Eastern Europeans don't speak romance

After having my mind blown by Bertolucci’s “Last tango in Paris”, my first thoughts went to my amazing Western lovers and to how movie-like our relationships have been. It sounds a bit farfetched to make generalizations based on such few cases. But maybe I can extend my sample by also considering my most favorite men, who are directors or writers or just some of their characters.

I’ve always found Eastern Europeans to be a bit on the dark side. They have this obscurity that somehow makes you feel like you could never penetrate to a level where they would lose the grip. There is something about them that is never satisfied. Like they could always get better, but they’re not even bothering to look. I do believe that all of this brings along a lot of frustration. Of the Eastern Europeans I got to know better in time, I find Serbians to be the most shady. I think they pair a nice imagination with some serious case of always feeling wronged. Hungarians are still a mystery to me, they do have a potential for romanticism, but maybe they’re too well programmed to roam free. Bulgarians are nice guys, but you can never be sure they’re not being sarcastic. I don’t think it’s a national trait, but maybe a case of Romanians being lost in translation. The latter speak a really weird kind of romance. Because they’ve always experienced it second-hand. That kind of traditional courtship inherited through the ages is almost gone. The one where you would dance with the girl on Sunday and then try to get her alone when she’s out working or whistling over her fence and then eventually stealing her in order to oblige her parents to give you their blessings. Romanians have borrowed bits and pieces from Italian or French and now American fashions of the times and forgot how to pursue women in their own way. The most obvious example is the toxic bachelor syndrome, where men figured after a certain age there is a flip in power and now they can sleep around and convince women it's all right for them to do so because they call it open relationships and everybody does them nowadays. However, I believe women much rather adopted platform high heels than fancy-named polygamy.

What I’ve always loved about the French, for example, is that openness to however sophisticated or absurd approaches to courtship. That ability to see women as means and not ends, to not think about whether tomorrow they may still belong to them. And that gives them a freedom that Easterners’ fear or ridicule would never allow them to experience. The freedom not to think twice before they speak and not to have to hide behind words. And the ability to be there and not somewhere else when they’re with a woman and treat her like she’s the only one left on Earth. When I talk about darkness I don’t refer to mystery. I refer to being impermeable to intimacy and in that sense the more you go East, the thicker the barrier gets.

Latinos are not big on intimacy either, but that fire that everyone talks about, it’s there all right. These guys know what they want and they take it. And they hold on to it. Not by always fearing it’s going away and bitching about it, like Eastern Europeans do. But by being a bit overly possessive and mostly by being insatiable lovers. They are maybe not the most fancy guys you can find, but I believe they know how to enjoy the really good stuff. The sun, the sand, the food, the wine and especially the women. Uncomplicated lovers, I believe they make it to our hearts easily because of that warmth they effuse. But what I like the most about them is that they can really fight. Not just stand there and look angry, not just offend you and walk away. They argue the way they love, spending a lot of energy and burning all of the tension then and there.

It’s a pretty sensible subject and I’m sure anyone could disagree with my experience. It’s always been a bit wrong to put people of a certain nationality in the same box based on traits we consider to be inherent to their ethnicity. But I believe some of the cultural heritage does express itself in our everyday lives, and why not in our relationships.

Toxic crushes

This morning a friend of mine posted a song I couldn’t get out of my head. I’ve attached it below. Looking at the comments it got, I realized there’s lots of us out there. People who have their very own Jessie. That one person we cannot say no to, even though they don’t treat us well, are not good for us and when we think we’re off the hook, they just show up out of the blue or mesmerize us from the other end of the line.

One day I thought to myself I’m really over it, but while writing this post I realized I still get the chills and my knees would still melt if I saw him on the street. He could sell me any bullshit any day and maybe I wouldn’t even realize it. But how did I get here? The easiest way is to want it really bad for a very long time and never see it happening until it does. And then being denied the whole thing. Getting just bits and pieces and being driven crazy. However, I believe the mind games were not as effective as the incredible attraction. Because I knew all along he wasn’t good enough for me, but I could’ve spent days and days just looking at him. And doing other stuff. And every time he showed up, he would sweep me away. And every time he’d call, I’d drop the pajamas and walk out the door at 3 a.m. Nothing is as toxic as a desire we manufacture ourselves. It’s like drinking our brains out and waking up the next day feeling intoxicated. When we went out we were all like “yaaay! I’m getting smashed tonight”, but the next day it’s “what on Earth was I thinking?”. It’s the same with these irresistible crushes. We say to ourselves, “what’s a fun night gonna hurt?” but a few days later we do stare at the phone and think of how the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (stab in and thrust up).

Some people are lucky. They get over it pretty easy. It usually takes a few years. You rarely get to be with your toxic crush, or have a healthy relationship with them at least. So you’ll always have the “the one that got away” syndrome. The big difference being these people are bad for you. They either use you and abuse you or just ignore you, it’s no way you can get out of this without a bruise here and a scratch there. One of my friends had this crush on a guy she usually met at parties. They made out in the broom closet and so on, but she never asked for more, figuring the guy was such a free-spirited person. Even when she was in relationships, he would still hit on her and most times convince her to hook up at least for the night. Eventually he got a plain girlfriend and will be married soon. Someone’s Jessie may be someone else’s Prince Charming. My friend still wonders why she couldn’t be the one. Other people I know just got tired of waiting. Or got tired of being used. They had the balls to call it quits, no matter how badly they wanted to let go and no matter how strongly the other one insisted.

I noticed a few of the comments said “I’m married to/ going to marry my Jessie”. I find that really hard to believe. Someone who doesn’t like and respect you enough to give you more than a few dreams is rarely going to change and decide he’s suddenly ready to settle down and you’re the one he wants to do it with. I could never trust a person who stringed me along for years and I wouldn’t commit to someone who used to tell me he has nothing to offer me (but maybe to someone else he did?). We buy any dream they sell, but somehow we also know it’s a game and we’re willing to play it. We like to play along this make-believe that we could be the one who’s worthy of it all. When in fact we don’t deserve any of this. And choosing to do it to ourselves is utter stupidity. We don’t deserve the booty calls and the last-minute hook-ups, the feeling we’ve made ourselves optional and disposable and going along with it just so that we can lie to ourselves a little bit more.
So seriously, the Rolling Stones had this great chorus we may want to keep in mind, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need”. Things that are bad for us may look sooo attractive, but at the end of the day we need to let them go. When we choose to be used and abused it’s our cross to bear, but allowing somebody to do us wrong thinking they’ll eventually grow to appreciate us is not an option. Because we deserve the best we can get and hanging on to a toxic crush is not it. 

Growing up? What's that?

One of these days I looked myself in the mirror and asked what did I want to be when I grow up? Where did I plan to be now in that scenario of my life I played out in my head as a child? And then I smiled and I thought “this is it”. I was raised to believe education is the best way for women to make it big. To reach for independence. To enjoy the simple little things in life. I wanted to be a detective and a writer and a student for ever and ever, and the way things work, I'm living the dream. I wanted a place of my own and a handful of friends I can hang with and count on. I’m here, but somehow there are plenty of people who still think I have a lot of growing up to do. As in get married and have babies. Make big bucks and move to a house in the suburbs. Buy a car and take the kids to piano lessons and soccer.

I see growing up as something different. I believe most of the roles people expect us to play have to be tried on. To see if they fit. That’s why we play all kinds on enactments of adult life as children. We try different jobs and we play house. We do the same as young adults. And some people decide it’s the real thing. But I believe in taking chances and knowing yourself. When people just assume the roles they were set out to play from early childhood, can we really call that growing up? Marrying your high school sweetheart fresh out of college and having a baby a couple of years after finding a stable job. Is that what growing up is all about? Because I’d rather call it settling. Not just settling down. Settling for what you were told your life should be like. Like microwaving a frozen diner instead of trying some amazing Thai cuisine. It’s true that most generations before us had a clear path before them and that saved them from experiencing a quarter-life crisis. But shouldn’t we consider ourselves lucky? With the amazing variety of options we now have, we can be the architects of our own lives.

My childhood best friend used to tell me she wants to graduate from college and get a job in a nice office and marry her one true love and have kids and live happily ever after. I guess this is it for her. I think she is soon to marry her first boyfriend, they’ve been together for the last seven years, if you don’t count the one when they first met in junior high. She got a job working for a multinational corporation and her parents must be really proud. Her life was a straight line towards her childhood dreams and I’m nobody to say that she is stuck or just settling. What I’m saying is that most of us don’t get to be like that.

Most people I know and hang around are actually extremely indecisive about their future even in their mid-20s. It might be that there is a common denominator that brought us together, while maybe people who couple early in life and marry at our age eventually  have friends that are more similar to them. What I wanted to say is that we are just as grown up as they are. And maybe more. Because we got to experience so many sides of life and we’ve been on our own and played house and tried all kinds of other wacky combinations. We traveled at least as much and met tons of people, we’ve questioned ourselves more and got to know ourselves better in the process. We didn’t take things for granted, be it religion or taste in men, and most times chose to think for ourselves instead of caving to the majority’s opinions and precepts. As far as relationships go, we’re the ones who won’t ask ourselves what would that have been like, because we went there and we already know. Being experienced and open-minded is what I consider to be grown-up. Because growing up should be more about growing than moving up towards a position set for us from birth. These indecisive people I know might marry and have children as well. But they will be the ones who make a grown-up decision to do so. The ones who can fully enjoy being mothers and wives/fathers and husbands as a personal decision they can celebrate, without looking back and thinking they could have taken a year off to back-pack around the world or given a chance to that cute person they used to know in college. So yes, I am all grown up now and I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I can go anywhere from here.

Freaks and monsters and what not

Now it’s common knowledge that there are different levels of knowing a person. Different depths, if you allow me. I always thought I may not seem much at the first glance, but when people get to know me they find I am quite something. But what I fear for as long as I can remember is that they might get to know me too well. Reach the dark depths where my freak lives. The little monsters in my head. That scary place you don’t just walk into. I’ve met people who introduced me to their own, one way or the other. Sometimes we even paired our freaks, gave them matching slippers and let them walk around while we were busy doing other things. But it is rarely that we can meet people we can accept entirely. Knowing the little monsters they can be. And there are maybe fewer people who can see and live with our own.

Most obvious type of freakiness we think of is in the sexual sense. When it comes to sex, it’s a mine field. Or a fence race. There are as may boundaries as people. Or even more. And the ones on the other side of the line are the freaks. Because people judge. Oh, they judge all right and their favorite thing to point a finger at is whatever is different from them. And in our sexual preferences we are all different. Now it maybe depends on how thick the line is. Some people say no, some people say maybe, others would never go there. We’ll probably hit a lot of those fences in our lives. Granted we draw the line farther than most of our sex partners. What I find funny is that the world is still full of people who hide in tiny little boxes. You know, the kind that do it with the lights off and just lay there. But some of the fences we’ll bring down and some we’ll just turn our backs to. When it’s worth it, even tanks can be in order. Some people will make us climb our own walls, take us further. And there will always be some people on the side labeling whoever is not on their side of the line. Screw them. Sex freaks are fun and at some point we’re lucky enough to find a freak or more that match our own. If we were all “normal”, we’d still be wearing night gowns with a hole around our genitalia. And say “Hail Mary” while waiting for it to be done with.

We are also freaks in the intellectual sense. People will always like weird stuff. They will listen to music that is too violent or too moronic for us to bear. They will watch movies we’d never be able to stay awake through and enjoy things we can’t understand. Lots of people we meet will not be able to have an argument without absurd statements or without a fight. Intellectually, it is very difficult to find a match. Tuning freakiness is a question of finesse when it comes to the brain. I’ve met so many attractive men who could make me laugh but when it came to conversation, they turned out not to be the brightest crayons in the box. Giving good conversation is maybe more important than giving good head. People are sometimes appalled by my tastes or preferences or social standings. And I am of those of others. We all meet freaks every day. But to some people we just feel like home.

The biggest freaks I’ve met so far were the emotionally handicapped. And I’m not only talking about commitment freaks. There are freaks at the other extreme as well. People who can hold on to someone with such violence they eventually drive them away. Those who threaten they’ll commit suicide if left astray. The ones that take you on guilt trips for every phone call you make or don’t take, for every person that looks at you funny on the street and so on. The crazy insecure possessive type. Of course the commitment challenged are more often met today. Probably because the other freaks already paired up. And this guys might never do. It should be easy by now to spot the difference. But it’s not, because our egos make us blind and stupid. I guess we somehow think we could be the ones to change that. To take a commitment freak and turn him into a white fence, barking dog, two kids kind of guy. But I’ve heard so many excuses I’m afraid to say I’ve heard them all. Most of us will never be that girl. The one who turns the available sign on. This is a form of emotional freak as well, this unavailable bachelor hunting. However, I believe whatever freak we run into, if we can’t fit it in our own crazy monster zoo, we’d better let it go. You can’t really change freaks, you can only pat their heads and kiss them goodnight.

Fairytale conditioning

Now I know I’m probably stating out things that most people already know, the feminist critical literature has been tackling this subject for years now. But after referring so often to the concept of Prince Charming, I really felt like a talk on fairy tales was in order. There are many ways in which we are socialized and even socially conditioned and I believe gender roles to be one of the strongest ways in which nurture builds characters.

In early childhood we are told stories that fascinate us, but also give us guidelines to who we should eventually become when we grow up. Apart from the gender-specific behavior we learn from our families, there is this powerful effect stories have upon us. They answer to our need to enjoy our imagination and also to our spirit of adventure. But the things we eventually end up learning may not be just human values and qualities like kindness, courage, determination, integrity and so on. We learn that as girls or boys we have separate places in the social world and that we don’t succeed in the same way.

Women in fairy tales are most often portrayed as helpless, damsels in distress waiting for their prince to come find them. They lack initiative and they lack any distinctive personality traits. The only thing that we know about most of them is that they are beautiful and that is their main worth. They are usually passive to events that come about in their lives and are only thrown into adventure by outside forces and with the help of supernatural creatures. Cinderella dreams of going to the ball, but it is only after the Fairy Godmother gives her a dress and a carriage that she can actually act upon her desires. Most main female characters in fairy tales are still stuck in the domestic realm. Snow White, even when she runs away to the dwarfs’ house, takes care of the cleaning and cooking and Cinderella does that all day long for her family. Even in some of the Romanian stories, where the main characters are girls and they are revered for being more that pretty faces, their smarts and kindness are put to the service of their families and they all do housework and care for others and that is the only thing they are rewarded for. Moreover, their devotion to men is religious. “The Poor Man’s Smart Daughter” eventually marries the town’s judge and when he gets upset with her and wants to throw her out, the one thing she chooses to take back with her (given the option to pick anything) is her husband. In stories where the main character is a prince who goes on a great adventure to rescue his kingdom or a princess, the women’s role is purely of décor. They sit around waiting to be saved from the evil grip of the monster and then indiscriminately marry the one that saves them. They are envied not for their personality, but for their beauty, which is what gets them in trouble and saves them at the same time. The evil forces want to kill or kidnap them just because of their looks, they pose no substantial threat as persons, but rather as a better and improved model of the female charms.

Talking about evil forces, the alternatives to the beautiful submissive soon-to-be-housewife in all fairy tales are women with supernatural powers. The good ones are Fairy Godmothers or kind old witches who give a helping hand. The others are evil witches or bad mothers. Any unmarried woman in stories has to be a witch. One of my anthropology teachers believes that witchcraft is strongly associated to women’s sexuality. So one way of explaining why some women chose to live outside of society’s clearly ascribed roles was witchcraft. The years of witch hunting were, in his opinion, just a measure to reinforce traditional gender roles.

So the templates for being a woman we get from fairy tales as little girls are nice and simple. You can either be a beautiful homebound princess, who is patient and kind and submissive and lives to meet her prince. Or you can be a witch who is forever alone and lives only to help or maim others.

The role models boys get from fairy tales are completely different. One annoying thing is that almost all male heroes are royalty or at least really rich. They are good looking and great fighters, fearless and intelligent. Men are part of the public sphere in all fairy tales. They roam around looking for adventure and saving damsels in distress. They don’t wait for things to happen, they go and take it. In a way, these are all attributes that are more difficult to live up to than those ascribed to women. And they create unrealistic expectations for the female readers about what a worthy suitor is supposed to be like. It is rarely that we find that knightly strength and courage in a man. They don’t fight monsters for us and don’t take us away to a castle on a white horse. We don’t instantly fall in love with the first one that rides into our lives and don’t live happily ever after with them. We rarely meet any male evil characters, though. In German fairy tales they are  barely existent and Romanian folklore has created this semi-human creature, similar to a basilisk, that kidnaps young princesses and is always defeated by Prince Charming. They are also secluded and, the way I see it, have all the psychological traits of a sociopath.

So boys and girls, we’ve all been taught by stories adults told us that there are two ways to go: comply with our gender roles, get married, have babies and live happily ever after, or stay bachelors and turn into monsters or slutty witches. Even though the world has changed so much, we still have these patterns of how we are supposed to be and live our lives buried conveniently in our subconscious.

If I ever get to have children, I want them to hear the real stories. About women who worked their way through school or even went to prison for their convictions who eventually got to run some of the largest or most powerful countries in the world. About real life princesses who raised money to feed the poor and give as many children as possible an education. About those who were laughed at and discredited, but kept fighting for our right to now be better educated and reach parity in economic power with men, for our right to choose whether to and what kind of family we want to dedicate ourselves to, for giving us the horse and the sword to be our own Prince Charming.

Walls people build

Some chick once said we don’t build walls to keep people away, but to see who are the ones brave enough to climb them. I believe it’s the other way around. The simple logic and basic functionality of fences and walls is their ability to separate. Man from the cold, garden from annoying neighbors, town from invaders. To keep away. Now, the only place where trespassing is portrayed as acceptable and even desirable are fairy tales. Like when Sleeping Beauty’s prince goes through all that trouble to get inside the castle to wake her up. Or when some Prince Charming fights the monster to save his princess. (I may have a thing for underdogs, but I sometimes cheered for the monster. Nobody asks them why they steal beautiful girls. Maybe they’re lonely, maybe the chicks dig their bad boy attitude. I see the symbolism, but in real life there are more than monsters and princes. Sometimes you even get both in the same package. But next time on fairy tales.)

The thing is, we need these walls. They are a natural protection against all evil. The more trauma, the more walls. Some people are so damaged, they have multiple-layered walls. Out of steel. Some have pretty walls and towers and all, in order to be inviting to passer-bys. But always being advised to tear them down is just stupid. In order to let people in, humans have invented these interesting things called doors. There is a name for climbing up the walls in order to get in, and that is invasion. You want in, stand there, in front of the door, let yourself be seen, knock and wait. Social protocol was designed for a reason, it’s supposed to make our interactions easier and decrease the risks of conflict. So the way I see it, walls should be cherished and boundaries respected. To those who have built them, they bring warmth and safety.

And when you are allowed in, there’s so much to discover that was not visible from outside. Sometimes we like what we find and we move in if invited. Sometimes we even make alliances and exchange keys. Sometimes we walk around for a while but get bored and on to another adventure. Sometimes we are terrified by what we see inside, run outside and never come back. We may come visit from time to time, we may be there just once. We are individuals, and individuality comes with boundaries. Getting to know somebody will always happen on their territory and the other way around. Being too invasive might make them feel threatened and show you out. Being stubborn about meeting them on neutral grounds will only allow you a short glimpse of what’s actually there.

So when you are invited in, take the chance. Even if only out of curiosity. And when you want in, do it the right way. Knock. Wait. And when the doors have shut behind you or might never open, let it go, move on, the adventure is probably elsewhere.

I’ve tried for years to bring my walls down and I’ve been pushed to do it so many times but now I believe those people were just lazy. Or had no understanding of what walls are made of and why. Stone after stone makes us who we are. From an early age we learn to see ourselves as distinct individuals. The songs we sang, the little pleasures and scars, the people who’ve stopped by to help us put on another stone, that’s how we build. We don’t just build to keep away. We build to stay inside. A place from where we can observe the world and try to make sense of it. Of course we go visit others as well, we travel, we explore. But we always need a place to call home. And I believe we like to have friends over. And lovers too. So trust me, people who want you over will keep the doors open for you. It happens sometimes that they’re taking a bath or singing (more like shouting) to the Rolling Stones in their pajamas and can’t hear the door bell ring. But check your pockets, you might have the key.

The one that got away

                    
                              Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. (Andy Warhol)

Things we wanted badly and never got have an underlying power of growing in our minds up to where we see them as perfect. So do people, especially those who play a temporary role in our lives, but leave us with a sense of missing out on something bigger. At some point, we all have in the back of our heads the one that got away. That one person who would have been perfect for us, who none of those we actually had can compare to. The one that got away is our standard for perfection and our hallmark of nostalgia.

I met mine when I was still pretty young but not that innocent. I had known him before, when he caught my eye, but it was only a few months later that we actually met. He was supposed to entertain me for a few hours while I was transiting a new city. Maybe it was the sunset or the soon-to-be-summer weather, maybe it was just me and my soft spot for really smart guys, but it took a couple of minutes and I was hooked. Our sense of humor blended perfectly and we were amused by the most random things. We talked for hours and I wished it would never end. We saw each other two more times that week and it did feel like it would never end. But then I went home and e-mailing just didn’t do it. I never even held his hand, although I dreamed about it for months. In the end, we both fell in love with other people and let it go.

But every now and then I keep wondering whether I could have transformed that story into a love story. Whether we would’ve been great together if it wasn’t for the distance. I now dare to say it’s better the way things turned out. We all need that hope that comes with knowing you had that perfect thing right in front of you and you let it go out of not wanting to spoil it. That hope that makes us believe giving up is not always a bad thing.

I don’t believe we search for perfection in our relationships, I think we all look for a match, a match that would fit our own flaws, one that is insanely wrong and feels so good. We want things we can eventually let go of, not life-changing indispensable love. That kind is left for our imagination, for that amazing place where all the magic takes place.

So while keeping the wonders of meeting the perfect man in the back of our heads, let’s celebrate the other ones. Let’s raise a glass to complicated and weird and sometimes annoying, to the ones we have to learn to love and the ones we have to forgive from time to time, the ones we want to murder now and revive the next minute. Perfect is great, but wait until you meet the damaged. The real deal.

The one that got away will always be that one thing we wanted from life but never got. We might not think about it every day, we might even forget for a while. But one day, when we’re grandmas, we’ll open a box and look at a postcard and the whole skip a breath feeling will come back to us. Because fantasy love never leaves us. Never having to end it has made it part of us. Never even doing it has given us the power to write the story of what could have been in our heads over and over again and living it in our imagination protected it from all the darkness and dirt it would have faced in the real world. So we do live our own fairy tales, and Neverland is not as far as you might think.