I started reading ‘The Ivy League Stripper’ about a girl who went to the same college as me but could only afford to pay her tuition by stripping at a high-end gentleman’s club called the ‘Foxy Lady.’ In a creative writing class I took one summer at Harvard, I met a girl named Alexa who had just quit stripping at the Foxy Lady. It was while working there that she encountered her now boyfriend, a law student at Boston University. I found Alexa fascinating. One day after class we sat in her car as she showed me all her old costumes that she was now selling to other strippers for cash: being a waitress was not nearly as lucrative. She sat in the front seat explaining how many seductive ways she could open a clasp or undo a tie on each dress to the point where I could almost see her dancing, years before I ever went to a strip club. There was a light in her eyes when she talked about it, so I never asked her why she started, only why she quit. She stopped because her boyfriend demanded it. What a waste! Alexa could have been a spectacular stripper at the Foxy Lady and brilliant student at Harvard at the same time. Apparently, Heidi, who wrote this book, had the life my friend had to boycott. I had learned that I was not so different from the girl sitting next to me in my writing class, so how different was I from Heidi?

Heidi begins by describing a childhood that is at the opposite end of the earth and spectrum of every possible scale, compared to my own. I find it remarkable that we even existed within the same generation, let alone ended up at the same school. She talks about wanting things that I had before I even knew they had value and never appreciated. She’s had things in life I will never know, feel or understand, things that cannot be bought or produced for me. And as I read more and more into this contrast I began to panic: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I know I need to do one or the other or else my insides will start erupting and flow out of mouth: blood, guts, entrails, PAIN.

She talks about life in Maine, how on the day she was accepted to Brown she had been playing piano for a junior school kid, like tutoring. I’m struck by a parallel memory from Hong Kong, of trying to teach my bus driver proper English in elementary school. I really liked him. His name was Chris, that was his Western name, and he was young but had a young family too. I will never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre, in truth, because the day after it happened Chris did not drive our bus to school. He was one of many who went to Victoria Park to protest the atrocities that had taken place in Beijing the day before. I’m sure schools were closed that day, but what I remember is the black armband he was wearing the next time I saw him. It was a symbol of remembrance for those who died, and an outcry to the rest of the world to stand up and protect the rights of people who could be crushed by tanks. People just like Chris. I asked him if he went to Victoria Park. He said, “Yes.” That’s how I KNOW for certain, beyond speculation, what really happened at Tiananmen Square.

I used to make English homework for Chris, as well as give him verbal quizzes as he drove the bus, but one night my Mom caught me grading his homework and became very angry with me. She ordered me to stop. She told me I was insulting a grown man with my silly, hand written word puzzles, which I had the audacity of correcting with smiley and frowning faces. She made me feel so guilty for hurting someone who felt like my friend, even though he was a grown up and I ought to show him respect. These are Asian values, why didn’t I know better? The next day he asked me for the day’s homework and I said I didn’t have any for him anymore, and I never spoke of it again.

I wanted to give the gift of English to the man who helped me understand the meaning of the Tiananmen Square massacre and I couldn’t. Damn it Heidi! That’s what my life was like! And finally I cry, because something had to come out. When I think about my childhood I hear so many voices yelling at me, to do what I’m doing differently, because I’ve got it all wrong - AGAIN! Just thinking about it I feel heckled and hunched over. It’s only because I was young and unbelievably headstrong that I survived. But now to look back and have someone ask me to feel grateful that I didn’t have to take my clothes off to go to college hurts me. There’s so much my book would tell you too, Heidi! Once I write it.

Drew, a character in a chick-lit novel makes the insightful statement:
“Don’t be jealous of anyone, I guarantee you, if everyone walked into a room and dumped their problems onto the floor, when they saw what everyone else’s problems were they’d be scrambling to get their own problems back before someone else got to them first.” – A Total Waste Of Makeup BY KIM GRUENENFELDER

I take a deep breath and try to wrap my head around the fact that there’s no measure, no scale for pain experienced in a lifetime. Therefore there’s no way of knowing, she or I, who had it easier. We are both the products of our experiences. But somehow I just haven’t been able to resume reading her book.

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THE WRITING OF: No Bus To Crossover

SoulCasters have commented a lot on the distinct sound and style of my writing. So I wanted to respond by discussing and dissecting my latest piece 'No Bus To Crossover' to open up to you about my process and the place my writing comes from. Perhaps you too can share: what part of you holds the pen?

When I write a piece I don't spend hours on it, I spend days, sometimes separated by weeks at a time. It's not always about looking at it through a fresh pair of eyes, as much as sometimes needing to get enough emotional distance to make the phrasing palatable for readers. I write about things that stir me up and my process is very intense because I insist on writing down those thoughts and feelings while they’re happening. I think any time you have to talk yourself down from an emotional cliff is a powerful moment. But it's an excruciating time to write and many of my first drafts were typed through tears.

'No Bus To Crossover' was especially emotional to write. When I read it I can see myself climbing on the school bus in my plaid school uniform, looking up to find my bus driver's smiling face and I see he's wearing the same disheveled, collared shirt. Suddenly I am that girl who loved giving English lessons, who feels guilty for doing something that was unwarranted and disrespectful in her mother's eyes. I feel little girl feelings, I’m no longer inside my grown up head but we're together somewhere inside that story.

This piece really involved reaching deep. It was challenging to accurately realize childhood memories on paper. I wanted to carefully shape my language to articulate the tenderness of those memories to match how I remember them my mind. I hope that I was able to convey some of the childlike thought with the adult mind making sense of it.

As to the meaning of 'No Bus To Crossover', I think it's a piece of the puzzle. That puzzle is me, the pieces are in part the works of writing I show here, but the picture on the front of the box that's supposed to guide you is more like a psychedelic screen saver, winding in and out, changing from frame to frame. Is she smiling? Is she laughing? Is she crying? Is she shouting? Yes, from time to time, I am.

I know everyone is as complex, whether they realize it or not.