From Vancouver With Love

The first time I saw her at the Vietnamese Student Club, I knew I had to have her. The tall, curvaceous and golden brown sister with the killer booty and sweet smile simply took my breath away. At the time, I was dating a Vietnamese chick named Miranda Nguyen, a romance that was doomed to fail since Asian parents seem to hate seeing their daughters with Black men. As a Haitian guy raised in Ontario, Canada, I consider myself as open-minded as the next person, but many in this world don't share my viewpoint.

My name is Steven Guillot and I'm a brother with a story to share with you. The tale of how I met my future wife, Arianne Chisholm Lee. Born in the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, to a Jamaican immigrant mother, Anne Chisholm, and a Chinese-Canadian father, Eric Lee, Arianna or "Ari" as I call her, was destined to be exotically beautiful, brilliant and sinfully sexy. The first time I laid eyes on the tall, fair-skinned cutie with the booty and exotic features, I could tell that she was mixed but I didn't know with that.

You don't see a lot of brothers with Asian women or sisters with Asian men. By and large, Asian culture seems to be quite hostile to Black folks, yet they apparently worship all things white. I swear, man, Asians love whites more than their own kind. That's why I was so surprised to hear that Ari's father was Asian and her mother was Black. What Asian family would welcome a Black person into their ranks? These people seem allergic to those of us who have Melanin in our skin.

I've seen Chinese girls with white guys and those broads usually act like they're on cloud nine, man. I shouldn't talk about people's dating preferences. You see, Ari is the first and last Black woman I've ever been with. I was raised in the City of Toronto, Ontario, by a gay white couple, Justin Edwards and his life partner Martin Guillot. I know I was born on the island of Haiti but I was adopted early on and remember very little of that place.

Growing up Black in a multicultural city like Toronto wasn't so bad since it's so diverse, but I was made to feel unwelcome by the Black youths at my old high school. You see, there aren't a lot of brothers out there who play hockey in high school and like chess, instead of loving football and basketball. I even did a two-year stint on the varsity swimming team, and when I wasn't enduring racist taunts from the whites, I got hassled by my Black peers. I was an odd duck. I was too Black for the whites and not Black enough for the Blacks.

Even though I am staunchly heterosexual, I remember having my sexuality questioned by my fellow students once they found out that I was the adopted son of a gay white couple. People need to get over stereotypes, seriously. I'm a six-foot-two, lean and dark-skinned male of Haitian descent. I like chess. I'm a pretty decent swimmer. I am proud of my parents, and yes, they're a gay white couple. I embrace all that I am, and I never forget the places I've been and the people I've met. A man's life experiences make him who he is, that's what I believe in the end.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, yeah. I was telling you about my romance with Arianna "Ari" Chisholm-Lee. I was having serious issues with my then-girlfriend Miranda Nguyen and seriously, the broad was getting on my nerves. Ever since high school, I've been fascinated by women of other races because they were friendlier to me than the women of my color. No woman can be as cruel to a brother like a Black woman. Sorry, I honestly don't mean to generalize, but that's been my experience.

You wouldn't catch me hanging out with the Black youths in high school because they judged me and hassled me. I hung out with Asians, Hispanics, and Arabs. Basically I was cool with every race but my own. At the Prom, I took a lovely Hindu gal, Richa Singh, as my date. After high school, I moved to the City of Ottawa and enrolled at Carleton University. I wanted to study criminology and Carleton has one of the best programs in all of Ontario. That's why I left my beloved Toronto for the seriously lame-ass and absolutely whack locale known as Ottawa.

Carleton University surprised me with its diversity. I swear, I thought I was going to be the only student of color there. Nope, I saw lots of Arabs, Africans and Asians in the hallways, and felt instantly at home. On my first week at school, I met this short and cute Asian gal named Miranda Nguyen, President of the Vietnamese Student Club, and we totally clicked. Miranda took a liking to me and when I invited her to chill and catch a movie, the cutie was totally down with that. I thought she was cool. And then her parents, Karen and Timothy Nguyen, saw pictures of us together on Facebook and began to get on her case about our relationship. Asians are racist, man. The way I see it, the Black man has never done anything to the Asian community, yet the white man has massacred Asians during the Yankee invasion during in the Vietnam War, during the World War II occupation of Japan by the Americans, and Great Britain's invasion and conquest of China.

How quickly people forget history, eh? People never cease to amaze me with their short memory and lack of logic. The white man has made the Asians bleed, and the Black man has never harmed any Asian nation or community, yet Asians love handing their daughters over to white guys and their blood boil at the sight of a Black man with an Asian woman. I tried to work things out with Miranda Nguyen, even going as far as helping her with every activity of the Vietnamese Student Club. If that doesn't make me a devoted boyfriend, I don't know what will.

Miranda Nguyen and I had our problems, and no relationship can last when it's just one person trying while the other has given up or doesn't care. One day, she dumped me via text. Yup, you read right, ladies and gentlemen. I was heartbroken. For the rest of my first semester at Carleton University, I was sullen and deeply unhappy. My grades suffered. My advisor recommended I seek a tutor on campus because she didn't want my Black ass to fail. I showed up at the tutoring center, and guess who I ran into?

Arianna Chisholm-Lee, the gorgeous biracial sister from Vancouver, BC. The uniquely lovely daughter of an Asian dude and a Black woman. I wondered if she would remember me. Fortunately Ari did, and gladly shook my hand. I smiled at her and blushed, for she was really lovely. Arianna returned my smile, and told me that together, we would save my academic career. The lady was telling the truth, folks. Arianna didn't just save my ass academically. She saved my soul.

Our first meetings were awkward as hell, simply because my growing attraction to Arianna surprised me. You see, I hadn't looked at a woman with even partial African ancestry since the ninth grade. The mean Black girls at my high school made me allergic to Black women. Yet Arianna, although born of an Asian dad and Black mom, considered herself Black rather than mixed. The gal knew so much about African history and culture that she made my head spin. The more I learned about her, the more fascinated I became. Arianna told me about Taharqa of Nubia, the Black pharaoh who conquered Egypt thousands of years ago, and Mali Emperor Sundiata Keita and Shaka the Zulu, the fiercest warrior who ever lived on the African plains. Without her, I never would have learned that Africa was a beautiful place, full of fascinating people, and not the barbaric wasteland that CNN and Fox News would have me believe it is.

Thanks to Arianna, I began to slowly awaken to what exactly it meant to me, being a person of African descent. When I revealed to Arianna that I'd been adopted from the island of Haiti by a gay Canadian couple, she hastily got me lots of books on Haiti. Not just books on Haiti but books by Haitian writers. Thanks to her I learned about Edwidge Danticat, Georges Anglade, Antenor Firmin, Dany Laferriere and Teejay LeCapois. Thanks to Arianna and my renewed interest in all things Black, I experienced a change in consciousness.

Two months after we met, I tentatively asked Arianna to grab a bite with me and she froze. With my heart thundering in my chest I awaited her response. I figured a gal as gorgeous as her wouldn't be interested in a regular Joe like me but I kept my game face on like the cool brother I always pretend to be. Smiling, Arianna playfully punched my arm and said yes, then she asked me what took me so damn long. I smiled and nodded. The next day, I took her to the Silver City movie theater in the east end and we grabbed a bite and watched a movie. That's how it all began, ladies and gentlemen. The romance that effectively changed my life. And that's all she wrote, folks.