LOVE IN A TIME OF GOUT

Often Savage Kitten says things that really encapsulate our relationship. As some of you know, she is Cantonese-American, I am white. So aside from a height difference (she's fine-boned, I am normal), there are also "cultural" differences.
What comes out of her mouth reflects exactly how different Cantonese people are from all the rest of us.



INSTRUCTIVE EXAMPLES

ME: 'I'm going to the store, hon, you need anything?"
HER: "A lobster!"

This is an example of optimistic Cantonese tunnel-vision. Eventually I must bring back a lobster from the corner store - logic takes a backseat to a positive attitude.
If you wish it, it has got to happen.


HER: "I know, you could go visit my mom, I'll stay home. Just tell her you're me."
ME: 'She'd spot the difference immediately'.
HER: "Not if you don't say anything."

Her mom does not know Savage Kitten is living with me, and thinks she's an old maid living with a classmate from college, another old maid. And, seeing as all of us white people look alike, surely mom won't notice a thing provided I keep my mouth shout. Savage Kitten knows I can do that, and therefore she has complete confidence in the workability of her idea.


ME: 'I'm sorry, I didn't know you were in here!'
HER: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaauugh!!!!!"
ME: 'I just heard the tank running, I had no idea you ......'
HER: "Nasty Old Toad!"
ME: 'Look, I'm really sorry, it's just that the water....'
HER: "You should've stayed in here then and waited for it to finish!"
ME: 'Well, now I know.'
HER: "I have no heartbeat. It's stopped, I'm turning blue, it's all over. Cold, so cold.... What are you going to tell my family?"
ME: 'Nonsense, I can feel it beating.'
HER: "If our landlords ask about the screaming, the toilet scared you."

Our landlords are also Cantonese. All Cantonese KNOW that Caucasians are irrational and easily startled.
And only a middle-aged white man would scream like a girl in the middle of the night.


HER: "Silly Toad, why didn't you tell me you had gout, letting me order all those oysters!"
ME: 'Well, you wanted oysters and you were so happy....'
HER: "But if I had known, I would've bitten the bullet - I would've eaten all of them myself."

True love. Note the element of selflessness and sacrifice. All couples should be so compatible.

In another month we will have been together for twenty years.



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AFTERWORD

Savage Kitten left a message for me on my office answering machine. We are having "White Person's Duck" for Thanksgiving!
See, we always do duck for holidays - a turkey is just too much for two people. But yesterday the May Wah Market was entirely sold out of duck (we may not be the only people in SF to prefer roast duck to dry monster bird), as were all the other meat markets in San Wah Fao. Not a Chinese Duck to be had. Today she found a duck nearer home, at one of those pretentious food stores that cater to snobby white folks into granola, wheat germ, and tofu. This duck was all macrobiotic veggie fed, free range, no antibiotics. In her words, "It's a healthyass duck". Probably a little lean, and may require some extra grease. White People. And their ducks.