From "Metronome"

One time that summer, Jin had grown hard while he’d been sitting on the bench next to Jake. Jake had come back from soccer practice and hadn’t had a chance to shower- and Jin had dismissed his wish to do so because he was already fifteen minutes late. They were working on scales from “The Leschetizky Method,” and Jake was anxious beneath the irritating layer of dried dirt and old sweat, too preoccupied with the urgent treasures of high school to be tied to a piano.
“I can’t wait ‘till I’m at college so I can just get up and get a beer, you know?” He turned to look at Jin when he said this. Tiny spores of dirt flecked across his forehead.
Whether it was the urgency of his odor, the idea of sharing a cold beer, or the fact that this impossible boy was good at everything he tried and gifted enough not to care, Jin felt himself growing beneath his slacks and had to excuse himself to use the first-floor bathroom. After that lesson, Jin started to see two, three men an evening in his rented rooms in the city. One time in August, right before school started, he took three strangers back to back, all of them difficult and violent and hard and so filled with rage, the last man made him bleed. Nevertheless, when he crawled into bed afterwards, Jin was consumed with regret that he hadn’t gone further.

An exclusive, all-boys school in Greenwich hadn’t been an obvious choice- but Jin felt immediately calmed when the bus left the Merritt parkway for the gentle slopes of Round Hill road. The houses were massive, but they were also elegant. There was an air of entitlement that swept through the oak trees and along the well kept paths that Jin hadn’t encountered since his childhood in Montgomery County, where his father worked in the Solutions Division of Carahsoft Technology. People didn’t feel guilty about their wealth in Greenwich the way they did in Cambridge. At Longy, Jin had been invited out at weekends or for the occasional Thanksgiving, and he was always struck by the way his friends parents went out of their way to maintain an uncomfortable relationship with most of their possessions. If Jin complimented the dinner service, he would be instructed to disregard the chips in the porcelain plates. If he made a general remark about the framework of the house, the lofty ceilings or the intricate staircase, for example, the hostess would divert his attention instead to the pile of books beneath the staircase, the dismal state of the lawn, or the limpidity of the water pressure in the upstairs bathroom. One time, on his way to a first floor powder room, he caught sight of a woman in the kitchen cooking something on the stove. She gasped when she saw him and Jin found the door to the kitchen closed on his way back from the bathroom.
In Greenwich, people found comfort in the tactile things a luxurious life afforded them. Long, winding driveways with professionally lit landscaping and outdoor chess boards with moveable pieces the size of a large dog. He’d yet to meet anyone who felt the need to apologize for the things they had, and this made Jin feel far more comfortable than the opposite scenario. After all, what did it say about him if people were constantly making excuses in his presence for the way they lived? The parents of his students didn’t know a single thing about him. The fact that he was Asian offered Jin a protective outer layer that few people felt comfortable puncturing. Jin looked different, which meant that he might be different, and no one wanted to put themselves in a position that proved the profundity of their ignorance.

From "Homemade"

When they were still in grade school, their mother told them that a good relationship was like a mathematical equation. If you did certain things, and he did certain things, you could be sure to end up with a successful marriage. After that conversation, which was the closest thing they got to the birds and bees, Sarah pulled Teresa aside and told her that their mother was talking about blowjobs and that one day, a boy would pop a pimple in her mouth.

From "Homemade"

Teresa took pleasure in knowing what was in store for her socially; she didn’t like surprises, never had, and never would. Several years ago when she was still working at Hallmark, Sarah took her out to an Italian restaurant for her thirtieth birthday. There had been three of her colleagues at the bar when she arrived. It made Teresa so uncomfortable to have them there that she had loose bowel movements afterwards for two days straight. Who knew what they usually did with their free time? The worst thing you could do to Teresa was take her by surprise. Sarah knew this about her, and sometimes, she wondered if she hadn’t organized the party out of spite.

From "Homemade"

In the past, Teresa mailed a vacuum-sealed loaf of her famous zucchini bread with a handwritten card for each of her friend’s birthdays. Well! That would make two less loaves to bake in the future.

From "Homemade"

Teresa had always had a soft spot for creative activities- rainy day “hobbies” like stenciling and paint-by-numbers. When she was little, her father worked a lot and her mother spent most of the day sleeping. Her mother’s migraines had been even worse than hers, and for weeks on end, she wouldn’t be able to eat at the table with her family because the clanking silverware made her see spots.
At first, Teresa used arts and crafts as a way to pass the time, but she came to love the way a project could turn an aimless afternoon into an exciting space within which something concrete could be achieved. These days, she was interested in rughooking. She’d found a yarn store in Stamford that gave 5% of each sale to the National Recreation and Parks Association. They sold hard-to-find brands with inspirational names like “Bitterroot Rainbow”, “Maiden’s Moss” and “Chinook”. It was delightful to be transported to far-off, humid places from the reassuring comfort of her fold-up bed. These niche brands cost more, but it was worth the mental trip. In reality, she’d never been further south than Annapolis.

From "Metronome"

The juice had a slightly tinny taste to it, one of these designer juices that involved crossing one fruit with another until you couldn’t identify one overruling taste, but rather a mob pit of competing flavors. Cranapple bananna mango madness.

From "Metronome"

One time, before a performance at Longy, a classmate gave Jin a beta-blocker to help him with his nerves. “You won’t sweat,” he said, dropping two pills into his already sweating palm. The boy’s name was Dave and he’d since gone off to work for a hedge fund in Madison, Wisconsin. And he wasn’t a boy anymore, he was a man- a man with a wife and an adjustable rate mortgage and according to his pictures on Facebook, a rheumy-eyed maltese and a four year-old boy.
The performance in question was the Spring Concert of Jin’s junior year. He was to perform Beethoven’s Septet in E-Flat, rearranged as Op. 38, and he was ready, technically speaking. He’d gotten to a place where he could play it on the T, his left thigh and right thigh standing in for two halves of the piano.
Lots of the students took beta-blockers. Acebutolol, atenolol, nebilolol. LOL’s, they called them. Laugh out louds. Jin had never taken anything for his performance anxiety. He avoided coffee the day of a concert and ate calming foods that would stay in his system- a heaping bowl of buttered rice with scrambled eggs on top.


The piece didn’t go as it should have, although Jin didn’t realize it until later at the reception when people kept their backs to him at the punch bowl. His fingers had felt heavy, and his nerve endings, numb, as if he was suffering from a particularly bad hangover. Because of this, he had been three to five milliseconds late in his articulation of the notes. And the humor, the tactile witticism that was the hallmark of the piece, Jin had thrown a comforter on top of the joy of this rare and shining thing that everyone had been looking forward to. He had kidnapped something marvelous, and no one wanted it back. Not from him, in any case. It was after this performance that Jin realized that he simply wasn’t good enough. When other students gave a poor performance, the Jaquelyn Wu’s and Tony Higgins of his junior class, people approached them with pinched looks and furled eyebrows. What….happened? There was a real sense of disquietude in the aftermath of such a letdown- the shared sentiment that the bystanders couldn’t let a rising star fall. Jin didn’t experience anything like this at the reception after his performance. People were embarrassed for him. He’d ruined the last piece of the program and left them with a bitter taste in the back of their throats that would probably end up causing them an ugly feeling of inevitability when their steak arrived medium instead of medium rare later that evening. I’ll eat it anyway. What does it matter?

From "Metronome"

There was nothing stranger than seeing the captain of the football team with eyeliner and lipstick on under the high voltage lights of the Marshall Burke Theatre. Marshall Burke’s son had been captain of the soccer team- Jin never knew him but he’d heard arresting stories from the other teachers at lunch. He used to make his maid clean up thin puddles of vomit after late-night pool parties and he once pulled a tampon out of a conquest with his teeth. Well. Now he had a hi-tech theatre named after his father and a comfy spot at Williams College. If he behaved well, he’d become soccer captain there, too. If he didn’t, his father would have to build a rec-room or a cinema. Williams already had a very nice stage.