Photo at right: From L to R: Kelly Tsai, Ed Bok Lee, myself, Bao Phi, Marlon Esguerra (Asian American Writer’s Workshop, New York, 2007)

I first met Kelly Tsai in like 2000 or 2001 in Chicago through Gina Magsombol. She came to this workshop I was part of, and when she walked in without saying a word, in my mind I was like “that must be Kelly.” We later hung out in outdoor seating at a bar and drank Goose Island IPA. For some reason, I subconsciously thought we had the same birthday, even though we’re five months apart; I still always think that too.

I first met Bao Phi around then too. I was in Minneapolis for work, and we had some things in common – we had a mutual friend (Celine), the spoken word thing, the pissed off Asian guy thing – so he swung by and we went out for Chinese food. While waiting for him out in the cold, 5 members of the Roots crew walked out of the very hotel I was staying at. Later, we stopped by his crib, which was basically the Chinatown of St. Paul. There was like 6 Asian people living together, which was close to the highest concentration of Asians in the city.

So those are my first memories of meeting these two great friends. The reason why it matters is that, even though I count them as family, we haven’t really spent that much time together. With the friends I see every day, I can’t necessarily remember when we first met. But the ones I sometimes cross paths with on the road, you know, each time you see them, it’s kind of a big deal. It’s like every time we do a show together, we have to update each other on all the grand life events – the wonderful and difficult – and cram it into a night’s worth of talking. So those moments are filled with everything, and naturally stick out in your memory. It’s not that they’re more important or anything like that – it’s just that when you only see each other for a day at a time every few months or even years, each one of those meetings is like an EVENT.

Photo at left: From L to R: Kelly Tsai, myself, Bao Phi trying to order food (Hotel Room, ECAASU, New Brunswick, NJ, 2009)

So this past weekend, it really was an event, because I got together with both of them to perform at ECAASU. And I guess the point is that it felt like old times. I’ve been doing this spoken word thing for close to a decade, and both of them have been at it even longer than me. And even though I haven’t shared a stage with Kelly since probably 2005 or so (?), it was mad natural to do it. We even did round robin style – with all of us on stage for each others pieces. That’s some early-20s isht right there son! I loved it!

Anyway, timing was an issue, and none of us got to do the set we all expected to do, but you know, we managed to accurately represent ourselves. Unofficially, we were calling ourselves KGB. Officially, let’s pretend I didn’t tell you that.

After the show, we went on an adventure to get dinner, and wound up eating subs in our hotel room at 1AM. (I had a “Fat Darryl,” which sounds disgusting, but was actually wicked delicious.)

Also I should mention, the Rutgers folks put on a fresh-to-def conference. The performance venue was absolutely beautiful, and they took care of us real good. I know handling travel for three stank-ass poets from three different cities flying in and out at different times over three days is a pain. I hate to do this and leave anyone out, but James and Jodie were great, as well as Laurence for being really committed to bringing us in, and other ECAASU staff/volunteers I met included Nick, Matt, Nilam, Caspar, Fiona, and the brother who picked me up from the airport whose name I forgot; I know I left people out, but I was up way past my bedtime Saturday night, so please excuse my brain hiccups.

Please send me photos if you got them!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 1:25 PM and is filed under show recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.