Mistaken Identity

If somebody stole my identity, it would suck ass, especially since I spent nearly all my life trying to be someone else.

Since I lost my ATM card, I had been pre-occupied with thoughts of identity theft. My card has been replaced since, but there were a few hours where I thought about somebody running around passing themselves off as me. I mean, it took a really, really long time to gain and then maintain the reputation of being a slut. It's distressing to think that someone would be taking advantage of this.

I have to admit though, that being an identical twin helped in gaining a slutty reputation. Since Peter and I frequent the same gay bars, it is quite natural to have a case of mistaken identity. People would see me playing tonsil-hockey with some dude and then see him dirty dancing with somebody else and think we were the same person whoring around town.

I've even had people with whom Peter is going out with get huffy with me for not saying "hi" as I passed them by. People get mad you know, when they think you've just "ignored" them, especially the ones that broke up with their boyfriends for you but haven't heard from you since. Yeah, they get pretty darn angry. That you owed them five hundred dollars was just incidental.

It does get confusing sometimes. I don't know if I don't recognize a cute stranger who comes up to me because it is Peter he knows or because I couldn't see his face while I was being gang-banged at the sex club. It's not like people introduce themselves first: "Hi, my name is Kerry, I'll be fucking your ass after this guy." It would be nice though. Actually, it would be quite charming, I could fall in love with someone like that.

Unlike other twins, Peter and I have never played the twin-switcheroo that is the plot of many a comedy film. I don't understand why anyone would do it anyway. One twin will always get screwed. Think of it: the only time you would want to be somebody else is if your life sucks. Can you imagine anybody wanting to be someone else while they are shooting their wad all over somebody's face?

I do worry about somebody buying the nomilkplease.com domain because I'm too cheap to do so. Also, I've heard that there are unscrupulous people who will steal your URL if you neglect to renew your domain registration and try to sell it back to you at a premium.

The only time I thought about changing places with my twin brother is when he got laid off a few years ago from his last company. I had gotten my U.S. citizenship then, but my brother was still a non-immigrant working under an H1-B visa.

Having an H1-B visa status meant that he could not work for any other company other than the one which sponsored him. If he did not get a new sponsor within sixty days he would have had to leave the country, leaving behind everything that he worked for. Trying to get a job in the U.S. while you were in another country is near impossible—he had to find a new sponsor.

Those two months were harrowing. He must have sent out hundreds of resumes hoping for a nibble. We had been preparing for the worst, what we would need to do if he had to leave the country; where he would store his stuff, if I had enough money to pay his mortgage or if we had to rent his place out.

I had fantasized about how we could take advantage of our being identical twins. I had thought about various scenarios of him re-entering the U.S. using my passport in order to look for a new job. I juggled thoughts of what permutation of him leaving or my entering the country would create enough confusion on his actual whereabouts.

We had even discussed a "marriage of convenience" for him with a U.S. citizen. Did we have any female friends who we could approach with such a serious request? Will any of these women be willing to have him wear their sassy clothes and high-heeled shoes?

I remember thinking that there was nothing funny in this situation that we found ourselves in. There was no laugh track or jaunty background music. There were no crazy pratfalls, no inept and bumbling INS agent skulking about or hiding in smelly, dusty closets to inject any kind of levity. There was only a quiet desperation.

Luckily, a few weeks before Peter had to leave the country, he got a new job as a financial analyst with company who was willing to sponsor him for a new H1-B visa.

I was immensely relieved. I can't even imagine what he had to go through.

I think that if we absolutely had to, I would have been willing to risk having him assume my identity just to buy him some time. Thank God we didn't have to go through such lengths.

I guess we were pretty lucky.

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