Hey all, been a minute. Just dropping in to congratulate Jonah/Krystle on her engagement and state for the record that while I would feel like a complete asshole to ask her to choose a date that's either the weekend before or the one after my brother Max's wedding next summer so that I could just take a couple weeks of vacation and minimize the brutal jet lag next June, I am absolutely not above just casually mentioning this circumstance in a slice-of-life blog entry about how I've evidently reached the point in my life where everybody I know is getting married and it's kind of a pain in the ass.
I am, of course, pretty happy for everybody in my life who is tying the knot, especially them, although I'm not likely to join them any time soon; I had a long string of bad dates before meeting the guy I'm seeing now. The funny thing is that my mother is starting to get antsy, quoting some statistics about women over 30 getting married or having children, and I tell her that wither you consider me a man over thirty or a woman under, but you can't mix them up willy-nilly like that. She says it's perfectly reasonable - I've lived that long and I certainly seem to identify as a woman - but she's had two kids and is about to attend her second wedding, anything from me is a bonus.
Meanwhile, both of the Chen-Ais got married this summer, and I was a bridesmaid at both.
For original Chen-Ai/current Bingbing, it's to some guy whose family owns a bunch of factories in Guangzhou, who doesn't seem particularly evil himself, but the rest of his family and friends... Ugh. This was my first trip into the Mainland, which I gather isn't necessarily that big a deal for a lot of Hong Kongers, but I've been kind of skittish about it. I'm not politically outspoken, but folks know I've spent a lot of time in the United States and that I tend to take that perspective. Plus, I'm a Chinese-American guy who has taken over the life of a Chinese woman and while we've all experienced how the Inn's magic keeps people from believing in it, maybe there's someone in the Chinese government who sees me or the "Lee Yuan-Wei" identity as an asset. Or just a criminal.
It doesn't seem to have bothered Bingbing, though, who after draining her old bank accounts as much as she could without the lawyers starting to lean on her sought out a new potential rich husband, and this guy is probably a good target because he may technically be what they used to call a "princeling" - wealthy family, educated abroad, not involved with the business's day-to-day - he seems to be an earnest socialist and humble. Enough that, after I'd wound up dragged along on a few outings with them, I asked if she has Inn-related plans for him, and she stook her tongue out saying "yuk, no interest in having one of those things on my body, and his is big that I don't know what I'd do with it." I gave her a look and she said she liked being Bingbing and wasn't looking to change. Much more fun, she says, to be the pretty wife who is good at social things than actually running the business
I think she remembered my skepticism, though, because I fucking swear she had the dressmaker make my bridesmaid dress tighter, shorter, and doing more to push my tits up into a plunging neckline than when we tried them on, so I spent the whole wedding and reception looking like I was some tacky Kong Girl trolling for a rich Mainland husband of my own from among the much-less likable folks on hand. Just gross even when they weren't grabbing my ass.
(It's been a while, but, no, I haven't become a shrinking violet or anything; I just enjoy guys pawing me a whole lot more after we've established we like and trust each other than before, and part of that is them not being asshats because I'm not one to hide what yoga and dance do for me!)
I admit, I did agree to a date with the least-objectionable one, but I'm glad the night ended on a silly-seeming pop-cultural argument as opposed to actually getting near a second date. And that wasn't all bad; the guy I'm seeing now had actually been in the restaurant and mentioned it when a dating app matched us up, saying that I was right and he was impressed at my willingness to call something a red flag. So not a total disaster.
I'm happy for the newest model Chen-Ai, though. As much as she's made some solid progress in that identity, Cantonese is a tough language to learn at her age. Six months ago, she met a nice man her apparent age that works at one of the large UK-based banks, they hit it off, and when he was reassigned back home, he proposed. And while immigrating to a new country by marrying someone from there is not nearly as straightforward as people assume - I've reap up on this "just in case" - Hong Kong to the UK is apparently one of the easier cases; the new quasi-stepfather says that making it easier for Hong Kongers who held UK passports before the handover easier to immigrate was one of the few good/competent things Boris Johnson did.
This was a much smaller ceremony, as a lot of Chen-Ai's friends have sort of fallen away as she disappeared and returned as someone else who had a hard time communicating with her. It's good, I guess; she's going to be starting a new life on the other side of the world and being able to make a clean break is probably pretty handy, but she gave me this big hug like I was her actual daughter and thanked me for how much I'd helped her to be able to get by so that she could meet someone like him.
I'm not sure what to do with that, really. I know that I was often a real asshole before going to the Inn and especially while I was Deirdre, and I don't really recall a point when I decided to stop being an asshole. Anne likes to point to me deciding Benny could keep my old life as that moment, and, maybe, but sometimes I feel like I was more intimidated than generous there, or what it means that I had to be made attractive or female for me to treat others well. I like myself more than I did, and it's not just knowing that there are folks out there who want to fuck me. If the thing I've got going now doesn't work out, I know I'll be okay.
But Chen-Ai didn't have anyone from her old life when she got married as Bingbing; her real daughter and the real Bingbing are men in Montreal and I gather she didn't really have any regrets about their not being there. I don't know if the original Yuan-wei will come when and if I get married, but she came to graduation and we get along okay. We'll find a way to explain why my folks are there.
Is there a point to this? Probably not. It's just been crazy hot and busy and I've had my weekends eaten by weddings lately and I needed to blow off some steam.
-Jordo
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