeletal face and too much black eyeliner threw her head back and cackled. She sat with a guy who had all the fat that she didn’t. He was three fridges wide with a pack of hot chips and a meat pie on his lap. The seat next to him was mine. I sat down and shielded my face from the camera lights and the flecks of spit coming from the people who had turned to guffaw and gawk at us. Tammy laughed along. She clapped her hands and her acrylic French tips sounded like the tapping of a keyboard as they hit each other.
Tahir let the laughter die down before he moved on. He introduced the comics like a ringmaster at a circus. The first was a Greek woman whose day job was as an IT consultant. One day she’d gone to a salon and asked for a Brazilian. The staff had been so overwhelmed at how hairy she was that they’d needed several people to pull the wax off her labia. The second was a Fijian-Indian guy who had a day job at a video game arcade handing out coins to patrons. That’s why he was called the Token Black Guy. The third was a Chinese guy who complained to the audience about the lack of diversity in government road safety ads. Where were all the Asian women? The last comic was Vietnamese. He had a crush on a hot girl but didn’t stand a chance with her because she had accused him of eating her dog. He still jerked off to her though.
After Jerking Off finished his set, Tammy leaned over. The frangipani scent of her perfume closed in on me and I could almost taste the wilted petals mixed in with her sweat. ‘He’s really cute,’ she whispered. I observed Jerking Off’s face as he left the stage. He had a strong brow line and a sharp nose. I tried to look for his name in the program but as I flipped it over to the other side, steaming brown lumps of meat pie dropped all over the paper. I looked up and saw the guy beside me clutching his Four’N Twenty in his ham fist. I was going to spew. His piggy eyes were focused on the stage, oblivious to the sauce and mince running down his hairy arm. This dickhead used his mouth for two things: shoving pies inside and laughing at ethnics. Did he visit the girls at the Golden Phoenix and put his grubby mouth on their breasts and between their legs? I wanted to take a deep breath but couldn’t. The gravy from the pie. The sharpness of the tomato sauce. The sweat. I looked over to Tammy; she was fixated on the show. I rolled up my program with the meat inside and placed it on the floor under my seat. Then I stood up and walked out. This time, I didn’t give a shit about Tahir making fun of me. I let his voice gargle away like water being flushed down a toilet.
Outside, the hipsters were still at the bar under the red, blue and yellow fairy lights. They had stopped talking and were now making out. The guy with the red beard slid his bony hands down the girl’s long back and cupped her ass-cheeks in his palms. I sat on one of the stools and pretended to check my phone. The night air was warm against my bare shoulders. The only message I had was a voicemail that Mẹ had left. Be home before midnight. Or else.
When the gig was over, Tammy came and ordered a martini at the bar. She didn’t ask why I had walked out half an hour early. After sculling the cocktail, she sprinted to the other side of the courtyard towards a crowd of people who were gathering at the bottom of the stairs that led to the backstage exit of the theatre. She wanted to get Tahir’s autograph.
A Lebanese guy with a shaved head and Lonsdale trackies grabbed a bar stool, put it between his legs and drummed his hands on the seat. Dada-dat-dat. The doumbek beat was strong and consistent, the screams of the women ebbing in and out. The drummer leaned forward, concentrating on maintaining the beat while his mates danced around chanting, ‘Ha-bib, Ha-bib.’
‘Brother, sign my shirt! Deliver my pizza!’ Meat Pie Guy roared, waving around a yellow shirt with FAT PIZZA written on it in black texta. The sauce and mince had dried on his arm and was flaking off his skin.
‘Habib! I love you, let me be your Toula!’ Tammy screamed, standing on her toes. Her bleached blonde ponytail swung from side to side as she waved her arms. She had loved Habib ever since we’d started watching the show in Year 7. We had outgrown Lizzie McGuire and were entering the era of Mean Girls, cutting back on carbs and buying Veet wax strips to wrench body hair from the surface of our skin like weeds. Tammy had found in Habib a man who not only accepted, but adored, his fat and clingy wife. Habib was the holy grail model of a man she yearned for and tonight she was screaming along with all the other women who wanted to be his fat wife.
Finally, the doors to the backstage of the theatre opened and the comics descended the stairs. The Greek woman, the Fijian-Indian guy, the Chinese guy and the Vietnamese guy. Some people politely clapped as they slunk away in different directions. The doumbek beat grew faster and louder. The door opened again and Tahir’s head popped out like a jack-in-the-box. The women shrieked even louder and the doumbek beat was so fast now that the drummer’s hands fluttered like the wings of a hummingbird. The King descended from his throne, his Reeboks lightly springing with each step.
‘Habib, cuz! Let us shout you a beer!’ The drummer and his friends jostled each other like puppies. Tahir acknowledged their invitation by raising his arm towards them. He was wearing a black and yellow tracksuit – just like the Fat Pizza uniform. I sat at the bar beside Tammy’s empty martini glass and watched her go nuts. She jogged on the spot, held her head in her hands and screamed out a war cry. Meat Pie Guy ploughed through people like Godzilla, waving his Fat Pizza shirt like a flag. Tahir put both of his hands up and bowed his head, surrendering to the adoration. I withdrew further into a corner of the courtyard and sat at an empty table, distancing myself from the crazed worship. The hipster couple stood at the table next to me and had progressed to second base, their ghostly hands sliding up and down inside each other’s shirts.
‘Hey, anyone sitting here?’ I felt a finger lightly tap the bare skin of my shoulder. It was Jerking Off – the Vietnamese guy. His features looked sharper close up, like an exclamation mark – his strong brow line and straight nose ending in pillowy lips. I shook my head and could feel my cheeks heating up.
According to Tammy, I had ‘go away’ written all over me and didn’t make enough ‘welcoming signals’. At least on Tinder I could hide my Resting Bitch Face. Jerking Off pulled up a stool and offered me a smoke. I leaned back, as Sheryl had taught me to do when it came to unwanted intrusions on your path to success. He was cute but I did not want to inhale the fumes streaming from his lips.
The doumbek drumbeat stopped and the crowd shifted into a murmur as Tahir started to sign merchandise.
‘Ahh, I thought your jerking-off joke was the best out of what was on offer tonight.’
Jerking Off raised a thick eyebrow at me and took a sip from his water bottle, his cigarette still tucked between his fingers. The red-bearded hipster had stopped groping his girlfriend and was eyeing Jerking Off’s cigarette.
‘Saw you in the crowd. Tahir roasted you and your mate for coming in late.’
‘Tahir’s self-hating jokes are overrated.’
Jerking Off chuckled. He turned his head away from me and blew smoke into Hipster Guy’s face. Hipster Guy didn’t react and instead continued running his fingers along the outline of Hipster Girl’s bra. The doumbek drumbeat started up again.
‘And what’s your name? Why are you here if you only wanna listen to Oprah?’
‘Sylvia. I’m here with my friend. What’s your name?’
‘Paul. Written in the program, didn’t you get one?’ He turned away again to blow smoke. This time, Hipster Guy rolled his eyes and coughed loudly, red pubes all over his chin.
‘Listen, Oprah. I’m staying near Petersham Town Hall. Why don’t we continue this conversation back there? It’s only a short walk.’
He may have been in his mid-twenties. The ends of his thick eyebrows sloped slightly downwards, framing his round dark eyes with a touch of sincerity. I didn’t think it’d hurt to get to know him, since I’d never met a Viet who made a living from laughs. Plus, he wasn’t that much taller than me. I figured if anything bad happened, I could fight him.
Before we left, I looked over at Tammy. She was still stuck behind a group of women who looked like a clan of Kardashians in their tight leather skirts and nude blouses. They clutched their iPhones, hoping to snap selfies with Tahir. Meat Pie Guy had got his yellow shirt signed and was holding it with both fists.
