Remem­ber my last col­umn, months ago? (Who said ‘no’ ?) Don Juan, the musi­cal, inspired me to go to Shang­hai to “spread love in the woods”. Well, I didn’t spread much of any­thing. Have you heard about the Chi­nese lady whose blog depict­ing her sex­ploits have been banned by the gov­ern­ment? Well, that wasn’t me. Strange­ly enough, some read­ers think a man is writ­ing this col­umn. I wish! If I were a man, I would be gay and I would get laid more often. Instead, I’m just a (young) sin­gle woman who lives vic­ar­i­ous­ly through musicals.

For years, my role mod­el was Kim in Miss Saigon. Like her, I would fall in love with a hunky GI (espe­cial­ly if he looked like John Bar­row­man or Patrick Wil­son or David Camp­bell or Jar­rod Emick). I would wear a vir­ginal ao dai (that’s how we call the tra­di­tion­al Viet­namese dress­es) and burn incense sticks all day long. After my boyfriend left me, I would wear his old Army tee and keep his gun near­by — just in case — but I would nev­er be mad at him for dump­ing me like an old shit. Then I would have a cute lit­tle boy named Tam and would live with him in Bangkok (great city for shop­ping). Even­tu­al­ly, I would com­mit sui­cide, so my son could have a bet­ter life. Well, some­one has to sac­ri­fice her­self. Just ask my moth­er. Doesn’t that sound like a great life?

But late­ly, I have been chang­ing my mind. Is it because I am get­ting old­er? I was think­ing: why would I kill myself for some jerk who prefers a blonde whin­ing woman? Then I saw Mam­ma Mia! and I thought: this is the char­ac­ter I want to be. I’m not talk­ing about being Sophie, the young woman who has a hunky boyfriend (I’m beyond that these days). I’m not talk­ing about Tanya either, the Kim-Cat­trall-esque char­ac­ter who is not afraid of men and gets to wear fab­u­lous dress­es. No, I was fas­ci­nat­ed by Don­na. Not because she is the lead but sim­ply because she made brave choic­es. She decid­ed to start a busi­ness of her own. She took care of her daugh­ter by her­self. She left trou­bled love sto­ries behind. And see what her life is like now. She lives in a beau­ti­ful Greek island. She gets to sing ABBA songs all day. She barks orders at young Greek hunks. THAT is my idea of par­adise. So good­bye Saigon and the Viet­namese (and Con­fu­cian­ist) con­cept of sac­ri­fice, hel­lo Greece and hedo­nism! And gimme a man after mid­night, and before too. Thanks you ABBA, for the music… and for every­thing else.