I tried to make this shorter.

This is Kevin's nightmare.

INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED AMERICAN SINGLES

Last Saturday, we went to a wedding for Kevin’s brother. The bride was a girl he met while visiting The Motherland last year. They’ve been maintaining a long-distance relationship for the past year, aided by daily webcam chats, emails, and free internet phone service. Just your classic love story in the 21^st century.

At the after-party, there was this drunk 50-something creepy guy who kept asking one of us to hook him up with this Corean woman. Neither person was part of our wedding party or anyone we knew either; they just happened to be at the bar. Despite this, one of our cousins was so drunk that he actually obliged and talked to the Corean woman (in Corean), who mistook him for someone who was interested in her. She kept telling him, “No, you are too young for me.”

I got a close-up into the “fog of war” known as singles dating again.

Everyone's a piece of piece looking for someone to melt with.

Random "me" shot.

BLACK TRESSES AND DRESSES

You can often tell how hot a girl is by how disparagingly other women describe her behind her back. Female compliments are inverse threat assessments.

“You know that girl in the black dress at the reception?” I started telling Amy.

“You mean that HO’?” Amy replied.

Yeah, so Girl In Black was pretty attractive, from the male gaze at least.

Guys, on the other hand, might say “she’s nice,” which can either mean “she’s okay, nothing special” or “she was smokin’ like Mt. Saint Helens” depending on how they say it. (A volcano reference from 1980. Even I think I’m old now.)

I had been sitting at a near empty table with my brother-in-law, deep in sober thought (I don't drink), wondering why there can’t be organized fighting in bars like this (this is why I don't drink); half the guys in any given bar want an excuse to fight anyways. That’s when Girl In Black actually said something to me.

I knew she was across the table, even remembered her at the reception with a crowd of all Caucasian friends (they were a nice group – they just stood out like how I stand out, and she kind of stood out among them as the only non-Caucasian). I was just surprised that a good-looking girl whom I wasn’t even feigning eye contact with would just come right out and ask me something so ….

“Are you half Asian?” she said.

“… What?” I came to.

“Are you half Asian? You look like you might be,” she repeated.

“Yeah, half-Corean. My mom’s Corean.”

Now, I can’t speak for all mixed Asians or hapas, but when someone can actually recognize that I am half, I consider it a compliment. It may sound like a simple question, but if they are asking it, then they are already thinking that’s what you are. So, asking you is not only a sign of inquiry but a sign of interest, and even acceptance, which isn’t something you can take for granted when it comes to being half-Asian in a room full of drunken Asians.

I wouldn’t recommend this approach with girls though, or else you’ll be an example of the new natural selection and be selected out. Girls want you to want them for who they are, not what they are.

Guys just want you to have sex with them.

“Can you speak Corean?”

“A little bit but it has to be pretty basic. Still learning,” I answered.

“Neat. Have you ever been to Corea?” she persisted while I sipped my Pepsi like a debonair Agent Cody Banks.

“Yeah, twice. We went on our honeymoon in ’99 and then in 2001,” I answered.

“That’s nice. I’m Japanese by the way. Everyone always thinks I’m Corean,” she confessed.

“Have you been to Japan?”

“I was there for four months. It was enriching. I never had any Japanese friends before I went there.”

Something resonated in me when she said that.

“Four months, that must’ve been great. Could they tell you were from America?”

“Well, not so much from any accent but when I speak, I use my hands a lot. Japanese people never use their hands. They’d look at me like I was an alien. Yeah,” she paused and then continued,

“When you ask a Japanese person a yes or no question, they always answer ‘maybe.’ It’s impolite to answer directly. And I’m very direct. They thought I was very Corean in that way.”

“Haha, Coreans can be pretty direct sometimes,” I added.

“Sometimes we’re too direct,” my brother-in-law cut to the chase.

“So I’ve heard that Coreans are very respectful of their elders. They take care of their grandparents and parents. Even the language is built so that you can only speak a certain way to people above you. I really admire that kind of respect,” she … fawned.

I felt like I was listening to an informercial trying to sell me something I’d already bought into. She was preaching to the choir and pitching to the shareholders. Giving heart shaped chocolates to someone you already had at “are you.”

“Yeah, but sometimes it’s a pain in the ass too,” the bro-in-law said realistically. He’s right. Fights, misunderstandings, and disinheritances can occur by not using the respectful ending on a verb when it’s expected.

Anyways, my bro-in-law kind of picked up the conversation while I slipped away. I just felt kind of funny about staying. My Scotty-sense was tingling.

“You know that girl in the black dress at the reception?” I was telling Amy later that night.

“You mean that HO’?” Amy replied.

“She’s actually Japanese. I thought she was Corean,” I continued.

“I thought she was Chinese,” Amy said.

“She was kind of weird,” Amy’s sister informed us, “she was asking us how do you say ‘will you go to bed with me’ in Corean.”

“Pshh,” and an eyeroll was Amy’s editorial to that.

Nice girl.

LIKE CHILI DOGS AND ROOT BEER

“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” I ask my brother Mark at the drive-in A&W. I thought they closed all the A&W’s down, like drive-in movies and lazer tag arenas.

“I don’t know. I guess. I don’t want it [the wedding] to be a big religious thing,” my brother says between chili dog bites.

“You and Amy kind of messed me up though,” Mark explains, “I want my kids to look like Sun Su and Ooseung now. When I meet a girl now, I wonder what our kids will look like.”

“I used to think that, but once you actually have a kid, no other kid looks as cute as your kid,” I answer back.

“Yeah, I’d like to be married some day. It’d be nice to have a permanent girlfriend. You guys are lucky.”

I press the button that calls the waitress to pick up our window tray.

“You didn’t finish your root beer float,” my brother points out.

“Oh shit,” I say guzzling down half the mug while The Waitress of Impending Tray Return circles our car.

Funny how you can forget the sweet things in life sometimes.

Circa 1999. Taken in Corea. The choice of suit was not mine.