Today’s soundtrack: Random blonde bio high density rhythm
Today at 8:02pm: dozing in a chair

I always welcome the chance to center a big American highway in my windshield and blare escapist music, but in order to really enjoy this you’ve got to be alone. If you’re traveling in a convoy it’s no fun because you have to maintain pace, and if you’re carrying passengers it’s considered impolite to crank the volume up to 10 because you don’t feel like talking about Richard Clarke or movies or carbs or whatever.

So for the MovieTalkers gig up at Yale, I opted to drive up by myself, at a separate time from my teammates in their other car.

On Friday afternoon I threw the MovieTalkers script and a change of clothes into a backpack. I started packing up my laptop and grabbed a road atlas, but ditched both of these at the last minute because I figured I wouldn’t need either. This mistake would cost me twelve dollars within the hour.

The weather was gorgeous outside. Spring came to Manhattan late and beautiful, like a date who keeps you waiting because she knows you’ll put up with it.

I hopped in the car and tooled over to the east side, windows rolled down, with some crumpled directions to New Haven shoved into a slot on the dashboard. It wasn’t until I’d started rocketing up FDR Drive that I switched the radio on and heard the bad news: A tanker truck had blown up on 95. The heat from the ensuing fire had buckled the roadway, leading to a shutdown in both directions.

While I was sure the driver had died and felt bad about that, my more practical concern was that 95, around Bridgeport, would be closed “for at least two weeks.” The directions I had to Yale were 95 all the way.

At a rest stop in Connecticut I bought a $12 road atlas. There was a McDonald’s there too. I figured I oughta get something to eat, since I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner later (I always get too nervous before a show to eat).

After scanning my twelve “Value Meal” options I opted for the Big ‘N Tasty, which recent experience had proven to be misnamed, but which still seemed like the lesser of twelve evils. Plus there’s something nice about knowing exactly how much something is going to suck. Do you know what I mean? If you don’t, you probably have lots of true friends and have never been greeted in a strange town with racial slurs or had someone try to hit you with a rock.

I ate the burger and pored over the atlas. Afterwards I took a few minutes to stare out the window and wonder where my life was going, then I got back in the car.

What should have taken ninety minutes took three hours, but because I’d left early I was still ahead of schedule. I pulled into New Haven around 4pm.

I’d heard New Haven was a cesspool, but had only been here once before, late at night to drop an old friend off. This time around I wouldn’t get to confirm it for several hours yet.

The Omni Hotel was jammed with college kids (I’d later find out the attendance was around 600) from all over the country, here to attend the conference, of which MovieTalkers would be a small part. Since the conference was put on by a Korean-American college organization, about 90% of the students were Korean-American. It was kind of cool, I heard Koreans speaking in the familiar New York accent, the laid-back west coast drawl, and that unmistakably clean midwestern English.

I didn’t know anybody, so after parking the car I sat outside the jammed lobby and called my “handler.” He sent someone to check me into my room. I love staying in hotels--free cable, and the bathrooms are always way nicer than anything I’ve encountered while crashing on a friend’s couch.

After resisting the temptation to stuff one of the fluffy white bathrobes in my backpack, I headed back downstairs and walked a few blocks to see if I could get any good pictures of New Haven. Turns out I couldn’t.

Back in the lobby I perused the Schedule of Events. Looking over the list of speakers, I saw my friend Michelle was on the roster, and was giving a workshop at that very moment across campus.

(Background: I met Michelle, a political-activist or whatever you call it, during a speaking gig at Smith College two years ago. Since then I’d booked her for a group speaking gig I did last year at the University of Wisconsin. Whenever we see each other it’s at colleges.)

I couldn’t make heads or tails of the campus map, so I asked a sinfully hot girl of maybe 18 for directions. A couple blocks later I found Michelle’s building, said hello and we exchanged numbers.

Several hours later our gig was about to start and I stood in front of a room of fifty people, frantically trying to connect a DVD and projector to two monitors. Some Yale students, tech guys, had hooked it up erroneously, and I was stunned to see they’d plugged the red cable into the white port and vice versa. Now George Bush attending Yale started to make a little more sense.

Due to technical difficulties, scheduling fuck-ups and general disorganization, our show started an hour and twenty minutes later than it should have. My co-performers (Tina and Derek) and I, mostly exhausted by that time, put on what I have to say was a mediocre-to-lackluster performance. Or maybe it was just Derek and I, Tina was pretty on. Anyways I doubt we’ll be booking any paid gigs on the strength of this one show.

Afterwards Tina broke out, while me, Derek, the director and several friends of hers headed to a nearby restaurant for a late dinner. We were the only Asians in the whole place and I was unsurprised to see we drew stares and obvious murmured comments after walking in the door.

Derek and I were feeling a little down, but over dinner he ordered a pitcher of Sangria and it seemed to cheer him up.

On line for the bathroom, I overheard a Yale student talking on his cell phone. “You got into another fight?” he crowed into his phone, excited. “Dude did you fuck him up? Did you fuck him up?”

Yep, George Bush definitely went to school here.

Michelle joined us for a spell, and after a couple hours of dinner and booze (for everyone else, not me) Derek and I headed back to the hotel with the director, a female, and a female friend of hers.

On the way back to the hotel we came across two white frat boys hanging out on the sidewalk, one of them urinating. We had to walk over his stream of urine to cross. As we passed he stared us down and spat a nasty racial slur at us. “Try me,” said Derek--and then one of them picked up a rock and threw it at us. (He missed.)

I couldn’t believe it. This was a fucking Ivy League school.

While we kept walking, Derek said something back to them and was fully prepared to fight them. I wasn’t, which bothered me for the rest of the night. My first instinct, especially when with girls is to avoid beef altogether, but maybe that’s a pussy instinct. I was kind of disappointed in myself.

Something that blew me away was these two kids were on top of the food chain--white males on their way to earning degrees from one the most prestigious universities in the world--and they still had to flex. It made me sick just thinking about it.

Back at the hotel, Derek and I were hanging around the student-jammed lobby when I overheard various tales of racial taunting encountered by the conference visitors. I again found myself surprised, because while open-faced white hostility isn’t exactly an anomaly in this country, the last place I expected to find it was fucking Yale.

On top of that, I know Koreans are kind of hot-tempered as a people, so I figured it was only a matter of time before one of these white cats went too far, or had better aim with rocks, and some shit was going to jump off.

Sure enough, we heard a commotion in front of the hotel and went out to see what it was.

Two cop cars with flashing lights were blocking off the end of the block. A bunch of the Korean students were standing and watching.

“What happened?” I asked some students coming from that direction.

“They got arrested,” said one.

“Who?” I asked.

“Three Korean students from Toronto.”

“The white kids didn’t get arrested though,” said another.

I never got the whole story from the same person, but what I was able to piece together was this: Five Korean-Canadian students went into a bar, which was of course 99% white. Inside the bar some racial slurs were thrown, and the Koreans didn’t take to it too kindly, and there was some kind of brawl, and the Korean students were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to go back inside to get their coats, and then another brawl broke out outside. Then the police showed up and arrested three Korean kids.

I don’t have all the facts, but I’m guessing the Koreans didn’t start it, and here’s why: As any person of color knows, you have to be some kind of maniac to head into a bar that’s 99% white and go popping some shit. They probably went in there for a drink and ran into some knuckleheads like the rock-thrower we ran into or the people who hawked us at the restaurant. Cue drama.

I felt bad for the kids who got locked up, because they’re from Canada so I don’t know what kinda legal shit they’re gonna get into.

I hate dealing with racial bullshit every other time I leave the city. I try not to write about heavy shit in here because I myself don’t enjoy reading people’s blogs when all they’re doing is complaining, but this one I had to mention.

Anyways later Derek and I were chilling back in the room while I flipped through free cable. “I wonder if we would’ve gotten arrested if we did something,” said Derek.

“Man, that would’ve sucked,” I said. “Can you imagine, we come up here to do a gig and we end up getting locked up.”

It might’ve sucked, but it still bothered me that I didn’t do anything. Maybe it was worth getting arrested over.

Even worse was the feeling that this wasn’t some isolated incident--experience has proven antagonistic acts like this will continue to happen for the rest of my life, and I know there’s no way I can do something every time and win every time. It’s maddening.

Let’s say I’m lucky enough to find the right girl to marry, and we have successful careers and save up enough to have kids, and work hard at giving those kids a good life; well, someday, someone will still call my kid a chink, or worse.

I went to bed and tried to forget about it. The gig didn’t go well, but there will be more gigs. The day didn’t go well, but there will be more days.

The thing that won’t go away is that there is a burden that comes with being non-white, and I don’t have any choice but to bear it, and the solution eludes me.

Unable to sleep, I tried enjoying my free fucking cable.