Monday, December 18, 2006
The country of Chile clings to the western shore of South America like a pair of wet swim trunks on a sallow old man. The nation is home to the world's driest desert (the Atacama), the world's second tallest mountain range (the Andes), and one of the most beautiful and intriguing women I've seen in the past year.
I met her at my brother and sister-in-law's Christmas party over the weekend, a Saturday night affair packed with dutiful Mormons spewing profanity-free conversation. When I arrived (late), I immediately began sizing up the women in attendance. Not bad. Married. Weird hair. Too churchy. Ugly sweater. Talks with her mouth full. And then...hmmm, what do we have here?
I have this weird fascination with what I call "the gray race," which is basically any person whose ethnicity isn't immediately apparent. We all know people like this, folks who could pass for Hispanic in bad light and Asian in good light. Black people who look a little too white, and whites who look a little too swarthy to check the caucasian box at the DMV. Picture Tiger Woods, who epitomizes the spirit of the gray race with his bronzed skin that's not quite black. He's a little bit of everything (even white!), a stewing mass of genetic material that somehow combined to form an incredibly toothy grin (white again!) along with world-class athleticism.
So I'm sitting there checking out this girl, trying to decide what her ancestral roots are. She was average height, average build (deliciously curvy, but not chubby), and had long dark hair just thick enough to be sexy but thin enough to be shiny and manageable. Mmm. I began to drool, and not from the cookies and Doritos on my plate. I finally decided that she was half white, half Native American. When I asked my brother yesterday, he said she was an import from Chile, which would be good for me under most circumstances since most women in Chile would love the attention of any white man, no matter how ugly, just because it would transcend the norm. I've been told that red hair is even a turn on for them, thus proving that entire races can suffer from mental disorders. Sadly, this girl had no trace of an accent, proving she's a long way from her Chilean home and has probably lost the white-man worship her entire continent usually displays.
After a really gay game where we had to guess Christmas songs based on clues, the party split up. Those brave enough to endure the frigid night chill convened to the garage for a ping-pong tournament, while the wimps stayed inside to play Scene-It. I was planning on staying as close as I could to my newfound love interest, since she'd already crashed the list of the top-10 most important people in my life and I barely knew her name. Lust does strange things to young men!
But my brother insisted that I come play ping-pong with the men, since after Forrest Gump and the guys in the olympics, I'm world-class. So I grudgingly made my way to the garage to freeze with the rest of the guys, while the chicks enjoyed a rousing board game. Imagine my shock when I entered the garage to find my Chilean beauty swinging a wooden paddle with a vengeance, destroying a guy twice her size. She eventually lost, but she put up an impressive fight and she was the only woman to play. I stood in the corner and watched, her hair swinging wildly with every lunge. I'm sure the copious amounts of drool that cascaded from my open mouth are now frozen on the garage floor.
I ended up winning the thing and left the party soon after, but not after a stimulating conversation with the woman in question in the kitchen. She knows both of my brothers from the singles' ward and asked how I fit in. She thought I was older than my older brother, a strange observation, since my brother's baldness tends to age him about fifty years. But I politely straightened her out and managed to hide any amorous feelings I covertly harbored. You gotta play the game.
I found out the girl's age (26 or 27), but couldn't get much else out of my younger brother. The only move I can possibly pull now, short of getting her number from my sister-in-law and placing an awkward phonecall, is to diligently attend the singles' ward, worm my way into this woman's social consciousness, and hopefully win her over with whatever charming qualities I might possess. The only problem with the whole thing is that after we get married, barring some unforeseen miracle, my own children will be members of the gray race. Red-headed Hispanics? May the world have mercy on my posterity.
I met her at my brother and sister-in-law's Christmas party over the weekend, a Saturday night affair packed with dutiful Mormons spewing profanity-free conversation. When I arrived (late), I immediately began sizing up the women in attendance. Not bad. Married. Weird hair. Too churchy. Ugly sweater. Talks with her mouth full. And then...hmmm, what do we have here?
I have this weird fascination with what I call "the gray race," which is basically any person whose ethnicity isn't immediately apparent. We all know people like this, folks who could pass for Hispanic in bad light and Asian in good light. Black people who look a little too white, and whites who look a little too swarthy to check the caucasian box at the DMV. Picture Tiger Woods, who epitomizes the spirit of the gray race with his bronzed skin that's not quite black. He's a little bit of everything (even white!), a stewing mass of genetic material that somehow combined to form an incredibly toothy grin (white again!) along with world-class athleticism.
So I'm sitting there checking out this girl, trying to decide what her ancestral roots are. She was average height, average build (deliciously curvy, but not chubby), and had long dark hair just thick enough to be sexy but thin enough to be shiny and manageable. Mmm. I began to drool, and not from the cookies and Doritos on my plate. I finally decided that she was half white, half Native American. When I asked my brother yesterday, he said she was an import from Chile, which would be good for me under most circumstances since most women in Chile would love the attention of any white man, no matter how ugly, just because it would transcend the norm. I've been told that red hair is even a turn on for them, thus proving that entire races can suffer from mental disorders. Sadly, this girl had no trace of an accent, proving she's a long way from her Chilean home and has probably lost the white-man worship her entire continent usually displays.
After a really gay game where we had to guess Christmas songs based on clues, the party split up. Those brave enough to endure the frigid night chill convened to the garage for a ping-pong tournament, while the wimps stayed inside to play Scene-It. I was planning on staying as close as I could to my newfound love interest, since she'd already crashed the list of the top-10 most important people in my life and I barely knew her name. Lust does strange things to young men!
But my brother insisted that I come play ping-pong with the men, since after Forrest Gump and the guys in the olympics, I'm world-class. So I grudgingly made my way to the garage to freeze with the rest of the guys, while the chicks enjoyed a rousing board game. Imagine my shock when I entered the garage to find my Chilean beauty swinging a wooden paddle with a vengeance, destroying a guy twice her size. She eventually lost, but she put up an impressive fight and she was the only woman to play. I stood in the corner and watched, her hair swinging wildly with every lunge. I'm sure the copious amounts of drool that cascaded from my open mouth are now frozen on the garage floor.
I ended up winning the thing and left the party soon after, but not after a stimulating conversation with the woman in question in the kitchen. She knows both of my brothers from the singles' ward and asked how I fit in. She thought I was older than my older brother, a strange observation, since my brother's baldness tends to age him about fifty years. But I politely straightened her out and managed to hide any amorous feelings I covertly harbored. You gotta play the game.
I found out the girl's age (26 or 27), but couldn't get much else out of my younger brother. The only move I can possibly pull now, short of getting her number from my sister-in-law and placing an awkward phonecall, is to diligently attend the singles' ward, worm my way into this woman's social consciousness, and hopefully win her over with whatever charming qualities I might possess. The only problem with the whole thing is that after we get married, barring some unforeseen miracle, my own children will be members of the gray race. Red-headed Hispanics? May the world have mercy on my posterity.
