Yin and Yang
I have been writing a lot about this guy I know, Black Agassi. One time he roofied everyone at Shabbat dinner with diarrhetic herbs. He’s a Chinese Medicine Doctor. It’s cool because his name is Black Agassi and he’s not Black, he’s Armenian. And you would think he was Chinese because he is a Chinese medicine doctor, but he’s not, he’s Armenian. And he’s giving everyone diarrhea at the Shabbat dinner. It’s kind of like that guy from the pandemic. That Chinese guy whose skin darkened during the covid problem and now he’s a black guy.
One time I was with some boy on acid. And I remembered this scene from this HBO show where this girl gets on her knees on acid. And they’re fighting. And she says ‘See… This is why it will never work, Bret. You’re up there with the clouds, and I’m down on earth.” And then she proceeds to rub dirt all over her face.’ I was like wow that’s cool. And then I did it to this guy while we were on acid, but we weren’t fighting. We had just met. And the guy was like, “Yo are you r-worded?” And I freaked out and lied. “Sorry I’m just having a moment. My mom is dead.”
Anyways that’s how Black Agassi and I started dating. He was crazy. Actually, he inadvertently framed me, because I only ate the challah at Shabbat, and he roofied the brisket I’m pretty sure, with the diarrhetic herbs. And for some reason he ate the brisket after roofying it. So, I was the only person who didn’t get the diarrhea which was pretty fucked up because they don’t invite me to Shabbat dinner anymore and my Entertainment/Hollywood career faced a couple setbacks.
And then Black Agassi tried to burn my house down. I saw him on my porch with kerosene that I love the smell of. And then I was like “What are you doing? “And he was like “Burning your house down.” And I was like “Why?” And he was like “Ants.” Because I had an ant problem.
And then after college, Black got me a job at the Chinese hospital in Chinatown, and I was his assistant for a while. One time I came into work with some grapes, and Black was like “Can I have one?” And I gave him one and he was like, “What is it?” And I said “Uhhhhhhhhh grapes?” And he said, “Grape.” And then I had to bring him grapes every day to work.
One time I was lying next to Black Agassi, and I had a dream that Mark Zuckerberg had Kanye West assassinated. And I woke up kind of freaked out. It was a stress dream; my adrenaline was gushing. And then, I turned to Black for comfort, and he said, “Stay woke. Anything is possible.”
After I quit the Chinese hospital job, our relationship became strained. We saw less of each other. He was very busy. He had two patients, but they were a handful. They both had cancer, but it wasn’t going away. I helped Black Agassi order multiple boxes of 50 mg Nicotine patches from Alibaba for the two cancer patients, but by the time they arrived, one of the patients had died.
Black introduced me to his parents during our rough patch. They were going to have us over for dinner, but Black had recently set the house on fire after an ant problem. Instead, we went to a buffet, and I joked about Black putting the diarrhetic herbs in the food, and his parents looked at me in confusion and then Black texted me that his parents thought he was an entrepreneur, and I asked him what kind of business, and he said ‘in the Energy sector’. Anyways, it was awkward, the silence was deafening. I could feel the silence sticking to me like glue and I kept scratching my arms. Eventually Black said, “Riska has a really good MLK impression.” And after just enough coercion, I tightened my posture and started… “I have a dream” and then they laughed, and it wasn’t as weird as you probably think because the Agassi’s were Armenian and not Black.
The dinner went well enough, but there was still a dread, and a distance between us. It didn’t matter that his parents liked me or my MLK impression. Black spoke tersely, in riddles, and I spoke in haunted tongues. He was of the clouds, and I? I was just dirt (rub hands all over face).
Eventually, I left for India during the Holidays. I had thought that a couple months away from Black would be good. My parents didn’t like Black mostly because of the ant incident, but also because of his job which is a Chinese medicine doctor which is weird because Indian people love doctors. They told me we were attending a wedding, but it was a machination for my arranged marriage. I was forlorn that Black had not wrote to me since the beginning of my trip and that he kept posting clips from local comedy clubs on his instagram story, so I had finally agreed to a meeting with a groom.
The first groom we met was an Indian doctor, neurosurgeon. Neurosurgeons are the highest paid doctors which I thought was cool. He was also handsome which was very interesting and liked to talk a lot about poetry, and artistic pornos and cinemas and stuff. This is man who knew what he deserved and liked to get it how he wanted. And you’re not going to believe this, his was name was White, White Malhotra. He was so cool. I loved him so much. My heart was exploding.
We set the date for the wedding, and he came back with me to America.
I tried my best to avoid Black. I soft blocked him on Instagram, moved neighborhoods, changed phone numbers, got a blowout, dyed my hair. And White and I felt pretty settled in to our way of live. We got into an argument and I pointed to the sky and told him he was like the clouds, and opened the back door and went into the yard and grabbed a handful of mulch and rubbed it all over my face, And “Im down here, in the dirt.” And he grabbed my shoulders to a stand, and told me, ‘I’m the letters, you’re the words, I’m the wind, you’re the ocean, I’m nothing, you’re everything, I’m over here and you’re over there. Together we are the world. Wow. Just wow. White Malhotra was a poet, and a neurosurgeon. Our house was expensive, and had lots of poetry books.
Because of White Malhotra’s charm and love of Israel, we got invited back to Shabbat dinner as a couple. Everyone loved how he was a real doctor and how he loved Israel so much as an Indian guy and we brought pie from the grocery store that had a holistic philosophy, instead of the bad grocery store where poor people and regular people go.
As the dinner came to an end, Black was parked outside in a leather jacket. I ran to him and asked what was going on, and he said, “Why did you never reach out to me?” I saw his arms, they were covered in nicotine patches. And inside the car there was a pitcher of a green liquid. It was Kratom sludge. And he had lost a lot of weight. He dangled an empty bag of diarrhetic herbs in my face. “I’ve been taking these, trying to cleanse myself of you, but I can’t. You’re there in me, stuck forever.” He said. And I was like “Im with White Malhotra now. Im sorry, Black Agassi, I really am.”
He went to the trunk of his car and pulled out two fencing swords. And he threw one at White. He said, “May the best man win, Dr. White.” White picked up the sword, “On guard” He yelled. Boy they fenced, they fenced so hard. My head was spinning. I thought to myself about all the times with Black, and the way he didn’t say much. And all the herbs, and the Armenian food, and our college days. And the grapes, he loved those grapes. And then there was White, he had a job, and he was smart and fancy. As I felt the pull of the two men in my heart, I tuned back into the battle. It was getting gruesome. And then I heard a slimey sound of a sword piercing through skin. The two men fell to the ground in a puddle, White’s head was at Black’s feet, and Black’s was at white’s. It looked familiar, like a, like a, like the Yin Yang. The yin and yang, the white and the black. Together they were complete, in their desire for me and pain for me and misery for me, all about me. I walked over to see who had won the fight and my heart. White Malhotra was wounded with a slice, that later caused him to die because it was rusty. And the nicotine patches Black’s chest stopped the sword from piercing his skin.
It was tragic and beautiful. I never thought I would recover. Black and I eventually broke up because after he burned our house down from the ants, he started to get really distant and manipulative and gaslighty. And yeah my current Boyfriend is pretty awesome, he’s a quarter Chinese, sometimes he sounds Black. Not like the race, he sounds like my ex boyfriend Black Agassi.