There comes a point in every one of my relationships where the stories about my family serve to pique, not diminish, her desire to meet them.
"I want to meet them," she'll say. "I wonder what they would think of me..?"
I can tell from her tone that she thinks she'll be different. That I'm somehow exaggerating. Why perhaps, on beholding her spectacularness, they'll even clutch her to their bosom. She doesn't realize, of course, that there is no bosom. There's only a cremation furnace where a heart should be. My family peddles rage and hate the way others hand out love and awkwardness. Cruelty is their bloodsport of choice. To be thrust into it without having grown up in it is like learning to swim by being tossed into 20-foot waves.
Yet no amount of metaphoria dissuades the cocksure girlfriend from wanting to meet them. "Over my dead body, " I say. I haven't introduced a girlfriend to my collective family since high school. One, the AW, did meet a single sister who was visiting. To the AW my sister said, "I'm supposed to invite you to come home and meet the family."
"Oh, how nice!" the AW replied.
"It's a trap," I sighed as I drove. "They're trying to do an end-run around me. Same shit, different decade. They know they won't get anywhere with me. Did this come from Maria?"
"Yes," my sister replied.
"That particular knifing is not happening."
"I know."
We drove on in silence. "What just happened here?" the AW asked.
"I just saved you thousands of dollars in unsuccessful therapy. You're welcome."
The day wore on, and my sister got me caught up on all the family dynamics. At any given point, such as at this writing, I have no idea who's not speaking to whom. Sometimes people aren't speaking to me and I don't even realize it. So that's what my sister was briefing me about. It went for hours. Hatred, envy, rage, incredibly aggressive acts of cruelty. The AW heard all the crap some say about me. I'm on drugs. I'm a drug dealer. My house isn't really my house; it's a rental I use to fool my sister. The AW herself isn't my girlfriend; she's a friend who's posing, again to fool my sister. The list goes on and on.
That night, when she and I lay in bed, a shell-shocked AW stared at the ceiling. "I don't ever want to know these people."
Welcome.