SEX &/OR LOVE, A PREQUEL: The evening of March 31st, 1998, Ho Chi Minh City; in a modest hotel room, amidst a background of noise from the hustle and bustle of the city, a woman waddles from the bed to a desk a ways across the orange tinted room. She is neither short nor tall, her brown locks are neither long nor short, and she is neither overly skinny nor chubby-- in that she is incredibly small-framed, and also presently pregnant.

She is very attractive; this is a woman, who, without the profuse sweat, soiled clothing, and overly pained expression could be-- and in fact, is-- a model. However, right now, her aesthetic appeal, the result of being the descendant of Vietnamese royalty and French dignitaries, is doing very little to assuage her pain.

As she picks up the retro-looking black phone, she is practically howling in pain. She yells as an operator picks up, and the English speaking front desk attendant of the hotel quickly forwards her call through to the woman's significant other. Something of a celebrity in the area, the woman doesn't need to say much to get this done.

"Jeanne!" She echos over the line, with a fire in her voice. "Tôi đang đi vào lao động!" She says that she is going into labor.

An average looking man, of common Vietnamese descent, jokes with men and women in both Vietnamese and English as he makes his way to the phone in a club's lobby after being summoned from stage. Unlike the woman calling him, it's doubtful you could pick him apart from a line-up of individuals. Despite this, however-- those who know the man, or have seen him play-- will argue profusely that this man is exceptional, both in measures of character and talent.

He is a Jazz multi-instrumentalist and local celebrity, and the club takes note when he leaves the stage. As his wife-to-be speaks to him over the phone, jeers can be heard coming from patrons of the club and his band-mates. As his wife tells him of her broken water, he glimpses the clock at 11:58 PM and realizes that tomorrow is April Fool's Day-- He cracks a grin. "Ha...! đó là một trò đùa tốt." He thinks that she's joking with him.

The wrath of a furious storm can be heard in the woman's voice as her plea is brushed off as a joke, "Tôi không nói đùa bạn trai của một chó cái!!" She is not joking, she says, and he is a son of a bitch for thinking so. By now other residents of the hotel are knocking on her door to see if she's okay, room 401-- how fitting-- she goes on to tell him that she's going to see if the hotel can get her an ambulance, or if one of the cocksuckers knocking on her door can help her. She orders him to meet her at the hospital.

The man's expression changes as he detects the severity in her voice, the natural high that came from performing is replaced with anxiety and adrenaline. He turns slowly, dumbfounded, feeling the oddest mixture of joy and horror, and displaying it tentatively, absently... proudly on his face. Standing in the lobby, the man sees the crowded show-room and smiles victoriously, the room goes quiet.

He was going to be a father!

BIRTH, A BEGINNING:Those who are newer to the club are following the direction of their seniors, those who have been coming for years, or know the man personally immediately understand the smile. They understand that this is an event he'd been looking forward to dearly, they understand this is an event that may mean his departure from their city and possibly their lives, and they understand, that as much as he'd anticipated this event-- he was not prepared in the slightest.

So when he turned, ran outside, and immediately turned back around and ran inside, remembering that he didn't own a car and asking if someone could give him a ride, no one seemed horribly surprised-- and indeed, many people offered their cars as if he were royalty. The father-to-be, without wasting time, accepted one of the offers-- from a man, he wouldn't have quite called a friend, but still trusted a great deal-- an intense light-skinned African-American man, much older than his youthful appearance led one to believe. This American man had appeared only a few months ago from the father-to-be's perspective, but he had proven to be a strong ally to the father-to-be in the time the two had known each other.

The American was very quiet, seeming to analyze all he could of the world each second. From what little the father-to-be could gather of the man, he was some type of taxi-driver in the States, who had recently come into an inheritance or some large sum of money and decided to travel the world. It seemed off to the father-to-be, but in the months since he had first seen the American, the silent man had proven to be a reliable customer, consistently showing up for his shows, as well as someone, who one more than one occasion, he could turn to for reliable transportation whenever he was running late.

Together, the pair made their way to the car, and set off to the hospital. No conversation took place in the car, the American was focused on a task, and the father-to-be was experiencing extreme cognitive dissonance, caught between euphoria and fear.

He was going to be a father!

So you can imagine the pair's frustration when a traffic jam prevented them from reaching the nearest hospital as fast as possible. You can imagine their shock as they discovered the cause of the jam-- a crashed ambulance. And you can imagine their absolute horror to find in the midst of the crash, a pregnant woman. She was the soon to be mother, who had gotten herself that ambulance ride, only to have the unfortunate fate of having her ambulance crash into a light-post. Her paramedics were distracted by the woman who kept telling them to go faster, and that they were taking the wrong routes.

Understandably annoyed at the whole situation, combined with the pain that came from going into labor, the woman howled into the midnight air. She only found a mild comfort by the fact that her lover, the father-to-be, had managed to find her, on all the curbs of the city. Other concerned onlookers, mostly older women who had been woken up by the screaming, tried to provide her with some peace of mind with moot pleas. It didn't help; she was giving birth, and the woman needed a doctor.

Holding the woman in his arms, the father-to-be looked around the crowd of disgruntled drivers and woken women, before he could even ask if one of them was a doctor-- before he could even begin to think to yell out for one-- someone who wasn't quite a friend, but an ally nonetheless, was already taking charge of the situation with stark, silent practiced professionalism.

The American, the man who the father-to-be had seen as a mere taxi-driver, stepped forward and began giving orders with a stern, but calm voice. The men carried the woman into one of the houses of the older women she had awoken with her screams, and with little more than what one of the women could provide, and the trained assistance of the American, at 3:01 AM on April 1st, 1998, a baby girl with a head full of black hair was born into the world.

The American cradled the girl for a moment before handing her off to her mother and father, Rita Phán and Jeanne Kiều.

These, were the odd circumstances of the beginning of Vivi Kiều's life.

LIFE, A NEW MOVIE//THE WORLD, AN OLD STAGE: On April 2nd, 1998, the new parents got married in a hospital with their new daughter present. Rita recovered from the trauma of child birth, and young Viveca, named after a Swedish actress her mother knew well, receiving all the medical treatment a young human being might need to remain healthy in the world. Rita had wanted a large ceremony that might bring the city itself to a halt, but Jeanne insisted. He didn't want his child to have lived a single day without an 'official' mother and father.

Jeanne made calls from the hospital informing relatives from both sides of the family of the new birth and impromptu wedding. He tried to contact the strange American, who may have saved his daughter's life, and in fact spent most of the day searching the city for the man. But it seemed he had dissipated into thin air.

The ceremony, as rag-tag as it was, took place at 11PM that night.

The following years for Vi-- Vivi as her father took to calling his little girl-- were simultaneously peaceful and unpredictable. Despite the glamour that is typically associated with modeling and a musician's life, money was a scarce commodity for the new family. She spent her formative years traveling; either with her father, who improvised beautiful jazz music in clubs around Southeast and Pacific Asia, perpetually orbiting Ho Chi Minh, sleeping with him on the couches of an elaborate network of friends. Or with her mother, to numerous distant countries where she got to stay, typically alone, in nice hotels, with aides and tutors from her mother's agency.

Although her life may have never been in any danger, and she didn't experience any particular emotional abuse, even at the tender age of three, Vivi could see the differences between her two parents. Her mother was cold and distant, and her father was loving and ever-present. Whereas time spent overseas with her mother was enriching for the young girl, serving as a special exchange student in practically every country K-12 in the northern hemisphere, it was lonely without friends her own age, and even moreso without a mother.

Her father noticed her social ineptitude early, and her growing negative opinion of herself and tried his hardest to make her feel loved, and tried his hardest to find a more permanent place of employ, despite his nature as a rolling stone. By the time Vivi was 7, Jeanne had earned himself a permanent seat on the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra-- half a world away in the United states-- and the family found itself settling in Athens, Georgia, and establishing a more permanent base of operations. The bond between father and daughter continued to grow.

While her general social ineptitude and maternal melancholia prevented her from interacting with those her age on any significant level. She did find a pleasurable respite in music, and she spent as much time listening to her father as possible. Her relationship with her mother, on the other hand, continued to grow rockier. As Vivi grew older, she would come to realize that her mother blamed her for her loss of figure, as well as stealing Jeanne's attention away from her-- and the negative self perception that came as a direct result of this treatment from her mother still plagues her today.

Her 8th year on earth saw the deterioration of relations between her parents, climaxing in a divorce. Vivi came to resent her mother and herself, despite her father's insistence to the contrary. Vivi believed that her mother's callous attitude toward her was her own fault. She resented her for being so petty and absent, and also wanted nothing but her love.

With Jeanne, Vivi felt love, and for a time, was happy. Vivi's education revolved largely around music and sound technology, by the girl's 10th birthday, she had a native fluency when speaking Vietnamese, French, and English, and she had seen much of the world, and through her father, met many influential figures in Jazz and Classical music. Up to then, her education had largely come from tutors hired by her mother's fashion agencies, or homeschooling from her father and his friends. Her education had primed her for the world in many ways culturally, but left her behind academically. When she was 11, Jeanne, using newfound wealth from his tenure with the ASO and the other opportunities that afforded him and at the insistence of his new girlfriend (a woman who reminded Vivi of her mother), had her enrolled in a cheap, but exclusive private boarding school in Missouri in order to remedy this.

It was his hope that Vivi would be able to connect to other people her age, and grant her independence, while he worked on his craft. At least, that's what his new girlfriend told him.

Of course, Vivi-- still feeling as though her mother hated her due to fault of her own, felt this abandonment harshly. What her father saw as an opportunity for personal growth and independence, she saw as him telling her that he wanted nothing more to do with her. This is where the reserved demeanor she had been building up since her birth would break out into a full lifelong depression.

And so, the Thomas Jefferson School in Missouri would become her home. Due to the nature of her global education, she was a mature 12 year old, and due to the reduced rate that day students received as compared to students who boarded. The pre-teen girl was afforded with a town house within walking distance of the school, all her own, and a weekly stipend for living expenses. From 6th grade onward, Vivi was essentially on her own. It was this year that Vivi would meet a lifelong friend, the only other non-white person attending the school, Mala Garcia.

PRESENTING, A JUXTAPOSITION TO (EGO) LIFE; (EGO) DEATH//OUT OF POPCORN:It was also the year, after being set up on her own in the middle of nowhere, Missouri, that her father died.

She had barely been attending the school for half a year when she received the news. The sadness she had felt before proved to be a proverbial drop in the bucket when compared to the despair that came upon her upon hearing the news. She didn't scream or cause a scene in the same way her dramatic mother would, but instead fell silently in the principal's office where she'd heard the news. The tears came with ebbs and flows and slight whimpers punctured the air of a world that seemed infinitely more quiet. She had started to make music on her own... She'd planned on impressing him the next time they met with some of her very first produced instrumentals and... and... They were going to play together!

...

A car accident.

What was supposed to be a few days for bereavement become several months of absence. Vivi fell into a near catatonic state of depression, something she wouldn't have been able to fight her way out of on her own had it not been for the one other significant connection she had made with another human being. Mala was, in many ways, Vivi's opposite-- she was raised in a poor household, she hadn't seen much of the world outside of California, she was exceptionally gifted in school, had many friends, was an optimist and was the first person in Vivi's entire life to show her unconditional positive regard.

After three months out of school, Mala found out where Vivi lived and visited out of concern-- and after a week of visits, Vivi returned to classes. Love and guilt were common themes of the conversations they had--

MEMORY, A MOVIE IN A MOVIE//INTERMISSION, A FAMILIAR RESTAURANT: Two young girls, both shorter than they should be for their age, enter a diner. Neither payed particular attention to the name of the diner as they came in, but it feels oddly familiar to them, almost like a second home. The feeling is eerie, but neither dwell on it too long, and slide in to the faux blue-leather booth nearest the window. A waitress named Norma greets them and brings them both mugs of coffee, she takes note of the differing in demeanor between the two girls and leaves them to their rest and relaxation.

The Asian girl in an over-sized T-shirt and sweatpants-- the one it took Norma several minutes to place as a girl at all-- appeared to have recently been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she didn't look at all excited to be exposed to the public. The petite Latina, on the other hand, just looked tired-- despite her resilient smile, despite her maintained and worn uniform, despite her days old make-up-- she was exhausted. The two of them, creatures from different planets, just needed some caffeine... and some time alone.

Vivi scanned the diner. It appeared mostly empty, save for a light-skinned Black man who seemed to be staring directly at her. Her eyes shot back down to brown ripples of her coffee after making eye contact. Moments later, with prompting from Mala, Vivi spoke up, "My mother called me today."

"Oh?" Mala replied, pouring an inordinate amount of sugar in her drink.

"She asked me how I was doing..." Vivi sighed, "But..."

"But...?"

"I... I could hear it in her voice, Mala." Vivi brought the mug to her lips, letting the aroma of black liquid ease her sorrow, "She still hates me. I know she wanted to tell me that it was my fault." Taking a sip, she glanced over Mala's shoulder with growing concern. The man was still staring directly at her.

"You can't know that, Vi."

Vivi remembered that she was 12, and that coffee still tasted terrible as the steaming caffeine hit her system, "B-but I can!" The mug hit the table hard as it came down, spilling some of it's foul tasting contents onto the pristine reinforced plastic table top.

Mala, still holding that ever-so-slight smile, merely tilted her head, "How?"

"I just..." Vivi stuttered in thought, "I..."

Mala took a polite sip of coffee as the tears began to well up in Vivi's eyes. The man who had been staring at her seemed to instinctively switch to viewing a newspaper.

"I guess... I think she might be right."

Mala didn't respond, but her face gave away enough of a query, 'Why do you think that, Viveca? What's wrong with you?' It was the same look a mildly concerned school therapist might give. It made Vi upset, mostly at herself; what was wrong with her?

"He didn't want to send me here... But I..." Vivi looked at her own reflection in the coffee, "I didn't fight him on it, I didn't... do anything. I could have told him I wanted to be near him. Things would have been different if I had." She sniffled, "I was just too..."

Weak.

Mala moved from across the booth to slide in next to her friend, placing a comforting arm around her shoulder, "You need to stop blaming yourself..." Mala, somewhat awkwardly, gave her quietly crying friend a hug in their booth, "... Hey, Vi?"

Wiping a tear from her eye, she responded, "...Yeah?"

"Do you recognize that guy over there? I didn't wanna make a big deal about it or anything, but he's been staring at us since we came in."

Still embraced in a hug, Vi couldn't help but smile, "No, he's just some creep."

Mala broke the embrace and gazed back at the man inquisitively, "Maybe he knows you? Should we go over and talk to him?" Vivi's immediate response was to go wide-eyed and shake her head 'No.' "Aww, come on! Look!" She squinted, making it obvious she was staring back at the man, who was now trying to downplay his looking at the pair, "He cut cute little eye-holes in his newspaper! Maybe he's a spy! Oh man, wouldn't that be something!"

Vivi looked back down at her coffee, it was cool now, and the ripples had stopped. The dark reflection that stared back at her seemed to be less lively than before. "My Father said that if a man ever stared at you in public for more than half a minute you should find a police officer or a person who is bigger than them."

"Hmmm." Mala examined the man critically, hand stroking a non-existent beard, "I think my sister is taller than him."

What? Vivi's expression was one of exclamation, she turned to Mala, "You have a sister?"

Mala nodded, "My dad says shes cousin, and that she's not even really my 'blood' cousin. But I think that's stupid, so I call her my sister." Mala gave a sidelong glance and a smirk, "Why should something as accidental as blood be the only thing that determines family?"

"Wow..." Vivi risked a nervous glance into Mala's eyes, "That's really deep."

"What can I say, Vi?" Mala gave a smug shrug, "I'm a fucking child prodigy!" Without pause, the sarcasm left her voice as she took Vivi's hands into her own, "Oh, Vi! You'll just love Dahlia! She knows so much about the world and is so fun! And I'm sure she can beat up that stalker, too! She used to be a guy you know!"

Used to be a guy...? Wait...

The word love triggered something in Vivi. Something that brought back that lip quiver, the blurry vision-- a simple word that reminded her she had lost the only person in the world who truly felt anything for her-- and even he had sent her away! She didn't need to say anything, or even make a sound for the ever-perceptive Mala to get exactly what was going through her head.

"Hey..." Mala had that easy smile, those caring eyes about her, "I know it hurts-- I can't imagine how much-- but I know it hurts," She moved closer to Vivi, griping her hands tightly with one hand, Mala used the other to lift Vivi's chin, and gazed into her eyes, "I just want you to know that I love you."

Her initial react was to reject the affection. To say that Mala was just saying all that to make her feel better. Retreat! Retreat back in your shell, don't let the world lure you out! It'll just hurt you again! She didn't want to accept it, the love. She wasn't deserving-- she would just hurt Mala with her weakness again-- she wanted to pull back, to run away.

But...

But her body wouldn't let her. Her arms fell limply as Mala pulled her in for a tighter hugs, tears streaming silently down her reddened face.

Why are you so weak...?

Mala whispered, mid embrace, "Hey... that weirdo is still ogling us, just so you know..."

LIFE, A MADE-FOR-TV STAGE MOVIE (CONT.): And so, Vivi returned to school for a time. Catching up as best she could to her classes. Jeanne's girlfriend, who had inherited a large portion of Jeanne's estate upon his death, kept up with Vivi's tuition for 7th and 8th grade for what it was worth. However, due to pressure from the woman for Vivi to be less of 'burden' she ended up moving in with Dahlia and Mala, who had begun living together following family issues of their own.

Without the star power of her backing backing her, Vivi, a sub par student at her best, was kicked out of the Thomas Jefferson School before she could enter the high-school levels. As such, with Dahlia whom had begun to take up a motherly/big sisterly role in her life, forged documents, painting her as a legal guardian of Vivi, allowing her to attend public school in Missouri.

Vivi lasted two years, just barely finishing 10th grade with a GPA of 1.36 before the wanderlust instilled in her by the constant travel in her childhood, as well as the exacerbating effects Missouri seems to have on depression, got to her. Turning to Dahlia again, Vivi forged signatures required to have the inheritance her father left for her granted to her early, and by the age of 17 she managed to pass the GED exam with (you guessed it) help/enabling from Dahlia.

By this point in her life, she was still disturbed-- perhaps even moreso than immediately after the death of Jeanne-- she was,and in fact still is, inherently disconnected from her feelings, as well as reality. By numbing herself to her feelings, and her surroundings she avoids pain, but simultaneously hurts herself more than anyone else and causes self-resentment. As she is the person to blame for her lack of perceiving and feeling true love.

Music, for a long time was a way to connect to her father and share their love. After his death, while she began to throw herself into producing and remixing and training her talents in the area-- the passion became less about love, and more about distraction. It was a thread that tied to her to her father, and also muffled any thoughts she might have about him.

Since she was freed from the responsibility of school for the time being. She began traveling around the country with Dahlia, acting as a spoiled, rich, brat-- with none of the money to show for it. By 2014, she had already posted numerous tracks online to some acclaim, and by 2015 her popularity had risen to the point that she was earning some money from her work, certainly not much, but enough to make a young hopeful in the industry excited. It was also around this time that Vivi's image went from 'tomboy' to 'full on genderfuck.'

This probably had something to do with Dahlia's influence.

While Mala attended a school of mild repute in Missouri, continuing her scholarship from TJ school, Vivi found herself repeating her father's footsteps. Going from California, back to her 'home town' of Athens and Atlanta, up the east cast to New York. However her Ho Chi Minh City, that location that she revolved around had become Mala.

Vivi never took the time to sort out her feelings for the woman as they grew apart.

She couldn't bring herself to fully accept her love, she had to distance herself from her, and the feeling of undeserved acceptance. But she also wanted to be needed by her... she wanted Mala to pull in her and keep her there, the way her mother never did. The difference between wanting to be wanted platonically and sexually blurred in her mind too-- Vivi couldn't tell if she was placing Mala in the role of her mother or... father? Or both?

And truth be told. She felt like she didn't want to know.

So eventually the two fell mostly out of orbit with each other. Vivi went on to settle in and around Ithaca, New York for a few months, with Dahlia phasing in and out of her life as is the norm. There, she had a guaranteed gig, a new townhouse all her own, and an opportunity to attend a community college!

She dropped out after barely finishing one semester.

DEATH, AN ENDING//YOL2: Silky Jones, Ithaca, NY. 10:00PM, 'Valentine's Day' February 14th, 2017;

Moshing during shows is regular.

Vivi had seen plenty of moshing in her time-- people get excited, they have a few coronas, they stop thinking and get violent. Vivi had seen that, violence made her uncomfortable, but she could deal with that. The bouncers would handle it, or more level headed members of the club could deal with it themselves.

What happened on Valentine's Night though...

REBIRTH, A SEQUEL//UNDEATH: As Vivi understands it, someone in the crowded orange-lit club had to have died. Which means someone must have had a weak heart... or have been murdered... or maybe there was a fight that got out of hand. It didn't matter.

For 20 minutes-- 30 minutes-- maybe even an hour. Vivi kept blasting that shitty Valentine's Night mix as the crowd seemed to get rowdier and rowdier. Simple moshing became outright biting. In the darkness, Vivi mistook it for necking, it was Valentine's Day after all.

She was so focused on her music, that it wasn't until bloody mouthed men started to crawl on the small stage she had set up that her instincts hit. No quite fight or flight, but instincts Vivi had built up over a lifetime of running away, of being hurt by reality-- of a fear of any type of pain that seemed to define her being.

She didn't just run home and close the door. She ran too, from the world.

The end was taking place, and she refused to be any part of it.

The dead had risen, proving false what many had thought to be a 'zombie hoax' and given her that final push out to sea-- Jeanne was gone, Mala was gone, her music was gone-- the anchors had been severed and with them, any desire she had to remain cognizant. She went to her shell, to hide and refuse to feel the pain the world wanted her to feel.

She was weak.

UNLIFE, THE DREAM//FREED FROM REASON (AND THEATRES): Nearly 3 months.

Nearly 3 months Viveca spent in that shack of a house. Surviving purely on her own mediocrity, on the obscurity and insignificance of her own existence. She didn't board up her doors-- she didn't even bother to lock her doors.

She hid away, nibbling on what little food she had, but mostly going without. For days at a time she would do nothing but sleep, while rejecting any attempt at hygiene during the entire period.

In the early days she still got calls-- apparently she had a half-brother who died-- concerned family from Vietnam managed to get two or three calls through.

Her mother never called, though.

And she never answered.

As the days marched on the world became silent. She would dream for days and see her father, he beckoned to her to join him. And for a time she wanted to, or rather, she felt she wanted to. Death was only a step outside and a yell. But she couldn't ever bring herself to. Death, it seemed, was simply worse to her than suffering and isolation. So, she choose simply to be alone.

And for a time, she was. Until that fateful knock on May 18th;

<Come on loser, We're going to Missouri!>

Dahlia, still in some extravagant dress as she always was, but now caked in blood and bogged down with bags, unnecessarily kicked down the door after that. Vivi, still in a near comatose state, found herself forced into a world she'd been ignoring for the first time in months.

Dahlia had to practically drag the unresponsive Vivi at first. Claiming that the younger woman's self-imposed exile was 'selfish.' They haven't quite worked out their differences, but the two eventually do find their own way to survive. And by the time November rolls around, the two have made it Missouri in search of Mala, after months of bickering, boating, walking, crying, and driving from New York across the great mid-west.

SURVIVAL FOR SURVIVALS SAKE//EXISTENCE FOR EXISTENCES SAKE//AFTER THE END//POST CREDITS//ETC.:_(cont. IC)