Jason and Joanne would argue repeatedly about the issue of self-identity. Jason loved to rile Joanne about it, largely because he knew it would get her vex fast.

"Speak in your accent." Jason told her one day in the kitchen after an unbearably long period where he was quietly listening to Joanne recapitulate some story about the preceding day's events.

"This is my accent." Joanne refuted annoyed.

"No your Trini accent."

"Why do you always tell me that? So what, running around spouting colloquialisms and hanging a flag from your rearview mirror makes you more somehow more authentic?"

"Come nah Joanne. That is not the point." He was methodically stirring soup as it simmered over low heat.

"So what is your point?" She demanded, incensed, waving a hand over to one of his walls.

"You and your blasted David Moore paintings--"

"Aye, I like my David Moore paintings."

"I like them too Jason but having a million in your home does not somehow make you more of a Trini. This is me, this is how I choose to define my West Indian-ness."

"Ahm." Jason was smirking and shaking his head.

"What? What? I know you have something to say!"

"Joanne, you are the most un-trini Trini that I have ever met." Joanne supposed that he was right on a certain level.

"That's your problem Jason. You and all these expatriates running around in your '100 percent Trini' t-shirts." Jason guffawed because he knew he owned one of those very t-shirts.

"You people are all walking contradictions. You only realize how fantastic it is once you've left the place."

"Not necessarily." Jason interjected.

"I doubt it,' Joanne countered, "that in form one, you were running around thinking Trinidad is such a paradise. You probably could not wait to get out."

"I know you couldn't." He told her, then added, "so, what is yuh point again?"

"Well you say that now. That's my damn point. Every one creates this idealized space from whence they came. We write odes. We pay homage. We wave flags but we'd never go back there and live." Jason shrugged reluctantly in mild compliance and listened.

"I mean, how is your reality Jason, anything like the reality of a young fella ducking bullets in Laventille?"

"I don't know since I don't know of anyone personally in Laventille to begin with but I know that I could just as easily tell you that that fella's reality is also different from that of the fella living Westmoorings. So your point there fail because even in Trinidad , you could find that difference. You don't have to leave in order to see it and yuh being presumptuous Joanne. That fella from Laventille might have plenty in common with the fella from Westmoorings. They are still both Trini people. Yuh never know."

"No he doesn't. I can tell you already that their realities are like two totally different Trinidads . Totally."

"Okay." Jason took a deep breath and was no longer watching the pot but looking at Joanne intently.

"So what is yuh real point Madame? Is the fella in Laventille somehow representative of a more authentic Trini experience, to use your word and how so? Why discount the fella in Westmoorings? Because he's bourgeois or maybe light skinned? And if you are saying that, then that's just as much bullshit as me defining my Trini identity by wearing my t-shirt and waving a flag right?"

"Okay! I don't know Jason." He had a way of turning her face toward the light forcing her to really see and it made her thoughts spin.

Jason was able to engage in constructive dialogue with Joanne in ways that equally enthralled her and frustrated her at the same time. Soon she'd be dancing circles around her own personal ideologies.

"I just think it's important that we don't reduce our cultural identity to the lowest common denominator. I don't think I should have to defend my need to look critically at all these trappings of pseudo West Indian-ness and pseudo Trini-ness." Joanne told him quietly feeling more exposed and more un-Trini (to quote Jason) than ever before.

Jason smiled as he stood in front of her, "I know babes. However for some people, that's love. Jumping up in a fake-ass Carnival here in Miami , waving a flag and wearing a Carib t-shirt, that's their expression of love for their heritage, their homeland. Other people need David Moore paintings and flag pendants and these 'trappings' as you call them may seem trivial to some. To the owners they are representative of a love for their home, their people and their culture." Joanne looked at him dubiously.

"Not everyone, certainly. But some people, yeah. It means that much," Jason continued, "so you cannot tell people that there's more to being a Trini than that, because to some people, that's all there is, and that is fine with them. What can you do if you're not there anymore but you still are here," he indicated toward his heart in his chest.

"And if not, then what is it? Now you instead, you read CLR James and Green Days by the River . So is that all there is to it then? Reading and understanding? What is it that makes someone more Trini, or more American or more anything?" Joanne hated being made to feel like some esoteric elitist who migrated and was conveniently pointing out what was wrong with everything. She did not feel like arguing about it incessantly and she really did not have to. She and Jason were usually intrinsically on the same page and when they weren't, they were often just a few paragraphs away.

"Your soup is boiling over." She said simply and he quickly scuttled toward the stove to manage the mess.

"It's so oxymoronic though. You love a place more because you leave it." She murmured watching his back muscles move while he wiped and stirred some more.

"Some of us do. Some of us just hate it."

"I don't hate TnT," Joanne was indignant and defensive, "I'm just ambivalent." Jason shook his head.

"Gyul. I don't know what you're so afraid of, but one of these days, I am going to find out. Whatever's haunting you back there is probably long gone, grown up and/or moved on."

"Nothing's haunting me." Joanne knew she sounded as unconvincing as the words felt resonating alongside the sounds of the bubbling pot.

"Yeah, right. You cyah lie good meh girl." They looked at each other like tit for tat.

"Anyway come and taste this. I telling yuh, once yuh taste my hand Joanne, you'll want to marry me." Jason was rocking a sample of his hand tantalizingly in a big pot-spoon. Joanne laughed thinking to herself, I already want to.

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