Anthony Veasna So died unexpectedly last winter, before his debut book was released.
Everyone remembers him differently.
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Some writers might be tentative about the limelight, but not him.
Its a bittersweet irony that Anthony is now enjoying a literary debut he could have only dreamed of.
The family did not learn the official cause of death until just last month.
Memories blurred and diverged.
He was a bundle of frenetic energy, a silent observer; a hard worker, a hard partyer.
His friends would say he was sharply funny, generous, and confident in his awkwardness.
If you ask Anthonys mother, Alex lies.
His parents think of him as their wise, quiet angel who could tell the story of their family.
Dark corners that can never be fully legible.
How do you know a soul?
He was good at code switching and hiding certain things from certain people.
II.The Quiet One
II.
In the extended-family universe, Anthony is No.
7 out of 11, right between Christina and Kevin.
(Chavy died in a car accident in 1999.)
Oh, wenumberedeach other?
breaks in Christina (No.
6), when I ask whether David, the baby of the bunch, is No.
Now were ranking behind the scenes.
I see how it is.
It was literal birth order.
I know how the cousins roll, Christina says, laughing.
Christina, commands Ravy from across the kitchen island.
Can you make a pot of rice?
Yes, in a bit.
My visit has occasioned this gathering to remember their son, cousin, nephew, and grandson.
In the family dynamic, Anthony was the quiet one reading in the corner.
He was smart but lacked common sense.
Like his mom, he had a nervous twitch around his eye.
He was their shy, sweet, awkward boy who went can you believe it?
He told me that he majored in English.
Im like,Oh my God.
But for me, I saw what Stanford instilled in him.
I always have a problem with my daughter.
Always fight with her.Ay-yi-yi.
But Anthony was different.
He was very wise.
Hes my little professor.
He was just listening and soaking it all in, says Christina.
Every story we told since he was 5, says his mom.
Im surprised that he remember.
His short story We Wouldve Been Princes!
declines to name secondary characters and instead typecasts them: FAMOUS SINGER, FUN COUSIN, LOCAL ACCOUNTANT.
Maybe limiting but maybe true; the accountant cousincouldgive tax advice.
(That would be Melissa, cousin No.
Anthonys parents had wanted him to become a doctor or a pharmacist.
5), is a lawyer; Sopheap (No.
works at Social Security like his mother and aunts before him; Brian (No.
- works in IT.
Anthony picked the thing so many Asian immigrant parents fear: a life of creativity and fellowship applications.
The older he got, the further his adult life spun away from his familys.
Feeling uncomfortable as a queer man with his conservative family was a part of it.
Another was the mutual language barrier; Anthonys Khmer wasnt that good, in part by design.
The American Dream for immigrant children means entering rooms their parents cannot.
Still, he couldnt always keep his worlds separate.
Before he switched to English, Anthony majored in computer science at Stanford.
He was put on academic probation for plagiarizing code and suspended for one quarter.
He was diagnosed as bipolar and began taking Seroquel.
I was like, So you got suspended and you tell your parents [that youre gay]?
He was like, Yeah, I opened Pandoras box.
And we started laughing.
I feel like a bomb just dropped on top of me, says Ravy.
My beautiful child, I thought he was healthy.
Hes very brave because his dad still did not accept.
Tell you the truth?
I dont want to know about it.
Whatever you do, dont need to tell me.
He only hid from me his relationship with Alex, says Ravy of Anthonys partner.
Actually, he hide everything from us, says his father.
I think he really blossomed more once he left [home], says Christina.
If you meet him, you do not know that he has the funny thing, says Ravy.
Theydont think hes funny, corrects Christine.
The last Christmas we were all together, we did a family trip to Tahoe.
And Anthony tweeted, we cant be screaming about white people AND trying to steal their condiments.
That was a typical conversation.
Im just looking at his tweets, Sam says, checking her phone.
I never looked at them before.
Where do you find this app?
Mother, replies Sam.
Dont look at the tweets.
I dont even wanna look at the tweets.
III.A Twitter Break
III.
there is not one fire sign in my whole damn chart.
This is conveyed mostly through projects combining prose, drawing, print transfers, photography, and animation.
All with a splash of laughter and tears.
He was always pushing a ridiculous agenda, says Sharon Bade Shrestha, a classmate of Anthonys from Stanford.
You had to be careful with Anthony, because often he would be like, Youre being dumb.
(He was very anti-milk, says Shrestha.)
before he kept talking to me.
Or just planning my whole future.
As he saw it, what was this journey called life for if not to become hot and successful?
Anthony was suspicious of institutions of power but savvy about leveraging them.
He was really good at making use of opportunities, says Quintana.
Networking, connecting with people, taking advantage of programs.
He wouldnt tell you about everything he was doing, remembers Quintana.
Great on a Raya profile but lacking a certain zest.
Technically, Ben might be successful, but he is also boring at life.
He reserves theAname for his sharp-tongued narrator, Anthony.
VI.The One Who Knew Him Best or Worst
VI.
Everyone grieves differently, but even Alex would say hes further along in the process.
Anthony and I took a really philosophical approach to living, he says.
Thats why Im handling my grief very well.
He tells me he feels great, and I believe him.
Anthonys family has found his detachment cruel and perplexing.
He really surprise me when he didnt show that much love when my son died, says Ravy.
I thought he would be heartbroken like me.
The versions of Anthony they experienced were worlds apart.
Theres just things they wouldnt know, he says of Anthonys family.
His art wasnt just fueled by sitting in the classroom and being a straight-A student.
It was fueled by somewhat chaotic living.
As modern lovers do, Alex and Anthony met on Grindr.
Their first date took place at the Philz Coffee on Alma Street.
He was a jungle Asian, as Ali Wong, whom Anthony admired, would say.
Id rather just have Tourettes than attempt to stop eye twitching, he said with a performative slouch.
Things clicked into place; he understood that even the jokes were Anthonys way of telling you about himself.
We had a real powerful ability to be moved by aesthetic experiences.
We instantly fell in love.
From that point on, Anthony and Alex became the kind of couple that shared everything.
They did enter into this world where you knew they were a package deal, says Quintana.
They wore the same clothing, shoes, underwear even.
Alex thought they were like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas or Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith.
There would be no book without Alex, Anthony writes in the acknowledgments.
I dont think I couldve finished this book without knowing that.
You wrote these stories with me.
He adds, Anthony had this sort of arrogance about him that was usually accurate.
Alexs version of Anthony is spikier than others, with more effervescent highs and crushing lows.
He polarized the girlies; people loved him or hated him, but at least they felt something.
He did what youd classify as circuit gay drugs: coke, ketamine, molly.
He had that ethos about him, picking anybody to do a drug.
I think he was toxic in certain ways.
The problem is people thought he was funny.
People liked having him around.
After Anthony died, he began pitching himself to his publicist and agent as someone who could help editorially.
Now hes getting assignments.
He asks me if I can get him a job just kidding.
I didnt have any Twitter followers before this.
Now, I have over a thousand.
I tell people it felt like I woke up when he passed, Alex continues.
The closer we get to discussing the night of Anthonys death, the vaguer Alex becomes.
He says that in the months prior, their partnership was fracturing.
He says that Anthony would have nightmares about the genocide and talk about it.
You dont always want to be thinking about Pol Pot, he says.
Being in his creative space was very difficult.
I needed a break from it.
He was starting to feel like a muse trapped in amber.
Sometimes I feel like he was Hades, and I was Persephone, he continues.
Like if I left him, he would do something bad.
There was a lot of concern there.
Anthony was anxious about finishingAfterparties,he says, and living off nonprescription Adderall and fumes.
And he couldnt let go of the work.
He was very fixated on it.
He had OCD, and I think that was not always a good thing for his art.
I would tell him, Youre at an A-plus.
You dont need an A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.
Anthonys friends remember this time in a different light.
They were more concerned about Alexs partying and drug usage.
And then he would have to listen for extended amounts of time and that would disrupt his schedule.
I dont remember a lot of it …
I cant really get there, he says.
He made cocktails, and he spiked it, I think.
I think he was on so much Adderall and caffeine.
I think he just took a lot of something, and I dont know what, he continues.
I woke up the next day feeling tired.
I showered, I logged onto Slack, and then I realized he wasnt moving.
Ill leave you with this thought, he says after our first conversation in May.
I was not surprised by his death in ways that other people were.
Anthony was a very complex, beautiful person.
Its very difficult for me to watch other people talk about him in ways that they do.
And its not that theyre wrong.
Its just that theyre not seeing the full story.
VII.The Cause of Death, According to the State
VII.
A medic was on the scene and had pronounced him dead four minutes prior.
[Torres] stated he and So used GHB, Adderall, and ate an edible marijuana induced pastry.
So and [Torres] went to sleep at approximately 0200 hours.
So fell asleep in the bedroom and [Torres] fell asleep in the living room of the apartment.
On 12/8/2020 at approximately 0800 hours,
[Torres] woke up and checked on So.
When [Torres] touched So, he noticed that So was cold and stiff.
[Torres] called 911.
[Torres] stated that So was writer and had been writing a book for the past several months.
[Torres] also stated that So had Asthma.
There is no evidence of alcohol ingestion.
The manner was determined as accidental.
VIII.Afterlifes
VIII.
Both find the presumption from the elders ridiculous.
The story is drawn from So family lore.
The cousins real-life reaction was similarly incredulous.
Like, Who the fuck are you to say my aunt is a reincarnation of your granddaughter?
Shes actually pretty cute.
After Anthonys death, Sam started dreaming that he was following her around.
When she found out, she was like,Oh good, Anthony has come back, she says.
Ravy explains that she wouldnt want her grandchild to necessarilybeAnthony.
Over time, the body they inhabit becomes their own, and the deceased becomes a faint memory.
More than anything, Ravy has been searching for closure and understanding.
Anthonys death unmoored her.
I talked to him in the coffin all day long, telling him to come back, Ravy recalls.
She thought he was her perfect son, but then he caused her the greatest injury by dying.
Its like I lost my soul, says Ravy.
They put together a slideshow of photos.
The event was light-filled, communal, personal.
Shrestha and Quintana were there.
Alex did not attend.
For seven arduous months, the family waited for the medical examiners report.
A delay with the city had dragged out a very basic question what happened?
The hardest part for my family is not having a clear picture of why, says Sam.
Because theres only one person with him on that night.
And for whatever reason, they dont feel they can trust that persons story.
The family continues to find ways to remember Anthony.
Sienghay is planning on getting a tattoo of his sons Khmer name, Veasna.
Anthony and his father always liked the name, which means destiny.
(His mother hates it.)
For the release ofAfterparties, they have been thinking about having their own book party.
We felt like we should have a celebration and invite all his friends to come, Ravy says.
I still dont know what his writing means to the world.
Sam begins to say the preorders are good, but her mother interrupts her.
No, no, no, no, no, nothing money with me.
I dont really care.
I want his dream to come true.
IX.The Mythmaker
IX.
workshop had liked least.
No, thats not true, says Dana Spiotta, his first-year workshop instructor.
I think that was a bit of self-mythologizing.
Anthony was a deviser of his own apocrypha, says Spiotta.
He exaggerates for comic effect or for drama.
So much of it is going just as he had planned, says McQuilkin.
He didnt care about riches much.
He did care about renown.
He did want to be a well-regarded famous writer.
Anthony was talking to TV producers about potentially adaptingStraight Thru Cambotown.He wanted to go to Hollywood.
Individual talent and historical circumstance had convened to create someone singular, someone they had never seen before.
As an editor, whats always exciting is feeling like youre reading something new and alive and invigorating.
He was good at intellectualizing his work, grafting theory onto craft.
I dont think people are actually that interesting, he said in the same interview.
Theyre not that complex theyre very much created by the institutions and the forces around them.
We would have grabbed food at Tartine or gotten drinks at El Rio.
Our exchange would have existed within the parameters of a conventional profile: the tension of mutual seduction.
He would have been charming and engaging.
Someone as well versed in critical theory as in Pokemon types.
We might have rehashed a discussion around autofiction or cruel optimism and the American Dream.
Either way, I probably wouldve liked him.
The present moment is wedged between damned pasts and possible futures.
He sports a mustache; he looks healthy.
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