(Mis)Adventures in Dating: What's the equivalent of blue-balling for blogging?

... So, I've been rather horrific about updating this blog, an offense made even worse by my last post, which promised all sorts of juicy stories about my dating (mis)adventures. I wish I could attribute my absence to being kidnapped by a viking named Bjorn who then strapped me on the back of his alpaca and took me away to live in his yurt, which, of course, has no internet and is beyond the reach of my AT&T 3G coverage. But alas, my life is never that exciting, and I can only say that after a series of bad dates that involved one guy rushing back to work after meeting me for 43 minutes, another guy purring while he was sexually aroused, and another guy trying just a little too hard to get me drunk, I decided that the piss in the dark that is internet dating might just not be the strategy for me. So, I took a new strategy called "Giving Up," and welcomed a summer break of helping my dad adjust to his new bionic hip, playing mah-jong with my mom and aunts, and watching Downton Abbey on Netflix streaming. I do have the impulse to be quite content in this spinsterish state, but a new academic year signals new goals and new aspirations. So the last couple of months have been devoted to fully enjoying the social circles I've cultivated in the past year.

Since coming back to Boston in August, I've been reconnecting with friends who then extend invitations to parties thrown by their friends, getting more involved in an community organization I volunteer for, and spending more time with people from my Taekwondo studio. I figure it only makes sense to meet people doing things that I'm already interested in doing. Even if I don't find myself a boyfriend or a guy who is remotely fuckable in these activities, I figure at the very least the men whom I do meet can introduce me their friends. (Because, frankly, spending all my time with single chicks isn't doing me any favors.) There's only one problem with this strategy: At my age, being out and about and doing athletic shit really results in me spending time with more married men.

And here's the thing with married men, that I had never before discovered: They're way easier to get along with.

Which makes sense, I suppose. A married guy can chat you up, flirt with you, make you feel special, knowing full well that he's always going to have his wife to go home to. Whereas single guys get all anxious about whether or not you find them attractive, whether they're saying or doing the right thing, whether you're interpreting their words or actions the wrong way, married guys can do whatever the fuck they want without putting their egos at risk. If the girl responds positively, talk about validation! And if not, it doesn't matter, because they can always count on wifey to give them a blow job when they get home. (Yes, I realize that was a very sexist thing for me to say, but to be frank, I'm around a lot of super heteronormative couples who, despite their liberal politics, have a strange tendency to replicate really old-school gender roles in their marriages.) Maybe it's for this reason that married men seem to exude a confidence that I rarely find in single men.

Sometimes this confidence is harmless. I have one friend whose husband always says things to me that I wish I had heard more often from my ex-boyfriends. He'll tell me I'm a catch, notice what I wear, and greet me with a "Hi, gorgeous." But since this is always done in front of his wife, I always take it as just platonic flirty flirtykins. While I know that his wife could very well be gritting her teeth at his behavior and ripping him a new one when they get home, I have no reason to believe that his flirtatious behavior indicates any intention on his part. Which, of course, brings its own frustration: DON'T FUCKING CALL ME GORGEOUS IF IT CAN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO ME.

And then there's this other married friend whose wife is never around, and who also interacts with me in ways that definitely cross the line between platonic and intimate. This, of course, is more problematic, because as a single woman who isn't his shrink, I really have no business knowing about his marital troubles. I definitely am in no place to be dealing with his playful jealousy when other guys hit on me or accepting his offers to buy me drinks. I admit that I should be better about turning on my cold bitch mode and walk away the second he pulls any of this, but I also admit that I have more fun hanging out with than I do on most dates I've been on. A part of the reason we get along is precisely because he's married. He can feel free to divulge his inner feelings and play the part of a charmer without risking anything except for maybe a little bit of guilt, and I can also act as I feel, whether that is flattered or flippant, simply because I know our interactions can't mean anything so long as he is married. In some ass-backwards way, it is precisely the illicit nature of our interactions that allows each of us to act more naturally than we would were we simply two single people dating. In fact, when I bluntly told him that a married guy shouldn't be telling a single girl that she's hot, his reply was, "Maybe it's because I'm married that I can be honest." Oh, the irony. And the grossness.

It's no wonder that extramarital affairs are so common.

I refuse to indulge in such a cliche, not so much because of any adherence to some lofty sense of morals, but because of my selfish need to budget my emotional investments. A second spent thinking about some married dude is a second wasted. And that, I suppose, is the lesson I can take away from my experiment with this social butterfly strategy of mine: There are endless ways to waste one's emotional energy without the help of online dating sites.

So that's it. I give up. I'm probably better off joining a mah-jong club.

AsianGirlProf's (Mis)Adventures in Dating

A few years ago, there was an emergence of Asian American chick lit, with the release of books such as Kim Wong Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things, Blossom Kan's China Dolls, and Sonia Singh's Bollywood Confidential. These novels are modeled after Sex and the City and Bridget Jones's Diary, but with Asian female protagonists. They center on 30-something-year-old professional women who enjoy designer shoes and fancy martinis, and who create adventures for themselves dating a bevy of (mostly non-Asian) men. Not exactly an original formula, and as the titles indicate, these books are also generally poorly written. Several of my Asian American girlfriends told me that I should have ridden that wave and written my own chick lit novel as a way to vent my dating frustrations. Too bad I was busy writing my dissertation (pesky scholarly work of intellectual value) and missed that boat. I guess I'll have to settle for writing my own Tiger Mom novel before that storm passes.

Still, given that every other aspect of my life is hopelessly boring, I probably should write about my experiences circulating in the dating pool. That way, even the worst date won't turn out to be a total waste of time, so long as a good story comes out of it. I can't promise that my writing will be any good, either. I don't have that breezy writing voice that's most suited for this genre, and I'm perhaps too self-conscious about exploiting ethnic stereotypes for the sake of entertainment. But at the very least my stories will come from the perspective of a 30-something-year-old professional woman who can't afford the shoes she covets, who will often prefer a beer over a martini, and who tends to (either on purpose or not) date nerdy Asian men. Doesn't exactly sound like juicy blogging fodder, but might be a fun experiment anyway.

Once I figure out where I want to begin, I'll post Chapter One!

How Do Normal People Do It?

Yikes, has it really been four months since I've updated this blog? Blah blah, I've been busy, blah blah, being a professor is hard, blah blah... Everyone seems to belong to the Cult of Busy, so I don't think my life is any more special or important than anyone else's. But still, these last few months have got me asking, "How do people do it?"

And by "do it," I mean lead a normal and fulfilling life.

I think I've had a pretty productive first year on my tenure track. I've taught successful classes, did some department and university service, took on a few student advisees, revised and resubmitted an article, wrote a draft of another, applied to a few conferences, wrote papers for those conferences (the first new work since finishing my dissertation), got elected to the executive board of one of my academic associations, and participated in all those obligatory odds and ends meetings and things that are constantly happening on campus. My chair and primary evaluator gave me a positive evaluation, and my contract is still in tact.

And yet, though I should be entirely satisfied with how I've transitioned into this job, I can't help but hear the incessant ticking of the tenure clock. I really wish I could have done more: submitted the second article, got started on my book proposal, just did more plain ol' reading. I look at some of my colleagues around me and wonder how on earth they can be so damn prolific. For me, squeezing out a paper really does feel like pooping a watermelon most of the time.

There is the stereotype of the nutty professor whose entire life is his/her work. There could be some truth to that, especially for women. Several women whom I admire churn out book after book, article after article. They get invited to give guest lectures at universities halfway across the world. People travel halfway across the world to see them at conferences. They actually receive grants for the research they do. But these women are also single, have had to uproot themselves every few years, whenever another institution offers them a more lucrative position, and will never have children. At least from an outsider's perspective, these rock stars are only so because their work is their life.

I've gotten a lot of career advice over the years, but no one has ever been able to tell exactly what it takes to "make it" in this profession. Am I supposed to be putting every ounce of energy into this work? How many hours a day should I be devoting to my writing? How many books should I be reading in a week? Can I afford to do anything else?

I don't even want to be an academic rock star. I would be perfectly content working for the rest of my life at a lesser-known institution with tenure requirements that encourage faculty to strike a healthy balance between teaching, research, and service while also allowing them to have lives outside of the university. And by the looks of it, my current institution should be such a place, but I feel as though I'm already struggling to keep afloat. And I know for a fact that it's only going to get harder next year and the next, as I get asked to take on more responsibilities like sit on committees and start up programs on campus. I'm really starting to understand when people say that a professor's job never stops.

But I need it to stop once in a while. I need to be able to put work aside and go to my Taekwondo classes, choir rehearsals, volunteer activities. I need to be able to sit down at my electric piano and just bang out some Beethoven for an hour. I need to attend the parties that my friends throw. I need to help my friends when they need a favor. I need to visit my family. I need to host friends when they come to visit. I need to maintain my home so that it's not disgusting. I need to go on dates! (Dating, I've always thought, is practically a parttime job in and of itself, which is probably why I've never been very good at it.) I need to allow myself rest when I get sick (as I did for the whole friggin' month of March). I need to imagine that should I one day in the not so distant future get married and start a family, that I could do so without feeling as though I'm throwing away the career I worked so hard to attain.

Can I do it all? I know several female academics who have families and hobbies in addition to prosperous careers. And they seem like well adjusted individuals, and as far as I know they don't have secret coke habits. But maybe they're also out-of-this-world brilliant and are able to come up with ideas and produce them at a fraction of time it takes for me to do the same. Is that what it takes? Is that how they do it?

So yeah, long story short: I've been busy. It's been a good busy, but overwhelming nonetheless.

Blah.

Hardass Asian Parenting

In preparation for every new year, my mother does a thorough cleaning and clearing out of the house. She decided to take advantage of my time at home and asked me to purge my room of belongings I don’t want or need anymore. After dumping several garbage bags full of clothes I only wore a couple of times, arts and crafts kits I never used, useless souvenirs from family trips, toys I quickly outgrew, I felt ashamed of how excessive my parents clearly were in indulging me and of how disposable all these luxuries of my childhood have proven to be. I joked to my mom, should I ever have kids, they will own nothing. They will have very active imaginations because they will have imaginary toys. They will exert their creativity by playing with cardboard boxes. If they want trendy new outfits, they will learn to make them themselves. They will dream not of owning the latest video game system, but of a Bosendorfer piano. At this image of my parenting strategy, my own Hardass Asian Mama said, “Your children are going to hate you.”

This was before I read Amy Chua’s article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” which, I was convinced, had to be (poorly executed) satire. Chua maxes out on the Hardass Asian Parent stereotype, declaring that her daughters are not allowed to have playdates, watch TV, or be anything less than the #1 student in their classes. Chua scoffs at “Western” notions of self-esteem, brags about calling her daughter “garbage,” and details a scene in which she forbade her daughter to eat or go to the bathroom until she learned a piano piece perfectly. This, Chua claims, is the key to raising successful children.

Whether or not Chua is being serious, her article is certainly problematic, and many in the blogosphere have leveled their criticism. Angry Asian Man claims that the piece perpetuates the stereotype of Asians as soulless automatons at the same time that it essentializes this so-called “Chinese” parenting as the reason for why Asians are the supposed “model minority.” Hugo Schwyzer offers a more sobering perspective, reminding us that not only are there plenty of Asian American students struggling with poor grades, drug and alcohol problems and learning disabilities, but that Asian Americans (and Chinese American women in particular) are also more likely to commit suicide than white teens.

I echo both of these assertions, and add one more point that I have yet to see any other critic make: Amy Chua should also acknowledge that her daughters, whose parents are both Yale Law School professors, have become “successes” in large part because of their class privilege. Chua’s children benefited not only from hours of tenacious practice and discipline, but also from the fact that Chua had the means to send them to good schools, give them piano lessons, enter them into contests, and take hours out of the day to attend to their studies and practices. A mother struggling to raise a family on a domestic servant’s salary would have a much harder time getting her daughter to Carnegie Hall, no matter how ruthlessly she believed in discipline and hard work.

And perhaps it is because I so see “success” as determined by class privilege that I have conflicted feelings about Chua’s article. Indeed, I am bothered by how it panders to stereotype and how it dismisses the psychological damage her strategies could inflict. But I also see its hard-boiled aspiration for glory as so utterly familiar. I would guess that Chua, a Harvard grad whose parents were Chinese immigrants from the Philippines, grew up with the pressure facing so many children, especially children of immigrants: to make good on your parents’ sacrifices by achieving more than they did. When Chua writes, “Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud,” I can’t help but be reminded of all the times I told myself that I had to achieve more than my father, who himself has two masters degrees. So while I certainly find Chua's cultural essentialism repugnant, I also read her confidence in how she has bred success in her children with, I daresay, a little bit of envy.

My parents couldn’t drill and mold me in Chua’s fashion, even if they wanted to. They were able to give me a comfortable middle-class upbringing, but not without a good deal of struggle. When they first bought the house I grew up in, their income only exceeded their mortgage by $100/month. Photos of my early childhood show an empty house in which our relatives would gather for my birthdays. My grandmother made the uniform I wore to Catholic school. But with hard work and smart planning, my parents gradually gained some sense of upward mobility. (I know they were able to because my dad is highly educated—No doubt that climb would have been harder without the educational capital.) When I was five, my parents started me on piano lessons. When I was eight, my parents started me on Chinese school. If there was ever a school choir concert, field trip, or summer program that required some extra money, they were usually glad to shell out the money. I wouldn’t say that my parents were particularly strict about my studies. I was always expected to get As and to take the most challenging of classes. But I didn’t have a legion of tutors to keep on the grindstone. Either because he couldn’t afford them or because he preferred to instill self-discipline, my dad would often make fun of the more intense Chinese parents and say, “If your kid is stupid, no amount of tutoring is going to help.” I think my parents set a healthy balance of nurturing, disciplining, and indulging me. I always knew they had high expectations for me, and they did their best to create the conditions that would help me meet them, at the same time that they let me watch TV, spoiled me with luxuries, and left me alone. I think my brother and I both turned out as successes because of this balance. Neither one of us is a slouch, neither one of us is an automaton, and we both have healthy relationships with our parents.

Still, precisely because I know that my parents would have gladly given us more opportunities if they could, a part of me wishes they could have been bigger hardasses, so that I could have given them more of a return on their investment. When I was 16, I decided to quit piano lessons, the last two years of which I was truly a slacker student. My parents didn’t put up a fight, and accepted my rationale that I was never going to use the piano professionally and that my first priority needed to be getting into college. (This failure of an Asian kid didn’t get into Stanford, so ended up going to UCLA.) But not a day goes by now that I don’t regret not putting in the 2-3 hours of practice a day that was required to be truly skilled, of taking advantage of the Vienna-trained teacher that my parents hired, of turning my back on 11 years of lessons. While I don’t think I ever would have been good enough to be a concert pianist, I also don’t think that I really knew at the age of 16 what the consequences of my choices would be. I certainly did not anticipate how much I would continue to love playing the piano, how painfully I would wish my fingers could move with more dexterity, how enviously I would eye the musicians lugging their instruments on the subway, and how the bleak job market would make me wish I was qualified to teach piano as a source of income. The piano, as well as all the other things I gave up in my childhood, now represents a big “What if?” that haunts me every day. So though I am disgusted by Chua’s piece, and though I suspect it would really suck to be one of her kids, I also envy the way in which she refuses to give up on her kids’ potential.

Which isn’t to say that my parents gave up on mine. They simply let me devote my energy to paths of success less familiar to them. Who knows? Had I not quit the piano, perhaps I wouldn’t have had the time to join the school play and the debate team. And had I not done these activities, perhaps I wouldn’t have found the confidence to cultivate my opinions and express them. And perhaps had I not done that, I wouldn’t have eventually become an English professor.

So maybe that’s what’s ultimately missing from Chua’s prescription for “success”: It is far too narrow in defining what success is, attributing it to status and competition. Perhaps Chua’s daughters will grow up to be Ivy League-degreed millionaires who developed the next wonder drug or something. I’m pretty sure Chua would see both me and my brother as failures. My parents, however, are very proud of my getting a degree in a language that still falls clumsily off their tongues, and of my brother, a designer, finding a career in the one subject that they never thought to put him through lessons in. Should I have kids one day, I hope that they will surprise me with their life choices, so long as those choices are made with integrity, commitment, and some sense of social consciousness. With my own success, I have afforded them that luxury.

But make no mistake; my kids are damn well going to be taking piano lessons. And Chinese school, too.