Kissing Outside the Lines Read online

  At the booth next to the bar was Seung, sitting with his cousin and his cousin’s girlfriend. Seung had just told his table of our last meeting. He summed up our story with his getting my number and being subsequently blown off. The girlfriend at the table said, “I know her! We just worked together and she totally looked after me.” Seung, the cousin, and his girlfriend who knew me made a fast plan for the girlfriend to lure me in and give The Giant Korean a running start at more than my number this time.

  It took me a moment to remember Breanna, the actress who had just guest-starred on my sitcom. As the lightbulb went off, so did another—illuminating how I knew Seung, who was sitting across from her. My drunken behavior came back first, then the napkin note. I wanted to run. In a moment of fleeting maturity I stayed, though, and smiled until some confidence came back to me. I chatted with them for a few minutes in hopes of seeming more presentable than when last we’d met.

  Humbly exiting to my table of alcohol-filled girlfriends, I sat next to the engaged one. I laughed at myself and whispered that I still thought The Giant Korean was cute. And that he didn’t seem too put off by my last showing. My dutiful friend was about to say some really nice things about Seung, which she was going to make up because she still didn’t know Seung very well, when the “Asian Ken doll” came in. To imagine Asian Ken, picture this: perfect, silken, shoulder-length black hair; broad shoulders; and a deep voice. This guy was one of the more beautiful humans I have ever seen. His father was Scottish and American Indian and his mother was Korean and Japanese. The jokes at our booth went like this:

  “I’m removing my IUD under this table in hopes of conceiving that man’s child in the bathroom of this bar.” “Which one of you will consider a threesome and never talk about it again—if it will help us capture that perfect creature?” “How many sake bombers does it take for one white girl to ...” You get the point. And Cosmo thinks women sit around wondering if they are wearing the “right” bra to catch a man. Ha.

  While the ladies made secret-evil plans to lure Asian Ken over to the table, I snuck away and asked him if he would sing a karaoke song with me. Two seconds later we were onstage. AK (as I went on to call him) sang wonderfully while simultaneously trying to understand why a gaggle of women were hissing at us. Three hours deeper and another buzz on, I was headed to the bar to get another napkin of love to give AK my number. For the record, it’s about three sake bombers. I sidelined myself by stabbing a few olives, as dinner, before grabbing a cocktail napkin. With a mouth full of Greek delights, I discovered The Giant Korean was next to me.

  “How are you, Diane?” said Seung.

  “Really busted!” I wanted to say. And a little intimidated, too. The Giant Korean is six foot two and has shoulders twice the size of mine. I felt like a bean out of my pod next to him and I’m almost six feet tall myself. How come you’re never mad when you catch me flirting with you and then picking up other guys? I thought about this but all I squeaked out was, “Fine, and you?”

  Seung gave me a big smile with a pause that I didn’t understand. He then humbly spoke like I was one of many ladies he was happy to exchange pleasantries with that night. “I’m good. I’m Seung, if you can’t remember my name.” I didn’t know his name, because I never use a guy’s name until I’m sure he’s sticking around. But this name came flooding back fast. “Seung—like ‘sing’ a song—I remember.” I smiled and Seung turned away. Oh, maybe he is annoyed after all, I thought, then, No! He’s turning back!

  “Did you need one of these?” Seung handed me the napkin I had reached for when my desire for olives outweighed my desire to write AK my number. I thanked him and scampered away laughing. The Giant Korean had just called me out. Cool guy.

  AK and I hung around each other for a couple of months. He was sweet and beautiful but young. I was afraid I might pull one of the petals off of his beautiful soul, accidentally, if I let the relationship go anywhere beyond occasional kissing. So for the two times my future husband witnessed me hooking up, I never even got laid. How on earth would I ever explain that?

  It was another six months before this damn engaged couple would get married. A solid year lived between their engagement party and the nuptials I wondered if Seung would attend. I left one TV show and started another in New York City. I had also started my first relationship in over a year, which didn’t begin at a bar with one of my close-this-deal-quick pickups. I was almost healthy again after having had my heart so badly broken the winter before. But would I take my new guy to the very first wedding in my party crowd?

  Nope. Too big a risk. Because, being the first to call their single days adjourned, Mr. & Mrs. Friends-of-Mine were planning an event like nothing I had ever seen before or since. Fifty friends were flown to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and put up in villas along the beach. We were asked to drink shots of tequila as a wedding toast, just before we all jumped into the ocean together—and that was just the rehearsal dinner. The weekend was destined to be epic. I couldn’t risk it on a new person. And besides, the big guy, with the shoulders and the cheekbones and all the rest was going to be in the house....

  Before leaving, we knew that the women outnumbered the men for this hot-tamale love-fest. The groom, always astounded that his girl’s friends were all single and ready to party, was inviting people he met along the way (in the airport lounges and random cities in Mexico) to just “stop by” because a gathering of his future wife’s friends was like a Miss America pageant with points given out for cocktailing abilities. As a team captain (read: “bridesmaid”—and there were, like, eleven), I decided the safest way for all these fabulous ladies to get along was for every woman to “call” a guy before landing on foreign soil.

  On the Thursday night flight to Mexico, I stood in the aisle and asked every unaccompanied woman to say out loud whom she was interested in hooking up with. This way there could be no feigning ignorance if you stepped on someone else’s Mexi-weekend fantasy. Shockingly, there was not one man-overlap in the preplan. Which I was especially thankful for because I had broken up with the “almost guy” in New York on Monday, in order to arrive Tuesday in Los Angeles unencumbered and up to the standards I used to hold myself to before being tossed like a Caesar salad by the ex-fiancé. After hearing all the ladies’ confessional crushes at thirty thousand feet, I added, “Mine is the giant Korean. You’ll know him because he’s the biggest Asian you have ever seen.”

  The deal was, any woman who called a guy had him on reserve through the rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony. If you hadn’t closed your deal by Saturday’s reception, your man was back on the open market. Clearly I hadn’t abandoned all the military training I had gathered over the past eighteen months of singlehood. I was just acting more like an officer now.

  * SEUNG AND I KISSED FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER the rehearsal dinner and I fell for him fast. As a bridesmaid I had access to the seating chart for the wedding and I rearranged all the tables to accommodate the hook-ups of the night before (particularly mine). The wedding was lovely, but it paled in comparison to the magic I shared with Seung all weekend. En route to the airport on Sunday evening, I hinted and hinted that there would be no “alone time” once we deboarded at LAX because my father was picking me up. Yet Seung Chung never asked for my phone number. Not in the air, not through customs, not at the baggage carousel, and not even after he shook my father’s hand outside the international terminal. Of course there were people to get it from, but I worried as I watched Seung roll his suitcase away from mine. I worried that my heart was going to shrink back to its normal size, after having expanded so much in one weekend.

  I woke at 5:00 AM for a photo shoot in New York the next day, without needing an alarm clock because I hadn’t slept all night, wondering why this man didn’t want to see me again. I spent six hours on the plane ride to New York, also not sleeping, mostly wondering if the wedding weekend was just payback for the two times I had tortured Seung the year before. But by the time I landed at JFK in NYC, Seung had
left me a message.

  He was asking me to dinner. He was asking for tonight. I ran to the United Airlines counter before I even returned the call, to change my flight to return to Los Angeles as soon as possible. I called Seung from a taxi as soon as I got outside. “How did you get my number?” was the first thing I wanted to ask. But I held my cool—for five seconds—and said hello first and then asked. Seung said I gave it to him. “When?”

  “When I first met you. At the engagement party.”

  Seung never asked for my phone number when we left Mexico because he had saved it for over a year, waiting until he thought I was actually interested in him before calling me. Hearing this made my spine turn to cheese dip. I slid down the well-worn cab seat into my own puddle of happiness. Seung Yong Chung owned me now, even though I couldn’t correctly pronounce any of his three names.

  Seung and I both had to work in different cities for the next few days. As each of us finished the business day, we got back on a plane to spend another night together in Los Angeles. By Wednesday, Seung was flying back to the same city in the mornings just to share a meal and a cuddle with me each night. All totaled, I spent every night with Seung from the wedding rehearsal on, for about six months.

  I LIKE TO FALL IN LOVE. And I like to give with all my heart—especially in the beginning to see how much depth the other person has to give back. As I shed each layer of my cool-girl facade, Seung more than met me halfway. He was infinitely kind and not afraid to share. And he is an amazing disco dancer. The search was over.

  One morning we walked from his beachside apartment to a breakfast eatery in the sand. There was a beautiful Asian lady having coffee outside. As we settled at our table, I was fishing for a compliment when I asked, “Are you gonna leave me for an Asian girl someday?” Seung said nothing for just a moment too long.

  “No, but this is gonna be a problem for my parents.”

  I had unknowingly hit the $64,000 question. Seung let out a volume of fears that I had no idea he had been carrying around for weeks. He began by saying, “I am supposed to marry a Korean girl.” I didn’t really understand what that could mean. Did he mean in theory, or was there an actual wedding in his future, to an actual Korean female? Seung continued, “My parents have been very clear about that my entire life.” And this didn’t make much sense, either. Did Seung Chung—a football-loving fraternity brother who could recite all the lyrics in any rap song from 1985 on—have an arranged marriage waiting in the wings? Was that even legal in America? “They are not going to easily accept this relationship. I’m most afraid they will never accept you.”

  The questions in my head stopped. It didn’t matter what all this meant because I could now see Seung was willing to fight for me. And that he was being torn in half by the idea of hurting me or hurting his parents. Whatever the outcome would be, I didn’t want the beautiful experience I was having with this man to be ruined by people I had never even met. Seung’s last sentence implied that if there was a Miss Korea lined up to marry him, he was opting out. So I opted to take care of him and understand the details later.

  I told Seung I was sorry. So sorry for what an awful feeling it must be to have this great love and a simultaneous fear of telling other people you love about it. I meant it when I then said the only problem I could foresee was for him, because at thirty-five years old I did not need his parents to accept me. They lived thousands of miles away, we were not nor would we ever be financially dependent on them, and I would be respectful to them whenever he needed me to be because I respected the great man they made. I had no interest in fighting civil rights with the aging people Seung loved most. So, if he wanted to pursue our relationship, he could take my need for a second mommy and daddy off his list of things to worry about. Seung smiled and said, “That’s good to know. Because I have a plan.”

  UNBEKNOWNST TO ME, Seung Chung already has an elaborate plan to make his parents like/accept/love/not kill me. And aren’t I great that I will support him. And aren’t I even greater for not caring about Ma and Pa Chung feeling disappointed by me without even knowing me. Yeah, maybe I’m not that great.

  I mostly find it ironic that the Chungs would judge me for not being from the same country they left. After Seung goes to sleep this night, probably relieved to have shared with me the cross he has been asked to bear, I toss and turn. What do you mean your immigrant parents—who gave up everything to be in this country, in hopes of gain for their children—won’t like me? Didn’t your mommy and daddy just win the lotto that you fell in love with an American girl who desperately loves you back? I know I could make this argument, but truthfully, the situation is so unfathomable to me that I’m kind of digging the drama. It, strangely, makes me feel sexy—in a “forbidden” sort of way. However, as a New Yorker, I also have an instinct to get some backup. Meaning, I’m dying to call my family and line them up to support the “white cause.”

  “This boy’s parents are being mean to me, Mom—because I’m white! And by the way, how come you never called us ‘white’? I thought you were so stupid when you told me not to fall in love with a black man because our children would never be accepted. Could you be right, Mom? Why didn’t you mention that other races hate white people? And would you help me with a little quid pro quo and please sweat my boyfriend a bit? Maybe acting as if he’s not up to par (even though he has a master’s degree, owns a home, a company, has a retirement package already, and is infinitely honest)? Mom?”

  Yeah, I never actually make this call. I instinctively know better than to have any conversations with my parents about my feelings “almost” being hurt. I feel comfortable in my skin—even if I am being judged for it—so I don’t really need confirmation that I am “an okay race” to love. So instead, I call a girlfriend because this is the exact conversation that girlfriends exist for. I call many girlfriends, in fact, and between us we decide that I need to seek some counsel from people who have lived through the prejudice of one American falling in love with another, whose parents see themselves as something other than American first and foremost. All my friends are sure that there must be some boundaries or steps I should be aware of before I move further in.

  This will become the understatement of the next decade in my life. LIKE MOST PEOPLE MY AGE, I have friends who are dating someone of another race. I also have friends who are married to or have children with people of another race. Yet these are not the friends I want to lay all of my possible in-laws’ baggage on, because up until now I have judged these friends’ parents for their prejudices. I have secretly wondered how much the parents’ negative influence affects their romantic union and also the children of those unions. At times I have even judged my friends for not standing up to their parents enough and just telling them to take a walk out of their lives. The last thing I want to do is expose my beautiful boyfriend’s ugly family drama to my world. I need some anonymous advice. How handy for me that aside from being blessed with girlfriends to confide in, I also have unlimited access to email.

  I’M SENDING A CASUAL NOTE to a few friends, in cities other than Los Angeles, asking if they know people raising mixed-race kids whom I might talk to about their experiences. Sort of implying: EVERYTHING IS PERFECTLY FINE in my relationship—I’m just curious about the future. This leads to many more emails explaining that I am not pregnant.

  After convincing the masses that there is no mini-Seung on board, someone throws out: “Of course—you’re writing a book on mixed-race couples. That’s so you.” Oh yes. Smile and pause. So me! Now laugh. Eventually, after all these half truths, I collect the names and email addresses of couples that have scaled racial speed bumps and survived. Someone I’ve emailed asks if I will be recording my conversations with their friend for “the book.” First

  I run to the electronics store and buy a recording device for the phone. Then I return the email, saying yes, I will be recording the interview.

  I’m well aware that it’s premature to write a book about being part of a mixed
-race couple when I am not even known to be a couple by the guy’s family—but I’m keeping my tape recorder. Because having this $25 device on gives me a justified reason to ask real questions that you can’t normally ask people about their relationships. With my three-button, handheld machine and a list of strangers’ email addresses, I am going to wrap up this little “your race versus my race” dilemma in no time.

  Along with the cyber addresses, my people have given me CliffsNotes versions of the friends they are recommending I speak to. One of the selling points about Lisa and Dave, besides their two sons, is that Lisa’s mother was “really angry when she was going to marry a black man.” An injustice with a side of pain and suffering, which seems to have a happy ending since this couple is still together, is perfect! I ask my friend to set up a time when I can call Lisa. Sooner, rather than later, because I’m really excited to talk to her. Until I realize I have no idea how to do this.

  “So, I hear your mother doesn’t like black people?”

  Yeah, that’s not going to get me far.

  As an actress I’ve been interviewed a lot. When famous people I work with are doing something deviant and I get a call from a reporter, the last thing I want to give that reporter is a shocking comment to be used out of context against someone I know. That’s the loyalty I feel for a coworker I’ve known for a year or so. I am attempting to ask Lisa intimate and embarrassing questions about her mother and the father of her children.