Children of the Dust - 6. The Reunion

The features, which made many Amerasians the object of scorn in the late seventies, became fashionable a decade later. Many of us were sought after by advertising agencies, seeking models who could straddle two cultures. Our exotic looks were considered capable of selling anything to the general public, from soap, to clothes, to automobiles.

Beginning with a small layout for a newspaper advertisement, something arranged by my father, I was soon earning a lot of money just for wearing clothes in front of a camera. A body shaped by many hours playing footy, made me a favorite with underwear and swimmers manufacturers catering to the gay market.

I postponed attending uni, permanently it turned out in the end, and spent most of my time on the fashion runway, in front of the camera. It was shortly afterwards I began searching for my biological father.

Finding retired United States Marine Corps Master Sergeant Vincent Samuel Blake wasn’t too hard. Establishing a relationship with him was.

About a year after we started searching, we found my father living in San Francisco, in an old Victorian house―one of the famous Painted Ladies. I sat on the information for another year. I knew he had married and raised a family. What if he didn’t want to see me? I wasn’t ready to be rejected again. As an infant I had nothing to do with my mother abandoning me; now I would be the one who was opening the door to a lot of potential pain.

My mum was the one who gave me the final push. She said I was a survivor, If I was rejected I was strong enough to survive. Sometime in nineteen eighty-three I sent him a letter. I didn’t receive a response for six months. At the time I contacted him, he and his wife were mourning the death of a son, five years younger than me, to cancer. The pain of the loss kept him from answering my letter.

After I wrote a second time, I received a reply. At first he was skeptical. There were scams targeting Vietnam era veterans, where supposed children of theirs asked for money and assistance in getting into the United States. He asked if I was employed, if I was asking for financial help or to move in with them.

I explained I sought neither. After I sent pictures of me through the years, there was no need for any sort of paternity test; I was almost a carbon copy of him at my age. The skepticism became acceptance, and in the eyes of his wife, a gift from God, a son to help fill the void left by their recent loss.

We established a relationship through the post. Two years after making initial contact, they both traveled to Australia to meet me; I promised to come to America, as soon as my work commitments allowed. I had just signed a contract which would limit the holiday time I’d have for a while. I didn’t want to travel to America for only a week or two. In the spring of nineteen ninety, I boarded a Qantas flight in Sydney, bound for San Francisco.

With me, I carried my most treasured possessions, a yellowed letter and a few baseball cards inside a dirty envelope, and a twenty-four by thirty-six inch olive green, piece of cotton fabric.