Normally This Would Be None of Your God-damned Business

I've spent the past hour going through our box of photographs. I've found silly ones of us together wearing the tissue paper crowns from Christmas crackers. There's one of me laughing while my brother pretends to attack Ptichka with a meat tenderizer during a crab-eating bonanza at my parents' house. These photos were taken before we thought about the immigration process. Once we started thinking about it, however, the pictures of us change. There's us in Vienna. We're standing in front of a big building that screams out "imperial capital" with our arms around each others' waists. We're smiling and looking straight at the camera. There's another one of us in Québec City. We're standing on the wall with a landmark in the behind us. Once again we're smiling and looking straight at the camera. The later pics all demonstrate that we know what Immigration wants to see: a foreign location, us looking happy, us together. The earlier pics, which are all we have at the moment to document the beginning of our relationship, are not meant for public consumption. We're deliriously happy and silly. As much as my rational mind tells me that Immigration has a right to see these photos because they have a right to insure that all spouses entering the country are indeed more than spouses on paper, it still pisses me off that some chinovnik is going to see the side of me that I save for people whom I love. Yes, we're happy and in love but, really, it isn't anyone else's business. I mean, I've already sent you a chest x-ray. You've seen my ribs, my lungs, my actual heart. Isn't that enough?