NYC September 1st, 2008 (Meeting Parents)

I spook easy: spiders, flying, yelling, bus stations, seafood, white women, soup, Tijuana, make-up, imagination-less smart people, skinny-jeans, Stevie Wonder songs, and, most of all, MEETING PARENTS.

On the flight over to New York City, shoehorned into my seat, I was being gang-raped by five phobias. For starters, I was in the air. I'm not meant to be there. Then there was the melting candle woman next to me, oozing over the armrest, eating an especially pungent, sorry-looking 4th-world Tuna sandwich. Stevie Wonder was Continental Airlines background music to the flight crew instructions. Bollywood James Bond and his minty fresh Bond-girl smiling about potential emergencies and calamities. White women were EVERYWHERE up and down the aisle, insecure as the luggage being stuffed into the compartments over their heads. A hideous cross-section of these insidious Harpees: bickering ancient white women, lobotomized-eyed white girls plugging into white corded ipods, white wives stuck in their seats like decaying teeth to diseased gums, venomous white mistresses, folksinger-sized white lesbians---the whole kit and caboodle of never discriminated against moisturized pale flesh. Me as one-man mob of intolerance, Rosie Parks of the struggle, glaring wrath upon all. Most dire of all, I was on my way to meet my girl's folks.

Let's be honest---I'm a strange, challenging case to sell at the best of times. Favorable conditions these were not. We wanted to move in together. But not where she was from. Not in New York. She wanted to move out to Vancouver to be with me. We seemed to get along pretty well when she came to visit in Vancouver. Better the second time. By the third time it seemed pretty obvious it was worth giving a try. She felt like summer camp and a mermaid rolled up into one.

Now try selling that to her parents...

Possible future slogans Canadian tourism might use to sell Vancouver to the world employing stereotypical Canadian aplomb and politeness:

"CANADA, we don't mean to inconvenience or bother you in suggesting, have you ever considered the possibility?"

"CANADA, why not?"

"CANADA, c'mon it won't be so bad!"

"CANADA, forget peace, give US a chance?"

"CANADA, as the USA's retarded little-brother, we have a much sweeter disposition than most places that we're pretty sure, if you don't mind us presuming, you'll enjoy."

"CANADA, wonderful drinking water and, possibly, MORE!"

"CANADA, don't forget about us, we haven't forgotten about you!"

"CANADA, we didn't mean to frustrate Ryan Adams with being confused for OUR guy. Sorry. Really. Check us out."

"CANADA, stop by sometime."

"CANADA, it's quite the place."

"CANADA, if suicide is the biggest decision of your life you can't ever regret, we'll do everything in our power to minimize regretting visiting us!"

On the way through customs the same fucking question:

"Where you going?"
"New York."
"What's there?"
"Girlfriend."
"Whose she?"
"My girlfriend."
"How'd you meet her?"
"Uhhh."
"How do you know her?"
I imagine the response her parents registered as I utter, "I met her on the internet."

Part II forthcoming...