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[NQV] SF visit: 8/31/96 (7)
Saturday 8/31/96
(continued)
In grand and disarming fashion Alex rushed back and forth and
impressed practically everyone within sight to buy tickets for
the fund-raiser Golden Summer Night on the following day (at a
$3 discount from the $15 door price). I was quite impressed,
however, at the draft "Lu+u Bu't He`" collection he was editing
for GVA which was passed around on the registration table. Alex
was quick to throw another advance pitch for that collection as
well as for membership in the Gay Viet Alliance: at cost for GVA
members! As I jokingly asked about discount for honorary members,
he shot back that GVA would be quite honored to charge them more. :-)
Just as the afternoon sessions were reconvening, and I was still
caught up in conversation with Ryan, a QAVA member (who bore a
rather striking resemblance to a classmate of mine and notorious
gay activist at Harvard named Joshua Oppenheimer, but I digress),
the lovebirds Duc and Khai made their entrance.
Never mind that I had once had a soft crush on Duc until I would
later found out that lucky for him Khai had had the upper hand at
it, it was quite pleasant and gratifying to see the two of them
so nicely matched in person. :-) I was somewhat surprised to find
anh Khai slightly shorter than I am (since I had imagined that the
medal-winning tennis player that he is would be at least as tall
as Michael Chang, who obviously holds an edge over me at 5'9"!),
next to Duc he seemed rather subdued (which was another surprise
contrary to my previous expectations), mostly grinning quietly
in a mellow sort of way. Duc seemed rather chirpy, and quite
"ddie^.u" in manners in a fussy "Northerner" kind of way, and I
was indeed impressed to see anyone edging me out on this count,
especially in Northern speech (which is all the more surprising,
considering Duc's orthographic sloppiness in written Vietnamese)
Now here's someone who can speak even more impeccable Northern
speech than I do, and that's quite a surprise! :-) But other
than that, I was quite happy to see the two of them looking so
nicely together in person: and they looked so much alike, from
their general looks, built (though Duc is slightly taller), the
way they dress (even to their glasses!) and act (though Duc was
slightly more animated on this occasion), one could tell they
had to be a couple, and a nicely matched one at that! :-) As I
sneaked toward the back of the room to say hello and chat with
Duc and Khai for a while, I got carried away with it and, lo and
behold to my embarassment, the whole room turned around and stared
at me as I was hushed up by a jocular chi Trang-Anh! :-) Taking
my cue, I was more circumpsect later when Illong belatedly arrived
during the video showings, and we greeted/chatted with one another
briefly in the back of the room. During intermission, Illong took
his leave to go to exchange/reschedule his tickets for the upcoming
SF Opera season which would be starting in a few days (and making
me moan and groan with envy for having to miss it this time!)
(to be continued)
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