Improving the Gene Pool
Nellie had never been a very religious person, but for the last two weeks every time she went to sleep she would whisper a little prayer in her head, thanking the Lord God for having the wisdom and foresight to create Thai bar girls.
It had all started innocently enough, as these things always do, with a 20th anniversary trip to Asia. Nellie and Fred had met when she was 23 and had just joined a medical supply company as receptionist and all around gopher. Fred was 28, the Assistant Regional Sales Manager, and gorgeous. Their whirlwind courtship was well noted throughout the office, as was Nellie’s swelling belly when Fred finally popped the question.
Two kids, three mortgages, and any number of kilos made the years pass quickly. Fred’s career moved rapidly upwards but then, sometime in his early 40’s, it seemed to stall. While he had always been happiest on the road, meeting new people, finding new leads and selling, always selling, lately it seemed that football and beer were becoming higher priorities. When a younger man got the promotion Fred had been anticipating, and he found himself reporting to someone 10 years his junior, the resentment that had been simmering under the surface finally broke through.
He started packing on the weight, bathing a little less frequently, and coming home later and later, and when he finally did arrive it was with great effort that he managed a few words to Nellie before falling asleep in front of the TV in his favorite chair.
With the kids off at school Nellie became bored and took a job at the local library that paid little but got her out of the empty house. It was there, sorting books one day, where she ran across a guidebook to Asia.
The trip was all she had imagined. They flew to Singapore where they acclimatized for a few days, rode rickshaws in Chinatown, went to the zoo, drank those awful Singapore Slings at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, and lost a few hundred dollars at the casino. Then it was off to Vietnam, where Nellie’s father had fought, a side trip to see Angkor Wat (Nellie had never even heard of it before she saw the guidebook but for her it was the trip’s highlight) and then to Thailand. Bangkok she felt was a bit dodgy but she liked the food and the Royal Palace and the boat ride up river to Ayutthaya which was wonderful and then it was time for the last destination: 3 days relaxing on the beach in Phuket.
When the travel agent recommended this final stop Nellie had been a bit apprehensive, for she had seen the movies about the tsunami, but she finally acquiesced. They went snorkeling in Phi Phi, saw the Big Buddha, and ate wonderful seafood. One night they went to a restaurant named Savoy and from there it was a short walk to a street where there were many bars. Nellie was horrified, then delighted, at the men dressed up in women’s clothing who paraded up and down, charging 100 baht to have their photo taken. (Nellie did so and promptly uploaded it to her Facebook account, where within minutes all her friends back home were commenting on it).
Finally she was tired, but Fred wanted to keep drinking so she left him at one bar and contentedly walked back to their hotel by herself. Marriage didn’t mean doing everything together, and she was happy for the time alone. The next day Fred went golfing by himself, and although he didn’t take any equipment he assured Nellie he could get all he needed at the club. That night he stayed out late again by himself, and on their last day found another excuse to take off alone in the afternoon.
After they returned Fred came home one night and went in to a rant against feminism (which Nellie hadn’t heard spoken of since college), fat white women (yes, Nellie would admit, she had put on a few kilos, who hadn’t, and so had Fred), divorces favoring women, and how western society discriminated against white heterosexual men (the man who beat Fred out for the top sales job was black). After Fred had been shouting for the longest time Nellie stopped listening and eventually went to their room to watch TV.
Shortly after, Nellie realized that Fred was spending more time alone at the computer in his basement office. One day, when he wasn’t around, she logged on and spent some time exploring. She found the Skype name of someone called “Nam”, and all the messages between her and Fred. Skype messages stayed on the system, and were there for anyone to read. They could be deleted but only with some difficulty, and then ALL the messages from ALL the accounts had to be deleted at once. Since Fred used Skype for business there were many messages from his colleagues that he needed to save.
She found the EXCEL spreadsheet with all of Fred’s passwords on it, and the new Gmail account he had set up to further communicate with “Nam”. “Nam” was a pretty girl who claimed to be 23, and Nellie was glad Fred had chosen well.
Finally, Nellie found a site called Stickman. She wasn’t sure what a “Stickman” was, and found differing definitions including a hockey player, the croupier at a dice game, a cartoon character, and your best buddy. Stickman also offered a “girlfriend investigation service” and two weeks later Nellie had a report telling her that “Nam” was 28, had a child, two foreign boyfriends who were sending her money, a husband in Norway who she hadn’t seen in years and a Thai man who she had never married but with whom she and her son stayed whenever she went back home.
When the divorce notice came in the mail Nellie couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry at the stupidity of her soon to be ex-husband. “Nam” was welcome to him, she thought, and she wondered how long Fred would last with “Nam” or “Nam” with Fred for that matter. Thai bar girls, Nellie realized, served a valuable purpose on earth, just like bacteria in the stomach or foxes that kept the rabbit population down. Bar girls served the purpose of drawing the angry and unproductive men away the West, to a place where they could be kept permanently drunk and sexually satisfied while their meager bank accounts were slowly siphoned away. All in all, a major improvement to the Western gene pool.
I’m glad he’s sleeping with you, and not me, and it seems like you can use the money more than I can, thought Nellie as she tucked the divorce notice back into the envelope. She looked at her phone and saw that she had 45 minutes to get ready before her date. Sam was an architect, well off and well mannered, who took her dancing and, unlike Fred, always showered before they had sex.
Take care,
Professor
Stickman says:
Wonderful!
