Today’s soundtrack: that’s true, yes I do, indeed I do, you know I do
Today at 8:42pm: Disgracing myself at the dinner table.


“Go easy on me, sir,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

My partner in Hapkido today was K, a slight-framed black girl about my size. I suppose she’s plain-looking but I find her beautiful. She’s got really good kicks and it looks like we go to the same barber.

K. asked me to take it easy because I’d torqued her wrist too much during one of the grappling exercises; since I’m usually the smallest guy in class, I’m used to applying extra pressure. Now that I’m working with someone actually my size I have to recalibrate.

At the dojang we call everyone “sir” or “ma’am,” I know it sounds weird to you but what can you do. I suppose you could come to the school to laugh at us but then I would have to twist you into a pretzel.

I hit the showers around 8pm and walked out the door at 8:15. The streets were dark, it was freezing out and I began to wonder about dinner. After Hapkido, in chow-seeking mode I still reflexively think I should call Eumi, forgetting she moved out of the neighborhood over a year ago.

Phone is blinking, someone’s left a message. It’s Eggtart, speaking quickly and without commas: “Hey Rain come meet us at Joe Shanghai’s a bunch of us are getting together for dinner tonight it’s Canadian Thanksgiving.” I can’t help but chuckle. What will those Canucks think of next.

At Joe Shanghai’s, Cia and I demand an explanation of Canadian Thanksgiving from Eggtart. “It’s about, you know, the Pilgrims and the Indians,” says Eggtart. Both Cia and I remain unimpressed.

So like I realized, I can’t eat shao lon pau in front of chicks. The potential calamity is too great, the risks too high. I mean if Lam and I are chowing down to soup dumplings and I bite into one a little too hard and scorching soup shoots out of my dumpling and directly into Lam’s eye, blinding him and causing him to scream, it’s all good; we’re guys.

Someone sabotaged my shao lon pau anyway. I think the cook intentionally weakened the structure of mine because when I tried to ventilate it, the meat part fell out of the bottom and the dumpling began hemorrhaging soup. I felt like such a spaz.

Have you ever been lonely, have you ever been blue. Don’t answer that, I’m not really asking but Patsy Cline was. You know how even after you press Stop you continue to hear the song? Yeah.

My workaday afternoon was interrupted by a big mystery. Okay so it’s not that big but it’s big to me because my life is empty and I’m dead inside so shut up.

After her party Cia sent us an e-mail listing five peoples’ names, and mine was one. She wrote something like “Are any of you on this list single/available, because last night, inquiries were made.”

I shirked my project and hit ‘Reply’ to demand an explanation. All Cia would say is that one of her French friends was asking about “the Japanese-looking guy wearing a hat,” which would be me. But then she also said the same girl had asked about Handsome Dan, so, so much for that. I wrote another letter of inquiry anyway, signing it “pleure.”

Cia’s next e-mail said:


sorry dan,

the french girl chose rain over YOU!

and rain, "pleure" is "to rain," a verb, not you in French. lol.

What can I say, my French sucks. I only studied it for, er, seven years.

Wait a sec, the French girl “chose” me? Aha, is this how the French do it? Dan and I are just pieces of Korean meat on a menu, huh? Well I, for one, will have absolutely no part in--

“Is she cute?” I asked Cia, at Joe Shanghai’s.

“Yes, she’s cute,” said Cia.

“I don’t believe you.”

Under duress Cia handed over her digital camera, which still contained images from the party. I scrolled through looking for the Frenchwoman. “She’s got red lips, very red lips,” said Cia. Which is good, because no one wants to date a Frenchwoman with green lips.

Aha, I found a picture of her. Dark hair, blood-red lipstick, but it was difficult to tell much in the little LCD. She could have been beautiful, she could have been hideous. Also she was wearing glasses, which might explain why she’d “chosen” me over Handsome Dan. Dan was a male model, for chrissakes. Me, I have as much style as a mailman.

“Would you date someone older than you?” asked Eggtart.

“Absolutely, I’d like to find a nice girl my mother’s age.” I was trying to make Eggtart spit a soup dumpling but my timing was off.

“The French girl is thirtysomething,” they said, and instantly began machinating, colluding and scheming about fixing us up over drinks this weekend.

“Whoa whoa whoa, I haven’t committed to anything!” I protested. I didn’t care if she was thirtysomething, in fact I welcome it, but this was all happening so...fast.

“Oh come on,” said Cia and Eggtart, and it didn’t take much for them to break down my door of reservation. Let’s face facts Rain, as a product in today’s competitive dating market you’re not exactly flying off the shelves.

Besides, my luck being what it is I really have nothing to worry about; the chances of anything actually coming out of this are slim. Perhaps she will have malodorous qualities, or I will be shorter than she remembered, or I’ll get all shy and stand around dumbly while people jostle me at the bar. I’m predicting an anticlimactic climax.

Just thought of something else--hey, do French people French kiss by default? Like right off the bat, instant tongue? The one time I was in Paris the only girl I got anywhere with was Danish. I kissed her because she was pretty and I was into her but I think she was just experimenting.

We kissed under the Eiffel Tower at night. That’s a moment I will never forget but something tells me it’s not exactly underlined in her diary.