Nihao, New York
I reluctantly fork out the exorbitant surcharge for my overweight luggage, whilst wondering what is the absolute limit to the weight a single plane can carry, and if the airlines take this into account when raking in our overweight-luggage fees, or if they’ve conducted extensive statistical analyses and have determined that approximately 63 percent of people with overweight luggage would rather frantically unpack their suitcases in front of an audience to selectively dispose of their contents, thus ensuring that the amount of overweight luggage on board will always remain well under the maximum capacity, or if, as I suspect, doubting ho that I am, they don’t give a flying fuck and will suck every penny out of you that they can and accept your extra money for the overweight luggage without any limit, meaning one day, a plane I’m on will drop like a stone from the sky and we will all hurtle toward certain death because one too many people checked in overweight luggage.
I medicate myself with an Asahi and a packet of sour gummy worms to avoid dwelling on this morbid thought for too long.
Roughly 6,700 miles between Tai and me in about thirteen more hours, once I deplane my nonstop flight to New York. Not the best timing, per se, when there is nothing quite tangible between us yet, this flickering flame of a nonrelationship, but I’d already booked my trip months ago in anticipation of the summer holidays. My first time traveling solo, because I’m a big girl now. I scroll through our texts, the smattering of short one-liners heady with barely concealed lust and playful banter. Initiated by yours truly, the day after the beach party.
you’re kinda cute :)
I confess that I composed several different variations: capitalized, in all lowercase, with emojis, with no emojis. I decided against sending it after hours, lest I sully my own reputation: I am a Madonna, not a whore. A virgin in love is not to be trifled with, no sir.
In the end, I deleted the hey and the emoji, opting instead for an old-fashioned smile emoticon. All lowercase, in a deceptive show of casualness. I sent it at the unthreatening hour of 11:02 the following morning.
The rest is history, as they say. My phone lights up with a new text, and my heart lights up, too, a fresh lime dropping into a cold bottle of beer, a bursting balloon, a cartoon lightbulb flicking on with sudden, radiant intensity. A giddiness I refuse to contain.
I reread our texts every night, starting from the very first. I memorize all our lines, plot them into a color-coordinated spreadsheet that maps the frequency, initiator, and average response time of our conversations. I study the data in order to control my basest impulses and tamp them down; I master the art of coyness and mystery. A minimalist approach, if you will. Because less is more, he must make more of an effort to stoke the fires of our dialogue, keep it alive. I delight in snipping short the threads of our conversations and affecting a tone of detached nonchalance, for him to slam the ball back into my court out of desperation. Gleefully, I take it as a token of his continued interest.
text me when you get there! hope u have a safe flight mika
He adds a mikan, or mandarin orange, emoji at the end of the text, and my heart thumps at the personalized touch, his undeniable show of affection.
I cling with gratitude to the morsels you throw at me. I feed on them throughout the day and hold them close to me in the moments before I fall asleep. Darling, you sustain me more than you could ever know. (If only you knew.)
A bright, cold terror coils within my stomach moments before touchdown. What have I done? All alone with a few thousand dollars to my name, courtesy of my soul-sucking corporate job. Cold, hard cash that I intend to spend in the most frivolous of manners. My heart drops into my stomach and beats irregularly as I board the shuttle bus to the Midtown Hilton. No motels or hostels for the likes of me! Nothing beats the feeling of crisp, fresh white sheets and fluffy white towels, those mini bottles of shampoo and plastic-wrapped bars of tiny soap. A New Testament with an uncracked spine in my desk drawer, chocolate mints on my pillow. I am, after all, a fancy bitch.
A fancy, friendless bitch in the great city of New York, left to her own devices for five whole days.
I order room service, and a bespectacled man wheels in my silver platter at half past eight. He lingers at the door, and I smile and shut the door in his face—did he want my number?—before I remember, far too late, the terrible culture of tipping in America. I open the door again but to no avail; he has vanished without a trace, no doubt with a blossoming seed of anti-Asian sentiment that I have planted within him. I dine upon a single greasy slice of pepperoni pizza the size of my face, wash down my middle-class guilt with a can of Coke in a champagne flute, and vibrate myself to sleep.
I wake up, entangled in starched white sheets, legs stubbled. I try my best not to picture that episode of an investigative TV show where a hotel room, under the glare of black light, showed splotches of semen in every corner of the room. Try my best not to think of how many couples have fucked with reckless abandon on this very surface that I now lie upon, all by my lonesome. Or on the velvet armchair sitting like an innocent in the corner of the room, on the desk with a gilded mirror hanging ever so conveniently over it, in the porcelain bathtub with curved lion paws, or the walk-in shower. The carpet must be coated in cum. Not an inch left unfucked. I shower the remnants of other people’s lovemaking off my virginal body and shave my cactus legs in order to please the patriarchy.
I dress myself leisurely, luxuriously, in front of the full-length mirror. First, a silky pink thong embroidered with flowers followed by an oversized dusty-pink graphic T-shirt sans bra, and black-and-white striped drawstring pants. I dust glittery eye-shadow across my eyelids, draw on heavy-winged eyeliner, slip on black platform wedges so high I could break an ankle in them. Once again, I take time to mourn the waste of my unappreciated, unfucked beauty. I grope my own breasts because no one else will grope them for me.
A new text from Tai awaits me, but I leave it unopened. My little present. I will let it sit for a few more hours to conjure the illusion of being preoccupied, of not being utterly consumed by thoughts of him. The one who cares less wins. A woman is happier when she is loved more than she loves, my mother once told me. The secret behind my parents’ silver anniversary, no doubt.
A full day stretches out before me, with an itinerary to pluck and discard or ingest as I please. But first, breakfast.
The breakfast buffet proves to be a sumptuous feast. I dine on Chinese congee with broiled peanuts and pork floss, fuse East and West in my belly by partaking in a mushroom and cheese omelet cooked to order, a tiny blueberry muffin, two rashers of crispy bacon, fresh papaya, and a little glass bowl of Greek yogurt drizzled with honey and sprinkled with granola. I mop it all up with a triangle of toast, buttered thickly with a silver knife. It is very good toast; my teeth meet initial resistance with the crusty exterior, before sinking into a delightfully spongy interior. I leave no crumbs and wash it all down with one last cup of milky coffee, as steam condenses like dewdrops upon my lashes.
I have eaten until I’ve reached that happy place where a minuscule pocket of residual hunger gnaws within me, hara hachi bun me. I discreetly loosen my drawstring pants and head out into the city.
My phone buzzes again and I know without looking that it is Tai, and a warmth seeps through me. Like pissing in the shower, a liquid blanket. Except it’s love, not piss: I am in love.
This feeling that I get, whenever I see his name pop up on my screen, whenever he deigns to respond without leaving me on read, whenever I scroll up and then down our ever-accumulating flurry of exchanges, I wish to bottle it up, this pink-prosecco giddiness. I could jerk off to the feeling every night.
“WATCH IT, LADY!” screams a spandex-clad bicyclist as I attempt to jaywalk, but even his anger cannot dampen my Tai-induced fizz. I check it off my list of quintessential New York experiences and raise nary a middle finger to his fast-retreating buttocks.
Our charming encounter aside, I am relatively anonymous, and I revel in my invisibility. So unlike the suburbs of Ohio, where I had the misfortune of spending my formative years because of my parents’ jobs. New York: the next best thing after Hawaii, at least to my people. When you think of America, you think of New York. Not Ohio, never Ohio. The streets of Manhattan are for the most part pleasingly numbered and uniform—not a cornfield in sight!—and I walk with an air of purpose and practiced disdain so strong that another tourist stops to ask me for directions, and I have to shake my head and say, “Sorry, I’m not from here.” Hungry from walking, I order a hot dog off a shabby cart parked on the corner from an alarmingly mustachioed man, feeling my New Yorker fantasy, when I am Nihao-ed.
(By a middle-aged, vaguely Middle Eastern man, no less. The whites have divided and conquered us; so much for racial solidarity!)
He spits the words in my face, smirks, saunters off. I am shooketh. I did not know, did not dare imagine, that Nihaos transpired outside of the flyover states. A hot, scorching embarrassment crawls over me, and I stand stock-still as he walks away. Not a single witty insult comes to my lips, and I am left to stew in regret and vivid, violent fantasies of everything I could’ve, should’ve, done.
*
Mika shoves her half-eaten hot-dog sausage up his left nostril, then stuffs the bun into his jeering mouth. Grabs a ketchup bottle and garnishes his face, before squirting mustard into his hateful, piggish eyes. Observe now as he gags and gasps for breath, totally reliant on the tiny airway of his right nostril. He falls to the ground. She reaches over and stuffs the free end of the hot dog into his right nostril, forming a sausage septum ring and closing off his last available airway. “NIHAO TO YOU TOO, BITCH” are her parting words as Mika leaves him twitching on the sidewalk, hordes of indifferent New Yorkers stepping over his dead body.
*
The hot-dog vendor avoids eye contact as he busies himself with the next customer. Only he is witness to my humiliation, and I nibble at my hot dog in a brave show of nonchalance. My melanated skin barely masks my burning cheeks and my heart is beating a mile a minute, but my Asian poker face is my saving grace.
I stroll on, street meat in hand, like a seasoned local. Unperturbed, unaffected. I belong here, even if my passport says differently. The vast influence of American soft power (or the corrupting impact of Western imperialism disguised as globalization, whichever you prefer) ensured that the world grew up watching American movies and listening to American music, eating at American chain restaurants, wearing American brand clothing, even speaking American slang. Shit! Fuck! Bitch! Our politics, cultures, and wars manipulated by America to varying extents. We ended up looking up to America with a mixture of childish love and longing; we believed with unfounded confidence that we would belong, that America would accept us, if only we were able to get there. In a way, America belongs to us too, because we’ve known America all our lives. I belong here! I belong here! I march down the sidewalk in my black platform wedges and cast my leftovers to a pair of rats, who promptly engage in a violent scuffle. I eye my reflection in a shop window, the Nihao incident blocks behind me. Look at that ass, the curve of that spine. Not even a quarter of a century old! Youth in all its glory and radiance: moi. What am I without it? Nothing. But for now, it is in my possession, and I am all the more desirable for it. I pass a bearded man with dreads who is leaning against a building. He appraises me coolly though half-lidded eyes while smoking a cigarette. A seemingly homeless man whistles before yelling “I LIKE LEGS!” from across the street, and I beam with pride even as I avoid eye contact and hurry along, clutching at my purse strap. Men other than Tai find me attractive! My calves are pleasing to the eye!
There is a novelty in being perceived, really seen, as a foreigner and a woman. Catcalling does not occur in a civilized country like mine, at least not for me, and I will sink into relative obscurity again when I arrive home. Nobody will spare a glance my way; I’ll be just another average blackhead. But here, I am Nihao-ed and I am catcalled.
I text Tai the details of both incidents, and I am delighted by his immediate reply, his imagined jealousy and gnashing of teeth. Fuck that guy. Are you ok? He’s probably at home, furiously masturbating at the thought of me, a dozen abused socks discarded by his bedside, stiffly upright like meerkats. I’m worried about you he says. Stay safe out there and come home in one piece, ok? And I chide him for his paternalism, reply yes daddy with a heart emoji tacked on for good measure to really get his blood going. He texts me a singular fuck in response, and this eloquent Shakespearean expression of the bottomless depth of his carnal longing renders me weak in the knees. I consider printing out his text and framing it. Every time my phone vibrates with a new text from him and my screen lights up with his name, a shot of serotonin goes straight to my heart. This, this must be love.
Later that night, I sit nestled in fresh sheets, popping my blisters and scrolling through our texts from the very beginning. As per usual. Oh, the perverse pleasure of blister popping—applying steady pressure with my thumb until pop! the clear juice, or sauce, as I like to call it, explodes, which I soak up with a tissue before applying ointment and a bandage over the new crater. I pop one and then another, my battle scars from conquering the streets of New York, as I savor my exchanges with Tai. It’s morning in Tokyo, but he texts me good night with a little crescent-moon emoji, and my heart explodes into fireworks at this minimal gesture of affection, a shortcut salutation, and I drift off to sleep, happy in the knowledge that I am quite in love. My remaining days in New York gallop by in a rather uneventful fashion; I have money, but I don’t know how to spend it. I end up shuttling myself to tourist destinations and burn with quiet shame come nighttime, when I have to feed myself. Lunch is a much more manageable affair; I indulge in a buttery lobster roll and a frothy root-beer float one day, and enjoy a small feast from an organic supermarket that I bring to Central Park on my last, flicking through a paperback while spearing marinated olives and gorging on miscellaneous delicacies: crackers with Brie and apricot jam, garlic shrimp, truffle potato chips, and jammy egg and watercress sandwiches. I spit the olive pits out with glee like a proper barbarian. But oh, how I dread dinners, the holding up of one finger and smiling sheepishly when the waiter inquires, “Table for how many?” and sitting there pathetically, miserably, at a table set for two, while surrounded by couples and friends and families. There is never another solo diner in sight. Because only losers eat dinner in public by themselves. I’m a loser, and everybody here knows it.
Everybody except for Tai and Nana and my family, the only people I text every day; they are none the wiser. I send Nana snapshots and selfies, and she texts me back UGH SO JELLY and I grow complacent in playing the part of a person who inspires envy. My parents telling me that they love me not through words, because we’re Asian and we don’t do that, but by asking me if I’m eating well and to send pictures of what I’ve eaten, and I realize that nobody else in my life cares about what passes through my esophagus as much as they do, and if that is not love, what is? My mother wants me to be careful of pickpockets and rapists, and my father wants me to send him my flight details so he can pick me up at the airport. Tai writes hurry back soon and suddenly it doesn’t matter that I’m all alone, scarfing down a bowl of overpriced duck ragu in a neighborhood bistro in a foreign country, because the glow of his words renews me, gives me strength. I slip my phone into my pocket and smile, tip the waiter 25 percent, and sail out of the restaurant on love’s light wings.
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From Hello, Limerence by Momo Yamaguchi. Used with permission of the publisher, Mariner Books. Copyright © 2026 by Momo Yamaguchi.
