My best friend throwing away photocopied sheets reminded me of when I considered doing the same thing.
Throw them away, I told myself.
It was mid-'84, and I broke from my life drift after Ruby's sealed lips. I made the bold decision to find myself a bride.
A mail-order one!
It was one way to fill a winter evening at home. I keenly scanned an A3 photocopied black and white page. I was wholly aware that my decision held more than immediate consequences.
I brooded at the kitchen table; I dog-eared the corner of the A3 sheet. Another A3 sheet contained twenty-five passport-sized photographs of young women between twenty and thirty.
What in heaven's name was I doing?
I questioned myself, yet I continued doing it. I matched the photographs, including a name under each, to a pile of separate information. These were messy pages stating the girls' names and addresses. They were on a stapled A4 page set, not in alphabetical order.
The title of the stapled sheets stared up at me, lying on the table: Secure your Eastern European bride.
I mulled over my intent and hopes.
Time and unanswered letters?
I tried to empathise with the girls in the photographs. What was their investment here? In the photos, it seemed they exposed themselves; their name and mailing addresses were out in the open.
I tried to rationalise love and passion.
An impossible task!
Whose company was I keeping here?
Did I dub myself a bride-hunter?
It sounded awful.
Did happiness or romance lie anywhere in the equation?
It struck me: writing letters to the girls; maybe I'd find a connection that way. And we see beyond the other's face — if I include a photo of myself.
I dithered at my table. Then I scrambled and scrounged my apartment to find a recent pic.
I wondered how slow the mail turnaround between Eastern Europe and Australia was — hopefully, it wouldn't take months.
I looked in a drawer and found three old visa photos. Lacking confidence in my photo search, I reflected on my doomed feeling about the matchmaking process.
How recent were the girl's photos? What if they or someone had edited the images? What were these girls searching for? What was I searching for?
I crumpled a sheet, reassessing the bin option.
What drove my constant yearning?
The fancy, the possibility of selecting an at-random life partner. Was I looking for someone to reciprocate love out of thin air or through the postal service?
Somehow using gleaned and garnered agency photos to correspond with the supposed one.
Could I get a young cutie to Australia, or might I receive an invitation to visit her homeland?
Could I ask a girl to leave her life, culture, and family behind?
If these girls embraced the plunge, they squared to face unknown guys.
And their lives stretched as folios of undisclosed memories. I realised their religious beliefs floated as unknown. I pictured listening to prayers before sex!
And did their unnamed preferences for x, y and z differ from mine?
What if they desired a family of several children?
Man, oh man, I hadn't factored children into the equation.
Loneliness dominated, but optimism flickered.
These were young, actual girls, not fantasy objects, pitching themselves forward.
They had expectations, as did I.
Many girls looked like runway models.
I confronted myself.
Someone smug in a rented office in Sydney must have compiled the sheets. Another person had photocopied reams of these. Next, they placed ads in major dailies and waited as dullards sent their cheques… just like me in Melbourne.
They mailed out their shoddy typed and faded photocopied sheets.
And here you are, I thought.
Two A3 sheets, fifty girls.
The last page of the A4 sheets stated: "Write to as many as you like."
There were no suggestions about what to do if you failed and received no replies.
Yes, there was a photo and an address, but no information on their age or how proficiently they spoke English as a second language.
I murmured; I could manage this business better myself.
I continued to read the attached information.
'Start with ten girls to write to. Using a standard letter is okay; maybe three will write back.'
How callous; they all might write back!
Even if I carried through, it started with a half-truth. My photo wasn't recent, and I would only reveal my better side.
Yet optimism lay hidden within the A3 and A4 pages. It was based on the belief that somewhere on this, at times, lonely planet—
somewhere— not in my apartment block or workplace, not in my neighbourhood or city,
—someone would reply to my expression of interest — somewhere overseas — 'I like you.'
This would mean, 'I like your photo.'
They can hedge and add, 'I like to travel.'
Of course, they will. You listed it as an interest. They are broad, brushed words.
When do we expose our vulnerable spirit to another?
Bin the pages, I directed myself.
Yet, I hung in the process, ratting the edges of the sheets.
How did they select which photos to use?
Fifty young women were lined up in an ad.
Each demanded respect as a unique individual.
'Write to them all' was the final sentence on the information sheet.
Seriously!
And the alternative?
Shut your eyes, stab your pen—ouch, unfair.
Cut the photos into a pile and jumble them in a container.
Pick one, no more random than selecting a girl by her facial features.
Ah, the true criterion emerges — looks!
My ego peaked at Galina, Alina, and Valentina as stunning young women.
My conscience moderated — Look.
I rifled into their eyes.
I used an A3 faded photocopied sheet in black and white to see into a pair of eyes and glimpse the girls' dreams, desires and life intent.
So hard because it's an image, not an eye contact moment like returning a gaze at Patsaporn glancing at you from the corner of a hotel lift, Jenny on a dance floor or Ruby's upwards from a café table.
Holistic lives are reduced to four-by-three-centimetre images.
I could only make a personal judgment by following a hunch — a feeling.
I contemplated the richness of lives and decided on a potential wife based on mere centimetres.
My life was previously determined by centimetres, the height a farmer selected to make his barbed-wire fence. Then, the posts sagged over time.
Did it matter?
Normally, no.
But as a child catapulted by a car accident, those centimetres saved my life.
A four-by-three-centimetre photo would decide my immediate future, perhaps the rest of my life.
It's unfathomable.
Wondrous.
I settled on one pair of eyes.
I repeated to myself, Are you sure? Galina is hot!
No, stay steady, I reprimanded myself.
My hands trembled.
Trust the eyes.
My handiwork in total: one envelope, one stamp, one address.
My mail flew to a far-off place.
This letter started using the plainest and standard of openings.
Well, the first word.
The second word was never to be ordinary or unremarkable.
Dear Rhea,