The Great Disneyland EU Debate
My Turkish friend, Ulak, works as a sales rep for a Turkish coffee company. He's an investor, too, and he tells me all the time how he will one day retire to Polonezkoy with three million American dollars and a raven-haired American wife. I don't know how well his coffee portfolio will do, all I know is Ulak raises his bushy eyebrows and smiles when I ask him about his caffeine empire, but I can tell you with certainty his efforts in the wife procurement department leave something to be desired. Not that he's not a catch, mind you! Ulak is gentle and kind and cute in a swarmy Turkish way, and generous and funny and always up for a good adventure. And he's smart - the most intelligent person I have ever met, bar none. But he's old-fashioned in disconnected ways. He won't wear deodorant or trim the hairs on his ears. He keeps his nails slightly long the way old Turks do. And cute and funny and smart and generous only go so far when they smell like an old Turkish yak who might slice you should he attempt to hold you. I've tried telling Ulak this, gave him mounds of the new Avon Men's Catalogue stuff, but I can smell he hasn't been giving the products a good try. I've given up.
Ulak asked the tiny barista at a seaside cafe, the one with the fire pits dotting a wrap around cement deck where police officers and motorcycle groups and young mothers' clubs meet for lattes and French pastry and blasts of clean ocean air. She said no with a shake of her long black hair. Ulak described her, the way he felt when he delivered coffee to the cafe every Thursday.
"I want to take her. She looks like she belongs in Istanbul. But she won't go. So you have to come with me, Birdie."
I asked him why he couldn't go stag with his brother, Cem, another coffee investor whose route extended deep into east county.
"He's taking Ana. We all drive together, ok?"
"Ok." I sounded chipper, excited, but inside I wanted to scream. Ana? Oh great. Better paint on the thick skin now, wrap myself in good humor and witty comebacks. Ana is Turkish for Mother, and this ana is the matriarch of Ulak's family, the woman with an iron Turkish fist who demands nothing less than slavish devotion from her two sons. She uses a silver walker and drools as she shuffles but behind the aging facade is a rhinoceros with an invisible horn called guilt. The first time I met her she sat in a red velvet chair, the focal point of the family living room. She turned to Ulak.
"She's fat. She's not one of us. I know a nice thin girl who works at Macy's. In shoes. I'll introduce you."
"Oh, you don't understand. I'm not dating him. I'm not going marry him." I smiled and laughed and rolled my eyes in jest to assure her that the possibility of an Ulak-Birdie union was near zero percent.
"Allah protect us! She's a whore!"
So one week ago found me dressing, primping, wondering what the evening held. I knew Ulak, Ana, and Cem would pick me up at 5, knew we were headed north to Los Angeles, to a huge Disneyland hotel ballroom where the coffee company would hold a holiday extravaganza.
to be continued....
8:24:05 AM 
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