Pronoun Problems: A Novel About Friendship, Transgender and (eventually) Ninjas

57 - Flight Is Stupid

The course of true love never did run smooth.

I read that in a horoscope once, although I'm pretty sure they stole it from Shakespeare. Or maybe the other way around. It's impossible to know for certain. Regardless, it is solid advice. To wit, a marriage to Samantha that had always seemed unbreakable, until it was broken, followed by an estrangement that seemed beyond saving, until it was saved. All thanks to an adorable Asian-American woman named Qi and a portly kid named Felix.

I shall explain.

I met Qi at Traffic School. More specifically, Comedy Traffic School which is a thing you can take in Los Angeles if you need to work off the points on your license after getting popped for a rolling stop (which is a bullshit ticket, by the way, but I guess the cops need to hit their quota somehow, right, Officer Hernandez?). It's a nice idea in theory, using humor to alleviate the technical tedium of road rules, but you don't exactly get your A-list comedians teaching the course. And if there's one thing I've learned as a comedy professional it's that bad jokes are a whole lot worse than no jokes.

Anyway, Qi was sitting next to me while I was being a smart-ass to our instructor — I can't help it; there's just something about an educational setting that brings out the snarky teenager in me — muttering flippant comments under my breath, which Qi found hilarious. She would put both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing, which I found incredibly endearing.

Incidentally, Qi is a Chinese name that is supposed to be pronounced Chuh. To my ear, it sounded like the noise a person makes when they get sucker-punched in the stomach. But I was willing to overlook that because she reminded me very much of Melody, my first girlfriend in high school. And no, it wasn't because all Asians look alike, you racists, but because she was smart, super-cute and shy. I do admit to some nostalgia, though. My youthful relationship with Melody was the only one I ever had that didn't at some point blow up in my face.

When we went out for drinks afterwards I discovered that I had completely misread her. (What else is new?) Smart and super-cute, yes. But quiet and shy? Um, no. She was, I discovered, a fitness freak and an adrenaline junkie. She didn't drink alcohol or even coffee, referring to them as "pollutants" whereas I referred to them as "the things that make life worth living." Qi was an avid X Gamer who enjoyed activities such as mountain boarding, base jumping and hang gliding.

So... not my soulmate.

"I see," I said after Qi told me a harrowing story about almost losing her grip while free climbing at El Capitan. "So your goal is to be in peak physical condition when you fall to your death." She laughed at that but then assured me that — despite my stated fears of all those things — she would sooner or later get me to do them, too.

Good fucking luck, lady, I thought.

But here is something important I came to learn about myself. My fear of heights might be paralyzing, but it still no match for the promise of athletic sex with a beautiful, hard-bodied divorcee. So to my surprise, but not Qi's — "I knew I'd wear you down, sooner or later!" — I found myself agreeing to go hang gliding. And I am tremendously glad I did, because I wound up learning something even more important about myself.

I suffer from something called Resting Bitch Face.

RBF, for those of you who have not heard of it, is a real scientific thing discovered by real scientific scientists. Scientists who, I suspect, are complete jerkwads, because otherwise they would have taken the time to give this condition a dignified name. (I mean, name another condition with a curse word in it. The results of your tests are in and I'm sorry to inform you that you have an acute case of Fucknuts.)