Kage Alan Blog

There’s something magical about waking up in New York City with the love of your life wrapped up in your arms, breathing softly, holding your hand and waiting in secret anticipation of your wedding two days later…separated only by uncomfortable pajamas you’re forced to wear and his mother’s stare from the next bed. Her eyes seem to say “No funny business on my watch! I know what you want to do to my son!” While my eyes retort with “You have to take a shower sometime, lady. And don’t think for a second I get to do what I want to your son. He just looks at me, tells me to keep dreaming, white boy, and to assume the position.” Hence the three of us roused ourselves out of bed on Monday, President’s Day.

After sharing a delightful breakfast with Miss Kim, I grabbed my coat, sent Pookie and his mother out to go sightseeing and set off to check out the location of where we were getting hitched on Wednesday. I find it useful to be prepared. Extremely prepared. I guess I’m kinda anal. Big surprise, right? I also believe in being prepared. The problem with my setting out on a mission like this is that I don’t always take things like…well, distance…into account. I knew where I needed to go, only I didn’t realize that I was walking from 28th all the way up to 78th, then over or that it was 3 1/2 miles one way. As things turned out, getting there wasn’t the problem. It was a little rough, but not horrible. No, horrible was walking all the way back since pride prevented me from taking a taxi. That and the Beard Papa creme puff bakery I found. Hello? To die for!

Seven miles, several expletives, multiple Tylenol pills and a couple hours of rest later, I met up with Pookie and his mother at the Empire State Building to go up to the top and take some pictures. It costs $22 to go up. Guess who didn’t go because it’s too expensive? That’s right. All of us! They decide to instead head out to Walgreens and CVS to shop. I summarily dismiss myself and meet up with Miss Kim instead. She wants to go to the Museum of Sex. Hmm…CVS…Museum of Sex. Yeah, no contest.

The four of us regrouped and set out for dinner with my honorable adopted little brother and his fiance–they’re getting married in July. They suggested a Thai place called Spice and much to our borderline obnoxious requests not to, paid for the entire meal. The Chinese are a little funny about that. On one side, Pookie and his mother. They wanted to pay. On the other side, my honorable adopted little brother who’s also Chinese and aware of these rules as well as how delightful it is to trump another Asian person whilst playing this game. And then there’s me, the poor little, innocent, angelic white guy caught in the middle. And then there was Miss Kim, who took great satisfaction in cockblocking me from stopping honorable adopted little brother’s credit card from going through. Girl got a sadistic streak!

Despite this setback and aside from the nasty stares from Pookie–I so got the shaft without getting the shaft that night–a good time was had by all. It also gave me the opportunity to talk to Mark, honorable little brother’s fiance. This was apparently a great relief to him (honorable little brother’s name is Little Eddie) because Eddie texted me the next day to inform me that “I’m glad you talk to Mark last night. Stopped you from tasting me.”

Ahem…teasing? And he wonders why I giggle at his Engrish sometimes. I’m allowed. Mark did ask the Pookster and I during dinner what we thought each others worst habit was. I went first.

“His incessant lateness for everything. No matter what it is, I practically have to yell to get him to move his adorable rear end because he putzes like it’s going out of style.” This came as no surprise to my guy. His answer, however, took me by surprise.

“The bathmat. If Kage takes a shower first, he dries off on the bathmat. So whenever I shower and dry off while still in the shower, I step out onto a sopping wet bathmat. It drives me insane!” Correct me if I’m wrong, but considering how long he putzes, wouldn’t the bathmat already be dry by the time he got out of the shower?

That last point aside, I can’t wait to read what you folks think of the purpose of a bathmat. I was always under the impression that bathmats were for drying off on. Am I wrong or it is an Asian/gweilo thing? Moving along…

So, Tuesday morning. Soon-to-be-mother-in-law and Miss Kim enjoy breakfast together. Meanwhile, the other two of us have a date with destiny.

This is the start of something special for Pookie and I, mostly because if we don’t complete a certain task, we ain’t gettin’ hitched! In hindsight, it’s a good thing he was too nervous to figure out that he could have stalled us another year if he’d thought it through properly. As it is, he mistakenly left his passport at the hotel. Uh, huh. Fortunately, they accept a drivers license when applying for a marriage license at the City Clerk’s Office.

We entered the building a few minutes after 9am, approached the information desk and found ourselves stuck behind an annoying man being asked if he had picture identification. He did…only it was in a HUGE wadded up bundle in his hand that he had to sift through. The gentleman behind the counter–in typical New Yorker fashion–asked if the man had another document with him, rolled his eyes and put his head down on the desk in frustration when the man pulled out another wadded up bundle from the other pocket and mentioned he could look for that, too. We were ushered up, given a ticket, A035, and sent down the line to sit and wait for our number to be called.

Pookie fidgets, plays with his phone for a bit, fidgets some more, looks mildly annoyed when I try to engage him in conversation, goes back to fidgeting, then seems amused when I can’t take a proper picture of us sitting there waiting to go up to the desk. And when they call our number? His eyes grow wide and he starts mumbling “Is that us? Where do we go? Do you know where we’re going? Are you sure the desk is in that direction? What was the number again? How do you know you’re going where you think you’re going? Should we use the GPS?”

I wanted to put that GPS somewhere alright, but I’m not even allowed entry there. Half an hour later, though, and we have our completed marriage license in our hot little hands. Mission accomplished. We just have to sit on it for 24 hours before we can use it. Incidentally, we pass a number of folks who are having civil ceremonies performed that morning. They look happy and it really tugs at the heart. Ironically, I think that’s when it occurs to him that we’re about to share in that happiness ourselves, only we’re not going to do it at City Hall. He realizes that I’ve taken a different route and made it a bit more intimate and private for us. It’s really, really starting to dawn on him that we’re going to do this. It excites and scares him, like telling him I stopped by Best Buy on the way home from work on New Release Blu-Ray Tuesday.

Dinner that evening is at Rare Bar & Grill, the main restaurant at another Hilton two blocks away from where we’re staying. It strikes us as odd that the hotels are so close to each other, but any direction those thoughts lead to next are put to rest the moment we look at the menu; lobster burgers!!! Honestly, we tried to get Miss Kim to order the deep fried Oreos, only she’s not having it. She also trumps Pookie and soon-to-be-mum-in-law by paying the bill and that tickles me this time because she does it right under their collective noses. I still get the shaft without getting the shaft, but I enjoy it this time regardless.

Sleep really doesn’t come easily to us that night. I’m restless, mentally making sure I’ve got the entire timeline down in my head, cheat sheets ready for everybody with locations and times, wedding vows rehearsed in my mind–Pookie wrote his tonight with Miss Kim as an audience–and praying he likes the suit I bought that he hasn’t seen. Pookie is restless with the knowledge that I’ll soon be eligible for half of everything he owns and that he’ll potentially be getting the shaft one day no matter how many times I’m the one who assumes the position. Soon-to-be-mother-in-law, meanwhile, tosses and turns wondering which one of us is really the top and why her son is marrying a poor, mouthy gweilo instead of settling down with a nice Asian man.

Somewhere around us, somewhere in this Big Apple…and in every other city in the world…somebody is getting laid. Not me, though. Alert eyes in the room watch me from the other bed and attempt to size up just how much time I need with her son if she gets up to use the bathroom…

Tomorrow is the big day! (To Be Continued on Thursday…). Click here for Part IV.

If you missed Part 1, here you go: My Tiny Skinny Half Asian Wedding Part 1: Pre-New York
And if you missed Part 2, then by all means, please check it out, too: Operation Brotox: A Gay Wedding In New York Part II

________________________

Kage Alan is  the Tale of the Mummy watching, Frankie Goes To Hollywood listening author of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Sexual Orientation,” “Andy Stevenson Vs. the Lord of the Loins” and the first book in a separate series, “Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell.” And we’re finally down to the next post being about the wedding itself. Ah, good times! I still can’t believe he cracked up when… Well, why spoil the fun?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2012 at 6:30 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.