It's Thanksgiving, Jin Akanishi
Title: It's Thanksgiving, Jin Akanishi
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Akanishi Jin
Summary: Jin didn’t know much about Thanksgiving, but his friends said that you ate until you couldn’t move and then passed out watching some American football. Since he had nothing better going on, his friend Pat invited him to some exotic sounding place called “Minneapolis” for dinner with his family.
Notes/Warnings: Set during Jin's first time in America. Features some culturally insensitive American characters, but it's all in good fun. Some bad language too because I can't help myself. Sorry - I'm totally in Bakanishi mode because of his pending solo concerts.
“Jin, man, you gotta come,” they’d said. Apparently it wasn’t really Thanksgiving unless you were in a colder place.
Jin didn’t know much about Thanksgiving, but his friends said that you ate until you couldn’t move and then passed out watching some American football. Since he had nothing better going on, his friend Pat invited him to some exotic sounding place called “Minneapolis” for dinner with his family.
So they rolled into LAX in Pat’s shitty Corolla, and Pat was already complaining about how parking was “totally going to ass rape” him, a phrase Jin found funnier every time he heard it. Then again, when he sent an email completely in English to Kame asking if idol life was ass raping him, all he’d gotten back were question marks and frowny face emoji.
They checked in for their flight, and his eyes kind of boggled at all the school books Pat had brought. Pat went to UCLA. “You going to do homework on vacation?”
“Nah,” Pat said, squeezing his big frat boy ass into the plane seat (Jin hadn’t had any trouble). “It’s just so my mom thinks I’m studying so she won’t bother me.”
“Mm,” he replied, “they know I am coming?”
“Oh,” Pat said, looking a little embarrassed. “Grandpa Vern fought in the Pacific. Shit. Uh, I forgot he’d be there...”
“Fought in...Pacific Ocean?”
“World War II, man,” Pat explained. “Just uh...just don’t let anything he says bother you. He’s got dementia.”
Jin didn’t know what dementia was - his vocabulary in English was improving, but even his brain had its limits. Pat passed out snoring, and Jin turned up his iPod to settle in for the flight to Minneapolis. He hoped Pat had hot cousins.
--
If Pat’s parents and younger sister were any indication, Pat did not have a hot family.
His parents were both sumo-sized and his sister was...well, he’d seen better looking guys. Working for Johnny’s meant pretty guys in spades. But Jin felt sufficiently welcomed when Sumo Mom embraced him immediately.
They seemed to think that since Jin wasn’t a native English speaker, maybe speaking loudly would help. It didn’t. He wasn’t deaf, after all.
“You must be Pat’s friend from Japan!” Sumo Dad said, shaking Jin’s hand as soon as Sumo Mom let him breathe again.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, really just wanting to take a nap. There’d been a shitload of turbulence during their flight.
“Your English is good,” Sister commented. “You eat sushi?”
“Uh...yes.”
“I think that’s disgusting.”
“Hannah!” Sumo Mom scolded.
“It’s okay,” he replied quietly, already missing LA as the family shuffled, huffing and puffing through the terminal.
The five of them piled into a noisy minivan that kind of sank under their collective weight, and there was already snow falling. In November! Minneapolis was ridiculously cold, especially since Jin had been at the beach a day earlier.
“Hey Jin,” Sumo Dad announced like he was cheering at a baseball game rather than in a minivan with his fat family. “You like American music?”
“Some.”
Sumo Mom seemed pleased, waving a CD around the front seat. “We just got Toby Keith’s latest! You like Toby Keith?”
“Uh...” Who the hell was he?
Well, he found out soon enough with fat Pat singing off key to his left and grouchy Hannah to his right. The whole family sang along with a song that Jin realized he hated from the first chord. Before the chorus, already this Toby Keith had said America four times, and if his vocabulary was right, “flag” twice and “eagle” three times.
“Ah, traffic!” Sumo Dad said. “We may get to listen to Toby twice through!”
Jin didn’t know why this was a good thing.
--
Pat’s house was pretty big, and they had a spare room for him.
“Sorry about all the floral wallpaper,” Sumo Mom shouted in his ear. “This was Grandma Myrtle’s room.”
Jin didn’t really care about floral wallpaper. He was exhausted and praying for Toby Keith to suddenly lose his voice. Permanently.
“Grandma Myrtle died in here. I don’t know if you Japaneses find that offensive, but we cleaned...”
Jin lost her after she mentioned Grandma So-and-so dying in here. He set down his bag, seeing a picture of a wrinkly old hag in a frame next to the bed.
Sumo Mom gave him another hug. “You sleep tight, okay sweetie?”
“Thanks.”
Sumo Mom left. The first thing Jin did was turn the picture frame away, shuddering.
--
Pat woke him up bright and early. Jin didn’t really like getting up before 10 AM if he didn’t have to.
“Mom wants us to help in the kitchen.”
Jin sat up, realizing just how tired he’d been the night before. Not only had Grandma Myrtle been a fan of floral wallpaper, but she’d really had a hard-on for Jesus. There was a cross over the door, a Jesus blanket on top of him and Jesus praying pictures on the walls. He turned down the blanket as gingerly as possible before following Pat downstairs.
The kitchen was a flurry of activity. Jin’s eyes widened as Sumo Mom jammed some weird mushy stuff (“stuffing” Pat explained vaguely) into the huge uncooked turkey’s ass. Sumo Dad was chopping vegetables.
“Morning!” Sumo Mom cried as she pushed another creepy fistful of mush into the bird. “Jin, do you like turkey?”
“I think so, yes.” He’d eat anything but the mush at this point.
“That’s great.” She gestured to some potatoes. “Patty, you do the fruit salad. Jin, honey, you peel those, okay?”
“Okay.”
By the time he was done, he never wanted to see another potato. Pat had clearly gotten the easier job, but that was probably because he couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Pat was a good friend, always paid for another round of drinks, but he was pretty dumb.
Sumo Mom thanked them each with a lipsticky kiss on the cheek. Jin wanted to wipe it off, but he was a guest and getting back to LA from middle of nowhere America would probably be pretty hard on his own.
--
As the morning turned to afternoon, the rest of Pat’s family started to arrive. Jin had never seen so many big people in his life. And each of them looked at him like some kind of exotic zoo animal. Then again, it still beat fangirls trying to tear off his clothes.
One of the aunts poked at his ribs. “Skin and bones, these Chinamen.”
“Aunt Debbie...” Pat moaned, turning red.
“Communism. They don’t let them eat,” Aunt Debbie continued, and Jin backed up.
“I am Japanese,” he explained.
“We’ll fatten you up good, pumpkin,” Aunt Debbie said, no apology offered.
Pat’s succession of equally fat cousins asked him if he knew karate, if he knew Mr. Miyagi (who the hell was Mr. Miyagi?) and if he killed dolphins for sport.
“Jessica’s vegan and animal rights and all that shit,” Pat explained later. Jessica had been on the skinnier side, and it made a little more sense now. “Ignore her.”
Finally, Grandpa Vern arrived, and Jin offered a hand to shake. Instead Grandpa Vern’s eyes widened, and he was rather spry for an old fart. Jin soon found himself sprawled on the rug, the old man throttling him.
“Vern!” Sumo Mom shouted, hurrying in while Jin was starting to see stars. Yeah, he was never going to Minneapolis again. “Vern, he’s not a kazekami!”
“You bastard!” Vern shouted, and all the chubby uncles were trying to pry the psychotic grandpa away from Jin’s throat. “You took away Sammy and Jim and Chuckles, ya rice eatin’ bastard!”
--
Grandpa Vern had taken a while to calm down, so Jin was hiding out in the creepy Jesus room, icepack on his neck. He was kind of disappointed in himself for being so damn curious about what Thanksgiving was. Because in Jin’s estimation, Thanksgiving was about fat people trying to kill him.
He stared up at his cell phone, not really wanting to know how much money it was going to cost to send a mail home. It was about four in the morning there anyhow, so it wasn’t like he could call his mom. Although he wanted to. Jin wasn’t a mama’s boy so much as he wanted to thank his mom for never making him listen to Toby Keith. She probably wouldn’t know what he was talking about and would tell him to come home and give up the whole study abroad thing.
He clicked through his contacts. Pi would sleep through his ringer, Ryo wouldn’t answer. Matsumoto would get pissed off, and with how sore he was, pissing someone else off sounded kind of great, but he decided against it. He hit Kamenashi’s name. The guy probably hated his guts for leaving, but at least he’d wake up. The call would cost so much that he’d have to eat Saltine crackers and canned tuna for a month, but he had to hear a familiar voice.
Jin nearly cried at the sound of Japanese. “Don’t call me,” Kame complained, yawning. “Do you know what time it is here?”
“Kame, help me.”
“What’s wrong with you? You sound like shit.”
His voice really was as scratchy as he thought it was. “Grandpa tried to kill me.”
“What?”
“My friend’s grandpa. He had a flashback to the war. He called me a rice eating bastard.”
Kame snorted. “You appear to have survived.”
“Oh, just barely. Some fat ass uncle reminded Grandpa that he had a Sony television, and he backed down.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you aren’t dead.”
He adjusted the ice pack on his neck. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a while.”
“Guess I get sentimental when some asshole calls me all the way from Los Angeles in the middle of the night.”
“Minneapolis.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind,” Jin said, smiling. “I miss you guys, believe it or not. Even Taguchi.”
“Liar. You’re partying and shit every night, right?”
He looked over to see Jesus peering down at him from the picture on the wall, and he closed his eyes. “Not every night. How’s drama filming? You and Koki okay?”
“Why are you even asking me that?” Kame said, and Jin felt embarrassed. He was wandering around, having fun. Everybody back home was working hard, even harder than before.
He decided not to continue the conversation. Kame needed all the sleep he could get. He was being a dick for even calling. “I think we’re going to eat. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I hope not,” Kame snitted, and the line went dead. Jin clicked the phone shut. He was still glad he’d gotten to hear someone speak Japanese. Hearing Kame bitch was worth a month of cheap salted crackers, wasn’t it?
The bedroom door opened and closed. He opened his eyes to see the cousin who didn’t eat anything. Jenna?
“Jessica,” she said, nearly reading his mind. She was wearing a tight little orange sweater, and with all the oxygen he’d been deprived of during Grandpa Vern’s flashback, she was looking pretty hot.
She sat down on the bed and stared at him. Was she going to accuse him of killing dolphins again? He could make a comment about some of the crazy shit Americans did too, but again, he was a guest here. He had to get back to Los Angeles in one piece. The silence was getting creepy, and there was enough Jesus in the room to already make it terrifying.
“What?” he asked, knowing it probably sounded rude, but she just cocked her head, brown ponytail bobbing to the side.
He was more than a little shocked when she slid her hand up his pant leg and grabbed hold of his ankle. “You’re pretty.”
Oh god. Here he was, completely freaking vulnerable and the not unattractive member of an unattractive family was trying to feel him up. He thought about Grandma Myrtle’s picture, turned aside. He thought about Grandpa Vern, who would probably disembowel him for consorting with his granddaughter. And then he thought about Kame accusing him of partying and messing around with girls every night. Kame had been right, in a way. But Jin couldn’t help it when the girl was coming onto HIM, after all.
“Jessica,” he said, scooting until his back was to the headboard and the ice pack was being held in place by the sheer force of his chin power.
“Yes?” she asked, sliding her hand up until she was nearly to his knee. She was never going to get where she wanted to go at this rate, but Jin was having a hard time concentrating. As long as she stayed away from his collarbone. That would only end badly.
“I am Pat’s friend. You are Pat’s cousin.”
“So? Pat’s a dickhead.”
Jin knew that word. It wasn’t necessarily untrue about Pat, but he really didn’t want to sleep with the guy’s cousin. Especially when there was a house full of weird people downstairs and Jesus was watching. “Pat is my friend,” he reiterated, hoping that she was getting the message.
She wasn’t.
She came closer, removing her hand from the bottom of his jeans and resting it on his thigh. Her orange sweater stretched just so across her chest, and Jin gulped. She said a bunch of things, a little too fast for his comprehension. He heard something about an ex-boyfriend liking Naruto and wanting to forgive people for eating defenseless cows.
“Pat says you’re famous, too.”
He looked away. “Not really.”
Maybe if he started yelling at her hysterically in Japanese, she’d go away before he did something beyond his control. Because once he had boobs in his line of sight, it was dangerous. Grandma Floral Wallpaper died in here, he told himself, feeling Jessica’s fingers go for his belt. She died, probably rotting away while eating something from Taco Bell or McDonalds.
When Jessica grabbed his crotch, he flung himself off the bed, hitting the floor with a hard thud. “What the hell?” she complained, and there was a knock at the door.
It was Pat. Thank God, it was Pat. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?” his friend shouted, and Jin didn’t know which of them he was yelling at. But Jessica got off the bed, straightening out her sweater and leaving. She was nice enough to flip Pat off on her way out.
Pat walked over, towering over him. The floor hurt a lot, and it was making him forget the whole choking thing, at least for a while. “Sorry,” he said, trying to hide his hard-on by rolling onto his side and curling up in a ball. “Pat, I am sorry. She was all on the top of me.”
His friend just laughed. “It’s okay, man. Not your fault. She’s kinda slutty. We’re gonna eat in five minutes. You’re in the kitchen at the kids table with me, alright?”
Pat left, still laughing, and Jin sighed. So Jessica was just after anything with two legs and not related to her. Great. How many other members of Pat’s family would physically assault him before the end of the day?
--
The kids table really sucked, Jin realized, shoving another forkful of overly buttery mashed potatoes in his mouth. Jin liked kids, but not once they hit eight or nine and turned into little douchebags.
Dakota and Dylan looked exactly alike and spent most of the time flinging beans at each other. Madison didn’t eat anything. Montana kept asking if Jin was a ninja. Jin was mostly confused as to why so many people in this country named their kids after geographical locations. He hadn’t met a lot of Japanese people named Osaka or Yokohama or anything.
So this was something Americans did every year? Eating a huge meal with people they were related to but didn’t necessarily like? Pat was eating more on one plate than Jin had eaten in a week, and Jin considered himself a pretty big eater. He took a bite out of the stuffing which actually wasn’t that bad. He pointed to the TV on the kitchen counter with his fork.
“Why does the girl take the football away?”
Pat laughed. “Lucy? Lucy’s a prick teasing bitch, and Charlie Brown is that guy at the party who keeps trying to get laid but fails.”
“Patrick, you have a dirty mouth. I’m telling my mom,” Madison complained.
“You should hear what your mom says about you when you’re not around,” Pat told her, and the girl burst into tears.
Jin stared at the TV again, watching again with Pat’s insights. Lucy didn’t look any older than 10. American TV was strange. And people said Japanese animation was weird.
He got a green bean to the forehead and sighed. Los Angeles was far, far away.
--
He and Pat were playing X-Box that night once the house full of fat people became a house full of significantly fewer fat people. Jin was having a hard time reconciling Thanksgiving. Nobody had really given thanks for anything that day.
Sure, there’d been a prayer or something before the meal, but Jin had stayed in the kitchen to avoid another body slam and choke hold from Grandpa Vern. Everyone ate until they passed out, and Jin didn’t understand the rules of American football enough to find a connection between that and the Pilgrim people he’d read about online. But he’d had a hard time explaining Golden Week to Pat, so it all evened out in the end, he supposed.
“I am sorry,” Jin repeated. “About your cousin. I did not want to fuck her.”
Pat choked on his sixth can of Mountain Dew. He patted Jin on the back hard. “You are awesome, man. I love you.”
“What did I say?” Didn’t everyone around here talk like that?
“You wouldn’t want to touch that anyway, Jin,” Pat continued, not answering his question. “She does like, these hippie guys from her art school. You do not want to go where someone like that has gone before. They eat bean sprouts and tree bark or some shit.”
“Okay,” he answered. Jin didn’t know what a hippie was, but if Pat was proud he’d held out and not banged his cousin, then Jin’s first Thanksgiving hadn’t been a complete disaster.
They played Halo until Jin could barely keep his eyes open. Unlike his friend, he hadn’t gone through that much Mountain Dew. They had one more day in Minneapolis, and then he could get back to Los Angeles, back to English lessons and back to the beach and girls he actually want to sleep with.
--
On Friday, Jin endured snow shoveling and Pat’s sister’s volleyball game. They sucked. It did mean another free meal though, so Jin got to add Chili’s to his list of American eating establishments that he never had to eat at for the rest of his life.
It was still kind of nice to eat in a restaurant and not have to get a reserved table in back or eat fast to get out before someone started snapping pictures with their camera phones. The food was greasy though, and he’d watched in horror as the family went through two giant plates of some fried onion thing before their actual meal.
He pondered taking a picture of his sizzling plate of fajitas to send to Pi, but remembered the Saltines he had to look forward to since he’d already called Kame. He kept his phone in his pocket.
“Are you having a good time in America, Jin honey?” Sumo Mom asked, and he felt bad thinking about her that way. She’d been very nice. He decided to just think of her instead as Pat’s Mom. Who happened to be really big.
“Yes,” he said honestly. So long as he thought of America as the west coast and not this snowy place with crappy chain restaurants.
“How’s the Spanish rice?” Pat’s Dad asked, “Better than the rice back home?”
Did everyone think the Japanese just ate rice and sushi? He took another bite of the strangely orange rice and shook his head. “Not really.”
“Ah, well, I like the Spanish kind,” Pat’s Dad said. “Got a kick to it, huh?”
He took a sip of his water and just nodded. Nodding made Pat’s parents happy. The sister was just as glum and annoyed as she had been since the airport. Pat claimed that his sister was just pissed off that her friends were getting boobs now, and she was lagging behind. Jin didn’t really understand Pat’s way of thinking about his relatives.
Pat’s Mom looked at his plate later. “Not going to finish? You need a doggie bag?”
He looked down. He had half his food left, and Pat’s family was already on dessert, some chocolate thing with ice cream and chocolate sauce and nuts. Jin’s stomach did a flip flop. “No, I am sorry for not finishing.”
“So polite,” Pat’s Dad said quietly, as though Jin couldn’t hear English at a lower volume. He spoke louder over the noise and crappy restaurant music. “Don’t you worry, kiddo. You’re a smaller people, so your stomachs are probably like a thimble.”
Pat made a horrified noise beside him, but Jin just took it in stride at this point. Pat’s Mom had Jin’s leftovers wrapped up anyway. He was pretty sure one of the family would eat it around 2 in the morning or something.
“We’re sad to see you go,” Pat’s Mom said as they were heading to the parking lot. She wrapped an arm around Jin’s shoulders, and all of a sudden, he missed his own mother terribly. “You should come back with Patty for Christmas if you have no other plans.”
It was nice. Really, it was. But he’d rather shoot himself in the face than visit Minneapolis again.
He nodded. “I will think about it, thank you for being kind.”
She planted another lipsticky kiss on his cheek. “Don’t let me forget to burn you a copy of that Toby Keith CD before you leave.”
Jin made sure to forget.
--
Sunday morning found Jin laying in the sand at Cabrillo Beach. He gave thanks for the sound of the waves hitting the shore. He gave thanks for the sunshine and the breeze. He gave thanks for the girls in bikinis who were setting up an umbrella and their blankets a short ways away.
Thanksgiving in America just meant something different to each person, he supposed.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Akanishi Jin
Summary: Jin didn’t know much about Thanksgiving, but his friends said that you ate until you couldn’t move and then passed out watching some American football. Since he had nothing better going on, his friend Pat invited him to some exotic sounding place called “Minneapolis” for dinner with his family.
Notes/Warnings: Set during Jin's first time in America. Features some culturally insensitive American characters, but it's all in good fun. Some bad language too because I can't help myself. Sorry - I'm totally in Bakanishi mode because of his pending solo concerts.
“Jin, man, you gotta come,” they’d said. Apparently it wasn’t really Thanksgiving unless you were in a colder place.
Jin didn’t know much about Thanksgiving, but his friends said that you ate until you couldn’t move and then passed out watching some American football. Since he had nothing better going on, his friend Pat invited him to some exotic sounding place called “Minneapolis” for dinner with his family.
So they rolled into LAX in Pat’s shitty Corolla, and Pat was already complaining about how parking was “totally going to ass rape” him, a phrase Jin found funnier every time he heard it. Then again, when he sent an email completely in English to Kame asking if idol life was ass raping him, all he’d gotten back were question marks and frowny face emoji.
They checked in for their flight, and his eyes kind of boggled at all the school books Pat had brought. Pat went to UCLA. “You going to do homework on vacation?”
“Nah,” Pat said, squeezing his big frat boy ass into the plane seat (Jin hadn’t had any trouble). “It’s just so my mom thinks I’m studying so she won’t bother me.”
“Mm,” he replied, “they know I am coming?”
“Oh,” Pat said, looking a little embarrassed. “Grandpa Vern fought in the Pacific. Shit. Uh, I forgot he’d be there...”
“Fought in...Pacific Ocean?”
“World War II, man,” Pat explained. “Just uh...just don’t let anything he says bother you. He’s got dementia.”
Jin didn’t know what dementia was - his vocabulary in English was improving, but even his brain had its limits. Pat passed out snoring, and Jin turned up his iPod to settle in for the flight to Minneapolis. He hoped Pat had hot cousins.
--
If Pat’s parents and younger sister were any indication, Pat did not have a hot family.
His parents were both sumo-sized and his sister was...well, he’d seen better looking guys. Working for Johnny’s meant pretty guys in spades. But Jin felt sufficiently welcomed when Sumo Mom embraced him immediately.
They seemed to think that since Jin wasn’t a native English speaker, maybe speaking loudly would help. It didn’t. He wasn’t deaf, after all.
“You must be Pat’s friend from Japan!” Sumo Dad said, shaking Jin’s hand as soon as Sumo Mom let him breathe again.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, really just wanting to take a nap. There’d been a shitload of turbulence during their flight.
“Your English is good,” Sister commented. “You eat sushi?”
“Uh...yes.”
“I think that’s disgusting.”
“Hannah!” Sumo Mom scolded.
“It’s okay,” he replied quietly, already missing LA as the family shuffled, huffing and puffing through the terminal.
The five of them piled into a noisy minivan that kind of sank under their collective weight, and there was already snow falling. In November! Minneapolis was ridiculously cold, especially since Jin had been at the beach a day earlier.
“Hey Jin,” Sumo Dad announced like he was cheering at a baseball game rather than in a minivan with his fat family. “You like American music?”
“Some.”
Sumo Mom seemed pleased, waving a CD around the front seat. “We just got Toby Keith’s latest! You like Toby Keith?”
“Uh...” Who the hell was he?
Well, he found out soon enough with fat Pat singing off key to his left and grouchy Hannah to his right. The whole family sang along with a song that Jin realized he hated from the first chord. Before the chorus, already this Toby Keith had said America four times, and if his vocabulary was right, “flag” twice and “eagle” three times.
“Ah, traffic!” Sumo Dad said. “We may get to listen to Toby twice through!”
Jin didn’t know why this was a good thing.
--
Pat’s house was pretty big, and they had a spare room for him.
“Sorry about all the floral wallpaper,” Sumo Mom shouted in his ear. “This was Grandma Myrtle’s room.”
Jin didn’t really care about floral wallpaper. He was exhausted and praying for Toby Keith to suddenly lose his voice. Permanently.
“Grandma Myrtle died in here. I don’t know if you Japaneses find that offensive, but we cleaned...”
Jin lost her after she mentioned Grandma So-and-so dying in here. He set down his bag, seeing a picture of a wrinkly old hag in a frame next to the bed.
Sumo Mom gave him another hug. “You sleep tight, okay sweetie?”
“Thanks.”
Sumo Mom left. The first thing Jin did was turn the picture frame away, shuddering.
--
Pat woke him up bright and early. Jin didn’t really like getting up before 10 AM if he didn’t have to.
“Mom wants us to help in the kitchen.”
Jin sat up, realizing just how tired he’d been the night before. Not only had Grandma Myrtle been a fan of floral wallpaper, but she’d really had a hard-on for Jesus. There was a cross over the door, a Jesus blanket on top of him and Jesus praying pictures on the walls. He turned down the blanket as gingerly as possible before following Pat downstairs.
The kitchen was a flurry of activity. Jin’s eyes widened as Sumo Mom jammed some weird mushy stuff (“stuffing” Pat explained vaguely) into the huge uncooked turkey’s ass. Sumo Dad was chopping vegetables.
“Morning!” Sumo Mom cried as she pushed another creepy fistful of mush into the bird. “Jin, do you like turkey?”
“I think so, yes.” He’d eat anything but the mush at this point.
“That’s great.” She gestured to some potatoes. “Patty, you do the fruit salad. Jin, honey, you peel those, okay?”
“Okay.”
By the time he was done, he never wanted to see another potato. Pat had clearly gotten the easier job, but that was probably because he couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Pat was a good friend, always paid for another round of drinks, but he was pretty dumb.
Sumo Mom thanked them each with a lipsticky kiss on the cheek. Jin wanted to wipe it off, but he was a guest and getting back to LA from middle of nowhere America would probably be pretty hard on his own.
--
As the morning turned to afternoon, the rest of Pat’s family started to arrive. Jin had never seen so many big people in his life. And each of them looked at him like some kind of exotic zoo animal. Then again, it still beat fangirls trying to tear off his clothes.
One of the aunts poked at his ribs. “Skin and bones, these Chinamen.”
“Aunt Debbie...” Pat moaned, turning red.
“Communism. They don’t let them eat,” Aunt Debbie continued, and Jin backed up.
“I am Japanese,” he explained.
“We’ll fatten you up good, pumpkin,” Aunt Debbie said, no apology offered.
Pat’s succession of equally fat cousins asked him if he knew karate, if he knew Mr. Miyagi (who the hell was Mr. Miyagi?) and if he killed dolphins for sport.
“Jessica’s vegan and animal rights and all that shit,” Pat explained later. Jessica had been on the skinnier side, and it made a little more sense now. “Ignore her.”
Finally, Grandpa Vern arrived, and Jin offered a hand to shake. Instead Grandpa Vern’s eyes widened, and he was rather spry for an old fart. Jin soon found himself sprawled on the rug, the old man throttling him.
“Vern!” Sumo Mom shouted, hurrying in while Jin was starting to see stars. Yeah, he was never going to Minneapolis again. “Vern, he’s not a kazekami!”
“You bastard!” Vern shouted, and all the chubby uncles were trying to pry the psychotic grandpa away from Jin’s throat. “You took away Sammy and Jim and Chuckles, ya rice eatin’ bastard!”
--
Grandpa Vern had taken a while to calm down, so Jin was hiding out in the creepy Jesus room, icepack on his neck. He was kind of disappointed in himself for being so damn curious about what Thanksgiving was. Because in Jin’s estimation, Thanksgiving was about fat people trying to kill him.
He stared up at his cell phone, not really wanting to know how much money it was going to cost to send a mail home. It was about four in the morning there anyhow, so it wasn’t like he could call his mom. Although he wanted to. Jin wasn’t a mama’s boy so much as he wanted to thank his mom for never making him listen to Toby Keith. She probably wouldn’t know what he was talking about and would tell him to come home and give up the whole study abroad thing.
He clicked through his contacts. Pi would sleep through his ringer, Ryo wouldn’t answer. Matsumoto would get pissed off, and with how sore he was, pissing someone else off sounded kind of great, but he decided against it. He hit Kamenashi’s name. The guy probably hated his guts for leaving, but at least he’d wake up. The call would cost so much that he’d have to eat Saltine crackers and canned tuna for a month, but he had to hear a familiar voice.
Jin nearly cried at the sound of Japanese. “Don’t call me,” Kame complained, yawning. “Do you know what time it is here?”
“Kame, help me.”
“What’s wrong with you? You sound like shit.”
His voice really was as scratchy as he thought it was. “Grandpa tried to kill me.”
“What?”
“My friend’s grandpa. He had a flashback to the war. He called me a rice eating bastard.”
Kame snorted. “You appear to have survived.”
“Oh, just barely. Some fat ass uncle reminded Grandpa that he had a Sony television, and he backed down.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you aren’t dead.”
He adjusted the ice pack on his neck. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a while.”
“Guess I get sentimental when some asshole calls me all the way from Los Angeles in the middle of the night.”
“Minneapolis.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind,” Jin said, smiling. “I miss you guys, believe it or not. Even Taguchi.”
“Liar. You’re partying and shit every night, right?”
He looked over to see Jesus peering down at him from the picture on the wall, and he closed his eyes. “Not every night. How’s drama filming? You and Koki okay?”
“Why are you even asking me that?” Kame said, and Jin felt embarrassed. He was wandering around, having fun. Everybody back home was working hard, even harder than before.
He decided not to continue the conversation. Kame needed all the sleep he could get. He was being a dick for even calling. “I think we’re going to eat. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I hope not,” Kame snitted, and the line went dead. Jin clicked the phone shut. He was still glad he’d gotten to hear someone speak Japanese. Hearing Kame bitch was worth a month of cheap salted crackers, wasn’t it?
The bedroom door opened and closed. He opened his eyes to see the cousin who didn’t eat anything. Jenna?
“Jessica,” she said, nearly reading his mind. She was wearing a tight little orange sweater, and with all the oxygen he’d been deprived of during Grandpa Vern’s flashback, she was looking pretty hot.
She sat down on the bed and stared at him. Was she going to accuse him of killing dolphins again? He could make a comment about some of the crazy shit Americans did too, but again, he was a guest here. He had to get back to Los Angeles in one piece. The silence was getting creepy, and there was enough Jesus in the room to already make it terrifying.
“What?” he asked, knowing it probably sounded rude, but she just cocked her head, brown ponytail bobbing to the side.
He was more than a little shocked when she slid her hand up his pant leg and grabbed hold of his ankle. “You’re pretty.”
Oh god. Here he was, completely freaking vulnerable and the not unattractive member of an unattractive family was trying to feel him up. He thought about Grandma Myrtle’s picture, turned aside. He thought about Grandpa Vern, who would probably disembowel him for consorting with his granddaughter. And then he thought about Kame accusing him of partying and messing around with girls every night. Kame had been right, in a way. But Jin couldn’t help it when the girl was coming onto HIM, after all.
“Jessica,” he said, scooting until his back was to the headboard and the ice pack was being held in place by the sheer force of his chin power.
“Yes?” she asked, sliding her hand up until she was nearly to his knee. She was never going to get where she wanted to go at this rate, but Jin was having a hard time concentrating. As long as she stayed away from his collarbone. That would only end badly.
“I am Pat’s friend. You are Pat’s cousin.”
“So? Pat’s a dickhead.”
Jin knew that word. It wasn’t necessarily untrue about Pat, but he really didn’t want to sleep with the guy’s cousin. Especially when there was a house full of weird people downstairs and Jesus was watching. “Pat is my friend,” he reiterated, hoping that she was getting the message.
She wasn’t.
She came closer, removing her hand from the bottom of his jeans and resting it on his thigh. Her orange sweater stretched just so across her chest, and Jin gulped. She said a bunch of things, a little too fast for his comprehension. He heard something about an ex-boyfriend liking Naruto and wanting to forgive people for eating defenseless cows.
“Pat says you’re famous, too.”
He looked away. “Not really.”
Maybe if he started yelling at her hysterically in Japanese, she’d go away before he did something beyond his control. Because once he had boobs in his line of sight, it was dangerous. Grandma Floral Wallpaper died in here, he told himself, feeling Jessica’s fingers go for his belt. She died, probably rotting away while eating something from Taco Bell or McDonalds.
When Jessica grabbed his crotch, he flung himself off the bed, hitting the floor with a hard thud. “What the hell?” she complained, and there was a knock at the door.
It was Pat. Thank God, it was Pat. “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?” his friend shouted, and Jin didn’t know which of them he was yelling at. But Jessica got off the bed, straightening out her sweater and leaving. She was nice enough to flip Pat off on her way out.
Pat walked over, towering over him. The floor hurt a lot, and it was making him forget the whole choking thing, at least for a while. “Sorry,” he said, trying to hide his hard-on by rolling onto his side and curling up in a ball. “Pat, I am sorry. She was all on the top of me.”
His friend just laughed. “It’s okay, man. Not your fault. She’s kinda slutty. We’re gonna eat in five minutes. You’re in the kitchen at the kids table with me, alright?”
Pat left, still laughing, and Jin sighed. So Jessica was just after anything with two legs and not related to her. Great. How many other members of Pat’s family would physically assault him before the end of the day?
--
The kids table really sucked, Jin realized, shoving another forkful of overly buttery mashed potatoes in his mouth. Jin liked kids, but not once they hit eight or nine and turned into little douchebags.
Dakota and Dylan looked exactly alike and spent most of the time flinging beans at each other. Madison didn’t eat anything. Montana kept asking if Jin was a ninja. Jin was mostly confused as to why so many people in this country named their kids after geographical locations. He hadn’t met a lot of Japanese people named Osaka or Yokohama or anything.
So this was something Americans did every year? Eating a huge meal with people they were related to but didn’t necessarily like? Pat was eating more on one plate than Jin had eaten in a week, and Jin considered himself a pretty big eater. He took a bite out of the stuffing which actually wasn’t that bad. He pointed to the TV on the kitchen counter with his fork.
“Why does the girl take the football away?”
Pat laughed. “Lucy? Lucy’s a prick teasing bitch, and Charlie Brown is that guy at the party who keeps trying to get laid but fails.”
“Patrick, you have a dirty mouth. I’m telling my mom,” Madison complained.
“You should hear what your mom says about you when you’re not around,” Pat told her, and the girl burst into tears.
Jin stared at the TV again, watching again with Pat’s insights. Lucy didn’t look any older than 10. American TV was strange. And people said Japanese animation was weird.
He got a green bean to the forehead and sighed. Los Angeles was far, far away.
--
He and Pat were playing X-Box that night once the house full of fat people became a house full of significantly fewer fat people. Jin was having a hard time reconciling Thanksgiving. Nobody had really given thanks for anything that day.
Sure, there’d been a prayer or something before the meal, but Jin had stayed in the kitchen to avoid another body slam and choke hold from Grandpa Vern. Everyone ate until they passed out, and Jin didn’t understand the rules of American football enough to find a connection between that and the Pilgrim people he’d read about online. But he’d had a hard time explaining Golden Week to Pat, so it all evened out in the end, he supposed.
“I am sorry,” Jin repeated. “About your cousin. I did not want to fuck her.”
Pat choked on his sixth can of Mountain Dew. He patted Jin on the back hard. “You are awesome, man. I love you.”
“What did I say?” Didn’t everyone around here talk like that?
“You wouldn’t want to touch that anyway, Jin,” Pat continued, not answering his question. “She does like, these hippie guys from her art school. You do not want to go where someone like that has gone before. They eat bean sprouts and tree bark or some shit.”
“Okay,” he answered. Jin didn’t know what a hippie was, but if Pat was proud he’d held out and not banged his cousin, then Jin’s first Thanksgiving hadn’t been a complete disaster.
They played Halo until Jin could barely keep his eyes open. Unlike his friend, he hadn’t gone through that much Mountain Dew. They had one more day in Minneapolis, and then he could get back to Los Angeles, back to English lessons and back to the beach and girls he actually want to sleep with.
--
On Friday, Jin endured snow shoveling and Pat’s sister’s volleyball game. They sucked. It did mean another free meal though, so Jin got to add Chili’s to his list of American eating establishments that he never had to eat at for the rest of his life.
It was still kind of nice to eat in a restaurant and not have to get a reserved table in back or eat fast to get out before someone started snapping pictures with their camera phones. The food was greasy though, and he’d watched in horror as the family went through two giant plates of some fried onion thing before their actual meal.
He pondered taking a picture of his sizzling plate of fajitas to send to Pi, but remembered the Saltines he had to look forward to since he’d already called Kame. He kept his phone in his pocket.
“Are you having a good time in America, Jin honey?” Sumo Mom asked, and he felt bad thinking about her that way. She’d been very nice. He decided to just think of her instead as Pat’s Mom. Who happened to be really big.
“Yes,” he said honestly. So long as he thought of America as the west coast and not this snowy place with crappy chain restaurants.
“How’s the Spanish rice?” Pat’s Dad asked, “Better than the rice back home?”
Did everyone think the Japanese just ate rice and sushi? He took another bite of the strangely orange rice and shook his head. “Not really.”
“Ah, well, I like the Spanish kind,” Pat’s Dad said. “Got a kick to it, huh?”
He took a sip of his water and just nodded. Nodding made Pat’s parents happy. The sister was just as glum and annoyed as she had been since the airport. Pat claimed that his sister was just pissed off that her friends were getting boobs now, and she was lagging behind. Jin didn’t really understand Pat’s way of thinking about his relatives.
Pat’s Mom looked at his plate later. “Not going to finish? You need a doggie bag?”
He looked down. He had half his food left, and Pat’s family was already on dessert, some chocolate thing with ice cream and chocolate sauce and nuts. Jin’s stomach did a flip flop. “No, I am sorry for not finishing.”
“So polite,” Pat’s Dad said quietly, as though Jin couldn’t hear English at a lower volume. He spoke louder over the noise and crappy restaurant music. “Don’t you worry, kiddo. You’re a smaller people, so your stomachs are probably like a thimble.”
Pat made a horrified noise beside him, but Jin just took it in stride at this point. Pat’s Mom had Jin’s leftovers wrapped up anyway. He was pretty sure one of the family would eat it around 2 in the morning or something.
“We’re sad to see you go,” Pat’s Mom said as they were heading to the parking lot. She wrapped an arm around Jin’s shoulders, and all of a sudden, he missed his own mother terribly. “You should come back with Patty for Christmas if you have no other plans.”
It was nice. Really, it was. But he’d rather shoot himself in the face than visit Minneapolis again.
He nodded. “I will think about it, thank you for being kind.”
She planted another lipsticky kiss on his cheek. “Don’t let me forget to burn you a copy of that Toby Keith CD before you leave.”
Jin made sure to forget.
--
Sunday morning found Jin laying in the sand at Cabrillo Beach. He gave thanks for the sound of the waves hitting the shore. He gave thanks for the sunshine and the breeze. He gave thanks for the girls in bikinis who were setting up an umbrella and their blankets a short ways away.
Thanksgiving in America just meant something different to each person, he supposed.