'You ever go into a Chinese or Japanese restaurant with a date who is white or black? Well, how do you feel? You're scrutinized and made to feel like the outsider. Your date doesn't feel any of this friction and tension. He feels like he's been taken inside; you're going to order the good stuff, maybe talk a little lingo with the waitress for his benefit. He might even throw in a little arigato, trying to get on your good side. There you are, eating, perhaps feeling the disapproval of the waitress, the busboy, all the while you're trying to figure out if your date is one of those guys who's got some kind of Asian-woman thing. And that 'thing' runs the gamut from asking you to teach him how to use chopsticks, to figuring he's going to get a shiatsu massage, to wanting his tea leaves read, to trying to find out if my vagina is slanted.

... 'I've never been with any non-Asian man who hasn't at one time or another during our relationship tripped himself up and said something racist.'

Working in a position that once again brings my ethnicity to the forefront is making me think about all sorts of issues that I've been too tired to really visit in the past year. Portland seems to be lacking any Asian American activist groups - at least that I know of - and I'm not sure where else to go to look for them.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not accusing my white boyfriend of necessarily having an 'Asian-woman thing' and I'm happy about the place we're in - but I'm aware that as an Asian American woman dating and living with a non-Asian man I am personifying the stereotypes, and despite my self-assurance in our relationship and its nuances it's still a very strange and paradoxical situation to be in sometimes.

Sometimes I wish I were as outspoken as I used to be on here.