Somebody from somewhere

An exploration of tourism and localism

What is your name? Major? Pronouns? Hobbies? Where are you from?

For two in-state Berkeley students, this question prompts a game of ping pong. The paddles inch towards each other, moving faster and faster. SoCal, LA, a neighborhood, a school, a point of contact two degrees away. They zoom in until the details become microscopic to my naked, out-of-state, human eye. But to them it is pleasant and comfortable and familiar. At the end they will smile and exclaim “what a small world!” and feel closer to one another.

Waverly, where are you from?

The east coast.

Oh! Where?

Delaware.

Is that … a state?

The blank expression tells me that I zoomed in too far, too fast. I can see the uncomfortable surprise, the uncertainty, the unfamiliarity. Zoom out.

It’s south of New York.

Ohhh! 

Delaware means nothing to most people. It’s a 4 and a half hour drive from New York — a drive which bleeds beach towns into highway foliage into stained city sidewalks, a drive my eyes have seen many times over. My eyes have seen the mood swings of the city: stripped down in the sticky humidness of an east coast summer, bundled and adorned in holiday attire, chirping and dethawing in the spring. But to say that I am a New Yorker is not even a misunderstanding. It is a claim to fame that is simply untrue, a lie, a misdemeanor, an offense to the locals who stand in as the rooted trees in a concrete jungle.

See, there is an unspoken precedent that to be from New York is to be from somewhere. The city that never sleeps. The Big Apple. It’s a center of opportunity and excitement, and that makes every New Yorker a somebody. As we navigate the subway, my friends look to me as if I am a local. What would we do without Waverly here?  I find myself stepping into the role of a resident, familiar with the streets and public transit and geography of Manhattan. I bring them to the Utopia Bagels on Lexington and 34th. I recommend my favorite beauty store in K-town. Most of me revels in the recognition, the opportunity to show what years of weaving in and out of the city have taught me. But I am a princess sleeping on an unknown pea. There is a lump somewhere unplaceable, a tumor growing in my subconscious. It is the small, nagging feeling that I am a faker. I’m a nobody from nowhere pretending to be somebody from somewhere. 

Since leaving Delaware, I have grown to love it. As they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder. However, it is a part, if not the entirety, of the human condition to want to feel special. We grip onto the strands of our identity which differentiate us, yank them into the center of ourselves, give them enough attention until we question who we are as individuals without them. And so I find myself desperate to prove that, here in New York, I am not like everyone else. I am not a tourist. I am better than a tourist. And in an internal struggle against no one but myself, I am clawing

grabbing 

grasping 

for straws.

For pieces of evidence from my past which prove that I am somebody from somewhere.

Decades of honeysuckle

The first time we drove into New York, my mother still called me bumblebee. She says she still remembers me looking out the car window as a baby, eyes glued to the city lights. That’s what I forgot to mention about the drive. Before you hit the stained sidewalks, you see the city sparkling, and it makes up for the lack of stars. And it is the nature of the night which makes the bright brighter, the city more vast, the eyes wider. 

Bumblebee is an apt name because every time I return to the city, I am buzzing. In every encounter a new flower trembles and wakes — each a honeysuckle I picked apart, ate, and savored as a child. When I am honest with my Delawarean origins, I am pushed to belittle the garden to nothing. What hurts the most in this denial is that as much as I have seen the city in her complexity, she has seen me in mine. She has seen my family visit the Christmas market in Bryant park year after year. Seen my sister and I bake brownies in a Queens apartment at 2 AM and eat all the edges before the morning. Seen me awake screaming from a nightmare, breathless on a lumpy futon. Seen me nearly faint on the Brooklyn Bridge. As I stayed with my brother throughout the summer, she was able to see me grown, tipsy in jazz clubs and studying in the Stavros library. She has seen me smile and buzz and cry and scream, held me throughout time, borne witness to my vulnerability and nakedness. 

During our short weekend trip, my parents make the drive up the coast, insisting they treat our group to dim sum. Good Chinese food is the #1 thing they miss while living in Delaware. I find myself placed in a familiar scene, at a circular table in a loud, crowded restaurant. Busy carts buzz around me. My dad orders everything because they apparently treat you better if you speak Cantonese. I hear my mother over the din.

Wilson, get me those durian pastries. Find something vegetarian for Gia. If you see the tripe pass by, grab it!

When he orders, I realize for the first time in my life that I have only ever heard my dad speak Cantonese in Chinatown, Manhattan. Even though I was not born here, he was. And even though it is not my history to take pride in, this is one of the straws I show to people as evidence of my roots. Before my eyes, my father turns into a bumblebee who has honeysuckle of his very own. Together we create a field that spans across time and space, across decades, across lifetimes. When we return to this place, the place of his birth, the place where his father ran a Chinese restaurant for years, does he face himself as I do? When he sees his reflection, does he see somebody from somewhere?

Deluge

Over the course of our trip, I feel the mental weight grow heavier — the weight of pretending to be something I am not. With it comes a strange guilt, trailing behind me like a floor length cape, sweeping along the city streets. Carrying it all transforms me into a desperate madman. As if in search of a diagnosis for symptoms, I crave a model, an explanation, a way to visualize my relationship to New York. 

Drip

In a bookstore in Chelsea Market, I scour the shelves, hoping some answer will magically pull me in and provide me with the mental peace I seek. 101 Things I Learned in Film School. A Woman’s Guide to Cannabis. 

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of new words for emotions. Its mission is to shine a light on the fundamental strangeness of being a human being — all the aches, demons, vibes, joys, and urges that are humming in the background of everyday life.

I spend the rest of our time there reading through each word and definition. But even in a book meant to describe the undescribed, nothing felt quite right. 

Drop

I writhe in a strange purgatory, a space between tourism and localism. Answerless questions form swarms in my head. What does it mean to be a local? As time passes, are we brought closer or further from what is genuine to ourselves? Am I merely a messenger pigeon, flying back to the places I call home? Am I a bee to honeysuckle? What am I to New York? What is New York to me?

Is it raining?

I am snapped back to reality by the sudden, torrential downpour that overtakes the streets of SoHo. Models and crews of New York Fashion Week scramble to pack their things. Hundreds of people stampede through the skinny sidewalks. We open our tiny umbrellas and shelter under a small awning of a nearby store, forced to wait out the storm, forced to take a breath. Zoom out.

I let the rain put out the fire in my head. I let myself feel the comfortable isolation of the deluge and remember that good thunderstorms are the #1 thing I miss while living in California. My hair and pants and shoes are soaked, and I am deeply and lovingly nostalgic. This place and this weather and this feeling run themselves to my core. As this rushing, chaotic scene unfolds before me, I am slowing down. I have spent our entire trip searching for New York in every shelf and window and subway car. Each of my steps have been riddled with the question of who we are in relation to each other. And in this ultimate stillness, I am finally approached by New York, herself. 

My lover

She reveals herself to me as more than a stranger, but less than a family member. She is a long lost lover. 

When I look into her eyes, they are longing and familiar. And I remember why I always find myself back at her doorstep. She truly is like a partner. Even my family adores her: my sister lived in Queens, my brother and father and father’s father in Manhattan. See, we have history — history that drips and pools across time, history that hurts to reject. She is comfortable and brilliant and buzzing, but she is not mine. After all, I am not a New Yorker. 

But perhaps there is a space to sit in between tourism and localism, stranger and family. When I accept New York as a partner of the past, I remember a fundamental fact. We are not made somebodies through romance and relationship. We are made somebodies through the ways we change and blossom and seek out the places beyond our origins. Love itself exists in the past and present and will exist in the future, but it is fluid and forever transforming.

I leave New York with one souvenir: a honeysuckle perfume. Decades of flowers and bumblebees of youth flow together. They change form. They create a somebody.

Words: Waverly Choy

Photos: Waverly Choy

Design: Khankamol Chor Kongrukgreatiyos (Jan)