Down With Image Tyranny!

[South Korean Lee Moon-sae (b. 1959) and Dawn (b. 1994)]

At 4:30AM, there are ten customers at the café on General Uprising, all men. Testicular humyns hang out at bars and cafés to escape home. Some drive long distance trucks or get killed in distant, voluntary wars for the same reason. Except for the pain, which may last months or even years, it’s arguably worth it. Oil rig workers may only get one week out of eight at home. This male need to stray from wife and kids dates back to our hunting pack days, undoubtedly.

Among the predawn regulars, there’s a Vietnamese American who’s around 80. I’ve never talked to him. My regular seat is front and center, just inside the entrance. His is not in my sightline. The guy rarely says anything anyway. Silent, he still feels that need to be among others. When a dog walked by, he swatted at its tail. Who knows what diseases, including mental, he’s breeding.

It was in Philadelphia that solitary confinement became a progressive innovation. Isolated, prisoners could contemplate their sins and chat with God often. Visiting Eastern Penitentiary in 1842, Dickens immediately realized its inmates had gone mad.

At 5AM, Tank Top and his son are here. Sitting right behind me, that fat kid with a vapid face is rat tat tat tating away, as usual. His only pleasure is to mow down virtual enemies. Just five-years-old, he’s insane. Hearing a loud gecko, he asked his dad, “What is that?” So many kids see and hear almost nothing that’s not coming from a screen.

Sitting to my right, Pale Face is mumbling more nonsense. Tank Top is ranting about the outrageous costs of international schools, “That’s only for the rich. They’re preparing their kids for a life overseas. That’s way out of my reach.” He and his son won’t ever leave Vietnam.

Oh, the magical West! Tank Top once blurted about a California based singer, “Gone overseas, she’s changed her flesh, swapped her skin!” Thay thịt đổi da is the expression.

Glancing every so often at the TV screen, Tank Top would swoon over yet another singer. Yesterday, it was the Saigon based Ngọc Diệu:

Just look at that! If you’re married to her, you will just stay up all night to stare at her! You just can’t sleep, can’t sleep. If you sleep, another man might just steal her! Or she’ll tiptoe out to see another guy. Ha, ha, ha, ha!

As he stared in awe at another songstress, I said, “She’ll wilt soon enough.”

“She’ll never wilt! You walk everywhere, uncle, so you’re wilting! They fly around on airplanes. They’ll never wilt!”

Tank Top is mostly focused on these singers’ looks. Everyone is mesmerized by images. Remember that two-year-old Syrian boy lying face down, dead, on a Turkish beach? Alan Kurdi’s demise became a symbol of Western cruelty in turning away any immigrant. Ignored was the Western role in generating millions of refugees from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, etc. All those many thousands of children murdered right now in Gaza are not represented by a single photo. We’re fed selected images, blocked from others and manipulated by all. Since words are better at conveying the entire story, they’re degraded or turned into white noise. Few can focus on even two sentences in a row, much less an entire book.

Recently, I wrote, “Relaxing, I stared at Petrol House, Sỹ Hoàng Optician and Sambal, the last an Indonesian restaurant I’ve so far shunned. Mirroring the West, Sỹ Hoàng’s large sign features a white woman with a black man.”

A black reader, KEH, responded, “Do you shun the Indonesian restaurant because its sign features a ‘white woman with a black man’?” No, I explained, the sign is at the optician, where I bought a pair of glasses. Having eaten great Malay food in Malaysia and Indonesia, I shun it here. Too upset by his misreading, KEH canceled his paid subscription. We’re well into postliteracy.

Now at Cóc Cóc, I can see that sign right now. A great looking couple, they’re not bad for selling glasses, but should writers be good looking? Of course, not. Andre Dworkin’s Intercourse is polemical poetry. She’s lit. Singers, too, should be judged by their voice and soul. Janis Joplin rules.

My concern for those deemed ugly is clearly altruistic. Born achingly handsome, I don’t have the slightest idea what ugliness feels like. Is it like a stench emanating from all your pores causing even geckos and cockroaches to flinch in your presence? Even the word stench baffles me.

The ugliest waitress at Cóc Cóc quit. All tatted up, she never smiled. It’s quite possible her unhappiness caused her to look so ugly. Young, she fears being unloved, even falsely, forever.

Our fixation on images prevents us from seeing ordinary beauty. There’s nothing wrong with any plain face, unadorned. To various degrees, we’re like Tank Top’s pitiful son. Soon enough, he’ll try to mask his ingrown ugliness with fashion and a sense of style.

With Cóc Cóc closed for siesta, I’m at my third café, Bạn Trà [Tea Friend]. Only my second time here, I’m learning it’s a teen hangout. Since the drinks are pricey, these kids are better dressed, though still goofy. With more protein and calcium, the teenaged barista is nearly a head taller than me. His hair is dyed slightly orange, and he has three ear piercings. Even after we had moved to the USA, my father kept cutting my hair. That wasn’t cool.

Compared to the First World, Southeast Asia is less pretentious, thus more natural. Though the burden of looking cool, tough or sexy is creeping in, most people haven’t gotten the hang of this. Kids, especially, are just kids. Appearing suddenly at a kindergarten window this morning, I was greeted by a joyful barrage of “Con chào ông!” Basically, “Hello, grandpa!”

Down, then, with this relentless emphasis on appearance! Without makeup, Amish women are most beautiful, and their children angelic. In Harrisburg, I watched in awe as an Amish teenager made me a turkey sandwich. Such serenity or beauty was so rare.

Almost daily, we read about feral American teens attacking some helpless person. So narcissistic and stupid, some even upload evidence of their crime. Since the pettiest fame is the only meaning they have left, they resort to pranks and unprovoked violence. Selfies get old quick.

After four black coffees, I just had an epiphany! I haven’t been canceled for going on about Albert Bourla or Rochelle Wallensky, but for being, well, not as photogenic as Nguyen Qui Duc, Phong Bui or lê thi diem thúy! What’s up with the lower case, Thúy? As for Tyga, he’s in a league by himself.

A boy just walked in with a black and white striped outfit that accentuates his slimness. He’s carrying a male purse that looks just like a vintage radio. Dangling silvery earrings frame his unsmiling, porcelain like face, so delicate. Even alone, he’s afraid to fart, I’m sure. “Golden Orchid” it says on his back.

[Nguyen Qui Duc in Tam Đảo, as published in his New York Times obituary on 12/6/23]

[Phong Bui, editor of the Brooklyn Rail, as published in the New York Times on 11/1/15]

[lê thi diem thúy, as photographed by Random House]

[half-Vietnamese rapper, Tyga]