Asian families have very clear, set expectations.
- Get a prestigious job that makes money and demands respect
- If you’re male, choose a wife carefully, based on attitude, height, looks, and prospects (in that order) to further and improve the family lineage
- If you’re female, either shoot for #1 to improve your hand on all the wife criteria before ‘prospects’, or focus on the first three wife requirements if you don’t exhibit the aptitude for #1 by your 5th grade report card or first music recital.
- If you fail to meet the bar on items 1-3, then “cause no harm” with your life, and lather, rinse, repeat the above expectations with your children.
Notice a trend here? It’s all about children, genetics, and advancement through children. This is where I could have personally run afoul of items 1-3 and still gotten by with some level of familial acceptance were it not for my failure to breed so far.
For my parents, to turn 30 this year and have no breeding plan in sight is unthinkable. It’s further compounded by the fact that I’m the only male heir to my surname in the United States, and that I’ve married a white single mom who, rightly so, may or may not want to have more kids.
I’ve committed genealogical suicide, and have been banished to wander aimlessly in purgatory, otherwise known as the sunshine capital of the world, Seattle. Yet all the pressure to not fail #1-4 has had a rather interesting impact on my psyche.
To wit:
A Dream Last Night
A congregation of white terry cloth robed women moved with a swaying and forthing. Their collective bodies arc’d and yearned towards some figure at the head of a damp community room. I was herded forward by the desperate grappling and shoving of elbows and hips. I was drowning.
Scene changes to a dark room, possibly a cave, where I lay on a sleeping bag covering a bumpy clay-like earth. Laying next to me was Paris Hilton. Strange, since there’s little attraction for me, but she’s the only source of radiance in the dusky squalor of the room. There was nothing of note about what she was wearing, but I couldn’t exactly make out whether she had any clothes on. We started to kiss violently, but darkness drew before the good part was revealed.
Oh no, back at the first room, but the women are all seated, cross-legged. I was seated naked in an office chair, with an erection of a size and girth not seen since the Cretaceous period. I felt like I was crawling up a very tall Greek column–knowing definitely that I would regret letting go. The women didn’t notice me or my ode to a Greek column, and continued to listen attentively to an indistinct, breezy voice. A ratcheting of increasing tension told me that something wanted to be let loose.
It all ended with relief.
But to my dismay, my golden shower had doused nearly every white terry cloth robe in my vicinity with intense yellow streaks. The women turned around and glowered at me in my office chair. I gripped my seat and wished myself out of the dream.