But I couldn’t not tell her what I’d been thinking.

I told her what was going down with my uncle and grandma.

What my mom said about the temperamental bent of half of my genetics. How that quality, of suppressing feelings/emotions, was, in her eyes, quintessentially Japanese.

“I mean, don’t you think that could explain stuff? Why I can’t ever sleep next to you? Why I can’t rest until I do something? Finish the book? Prove my worth?

“Like, that’s an aspect of my upbringing I can’t ignore: it was always pack your shit, nix your friends, keep it moving. That bomb hit but forget about it, we gon’ keep pushing. Go out into the yard and find a bamboo stick to keep fighting with.

“And I’m even not saying it’s bad,” I continued. “It just is. Is why I’m still pushing on this Art Shit. Even though everything is getting bombed to shit.

“I feel like being more aware of my tendencies could help me calibrate them. Prevent me from fucking up my shit, my relationships, before they get out of hand.

“Like better understanding Japanese culture/temperament is key to that.”

Ex bae mighta just been stressed about how much grad school reading she had to do by nightfall. Been annoyed that I was ranting so unboundaried at her.

But she hit me all scripted like “So you’re saying you have specific traits due to your ethnic background?”

“I mean. Well yeah.”

“That’s racist.”

“You tryna tell me there are no temperamental differences between your whiteness and anyone else’s cultures?”

“Well that’s how people justify racism.”

“Bro—Japan was a closed country until 1865. No one entered or exited. For centuries. Off on this isolated island. When people go to Japan they marvel at how random their customs. How strange, to them, their social quirks. Bae—you ever been to Japan?

“That’s what I fkng thought.”

And that ended that.

Ended maybe much more.

Didn’t occur to me till later that my preoccupation with my hapa-ness distracted me from the deeper issue: I was getting money from my family and was talking about moving in with V, rather than using it towards her, towards us, in the natural next step in our half-decade-long relationship.

Bc of course we were above such basic-ass customs as cohabitation, ‘marriage’…

•

We passed the Giant supermarket on Baltimore where I stocked up on final rations for the first leg. The Target I dipped into, as the sun set that first night, for the bug spray Rite Aid didn’t end up having. Ryden started telling me about his relationship.

Relationships.

He was dating a lady out in Brooklyn whom he knew from college; they’d visit each other on alternating weekends, as they were able. As their jobs allowed.

But they were ‘open.’

Ryden also seeing his ex, who lived in Philly.