The bear hunter
or “Driving Miss Yong-Mei”
Memoirs of a recovering ex-roommate part 2½
As a ten-year resident of East-meets-West Vancouver, I have long pondered the eerie magnetism that seems to exist between minuscule Asian women and fat, hairy white guys. The unenlightened think it’s a sumo thing, but after extensive research I’ve concluded that it’s more of a teddy bear thing.
Case in point: Yong-Mei, my bratty Taiwanese roommate. In our last chapter, we learned that her affair with slim ‘n’ smooth moi was a relative anomaly, as she went on to demonstrate a marked proclivity for fat, hairy white guys: my friend Arnold, her boyfriend Rutger, and the smut-scribing Engineering virgin.
However, there is one more fat, hairy white guy to discuss, but this liaison was so disturbing and unnatural, and its consequences on my worldview so traumatic, that it deserves attention in its own article.
Not long after she got together with Arnold, Yong-Mei befriended a bus driver who worked the route between the university and downtown Vancouver. He was also a fat, hairy, white guy, and by all indications this dude was catnip to her.
She would spend hours on the bus with this driver, riding back and forth and forth and back along his route, clinging to the side of his seat and making small talk. Once or twice a week I’d get on the bus, and there she’d be. It was very strange.
Of course, I had to ask Yong-Mei if anything was going on with this guy. “The driver is really nice,” she said. “He offer to show me around city after work.”
“You do realize that he wants to fuck you, right?”
“No he doesn’t! He really nice!”
“Oh come on! Of course he wants to fuck you! Have you spent any time with him when he’s not working?”
“Not yet. I always say goodbye and get off bus before end of his shift.” Clearly, she wasn’t as naive as she was letting on.
Over the following weeks, the question of her and the bus driver became a bit of a running joke, but she always denied everything. Then, one day, I noticed a video tape on her desk. “What’s this?” I asked.
“A movie.”
“What movie?”
“I don’t know. Bus driver give it to me last week.”
“Really? I bet it’s a porno,” I replied, laughing. Then I looked at the label. The movie’s title was Halloweenie.
“Oh my god,” I shouted. “It is a porno!”
“No way!” she shouted. “You lie!”
So we stuck it in my VCR, and lo and behold, there was Ron “the hedgehog” Jeremy—king of the fat, hairy porn stars—fucking a cute little redhead in a girl scout costume.
“See?!” I shouted. “It’s a porno! A porno! The bus driver gave you a porno!” I staggered around the room, head in my heads, my concept of reality irrevocably shattered. I couldn’t believe that my fair city employed bus drivers brazen enough to give porn videos to teenaged girls while on the job.
I mean, this is Canada, for crying out loud! A country where the clean-cut, straight-laced Mountie is the model for all public servants. This is not a nation where bus drivers sling smut! Where did this guy think he was? Italy?
Clearly, the world was a lot more depraved than I’d thought.
Meanwhile, Yong-Mei looked at the action on the screen with a grin so wide I thought her cheeks might cramp. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Well, yesterday driver ask if I like movie. Of course I not seen it, but I say yes.”
I laughed. “And?”
“And he offer to make me dinner at his house.”
“Ha! Are you going?”
“I dunno,” she said, still smiling. If there had ever been any question as to the bus driver’s intentions, it was certainly answered now.
Of course, Yong-Mei continued to ride with the bus driver after that, and she continued to deny any sexual contact with him. As for the truth, I can’t make a call one way or the other. Perhaps she was indeed seeing him during his off-hours—hell, they could have been going at it like minks during his coffee breaks, right there on the bus.
On the other hand, perhaps she was just playing one of her flirtatious little games with him, safe in the knowledge that the driver couldn’t make a move on her when he was on the job.
Alas, only Yong-Mei and the bus driver know for sure. All I know for sure is that one day I boarded the bus and there was Yong-Mei’s driver, with a different little Asian girl clinging to the edge of his seat. Fat, hairy white guys, your dream job awaits. •
Completed in 2004 for inclusion in the Wasting My Youth book, based on unused material from 1999.
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