During the extended ritual of engagement, one takes one's significant other to meet the people biologically or socially responsible for their being, well, here.

I did that in Iowa a month back in the 1st weekend of January. We stayed the first night with Julia's friend Dave, a line cook for a fancy hotel restaurant that owns a cat named Shatner. You see, he woke up one morning from a slumbering revelation, looked at the cat, and said as if from far off: "...the cat's name is Shatner." Great cat. We all went out to one of the downtown bars, were amused by the drunken antics of a local birthday wench, and then meandered over to where I'd proposed to Julia.

Which would be the Iowa City cemetery underneath an angel burnished black by the passing decades. I know, me.

During the next day (Saturday), we headed out toward Ames, Iowa, which involved tracking along the frost-encrusted tundra of the state's central, flat, awkward wasteland of sleeping farms and occasional billboards quoting things I'd never say. Ames was not the final destination, however, for we were headed to farm country. Buttfuck Egypt, Iowa country.

I'm pretty familiar with dirt roads, the occasional farmstead, and the sets of buildings huddling together in village fashion to guard against the insanity of living in a place where winter will kill a body, or at least a finger. One thing I wasn't expecting was stopping off at Julia's old high school. There are some major differences here. I graduated with a class of about 800 from a school of 3,000. Julia's graduating class was about 90 people, many of whom she'd known since 3rd grade. If you pressed me to offer the names of more than 10 people in high school, fuck if I could do it. But as we walked through the halls, there were scads of stories about this person, that person, Sasha her German exchange boyfriend, more persons whose names all blend together, and tight-knit halls sprouting in every direction. Apparently the whole thing had been revamped over the years: hallways that didn't exist now did, areas that were open were now solid wall, and many teachers had moved on. As we passed Julia's speech teacher's classroom, however, we noticed she was in there. A torrent of conversation ensued, at first characterized by me standing out in the hall and being amazed at how goddamn young these bipedal creatures looked. I was also immensely uncomfortable for some bizarre reason. Well not so bizarre, maybe. About every month or two, I have dreams where I am still in high school, have to continue taking classes in a high school (which now makes even less sense than when I was a grad student), or needing to take final exams viz high school. Something about my psyche hasn't been able to let go of the academic side of things there, and somehow the surroundings just brought that out. More acutely, however, was the prospect of talking with Julia's speech teacher. I just didn't want to. I was just apprehensive and not in a social mood. Be that as it may, I entered, said some of the usual I do whenever my job comes up, made chit-chat, and we left.

And then there was the final stretch. Now you know you're on the plains of Iowa when you try to open up your car door at a gas station and have to: a) fight against the wind to get the goddamned thing open; b) are sorry you did when a flurry of minuscule ice crystals and gentle chunks of snow belt your face as that post-apocalyptic wind rush noise echoes in your ears. We bought gas and energy drinks, postceded by taking photographs of the setting sun set against a very fetching wasteland example.

Julia's folks are pleasant, practical people. I'd only talked with her Mom once over Skype with Julia, but beyond a few awkward questions ("So how did you meet?" and "Is he the reason Tom and you broke up?"), it was actually fun.

As a basic synopsis, Julia cooked and we occasionally helped or chatted in the kitchen, followed by her step-father who'd raised her since childhood coming home from work. We all ate and proceeded to have copious beer. Being the product to sell, I gave it my all to make the research scientist schtick sound delicious and refreshing. That went off well. We then broke up into groups and chatted more. Her step-father wasn't an engineer but had the bearing and manner of one. He apparently is the point person for survey teams that go around and check out sub stations for an electrical company. They have their office in Detroit. That was a point of amusement. I learned many interesting things about dudes frying themselves by not grounding fifty million things properly. I'm glad I just futz with monkey brains.

The day thereafter on Sunday, we woke up at Dawn (which didn't suck as bad I thought it would) and headed into town to eat at a famous diner. One of its claims to fame is this giant pancake that looks like sweet potato but tastes like awesome. I required no syrup goodness, for the goodness? It was pan baked right in. Julia's brother, his wife, and their young son Ryan of about 3 joined us all. Ryan was dutifully passed around, as is the fate of all small children that are cute. We talked about inconsequentials pleasantly, for no threads of conversation particularly stood out.

Afterward, we headed to Sam's Club. Julia has this joke that her parents, particularly her Mom, is making up for being authoritarian by taking her there to buy stuff whenever she's in town. "Curtains, how about curtains?" she might ask. "Towels? Kitchen supplies? Oh we still need to get a DVD/VCR combo. Where is that, have you seen it? Wait, there's just one left? Well that's odd. Are you sure you don't need towels?"

We wracked our brains trying to figure out why we actually went there in the first place.

On the way back, Julia and her Mom got into one of those religious conversations with people of differing viewpoints. In this case, Julia was the incredulous non-devout agnostic Pagan type person indicating that the Bible was not the literal word of God and etc. Her Mom is very Christian. Not the "I just invoke the word of God and Jesus when it suits my purposes to condemn you" type. But still one who sees non-believers as those deviating from the path of securing a pleasant eternity. I forget how the conversation started. All I know is that I was sitting there, in the front seat, step-father driving, listening to Julia and her discuss particulars related to the New Testament. At some point, Julia indicated that not everyone is going to be saved and brought up the 144,000 mentioned in Revelations. Her Mom countered that with a common fallacy. I indicated that, strictly speaking, 12,000 male Jewish virgins from the 12 tribes of Israel (oh their mothers would be so proud) would ascend into the Kingdom of Heaven to watch humanity suffer. The actual number further raised up AFTER Judgment Day is left unsaid as far as I recall. I mentioned the first part and this did not go over well. Other than that, I stayed quiet. I ain't all dumb. Later on, both Julia and her mom apologized for potentially making me feel uncomfortable. I indicated that I don't publicly discuss religion or politics in public.

The rest of the trip (all 3 or so hours of it) went fine, we rode off into the literal sunset. I wondered if we had time to check out this badass abandoned farmstead. Sadly not.

In our next installment, I'll switch to talking about Julia's time meeting my folks in LA this past extended weekend.

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