a new post

Hard to believe it's been 5 days!

Was writing a bit tonight...thought I'd put a bit of it here to see how it looks in a different font...

Koda San is the Japanese version of Bill Murray. He even has the endearing pock marks on both cheeks that seem more like dimples than acne scars. His mouth is serious but his eyes are two seconds away from breaking into laughter, and the unflappable arch of his eyebrows conveys a perpetual state of innocence – like the look of a young boy who has just seen Playboy for the first time.

Soon after we met, I discovered that looking Koda San directly in the face was a recipe for disaster – an opening of Pandora’s box where eye contact for more than three seconds would trigger the feeling to rise from within. You know the feeling -- sneeze-like in its prickle of anticipation, chaotic and clumsy – as non-sensical and adolescent as my 7th grade, when Jessica Alvis, Margaret Berry and I would race to the water fountain, filling up like assassins, and crouch behind corners and lockers, waiting to douse each other’s sprouting breasts and make sheer what had once been the opaque white of a Gap pocket t-shirt. “I can SEE the outline of it!!! It’s a Calvin Klein!” We were just as eager to get hit and model our mystery lingerie (feigning modesty) as we were to launch the chilly liquid. Our laughter was giddy and irreverent; we were 11. But now, as a woman who has been hired to teach acting, breaking into laughter for no apparent reason might throw my Japanese co-workers for an awkward loop -- and make me look...unprofessional.

Koda San tells great stories. The other day we were eating at the white table with an electric green trim that matches the standing plants in two corners of the room. I was talking about my days as an exchange student 16 years ago – replaying the thoughts and impressions that I’ve told and retold and written down so much you might say it’s a bit of a routine. To my surprise, Koda San interjects, saying that he also did a foreign exchange while in high school. I press him for more details, careful not to stare too long lest I laugh before the story even starts.

“I grew up in Kyushu, which you know is a bit more isolated than the main island of Honshu,” Koda explains in Japanese. “I was so excited to go to the United States,” he continued between bites, “and at the time I just loved Michael Jackson. ” I imagine a younger Koda with the airbrushed poster of Michael above his bed: yellow argyle sweater with matching yellow bow tie, white oxford and starched white pants, coffee and cream complexion -- dressed like a country club caddy in his Billie Jean prime. “Then, one week before my departure,” Koda San pauses, remembering with a pained look on his face -- “I see footage on the evening news of the LA Riots. The coverage showed a lot of black people beating up white people. I grew scared. Was this what America was like in California?”

The LA riots were in 1992. I was in 10th grade, and remember the news coverage of Rodney King, an African American man who was beaten by 4 LA police officers, all of which was caught on tape. When the officers were found ‘not guilty’ of any wrongdoing by the LA court system, the mostly black neighborhoods of Compton and Watts went ballistic. Enter white truck driver Reginald Denny, who happened to get stuck at an intersection right around the time things were heating up (outrage, happy hour, looting). He was pulled from the cab of his 18-wheeler and beat senseless by four young African American men. The payback beating (eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth) was also caught on tape, but this time it aired LIVE via the news chopper feed (cue theme song for Magnum PI). This was before the days of the internet (let alone youtube) when the falling of the dominoes was a bit easier to track – the good old days when watching OJ Simpson flee police for 2 hours in his white bronco was happening LIVE in the corner of your TV screen, it was happening then, with no thoughts on ‘save it for later at my convenience.” "Live" meant you were glued to the TV for the sheer connection to that moment. This was before moments became so readily available.

I think of all this and start to laugh, but not because of the LA Riots. It’s the image of Koda San in a small Japanese fishing village being scared by the footage, and scared of where he was going. It feels like a John Hughes movie. I press him for more.