Ben

...
Ben married a Filipino woman in 1999. It was a momentary decision that he thought might address a lifelong discomfort.

His mother had always called him impulsive. He agreed but wasn't alarmed. He thought that the rising of an impulse meant that years of sub-conscious bubbling had preceded it, that the burning immediacy of the thing betrayed a long-building process. He placed great faith in these impulses, even if they had led him astray before.

The reason Ben married a Filipino woman was that he wanted her to shrink his self-importance. He realized it while reclining one afternoon in a plastic-backed chair, on the shaded concrete porch of his soon to be brother-in-law. Chicken smoking on the barbeque, emptied beer bottles standing guard. These were people rooted in simple things, with simple desires. Ben seemed to think too much. He walked quietly through town with his hands in his pockets. He filled notebooks.

Jennie was 4 foot 8 inches tall and round. She laughed loudly and asked personal questions of people she barely knew. He kissed her at a party while sitting in a blue La-Z-Boy recliner, she left with him on his motorcycle. They were married two months later; one in an oversized tuxedo, one looking funny in white.

The idea was that his going to work and coming back from work might be made easier with a woman at home, someone who cooked high-lipid meals and drank soda unabashedly. Ben worked in the office of a national furniture manufacturer. The idea was that the nagging on his mind might be silenced by someone who could be satisfied with this life. Someone who had known dirt floors and food served in a banana leaf.

In their marriage he cut her sentences short and always had the final word. She bothered him for brand-name purses. Things in their life seemed to be the color of old television.

He realized things weren't working, again, in a flash. Sitting in another, more beige recliner with the smell of lechón from the kitchen. It struck him that no matter how humble someone's background might be, they were always going to get used to their life. And they were always going to want more. The thought repulsed him and made him think of his father.

Amazingly, the old motorcycle's tank was still half-full of gas. Jennie couldn't hear the throttle over the sound of pork frying and very quickly Ben was gone.
...

atm1