We show up at your parents’ house in my cherry-red sports car. I neglect to tell you that I never use it for its sporting purposes – that, in fact, I have never driven over 65mph in my entire life. Your parents answer the door together in unison a second after you knock, and we all stand there staring at each other on our respective sides of the doorway like some kind of weird mirror image, shaking hands and practicing pleasantries with past and future, simultaneously. Once inside, I make sure to tell your parents that I’m a Brahms man, a man of the arts, a man with good taste and fine manners. I wear a sweater vest, and my hair is combed and cropped and stuck to my scalp. Your father seems to approve. You sit down at the right end of the dinner table (your spot, I presume), and I pull your chair out for you with you already seated in it. The chair’s legs grind across the hardwood floor below you as I tug them backwards, and they let out a long moan of agony and anguish. You direct a curt, half-smile towards your parents. The process scuffs your parents’ floor, and I pretend it didn’t happen. I calmly sit down in the chair to your left, delicately place a serviette in my lap, and allow you to get yourself back within reach of the table at your own pace. The casserole finishes up in the oven with an abrupt ding! that launches your mother into a waltzing dance around the room. The ginger-bread-man prints on her apron look as though they might come to life as the apron joyfully flutters and whirls/twirls. She feeds your father the first bite. He startles theatrically, like a character pulled into a scene in a musical. This is our second date.
The two of us – you and I – are moving our relationship along at high speeds. And I like it.
