Ryan Gosling Asian Girlfriend
"arrive stunning, and impossibly fresh-looking.”
During my summer as a pool girl, I watched a lot of HBO. I spent most of my nine-hour shift getting sunburnt and hauling salt flats in a pickup truck with my boss. (Rich British Colombians love their salt-water infinity pools, and that shit doesn't rake itself into the deep end). The job wasn’t glamorous, especially the days I spent suctioning out hair and condoms from the depths of hot-tub pipes. But it sure beat serving $20 chowder in the tourist traps of downtown Victoria.
For context on what little street smarts I had at this age, here’s a photo I posted that summer (note the pool chemical stained hoodie) with a caption that read: ‘So “high” up!’ 🤦🏻♀️
After work, my brain and body didn’t have much energy to spare, so my friend Lauren and I binged a lot of Sex and the City. (In the early aughts, “binging” meant taping the show 3 weeks in advance on a blank VHS.) As young twenty-somethings, watching early-thirty somethings flail around the Big Apple with cush careers was as addicting as it was terrifying. SATC was part warning bell, part doctrine for young women like us. I knew columnists like Carrie couldn’t actually afford that NYC lifestyle, but I turned to the show when I felt especially confused about my own dating life.
In the last season, Carrie’s relationship takes her to Paris. There is a brief moment, during her last dinner with the girls, when she refuses a final cocktail. She says that she needs to “arrive stunning, and impossibly fresh-looking.” That’s it. There’s no dramatic scene following her comment, no airplane bathroom montage of her freshening up. The show just cuts to her in Paris with one hand on her hat, twirling and Carrie-squealing at the sky.
In the spring of 2007, my junior-year exchange in San Diego was coming to a close. I had traded the waist-deep snow storms of Bishop’s University for the perpetual sunscreen smell of SoCal. I was smitten. I hadn’t realized how far San Diego was from LA, so the celebrities I had hoped to bump into at bars never appeared. (I also completely misjudged how severe the penalty was for underage drinking, so bars were also out of the picture. Being a 20 year old Canadian made me a seasoned, and disappointed barfly.) Part of me was thankful. Once adulthood started to clear the fog of my teenage dearth of self-esteem, I realized that if I ever did meet Elijah Wood, opening with, “So, about that fan letter I wrote you once…” would maybe not be the best way to kickstart a romance.
Celebrities aside, my time in San Diego broke open plenty of other dormant fantasies inside of me. It proved that a career path in photography was possible. It made me realize that I didn’t want a boyfriend who called me “his geisha” anymore. It introduced me to a boy from Paris who loved the ocean as much as I did. Still, I was only 20 and pervious to all that “girl-power wisdom” of Carrie Bradshaw. I’d also started identifying as an atheist (those dang college philosophy classes will get you every time!), so I was looking for other sermons to captivate my easily indoctrinated soul.
OK to be fair, I always threw myself in the path of racist jokes before anyone else could beat me to it. Which ultimately just perpetuated more. Ah, the sweet Catch-22 of self-preservation!
With a ticket from San Diego back to Vancouver, I scoured my closet for my best airplane outfit. I found the only cocktail dress I owned, slipped it on, and hitched a ride to the airport with said Parisian. We parted ways with a tearful goodbye, and we never saw each other again.
I told myself that I wore the dress for my French friend, but really, it was extra padding for whatever love I hoped was just around the corner. When you have your first romantic encounters in your late teens and early twenties, many afford you the title of ‘late bloomer.’ You’re associated with labels like steadfast, nerdish, smart — but like kids who wait to have their first drink at 21, the binging comes on faster, the learning curve is steeper, and some degree of damage is inevitable. Even as I kissed the Parisian goodbye, I was ready to carry on the search for “my next heartthrob.”
This cocktail dress was not casual in any shape, way or form. I could have worn it on the plane with sneakers and a hoodie, but it’s faux-silk skirt would still cascade off my hips, telling me that it deserved better than to sit in coach for five hours. So, I went all-out, completing my look with the only fancy shoes I had that semester: five-inch espadrille sandals.
As I tried to find my seat, I towered over kids and frazzled moms in sweats. My palm-sized gold hoops clacked against my giant black-and-gold sunglasses, which I refused to take off until I sat down. If I never got to meet a celebrity in California, at least I could pretend to be one. (Which one exactly? Your guess is as good as mine.) I was so hot from the polyester fabric of the dress, I didn’t bother to cover up the plunge-neck that suddenly felt wildly inappropriate. Thank god the hot-pink floral prints covered up the sweat stains that bloomed in those horrible minutes between boarding, where we all re-breathed the same air until the world’s smallest jet of AC came on, hundreds of hands shooting to the ceiling to twist their way out from under a panic attack.
Once in the air, my dress’ paisley print mixed with the teal and neon colors in my lap. I felt nauseous. A few rows ahead of me was a pretty brunette wearing athleisure and a wool hoodie. Hers was a Neutrogena face and Herbal Essences hair. She probably saved her cocktail dresses for cocktail parties. Conveniently ignoring Carrie’s advice not to order another drink, I downed my third glass of white wine and hoped that sleep would ease the awkwardness of my cramped seat.
Waking up to acidic breath and drool on my chin, I was greeted by the North Shore mountain ranges of Vancouver. I decided to keep up my film-star persona and put my sunglasses back on, even though it was dark in Arrivals. At baggage claim, looking like I had just completed the longest international walk of shame ever, I begged for my one suitcase containing all the clothes I owned to come quickly. Of course, the cocktail dress had taken on some sort of magic power at that point. It knew deep in its technicolor soul, it was likely not going to get another chance to shine. The dress clinged to my body for as long as possible, somehow willing the airline to lose my suitcase entirely.
An hour later, verging on the worst kind of hangover that comes from a boozy mid-afternoon flight, I was still waiting for my luggage. Afraid to admit the luggage might never come, I felt happy that I was at least alone. I started to shiver (because I was in a fucking cocktail dress). And then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Hey, sorry, excuse me?” a man’s voice asked.
I turned sharply, quickly. My bare shoulders felt intruded upon, and I prepared myself for leering, unwanted attention.
Ryan Gosling was standing at a forearm’s distance from my stale wine breath and the swirling psychotropic silk.
The Notebook had come out the year prior, but Gosling’s famous beard was still on his face. Why hadn't he shaved it when the film wrapped at least two years ago? I pondered staring into nowhere, assuming I was still passed out on the plane, dreaming.
I had spent the better part of my childhood writing to celebrity crushes, and the lesser part lamenting in my diary that if just one of them got to know me, they’d fall in love with me. I just needed the chance to prove myself. I needed an “in,” where I could peel off my head gear and my back brace. Where I could fix my makeup just right so I looked less Asian and more anything else. I was on my way — I no longer got hives from drinking alcohol. I could easily drink a six-pack or a bottle of wine before going to a bar. Still, I couldn’t change the tolerance when it came to my face. I was who I was. In that time, the only Asian arm-candy I saw in paparazzi photos was Soon-Yi Previn (😬), so I thought maybe, just maybe, I could be the first Chinese woman to marry a Hollywood heartthrob. Dream the big dream, kids.
“I mean, it looks like you lost your luggage too, and I think they lost mine.”
Gosling was still talking to me, gesturing with his hands and scratching his head. I’d lost track of what he’d already said, shit. Instead of responding with an expected social norm, like nodding or saying anything, I stayed silent and unmoving. Gosling continued to fill the silence with more words.
“We could probably go to the help desk over there. Did you come from LAX too?”
“No,” finally, words fell out of my mouth. “I’m coming from San Diego. Different help desk.” Without thinking I slowly turned my head away from him, signaling I was done with this interaction.
“Oh.” His eyebrows raised, and that look assured me, in case there was any doubt, that I was face-to-face with Ryan Gosling. He opened his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off.
“Good luck though.” I smiled, hoping to wake up back on the plane.
He nodded and walked to the help desk. When I was certain he wasn’t looking back at me, I stared at his white t-shirt and unwrinkled chinos. His hair was tousled, but not matted. Impossibly fresh-looking. The attendant’s giant smile confirmed yet again that I was not making this scene up. I wondered what path might have unfolded, if only I had walked with him to the help desk.
Would he find his luggage first and then offer a sweater to cover my shivering shoulders? Would he drive me to my friend’s house after finding out we were both headed to the same neighborhood? As Canadians living in the US, would we joke about how to spell neighbo(u)rhood? Would he read a diary entry and say, “oh yeah, now this is a script!”?
He would probably stay for a beer to be nice, three because we’re having so much fun, and then the night because DUIs aren’t his thing. I would break the barrier of being one of the first Asian-Canadian-American trophy girlfriends that was appropriately aged. I would finally get my writing career off to a blistering start. My face could be the next Neutrogena face, my hair the next Herbal Essences hair. I could start wearing sweatpants and wool hoodies on planes.
There was a commotion, flashes from cameras. More people had filtered into Arrivals, and Gosling’s cover was blown. But in his hands was the handle of a suitcase. He was walking fast, away from the mob, approaching me. He walked towards me, but he didn't stop this time. Maybe he finally noticed the dress.
“Ha! Got my luggage, sucker!” he shouted, waving a final goodbye as the sliding doors scooped him up and away into the Vancouver streets. A few girls stared at me in disbelief. How does she know him? they asked with their prying eyes. They did a once-over of my outfit. Blazing, bright, silk flowers on a … uh ... Hawaiian girl! Or maybe Vietnamese? Perhaps First Nations? When they got home, they might have tried to Google “Ryan Gosling Asian Girlfriend.” Of course, I’ll never know this — and likely no one, not even him, will remember me the next day. But the possibility keeps my chin high for too many years to come.
I offer up my anecdotes about writing to celebrities easily now. People think it’s funny and charming, albeit naive. The ugly-truth is that while I laugh with you all, I know deep down I wanted it to be real. I wanted to step off a plane, impossibly fresh-looking, and be swept into another world that would serve as the ultimate revenge-of-the-nerds story. So why then, when the most unlikely situation opens its doors to me, do I close them?
Years later, I’ll meet Ian, who will become my husband. When we first started dating, he told me that when he showed a photo of me to a colleague, the man replied with “Oh! She’s Asian!” It wasn’t just once — “I didn’t expect her to be Chinese,” was another response from another acquaintance. We talked and laughed about how deeply fucked up their responses were. I repeated the words, “that doesn’t bother me,” to console him, and myself.
But, just like my 2 minute bump-in with Ryan Gosling in the Vancouver airport, I dwell on all of this, even 15 years later. For months after, I obsess over four words. Relentlessly, and daily, I type into the Yahoo search bar: “Ryan Gosling Asian Girlfriend.”
I waited for my luggage for another three days before it was found. Luckily, the dress’s time was coming to a close. The airline took one look at me and offered me $300 as a clothing stipend. My luggage arrived at my friend’s stoop broken and smudged with tar. The contents were disheveled, but my clothing was all there. I wish they never found it; none of the clothes fit the way they used to. I spent the cash from the airline on booze and food and it would take a hundred more pools to earn enough for a new wardrobe.
That summer, I waited for the feeling of ‘not enough’ to fade away, but it didn’t. The only thing I could do was throw away the cocktail dress, so I did.
phenomenal