Don't Act Like You're Not Impressed.

I was asked recently if, before I got married, I’d ever dated an actual American. Or did I always find my boyfriends at my local ESL night class. I felt it my responsibility to have an Equal Opportunity approach. My best friend Beth couldn't keep them straight, my sister made fun of me: “HA HA you love terrorists, you’re gonna be kidnapped one day”, and Planned Parenthood refused service: “Erin the morning after pill should not be your primary method of contraception”.

One of the earliest contenders for biggest mistakes I'd ever made was the well behaved, well groomed East Indian whose grandma made me wear the traditional dot every time I came to the house and got mad when I called it a dot. Things went from terrible to awesome when his parents began negotiating my dowry. I tried repeatedly to break up with him, to no avail. “You realize I’m cheating on you right? Like, A LOT." I had shamed his family; he disappeared for a decade and now works for the Secret Service.

My first Asian American won me over with his frosted tips and over-sized blaze orange t-shirts and whose main appeal - which I remember shouting in my brag voice when I knew large groups of people were listening - was his uncanny resemblance to my favorite Backstreet Boy, in a kung pao kinda way. He wasn't a complete waste of time though; I credit him for my very refined, very precise Asian accent. 
The really racist one. 

There’s the chubby charmer whose family had me over for dinner every evening and whose nephews I babysat, who later stole all my money, fled the country and left me stranded in arguably the most dangerous city in all of Western Europe.

The ethnically ambiguous frat boy who worked at the Cheese Cake factory and kept a saber sword in his backseat who, when I finally asked where he was from replied: 
The Fertile Crescent."Um. So....... Iraq. So awesome."

A family favorite: the pot smoking, hacky sack tossing, film directing, virgin who I drove cross country with during easily the worst four days of my life. Half way through Alabama in his two door Pontiac Sunfire, filled floor to ceiling with only boxes of Macaroni and Cheese - so much so that I had to leave one of my bags at home for lack of space- he confessed his devout Lutheran upbringing, that he had a genuine concern for my soul and that I needed to denounce my pagan (Buddhist) religion.  "Fuck Lutheran's" I said. He slammed on his brakes sending me and the entire contents of his car crashing into the windshield.  "Watch the Mac N Cheese” I shouted and snort laughed. When I refused to bow my head and pray over my Arby’s curly fries it was clear we'd been sorely mismatched. “Hi, I'm Erin, Have we met before?"  

I was on the next flight home, arranged swiftly by his mother.

One special gem, after a long night of ruckus sex making rolled over to say he hoped I wasn’t expecting him to take me out to dinner. Or to call. Or to come over again. Oh and by the way not to tell anyone we'd been tampering with each other, cause that would hurt his chances with that other girl he really liked . Fuck me right?

A personal favorite: the middle-aged environmentalist ten years my senior; we were obviously doomed from the get go being that I hate the planet and that he washed and re-used his toilet paper. But he let me live at his house for a month and occasionally let me shower with the  rain water he'd collected. Out to dinner with his parents and nine brothers and sisters they asked if I was officially his girlfriend. Before I could finish my affirmative head nod and congratulatory high five with his dad, he quickly yelled 
“NO!! No, no, definitely not!!” all the way across the bar where he had belled up.   
 I drank excessive amounts that night and woke up the next morning  in his parent’s water bed. Alone.

The Mexican, Canadian named Jesus who'd fly to Minnesota so we could make out at his friend's uncle's house; The Swiss Guard who saved my life when I fainted in the Sistine Chapel; The barber shop owning gangster who made a living bribing government officials, immigration, and local law enforcement; the bulging body builder who made infomercials in his basement and canceled dates with me to get his back waxed.

The staunch conservative who kicked me out of his car after I made, what I thought was a very compelling comparison between President Bush and.. ..  my bush. 

The Sugar Daddy who was rollin' in way too many dolla' bills at 23, even within my predominantly privileged, upper class cast of college assholes. He would ‘run errands’ at two in the morning, while I stayed back at his place watching Weird Science, eating leftovers, and counting his cars. He was later arrested as the key suspect in the largest STING operation to have been execute in the state of  Minnesota. Meanwhile, that half a mill he’d raked in and so generously shared: Seized. 
You really fucked me on that one MNPD.

To all those other lunatics out there, we could have had a promising future. But lucky for you, I found someone who tolerates me just slightly more than you likely would have.