But the marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and she became angrier and unhappier, and this increased greatly as I turned eight, nine, and ten years old. My dad was gone a lot because he was working and going to college. He’s had many occupations over the years. He was a U.S. Forest Ranger, a truck driver, a pot grower, a teacher, and a winemaker. (He’s had a steady job since I was twenty-five, though, as head winemaker for Bridlewood Winery in San Ynez, California.) My mom had a tough time assimilating to American culture. She took ESL classes at night and took care of my sister and me by herself during the day, and she soon started working as a nurse. I try to put myself in my parents’ shoes. Here’s my dad just wanting the perfect little Asian wife, and there’s my mom, trapped in a house with two kids, barely speaking English, and her husband is never around. I think she resented having kids at such a young age. And my dad wasn’t coming home some nights, so that wasn’t helping their relationship. Then Mom started to not come home at night. She was rebelling against him. So I had neither parent around. When they were home together, the arguing was intense. I’d sit up in bed at night and hear them scream at each other and think, “Why don’t you get divorced already?”
That wasn’t the only problem. There was also my mother’s violent temper. I desperately wished I could have told my father what my mother was doing to me on those nights she was home and he wasn’t. She was this petite, but strong, karate-chopping type of woman who would take out her frustrations on me with anything she could get her hands on. She’d whack me with a broom, throw a shoe at me, or just backhand me across the face. I think she took it out on me more than my sister because I was closer to my father at the time and she didn’t like that.
I was Daddy’s little girl for most of grade school. We’d go hiking, camping, fishing, and even hunting together. Well, he hunted; I picked flowers. We were very outdoorsy and earthy. We even had a pet pig when I was younger. But what Dad and I really bonded over was music. We listened to music together and watched music movies like Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same. He was high as a kite, saying to me, “Linda! Linda! Come here. You have to see Jimmy Page play the guitar with a bow.” I didn’t know who or what he was talking about and I didn’t care that he was stoned; all I knew was that Dad was paying attention to me and I loved what he was showing me. I loved the raw energy of rock stars. I loved the shirt-less Jimmy Page. I loved it all.
Mom and I were not close. Her unhappiness and anger made a barrier around her. I felt displaced in my own family and alone. From around age seven or eight, I had to rely on myself—cook my own meals, do my own laundry, get myself ready for school, etc. In a way, it was good because I learned to be self-reliant and very independent, which I still am today. But as a child, you want both of your parents to help you with the simple things and participate in your life.
The worst fight I had with my mother was the day she snapped. After my parents finally parted ways in 1986, I was staying with my mother on weekends and with my father during the week. It was a Saturday afternoon at her apartment in Fresno, and I made a comment about wanting to be back at my dad’s house. I think I said something like, “Fuck you, I want to live with Dad all the time.” Little did I know how tough it was for her at the time to not have custody and how betrayed she felt when I chose my father over her. She was going through a really rough time. She was working two jobs, didn’t have family around, lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and didn’t even have an emotional support system after the divorce.
So we were arguing. She usually argued in Thai and spoke it really fast so I couldn’t understand what she was saying anyway. She grabbed me by the hair and then punched me straight in the face. I held my face in pain and looked at her with such hatred and shock. I felt so confused and devastated by that one blow. This is my mother, the one person who is supposed to protect me and instead she is hurting me. She then wrapped her hands around my throat and began choking me. I was a strong-willed kid, and I was not going down without a fight. That’s not me. I did my best to fight back, but she was a lot stronger than me. She was a small Thai woman but the devil inside her gave her this superhuman strength. The fight went on for at least a half hour.
“No! No! Don’t hurt her!” my eight-year-old sister, Debby, cried and screamed at my mother from across the room.
Mom hit me again. She was hitting me like she was fighting off some sort of attacker. I was beaten and bruised and my hair was in matted clumps from where she grabbed it. And the fight would’ve kept going had my dad not walked in to pick me up at the exact moment her fingers were clenching my throat. He had to put his body between my mom and me and reach out his arms to stop the brawling.
“Dad, I swear I never want to see her again!” I screamed with tears running down my swollen face.
“OK. You don’t have to,” he said.
I lived with Dad full-time after that. And I didn’t speak to my mother again until five years later, when my world came crashing down for a second time.
That one fight changed my relationship with my mother and with women in general forever. I wasn’t mature enough at the time to realize that my mom was the way she was because she was abused as a child herself. I shut down emotionally and closed myself off, especially to women. But men, that was a different story. This series of events made my Lolita ways kick in a bit. I think that’s why from a young age I dreamed of marrying a really great man, a man I could feel secure with. But at the time it led to a pattern where every time I was hurt, I went to a man. Any man.
CHAPTER 2
The Switch
Iclearly remember my first orgasm. I was twelve. I wasn’t a sexual child until I met Mark. He was the uncle of my friend Danielle. He was twenty-five, about five foot seven, skinny and lanky, with short brown hair. He kind of looked like Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots. He rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and worked at the gas station down the street. I knew he was way older than me, but that didn’t stop the huge crush I had on him. He was my first of many motorcycle-men crushes.
I was walking to school one day, carrying my books, and he pulled out of the gas station on his bike and just the sight of him excited me. I dropped my books and stared at him. I think it was the first orgasm I ever felt. It was at least the first tingling I ever had down there in that way. And I had not had any sexual feeling like that before, at least not that I remember. I vividly recall this intense sexual tingling and getting wet in my panties. I had thoughts of him for days after that and finally one day I made out with him.
I would see Mark often at Danielle’s house (she lived with him and her mom in a Santa Rosa apartment) and couldn’t help but flirt with him. He noticed the way I looked at him, smiled at him, and hung on his every word. I liked making a man pay attention to me, because I wasn’t getting a lot of attention at home. I didn’t think of the age difference at all. When you’re young, sexually curious, and starving for attention, you don’t think of those things. Today when I think about it, I see it as twisted and wrong. But in the moment, it was just exciting to have this flirtation with this older man. One day he invited me to come over and look at his books because I was still quite the bookworm at the time. Of course, I went. I loved books and I was flattered by the invitation. I thought it was a great opportunity to flirt more with this cool guy. As I was busy thumbing through his copies of Easy Rider magazine and various mechanical motorcycle books, my friend Danielle was busy in another room. Mark and I were sitting close on his living room couch and I kept looking at him with the sultriest look I could muster up for a twelve-year-old. He was flirting with me, too. Our smiles told it all. Each time we’d look at each other, we’d grin from ear to ear. The attraction was obvious, and well, I made it hard to go unnoticed because I was wearing a tight tank top and short-shorts. As we talked closely, we could feel the warmth of each other’s breath and the electricity in the air. We couldn’t take it anymore, and he finally leaned in and kissed me.