Brides-to-be

One of my medical attendants - a portly, slightly older one - is getting married in a few weeks. Finally. I was starting to suspect that he was a swishy, card-carrying faggot actually. The fact that he's finally settling down didn't surprise me... where he actually bought his wife did.

Just got up one of those cool mornings and walked down to the nearby housing estate to pick his wife out of a line-up. Seriously.

Mail-order brides have always struck me as something archaic, an idea meant to be filed in the dusty museums with the corsets and the bound feet slippers. And yet judging by the current state of affairs, it seems to have made a comeback of sorts - kinda like the corset. I have to admit it does fulfil a certain shortage when it comes to eligible brides - though I wonder why since damsels of a marriageable age seem to sprout up everytime I turn around, or perhaps it's because all my well-meaning relatives are taking the pains to introduce every desperate singleton they know to me. Still it obviously satisfies a certain clientele since a whole range of desperate gentlemen have been clamouring for a chance with these mail order brides. Sweet, nubile young things, just picked fresh from a healthy, rural farm in Vietnam, surely an irresistible lure.

Given a description of the girls marched out like so much cattle in small groups to face their would-be husbands, it actually reminds me of a slave market of old. Without the chains attached - not the ones that are visible to the naked eye anyway. They are then examined and thoroughly questioned by their prospective husbands - just short of examining their teeth and eyes.

If I sound terribly appalled, you would have guessed right. How terrible must the poor girl's lot in life be that she has to travel hundreds of miles to an unknown foreign land to marry a total stranger? Not only that, she only has two weeks on a tourist visa which means that she had better land a big fish in that span of time ( and most of the time, the fish she lands comes from somewhat unpalatable stock unfortunately ) or she'll be shipped back to the farms - like so much unwanted garbage.

As much as I might abhor such practices, still I have to wonder. If the roles were reversed, would I be tempted to take a bite? Say we swap the vivacious Vietnamese vixens for burly Burmese ( Myanmar if you wanna be PC ) boys? Or even tanned Turkish delights? Faced with the prospect of their beautiful smiles and their silky smooth, cocoa-latte skin ( and my own Dark and Delicious ), I find my indignation rapidly waning. Choosing a studly, tanned stallion from the irresistible range in their stables... hell, even with my vaunted self-control, I doubt I could resist the lure.

So where do I sign up for my own Myanmar hunk?