Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Meeting Family and Friends

I'd already gone into detail about how I med Myz' cousin Haad. I wound up meeting a few of Myz' other family members and friends in unexpected ways. But it would be a very long time before I would get to meet her parents, older brother, sister-in-law and niece.

The next one I met was her younger brother Sand. Sand was the one who was supposed to be living in the house when I first came up to meet Myz, but he moved back home before I made the trip. While I was visiting Myz, he showed up unexpectedly. I was in Myz' bedroom at the time. Myz told me he was there, but she didn't want me coming out. (She hadn't told her immediate family about me yet.) She was going to go talk to him to see if he was going to stay long. I thought I should go ahead and meet him because I knew it would look bad if I was trying to hide. She thought he was going to leave soon, so she told me to stay. She talked to him for a bit and then came back. She said he was planning on spending the night. I was going to have to meet him, but she needed a couple more minutes before I came out.

She went back to talk to him to let him know she had started seeing someone and that I was there at the time. She then called for me to come out. I greeted Sand. He just kind of shook his head. "We'll talk about this later. I gotta go." He went out to his car and left.

Myz had to run an errand, so I was left in the house all alone. Sand came back later. He was outside smoking. I decided to go start a conversation with him. I don't remember what all we talked about, but we were both being casual. He then asked how old I was. "37." "Oh, so you've been married a couple of times, then." "No, I haven't been married and I don't have any kids. Myz wouldn't have had anything to do with me if I had."

After that, we seemed to get along okay. Later, Myz and I were watching a DVD in the living room and holding hands on the couch. Sand came in and saw us. He appeared to not like what he was seeing, but he didn't say anything.

Anytime I saw him after that on future visits, he seemed okay. But even though he's my brother-in-law now, we've never really bonded like brothers. (That also goes for Myz' older brother Phod.)

I had visted Myz at least eight times before I got to meet the other occupant of the house, her cousin Robd. He was Haad's younger brother and lived on the other half of the mobile home. (I should point out that the mobile home was a single-wide, but they enclosed the porch area and put in a bedroom, bathroom and laundry room. It looked like a double-wide, but it wasn't.) When he was home and Myz and I were in her bedroom, we could always hear him when he was home.

One of the things that I knew about Robd was that, even though he was 19, he LOVED to drink. All over the house was a number of photos of him getting drunk with his friends. There were a few photos that showed them taking a sharpie to someone's glasses while he was conked out. I got to meet Robd when he happened to be home after Myz and I had returned from doing something. He was there with a friend. I don't know if he knew anything about me beforehand, but he didn't act surprised to see me.

About the fourth time I came up to see Myz, I met Gied. Gied was Myz' best friend from high school. She was a student at San Jose State University. Myz and I were in the bedroom when we heard the driveway door open. The next thing, we heard knocking on the bedroom door. Myz opened it and it was Gied. Gied gasped when she saw me. (Fortunately, Myz and I were fully clothed at the time.)

Once, Myz and I went to a portrait studio to have our pictures taken. When we were there, we ran into a friend of Haad's. She was with her boyfriend doing the same thing we were. Myz talked to her for a bit before we finished our pictures. Later, Myz found out that friend told Haad about meeting us. Somehow, they were able to figure out that I was older than Myz and they thought I was manipulating her. We kind of laughed about that.

Another time, we were in the bedroom and we could hear other people coming in the house. It was Haad and Robd's parents (Myz' uncle and aunt). Myz clearly did not want them to meet me because she knew they would tell her parents. We had to stay quiet in the bedroom for at least an hour. Because the conversation they were having was all in Vietnamese, I don't know what they were talking about. I needed to pee very badly, but Myz wouldn't let me sneak into the bathroom. It got to the point that I thought I was going to have to pee in a cup in the bedroom. At this point, it was quiet in the house. Myz went out and saw that everyone had left. The coast was clear. I could pee in peace.

On another visit, Haad warned Myz that her parents were coming up from Monterey and they would be there in an hour. For some reason, Myz had something she had to take care of at the house and wouldn't leave right away, thinking we had plenty of time. I kept trying to rush things along, but Myz was adamant about completing her task. Finally, we left. Just as we were pulling out of the mobile home park, her uncle and aunt pulled in. They could clearly see us and Myz shyly waved at them.

Later, when we told Haad what had happened, she said that her parents had poor eyesight and probably didn't see me in the car. I expressed my doubts about that at the time. However, it didn't look like they said anything to Myz' parents about me. But when I did actually get to meet them for the first time about a year later, they commented to Haad how they thought I was better that Myz' old boyfriend (whom they saw in the car that one time).

And I also met Haad's boyfriend Tond. An odd thing after meeting him was that I was working at Walmart at the Customer Service desk one day in San Diego. I noticed a TV news crew was shooting footage of me assisting a customer. Tond saw that footage on a Bay Area newscast and recognized me.

I guess I didn't always have to use my car to get around.

But it took awhile before Myz got to meet any of my friends and family.

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