The Problem With Pee Wee

Most of my dispatches from the Mill begin with me commenting on what Pee Wee is doing in the office. For example, last year’s A Visit from Charles Van Ness began:

So I was in the office at the Mill playing cribbage with Pee Wee, my flunky, when this kid named Charles Van Ness came in.

A few weeks later, the Mid-Term Report began:

Pee Wee, my flunky, and I were in the canteen at the Mill testing out a new recipe for steaming lobsters. You might think that there is no way to improve on steaming lobsters. Pee Wee would agree with you, but it is my conviction that if you turn the heat on the stove up higher the steam gets hotter.

I would have started this post in the same way, but I can’t because Pee Wee isn’t here. He’s not here at the Mill even though the season has, more-or-less, started. You may think that there is no point in having an old man doing Sodoku puzzles in the corner, but when he’s absent you start to realize how integral to the flow of things he is. This post kind of sucks, doesn’t it? You are bored already. See, no Pee Wee and things go down hill almost immediately.

I didn’t know why Pee Wee was missing until this afternoon. I was busy writing all of my passwords on the label of a bottle of scotch I keep in the upper right hand drawer of my desk… see, hackers will look in the upper-right hand drawer of your desk for your passwords but not on the bottle of scotch. Hackers don’t drink scotch. It’s a fact. You could look it up on the Internet.

I had just finished writing my username to GirlsInSwimFins&WestSuits.com when the HR woman, Cathy Aruda, came in. Now, I know you think I’m going to make fun of HR people by describing her as overweight, disheveled, and pushy, but that’s not it at all. She dresses well, is good at math, and doesn’t have that weird grin when she gives people the box to clean out their desks. You would hardly know she is from HR.

Cathy came in and told me that Pee Wee’s visa was denied and that he can’t re-enter the metafictional metaverse of Mushamaguntic.

“When did this become a metaverse?” I asked.

“I think when the ASS42000's avatar beat your avatar in Bolo,” she said.

“Thanks for bringing that up,” I said, “So, why won’t they renew Pee Wee’s visa?”

“They say that Pee Wee is a racist trope and shouldn’t be allowed back into fiction.”

“How is having an 86-year-old Korean man who wears baseball cap backwards and sits on a milk crate a racist trope?” I asked.

“He’s good at math,” she said.

“I would hope so, he went to Harvard, KAIST, and was civil engineer before he retired. In fact, he designed the bridge that runs out to Elder’s Island. Next time you’re driving across that bridge you tell me if you want him to be good at math.”

“That’s the ‘All Asians are good at math” trope.”

“I understand.” I said, “Tell immigration that we can make him bad at math and have him bet on horse races instead of playing Soduko, but don’t blame me if someone gets hurt when his projects collapse.”

“They had other concerns,” Cathy continued, “They say that in The Morning After post, you fell into the “All Asian’s can do martial arts” trope.

“What?” I said, trying not to betray my rising defensiveness. The allegations were beginning to chafe, and Cathy Aruda’s impassivity was getting annoying. “Pee Wee has never done any martial arts.”

“They quoted this selection,” she said:

They tried to take Pee Wee’s stack of Korean newspapers, but Pee Wee got there and for an 78-year-old guy he is still pretty quick. He was a southpaw Golden-Gloves boxer while at Harvard, which is why his old friends call him “Hookie”, and in the scrum around his newspapers three people went down but he looked fine.

“Boxing is a ‘martial art’?” I asked.

“Apparently so,” she said.

“What nonsense,” I said, “It’s not like I had him go into the temple and spit in a bucket or something. His cut man didn’t even have a mustache!”

“They also say you have fallen into the Mighty Whitey, Mellow Yellow trope.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” I said.

“You could look it up.”

“I dropped my phone in the toilet.”

“You could ask the ASS42000,” she said.

I made a shushing sign by placing an index finger in front of my lips and pointing at the ASS42000 “terminal” on my desk.

“If you wake it up it will want to play Bolo.” I said. Luckily, the little green light didn’t come on.

“The problem is that Pee Wee is your ‘flunky’, so you are the big white man with a humorous sidekick who is a 78-year-old Korean. What does that say about your thoughts on race? Where is the dignity in it for him? Why do you think it is OK for you to create Korean characters when you know nothing about Koreans or Korea?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “James Fenimore Cooper wasn’t native American and he wrote about Mohicans. He created Chingachgook.”

“That’s a horrible example.” she said.

“Shakespeare wasn’t Jewish and he created Shylock.”

“Even worse.”

“Well,” I said, “I need a flunky and by your reasoning the only flunky I can have is some fat white Irish guy over there in the corner.”

“Exactly,” she said, and I realized that her expression hadn’t changed the whole conversation. Her eyebrows hadn’t even widened.

“But the image of such a man wearing a baseball cap backwards isn’t funny, it’s pathetic.”

“So,” she said.

“And what’s he going to do, watch the Red Sox games and read fuck books?”

“That would be your choice.”

“Oh, it’s so awful.” I said, “ This is going to be the worst summer ever. We’re in deep kimchi already.”

“That’s the kind of talk that got you in trouble in the first place,” she said, then she turned around and walked out of the office.

The sun was still out even though it was late in the afternoon. The grass on the lawn was sprouting up in huge clusters, waiting for the lawn mowers to be released from winter storage. The apple tree blossoms were on the verge of bursting open. It’s hard to feel bad about things when newness is breaking out everywhere you look.

The yellow plastic milk crate still sits in the corner. There are no Korean newspapers in it. I will miss Pee Wee, but I’m sure he is enjoying being with his grandchildren and doing whatever it is that Korean-Americans do when they are not acting as my flunky.