The Dangerous Mind of Dan Luke

“A producer said he wanted me to play ‘a Chinese.’ You know, I mean, here I am a Chinese - and, not being prejudiced or anything but thinking realistically, how many times in film is a Chinese required? And when he is hired, I immediately could see the part - pigtails, chopsticks and “ah-sos,” shuffling obediently behind the master who has saved my life… I told [the Producer] “Look, if you sign me up with all that pigtail and hopping around jazz, forget it.”

Nobody would have thought that a hip, jive-talking cat from China would ever hold cultural prominence in the United States of America in the 60’s and 70’s. And nobody would have thought that a 5’8, gangly youth, would eventually sculpt his body into the defining image of physical fitness. Yet he did all of these things.

And for every impersonator that came in his wake, his image just seemed that much stronger, that much more secure. Bruce Lee was forever.

And of all the things I want to be. I want to be him most. But I always lacked his confidence, his determination, and his ability. I have always been one to succumb to dreaming, but never the waking moments in which I must achieve it.

I was to be ethnically mislabeled my entire life, without taking any action at all.

As the product of a sweet, religious, Italian woman and a Chinese, Japanese orthopedic surgeon – I was born onto a racial tightrope; always trying to navigate the big nosed, feverous, loud laughing Italians and the well groomed Asian American doctors that tortured my childhood with horrifically boring conversational topics such as: How to Spend United Flight Miles Correctly or How to File Your Tax Returns. Sometimes I think to myself, “Dan Luke, you are legend. Because a lesser man would have succumbed to suicide to avert more conversations about Medical Insurance, or H.M.O’s.”

That’s H.M.O’s, not ‘homos,’ although if it were ‘homos’ I’d totally be down with that too. But not in that way, just like, in a marginally supportive way.

There are several examples that I could use to enlighten you as to how this mixed ethnicity affected my upbringing in America. My favorite was during the Christmas season of 2004 - just coasting along the barren gray countryside of my small suburb in my broken down Geo Prism. My mother rode shotgun staring out her window at the Christmas lights adorning the buildings as it all blurred by.

Upon the arrival to our destination we hopped out of my car and wandered into the endless rows of pine trees, looking for the one that we would take home with us for that holiday season when we were approached by this old man. And what a sight the old crock was, rigid and worn. With bright red suspenders, thick rubber fishermen boots, and a crooked glass eye. Old and withered enough to have rode dinosaurs to work; yet fat enough to be some sort of horrific demented Santa Claus. He stood tall and confident.

“What kind of tree ya’ll want?”

I looked to my Mother and then back to him, “We were thinking of an Evergreen seeder.”

And just like that, he nods his head, his glass eye swirling in a clockwise motion, and he clamps his mighty hands around a tree, yanks it from its foundation, and slams it on to the asphalt with a tremendous thud. As he is strangling this poor, comic display of a Christmas tree to death, shaking it as if to cure the downs – I shake my head and mumble to myself:

“That’s a Douglas fur.”

Suddenly, he looks up to me and then stops. He sets the tree down and stands up, hands on his hips. Again, he surveys me with his good eye, and then my mother.

“You know this young man?” He says to my Mom.

“Yep. He’s my middle child.”

His eyes shoot wide. And for a moment, I believe that his brain may have actually exploded and splattered against the walls of his cranium.

It wasn’t like this was anything new. Actually, I expected this by now – I had been conditioned for it when I was a gangly youth trapped within the confines of my suburban, blandly white high school.

“Mexican?” They’d say.

“What?” I’d say.

“Are you Mexican? You know, ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell’ Mexican.” They’d say.

And I’d say, “Fuck no.”

And that would blow their collective mind. I could see it in their eyes, “But you’re brown.”

And I’d say “Yeah.”

And then they’d say, “Indiaan?”

“No.”

“African American?”

“No.”

And then it would come.

“Ayyyyy-a-jHUN?” Always just like that. With the ‘a’ dragged, the pitch slowly climbing, and the ridiculous stressing of the question mark, “Asiaaan?”

They would always say it like that would be the one word, completely liberating me from my Americanized senses, so that a moment I could revert into my rickshaw speech patterns from the old country that I had reserved inside of myself for so long, “OH HERROHHHH. YOU A-VERRIAH PREDDIEEE RAYYYDDEE. I GOTTAA BIGGAH-OLDAH BUDDAH BELLIE.”

But I’d intentionally let them down with a perfectly English, “Yeah, kinda.”

Before they would continue with their racial interrogation.

“Do you like rice?”

“Do you know martial arts?”

“Do you eat sushi?”

“How small is your penis? Do I need the aid of a magnification lens to view it?”

“Do you drive a supped up Honda?”

“What’s your DJ name? DJ SILVER HONDA?”

“Was THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT about your life?”

It was the same way every time. I didn’t understand why people had to always complete this obligatory Asian checklist, but they did, it made them feel human. I always felt like I need to reassure them, that I would not, in fact, rappel out the window via ninja rope whenever they weren’t looking or anything.

I was a normal kid just like them, I liked Kurt Cobain and thought The Fast and The Furious was the shit.

I had been raised and baptized in White American culture, but never recognized for it. Look at my family, almost all white people. Three Italian broads raised me after my Father left during my freshman year of high school (My mother, my step-sister, my other sister that was also multi-racial, and a Mexican woman that lived in my basement. Yes, she just randomly lived in my basement, and yes she was hot).

Our peculiar, white, oval suburban home (with its fresh cut bright green grass) reeked of estrogen as soon as you entered it. There were things you got used to living with all women; you would have to notice if there was the slightest, most remote change in their hairstyle. You could not mention their age or weight at any time. And you were not allowed to generalize women in any way, shape, or form. Typically, at the end of every month you would have to go into hiding. This week, known as, “Menstrual Week,” (God forbid, you ever encounter it) will scare you, as women tend to turn into vicious, fire-breathing dragons that will not think twice about mauling your face off like a rabid badger.

I would become a runaway, a refugee during these weeks. Escaping to the confines of my cold, steel, unfinished basement. I had a semi-decent ’87 Toshiba television and VHS unit and that was good enough for me. But the truth is, the estrogen in the house was affecting my body too, and I was convinced I had started growing tits. So, in order to remedy this, I would spend my nights watching Kung Fu flicks.

But modern Kung Fu felt like modern porn to me. It lacked the passion and raw vitalizing spirit of what it once was. It was all acrobatic leaps off buildings, 360 camera twirls, and running on walls. Gone was the pseudo-philosophical banter and displays of raw power. Gone were the authentic fights, real stunts, and amazing techniques. Gone was its soul. I had to find something real; something authentic.

It was in that basement, late one night that I ran into “Game of Death,” starring Bruce Lee. My Kung Fu Messiah. It was the classic battle between Lee and Kareem Abduul-Jabbar. From the battles first moments, I was absolutely mesmerized.

I thought: “Who the fuck is this inexplicably tiny, ridiculous, Asian dude in this tight yellow track suit, and how the fuck does he think he even stands a chance against this nine-hundred-foot tall black dude?”

I sat up towards the screen in my boxers and wife beater, eyes stuck on my ’87 Toshiba.

Lee stood with confidence, muscles contracted, eyes determined and focused. He bounced back and forth on his feet waiting for Jabbar to move. Jabbar did, he lunged forward with all of his force towards Lee, their arms connected and suddenly this huge, hulking, black man was shooting toward the wall. I had a new hero.

Lee became an obsession after that. I bought Bruce Lee books, movies, posters, collectible cups, and action figures. I sought out old television interviews just to hear what he sounded like in conversation. And I spent every waking moment babbling incessantly about his speed and dexterity or his fashion sense and hairstyles. People hated me. Chicks didn’t date me, at least, the non-skanky ones.

And at the height of that obsession, I began absorbing myself into the lore surrounding Lee. I began to consume the last remains I had yet to consume – his Kung Fu philosophy, which would ultimately become one of the defining moments of my life.

To present it – I must divulge into some back-story first.

If I remember correctly, Lee moved to the United States in 1959 and began constructing his own martial arts system. His firm stance that Kung Fu should be practiced by the best, rather than race, gave him a few enemies in the martial arts community. In 1964 a man named Wong Jack Man challenged Lee to a duel. They fought and Wong kicked Lee’s ass.

Lee then turned introspective. He believed that he had not lived up to his potential. To Lee, traditional martial arts weren’t organic enough. Rather, they were rigid patterns of blocks and attacks that were much too structured. Lee then changed his martial arts system and thought process to “the style of no style,” or Jeet Kune Do. Which combined all forms of Kung Fu and modern combat under one giant label.

But there was more to it than just that. It was how Lee described Jeet Kune Do in interviews:

This was true for me on many levels, not just for Kung Fu, but existence on this planet in general. I had spent my entire life being labeled as Asian or Caucasian or whatever the fuck else, but I had never found a racial place where I really fit.

But here too was Lee, who never had a Kung Fu identity. And yet, in spite of it, pushed himself to prove that you didn’t need a Kung Fu identity to be what you want to be; and I that I didn’t need an ethnic identity to be what I want to be either.

I am not saying that people should deny their ethnicity. Those with the luxury of it, those that bear its scars and rich history, should absorb themselves in it, but they also should never lose sight of who they are inside of the skin, whatever it is labeled to be.

At the end of the day their ethnicity is just that: A label, a martial art form.

There is no singular truth in this world. There is no absolute answer. As humans we can’t confine ourselves to one set thing – in fact, we need to break of the labels and routines in order to live as we see fit. In order to be ourselves, sometimes, we just have to be.

But I’ve gotten carried away. ANYWAY, back on the Christmas tree farm, in the rows of cedars and pines, this old man in red suspenders and his swirling glass eye looks at my mother and says:

“Adopted?”

And she says, “No, he popped out of me.”

But he has already decided what he will say and not a word she has uttered is heard: “Son, I just want you to know that as a white person I sure do appreciate all the pain and suffering you Navajo Indian’s have gone through. The white man sure did cut you guys a raw deal.”

And I just nod and say “thanks.”

Filed under: Personal Entry, Season 2