Visiting your old work and an internet friend
When my friends are struggling or having some life crisis, my writer brain is always equipped with some fact or anecdote that I have stored in my brain to help relate and maybe even remedy their situation. In some ways I’ve turned it into a kind of performance where each retelling has subtle new ways of re-enactments: hand gestures on some words, a few pauses to elongate moments I wanted to stress to them, maybe I even look them in the eye to make sure they know I was talking to them. However a few weeks ago in this one moment where I was trying to console a friend about something, wanting to pull a story that felt relevant to what we were talking about, but something was amiss: my train of thought crashed immediately with the many details I was forgetting. I replayed the story in my head in the beginning but couldn’t even locate the beginning of the story. I don’t know why but I started tearing up as I cobbled up the few remains of memory I have of the story and barely threaded together what I was trying to say. I quickly moved on to another story and it was just a weird blip.
Last Saturday while I was getting home at 3am because I don’t know how to say no to any social opportunity (sometimes I’m not even invited and I manage to charm myself in these moments), tears came over me again the same way when I was trying to remember that one story. I googled it with a few keywords of “Charles Barkley” and “Dad” and hit the play button on the recorded audio version of the story.
On December 14, 2018 Shirley Wang published a story My Dad’s Friendship With Charles Barkley. It was a beautiful tribute to her dad, Lin Wang, who unexpectedly became friends with NBA star Charles Barkley after meeting him in a hotel lobby. One of my favorite parts of the story is how she opens up the tale:
When Charles Barkley’s mother, Charcey Glenn, passed away in June 2015, Barkley’s hometown of Leeds, Alabama, came to the funeral to pay respects. But there was also an unexpected guest.
Barkley’s friends couldn’t quite place him. He wasn’t a basketball player, he wasn’t a sports figure, and he wasn’t from Barkley’s hometown. Here’s what I can tell you about him: He wore striped, red polo shirts tucked into khaki shorts and got really excited about two-for-one deals. He was a commuter. He worked as a cat litter scientist in Muscatine, Iowa. In short, he was everyone’s suburban dad. More specifically, he was my dad.
This opener was clear, concise and vivid as any great story should open up like. At the time I was reading this story, I was in my craft mode studying all the great stories that were going viral to see what tips or tricks I can pull from. However the next section made me put away the magnifying glass I hovered over it and let my guard down to enjoy to would be one the best pieces I would ever read.
“You know, it was obviously a very difficult time,” Barkley told me recently. “And the next thing I know, he shows up. Everybody’s like, ‘Who’s the Asian dude over there?’ I just started laughing. I said, ‘That’s my boy, Lin.’ They’re, like, ‘How do you know him?’ I said, ‘It’s a long story.’ “
I remember laughing out loud because of the way Charles just casually said “That’s my boy, Lin” as if this was a Buddy Comedy. It was in the same delivery that my black friends always had to explain the way I was the only Asian guy in the room. The story would go on to lay out how their bond grew throughout the years.
These were the little details I used to adore when I needed a portal to feel immediate joy, and yet coming back to this story now has brought me so much sorrow. Is this guilt I feel because I’m forgetting a story that saved me in a time of need? Am I abandoning something that I used to cherish?
When Shirley came out with this story, I too had released an essay: Cười (Smile) To this day, I don’t know how to describe what I wrote. I just remember being in excruciating pain, I started developing aggressive eczema that was crawling up my face. I was in a place of drowning, and didn’t know how to ask for help. I took my pen and drafted this essay and needed to expel what was weighing down on my soul. After a few revisions with a close set of friends and volunteer folks, I hit the publish button and just shared it to the world.
There’s this myth that writing about your traumatic life is cathartic. When you get good at it, you really have to sell it to the reader as if they are the ones experiencing it. To be honest I think I got too good at it for too long, because that was all I ended up writing about for the years to come. Always heaving out all the emotions that felt like razor blades coming out of my throat.
I just remember sifting through the comments and text from friends when I wrote that piece. Though I felt grateful and appreciated all the attention and care I was getting, I still felt lonely and miserable.
The first time I read and heard the story on Twitter. I just remember I was in awe of Shirley’s strength and composure she carried in her voice as she narrated her father’s journey, all the way down to the line:
After it was all over, I went through my dad’s phone and texted all his friends. I wrote:
Hi. This is Shirley. My dad just passed away.
I don’t know what exactly what I said on Twitter, I just remember resharing it and commented how much the story moved me (back then Asian Twitter was a thing where we did this on the regular.) Even though I was in so much pain that it hindered all parts of my life, I couldn’t fathom Shirley’s grief and how much that would have felt for me, and just wanted to show my appreciation. For a very long time that year, I didn’t feel so lonely. As I scroll back on my own essay, I forgot Shirley even took the time to read my essay and left a comment for me too. I remember being so honored that she did that.
I think the grief that I’m feeling is kinda in a way that you’d get from coming back to work after a 3 week vacation, or in the way after 6 months of waiting to meet your favorite artist at the VIP section before their concert, the moment is over and they have gotten into their trailer to drive to their next gig in another city.
But this particular grief is much different: It’s when joy sticks around much longer than it used to, staying around months at a time. Yet when that joy needs to take a break within the slower parts of my life, it doesn’t crash hard into PTSD and panic attacks as often as it used to. The grief comes in a gentle reminder how life was, with enough time and perspective put between those bad times. Letting myself listen to these times of old grief, I can always remind myself that I always pull myself out of those dark times, and am grateful for writers like Shirley helping me out, reminding me with such great gems like this:
I know how much his friendship with Charles Barkley meant to my dad. It was not just a relationship with a celebrity — it shed light on the possibilities of this world. A world where someone like him could just say something cool, something charming, and befriend someone like Charles Barkley.
I hope you are doing well Shirley.
Your sleeveless friend: Long Vo 
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