Everyday Individuals: Billy Hong

Billy and I were walking to visit our friend Kevin. When we were walking through the complex looking for his apartment apartment, Billy got a call. He picked it up. It was his dad. He began speaking in Vietnamese.

From beginning to end of the conversation, the emotive tone of the exchange between Billy and his dad didn’t seem particular. I felt the heat on my forehead and I squinted at the numbers of the buildings as I call them off one by one, each number approaching Kevin’s apartment number. Billy slowed down slightly after he picked up his phone and walked a few paces behind me. He asked a few questions. His dad answers through the muffling sound of his phone.

The voices behind me intermingled with the warm weight of the sun and the soft, raspy shuffling of my shoes as I walked through the lawn. I didn’t even notice his call was over until he let out a soft groan. Billy never groans.

His mom, diagnosed with cancer, had fallen ill, and he was to cancel all of his summer classes, which he was weeks into, as well as all of his academic plans he had in front of him for an indefinite amount of time. His mom needed his help. His family needed his help. He had to go back to Nevada.

About a year later, Billy is back in Davis. Before finals, we made plans to go to Tahoe and stay at his place in Reno during Winter Break.

In our last night in Reno, Billy, Watkins, Kevin and I spoke outside his house in the snow. We stood in a circle and Billy told us in details about taking care of his mom by her bedside. The three of us stood back and listened, urged him to go on, and Billy laid out the details that made us heavy and cold. The fact that he was crying hardly registered because we too busy trying to hold ourselves from emotionally collapsing. It seemed like a sensual manifestation of last year: Billy going through unconceivable pain after heading back to Nevada, the rest of us look on and told him we were ready to hear it.

A lot of times, similar tides wash against you and your friends, and there arises an intimacy and camaraderie as the waves pass. You clench your teeth together, full front fledge with similar experiences of people near you and willing to lend you a hand, and you withstand it, coming out a little wiser, a little tougher. Other times, though, some thing comes up and hit somebody in your group. And it is spectacular. It is not a distinctive event that comes and passes; it is a total subversion of the beams that uphold the structure of your life. Nobody in your group has ever experienced anything like it. Hearing what happened to Billy’s mom, we reach and grasp from our own memories of lost and pain to try to find some common ground for your friend, to try to find some merit in our empathy. But there’s nothing there. With Billy in Nevada, we glanced sideways from our everyday problems, with midterms, with parties, with girls, and tell him with all sincerity through emails that we’re ready to lend a hand, that yes, Billy, we’re ready to listen, tell us what you want. But it seemed futile. Maybe it’s because of Billy’s writing style, but there was always a feeling of reservation – almost rationalization, which would be natural – about the entire situation.

We had none of that in the snow. We trudged back into his house utterly exhausted and fell asleep early.

I think the one question that confronts every guy who moves out – in our case, to college – is, “well, do you feel like a man?” Since our dads were the symbol of the male figure in our younger years, asking the question right now is sort of like asking “well, what would you do differently than what your dad has taught you?” And for me and many of my friends, we’ve found that although there are some core values and attitudes that we’ve learned to accept from our family back home, we haven’t felt like men for the same reason that we’ve been following their rules all along.

It’s been a few months since Billy has been back. The raw excitement of having a friend back in your circle of friends has passed. A new tone overarched our conversations, letting air in for newer, sometimes more somber, topics to set in.

“How has your dad dealt with it?”

“He’s internalized it. That’s how he’s always dealt with things.”

Billy’s dad came to the United States with next to nothing. Through smarts and ironclad work ethics, he worked his way up to a comfortable slot in the American middle class. In the process, the stoicism present in his youth took on a hardened tinge. Raising Billy and his brothers, he taught them to hold their emotions back. Because that’s what a man does. Don’t yell because it seems unfair. Don’t cry. Hold it and look strong.

Academically, a conservatism common in Asian-American households shaped his dad’s vision for who Billy is going to be. He is going to pursue a natural science like genetics. No exceptions. From the typical immigrant who has struggled to his way up, it’s unthinkable that for someone who has the opportunity to secure a financially sound future would turn it away. It’s not that this world is no place for artists; a “professional artist” who can bring in money is not part of his rationale. It is play. And you play after you work.

But Billy doesn’t care for genetics. Between his study sessions in freshmen year, he spent all of his time drawing, designing and making videos. After talking to his aunt and pushed by the encouragement of his friends in Davis, he began pursuing design and film studies behind his dad’s back. After coming back to Davis, he worked the entire previous summer to support himself financially in case his dad finds out what he’s working toward in school and decides to cut his financial support. He doesn’t have his own room and sleeps on the floor in the living room. He cooks everyday and almost never goes out to eat. He refuses to use the heater around the house during winter.

None of our friends had experienced anything close to what he has been through. Along with his friends, I stepped back and hope that what he’s going through wouldn’t break him or make him calloused, and assured him that we’re ready to embrace him once fate is through.

Billy's photography
Videography