I don’t know what it is. You will not find that smooth quality anywhere else. None of the other Europeans have it (Brits, Germans, Yugoslavians, Danes, etc., I’m talking to you). But sail a bit lower towards the southern coast of Europe, like France, Italy, Portugal, Greece and mainly Spain, and suddenly the streets (or canal ways) are filled with sweet-talking, laid back men that like nothing more than a glass of Chianti as they look at paintings. Now, seriously, what the fuck is that about? Where does that leave me, and my pack of desi brothers? In the muddy grey area of funny-accented, hairy-bodied masculines with BO – that’s where!
Suave men we may be in our own right, but what chance do we stand against guys ooze charismatic charm akin to Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem, while they speak broken English in their unpronounced accents. And what do they say? Nothing much. Just regular stuff, like “take a left from the next turn”, but they say it with so much passion that any girl would be swooning over them in a moment.
I watched Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona last night, and it kind of pissed me off. Our main protagonist, Juan (played by Javier Bardem) can just walk over to a pair of girls and ask what color their eyes are, and them invite them over to an island to spend three days eating, drinking and making love. And they go! Look, I know it’s a movie, but I’m not so naïve that I would think it doesn’t happen. And who’s the loser in the movie? The straight-talking, no-bullshit, awkwardly romantic guy that works a decent job, makes good money, pays his bills and his mortgage, goes home and has sex with his wife/girlfriend. And that, my friends, is you and me (and don’t pretend otherwise). But these Mediterranean bastards, they will talk about life and its meaning, about the taste of wine (drink some beer, asshole), about the countryside, about not wanting to have a career, about living in the moment, and just when you start thinking that they’re totally off their rockers, the women are head over heels. I spent all my life thinking that women marry for money. And it is true. They’ll marry the rich guy, but they’ll have passionate, no holds barred all-nighters (it’s called “making love”) with the wine-sipping, poem reciting douchebag. Over and over again.
You’ll see it all over the media. In Europe it’s the Spaniards and the Italians. In the Americas, those fucking Peurto Ricans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians are doing it (same breed). They all make us regular folk look so stupid. I look at myself sometimes, and it’s pathetic. It’s almost as if I was specifically manufactured to be unimpressive. Us desis are at the bottom-most rung of the smooth ladder. The Brits have their accents, the Germans have their golden hair, the Americans have America (!); even the fucking Chinese have it okay, ‘cos they got Kung Fu, Confucius, and a history of bleeding tyranny. We got nothing. Oh, wait, we have hair. Loads of it. Wanna touch?
If I ever got a time machine, I would’ve rewritten a bit of history. First off, I’d have gotten rid of Henry VII. That would’ve achieved two things. First, the origins of the British Empire would’ve been eliminated. Second, the defeat of the Spanish and the Portuguese at the hands of the mighty British would’ve been evaded. The Spanish and the Portuguese were both interested in the Indian sub-continent. They would’ve come over, ruled our asses for a few centuries and we’d have adopted their way of life rather than driving right-handed. In the least, they would’ve impregnated some of our ancestors, thereby implanting the douchebag DNA into our genealogy for long after we’ve kicked them out.
Where have our hairy chests and our ability to debate a bargain gotten us, anyway? We work for Microsoft, for Google, for Yahoo!, we make programs, solve problems and all that. But where does that get us with the ladies, on a strictly platonic level. I mean, we do get married eventually, because our mothers find us wives, but do we actually ever score? What would I say if I met a pair of exotic girls from Spain? Come home with me, I will show you my blog and my Star Wars memorabilia? I’m so lame. I’m sitting here writing this shit. You’re sitting there reading it. And those fucking douchebags are scoring with the ladies, the ones that matter, anyway. They’re getting all the street cred, man.
