The Indicator x The Student: “I Write American”

What I am about to tell you is completely fiction. I never met a man named Stewart — or as we called him, Stewie — and I never tried to make him mine.

Never in my life have I been on a road trip. That’s some American shit, and I’m not American, only read tons of American fiction, and I mean Oregon-to-Massachusetts-lorry-truck tons. Never been to America, don’t know if they use “tonnes” or “tons,” or if they call them lorries.

So it’s all fiction, all of it, when I was on Route 9, feet on the dashboard, and Stewie, good old Stewie, suddenly turned to me and said, “Let’s not go to Amherst, let’s go to Williamstown.” Then he pulled over (I don’t know where, I’ve never been on Route 9, don’t know if there are stop lights, or cul-de-sacs, or gas stations by the road), and got outta the car. It was a cold day, early February, snow piled up where the sun did not shine. I was not in the warmest of clothes: Little black cheongsam with pink flowers, something I would only ever wear in America. Floral fishnets, high heeled boots, puffy jacket I’d thrown in the backseat. This is only relevant because I was trying to seduce him — Stewie, that is — and because he had turned off the engine and gotten out.

He walks to my door, throws it open. My arm hairs shoot out. He tosses the keys in my lap, does not watch my legs uncross: “You go.”

Every show I’ve ever watched has scenes of people driving. In “Friends,” Rachel speeds down a highway, gets pulled over. Oh, I’m sorry, Officer .… Handsome. Jumpcut. They’ve switched seats. Ross inches down the highway, gets pulled over. Oh, I’m sorry .… Officer Pretty?

I drive. I do what Stewie tells me. I have an American license, don’t worry. Though I am worried, because if I get pulled over, I’ll get deported, somehow.

I drive us up to Williamstown, off Route 9, onto Route 2, which is narrow and mountainous. We get to Greenfield, and there’s a rotary so big it doesn’t look like a rotary at all, but highway ramps pointing every which way. I miss and Stewie yells at me. We’re on some random small-town street now. It looks like Main Street, USA in Hong Kong Disneyland. Like literally, red brick and white molding and hand-painted signs, the looming ghost of a high school marching band. I try to turn into some diner parking lot and Stewie jumps: “WATCH IT.” A pick-up truck, a white pick-up truck, a white, Japanese-American Toyota Tacoma approaches — slowly, in my opinion. I could’ve made it.

Whatever. I drive into the lot, around two SUVs, then head down Main Street, USA again.

Stewie is a little older. I imagine he’s an athlete, or, as they say, a jock, and I’m a shy Chinese girl in stockings. Or, maybe, he’s a Harvard graduate student, Harvard Law School, and I’m a Radcliffe College girl studying music. He has a full-bodied mustache, unlike anything I’ve seen in real life. Lightish brown hair, striped polo shirts: He plays rugby, if they play that in America. Lacrosse? Football?

All I want is for us to be transposed to a restaurant in the south of France, tiny table on winding cobblestone. Two glasses, too many glasses, sky like Van Gogh’s starry night, scene like Van Gogh’s café terrace. Stewie and I, we’d be strangers in the Greek sense, of stranger guest-friends, familiar by proxy, my mother’s friend’s son who once spent a summer prepping me for the SATs. We’d find each other, in Arles, or Nîmes, at an American-friendly Institute of something or the other. Our second day, I’d see him, one of many white men, though one who is staring at me: “Priscilla?”

I furrow my brows.

“It’s me, Stew. Stewie,” he says, “Booth!”

I’m not the only Hong Kong girl he knows. He grew up here, you see. His grandfather wrote the famous memoir, “Gweilo,” about the experience of foreign devils in the city. It makes sense he confused me with Priscilla. We’re quite alike.

Aperitivo of peanuts and prosecco. Flirtation couched in academic discourse. We talk about technologies and time, distortions and impulse, necessity and the gods, and soon we find that the golden nets of Aphrodite have cast us into a hotel room.

At least, that’s what I imagine an American would do.

In truth, I’ve only met one American in my life. Her name is Stewart, Emily Stewart. Her father is American, her mother is not. She’d come to school and ask us what we thought of the new Miley Cyrus music video. I’d go home and google it. I watched “Hannah Montana,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “The Other Boleyn Girl.” Then, I wrote some fiction.