Sometimes people think that since I'm married to someone in hospitality, people treat me with the utmost courtesy and kindness wherever we go. This is not the case.

People will let their masks slip and even fall all the way off when they feel slighted at the sight of an interracial couple and, therefore, must prove a point of what is perceived as an offense to their fragile existence. It doesn't matter who we are or where we are. It comes out.

I sometimes joke to Alex that I should really have been an undercover guest, just to see the honest reaction when all pretenses are removed, and I'm just a no-strings-attached visitor because what I've seen side-by-side with him has been quite telling. No matter how awful I have been treated by various people growing up and through adulthood, it has never occurred to me to deliver that same stupid vitriol to people I don't know. As a mixed-race woman in a foreign country, it would make more sense for me to be the fearful one, but I don't choose to live my life that way.

I don't think it matters how much time passes - some people seem unable to fully see beyond their own provincial little gardens of rabbit-like fear, their own prejudices and grievances, so they will continue to treat others with contempt. It's sad but true.

With that said, I don't offer the other cheek to people who treat strangers with such blatant disrespect. Guarda indietro con rabbia (Look back in anger), not with a seething rage, but with carefully outlined receipts.