For the last month, I’ve been asked the same question at least a dozen times.
Are you going to South America for the girls?
No, I’m not. And I’ll tell you why.
There are two types of connection: physical and emotional. Physical connection is good enough for the first couple of dates until you get in bed with someone, but to continue after that, there has to be some type of emotional connection. Getting with girls abroad is not that difficult; alcohol and physical attraction without many words are enough to fuel a good time that lasts several days or so, until the novelty of staring at each other in near silence and drawing funny pictures wears off. It is very difficult to establish an emotional connection without language.
In college I knew this kid who would play and sing the latest rock ballads on his guitar. Girls would sometimes cry during his performances. I’d think, “Give me a break,” while mentally calculating how many hours of practice it would take me to get to his skill level. I did not learn how to play the guitar, but I did look at communication in a different way.
The importance of language, specifically words, did not hit me until I met this one Eastern European girl. She was the same age as me, with short blonde hair, and a type of nonstop laugh that makes you think you have a really good sense of humor. She was fluent in English. She wanted to hear a story, so I told her a story, a personal “love” story that did not have a happy ending. A story for another day.
Telling her this story caused me to relive it once more; relive not so much pain but a disappointed sadness, and I looked in this girl’s eyes, who I met three hours prior, and saw tears. She must have experienced something similar, I thought. I looked away as she wiped the tears away to give her a private moment, so she can feel what she wants to feel without someone maybe judging her.
At the time I didn’t remember doing that before, making a girl cry from a story; and it’s not power I felt, but a sort of humanity where we our experiences, what makes us who we are, is able to affect other people, whether happy or sad, positive or negative. Music is one way of doing this, language the other. Out of all the tricks I know to increase a girl’s physical arousal, none can touch the power that mere words have, that a story has.
Will I take advantage of sexual opportunities in South America? Yes. Will I be on the lookout for a serious relationship, for a girl I can import into the United States? No. If you can’t make it work with your own people, the idea of romantic love in a faraway land is more fantasy than reality. Unless, of course, you are trying to become fluent in the place you are going to.
