8th
Progressive Thinking
I met my cousin’s friend’s husband last night. This guy is seriously funny on several levels. First off, he’s an architect/fortune teller. Yes, that is correct: he designs buildings and tells fortunes, and makes money doing both. I never thought I would see those two professions slashed together into one man.
Second, he kept talking to me about how I should settle down in Thailand. Which means, obviously, that I should get a Thai wife ASAP. In an effort to convince me of the level of certain happiness guaranteed by his plan, he says, “American women, they are all about equality and human rights. Thai women will treat men like us like gods. Well, not like gods, but you understand.” He says this to me in the same tone of voice that an egalitarian-minded westerner would talk about gender inequality in marriages in other, non-western countries: as if it were backwards thinking.
The clencher is when this guy talks about his own past with women. He brags that he was first married at the late age of 27, after his golden playboy years. I met his wife the day before, a pretty 32 year old. This guy is 56. He emphasizes the fact that he managed to snare a much younger wife by doing the math for me. “She’s 24 years my junior,” he says with a smile on his face. I’m confused for a minute because I thought that this much younger woman was the woman he married at 27. That would make her 3 at the time that the nuptials were exchanged. He quickly clears up the confusion: “She’s my last wife. I’ve had 6 wives total.” I understand that he means ‘last’ as in final, not ‘last’ as in the last in a series (to be continued).
As I leave this guy tells me to give him my birthday and the time that I was born. He says he’ll give me my fortune later. I can’t wait.
I want to ask him, “How did you become such a baller?”
