I was up late watching Alain Delon in Les Felins, talking about beauty with my friend. Alain Delon is a majestic creature, made by God with both hands, on an exceptionally good day. My friend and I cackled like hags joking about how we’d drop everything to fuck him. “What baby? Oh no, I wasn’t doing nothing. That’s fine. No you stay there. Don’t get up. I’ll back into you.” Movie stars aren’t as stunning these days, but if anyone were to have a bit of the Alain Delon potential, it would probably be Gael Garcia Bernal, but that is about it.
I went to bed and had a luscious dream that Alain Delon was going to be married to my aunt. She was dressed in a lavishly embroidered scarlet Chinese wedding gown, and her hair was long and in a black fury around her face. My father’s sisters are all beautiful, but his youngest one is exceptionally so. With her long eyelashes and generous, smiling mouth, she would always remind me of Marilyn Monroe. She came from Korea in the 70s, to live across the street from us in San Francisco, to wait for her new husband. In my dream, Alain Delon was going to be her groom, and he was making a film of all her family, who treasured her so, because of her easy laugh and her warm, inviting nature. He and I decided that in my segment, I would write a short story about her, and read it to the camera. My aunt burst into my bedroom in her red dress and leaped upon my bed, as Alain Delon and I blushed and held onto our secret. I woke up then, never having written my story, so I will write it now.
My beautiful aunt would turn her glorious face to look at me, and I’d think, “My beautiful aunt loves me! She loves me!” I think that is why we all adore beautiful people. They look like love.
On some days, my aunt took care of my brother and I, as she worked behind the counter at my parent’s little snack bar at the east end of a bowling alley in the Japanese section of town. She was close to our age, not more than a kid herself, and when she watched us, it didn’t seem like we were being taken care of, more just hung out with, and those things make a huge difference to child.
There was a policeman who had been completely smitten by my aunt, and he sat, nursing a free coffee on a barstool, and waited for her to pay attention to him. I thought he was handsome, as he had a thick, burly moustache and looked a lot like one of The Village People. He was also white, which in my childish mind seemed like quite a big deal. My aunt mostly ignored him, as he’d saunter up to the bar and try to speak to her. She never feigned interest or tried to be polite. He bored her, and she was not afraid to let him know it, yet he would always return the next day.
One afternoon, my aunt was talking to me as I sat on the bar about the dangers of coffee, and how if you drink it once, you will never be able to stop, and how it isn’t nearly a good enough beverage to warrant that kind of devotion. Her policeman came and sat on the barstool next to me. My aunt rolled her eyes at me as he approached and lifted an arched eyebrow in a Dorothy Parker “what’s this fresh hell” gesture. He stared at the delicate gold heart hanging from a fragile chain around her neck, a new gift sent from her new husband taking the long route back to her from Korea. He reached out his big policeman hand and touched the gold heart with his big extended policeman finger.
My aunt said nothing, but the air around her froze solid. The policeman pulled back his hand as if it had been burned, not by fire but by ice. His foolhardy indiscretion had caused the sun in my aunt’s face to quickly set, and the darkness was deep and terrifying. Everything around us turned to stone, and it would soon claim the errant policeman. The earth and the sky opened up to swallow him, they quarreled over who would get to do it. He found the strength in his legs to wobble away quickly, and he never returned. My aunt’s sunny face was instantly restored. The stone all around us changed back into everyday counter and barstools. The earth and the sky stopped arguing and closed back up again.
It was in that moment that I learned an important lesson about what it means to be a woman. I realized how women should be treated. I love that song by Belly, that goes, “take your hat off boy when you’re talking to me…” because he should. He should be grateful to be in my presence. I am more than a goddess. I am more than a queen. I am a woman. I am the portal through which all beings enter. The earth and the sky are in my command. All life belongs to me. It is not enough for you to give me your respect. When you are in my presence, you stand in the church of me. Never forget this, or you will be forever lost. This universe does not merely belong to me. It is me. I am a woman. I am everything. The reason I didn’t get my due is that I never realized that I was a woman, and still I find it hard to imagine, even as I stand here, with my woman’s body all around me.
These memories of my family are kept like a great sample book from the fabric store, tattered lace and silk velvet, symmetrical swatches of time, stacked neatly to help me remember, color and texture, in case I ever might like to order them up for the future.