I really don’t have the time for this, but yet again, someone on the internets is wrong.

There were many foreign students in my childhood Bucharest, most studying to become doctors in our University and most speaking Arabic. Everything was cheap in petrodollars and especially Romanian women, who, according to the Arab students, were the best looking and cheapest in Europe. Most were willing to have sex even for small gifts, such as coffee, stockings and even cheap chocolate. The foreign students were renting cars and rented cars had plates starting with 12-B, hence Mihai Stanescu’s caricature.

In this internship-like version of “schimb de experienta cu expertii straini” (“cultural exchange”?) Romanian women were not only acquiring small gifts, but(t) also, due to the low availability of contraception methods and a certain societal permissivity, a new style of walking.

If you were to ask them after many years about their Arabic paramours, these pitzis would’ve said about each one “and I really loved him, but he broke my heart and colon; and after all this, he really was a Jew: he wanted his bong back” – never mind she never returned it. The following are real comments from “Adevarul” – the paper I wrote about in engrish & 13 to such a story:

You might think that comments don’t make a tabloid; then again, the content is not far off that genre either.

Yet it probably wasn’t the reputation of Romanian women the major factor in forming my ethics, nor was being on my own in my teens in Bucharest with an apartment to take care of, school to go to, a guardian aunt who was cheating on my uncle at my place and also keeping my pension and whatever my father was sending for herself in a crumbling infrastructure and disappearing morals. Let’s just say it was mostly my earlier childhood experiences that informed an oversized sense of fairness. Injustice made me literally sick (I ascribe my childhood asthma – “bronsita astmatiforma” – to such emotions) and it still has an almost paralyzing effect on me.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss issues of fairness or ethics with others as most people assume that you do so from a position of superiority, a “hollier-than-thou” attitude, but I persevere. One such issue is paying for sex.

Paying for sex is something I’ve never been able to bring myself to do – at least, I didn’t think so. I was in such a situation a few times, but nothing much came out of it. For instance, once in Paris, during one of my Euro trips, I had a few hours to kill before leaving, I was too tired of museums so I spent this time roaming the streets. I checked out a few brothels with menus and did strike up a conversation with the girls at reception who got mad when I told them I’m not interested. A while later, a black girl coming from the opposite direction started sticking her tongue out at me (in Paris brothels this seemed the one method of enticing potential clients). I was curious what would came out of it and even though I was actually turned off by this impolite act, I followed her into a seedy apartment where – long story short – I ended up a few hundred francs (yes, it was the year before Euro adoption) lighter and with a knife at my throat. Another time I was in Krakow but that story too is better left for another article.

The point is, giving a woman money, under any so-called “romantic” circumstance, instantly makes her unattractive to me and it completely excludes the possibility of a serious relationship. This is a bitch, because often times, women I have found attractive seemed to expect me to pay for dinner even when they invited me, while I may not find women who go strictly “Dutch” too attractive. I always offer to pay and sometimes even insist on it if I get the feeling that this is what she expects or that my paying will make her happy, but the end result is that she ceases to interest me sexually or otherwise. I find that even women with careers and high-paying jobs, who have their finances together, still take pleasure in having their date (me) pay for dinner; I feel insulted if they offer to pay for mine. I’ve been in situations where women – some older, some younger – treated me a bit like a plaything and wanted to pay for my hotel etc but I did not accept.

I even went as far as conducting an informal survey among my female friends on their attitudes on this sort of thing and it generally went something like:

• do you think it’s a man’s obligation to pay for dinner? – no, of course not, but it’s nice if he offers
• would you ever pay for dinner? – sure, if I invited him
• have you ever paid for dinner? – the answers varied from “no, but I would” to “yes a few times”
• for the “yes” I continued: more than he paid? – the answer was invariably NO

Yet that shouldn’t be surprising – if it is, listen to girlwriteswhat / donkey / responsibility.

Why is this important? Well, obviously, it’s not the amount of money. In our society, if I don’t offer to pay, I will be considered “a Jew” as the comments belowabove indicate and nothing further will happen because she will most likely not be interested. If I offer to pay, she will probably accept and nothing further will happen because I lose interest. I tried a few times to pretend I am interested, but the relationship was doomed and never recovered. This is obviously one of the many reasons some of my [potential] relationships fizzled, but it’s a pretty serious one. Chris Rock explains it better.

Furthermore, it never happens that both halves of the couple have the same financial circumstances – usually, one is a have-not. How do you deal with that? Should the couple engage only in activities that are accessible to both? Should the “richer” one fully and unconditionally subsidize the other until running out of money? Hard to answer, eh?!

Let us now move on to the actual story.

Sources / More info: ft, ro-ro-p