English Final

First Draft:

Shortly after moving for a second time, the message was loud and clear: I was going to move again. It took two tries for me to read the pattern, and the last time I fully understood it. My dad enlisted in the Air Force and served his country wherever the government sent him. My mom, my older brother Laurence and I followed him first from Utah, to Germany, and then to New Jersey. By New Jersey I finally learned how to make “fast-food friends”. I call them fast-food friends because you smile at them and they smile back; you each exchange conversation and experiences just enough to pass the time, enough to satisfy, but nothing is ever deeper than skin. I was going to pass through New Jersey like a ghost, without any connections or attachment. This way, I told myself, the next move was going to be easy.
We arrived in Millburn, New Jersey on the Halloween of 2003. While everyone was out trick-or-treating, I was sulking in the basement of our new townhouse apartment, lying on an overinflated air mattress, drowning my sorrows in rap CDs, reminiscing. I hated the pale yellow light and unfamiliar smell that surrounded me. This place felt like a hotel, a cold shell that should have been a home. I listened through the majority of Bubba Sparxxx’s album Deliverance and stared at the ceiling. Imagining the tiny shapes in the off-white paint to be countries and bodies of water, I could only wish to hop on a plane and travel from here back to Wiesbaden far away in the upper right hand corner above me. I would never see Wiesbaden again; it was in the outcast corner where not even the stupid lamp’s light could reach. There was a knock on the front door upstairs, and my parents smiled and dispensed candy. This wasn’t the New Jersey my parents told me about, but I wondered about the possibility of a hidden blessing rooted in New Jersey. For now, the move felt more like a trick than it did a treat.
By the time it hit winter, I hadn’t fully adjusted. Things were becoming a bit more familiar though, and I found an odd comfort in the claustrophobic urban landscape. Wiesbaden is one of the bigger cities in Germany, but there is a different sense of isolation: we usually didn’t talk to the Germans unless we needed to. Without a language barrier, the city streets of New Jersey felt more alive, more relatable. After the move, my mom’s subsequent search for jobs took us to Jersey City which became one of my favorite places to be. It was only a fifteen minute drive away and accommodated every constraint concerning a location for my mom’s work. It was a close driving distance, plus there was a PATH station situated perfectly to travel to Hoboken or New York. Frequent trips between there, Hoboken, and New York for my dad’s work allowed me to learn each place by heart.
Hoboken is a cleaner, more refined Jersey City. We took the Pulaski Skyway, a dangerous, old metal bridge, to either place. The difference between Jersey City and Hoboken is in the inhabitants of each city. Historically, Italian immigrants populated Hoboken. It also happens to be the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and baseball. Nowadays, there are just as many Italians with some Puerto Ricans. Red brick buildings still line the city streets. Since Hoboken is en route to Manhattan – just a few PATH stops away from either 33rd street or the World Trade Center – Hoboken became an intermediary along my dad’s commute. Rita’s Italian Ice is a local favorite for summer days and Carlo’s Bake Shop is always a good stop for top-of-the-line desserts.
Across the Hudson, New York was everything I imagined it to be. It seems to breathe a life of its own, and it has its own natural soundtrack if you listen. There’s a rhythm in the way people in the city move. Staccato footsteps punctuate the pavement; commuters rush to catch the next train, rattling off perfect eighth-notes. If you close your eyes, you can hear a distinct boom-bap beat created by the bouncing of basketballs and the back of cargo trucks crashing shut. Sliding gates are suspended cymbals punctuated by a ringing clap. Everything that Mos Def and Nas taught me about New York was true. I could see street narratives intimately play out before my eyes. Early job hunts for my parents led me away from the city seen in movies. Yet, no matter how easily accessible New York was, a commute to Manhattan was good enough for my dad. Across the Hudson, back in New Jersey is where I eventually spent most of my time.
Jersey City became the b-rate equivalent of New York to me. It is infinitely smaller with just as much of a diverse population. The sights, sounds and smells are similar: car exhaust, deep bass tones humming from distant subwoofers, people playing basketball, and the jingling of chain-link fences. Depending on the location, whether it’s the Indian strip, Filipino strip, Portuguese or Spanish strip, you could smell anything from curry chicken to fried tilapia. It was the Filipino strip that smelled the closest to home. The aroma of adobo, sinigang and pancit filled my nostrils – and to me, that was the best. If we weren’t at Newport mall, we were on Manila Ave.
I remember a trip to Jersey City one day over Christmas break. I warmed my ears up to the sounds of Nas’ first album, Illmatic. I memorized every lyric from replaying it over and over, analyzing every rhyme to improve my own rhyme skills. I was infused with hip-hop ever since my friends in Germany introduced me to its culture. My friend Kahlil and I started rapping at about the same time, and my friends DJ and Dominique taught me about break dancing. I learned how to write graffiti from my cousin Richie. The exclusively urban culture became part of my being. Maybe that’s why I embraced the grittiness of the east coast.
During the drive, Illmatic became my reality. Nas’ narratives about young city bandits and five-percenters framed my existence. I admired the graffiti that stretched along the walls outside the car window. NARK and LOSER’s names decorated the walls on the Turnpike. I was surprised that Nas never actually referenced graffiti writers like them, but then again Nas is from Queens and I was in New Jersey. My overactive imagination took control. On the Pulaski Skyway I could envision police helicopters buzzing above the Hudson like mechanical mosquitoes searching for an outlaw. We were almost to Jersey City. “Represent, represent!” Nas said. His mantra was simple enough. Represent!
We were back on Manila Ave so that my Mom and I could make a routine stop for pandesal and other Filipino goodies. After a fifteen minute stop in Philippine Bread House, we walked back to the car with the fresh bag of soft bread rolls warm from the oven. I put the items in the trunk: the pandesal bread, pianono – a cake-like pastry, coconut juice, and puto which are rice cakes. We then instinctively went to Little Quiapo, a tiny family owned restaurant behind Philippine Bread House.
Little Quiapo is so small that it reminds me of our very own kitchen. As a matter of fact, you can see the kitchen just behind the counter and the scent of whatever is cooking permeates the single-room restaurant. Lunchtime meant that I would order my usual: mami. Mami is a unique Filipino chicken noodle soup. It has thick egg noodles, chicken, still on the bone, cabbage, carrots, onions, garlic and hard boiled eggs. The eggs, neatly sliced into thin discs, sit on top of the disorganized mass of noodles, poultry and vegetables. In Germany, I never knew about mami. It wasn’t a meal that my mom cooked, but after Little Quiapo reintroduced it to her, she started making it. Mami became my favorite dish of the season. Now, there was an avenue available to me, dedicated to Filipino food so that enjoying it wasn’t its own special occasion. It comforted me with a sense of warmth that came from somewhere other than its temperature. Mami anchored me to sanity in a time of unbearable loneliness. Finally, I believed I could survive the winter. Maybe there was some good in New Jersey.
Mami wasn’t the only good thing that emerged from Jersey City. My next door neighbor, also a Filipino, moved from Jersey City to Millburn for its top-rated high school education. His name was J.R. and he was anything but a fast-food friend. Faithful would be the best way to describe him, and we were similar in more ways than we could have imagined. Both of us were hip-hop fanatics, hardcore basketball players and newcomers to the suburban township that we resided in. Millburn is comprised of mostly Jewish, Italian and Chinese residents. They were suburban rock lovers, but the guitar never spoke to me like the bass and snare or the smooth sample-based beats created by DJ Premier. With J.R., I relished in my identity as a Filipino possessed by the spirit of hip-hop.
As Laurence turned seventeen and got his driver’s license, J.R. and his family moved back to Jersey City. They were unable to afford living in Millburn and J.R. transferred back to Dickinson High School. Though the only other Filipinos besides me and my brother moved, an empowering sense of cultural heritage overcame us. It was almost like an outcry that my brother and I took pride in. We appreciated our differences and unique experiences that the majority of my Millburn counterparts didn’t have. Who, among my peers, could say that they lived in Germany for four years, taking daytrips to countries where couples have their honeymoons? Who could say that they spent their free time rapping and break dancing, backed by a family bound together by heritage instead of blood? Anywhere my brother and I went, we represented by blasting break beats and hanging a Philippine flag from the rearview mirror in our 1998 Dodge Durango.
Eventually, I realized that I wouldn’t leave New Jersey. Even today, my dad works for the Department of Justice at the city hall in Manhattan. I guess amidst the turmoil of my screwed up teenage emotions I had moving to Millburn, I forgot that my father retired as a master sergeant. My father retired, and the good school system in conjunction with a perfect commuter residence was the reason why we chose to settle on the east coast. I loosened up, adapted, but still kept the identity I found during the tough months of that winter in transition. As I grew older, there were no more fast-food friends for me, only pertinent connections and comfort in my own skin.