Okay guys: time to let the cat out of the bag about something. Some of you know this, some of you don’t. But I, Darby Shaw, chief editor of Explicit Exploits, have a daughter. Very few people know this, and if you just found out, congratulations. Welcome to the club.
Non-members of this club include: any single hospital, the international court of law, and the girl’s own birth parents. Oh, wait a minute, you thought I had a “came outta me peener” daughter? No. None of that. My daughter is adopted.
I met my daughter in a language conversation center I worked at in Vietnam. My job was to be the “Chatty Cathy” and talk to each and every student that came in. The year was 2011.
One day, there’s a new face in there, a 15-year-old girl who showed signs of social anxiety. I looked at her in her Vietnamese school girl outfit, her dorky glasses which seemed to cover her entire forehead, and the way she was all scrunched up in a ball like a cat trapped in the corner, and was like, “That girl right there ain’t saying shit to nobody.”
My hunch was right. Nary a peep out of her.
And so sitting in front of her, I happened to have a 15-minute one-sided conversation with myself. The girl, said nothing. And then she left.
“Well, I think I’m done here,” I said looking at my 3 Vietnamese female co-teachers in the room. It was only my job to talk to everyone that came to the conversation lab. I couldn’t be expected to make them talk.
I could hear the other teachers behind me in protest, saying, “You only just got here. DARBY. HEY, WHERE ARE YOU G–” I let the door slam behind me. I had a coconut to eat.
The girl with the glasses came back a week later. She finished her writing homework and then I got sent over to speak to her. Her head remained down, avoiding eye contact of all sort.
This time I came at her with jokes. She was unprepared. She tried to stiffle a laugh but a little pfffft! came out of the side of her mouth. I now knew that she was cognizant of my attempts to communicate with her. I was now able to rule out the possibility that she was mentally retarded.
Next week there was even more progress: I got her to tell me her name. And her name was Han.
The frequency of Han’s visits increased. One week she’s answering yes or no questions, and the next she’s giving detailed answers, and the next she’s telling me that she has a secret crush on K-pop. Oh wait no that was me telling her, I got confused.
Before long, Han was starting to have actual two-sided conversations with me. She was a turtle peeking her head out of her shell for the first time. And the other co-teachers of mine were blown away, because she had still never said a word to them.
Well little Han and I, we became tight. I found out she lived in Binh Thanh, the same district of Saigon that I lived in, and one day I went over to visit her. I met her parents, who didn’t speak a lickeroo of English, so Han would translate everything. And this was after she hadn’t spoke any English herself before coming to our speaking center.
I took Han outside, gave her a helmet, and she got on the back of my motorbike. Then we were zipping across the furied streets of Saigon, with one thing in our reticles:
Pizza.
Han had never had like a “proper pizza”, and I was entasked with changing that. I found out they had Sarpino’s in Vietnam, and I was like, “Do you wanna eat some pizza?” and she nodded and I was like, “–well then we are getting some FUCKING PIZZ–OH WAIT no sorry I did not, no… don’t talk like Darby, okay?”
We got our Sarpino’s, left, kept eating at various food stands on the way back, and then I took her home. 
When I dropped her off at home that day, I remember driving away and watching her wave goodbye with such enthusiasm, like someone who had just discovered PIZZA for the first time, and was like, “You know, it would be cool to have a daughter. I mean, a daughter like that. Skipping the diaper years and everything…
“Hmmm…“
I decided I would adopt her.
Han became my daughter and I was her dad. Aside from me telling everyone with a straight face that this small Asian girl was my daughter, and her calling me “Dad” or “Daddy”, not much changed. It was more of the same—us hanging out and experiencing the world together. It was like having a little sidekick. We were both enthralled with out new relationship.
Understandibly, not everyone shared that same sense of enthrallment: my girlfriend at the time, who I tried to introduce Han to one day, erupted on me in the middle of the street, apparently jealous that… I had a daughter before she did? Han was so terrified that she went mute again and I didn’t think she would ever say another word. My new role as a father meant that I had to protect my daughter, even if it meant breaking up with my girlfriend. And so I did.
Not long after I became Han’s father, life pointed me in another direction: Bangkok. I would be moving there in just a matter of days. Before I left, however, I bestowed Han with my most prized possesion: my Nintendo Wii system. The Wii was to me a gift from my Vietnamese sugar mama, so there was no monetary loss there, but it had a huge toll on me sentimentally. She cried when I left, and I cried when I gave her the Nintendo.
I would see her again, undoubtedly. I would be back to Vietnam to visit. I was just going next door. The Nintendo was insurance, proof that I would be back.
It took eight years for us to meet again.
Han had moved to Amsterdam. She originally went to study hospitality, but after she graduated from a Dutch four-year university, she found a job at a really nice hotel in Amsterdam and was working there. That’s all I really knew. We kept in touch, sure, but it was mostly like, “Hey Daddy I’m here, uh would you like to visit?” And I was like, “Yeah. I will see you there at some point.”
In the fall of 2018 I decided to cross another life goal off my list, which was going to Oktoberfest in Germany. It just so happened that the best way of getting there was for me to take a round-trip in and out of Amsterdam, then by heading to Munich by train.
I would be seeing Han very soon.
My first night in Amsterdam was just a brief stop over so there wasn’t time then. No matter; I had three days reserved at the end of my trip for Amsterdam. Oktoberfest was the shit show we all knew it would be, and I hit a couple of other German cities before taking a long night bus from Berlin into Amsterdam. I would be staying with my German friends while I was there, and this has nothing to do with any of this story, but those two got divorced about 3 weeks after I left.
Me and Han made plans to meet on my second night there, a Saturday. Han suggested that we go to a “techno” party at a place called Marktkantine. This did not seem befitting of a thing to suggest from the young thing I knew back in Nam.
Finally the night rolls around, and we agree to meet up right before the party.
She had not grown a single centimeter. In fact, if this was any bit possible, she did not look like she had aged a wink, either. Her glasses weren’t forehead-sized anymore, but it was still the same little girl I had pictured in my head. I was elated by this sense of familiarity.
So imagine how much that image was shattered when we went to the club and started DOING DRUGS TOGETHER. WEED, E-CIGS, PILLS, AND BALLOONS!
I was like, “When the fuck did you grow up? I mean—ooh, sorry, didn’t mean to say ‘fuck’.”
“It’s okay. You can say whatever you want. I’m a grown woman now.”
And by god, she was. In fact, I had missed all of the prime years when a lady becomes a lady. She was 23 now. From 15 years on, that’s when they start to lose their innocence. And here was Han talking to me about dating guys on apps and shit like that. It was a huge kick to the sternum to see how she had, almost magically, grown up.
And then she met a guy at the club, a Dutch dude named Ezra. And he was clearly into her, and she was into him. And the guy was like all gentlemanly about it, asking me if he could hit on her. And I was like, “That’s noble of you to ask, and yes, you may. She’s my dau–uh. She’s my special friend.” And then the guy and her start making out, and I’m like, “SHE’S A FULL GROWN WOMAN NOW! THIS IS FUCKING BLOWING MY MIND RIGHT NOW!” And then I looked down and realized that it was probably just the nitrous oxide-containing balloon I had been inhaling and exhaling repeatedly.
Han and I ended up having a conversation where we readdressed our roles. Where I would no longer be called her “Daddy”. Where I would become her “good friend.” Sad but absolutely necessary—people get suspicious with the “Daddy” nickname.
And then when we left the club, I gave her a ride home on her own bicycle, with Han sitting on the flimsy seat/rack in the back, and me freezing my face off in the front. It was a good callback to the times in Vietnam where I would give her rides on the back of my motorbike.
We got to her place and I passed out on the couch.
The next day, after waking up at 7 PM, I started to realize in even greater detail the depth of which her womanhood had bloomed. She had her own life. Her own apartment. Her own issues—namely visa issues that would present challenges to her staying in Europe, an issue that I would be dealing with myself in a matter of months. No longer was I the sole mentor here; she would end up teaching me, too.
What I really wanted her to teach me was: “Where can a man get a fitting fucking final meal around here!?” I was flying back to the US in the morning. She suggested a steak place, and we went there. You were able to eat the steak on your lap, free of those pesky tables, and the barbaricness of it all made me all fuzzy inside. I treated her to the lavish and extravagant meal because that’s what you do for your childre—uh, your ex-children.
A block from the steak place there was a coffee-shop called “Internet Cafe”, and we went downstairs and rolled some joints. Rather, Han rolled some joints, because she was a pro now. (Plus it takes me like 30 mins to roll one joint.) I looked at her over the rising smoke clouds and smiled. Han had come a long way in these past eight years. And she had done it all… without my help. As a surrogate father, or a mentor, or whatever I was, I wasn’t there to see her grow. I just saw Person A one moment, and Person B the next. It was a complete metamorphasis.
But if there’s one thing that gives me satisfaction, it’s the thought that us meeting that one fateful day in an English speaking center in Vietnam was a catalyst to this little duckling breaking out of her shell, for her becoming a grown-up woman with a fervour for living; for smoking, fucking, traveling, foreign language, and more.
I don’t plan on having any children of my own, but if I did, I would surely adopt. Being able to claim responsibility when the kid succeeds, and assuming none whatsoever when they fail, is really where it’s at. But then again—why should I adopt? I have Han. And although she’s no longer considered my daughter like the days of yesteryear, our unique and vibrant relationship now is something I wouldn’t trade for anything. Han, you have made me proud, and I will continue to support you in the years ahead. I know that things have been tough and that you had to leave your beloved Neatherlands for the time being, but you’ll be back. And I’ll be next door, over here in Spain, or Ukraine, or wheverever. I look forward to all of the adventures ahead. I don’t know when exactly I’ll see you, either; but I’ll never make you wait eight years again.
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