As the song goes, boy did I meet a stranger from across a crowded room. The room was the lobby bar of the W Hotel. The stranger was a middle aged woman named Rebecca and she was completely tanked. If she had a fuel gauge on her forehand it would read FULL.
As the song goes, she trounced across the crowded room toward me. In what must have been just ten seconds I conjured up scenarios where Rebecca was an IRS agent, talent scout, a down on her luck drunk soliciting a free refill, someone I graduated college with.
Her: You don’t know me but I know you. I’m Rebecca. I’m your sister.
Moi: Well that’s impossible. I don’t have a sister. I have a sister in law but that’s it.
She babbled with neck breaking speed that she really was my step sister. Her father was my father. She was from Upstate New York. A love child. She’d been tracking me relentlessly ever since she found out I existed. Just a few months ago, her mother passed quickly but not before spilling the never before discussed beans. Her legal name was the same as mine.
Resourceful Note: There’s less than twenty people in the USA with the last name of Namian. Here’s why. My grandpa was Armenian and entered the country via Ellis Island, thus escaping the infuriatingly underreported Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks. Very few Armenians made it to the States alive. The Turks had a mission to completely exterminate all Armenians.
Talk about being instinctively aware of who’s got your back at any given moment. Thankfully Rebecca approached me from the front.
So the less than twenty living Namians in America resulted from my grandpa, his mother (belly dancer) and three of his sister: Esther, Bodgy and Unna. Any Armenian that entered the States by way of Ellis Island got a tag attached to their name of IAN. If they entered the states through any other port, they were tagged with YAN. When a clerk at Ellis Island asked for my grandfather’s name he said name as he didn’t speak a word of English. And so the tennis ball bounced back and forth:
- Clerk: Name?
- Grandpa: Name.
- Clerk: Name?
- Grandpa: Name.
- Clerk: Your name is Namian. Go get your tetanus shot and welcome to America.
- Grandpa: Namian.
- Clerk: Correct. Oh and you’ve just been drafted into the Army. Congratulations.
I imagine he was thinking something like crazy place America in his broken English. So he served his newly adopted country for four years then made his way back to New York, sold apples during the Great Depression then settled in Connecticut and made a killing as a real estate shark. Now that’s some enchanted tale right there.
But back to business. Who was this woman Rebecca? With the Namian clan being small and completely accounted for, what sperm fertilized HER egg?
After two hours of conversation and about ten martinis we solved the mystery. One of grandpa’s sisters (Unna) was a live in nanny once she got settled in the States. Upstate New York to be specific. Well one push led to another shove and voila … Unna produced an unknown branch of the Namian family tree.
So you’ve gotta be wondering if this is all true, especially if you ever experienced my thirst to tell a story. Well most of it is in fact true … just minus the stranger across the crowded room that claimed to be my sister. A stranger did cross the crowded room some enchanted evening but turns out she just wanted to know where she could score some good weed.
I reached into my pocket and handed her my vape and said here just keep it.
Isn’t that what family’s for?