By Emil Guillermo
I had an affair with Tiger Woods. (I know, take a number).
I thought it was more than just casual, but now I know, I wasn’t the only one. (What are we up to? Eight? 14? Aren’t there 18 holes in golf?)
Maybe I was the only non-blonde, but then you can’t tell hair color from a text message.
Oh, my affair wasn’t sexual, but it felt like true love. After my first viewing of Tiger showing off his putter, I was smitten. He was the Michael Jackson of golf! And to think the world’s top golfer was the offspring of an African American father and an Asian mother.
He was like me: An Asian American! But not like me. And that was our hope.
When the Thanksgiving story broke, it began as a suspicious car accident.
But when it all turned sexual, an African American friend of mine said, “There’s the black side of him.”
I was offended because Asian American males are certainly quite capable of debauchery and serial infidelity! “What’s the Asian side of the story?” I asked. “The bad driving?”
Asian American males have always admired and appreciated Tiger. He was a godsend for our self- image. No more of that karate kicking, school book schlepping, bowl-cut image for us Asian guys. Tiger had big teeth, but not too big. Short? Tiger was buffed out like mama’s mahogany cabinet, and just as tall. And sex? We are not sexless. But who really knew until now.
Still, with Tiger, it has always been about golf. And at golf, there was no one—no one—better.
When Tiger won the Masters in 1997, his half-Asian roots still shocked some. On the Masters TV broadcast, Jim Nantz stumbled as he added “first Asian American” in his description of Tiger. (How empathetic will Nantz be after undergoing his own messy divorce due to an affair with a younger woman? But who cares about Nantz. He’s no Tiger).
In retrospect, a column I once wrote on Tiger was really a love letter that dubbed him “diversity’s champ.” He was our symbol of hope. Before Obama, there was Tiger, our wholesome American Dream success story. And like any good capitalist, he traded in his aura of goodness like a one-man milk campaign. Got Tiger?
We all did. And that’s where the betrayal comes in.
Tiger’s tramping has dissolved all trust. What is infidelity but the act of lying in bed?
The aura gone, the endorsements are falling.
If there’s a silver lining for the Asian American male in all this, it may be that Tiger proved that we could be as virile and amoral as the next guy. But didn’t we know that already? Did our hero have to disappoint?
In a text message to Jaimee Grubbs, a 24-year-old cocktail waitress and alleged mistress, Tiger referred to his ethnicity in a new way. He didn’t call himself African American or Asian American. Rather, in his “sext,” in response to Grubb’s questioning of “why I keep falling more and more for u,” Tiger responded with: It’s “because I’m blasian.”
Blasian?
Is that the modern anti-Asian American male stereotype buster we need?
Geeky, but trustworthy never seemed more appealing.
TIGER’S PENANCE
Staying away from the public eye can help Tiger. At the time of this writing, he is still incogtigro.
In many ways, it’s a bit unfair. Basketball phenom Wilt Chamberlain bragged of bedding hundreds of women. No fallout. But Wilt wasn’t selling his good guy smile. Kobe Bryant was, and when he was accused of raping a woman in Colorado, he lost endorsements. But over time, the episode was forgotten.
It doesn’t always work out that way. For example, I used to be a big fan of Woody Allen. But after he cheated on Mia Farrow with his stepdaughter, I couldn’t watch any of his films without cringing.
Tiger’s infidelity may be hard to forgive for some. But he’ll survive if he can provide us with a public show of penance.
To get his mojo back, he should proceed like he’s rebuilding his golf swing.
He should rebuild himself as a man. Perhaps, that means getting in touch with his spiritual side.
Let’s just hope he’s not holed up with a cocktail waitress, but with a few books and mentors. Maybe he’ll get in touch with his Eastern values by reading the Tao.
That’s the kind of work Tiger should do. Certainly, he can work with orphanages in Tibet, feed the hungry in Korea. But he needs to start with himself first.
From all reports, his wife is close to filing for divorce. The world awaits the first public statements from Tiger. If he answers like a real human being, and not like Tiger, Inc., then there is hope for redemption. And the disgraced hero could re-emerge from the carnage a new man.
