My Grandmother's American Accent.

Let me count the words.

There's Hello. Bye bye. Cheese. My grandmother also recently acquired the name of the nationwide book store chain: Borders.

Of course these words sound nothing like they should--with the exception of 'Bye bye'. You see, in Mandarin, certain tones and syllables that are prevalent in the English language--for instance the 'ruhr' in words like ratio and retrovert and retarded--are like a mystery to us folk. Rivalry is the ultimate in tongue-twisting diction--even I can't churn it out on a consistent basis.

But 'Bye bye' works. It's her best English word. She uses it on more than one occasion on most days. I'm pretty sure she's proud of it. 'Hello' squeezes out like 'Hurroh' and cheese is accented with a staccato beat that sounds forced and constipated. The two-syllabled good night is broken into four pieces, churning the ignivomous rage in any frat-boy closet racist.

But I'm pretty sure 'Bye bye' was the first word she learned and, in fact, spoke to me in English.

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When I saw my grandmother as a child, I was always elated. She would never bring me toys, but she would bring me grandma or pou-pou, as we would call her. She had the most distinct smell, as if she was part of those hazy Hong Kong dramas, with the flying warriors doing their flying fights in mid-air--the ones playing in the back room of a musty Chinatown Laserdisc store.

Usually, these stores would have porn in them. I remember this, because I also remember being very curious as a kid. I wouldn't say horny, but perhaps in a sick narcissistic, self-violating way, I was. I remember trying to make the quickest glance, always peering towards my father or mother or ugly storekeeper through my peripherals, terrified that my pre-pubescent fantasies of videotape voyeurism was to be found out or ridiculed.

There would be two 'worst of alls' to this plot if I were ever to be found out. (Actually, I was found out by my horrified mother once, who put me to shame for popping in the old man's Showgirls on a rainy schoolday morning. I took the day as my last and when I came out of my 7th period Accelerated Reading class, I was to the brink of tears. Nothing happened though.)--

--My father would scold me in English: it was better this way, the storekeeper would know half the words anyways. My dad was keen in public sociology in these ways--in front of my friends, he would scream at me in Mandarin. Terrifying, to say the least.

--Or they would tell my grandmother. And I would be shamed to the depths of shame for the rest of my life.

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I've kind of grown up with porn. In fact, I guess all of us have in some way, at least my guy friends. I remember catching a peek at late-night HBO, through the crack of my bathroom door. A sly fellow I was, leaving the showerhead on, peering at the full-length closet mirror while the reflection of my uncle's grotesque television taught me the way of the American bossom. That was until, I almost passed out from the tremendous heat from the steam.

But I could never look at Asian porn, or 'oriental' smut for the pron-gen purists. At first, I thought I was just a boob guy, turned off by the flat-chested, light-skinned sluts making themselves available for my every digital desire. In fact, I never even found them attractive in real life. For some time, I tried donning the crotch-rocket look, but I never found the full effect of my double cricket antennae bangs or hand-me-down Jnco jeans. So I left that phase and stuck with other things. American things. Football, nachos, and white girl porn.

But as I grew older, so did these oriental smuts. They grew older and I grew fonder. I now knew of why my white counterparts were so infatuated of them. Their soft features; their dark hair; their closet oriental smuttiness.

So for a month, I tried out Asian porn.

Bad news bears. Very bad news.

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So as I sit here, I look at my grandma, dying and breathing through tubes. The caffeine is wearing off slowly and it shows. I cannot help but stumble in expressing how I feel, at this certain time, when my pou-pou is melting away. Stroke runs in our family. I've never heard from anyone how a stroke feels, but I can imagine it. Like the air is knocked out of you. Like everything goes white. And you see something in the distance so beautiful that you die in the moments in which you are infatuated. Like that sweaty, steamy, pre-pubescent bathroom, in clear view of inverted porn and big fake analog TV tits. Like the water that falls into your lungs when all you can do is look up, where there is air.

I couldn't watch asian porn because of the fucking accents. They drove me insane. They reminded me of my aunts, of my cousins, and god-forbid, if I ever had a sister, probably my sister. But most of all, the accents reminded me of my grandma, my pou-pou. They reminded me of innocence behind those loving eyes, ones that had seen wars and refugees and distant lands and flying warriors. She had seen countless stories and had forgotten all of them. There was no more scent to her that was pleasing. All I smell is her dying and the crisp white hospital sheets in this goddamn hospital. In the elevator on the way up I was stuck in the box with some fake-blonde bitch with even faker blonde tits. The whole way up I wondered who was enjoying that silicon. Probably some fake blonde asshole who still watched oriental smut while his fake American inverted girl lay in bed with other men on her mind. I wanted to throw up.

So that's when I gave up on porn. The whole thing. It wasn't the fantasies that attracted me to it. It was their eyes, the way they looked at you. But it was as fake as that blonde's boobs or all the fake accents that pleased men as they turned up their headset volume while they took a shit in their girlfriend's bathroom. I wonder if they turned on the showerhead as well. But it was fake. The porn was fake. Because as soon as the camera was off, they were off. They probably shut their eyes and leaned back their head to stretch their cum-splattered necks. To look up and wonder silently why the fuck they just fucked some random dude with a name like Damon Revolver or Andre 3-millionth. They wonder why they don the accents. They wonder what their grandma would think.

I bet they throw up sometimes too.

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My grandma didn't have last words. Because that's how it usually is. But I guess it would be in her best American accent, speaking her best English word. And I would love it because it wouldn't be fake. It would be real. As real as her musty clothes. As real as the memories I will never forget. As real as her accent. Every syllable, every word.