E-Mail This Article to a Friend The parent crap The fine art of alienating potential in-laws BY CHRIS WRIGHT

ON THE DRIVE to Buffalo, my girlfriend and I argued. Bitterly. Specifically, we argued bitterly about Noam Chomsky "and his ilk," whom I had described as anti-patriotic. I’m not quite sure where this came from. For one thing, I am not generally given to using the word "ilk." Even as I spoke, I didn’t believe a word I was saying — except, perhaps, the part about Ralph Nader having a ridiculous nose. I think I may simply have been nervous. Maybe a little resentful. We were heading out on a whirlwind tour of Western New York, in which I would be introduced to every living member of my girlfriend’s family, parents included. It was the parent part that worried me.

I am not good at meeting parents. I fuck things up. Sometimes I fuck things up by blurting the word "fuck" over a glass of sherry. Sometimes not. Depends on the circumstances. The thing is, whenever I find myself in the presence of parents-to-be-met (PTBMs), I get nervous to the point of retardation. I become bipolar: sullen or sycophantic — there is no middle ground. I suppose it’s because I feel I’m being appraised, and not in the way you get appraised at job interviews, which tend to start with the assumption that you are basically acceptable and work from there. With PTBMs, you walk into the situation presumed to be a work-shy, whiskey-drinking, woman-slapping slob with a penchant for sniffing dogs’ genitals. It’s your job to convince them otherwise.

But PTBMs are not easily convinced. They are gritty, pitiless detectives. Everything you say gets sent off to a parental crime lab for analysis: "It is our opinion that Wright’s appreciation for the film Three Amigos suggests drug dependency." The pressure, for me, is too much. And so, in my effort to pass muster, I’ll invariably say something unspeakably offensive. A real-life example: I’m in a restaurant with a girlfriend and her parents; after the meal, we offer to give mom and dad a ride home; the father, who is blind, asks who’s driving; my response: "You are." Why?

The perverse thing about all this is how adaptable my faux pas are. It’s a kind of skill. Within a second or two of the clammy handshake, I’ll have sized up the PTBMs — their likes and dislikes, their political and religious beliefs. Then, using this intelligence, I’ll find a way to alienate them. If the PTBMs happen to be simple, blue-collar folk, I’ll grill them about Wittgenstein’s definition of tautology. If they’re educated and urbane, I’ll struggle to come up with the word for ... you know, the thing that drinks milk, meows, shits in a litter box. If the PTBMs are, say, Catholic and Republican, you can count on me to remark that George W. Bush should be crucified. Better yet: fucking crucified.

My blunders are not always verbal. Maybe I’ll contrive to evacuate a string bean from my nose. Or my eyes will wander across the mother’s chest as she asks me which school I went to. Routinely, I’ll interrupt dinner with a long, house-suffusing trip to the bathroom. And toilet smells aren’t the worst of it. A decade or so ago, I snuck outside for a nerve-calming hit of pot (they knew it!) and ended up having a choking fit. A few seconds after resuming my place at the table, I burped, sending a cloud of marijuana smoke over the table, where it hovered for what seemed like hours. Needless to say, I am no longer on this family’s Christmas list.

But I’m not as bad as I used to be. I am older now, more secure, and less inclined to consume illegal substances. Still, the drive out to Buffalo left me with those old feelings of dread. The thing is, my girlfriend’s parents are indeed Catholic and Republican — a combination that invites a million grim solecisms. I saw myself — consumed with my efforts to leave both Jesus Christ and Dick Cheney out of the conversation — saying things like, "Delicious lasagna, Mrs. E. Could you pass the fuck?" I even considered the possibility that I might suffer some sort of synaptic glitch and punch someone in the face. "Chomsky," I said as we entered New York State, "what an asshole."

In the end, it was not such a terrible meeting. I said something that implied I’d been having sex with their daughter. I gestured at a picture of the Last Supper and said, "What do you think they’re talking about?" Nothing to get me thrown out of the house. In fact, I even mentioned how nervous I felt, which led to a conversation about gaffes previous boyfriends had made. I enjoyed that. The next morning, though, I suffered a bout of gastric distress. It was bad. Bikini Island bad. But I figured if I could make it back to my bedroom without being seen, I’d be off the hook. So, with the precision of a safecracker, I slid back the lock, opened the bathroom door, and came face-to-face with dad. "Shit!" I hissed as I hurried down the hallway. I hope he didn’t hear me.

Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com