Dishonor on Your Cow!

Feeling myself, I'm conceited... 💁🏼‍♀️

As a writer, my vocabulary is quite limited. Hear me in a conversation, and my vomits of “um” and “like” would make you believe that I can barely read—let alone be an actual professional writer. Vast is my knowledge of the history of Fifth Harmony, and limited is my understanding of ways to convey my internal dialogue with more than a handful of perfunctory¹ words.

I learned my first “big word” when I was seven: Conceited. It was slung at me by a four-eyed East Asian nerd on the playground during a heated discussion on which The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids novel was the best. The answer was Vampires Don't Wear Polka Dots, and I refused to believe otherwise. I didn’t know to be offended by the slur “conceited” until later that evening when my mother defined it and then asked, “Are you an asshole?”

I am an only child with divorced parents who always were at war for my love, so my general disposition was “My Way or the Highway.” In my mind, everything was about me—because at home, everything was, in fact, about me. Marinated in that delusion, I became a self-involved child whose only fun in life was episodes of Days of Our Lives and creating strategies to make everything about me. Conceited, I was. I hated the moniker and started calling everyone conceited to dilute the word until it lost its meaning. At Thanksgiving that year, I sat on my grandmother's staircase, hidden like a cookie crumb in the back of the pantry. To anyone who walked past, I would snipe like a bird from a cuckoo clock and yelp, “You’re conceited.”

But being conceited is just having pride in yourself. It’s knowing you’re an interesting person. It’s believing that you have a story to tell—that you have worth. And, yes, sure, it’s also vanity—that manifests in me as narrow-mindedness for my own cause. But it’s what also makes me crazy enough to be a writer. It’s what makes me think I’m interesting enough to write a solo show—which is what this long-winded intro is really about: I’m writing a solo show. So, for the actual topic at hand…

I’ve been writing it this fall in East West Players’ The Solo Project workshop, which is the primary source for neglecting this newsletter (apologies to the eight of you who pay for this!). So for funsies, and cause I don’t have the bandwidth to write something new², here’s a scrapped excerpt of the play, soon to be formerly known as Dishonor on Your Cow.

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Dishonor on Your Cow

A large chalkboard is set center stage. Nicholas Pilapil enters.

Greetings. My name is Nicholas...

Nicholas walks to the chalkboard and repeatedly writes his last name “Pilapil” until he can settle on a pronunciation.

Pill-uh-pill.
Pil-La-Pil.
Pe-La-Pil.
Peel-uh-peel?

He writes “Pilapil” one more time but doesn’t say it. He underlines and circles it.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose—” Just kidding...fuck that guy.
Do you ever think about where names come from?

If life, as we know it today, evolved from a single microorganism gang bang’d by carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus under the sea by ocean volcanos jizzing superheat billions of years ago.

Then where did the gift of a name evolve from?
Who decided that we get two of them?
Who in my family thought PILAPIL was a cute idea?

WELCOME!
To what? To class!
Yes, you are in school.

I know you thought you came to this theatre to experience theatre, but this is not a theatre. WE ARE NOT IN A THEATRE. This is a classroom.
AND THIS IS NOT THEATRE THIS IS LEARNING.
But if you think about it, THAT, my friends, is theatre.
However. This is not theatre. That, my friends, is today’s truth.
But if you also think about that is actually a lesson in theatre.
THIS IS NOT THEATRE! CLASS IS IN SESSION.

Why are we here today? Why are any of us here?
Cause our parents fucked. And their parents fucked.
And then their parents fucked in a different country than the one you live in right now.

Today, I am here to teach you about:
“How to Uncover Your Family History in Attempts to Becoming a Fuller Human Being Because You’re 30 Now and Have Realized You Know Nothing About Where You Come From or How to Properly Pronounce Your Last Name.”³

For short:

Nicholas writes “HUYFHABFHBBYTHRYKNAWYCFHPPYLN” on the chalkboard.

Pronounced: “BALEGDEH.”

Nicholas takes a tiny remote from his pocket and presses a button that plays a projection of the viral clip of Little Mix’s Jesy Nelson attempting a Jamaican accent. Despite it being offensive gibberish, if you listen closely, it sounds like she’s saying, “My Last Name.”

This class is not for everyone.

If your last name is in the style of a Williams, Smith, Taylor, Thomas, Allen; if your last name can also be a first name, if you feel sufficiently represented across all media.
This class is not for you.
But if you are here already. No refunds.

This class is for people who may have grown up with the crushing pressure to become a doctor or lawyer from a parent who speaks horrible English.

This class is for anyone whose mom never tells you she loves you but is always feeding you but then always mad at you for being fat. Despite your average BMI.

This class is for white actors who have recently tacked on one of their grandparent’s “ethnic” last names to reap the rewards of the current trend of diversity.

You are all in fantastic hands with me here today.
If I had a Yelp page. It would be five stars.

So you trust me, my qualifications include:
I have a B.A. in general Theatre Arts from a state school
250-hours of Yoga Teacher Training
Trauma from being closeted in an Asian family
Missing out on loving my family fully because of said trauma
Realizing said trauma severed a connection to my cultural identity
Being smart enough to turn my trauma into art and monetize it

I mean if you’re gonna learn from anyone it should be from me.

Uncovering a family history can be a daunting task.
Where do you start? What questions do I ask? Isn’t it easier to do 23&Me?

It’s actually quite simple. You already have what you need to begin.
Start with your last name.
Your last name will inform you of what to ask and where to look.

I started on this journey, because I am unconfident in how I am supposed to actually properly in my native tongue pronounce my last name.

Now, how does one properly pronounce my last name? It’s up for debate.

My father says it like Pill-uh-Pill, which I refer to as “The White Way.”
Now repeat after me: Pill-uh-Pill...

The audience responds. Nicholas goes back to the chalkboard.

PILAPIL.
It is a Filipino last name from the Philippines.
Pilapil is Tagalog for “Dike.”
Very masculine. Very feminine. Those dikes.
We’re the embarkments between the rice paddies.

Nicholas presses the remote and a projection of Rice Paddies in the Philippines appear.

We’re barriers.
We hold back water and cause floods over growing rice.
Which is very fitting, because I am a very guarded person who holds back his feelings and too often cries alone at dinner over a bowl of rice.

1. I Googled this word. Did I use it right?

2. Except that I just wrote this long and unnecessary essay on being conceited. WTF.

3. My original idea was to give TEDTalk as a way to explore my Filipinoness. We have since moved in a different direction.