Last Tango in Buenos Aires

Emotional Unavailability and the Text Message

I love this quote from Jean-Pierre in Montreal, the writer of www.lazingarina.blogspot.com in a comment she made on 'Missing Buenos Aires (or Not)

  'If you're lucky, the guy will do something stupid and sleazy right away so you know to move on. If you're not, he waits till after the getting to know you period, when you two are already involved. That's when its especially painful.'

Men seem to do this a great deal, the hooking you in emotionally and then running away. We tend to call it fear, commitmentphobia or emotional unavailabliity, when the reality could be that they are stoking up their egos. It comes back to the concept of 'Bad Choices'. J-P resents the fact that the choice seems to come down to women as though we are somehow the 'Moral Guardians' of choices and men are allowed to simply be irresponsible but this is not something new and is driven by biology. The irresponsibility we see now in 'Emotional Unavailability' comes from too many choices for men and this is entirely our own fault in how we have handled the Women's Liberation Movement.

The sisters who fought through the sixties (and before) for the sexual revolution are probably horrified at the outcome in young women today. Women now want to enjoy a 'quick shag' that cannot possibly be fulfilling for the numbers that claim it. (Women's biology is simply not created equal to a man's). So now, rather than holding more power in our sexual choices, we have meekly handed the power back to men. With the pill and easy sex, they don't have to get married or pretend to be in a relationship to get sex - they simply text you for it. And in our own backlash against the liberation movement, we not only go along with it, we take it to the extreme. There would not be porn everywhere you look if we did not encourage it.

After my relationship with the BD, I will never again allow text 'romance' - it is simply an excuse to remain distant while demanding what you want - sex and emotional commitment. It's like the cabaceo in tango - I won't do it - If you haven't got the balls to come and ask me for a dance/shag then go elsewhere.

The choice is ours - IF we have the strength to make it. Women as usual, are in competition with each other - now it's not who can catch the most eligible husband, but who can be the biggest slapper. Men won't change until WE make them.

Emotionally Unavailable Men - Everywhere

I am hugely ensconced in the screenplay for 'Men With Axes' and as ever what is being written reflects into life - and vice versa.

Some women - people - are naturally more passionate, romantic than others (Those others might call it obsessive, foolhardy). We carry a torch for a man, wear him in our lapel like a brooch even though he is far away. Our friends say 'Move On' or this state of being is 'Unrequited' but do we only love when it is returned? It seems somewhat calculating. Last weekend I saw Joseph Fiennes in 'Cyrano de Bergerac' as a man who loved his cousin for fifteen years and died without telling her - Why do we not have romance like this in our lives any longer. Move on. Get Over It.

But I digress. There have been motions that it was simply my bad choices that created the fraught relationships in Argentina. While I do not discount the fact that the bad boy is generally more appealing (and as Carlos told me, men prefer women that way too), it is hard to imagine that the vast majority of the women in Argentina are all making the same poor choices. Maybe there are no good choices available. For at least a decade it has been my theory that the men who are able to form relationships do so - Hence the adage 'All the good ones are taken' - and all the others are swimming around in a pool of 'Bad choices'.

I always felt in Argentina that the men were operating in a microcosm of the 1950s - sometimes even the 1850s. Relations were like something out of 'Tess of the D'Urbevilles' where the cad was always disappearing and leaving you with a life in ruins. Or they were something like the pre-liberation movement years when women were possessions in the home like the car in the garage, looking after children or ancients, while the men went off together and had all the fun.

The men were stuck and had not yet caught up with What Women Want now. Still needing to look after -  read 'dominate' - their woman when women are capable of looking after themselves and want a partner to stimulate them in multiple forms. They are still looking at women as they look at their Mothers. But we are not their Mothers - we are no longer our Mothers. We might have a long wait for the stragglers to catch up.

The answer? There is no answer. Every single answer to this question is the same set of games to play and repressing of your personality to suit his caprice. Forget it. He needs to get with the new Woman (And once they get it - the good ones like it. Only the controllers resist). The answer is to get out there with your girlfriends - Adventure, discover yourself, do some challenging things and watch how the men will start flocking around fascinated.

Missing Buenos Aires (or Not)

Although I have moved out of Buenos Aires and am currently spending the summer in England and Wales, I am not done with South America and certainly not finished with the precipitous learning curve of dealing with 'love'. (Novel/screenplay of Argentine/expat love affairs currently in production). I simply could not cope with Buenos Aires for another instant. WHY? Are the people really more unpleasant there than they are anywhere else in the world? The answer quite quickly became yes.

Apart from the fact that for someone who loves mountains. Buenos Aires may possibly be the worst place in the world - humid, low, flat and not one speck of nature for hundreds of miles all around, it is also full of people who really couldn't give a damn.

Portenos are arrogant. Okay many Mediterranean races are termed arrogant but none seem quite so lacking of any reason for the characteristic as those native to Buenos Aires. The violent body checkers swarming the streets of downtown are the worst offenders. Portenos are phoney. I have heard expats from other nations say that at least in their own country they know when someone hates them. Here they pretend to be your best friend, promise the world and then bitch about you to everyone you know. All that kiss-kissing and fake politesse is simply a cover up for how misanthropic they really are - It goes with the jealousy.

Oh yes - Portenos are jealous. Schadenfreude is alive and well and growing like a weed in Buenos Aires. Portenos are greedy - In a world economic crisis when the first world countries are lowering prices to remain economically viable, Portenos are aggressively raising prices daily. My rent went up 20% and my expenses 100% - the landlady expected me to pay for the maintenance to the old building. When I gave notice - she tried, is trying, to sue me and 'reported me' to the British Embassy. These people want it all their own way. Take in the good times - take more in the bad times.

Argentina seems angry that so many expats are now living in their country, taking advantage of low prices. They seem to forget that without us living there, their economy would not have recovered so quickly - or maybe they really just want tourists - so much easier to steal from, no questions asked. Many people applying for residence permits are being refused now. They created the 'rentista' category and you only required 2400 pesos (about £450) per month of income earned from outside the country in order to qualify. Now people with tens of thousands in the bank are being refused because they aren't property owners 'earning' rent. Portenos are stupid - or maybe it's just irrational. Nothing they do makes any sense.

After having my most treasured possessions stolen by customs, having to pay fortunes for a residence permit that needs to be renewed every year, having to pay fortunes to bring a few more possessions into the country (which also needs to be renegotiated every year), having to wait more than a year for the privilege of an identity card (something sane people are strongly resisting in the UK) and having to find someone to guarantee your rent in order to be allowed to live in an apartment not valued in US dollars - Buenos Aires, a city that barely functions and has become as expensive as Europe, Simply was not worth it any more.

Argentina outside of Buenos Aires is a completely different place and the people are a totally different race. And they have beautiful mountains.

Ice Water

What do I miss most about Argentina? Patagonia and Glaciars, nada mas.

Being in England where cranky old toilets use 20 gallons of purified water to flush away a little pee and a plastic tomato planter ordered off the internet arrives packaged in enough boxes to protect a dresden figurine, we realise that some people aren't too bothered about waste.

And it won't be long before the tour buses and Americans jetting into EL Calafate for the day to 'do' Big Ice will have destroyed the beautiful purity of water.