News & Articles

First of all, I’m white. That’s one strike against me. White guys always have a thing for Asian women. No matter what country I live in, no matter how many non-Asian women I date in my life, the mere act of me glancing at an Asian woman will produce eye rolls all around. It’s a thing.

Secondly, I live in Koreatown. Do you have any idea how douchey that seems? A white guy living in Koreatown and dating an Asian girl? That just can’t happen. I might as well be the creepy white guy in college who hangs with the foreign exchange students all day, pretending to teach them English. I don’t even have a preference when it comes to which races I date, yet to most, my situation couldn’t be more obvious if I started keeping anime charms attached to my cellphone.

Add to all this that I wear skinny jeans and have a pathetically amateurish hipster beard, and people are just going to start throwing things at me. And rightfully so. That’s strike three and four, and we’re only in the third paragraph of this column. If I were to start a band where I wrote catchy songs about Asian girls I was afraid to talk to, a wormhole might open and swallow me whole, forcing me into a parallel dimension with other people who are too obnoxious to function in the normal universe.

The topic of my life recently came up amongst friends, as it often does. As usual, the discussion went something like this:

“Nice apartment, Paul. Koreatown, eh? How many times per day do you troll the neighborhood for Asian girls? I’ll bet if you ask out 100 of them, one of them might say yes.”

While those numbers are surprisingly reasonable and greatly compel me to test out the theory, it’s not why I moved here. I’m here because it’s quiet, okay? Koreatown is peaceful. I haven’t seen anyone under the age of 60 in three months. It’s a delight. I moved here because it’s nice and affordable and I like barbequed meat that you have to cook yourself even though you’re in a restaurant that has very high prices. Okay? Is that good enough? Sheesh.

Seriously though, there’s more and it’s really awful.

Ready to throw up? I also collect Japanese toys. I know. It’s completely unreasonable. I mean, I’m not going to stop, but I want you to know that I’m adequately ashamed. I might as well complete the Creepy Asian Fetishist Checklist by becoming a cashier at a Hello Kitty store and making everyone take off their goddamn shoes before entering my apartment.

I would compare myself to Woody Allen in this situation, if he hadn’t purchased a child and then raised her to marry him. Even I have limits.

Look, I like Eastern things. I like to keep up with the trends. I own a Kaijuken Superfestival Garamon. I’m not ashamed of these things. But adding an Asian girlfriend to what is already a stereotypical existence would be a little ON THE NOSE, don’t you think? On my birthday, friends would start bringing me awkward Asian-themed things like mochi and pixellated pornography. I’d remind them that I live in Koreatown, not Japantown and they’d say, “But you asked me to bring this.”

They’d be right, because I love mochi and pixilated pornography, but the implied racism would still cause me to get a little angrier inside with each bite, my rage slowly growing into a formidable reserve. After a period of several years, the resentment would boil over, resulting in a profanity-laced tirade in which I’d say hurtful things about a famous Asian person like . . . um, I don’t know. Ichiro Suzuki? Sure, that counts. I could say something hurtful, like how he’s only able to hit singles, and how singles are basically just walks, and Lenny Dykstra used to get walked all the time and he sucked.

So that’s why I can’t date an Asian woman. Because of Lenny Dykstra. I would assume Asian women would be offended by me asking them out. You live your whole life trying to be a well-respected human being, and then you get hit on by some goony white hipster who once owned both a 1990 Dodge Daytona with a flame painted on the side and a Domo-Kun air freshener (true story). That’s just humiliating. A woman can’t repair that sort of damage to their reputation. The best she can hope for is to move to a new city where no one knows that the men she attracts are complete trash.

Look, I like Asian women. They’re very pretty. I live in Koreatown. I have a beard and skinny jeans. I also wear a plastic watch, which is just awful of me. But I’m not obsessed. I’m not the lead singer from Weezer. I’m not going to write popular music that I then use to kidnap Asian schoolgirls and make them hold extravagant boba tea parties in my basement. I won’t force them to watch old TV episodes of Ultra Q. Not on the first date, anyway. Maybe if I really like them and they use the placemat at IHOP to make me a funny hat. That might impress me enough to warrant bringing out a $50 collectors edition DVD that - if we’re being honest - only has around 10,000 uses before it wears out.

Perhaps this could work. Maybe if I move somewhere where my bank doesn’t have bonsai trees in the lobby, and I stop dressing like a guy who works at a video game startup company, and I do something on weekends other than watch old Godzilla movies while drinking Hite beer that I bought because it’s only $12 per case. Then maybe this can work.

Screw it. I can’t stop doing that stuff. This will never work.