IN ALL HONESTY ...

When I ordered my grilled pork and rice, the person I knew was talking with the friend with whom she had lunched. About things in her life. "How old is he?" She was unsure. "I don't know." "how long have you been married?" "Oh, maybe twenty five years ... "

I've known her for several years now, and she is fairly alert and awake. So her uncertainty about her husband's age and the length of their marriage may have been due to her years, but more likely a typical Chinese mental block. The marriage does not seem to be the best thing to have happened to her.
A quarter of a century ago she was probably despairing of ever getting hitched. She's a petite woman with a kind face. Maybe she spent too much time living to actually have a life.

There is frequently a frantic quality to Chinese women who think in Cantonese rather than English. They expect things of themselves that they have never learned to question. It also infects their English-fluent sisters.
But often far less so.

I've noticed it occasionally with my apartment mate.
Sometimes that Chinese-ness crops up.
Which disturbs her.


The lady who runs the place remarked that I had not been around for several weeks. Well, yes. The food is good, and I like the place. It was an oversight. I claimed to have been far too busy. One of her staff remarked that I spoke Cantonese superlatively well. Which I don't. My ability is one step above crappy, but that's it. Most of the time I guess by context what the other person meant, which I had done earlier at the bank.

Was my wife Chinese? No, I am not yet married. The construction "not yet" agrees with the Chinese presumption that getting hitched is the normal thing to do, which everyone understands. Oh, was I seeing someone? No. Then really I should go to the mainland! Or perhaps I should kau the third woman working there, she too was not yet married!
How perfect!


Um.


I am flattered that they think I'm marriage material. Did I already mention "expectations" and certain presumptions? As a man of this age, and this income level, and this ethnicity (Caucasian, and so white I glow in the dark, you can read a book by the light reflected from my cold pale dermis), perhaps I am not an ideal mate for your unmarried employee, quite likely "Ngo m-ngaam keui" (I would not be suitable for her).

I didn't say any of that, though. I changed the subject.

She's cute and intelligent looking, but she undoubtedly thinks and dreams in Cantonese, which I don't. There would be problems of understanding, entirely aside from the fact that dating is something I do badly.

Besides, I'd have to explain a number of inconvenient facts. The apartment mate. The stuffed creatures. The pipe collection, the tobacco stockpile. Several hundred books. The lack of kin in California.
The goofy foreign languages.

The fact is that pride, stubborness, Aspergers, laziness, and a lack of singular drive, have had a combined effect on my life and lifestyle which makes me a horrible prospect for any reasonable woman.

I am just not marriage material.
But I guess I look okay.





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