I am awfully sorry to disappoint my readers, but my adventures of this past summer didn’t even come close to resemble the colorful plots that my dear friend nicely laid out
here. Unfortunately we’re looking at ramblings of a neurotic female instead of the drama of Mexican telenovellas. The diplomat didn’t turn out to be the cousin of the boy, there were no marines anywhere in the vicinity and I ended up back in Richmond safely and soundly, missing out on Cairo and abductions and confinements in tomb like structures with sex starved terrorists. Apologies again. If I can somehow make up for the lack of excitement, maybe I will, at some point in the future, when I am old and retired, turn this into an action packed flick, somehow managing to incorporate the KGB into this rest of the potpourri as well. After all, there are only so many boring old memoirs that the world can bear to read.
I do have to admit that this particular event did have a quite a lasting impact. After all, it’s not like proposals like this happen to me on a regular basis. If I were smart enough and knew better, I would simply let it go, attributing the temporary lapse of judgment of the said diplomat to Yerevan summer heat, alcohol, Indian spices and scantly clad women swarming the streets of my city, instead of wasting my precious time trying to figure out why on earth would anyone want propose to someone they have just met. Especially since I make it pretty obvious that those of my type are nothing but trouble, let alone suitable marriage material.
Had I been smarter, I would have known better not to question other people’s motives. Most of the time I can hardly figure out my own for that matter. As much as I claim that the underlying motives of US foreign policies are blatantly obvious, the dark and murky kind belonging to the personnel of the aforementioned department are better left alone. But even when I consider the most harmless of these motives, you have got to agree that proposing marriage must be the worst trick to use for anyone who wants to get laid. God, even I have over a dozen of more creative one-liners in my back pocket that have a better chance of success. Had the man been more honest about his intentions, I would have kindly pointed him to the right direction, equipped him with a couple of my own one-liners and sent him away with blessings. The story would have ended right there without any hurt feelings or bruised egos, as I would congratulate myself with yet another successfully accomplished mission…
And yet, at that moment, despite my seemingly cheerful appearance and humorous mood, I was really and seriously enraged. And the more I thought about it, the more upset I became. Thinking about the banality of this whole situation - a foreign diplomat in an exotic country, a young local female and the bright prospect of becoming a diplomatic wife … The fact that this particular subject was not a balding male with a protruding beer gut didn’t significantly improve the situation. If anything, it reminded me of the circumstances under which I was married years ago and clearly, it wasn’t something that they put in the curry that was making me sick in the stomach.
Some may see this situation as incredibly noble and romantic. After all, there was that slim possibility that the poor diplomat had the best of intentions. And yet I found it nothing but repulsive. I couldn’t stop but wonder that what I was encountering was one of the worst moves in gender politics. He was proposing marriage to a woman he had just met. He was handing it to her on a silver plate as if it was the best that she could have hoped for in her lifetime. Was this what he thought women wanted? Was it all that he thought women wanted? Was this his idea of impressing women? Should I have sat there, floored and flattered and dizzy with expectations of some happily ever after? I left the restaurant furious, wondering whether this really was the best that I could ever hope for– a reckless, thoughtless marriage proposal thrown at me as if it was the end all, be all.
But as I was walking home, I thought about women who may really want this. Women who might perceive situations like this one as appropriate, noble, romantic... I thought about women that would be happy to trade places with me and yet others who may be impatiently waiting for their partners to offer what this man was offering to me so readily and eagerly… Maybe I was missing a point; maybe all that I had accomplished during the years of my adult life was become a heartless romance-intolerant cynic. Maybe marriage really was some kind of an end-all, be all, and I was simply too stubborn, too vain and misguided to really see the point.
Maybe I will never, to my shrink’s disappointment, come to understand the point. After all, I am damaged goods when it comes to anything marriage related, given my past track record. And yet, even if I believe that marriage isn’t the best that I can ever hope for, I really wish that there is something more than reckless frivolity involved when it comes down to it. That night, still upset and frustrated, I asked the boy whether he would ever marry someone like me. Just like that. Over a text message. Unaware and unsuspecting, he wrote me back “Of course,” and called me to find out whether I was feeling ok. Now that, my friends, is what I see as true romance. Everything else can simply go to hell, maybe with the exception of a hot stripper. A bonus point if she has an eye patch.
