Red Roulette By Shum Desmond-pdfread.net

The swim team kept me emotionally grounded my rst year. I was the only
Asian among a group of white swimmers, but I felt accepted as part of their
group. We threw parties and drank plentifully. The coach, a barrel-chested
midwesterner in his early fties named Jack Pettinger, looked out for me,
inviting me over for Thanksgiving when most of the international students were
left to fend for themselves. Coach Pettinger came to my dorm to pick me up. I
had no concept of automobile etiquette in America. In Hong Kong, my parents
never had a car. So when he drove up, I got into the backseat. “Heh, do you
think I’m your chau eur?” he barked. “Get in here with me.” In China, you
don’t sit next to the senior guy, so I thought in America you did the same. I was
trying to be respectful. Turns out, I had a lot to learn.
Because I’d completed the seventh form in Hong Kong, I entered Wisconsin
as a sophomore. At USC, Steven was on the dean’s list, so I aimed for that at
Wisconsin. My rst year I barely missed it, but I never got close again. I was
invited to a few frat parties, but each time I went I stuck out like a sore thumb—
or, at least, I felt that way. Chinese kids would only begin coming to Wisconsin
in big numbers after 2000. And this was 1989.
New to America, I was pretty clueless when it came to the latest TV shows
that always seemed to be the center of conversation. I had trouble getting—
much less cracking—any jokes. I noticed that many Americans seemed to have a
di erent view of friendship than people did in Asia. There was a u ness to
American relations. Acquaintances at Wisconsin would greet me enthusiastically
and act like we were best buddies. But if I was looking for someone to be more
substantially involved in my life, I had a nagging sense that they wouldn’t be
there.
Still, throughout my rst semester I avoided people from Hong Kong. Living
in the dormitory and working out with the team, I didn’t come into contact
with many. When I did, I tended not to make friends. Once I went to a dance
party organized by students from Hong Kong. I started speaking English with
everyone, not our native Cantonese. People thought that I was showing o and I
didn’t get invited back. In reality, I was just trying to t in as I shuttled between
the dorm, the classroom, the cafeteria, and the pool.