My father never tells of miracles, escapes, and survivals. Instead he tells his life, and the history of his country in which it is inextricably entangled, in the form of mild jokes and anecdotes during unassuming conversations. Perhaps he no longer takes tragedy as seriously as others—but it is more likely that the mind naturally gravitates to the mundane and mirthful in its search for peace.
His first concrete memory, an awakening from that dream-like state that usually ends at around six or seven years of age, is of he and …

I. ANNA KOURNIKOVA
Two minutes into Stanford and I’ve spotted a girl with blonde hair and a California smile. She rolls into the Wilbur quad with wheelie-bags while I sling duffels like a real man should. She gives me a first-day half-wave, the kind that says, I’ll be seeing you around, but my hands are stuffed with linens and other things so I grin back the East Coast way, my best warm-hearted grimace. And here’s the thing. I never see her around. Never once in three years. Maybe she was someone’s …

I. The Existential Barf
The only free seat on the bus is by a sullen boy who doesn’t turn his face away from the window as I slump down next to him. His Converses are dirty. As I shove my bag beneath my seat he scoots his feet out of the way and the phrase F*CK U 2 catches my eye, markered in black on one of his outsoles.
The bus lurches forward, and despite my exhaustion and the boy’s smell and his surliness I find myself thinking, I like you, kid, …

My parents moved five times in the first ten years of their marriage. My younger brother’s birth was sandwiched somewhere between moves number four and five, four being the one that sent us sailing up the coast from Los Angeles into the San Francisco Bay, and five being the one that shot us into the landlocked heart of Southeast Asia.
Some of my earliest memories are of my brother’s birth: my father on the phone, coils of telephone cord looped around his hand as he calls the family doctor. …

Download “Touring the Erotic Museum” as a PDF.