Scandal? Who cares?

There was a man. He was your average middle-class white Australian man. Shortly cropped hair. Workman's boots. A navy pullover. Khaki pants. Skin that would burn in under five minutes. Lips that have never known lip-balm, 'That's for fags'.

At least, that's how I saw him.

This man was very preoccupied. For the entire three and a half hour flight across the Australian continent, as I traced my gaze to his seat, his fingers were locked in the same circular motions. They had found the magnetic pull of their moon: the wedding ring of the woman next to him.

Of course, I surreptitiously participate in popular media and its obsession with all relationships, involving bonkings and otherwise, of the rich and famous. By 'surreptitiously', I mean that none of my expenses include purposefully purchasing a magazine with Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston bleeding each other to death on the cover. However, two minutes at a supermarket line is enough to inform you that:

YOU ARE COMMANDED TO BE INTERESTED IN THE EXTRAMARITAL AFFAIRS OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

This is further reflected by painfully similar tales involving my own dear and infinitely-extended family of Chinese-Javanese, Chinese-Sundanese, Torajanese, Chinese-American, Chinese-Spanish, Chinese-Canadian family.

Estranged fathers and daughters. Publicly administered retributions, both physical and verbal in nature. Brothers scrambling for cursed and rapidly depleting family fortunes. Painfully complicated marriage proposals lassoing its noose over two or more continents. Inter-racial marriages. God Forbid! And of course, living and sexing together out of wedlock (that would be me).

It is as if my relatives are compelled to have a life that is as interesting as those of 'The Pitts' and 'The Jolies'. Otherwise, well, what would be the point of having a family? To shame and be shamed. To shame and let live. To be shamed and survive.

Meanwhile, this quiet white man who shared the same fart-congested air with me for three and a half hours, continued to trace the woman's bezoar of a ring. And my brain shamelessly wondered where this man and this woman belonged, thereby declaring myself a consumer of scandal.