At the resort, I clamped my boots into my skis for the first time and tried to walk to the chairlift, using the herky-jerky movements of a female Frankenstein. I saw a chair swing around and grab a couple in front of me, and I was reminded of a playground carousel from my childhood, a metal contraption that resembled a giant turntable in the sand. When I was four, a boy had invited me to get on. He started to push the carousel faster and faster, until it reached the speed required to play a 45 rpm single. I hung on to the metal rung, imitating a flag in a gale wind, until centrifugal force pried off my fingers and I flew through the air screaming.
Those were my thoughts as I faced my first chairlift. When it was Franz’s and my turn to get on, I politely invited the skiers behind us to go ahead. “Mais non,” I said in my newly acquired French. “Après vous . . . et vous et vous . . .” Franz picked me up and deposited me into the next chair, and up we went. He assured me that the initial run down would be easy. “Beginner slope,” he said.
I know now that even the smallest of inclines looks like Instant Death to a beginner, and if I ever went back to Gstaad, I’d probably laugh to see that the run was nothing but a bunny slope, a mere pimple of a hill. But then I think: Why did it take twenty minutes by chairlift to reach the top?
At the top, Franz shoved me out of the chair and I slid on my backside, a tangle of skis and poles.
“Do you really think I can do this?” I asked as he helped me to my feet.
“Ja, sure,” he answered. “No problem. Follow me.” And then off he went, with me staring after him. Three turns later, he disappeared from view, as did the twenty skiers who went around me and plunged down the hill.
Alone at the top, I stared down the mountain. Although the temperature was below freezing, I began to sweat. At this exact moment I recalled a vision of another Swiss mountain, the Matterhorn at Disneyland. “This not fun,” the mother in my mind was warning. “This dangerous.”
Before me was a precipice of sheer ice. All the fears of a lifetime gathered in one terrifying vision. I would be squashed flat, my brains smashed like a rotten melon, rivulets of blood staining the clean white snow. And then I imagined my mother saying, “Everybody jump off cliff, you do same?” And that took me right over the edge with my knee-jerk response, “Yeah,” and a half-second later the long, heavy skis were aimed straight down what I today know is the “fall line.”
I quickly reached speeds that caused the scenery to blur. I pressed down on the poles to brake. That, I immediately discovered, is not a good way to stop, but it is an efficient way to snap your hands off at the wrists.
I was a runaway semi, semi-shocked, semi-delirious. I flew by the Rich and the Famous—Rod Steiger, Julie Andrews—I was skiing with the best. Only ignorance kept me from panicking completely. I thought I might be able to stay upright on my skis long enough to reach the bottom of the mountain, where I could then gradually coast to a stop. That was the plan I would have executed had not the Queen of Sweden crossed my path (I’m not making this up). She screamed, as did her retinue, and I did my first faceplant on packed snow.
Blood! There was blood on the snow. My brains must have been leaking. I don’t remember which was worse: the pain or the humiliation of being asked by Jean-Claude Killy lookalikes if I was all right. I was also crossly informed by at least two people that I had nearly assassinated a beloved royal personage.
After my nose stopped bleeding, I took off my skis. Never mind that I was still some two miles from the bottom of the mountain and it might take me hours to reach it safely. If nightfall came, the rescue team could simply follow the three-foot-deep sitzmarks I was tracking down the middle of the slope.
I did not become an excellent skier that year. For forty-five minutes twice a week, I managed to use my poles to push myself across the flattest part of the parking lot until I had fulfilled my ski exercise requirements for school. Yet I was determined I would not let my newfound fear of speed defeat me. If anything, fear now fueled my defiance.
When I returned to the States, I continued to ski. Year after year I persisted, despite bad equipment, ludicrous ski outfits, and humiliating faceplants. Over the years, I’ve broken a pair of skis in half, been carted off a mountain in a rescue sled, and even managed, while merely standing in a lift line, to knock over a dozen skiers, like dominoes. I’ve learned that all this was necessary to transform myself into a person who not only seeks out terror but enjoys it tremendously.
This year, I fell down the entire length of the East Face in Squaw Valley, California, and went back up for seconds. I followed brain-altered friends whose idea of fun is skiing fast between trees in a blizzard. This year, I even took a lesson.
“Oh, going to ski again?” my mother asked one day when I told her I was heading to my cabin in Lake Tahoe.
“Yep,” I said. “I’m going to try and break a couple of legs.”
“Okay,” she answered. “Have fun.”
Who am I to ignore my mother’s advice?*
• midlife confidential •
As the daughter of hardworking Christian immigrants from China, I was given little opportunity to cultivate a misspent youth.
Ours was a family that rarely went on vacations; during the first sixteen years of my life, we took only two, one when I was six, one when I was twelve, both of them brief trips to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Most of my summers were spent in Bible classes or in school cafeterias, where I wove lanyards, or planted sweet peas in milk cartons, or made maps of South America out of dried kidney beans, split peas, and lentils. Common amusements during my childhood included riding my bike around the corner, going to the library, mowing the lawn, staring at the candy counter at the corner market, feeding leaves to caterpillars that eventually died, or watching cocoons that never hatched.
I count as the most memorable moments of my life those that were laced with heart-pounding terror—times when I was so scared out of my wits I could not even scream. When I was two, for example, my mother took me to a department store where I saw one man without limbs and another with legs as long as ladders. When I was three, I stood outside an apartment window and heard the echoing screams of a girl my age whose mother was beating her nonstop in the bathroom. When I was four, I desperately clung to the rails of a hand-pushed carousel, forever it seemed, until I let go and landed facedown in the sand. When I was five, a nurse in a hospital yelled at me for wanting my doll to accompany me to the operating room. When I was six, I stared at a playmate lying in a coffin, her hands crossed flat over a Bible on her chest. When I was seven, I watched people’s skin blister and foam in the movie The Angry Red Planet. When I was eight, I flew down a hill on a boy’s bike only to realize, at the bottom, that it had no brakes. When I was nine, I caught a snake in a creek—and the scary part was not telling my parents that the snake had slithered between the seats of the Rambler right before we drove to the airport to pick up my grand-aunt Grace. The last experience also counted as one of the most fun car rides I ever took.
The word “fun” was not commonly used in our family, except, perhaps, in the following context: “Fun? Why you want have fun? What’s so good about this? Just wasting time and money.” In our family, “fun” was a bad f- word, and its antonym was “hard,” as in hard work. Things that were hard led to worthwhile results; things that were fun did not.
Another bad f-word was “freedom,” as in, “So you want American freedom to go wild and bring shame on your family?” Which brings me to another bad f-word, “friends,” those purveyors of corruption and shame whose sole purpose in life was to encourage me to talk back to my mother and make her long to return to China, where there were millions of girls my age who would be only too happy to obey their parents without question. The good f- word, of course, was “family,” as in “go to church with family,” or “do homework with family,” or “give your toys to your family in Taiwan.”
Lest you think my parents were completely feudal in their thinking, let me clarify that th
ey did adopt some important American precepts—for instance, the notions that “time is money” and that “a penny saved is a penny earned.” As a consequence, they were also very fond of the word “free”—which should not be confused with “freedom” or the like-sounding “free,” uttered in useless expressions such as “free time” or “free to do what you want.” I’m referring to the sort of “free” that conveys valuable ideas such as, “You are free to go to summer school because they don’t charge us any money there.”
I exaggerate in saying we never had fun. My parents did allow certain versions of family fun, like walking around the campus of Stanford University, a form of entertainment that besides being free served to remind me of a destination and a reward second only to getting into heaven. Both rewards could be attained only if I listened carefully to my parents, meaning no boys, no pizza, and of course, no rock ’n’ roll.
A few months before my fortieth birthday, I found myself suffering from a bad attitude aggravated by chronic neck pain—symptoms common among authors on book tour. In my case, I had been on the road nationally and overseas for the better half of a year. Most people think that when writers go on tour they’re having loads of glamorous and exciting fun. Those people have good imaginations. As a touring author, I had lost mine.
I was spending the productive years of my life not writing but eating hot dogs at airport chuck wagons and obeying signs to “fasten seat belt while seated.” I was depleting supplies of brain power trying to figure out which city I had awakened in or how to act spontaneous answering the same questions ten times a day for twenty days at a stretch.
Although happily married, I was spending more nights alone than with my husband. I had been sleepless in Seattle, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Boca Raton. In hotel beds, I would obsess over dumb answers I had given that day, over how inarticulate I had sounded, how I was a complete disgrace to American literature. After reviling myself, I would listen through thin walls to what sounded like a woman having her tonsils removed without anesthesia, to a man who was either auditioning for the lead in Falstaff or suffering from explosive gastrointestinal problems. To help lull me to sleep, I would recall scientific details—such as the fact that the biggest source of room dust, accounting for something like 99.87 percent, is sloughed-off human skin. I would imagine years and years of skin particles from happy and sad strangers who had slept in this very bed now circulating in the air I breathed.
This was my mental state when I returned from my latest book tour. This was my attitude on November 6, 1991, when I heard the fax machine churning out what was sure to be a request to do yet another author appearance.
It was from Kathi Kamen Goldmark, the media escort who’d taken me to numerous book-related publicity events around the Bay Area. As I recall, her fax said something to this effect: “Hey, Amy, a bunch of authors and I are putting together a rock-’n’-roll band to play at the ABA in Anaheim. Wanna jam with us? I think you’d have a lot of fun.”
I pondered the fax. Did I look like the kind of writer who had time for a lot of fun? As to singing in public, could there be anything more similar to a public execution? Furthermore, how could I, the author of poignant mother-daughter tales, do something as ludicrous and career-damaging as play in a rock-’n’-roll band in front of thousands of readers at the American Booksellers Association convention? Amend that to a mediocre rock-’n’-roll band.
Two minutes later, I faxed Kathi my answer: “What should I wear?”
The very next day, I began exercising my middle-aged body into stamina strength. And soon after, Kathi and I went on a shopping spree at Betsey Johnson, the choice of every respectable fourteen-year-old. We perused the sales racks and tried on half a dozen skintight dresses. There I found it, spandex and sequins, a version of my lost youth, also known as Every Mother’s Worst Nightmare.
The prospect of being a rock-’n’-roll singer presented only one small obstacle: namely, the fact that I couldn’t sing. I am not being modest. When I was thirteen, my mother took me to a voice teacher, thinking I could learn to accompany myself Liberace style on the piano. The voice teacher had me sing progressively higher scales: “Do, re, mi, fa—oops.” After twenty minutes, he gave his verdict to my mother: “My dear Mrs. Tan, your daughter has no vocal skill whatsoever.”
Suffice it to say, about two months before our first gig in Anaheim, I woke up one night, drenched in sweat. I called Kathi the next morning. “Kathi, Kathi,” I panted, “I can’t sing at ABA.”
“Oh, no! A conflict came up in your schedule?”
“I mean I can’t sing.”
Kathi’s brilliant solution was twofold: I could practice singing into a live mike at a sound studio that belonged to David Phillips, a friend of hers who was reportedly a very sweet guy. Second, I could overcome stage fright by performing at a karaoke bar filled with festive patrons who, Kathi assured me, wouldn’t be able to hear me above the clinking din of cocktail glasses.
At the sound studio, it took me forty minutes before anything resembling even a squeak came out of my mouth. My vocal cords were paralyzed. David, as promised, was a sweet guy—a sweet guy who played in a real band, The Potato Eaters. Plus he was cute. I had been counting on humiliating myself in front of a dweeb.
As my lips moved voicelessly next to the mike, David would cast knowing but worried looks at Kathi before gently coaxing me yet another time: “Okay, that was a good try. We’ll just . . . well, try it again.”
At the karaoke bar, I sang with horrible stiffness, but was comforted to find I wasn’t the only egomaniac foolish enough to think I could sing publicly. The following week, I left for a vacation in Hawaii. For five hours a day, I sat on the beaches of Kona, wearing headphones and singing harmony on “Mammer Jammer” and lead on “Bye Bye, Love.” To an audience of porpoises and turtles frolicking in the waves, I sang my heart out, loud and strong, bouncing my head in rhythm to the background instrumentals Ridley Pearson had recorded for the benefit of the musically disadvantaged. My husband later told me that when beachcombers came within earshot of me, they retreated with the same haste people employ for avoiding sidewalk fire-and-brimstone preachers.
When I was fourteen, I used to go to the beach on weekends, supposedly to recruit kids for Christ. That was the only way my parents would let me go. By then my hormones were raging to sin. I was no longer content to sing hymns in the church choir as my only excitement. I fantasized shrieking at the top of my lungs while running along the beach—not too quickly, of course—as lanky bad boys chased me, threatening to pick me up and toss me into the ocean. The real boys did not chase me. Nor did they accept my offers to come to a “youth fellowship shindig.”
Every afternoon, while practicing the piano, I mourned that I was not a popular girl. I was not the kind who got invited to after-school garage parties where 45s were played at top volume and 7UP was laced with vodka. I hated myself for being perceived as the “good girl,” unlike the “bad girls,” who ratted their hair, slouched around in their fathers’ white dress shirts, and stole nail polish from Kmart.
That same year, I actually discovered something good about my parents, and that is that they didn’t know a thing about bad words, not the real ones at least. While they forbade my brothers and me to say “gosh,” “darn,” “gee,” and “golly”—those being variations of “God” and “damn”—we could utter “bitch,” “pissed off,” “boner,” and “hard-on” with impunity. My parents were blissfully ignorant as to what those words meant. My older brother, Peter, had bought a Fugs record, and when my mother asked me what this word “fug” meant, I said it stood for “happy-go-lucky,” and that “Fug you” was an American way to greet someone. Well, it was, in a way.
By using my parents’ naiveté to my advantage, I discovered how to be a popular girl. For one thing, I ran for freshman class secretary, which my parents interpreted as my natural Christian desire to do public service. To increase my very slim chances of winning office, I painted butcher-paper b
anners with the following campaign slogan: “Amy Tan Has Sec. Appeal.” I already counted on my parents’ not getting the pun, and indeed they didn’t. But my school’s vice-principal did. Just as I had figured, he made a huge stink over this inappropriate campaign slogan and ordered the banners be torn down, which then incited protests of unfair censorship from not only the freshman class but all the students. In short order, my name became widely known.
To clinch the election, I made a campaign speech in which I promised to raise money for school dances through the sale of kazoos, which students were not allowed to play on campus. In my speech, I passionately reasoned that there was no rule against the possession of kazoos. “Stop censorship,” I said. “A vote for me is a vote for kazoos.”
I’m happy to report that I won the election and kazoos became the ubiquitous symbol of freedom, waved at every basketball and football game. Unfortunately, my newly elected social status did not confer upon me sex appeal. Instead, I became the confidante to girls who confessed that their lips were bruised from kissing too much the night before, or to boys who wanted to know what to do when girls got mad at them for going too far.
As freshman class secretary, I also had to help organize the dances. I argued persuasively with my mother about the necessity of my going to the dances as well: “Come on! I have to be there to take care of things. What if someone doesn’t pay to get in? That’s like stealing. It’s not like I’m going there to dance or anything.”
Before going to a dance, I used masking tape to shorten my dress and asked my girlfriend Terry to lend me her tube of white lipstick. Neither measure had any effect on the boys. At the dance, I stood near the punchbowl, mortified as Terry, then Janis, then Dottie, then Cindy were asked to dance. The flick of a rotating mirrored ball beat into my brain with hypnotic force: Nah-nah . . . nah-nah . . .