Wenz

Had lunch with Wenz (cousin married off to the States) and Rubes (cousin cum my he-bitch). Today I want to tell the happy-ever-after story of Wenz and her husband, B.

Wenz grew up a plain girl in an armpit of a town in the middle of nowhere, where village folks go about their business on antique motorcycles sans shirts and crash-helmets, and chicken and stray dogs own the streets. She didn't have an easy childhood. Her father died in an auto-accident when she was very young, leaving her mother to work 3 different jobs a day to make ends meet and put food on the table for Wenz and her 2 brothers. Her mother, being uneducated, couldn't secure any cushy office jobs and had to sweat for every cent she made. The children were often left unsupervised, and the children soon found other more interesting activities to be involved in other than studies. They were often disparaged and being compared to their more fortunate, valedictorian cousins. Wenz often wished she was born smarter, richer and prettier. But she was just another ordinary, plump, bespectacled pimply-faced girl with bad hair and unattainable crushes on hot guys from school. Until she got to know B and her world was turned upside-down.

After highschool, Wenz went to the city and enrolled herself in a college with her portion of her father's insurance money. She struggled with the course and dropped out a year later, working odd jobs to pay the bills and feed herself. One day, she responded to an ad in Hotmail Classified. B was interestingly from half a world away, and Wenz's friends were making lots of friends this way. What's there to lose anyway, she thought. What she didn't know was, albeit her broken English and unfunny jokes and limited general knowledge of the world's happenings... she got B falling really hard for her. Throughout the years of their courtship, B flew from the States to see her 3 or 4 times yearly, and Wenz was, well, still naive, plump, had bad hair, worked low-class jobs, and couldn't speak a perfect sentence of English. But love isn't a language that demands immaculate grammatical skills. When they smile into each other's eyes, I still get pangs of acute urges to roll my eyes heavenwards and shudder while goosepimples creep up my spine. Oh yes, love is a wonderful thing.

Their courtship was no easy deal, mind you. Wenz went through hell trying to go over to the States. She applied for a visitation visa and was rejected on financial grounds. She applied for a student's visa and was rejected because she didn't have good enough exam results, and she didn't have any relatives in the States. Then B proposed, she said yes, and he promptly bitch-slapped some embassy people to their senses and finally her visa was approved. In total, they met for less than 10 times before they got married. Funky. So he whisked her up onto his white horse and they rode happily into the sunset? Yeah right. Wenz's family and relatives cried bloody murder about the white-man conning one of the clan to go over to the States so he could prostitute her off or chop off her limbs to beg on the streets. After much convincing and interrogation sessions and B's parents and grandparents sending over videotapes of snippets of their lives and house... the bird left the nest.

Today, Wenz is happily married for 2 years. She's in SF, happily relating to us about the places B brings her to, meeting B's friendly relatives and friends, her skiing trips, the baseball games she watched, and enormous Haagen-Daaz ice cream buckets they stock in the fridge. She's still plump, bespectacled, has bad hair and for the life of her can't pronounce "redeem". I still get the urge to strangle and rattle her. I am still envious. I bet lots of the other cousins are, too (secretly). I bet we'll envy her even more once she starts popping out adorable, exotic-featured Mat Salleh tots. If I'm still partner-less after 2 years, I shall register myself with MSN Classified. I could do with some fairy-tale romance in my life. I'll risk the prostitution and chopping of limbs part, dammit.

I'm genuinely happy for her. I'm as green as an ogress can be with envy, but I'm glad that this Wenz has finally found her man and snagged him to cuddle in bed and grow old together.