[AUDIO + Text] PEN America Emerging Voices Podcast: 2020 EVs

Below is an interview with PEN America Emerging Voices Fellows manager Amanda Fletcher. Following my interview, I read a short excerpt from my memoir, hella. The excerpt is entitled, My Uncle. The body of the text is below the podcast link.

My interview & reading begin around 20:45.

Normally, this is the time for the EV Spring Reading. Friends, loved ones, and the local literary community all gather to meet the fellows and to hear them perform. With the shelter in place orders in effect, we aren't able to host the 2020 EVs in public, so they're reading on the podcast instead! In addition, Amanda talks to Megan, Damien, Claire, Shannon, and M. about the uncertain times we are living in, a Tongva arts journal, who should play you in your movie, unusual superpowers, roommates, and writing sex, proving that even virtual connections can be life-affirming, and that stories are powerful beyond measure. To learn more about the 2020 Fellows, visit pen.org

MY UNCLE

On the day my uncle leaves, the Daly City fog is thicker than usual. From the window of our second floor dining room, I see my uncle’s mint-green muscle truck parked on our sloping driveway. He must have bought the 60s-era Chevrolet because he saw something of himself in that hulking mass. Tossing suitcases into the truck bed, my uncle’s bulging biceps and meaty shoulders make clear that the man and the machine are perfectly matched. My uncle climbs into the truck, backs down the driveway and accelerates down Campana Avenue. Away from me.

I had never known the world without my uncle. 

For the first seven years of my life, he had been with me nearly every single day. 

At the age of seven, there are plenty of reasons why I might celebrate my uncle’s departure. He spent a lot of time sitting on my head and ripping toxic farts. Him and his buddies would often pin me down and unleash foul-smelling burps in my face. When feeling inspired, they’d grip me by both shoulders and attempt to belch the entire alphabet. Not one of them ever made it past J or K, but the failure was not for lack of trying. 

Some people — probably most — would find these antics obnoxious. Or disgusting. Or, at the very least, stupid. And yet I laughed. 

I laughed hysterically. 

I was just a boy, and I would laugh so hard that tears would flow. Through the farts and the burps I would laugh myself out of breath because my uncle was laughing, and never, not once, did I ever feel bullied or abused or tortured. 

I loved the goofing off and the roughhousing. 

I loved the loud laughs and playful pranks. 

I loved the intimacy, the closeness, the proximity of these men who were still boys embracing me and playing with me and treating me as if I was one of them. I knew that later in the day, when they were not burping at me and farting on me I would get to hang out as they rolled joints on the pool table and talked about girls and cars. I would get to watch them lift weights, pumping iron just like Arnold. I would get the honor of handing them wrenches and rags while they worked on their motorcycles in our garage. 

Later, my uncle would lift me onto the seat of his orange Honda. He would put his helmet on my head before kicking the bike on. I would hold on tight to the handle bars, as my uncle's chest and arms and thighs contained me like a cage. We would plow through the cold wet fog, smiling and happy on our way to Gellert Park. Gliding into a parking space, my uncle would push down the kickstand and cut the ignition before lifting me up and setting me down and gently sliding his helmet off of my head. 

Gellert was home to a library, a baseball diamond, and a large playground. I would run across the brown tanbark and drop onto one of the black rubber swings. My uncle would rattle and twist the chains until I was dizzy, and then he’d push me as I’d crank my skinny legs, bending and extending them as I moved backward and forward through the air – high, higher, too high — until my uncle shouted at me to jump, at which point I would launch myself through the air. The weightlessness never lasted long enough, and with a thud I would land, sending chunks of dusty wood chips in every direction. I’d whip my head around to see my uncle’s face, laughing as he trotted toward me, making sure that I was okay. 

This is what most kids probably do with their fathers. 

This is probably how most kids develop trust. 

These are the things a boy does with a man and learns from a man that give a boy the confidence he needs to face life boldly and bravely. 

When my uncle leaves, these things end for me. 

Two years later, in those months before Grandpa’s passing, my uncle returned. 

I don’t know what happened in my uncle’s life while he was in Southern California, but he had changed. And while he was gone, I had changed. Our family and our world had changed. 

A lot can happen in two years. 

Relationships end, as do lives, and no one is ever again who they were before.