I often tell my best friend Asia that had I been born a beautiful gay Turkish man like I was supposed to, I would’ve coaxed Damien’s wavering bisexuality out into full force and she would have been my One True Woman. Then again, my idea of a romantic compliment is telling Damien he would be great as a twink in a gay porn. Thankfully, Asia understands this statement as the highest honour I could give her and she laughs and tells me we could just get married while we were in Montreal. I think this is an excellent plan -- then I would go marry Damien and she would go marry her boyfriend and we could spark a Supreme Court case asking whether we are committing bigamy or not seeing that the United States does not federally recognize gay marriages.
This sounds pretty exhausting, though, and we’re slightly too mentally ill and physically disabled to deal with something like that.
We are the sort of best friends who talk in broken, incomplete sentences or at times even just noises and understand each other as communicating full, insightful thoughts. Yes, we’re one of those. We amuse ourselves by playing what we call The Starbucks Game, where we walk into the Starbucks section of a Barnes & Noble and talk about the most disturbing aspects of our lives to date until we can clear out everyone in the area. This usually happens accidentally, though. We have no concept of ‘appropriate’ topics because neither of us have said anything to each other that we’ve found too disturbing, graphic, or just gross.
While pretty much all eight of my friends are my best friends, there is something about me and Asia that is different, I think, that while my friends and I all love each other, she and I practically share a mind. She’s the only person I could spend every day on end with and not want to stab myself in the eye, and I’m not even engaged to her. I even take her to family functions like she’s related to me or something. Damien’s family’s going to start feeling suspicious about something soon, even if they’re not sure what it is. But she’s the only person who can keep me sane through the crazy.
This Thanksgiving, Asia was not here, so I went with Damien to his brother’s new big house that Damien and his sister are so jealous of and he apologizes to me that he can’t be his supposedly wildly more successful brother. He doesn’t get that I’m not jealous because I’d rather not have a house with woodrot and be married to a sexually repressed bad dresser who works at a mega church. In any case, the whole family was there on both sides, and it was intensely awkward for me. Most people still aren’t sure about what to say to me or what topics to bring up, partly because they don’t know me, partly because I’ve been known to fly off my handle at their father.
“So what the hell is on my plate?” I whisper to Damien.
“Um, well, that’s turkey with gravy… here’s some creamed onions… those are sweet potatoes… and stuffing.”
“What’s in stuffing?”
“I actually don’t know.”
Marilyn, his mom, is now clued into the fact that someone, somewhere, is asking a question. “What’s wrong?”
“This is the first American Thanksgiving Lorelei’s ever had, so she‘s never had stuffing. She wants to know what‘s in it.”
Now everyone has heard: a first-generation American sits at their table, someone whose parents are from a different country.
“Is it really?!” Damien’s sister-in-law squeals. “I’m glad it could be our Thanksgiving! Do you like it?”
“Yes, it’s great, thanks.”
“What do you usually have, then? Do you not have turkey?!” Everyone is looking at me with wide-eyed anticipation.
“Well, um, we do have turkey, but Romanians don’t understand gravy, so we have mujdei. I guess Americans would call it aioli. We have mashed potatoes and we have icre. It’s a dip made with bread, onions, olive oil, and fish roe.”
Every time I tell people what I eat on Thanksgiving, I consider giving them some bizarre story about an ancient tradition where a virgin must walk through a field of chickens and see if it rains before the feast can begin. Thankfully, by the time I get around to describing icre, it has exactly the effect I’d have been going for. Everyone is disturbed, for some reason, and they say it must be interesting to be having a ‘regular’ Thanksgiving now, and they stop talking to me.
“Why does everyone like stuffing? I don’t get it,” I say as I work on the bland comfort food.
“I don’t know, darling, but you’re not making me eat fish roe.”
At least the kids are cute.
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