Fish Outta Water

Splashing All the While

The dry Summer heat of Utah splashed on my skin, searing orange kaleidoscope dreams through my closed eyelids. I was 18. Freshly so, I bounced outta my home beach town less than a month after turning full blown cigarette buying old. Leaving Hawai’i felt like my time to finally exist in my own story. The islands are beautiful, wonderful, with all the trappings of a dream. And all the memories of a nightmare.

A year ago I had visited Provo, Utah for the first time. The towering red mountains looked like they were set ablaze when the sunset hit them. I wanted to be set ablaze. To burn my loneliness to the ground and rise a phoenix. Or, at least, just be with my Aunt Nene.

I met her on that trip. My birth-mother’s little sister. We the family call her Nene, after the state bird of Hawai’i. It was a jarring introduction, to say the least. We moved the same, felt the same, could nearly read each other’s thoughts and make each other laugh with entire conversations had in a glance. She is my soul-mate, 10 years my senior, and I finally felt home.

Being adopted is a lot like being a fish raised in a birds nest. I was taken care of by my family (the ones who adopted and raised me), absolutely. I ate that spit-up food like the best of ‘em, and it was given with heaps of love.

It was also very clear from beginning to end that I was not hatched from the same eggs. The nest would graze against my scaly flesh, flaying my protective little scales off. I spent my life watching them fall, shimmering to the ground. Meaningless and in the way whilst perched on this branch. The things that would have shined with beauty in my ocean had no place in the world I was in now. I was emotional, I was loud, I was fantastical and imaginative, I was excitable and magical, I was different. Biology is a real visceral experience when your nature and nurture differ so deeply.

As my siblings were pushed from the nest to take flight I waited eagerly for my turn. Figuring I would spend my life trying to live up to their expectations. Flapping my little fins like wings and praying I’d somehow fly.

And then I went to Utah, and met Nene, and saw that I could be loved and wanted by someone like me. Saw that it wasn’t too late and all my scales weren’t gone and I didn’t need to hide them and maybe I could even feel what it feels like to live with my very own family of fish! To be accepted in all of my weirdness. To be as happy as she seemed, with a pretty simple life.

And so, I changed course. After 13 years in one of the most prestigious schools in the country, who crafted us so carefully, with all the trappings to successfully shoot us into the best of the best universities built to give us platforms of meaning through a hold on classism, I enrolled in an open-enrollment trade school in its first year of being an official university. My target moved from Boston to Utah and my life became my own again. As I was pushed from the nest, I tucked my fins in and dove straight for the ocean. Slipping into a life I never could have expected. One I was adamantly removed from at the get go.

I had considered Virginia Beach, where my birth-mother was. But gosh, I really hated it in those flat lands. And these mountains, lord! If you haven’t seen the Uinta mountains I pray you find a means to. Skateboarding on a longboard down the Provo River Parkway Trail is truly the most invigorating experiences I’ve had to date.

As excited as I was for my newly adult-sanctioned body, I was also still very much a child. Not that I knew that then, of course. I had always been told I was wise beyond my years and had the soul and eye contact of an ancient. I ate that vomit up, too. However brilliant or creative or ancient I oozed I was barely 18. In a relationship with a 24 year old man who I’d been seeing on and off for 5 years. Yeah, did I mention vomit?

He moved with me, into a little bedroom in Nene and her husband’s home. Before we were there a month he had a lady friend visit whom he hadn’t seen in years. As he and my aunt waited in the car we ducked into a Utah liquor store to pick up some party essentials for the short visit. If you’ve never been to Utah, you might not understand how serious they take their liquor sales. A place largely populated by the LDS (aka mormons, aka prudes, aka controlling and divisive folks), it has a lot of laws around libations. They only sell liquor and regular wine and beer at these really sterile, small, pharmaceutical-esque locales. I say regular because the grocery stores sell beer with a lower alcohol content. That’s right! They get factories to make an especially lesser form of beer just for their grocery stores. They also do not sell it on Sundays or a large portion of the night. And no one under 21 is allowed inside these liquor store establishments. They take it verrrry seriously. I did not understand this, completely. I used my fake ID to get in.

I didn’t even need a fake ID back home. I would buy alcohol from small convenient stores with a smile at aunty behind the counter who’d throw in a pack of gum and ask my 14 year old ass to promise I was old enough.

Safe to say, that’s now how it went down in my new town. As the cashier rung up my $7 bottle of Sutter Home Moscato (the sugary choice alone a clear sign of immaturity– a brand introduced to me by my birth mother) I smiled and handed her my ID. It was a good one! California made. A real one, actually. With my picture, even. Just all the other details were bunk. It was an un-requested gift made for me by my ex who went to USC years ago and joined a frat. He had this side hustle going, and with access to this high quality product he wanted to bestow me with the scandalous options only a fake ID can give you. He sent it in the mail, and I rarely used it. But here I was, with three people in their mid to late 20s at my disposal, using the damn thing. Was I trying to impress my boyfriend, who sat in the car? Surely. Acting as grown as his 25yo gal pal as I waltzed beside her into the building. I’d bought alcohol there before, actually. And successfully! And countless times back home. I didn’t give it much thought. Oye. Ignorance is not always bliss.

I was barely 5’2” and 100 lbs. Petite as can be with a round face and the essence of youth sparkling on the outskirts of my aura. I am 31 now and still get carded with the cashier’s full intention to bust me.

She asked if she could call California to verify my ID. I called bullshit and kept bluffing, “Sure!”

She went to a phone, and not 30 seconds later a police officer walked out from behind the scenes and put me in handcuffs.

And off I went to jail.

In the back of the car I squirreled my little wrists out of the cuffs. Only to immediately panic and shove them back in. As the officer let me out of the car I mentioned it, “You know, you didn’t make these very tight. I actually got out of them.” What on earth was I doing?! Being 18 and a snarky, scared creature. That’s what.

They logged and bagged and concealed everything I had on me. They ridiculed me and scoffed at my story and watched me get naked and dressed and took my picture and my fingerprints and my eye brow piercing. They gave me a little survival kit for the inside. A comb, soap. Things like that. I broke off a tooth of the comb and jammed it into the hole above my left eye.

My cell mates were several other women. We shared a toilet in silence and our grief in pieces. We were given small plates of food. The cornbread was okay, the rest total slop. One of my cell mates was particularly beautiful and reminded me of a girl I knew back home. Big, brown eyes that sloped downward in earnest. Long, straight, black hair with tan skin and fleshy lips. She was coming off heroine and her boyfriend would pick her up when she made bail. I listened to her cry and scream and moan through the shakes all night.

They let us out of the cell to mingle in a larger cage a few times a day. We could watch a tv there that was drilled into a corner high up above us. I did some yoga on the cold concrete floor. “Tequila!” was my nickname. The guards came up with it on my way while they joked about my attempt to buy booze and saw how little I was. I now realize they probably also thought I was of Mexican descent. I am half Chinese, but don’t look it. Just look… other. The other in this area were the Mexicans and so that was the assumption. Wherever I go, I’m just… other.

“Tequila! Outside!” We got a little bit of time in fresh air. Whilst sitting in a 4x4 foot cage. I looked up through the fencing and saw a bird winging through the breeze above. I could feel freedom for the first real time, because I didn’t have it. I was aching with hollowness and absorbing so much so quickly. I mostly kept to myself as I took it all in. This experience. This threat to my future. Not a month after 18… not a month out of the nest… It was a lot to take in. I did make one new friend inside. Her name was Bridgette. Bridgette was mousy and small, with stick-straight orange hair that thinly cascaded just past her shoulders. Her pasty-white face peered at me from behind a pair of black framed glasses that looked so much a part of her she must’ve come out the womb with them on. She introduced herself with conviction. She needed a way out and maybe I could help. I filled up the small piece of paper I was provided with her details. Maybe when I found a bail-bondsman to get myself out I could buy her car with the graduation gift money I had and she could use that to barter with a bailbondsman herself! I was eager to help! And glad for the bubbly and determined company.

It was a poor plan with a sketchy stranger and I am grateful that my aunts stole all of these details from me as soon as I put them down on the outside so that I didn’t stay in touch.

In jail they only let you call a number you know by heart. With cell phones having already become a way of life, I didn’t know any besides my home phone number back in Hawai’i. At some point I felt I just needed to hear a familiar voice. So I called it. 808-263-7263. At the edge of the larger room we were allowed to mingle in, I hunched my back and leaned my ear into the phone receiver in a mess of shame and hope. After a couple rings, I heard my Mom answer in her very sweet and sing song voice, “Hello?”

You have received a call from Utah County Jail. To accept this call, press 1

Oh. My. God. Dess. I did not realize they would inform the receiver where I was calling from. I could the terror watering in her mouth. She called my Father, “Ken! Ken!” He got on the phone. I explained what happened… trying to downplay the whole thing with a casual tone and anecdotal storytelling, “I was just trying to buy a seven dollar bottle of wine!”

“Seven dollars! Why are you spending money on alcohol!”

Jesus. I really can’t overestimate my Father’s frugality. He was born during WWII and grew up in poverty as the single child of a train conductor and housewife in dusty Tuscon, Arizona. When the now 2nd biggest city of the state was barely being decreed a city at all.

Eventually, I got out of there. Did my time, paid my dues, lost a lot and learned some too. Since then, I’ve been hard pressed to do anything that might have me lie. As folks start using fake vax cards left and right I can’t help but worry for them. I refuse to stoop to a level of disguise. I wish I had been living in my truth back then, when I was 18. Playing like an 18 year old instead of trying to fit into a world that was legally not for me. I did a lot of that when I was young. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned to love wherever I belong. And adhering to restrictions is one way of finding those places. Not hiding who I am, or mingling with folks who don’t want me in my truth.