Suddenly, this rain.1
Two weeks ago, we were in Hanoi.
We snag the last table in Mrs. Minh’s living room—of which there are three or four total, low to the ground with bright plastic stools that force you into a squat.
It’s stone quiet in Mrs. Minh’s living room, except for the occasional clinking of chopsticks and the slurping of pho—the clearest broth you’ve ever seen, true Northern Vietnamese pho, garnished simply with cilantro and chives and nothing else.
No one is talking, as if we’re all paying hushed reverence to the god of good meals.
We take our shoes off before entering the small, obviously lived-in space. To our left is a den full of people—Mrs. Minh’s family, presumably—making change and washing out pots and watching TV. To my right is a particle board bookshelf with dragons and buddhas and the practiced smiles of family photos. Past Vika’s shoulder is a cardboard box full of empty Japanese whisky bottles.
We sit on the plastic stools and are brought two steaming bowls right away—there’s no menu, Mrs. Minh serves only this—along with savory Chinese donuts for dipping.
The frenetic, pent-up sounds of the Old Quarter are right outside, a million motor bikes hissing and burping and politely honking just past the unmarked alley we turned down to get here—but I don’t hear or smell the city, not the exhaust or the crackling pork or the little old ladies hawking bitter melons from their shoulder packs.
Mrs. Minh herself was once a street vendor, but the cops kept busting up her small stand, so she moved the whole operation into her living room, where she continues to this day.
Tonight, we’re celebrating—it’s our last night in Hanoi, the last night of our honeymoon, and it’s our four-year anniversary.
I gaze into the impossibly clear broth like it can predict my future, and feel nothing but gratitude.
On nights like these, death feels obscure—so far beyond imagining it might as well be fiction. And here’s Mrs. Minh smiling at us, her eyes crinkling like origami paper, a physical reminder not to give up, to find another way when the old one’s stopped working.
There’s so much uncertainty and violence in the world, so much waiting and struggling and silence, but then, as poet
writes, “Every love story starts in want.”Not exactly a love story but The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler is so wonderfully ordinary. I kept waiting for a grisly surprise—which sort of happens once—but mostly everything works out fine—just this white family carrying on throughout the decades, helmed by a miserable couple.
We all know couples like this, especially from our parents’ or grandparents’ generations, who barely disguise their contempt for each other but stay together anyway, for money or obligation or spite.
Tyler’s writing is so crisp—like a single blade of grass after a sun shower—everything just vivid and alive. I envy that clarity. My own writing is like morse code—dots and dashes and beeps that I later fill in with dander, with hopes of not destroying the rhythm.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I should go back to reading rom-coms soon, which helps me get in the mood for my own, but instead I checked out a revenge book from the library, The Fetishist, by Katherine Min, based on this sex scene:
… All this should have registered as ecstasy, as ratcheting excitement, but it felt to Daniel curiously distant, like poor cell phone reception from some remote location. The harder he fucked the girl, the less he felt her. She dissolved beneath him, fading to transparency like a coy ghost. He fucked her, and there was Sigrid with the moving van. He fucked her and there was Alma on the Ponte Vecchio. He fucked her, and fucked her, and there was the broad white wall, minus the Milo Kretz, and it was no longer the girl who was dissolving, but himself.
I’m also excited, speaking of Almas, about Katrina Carrasco’s sequel, Rough Trade, which comes out next week. It stars Alma Rosales, a bisexual, kinky, mixed-race, gender-switching former spy slash opium smuggler during the Gold Rush-era. Like, I don’t even care what she does in the book because take my money.
You should read the first book too, The Best Bad Things, which is tempestuous and sexy in a way you almost never see in queer stories. Like, it’s a little gross, and I mean that as high praise—sex is a little gross—and the writing is tender but never sweet.
It reminds me a little of this definition of beauty from Rilke’s Duino Elegies: “Beauty is nothing but / the beginning of terror that we are still able to bear.”
I’m guilty of doing the opposite in my own books—where the sex is flawless and we all come at the same time and two strangers magically know how to touch each other in the precise way they need and bliss is this and so on.
But, I don’t mind. Escapism is a drug and I’ll peddle that hope til the cows come home and judge me for my weird sex!
I also can’t wait to get my hands on this book of poetry by January Gill O’Neil—Glitter Road. Simmer in this soup:
Think of me as a gift you’re unsure how to open.
“Rain” by Jack Gilbert
Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.
I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.
So many great book recommendations and insights here, Anna - thank you.
Great post. So many quotable quotes!