are you aware that you are being hypnotized?
Preview: https://youtu.be/79m08F1iess

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Cu
By Matthew Nguyen

black leather seats split apart to reveal the lining beneath,
the way mud cracks at the bottom of dry riverbeds
and where he got it I have no idea it easily could have been hallucinated
but, no, there are pictures and he was so forthcoming about his motives
he was always trying to get us to play with Alex, his son,
a few years younger than us, a withdrawn kid with a slightly superior air
the way smart kids sometimes are and anyway he turns out all right,
but as you’ll see that’s not a foregone conclusion
and we are minding our own business
at my grandparents’ small ranch house in Bethesda
when uncle Chu rolls up behind the wheel of a fucking limousine,
and it’s easily fifteen years old with a smell inside
that is axiomatic proof there are limits to the ability of language
to describe felt human experience but if you thought about
the residual smell of a thousand proms
and combined it with what it might be like to cup your mouth
over a 1979 vintage muffler with the engine running
you’d start to get an idea and the right there by the curb
he starts telling us that Alex has a limousine and a driver
(himself but he’s not actually a livery driver
in fact its usually unclear if he has a job or not)
like he’s some type of seven-year-old gordon gecko
when we all know they’re poor even though we’re only nine years old
and Alex can’t look up from the ground he’s so embarassed
because he probably said something to his dad
about how we weren’t playing with him
and somehow this was the solution
and then uncle Chu takes me aside and says “you know alex?”
like this was my first time meeting my cousin
“he’s a real cool guy he bought that limousine there”
as if nothing could be more natural than a seven-year-old
a decade away from a driver’s license purchasing a limousine
and I should mention that this wasn’t just a slightly-longer-than-normal-towncar
this was a limo the length of my grandparents’ house
and it didn’t take more than a nine year old’s dim knowledge
of internal combustion engines to know that something was amiss with this one
and Chu hovers around us until he practically yells
“Ey! Ey Matt! You want to go to SPACE MUSEUM?”
by which he means the smithsonian air and space museum in washington dc
but no way in hell do I want to get into that clunker
which is an accident waiting for passengers to happen to
however a day without us is too tempting to my parents
and after all how irresponsible can Chu be? he’s eccentric sure
and the limo is a little weird combined with the fact
that he sends a box of six granolas bars as a christmas present
though the box is already opened and there are only four in there
but lighten up and it’s the thought that counts
so we end up stowed in the cave of the limo
six cousins with uncle chu nosing his way through beltway traffic
and every time he changes lanes he makes liberal use of his horn
which is actually comforting because you could hide the uss dwight d eisenhower
in the blind spot and to take our minds off what is surely greater mortal peril
than any of us have ever been in throughout our very short, sheltered lives
we’re playing with the privacy screen and talking to him on the intercom
which is certainly increasing the danger we’re in because he’s laughing
and talking back and we are laughing at his accent
because we are sociopaths in the way that nine-year-old children are
and because we are insecure so the logical thing for an immigrant family
trying to make it in america to do is to shame its least assimilated members
and we’re too young to think about being thrown into your senior year of high school
not speaking the language and then getting an engineering degree at howard university
while the war is everywhere because its 1970 and everyone thinks you’re the enemy
and charlie’s in the trees and they’re not against the soldiers they’re against the war
but maybe you’re not against either of them or maybe you’re against both
or maybe you’re just trying to learn English and get a job
but we learn all that later and now we’re in washington dc
god only looks after children fools
and men who buy fifteen-year-old used limousines as their everyday car
because we find a parking spot and are able to moor our freighter right off the national mall
we’re like tiny diplomats from a broke country emerging from the vehicle
and as we enter the museum Chu wants to give us a talk because he registers
that he doesn’t have that natural adult presence
that demands children’s immediate respect and obedience
so there’s just no way he’s going to be able to herd six kids under ten years old
through a museum of rockets, space shuttles, and fighter jets
thus his solution is to turn us loose and tell us to meet at the entrance
at an appointed time however he sees a faint glimmer of a problem with that plan
and deems it necessary to add an extra layer of security
“if you get in trouble, we will have a word you call out to the group, eh?
vietnamese that only we understand...” he paused for dramatic effect
“...the word will be...Cu!!!”
this is the vietnamese word for penis and by the beaming pride on his face
its obvious that having his son and five nieces and nephews
cruising into our nation’s capital in a limousine
so they can run around a venerable museum and yell “penis!!”
at the top of their lungs is at least one of the local maxima on the graph of his life
and of course whenever we see each other across the room we start to yell it
and soon our shrieks of “CU, CU, CU!!!” are bouncing off the fighter jets
some of which are the very ones that basted the Vietnamese countryside
with napalm and agent orange and flattened haiphong harbor
where in fact uncle chu as a child had escaped from the north to the south
and then these planes buzzed overhead like giant insects
when they used to sneak out of their house in saigon to watch firing squads
execute traitors and we’re ignorant kids that know none of this at the time
and you’d think maybe this would be a good opportunity to tell us
but chu is laughing like a maniac “Cuuuu...cuuuu” so there’s going to be no learning
on this trip just absurdist theater and looking back it can’t have been an accident
that we were there in a museum filled with weapons
from the war that no one in our family wanted to talk about
not about the time chu got blown off a motorcycle by an ied leveling a restaurant
in Saigon and no one could go to rescue the injured because everyone knew
there’s always a second bomb
and certainly no one wants to talk about our family
sent to the reeducation camps in the jungle and tortured
or of the cousins whose escape boat was attacked by pirates
and ended up in a refugee camp after running their ship aground in malaysia
or about the great uncle who...
no no no its always later much later
we’re here for Chu now and Chu says its time to run around shouting “cu”
at the top of our lungs and it won’t change the napalm or rebuild Haiphong
but when we’re done we’re going to pile back into a fucking limousine
and uncle Chu is right
that’s something.