Dear Doug -- re asians. In the story, as I think is clear, I meant Asians as opposed to Asian-Americans. Ben was born and brought up in Manila, he is not a US citizen, his first language is Tagalog, then Spanish. His family still lives there and he is marrying a filipina.I have many Asian American friends, for example Rakesh, but alas none who grew up in say China or India or Japan and moved here as adults.
Some Asian-Americans prefer to think of themselves as Asians. That Asian is also a racial" classification makes this easier. But to my way of thinking they are no more Asians than My Mother, whose parents were born in Czarist Russia, was a European.
It may also be that if I concentrate my failing brain I can think of another Asian I know. Just the way I actually probably did speak to other men during the course of a day other than Ben, My London boyfriend and the guy at the newstand. The story has a slight quality of exaggeration and overthetopness. It is streamlined and pared down in order to make a narrative that does a lot of work in few words and is -- I hope -- funny. It would be a mistake to interpet every sentence entirely literally. One of its themes is the naivete and lack of experience of the narrator herself -- someone who does not know the world as well as she should. She moves in a small circle of people and experiences. Not knowing Asians is one of numerous ways of making that point.
but yes in real life as in my essay I do spend too much time on e mail.
xox k