I'm Bart Tangier. My family surname traces back to the Channel Islands, part of the UK. As that makes clear I don't come from a culture where arranged marriages are the norm; in fact the culture that I come from doesn't even endorse arranged marriages. However, my parents are the exception to the rule, even though in the United States in general arranged marriages are about as common as snake's legs.
I guess the fact that both of my parents are domineering, and that I was the first born and had the classic first child desire to please and follow the rules, made me entirely susceptible to fulfill their expectations without complaint. My younger brother and sister were rebellious but rather than giving me a reason to rebel myself their attitudes seemed to make me more desirous of pleasing my parents.
To make a long story short, my parents determined that it would be wonderful if I married Marina Garth, the oldest daughter of my father's business partner Wermier Garth. The Garth surname has its roots in Surrey, also the UK, where -- again -- arranged marriages were virtually unheard of.
Growing up my father and Wermier had a very successful business called Nemesis LLC, one that there was every expectation that I would someday take over. Wermier had three daughters and no sons and none of his daughters was the least bit interested in business, and Wermier constantly referred to me as a "really good boy" throughout my life so his expectations of me were the same as my father's.
I guess that it was almost a total lack of backbone on my part that I took all of the courses in college -- and excelled in them -- that would give me the background to take over Nemesis LLC, and a complete lack of backbone that allowed me to be dictated to by my parents and the Garths into marrying Marina.
Marina was not ugly, obese, obnoxious, stupid, pretentious, silly, evil, or cruel; rather, she was just "blah!" I never had any sexual attraction to Marina whatsoever, and I believed -- and confirmed it after we wed -- that Marina may have had the lowest libido of anyone not a nun or eunuch in the entire United States. What she did have in spades was an even greater desire to please her parents than I did.
Shortly before my wedding I was getting cold feet and both my brother and sister were encouraging me to stand up for myself and tell both sets of parents to get lost. When I was out with Marina about a month before our wedding date she could sense unease on my part. When we were having coffee after seeing a movie she put a hand on my one of mine. "You're getting nervous, aren't you Bart?"
"Is it that obvious?" I chuckled.
"To me it is because I've had the same apprehension that you have. I know that you don't love me, and I don't love you, but we are compatible. We've known each other our whole lives and we've never exchanged a cross word, have we?" she said with a smile.
"No -- I guess we haven't; but don't you long for a knight on shining armor to come and sweep you off your feet?" I replied.
Marina laughed. "Not hardly; too much drama. I want a comfortable life with close families and compatibility. Passion is overrated. I want to please my parents and yours, and I know that you feel the same. We've got a good life ahead of us, better than 99% of people in the world even without romance."
"You really believe that?" I asked, not skeptically, just informationally.
"Yes, I do. Don't cancel the wedding, Bart. I'll be a good wife and mother to our children. I know I'm no Jennifer Lopez or Elizabeth Hurley in looks or passion, but I'll never give you the drama and heartache someone like them would either," she smiled.
Especially in view of our post-movie talk I doubted that Marina had any more attraction to me than I did to her; however, I did take her advice and did not cancel the nuptials. We dutifully wed after we graduated from college when it was three months after my twenty first birthday and two months before her 21st. To say that both sets of parents were pleased when we went on a one week honeymoon to Bermuda -- at their expense -- would be the understatement of the decade. All four of them cried; I almost did too, for a different reason, thinking that I'd never really find true love.
I imagine that most newlyweds passionately fuck like minks on their honeymoon. While Marina and I did have sex three times on our honeymoon it was more a biological function than lust, and certainly not love. There might have been a smidgen of passion, but not more. Even though we had known each other all of our lives, in view of our new relationship we learned a lot more about each other -- none of it was bad, mostly just boring.
While I hadn't had that much experience, it was clear that Marina was a bad lay. Despite being a bad lay one thing that Marina has going for her is that she really is fruitful; and I must be too. Marina wasn't in the fertile part of her cycle on our honeymoon so she put off getting on some birth control until we got back from Bermuda (from this you can surmise that she's not too practical, although she is academic and got good grades in school -- to please her parents). Apparently not being in the fertile part of her cycle was meaningless because she got pregnant on our honeymoon, and popped out kids numbered two and three by the time that we had been married three and ½ years despite our infrequent sex. We figured that three was enough and since she seemed to get pregnant about one out of every five times that we fucked, we agreed that she would have her tubes tied after the third kid popped out.
So, though I was not yet twenty five, I had a wife and three kids.
Fortunately, Marina was a good mother and just like her libido her desire to achieve outside the family was low so she was happy as a stay-at-home mom. Except for the fact that we were more like cousins than man-and-wife as far as affection was concerned, Marina was also a good wife. We rarely had cross words, and seemed to be completely in sync with our ideas of child-rearing; namely give them all the love you can, but let them become independent (unlike us).
Even though I didn't love Marina, or anyone else at that time, although I was fond of her, my parents, my siblings, and the four other Garths, I found that I did have a large capacity for love. I loved my children intensely and without reservation. My two girls and boy gave me a constant glow of happiness, and I liked nothing better than interacting with them much more than any other single thing that I could do. One surprising quality that all three had as they got older -- and something that I loved about them -- was that they were never obsequious or submissive. If obsequiousness and submissiveness are genes thankfully they didn't inherit they from either Marina or me, and luckily Marina was just as happy about that as I was.
At Nemesis LLC I was promoted quickly, but not because I was the son and son-in-law of the owners. It was because I had real business acumen. Even though working at Nemesis was not my ideal job, it wasn't painful or boring either. Since I was up-to-date on business systems and practices my father and Wermier started deferring to me more and more. By the time that I was twenty seven for all practical purposes I was running Nemesis even though my father and Wermier were still the titular heads. I had tripled the profitability of Nemesis since I started working there and was financially rewarded properly for that.
At the time of my twenty eighth birthday I was content with my comfortable existence, although only my three children actually made me extremely happy.
*************
Since I usually wanted to get home as quickly as possible to see my kids and since I didn't treat my subordinates as personal servants, I often got my own lunch at a local deli. I became well known at the deli due to my consistent patronage but also because I gave each employee there $50 in cash for Christmas. When I arrived at the deli on the Monday after my 28th birthday after being greeted by Chip, the owner, I noticed a new employee. Her name tag said "Danika."
Danika's appearance knocked my socks off. She could have been the sister of Polish ancestry American model Emily Ratajkowski who was featured in the 2014 and 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit editions, starred in "Gone Girl," and is one of the most searched females in Internet history [if you type in "Emily" on Google Images the first name that comes up is hers]. I didn't know what romantic love was at that point in my life, but I'm pretty sure that the feelings I had were like the "love at first sight" reactions I had read about.
I was trying to be subtle looking at Danika out of the corner of my eye; I fantasized that she was doing the same thing. I almost swallowed my tongue when she came to the small table that I was sitting at and asked "I can clare you plate, no?" in a clearly eastern European accent.
I was able to blurt out, after an uncomfortable delay, "Yes, thank you." She smiled, cleared, and then sashayed away. I had an uncomfortable feeling at my crotch; I looked down at it and saw that I had pitched a tent -- most likely the first time I had done that just upon viewing an entirely clothed woman.
I made sure to go to the deli on Tuesday and Wednesday and both times interacted -- albeit briefly -- with Danika, although each time we said a few more words to each other than the last time. When I went on Thursday, she wasn't there. It was a slow day so Chip came over to my table to chat as I was finishing my sandwich. After enough small talk so that he wouldn't get too suspicious I asked "So, Chip, how is your new employee -- what's her name..."
"Danika," he said when I pretended to be at a loss about it.
"Yeah, Danika; how is she working out?"
"She's a very good employee; her English isn't great, but she is always on time and works hard. I like her," he responded.
"Yeah, she seems really competent," I replied.
"Her only problem is getting hit on by guys," he laughed.
"How often does she work?" I asked with my last mouthful of sandwich, trying to be subtle.
"She works just Monday-Wednesday, five hours each day. I gather that she's married to some old rich guy and is bored and works just to get some spending money he doesn't know about and to fill the time," the owner answered.
I changed the subject to the local college basketball team, and then left.
