A Third-of-a-Lifetime Story
As told by “Sweet Leilani,” a queer, first-generation Filipina American
Some people tell me: You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. The sweetest. A man I once knew used to sing “Sweet Leilani” every time he saw me.
Sure, I can be sweet. I always put the grocery cart back where it belongs. I once ordered a Lyft for a stranger because he had a long walk home. I tip well.
Then there are friends and family who know Moody Lani. They know which buttons not to press.
Then there’s my wife, who has seen horns poke through my thick hair on my worst days. She once said: You bamboozled me. She used to think that I was the sweetest person, too.
There is a smaller group of people who ask: How do you do it? How are you so nice?
This is my response.
I’ve never considered myself a nice person. Inside I feel tougher than anyone I know. Mean even. Except for my mother. She’s the toughest. How tough? She stayed with my father after he brought home a disease-ridden bird, whose company almost cost her her life. She had chemo and lived.
But for the most part, I feel like I could kick ass if it came down to it. I could damage reputations. Important people have trusted me with important information (don’t worry, still safe). I could be the best at something if I wanted it that bad. That’s what I mean by tough.
I’ll begin in high school.
When I was sixteen, I was the manager of a small business. I got a lead role in a musical. I was a varsity cheer captain and a youth group leader. I played the piano and handbells. I received love letters from decent people. I had a crush who sometimes waved back, who I would later date for years. I had a 4.67 GPA. I got a full ride to a private high school on the East Coast. When my mother told me I couldn’t go because I was too young, I sang “Go the Distance” to try and convince her that I should go anyway. It didn’t work.
If anyone else were me, they would probably think that they were the shit.
But not me.
Some kids called me fat behind my back. To my face, they said nicer things. Gummy bear. Fattest cheeks I’ve ever seen. Things like that.
A popular girl made fun of my bug bites and called me a hyena. I started to wear long socks to school even though it made the stinging worse, even though I was told to “roll ‘em’ down or get a demerit” whenever I wore my cheerleading uniform.
I was a fat hyena.
After high school, I went to the top public university in the nation and lost twenty pounds. I went to the gym twice a day. It was the only thing I felt I could control.
Everything else was hard.
I was surrounded by people who were more Type A than I could dream. They knew how to say things. Like poetry spilling from their lips. I had trouble keeping up with the reading. I’m a slow reader, a perpetual over-thinker. I don’t move on unless I fully understand every word and every sentence, which means I hardly ever move on.
One time while walking along University Ave on the West side of Berkeley, two high school boys stole my longboard. Just plucked it out of my hands. I ran after them for four blocks and managed to get it back.
As I skated away, one said: Nice ass.
During my senior year, in the middle of writing a faith-related history thesis, I grew unmotivated. I was coming to terms with my sexual orientation (bisexual, a bad word then, and a bad word now) and was tormented with this idea that I was going to hell because that’s what someone close to me said about people like me.
My best friend, who is also queer but didn’t reveal it to me at the time, told me I could finish. To stop thinking and just write.
So I did.
I abandoned my original plans to become an actress or a professor. The first because I had chosen to study abroad instead of completing a double major (I chose history over theater). I was also skeptical of anyone caring about a Filipina American face on stage or the big screen. The second because a professor told me: Don’t get your Ph.D. unless you feel called… like a nun is called to God. It’s eight years, hun.
After college, I moved back home and worked in retail while I mowed things over. Then I got fired for return fraud. What’s that? I’ll explain it this way: I bought something—an orange vest (don’t ask)—that didn’t fit and had a friend help return it. A few weeks later, I was called into a little room in the back of the store, where I was confronted by a man over the phone. Mickey, Mickey from Loss Prevention.
Later, my manager hugged me and told me: You’re the sweetest thing. Don’t you ever let people bully you into doing that sort of thing.
What I wanted to say was: No, I wasn’t bullied. It was my idea. I just didn’t want this thing anymore because it didn’t fit. So I made a bad decision and got a friend involved, too, which was a terrible thing to do.
I cried about it. It was embarrassing.
But I also learned two things about myself: 1) materialism is my weakness (I’ve gotten better) and 2) I didn’t want to lie anymore. About anything.
Soon after that, I got three job offers and took the one in education. In my second week, a student told me to “go die.” By the end of the semester, the same student told me that I changed his life. He cried when I told him I was moving to Japan.
When I was teaching abroad, I was called into another little room —what is it with little rooms?—where I was gently scolded for not wanting to take the driving test again. Those who have taken this test know that it’s not easy. There’s an S-curve and a thing called the Crank. I had already taken it three times and failed three times. The alternative was cycling everywhere, which was not a bad alternative.
But I had disgraced the department—that was the real problem.
A Japanese co-worker told me: You’re strong. Don’t listen. She was the first person other than my mother to tell me something like that.
That same year, I got published in print for the first time. I came across open submissions for an anthology a few days before the deadline, wrote a story on the Notes section of my phone because I didn’t have WiFi in my apartment, and received an acceptance letter a few months later.
Publishing is not that easy. I got lucky.
After Japan, I got an interview with a company that sold Japanese goods via subscription. Despite my jet lag and reverse culture shock, I booked a flight to San Francisco. During our meeting, the CEO asked: What’s your spirit animal?
A blowfish, I said. Just to fuck with him.
I didn’t get the job but something was comforting about knowing that I was not a good fit at a place where people ask about your spirit animal.
I worked three jobs to pay rent, including one that had more than 2,000 applicants (it was a remote position for a company trying to compete with BuzzFeed). The founder said he liked my cover letter. Short and just really smart, he called it.
A year later, I moved back to San Diego to start building a life with my now wife. While walking downtown, a man under some sort of influence said: Fuck you, bitch. I’m gonna rape you.
I reported him and never saw him again.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the worst someone has done or said to me. Between the ages of sixteen and thirty, I’ve counted at least fourteen people who have physically and/or verbally assaulted me, not including the incidents I’ve let go.
So you see. Ups and downs. Somehow, I think I’m winning. In the same lifetime, I met Lillian Faderman, whose work has been so formative to not only my self-identity but the way I understand history. I’ve received direct writing advice from author Chavisa Woods, whose stories gave me “Why is this so damn good?” chills the first time I read them. I got married in the middle of the pandemic. My biggest win yet. Married life is nothing like the trap I thought it would be. It’s my greatest joy.
I also left a good job to focus on things like supporting my wife’s tea company, non-profit work, and writing. I mean really writing. Ass-in-chair kind of writing. There’s that.
And most surprising to my wife, I started surfing, which has allowed me to face my irrational fear of the ocean.
So, back to the question. How do I do it, you ask? How am I so “nice”?
I suppose I choose to be. I make things easier for others—I bend over backward—because it has not always been so easy for me.
How about you?
