Life Experiences

I get this question all the time, usually from people who either don’t know me at all, or know my sister and then, by association, learn that I exist. “What’s it like?” they ask, as if I’m living inside some bizarre reality TV show called Model Sibling: The Ugly Duckling Edition. Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to disappear. Sometimes, honestly, I want to answer with brutal honesty, because nobody ever talks about this stuff for real.

So here it is.

[Read more…] about What It’s Really Like to Have a Model Sister When You’re Ugly

People hear “private investigator” and immediately think of trench coats, fedoras, or maybe a shadowy figure parked outside a seedy motel at 3 AM, snapping blurry photos. In reality? Most of the time, I’m just another guy in the crowd, blending in at a restaurant or loitering in my car with a cold coffee, waiting… and waiting… and waiting.

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You ever wake up after three hours of broken sleep and try to function like a normal human being? That fog, that stiffness in your joints, that feeling like your brain is booting up on a 20-year-old computer? That’s my baseline—on a good day.

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Son, love is… strange. The very first time you ever feel it, it’s like a whole new world has been opened. Your head starts spinning like a propellor on a plane, your heart soaring just like that aircraft. You can construct beautiful sentences in your head, but the second you start talking to this girl, they get jumbled up and you end up stammering out a combination of mixed up words. Those words start winding around your brain and pulling a knot, making it impossible to think, and you eventually end up walking away, your cheeks as red as the blood that your heart is pumping through your body at a million beats per second. And it’s beautiful.

[Read more…] about How Would You Explain Love To A 12-Year-Old

There’s a moment in every Asian child’s life—usually somewhere between age six and the first time you’re told you “disrespected the family” by having a B+—when you realize your life is less of a coming-of-age story and more of a Cold War spy thriller, except you’re both the sleeper agent and the bomb.

[Read more…] about I Am the Embodiment of My Parents’ Dreams, and That’s Why I Wake Up Screaming

There are moments in life — small, odd, sticky moments — that lodge themselves in your memory like a shard of glass in the carpet. You step on them occasionally, when you’re not expecting to. You’re not bleeding, not really. But the pain still feels real.

[Read more…] about Confessions Of A Guy Who Wants His Leg Amputated

What was the worst crime that someone was executed for while you were working there?

While we weren’t given any information on the inmates, sometimes certain inmates would stick out in my mind that I’d go home and find the information. The worst I found was one guy that killed a child, skinning it while it was still alive. I tried not talking to him anymore.

[Read more…] about Confessions Of A Death Row Correctional Officer

I found out about the addiction on a Tuesday. It was late, around midnight, and I had taken his phone because the Ring camera was down and someone crashed their Tesla into a neighbor’s bougainvillea. There were Snapchat notifications. I opened one. I wasn’t expecting the digital equivalent of self-immolation.

[Read more…] about “My Husband Spent $200,000 on Financial Domination”

I wasn’t supposed to be a parent. Not in any tragic, infertile, pining kind of way. Just—fundamentally. Structurally. Like a building not meant to hold that kind of weight. I didn’t fantasize about names or bedtime stories or watching little league games in the sun. I never stared at babies in restaurants. I was fine. Flatline content. But I was also bored. And boredom is dangerous when it wears the mask of ambition.

[Read more…] about I Thought a Child Would Fix Me—He Broke Me Instead