I hate culture. you'll understand why in a few minutes, if you take the time to read this. but I want to bitch and moan about this for a minute before I really get into why I'm writing this here.

culture is a great tool. it's useful for all those little parts of society that otherwise would be gray areas. culture is the tool used by parents to kick dead-beat kids out. it's culturally unacceptable to be 35 and living in your mom's basement. culture tells us how to deal with one another- how to cheat in an acceptable way, or why not to cheat if it's acceptable to beat the skull of a cheater in with a broom handle.

but culture can really fuck up your life. now's the part where I start telling you how.

in asian culture, theres the concept of 'face'. of keeping up appearances, of not looking inadequate, whether you are or not. you can't afford to, you have to save face. if you do something bad, you have to show that you had no choice, and then it becomes something bad that someone else did that happened to you.

here, in a real situation, is a girl. she's travelling away from home, to go see her friends who live in another city, in another province. with her, she has her yearly earnings in a little purse. little does she know what's about to befall her!

she drops the purse down a crack in the bus, and is unable to get it back because the bus is moving. she can't (culturally) ask the bus driver to stop because she just dropped a lot of money out the window. she can't get off and go back, it's too far from the nearest bus stop, and if she doesn't find the money she can't get back on another bus and is stranded in a strange town- if she's lucky enough to be near a town- with no friends and no resources. cultural fucking situation number one.

this is a cultural situation. she's fucked, because of her culture, and theres nothing she can do about it.

now, this fucked little girl gets to the place where she was travelling to and meets up with her friends. her friends are doing good, she's glad to see them does she need a ride to the hotel? actually, she can't afford a hotel. why? see cultural fucking situation number one. what can she do? stay with her friends, which is cool for a night or two, but not more than that- cultural fucking situation number two.

her family! that's an option, right? wrong. welcome to cultural fucking situation number three. her family is out, because they're the reason she HAS culture. she has to look good to them, and anyway, her family doesn't get on well. her mom would probably help her, but her dad would be abusive and call her a careless bitch. even in her situation, culturally she can't do anything and she probably doesn't really want to because of her asshole dad.

wait, here we have a solution! friend number one is going out with an old foreigner guy who has a lot of money (relatively speaking)! it's not culturally acceptable, really, but who cares? the money is good, the sex isn't terrible, the guy will be dead in ten years anyway, so who cares, right?

well, this guy has a friend. this friend has tried going out with bar girls and prostitutes and so on and has been robbed and cheated and so forth, because all the girls know he has money, can't speak the local language, and hasn't got a clue. so anything goes. but he's tired of it, he wants a good girl.

like the girl mentioned at the beginning of this. cultural situation number four.

so the girl goes with the guy for a bit until he gives her money to go home, and then she goes back home. over, right? wrong. cultural situation number five. the guy is ancient- a fucking rag doll with rigor mortis- and the girl goes back to him, because it's bad face (cultural fucking situation) to leave him, it makes her look like a whore- which, basically, she had to be in order to survive in this case. understandable, right?

and everything is happy and uneventful for a while.

now enter a new character. a charming foreigner with an easygoing manner, speaks her language fluently and with an intriguing accent. he's younger than her by a few years, but she likes him anyway. cultural situation number five. this strapping young lad asks for her number, gives her his... she ignores this, right? she's got a boyfriend, who's about as personable as a corpse and roughly in the same physical condition. he's not helping her at all in any way that she really needs... and this young guy looks appealing. this is how affairs start.

the young guy is clueless. he has no idea that this girl already has a 'boyfriend'- if 60 pounds of sagginess with gray hair can be called that- but she's into him, and he spares no expense on her, taking her on their first date to a fine italian restaurant on the river side, where they enjoy a light meal with some social banter, get to know each other better, have a few glasses of wine, and afterwards walk arm in arm and eventually hand-in crotch along the banks of the river in the moonlight.

little does our young hero know about the brick that the girl is about to drop on his crotch.

the next month is one of near continuous rendzevous in various places- movie theaters, restaurants, bars, and so on. the girl enjoys herself immensely, she's becoming attracted to this young guy in ways that scare her. the young guy becomes more and more attracted to the girl.

then the girl starts to shy away. at first the guy is worried that something bad has happened as a result of all that sex- maybe foreigners are too big for asians? maybe something has ruptured, maybe she's pregnant? so he arranges to meet her at a hospital where she will go to be checked out.

then the girl sends several emails saying that she has to break up with him, that this can't continue, but she gives no reason. as you can guess, the young man is flabbergasted. what the fuck could this possibly be? was she trying to get pregnant by him? she was on the pill, it doesn't seem likely, and anyway most of the sex was oral or with condoms, although he recalls with a few guilty pangs the times that no condoms were used.

the guy goes to the hospital to meet the girl anyway. he wants to know what the hell happened. the girl is hurting, and obviously won't talk about it in public, so the guy rushes back to his house, cleans it up, the girl comes over after her examination, and proceeds to tell him the whole story, probably omitting a few details (which obviously can't be mentioned here if she did).

after that, the guy, who is tired, goes to bed. the girl joins him. after four hours of passionate sex, the guy is more confused than he's ever been in his life, the girl is probably just the same, and nothing has been resolved. after several more sex sessions like this, the guy is still confused but cares less, and has feelings for the girl roughly the same as when he first started seeing her. old guys have no libido to compete with him, he starts to reason to himself. "the old guy will die soon." or "maybe she will leave him for me" or "maybe he will discover us and leave her, maybe he will even give us his blessing. he's like a father to the girl after all- an abusive rich drunk father. other than the rich part, thats the only type of father the girl has ever known."

and thats where I must leave this story. now do you see why I hate culture? now do you see why I can't stand someone who won't look at the way their life can be improved to what is a 'normal' level and do what needs to be done?

if you haven't guessed, I was the second guy in this fucking story. I was the young buck who stepped up to the plate and found somebody already batting. I don't like this shit. this if the most confusing fucking thing I've ever been involved with, and thats saying something. I don't like cheating, I'd never cheat myself, I know I simply wouldn't be able to deal with myself, but what the hell can be done to make this girl decide?!

shit.

culture is just whats accepted by the general public, unless violence is involved as punishment, you dont have to "obey" culture.

read the whole thing. this isn't about me obeying culture or not, this is about somebody else being stuck with their culture, which they've already obeyed and that's put them in a fucked situation.

I love culture so fuck you. You can't say you hate culture because you're a product of it whether you admit to it or not.

I'll read your post when I'm more soberer

I was talking about "saving face" she isn't in her country, she didn't have to put herself in a rut like that. Even if she was in her country, she can still say stop the bus (unless their is a threatening punishment outside of embarrassment/shame.)

no, she IS in her country, and so am I. the potential punishment is them saying "you want off the bus? great. we want you off the bus too. bye!"

She dropped her purse THROUGH A CRACK IN THE BUS?

Was this a bus in Zimbabwe or what?

Either way, you've been used and played and lied to. She could have left the old man on the first night, or not even fucked him. She's a slut, and kudos for catching his 80 year old VD.

whats worse, losing a purse full of cash, or a damn bus ride

I like your writing style. Mysterious.
Unfortunately I have no advice to give other than continue seeing her until more feelings of doubt arise, at which point you should consider cutting ties and moving on.

Wait, so, she dropped all her money out the window of a bus and pulled an anna nicole to be honerable??

not zimbabwe. southeast asia. buses are shitty here too.

yes, she did the 'honorable' thing. which.. yeah. I mean.. what the hell.

the thing that I'm picking up on with her staying with the old guy is that he's paying for her to go to college (she has one semester left, I think). thats basically it, that and the whole 'face' thing.

side note, if it weren't for the old guy situation, we'd totally be living together already. even with that situation, if I could get the girl to leave him I'd seriously consider marrying her. it's not about how you start a relationship, it's about how you finish it, you know?

so shes whoring herself out to pay for college? while still dating you?

basically the way she's explained it- and I don't generally believe things like this until I have proof- is that she hasn't told the old guy she's cutting him off until he's finished paying for her school.

thats about it. of course, she could be just blowing it out her ass, in which case fuck her, if she wants to fuck with people that actually want to help her then she can learn to deal with this shit on her own, but I- and many people I know that have met her and known her for a while- don't think this is the case.

Well hot damn, men believe the stupidest things.

You're like sirlicksalot but in reverse. She's using him for money, she's using you for sex (and probably other shit you do for her). Enjoy.

Also, you're from southeast asia, so the penis jokes could go on all day, but you've suffered enough.

no, actually, I'm from america, and my dick is probably bigger than yours since you're coming out and making that kind of comment, but whatever. i don't want to get into this.

and yeah, it's easy to believe stupid shit, and I know this, which is why I'm taking nothing she says at face value. but the things I do know is that she does like me (a), she's not a whore by choice- aka, she'd rather just have one guy, it's just that shit like this happens (b) and that this is the stupidest fucking situation I've ever been in, and I may end up just saying "fuck this" entirely because of that, and the hell with the demons she's gonna have the rest of her life after the old guy dies, she can deal with that bullshit on her own (c).

If you really like her, that's fine, stay with her. But at least have an open relationship (whether you inform her of your openness is up to you) so that when she does break your heart, you have a fallback girl(s).

I hate culture.

So do I. (http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5038/hateculturegz2.jpg)