a story for reader MMM, in which nobody comes off looking very good
Fascinated by the 70% of Taiwanese women who are interested in foreign men, a gentle reader has asked me to write more stories about the topics he’s interested in. I’m sorry to inform you, gentle reader, that I myself have none of those interesting topics going on; but I will steal a story from someone else to feed the boundless belly of your curiosity. (Although now of course I can’t remember if I’ve already told you this story...)
I’ve got a Nameless American Friend who has lived in Taiwan for an unspecified amount of time. One of the specific things he likes to do here is to go to bars and pick up girls, his success in which endeavor being exactly the sort of thing that the very important architect would put under “70% of Taiwanese women prefer foreign men,” in other words rather startling from at least this, perhaps somewhat innocent, American point of view. One narrative evening he was involved in said activity. The young lady he had been chatting with and up expressed interest in his interest, but first had to make sure that the friend she was there with got home alright; she got my friend’s address and left with the friend in a taxi. A while later she did, as promised, arrive at my friend’s place. The first thing she did was pull out her cell phone to call her friend and tell her that she was fine, was safely at home, and was going to sleep. Turning to my friend, she then explained to him that she was very nervous, had never done this sort of thing before, and was in fact a virgin.
“I was like,” says Nameless, “you just let me pick you up in a bar, tricked your friend into thinking that you were taking her home on your way back to your own home, then got here and called her up with utter nonchalance to lie to her about being at home, and I’m supposed to think you’ve never done this before?” Besides which, he was a little offended by her claim to virginity. “You see, I’d already slept with her once a couple of years earlier under similar circumstances, and I was kind of hurt that she didn’t remember me.”
I’ve got a Nameless American Friend who has lived in Taiwan for an unspecified amount of time. One of the specific things he likes to do here is to go to bars and pick up girls, his success in which endeavor being exactly the sort of thing that the very important architect would put under “70% of Taiwanese women prefer foreign men,” in other words rather startling from at least this, perhaps somewhat innocent, American point of view. One narrative evening he was involved in said activity. The young lady he had been chatting with and up expressed interest in his interest, but first had to make sure that the friend she was there with got home alright; she got my friend’s address and left with the friend in a taxi. A while later she did, as promised, arrive at my friend’s place. The first thing she did was pull out her cell phone to call her friend and tell her that she was fine, was safely at home, and was going to sleep. Turning to my friend, she then explained to him that she was very nervous, had never done this sort of thing before, and was in fact a virgin.
“I was like,” says Nameless, “you just let me pick you up in a bar, tricked your friend into thinking that you were taking her home on your way back to your own home, then got here and called her up with utter nonchalance to lie to her about being at home, and I’m supposed to think you’ve never done this before?” Besides which, he was a little offended by her claim to virginity. “You see, I’d already slept with her once a couple of years earlier under similar circumstances, and I was kind of hurt that she didn’t remember me.”
posted by blahgstein at 5:30 AM
1 Comments:
Now THAT'S ethnography! (Well, at least a story that panders to my basest instincts and is based entirely upon second-hand, indirect, reported speech--which I prefer to ethnography any day, as long as it involves smooching, etc.)
What I really think you need to do in order to understand the ethical implications of this practice of situational virginity is to sit down and write with the aid of a Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship for the Study of Ethics and Values, which surely exists for the elucidation of important social facts like these.
Are you reading this, Mr. Wilson?!!!
MMM
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