It wasn't that he looked so different. Or, perhaps, so it was—in the beginning.

But beginning impressions—like all kicks to the gut—fade, even though the remembrance remains.

He would have understood why I stared if he had at least known what her name was; known that there was a time, many years ago, that I had sat cross-legged in the oddly-shaped attic room of an A-frame house and thought the same thoughts about another person. But memory has its way of racing the mind even as it stills the mouth, and I said nothing. A few days after the convention was over, I emailed him, taking the unusual step of asking him if I could have his permission to write about him. Only in retrospect did I realize how this must have looked. I forget sometimes that not everyone who knows me also reads this site; if he had, he would've known that my intentions had as much to do with him as they did the exploration of my own memory.

But, I digress.

Jeff and I loaded the truck and began the drive to Atlanta shortly after dawn on Thursday. NPR, formerly only a passion of mine, now garners radio time in Jeff's vehicle as well. As he drove, the dashed yellow lines provided silent, syncopated rhythm with the vocal cadence of the announcers.

An interview, a scientist, of unknown stature and credibility, was speaking with one of the NPR hosts. He claimed that the measurable DNA differences between humans were less than .01%. Think of that: everything we use to identify each other, classify each other, rank each other—a percentage whose minuteness renders it virtually untraceable. Facial features, body shape, voice, everything. Point-oh-one. Or less.

In the end, I suppose it is more than a little ironic that we pride ourselves in living in the first Age of Universal Acceptance. After all: I'm ok, and you're ok—just as we are. But—and here's the key point—when did acceptance morph into the blasé, intentional ignoring of differences? It's become acceptable to notice differences, but the weight of impropriety has shifted to mentioning those differences.

My eyes were open; my mouth, for once, firmly shut.

It was his face that intrigued me first; on first appearance he appeared very much Japanese, but as we wandered off into conversation I realized that maybe he wasn't. Maybe it was a trick of the light; the more I looked, the less sure I became. The general cast of his face was right, but the pieces were wrong. The hair was right: straight, black; the eyes vaguely epicanthic, rounded, but more hazel than brown. The nose was the same as the mouth: too full, more West than East.

Why did I zero in on him? One person who reads this weblog—an old, old friend who remembers this person—knows the woman I'm thinking of. She: the same easy amalgamation, in her case, Chinese-American, the daughter of a Navy lifer and a small, delicate Taiwanese woman. In another room, years ago, I caught glimpses of her staring out the window, and found myself thinking thoughts that, unbidden, came back to me this weekend as I caught Scott in an unguarded moment.

Past the statement of amalgamation, the two of them have little in common. She had slim hands, nervous fingers, always using them to draw or sketch something that caught her eye. Her hands were always in motion, twitching, moving; keeping time with the nervous spirit within her that never allowed her to sit quite still. Her voice was high, fluted, rapid.

But I looked at him, and it was almost as if, despite their differences, I was looking at her again.

What did I see in him? An utter lack of performance—a quality that is difficult to describe but impossible to miss. It's best described as a lack of worry, a lack of self-consciousness. To one degree or another, we all perform for an audience of our fellow human beings—we want to look better, happier, more intelligent, more confident than we actually are. It manifests in many ways—from aggressively maintaining eye contact to an over-straightened back; tiny discordant notes that indicate that a person is consciously (or, sometimes, unconsciously) attempting to make a good impression on you.

I'm more guilty of that than most people; since I make a regular habit of observing the world I live in, I find myself taking small extra steps to ensure that I'm perceived in the best possible light. We are a vain species, and I am no different; thus, when I find someone who is uncaring of what others think, I'm fascinated. I want to understand why they are more comfortable with themselves than most people.

In the enforced camaraderie of tech staff, it can be all too easy to work with people for a day or two before learning their names. After much discussion (and finally breaking down and embarrassedly asking someone) I discovered that his name was Scott. Nickname: 'West Coast.' I had learned a lot of names before the convention started, and his was one that I hadn't put together with a face yet. I filed it away for future memory.

We talked, he and Troll and I—of food. They, like me, carry around recipes in their heads; somewhere in my suitcase I have jotted-down notes of recipes that Scott gave me. When I mentioned the lack of decent seafood inland, and mumbled about getting sushi, he laughed and told me that it was easier than I thought to prepare sushi at home.

His mannerisms were consistent; he laughed the same way he relaxed—free, unforced. When the smile came, it displayed a crooked incisor and crinkled the corners of his eyes. If he'd noticed I was watching, surreptitiously making mental notes for a journal entry, he didn't care. He was too busy being himself.

Better, I thought, that I concentrate on the way he laughed. Better that, than confess to my experience of the "ease" of preparing sushi in our house—an entertaining experience that left my hands thoroughly coated with sticky rice. Yes, better that I focus on his laughter than tell about previous culinary mishaps. Some things are better left unsaid.

Scott explained that his grandmother decided to teach him everything she knew about cooking, since there were evidently no granddaughters to pass the knowledge onto. Without elaborating, I marveled at the wealth of information that must have been. I didn't want to explain about—about her—because it would have entailed explaining the story of the Taiwanese woman who married the American military man and subsequently raised three children, never teaching them anything but the English language and American customs.

When I knew—her—she made mention once or twice of attempting to learn some Chinese characters and pronunciation in an attempt to communicate better with her mother. As I recall, she knew almost nothing about Chinese or Taiwanese cooking, knew nothing of the language; what little she had of her mother's family was echoed entirely in the shape and cant of her eyes.

On the other hand, Scott carried fewer of the features and more of the memories. Point-oh-one percent, I thought—so little can, in the end, mean so much.

But duty called. The conversation ended, and was never restarted. The questions I had would have to wait.

Perhaps next year.