On having a girlfriend:
"Unlike riding a bicycle, it involves certain skills which can be forgotten."
Perceval Snopes
And hence, I suppose, one should not allow oneself to fall out of practice for too long. Yes, my old friend and occasional cyber-gadfly, Mr Snopes, has once more been goading me about my romantic inertia.
I reflect that I have only kissed six women since I came to Beijing. And I have only slept with four. I have also been in love with four women; but unfortunately, it wasn't the same four (well, only once did I manage to kiss, and sleep with, someone that I was thoroughly in love with). Either way, there has been remarkably little actual sex. In nearly 6 years, that is a truly dismal record. Perhaps my problem is not that I have forgotten those relationship skills that Snopes alludes to, but that I never learned them in the first place. Oh, woe, woe.
3 comments:
ahem... did you read this after you wrote it?
Dude, you are hot.
8 years, 4 lovers, 4 Loves... in a country where 99.9% of the women are by default not your type.. of the remaining .1% they may or may not speak your language or be of interest to you.
Do you know how rare it is for anyone to meet someone they might possibly "like" let alone "love" in this environment??
You're being unnecessarily negative again, T. As I think I've said before, the chances should in fact be rather better in a situation like this one, since the expat community is so open and intimate, and since there's a tendency for this environment to 'select' like-minded people - the mere fact that we're here automatically gives us something in common.
Your maths is a bit off. My 'record' breaks down to 2 snogs, 1 fling, 2 not-quite-love relationships, 1 amour fou, and 3 great unrequited infatuations. In 5.5 years. That hardly makes me the last of the red-hot lovers! Most people, I think, would consider it positively monastic.
And regarding your other stat, I don't entirely disdain Chinese girls - there have been 6 or so I've been at least hypothetically interested in, but..... well, I suppose I was distracted by one of the great infatuations. However, even if I did limit myself to the expat community, that's now well over 1% of Beijing's population. It's a much higher percentage, if you compare like with like - the 'eligible' population, which I guess means educated, middle-class women. It is pretty unlikely that I'm going to fall for a waitress or a headresser. Official population is now about 14 million, I think - but getting on for a third of that lives in the rural districts of the municipality, not in the urban area. Urban population is probably only 10 million or so; and not more than a third of those could be described as 'middle class'. And those that have a good level of English (another key criterion for me) - probably no more than 5 or 10% of that group.
But the main thing, I think, that limits my interest in Chinese women (well, apart from their lack of inches) is that I tend to be attracted to women who are approximately my age - the 'acceptable range' for me probably runs from the early 30s to mid-40s. And there are very few single Chinese women in that age bracket. The expat community, on the other hand, predominantly comprises women in that age range (or younger, I suppose - I am prepared to allow a little bit of flexibility on this!).
So, in my 'target market', I think foreign women do actually outnumber Chinese women - or certainly, it's quite a close balance..... not the 1,000-to-1 predominance you suggest.
'Headresser'? I wrote 'headresser'?! Where was my head when I did that??
I meant 'hairdresser', of course.
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