confuse and castrate

Sex in the City is not a TV show that I watch diligently. So when my Dutch friend told me that she sometimes thinks that our lunch conversations resemble those of your dear heroines, I was naturally inclined towards suspicion. Because, or maybe in spite of this, during this particular lunch we chatted about the reasons for humans having such an enlarged thought processing unit, when compared to other mammals. Namely, the seemingly futile effort that both human species have been engaging in for eons: to find a rudimentary understanding of the other.

This conversation happens after another one of my episodes of Dating the American Woman, which usually provide hours of highly entertaining plotlines. Never mind the details, just know that it’s funny and that most of the time I try to tell myself that I enjoy contradictions. If you picture yourself starring in the movie “Sideways”, with a bottle of wine, and a feeling of emptiness where your cojones would usually be located, you are halfway to the embitchenated state that the American male finds hisself in. Which is what I try to avoid.

As a small side note: I have not seen this movie. My prejudice against movies about the castration of the American male is large and my patience limited. All I remember of the trailer are doe eyed dudes in convertibles drinking red whine and wondering where their balls went after the last one chopped them off and sacrificed them on her Altar to Confusion. Unfortunately, the girls here think they can bring the same strategy of Confuse and Castrate to the euro trashy boi that I am.

The husband of my Dutch friend is the envy of all men in my group. What is usually referred to as a woman’s insanity or propensity to wreck dramatized havoc in an otherwise pleasantly uneventful life is seemingly absent from his. She tells me this is so because Dutch men do not put up with the drama, they will simply leave when the girl tries to throw them for a loop. Before you cry wolf, know that when the guys try something that doesn’t fit into the rational pattern of human interaction developed by the low-landers the women do the same thing.

Now imagine young leetle Hansje, walking down a tulip infested street in a village just next to the canal, and this lovely leetle Marietje comes rolling along on her bicycle (which my Germanic grandfather grudgingly returned as part of the last war reparations in 1998). They see each other. They like each other. They agree to meet for coffee. They drink coffee and … (one month interlude here, they are good people, not HOs) kiss. They agree to meet again. Before that happens she lets him know that she thinks it’s not a good idea to keep going in that kissing direction, that she needs more time. But when they meet again, instead of this being true, it is only a matter of proving Hansje’s honorable intent; the game that ensues is a test. If, and only if, he jumps through any number of emotional hoops, he will get to kiss her again. If not, she will deny him. Now, if this would happen in Castration Central (CC) Hansje would gamely try to pass the test, jump through the Emo-Hoops and please his leetle Marietje to no end, just to get some satisfaction. Which, of course, he can't get. But since this is the low country he decides to keep his cojones around a little longer and moves on to a Marietje that puts her money where her mouth is… namely, between her legs (I don’t actually mean that, it just flows nicely, she can put her money in a piggy bank if she so desires). This being her fifth Hansje, Marietje learns that drama is unacceptable if she wants to hold on to a Dutch guy. And Hansje is similarly relieved of whatever silly macho notions he had about how to act around Dutch girls.

Seems to me that for the low-landers it is not about dominance, about castration or about who is on top. Instead it simply is alright for them to demand respect and to give it.

Which explains why the Flying Dutchman is the only one who doesn’t chime in when we share stories from the trenches of dating in CC, and why I am looking for a Dutch mail order bride catalogue. Feel free to send me one at any time.