My roommate from Denmark was locked out of his room the other day and waited in the kitchen for the landlord to deliver a spare key. I cooked dinner in the meanwhile and we got to talking. At some point he asked me, “Why are you here?”

—

“Everyone keeps asking me that and I wish I had a quick, powerful answer, but it comes down to two things: wanting to explore, something I think most men want to do, and wanting to get away from the American way of life. I really can’t say which one motivates me more to be here.

“In America you go to college, which you’re told is supposed to be the most fun years of life, and then you get a job taking orders from some pencil dick in this grand mission to chase money and accumulate stuff. I don’t need stuff—all I need in life is a laptop and good speakers. I’ll be happy anywhere because it’ll keep me busy. I can write, read, listen to music, stay in touch with friends and family… I don’t need more than that. Now I date girls young enough who think that type of lifestyle is ‘cool,’ but if I ever want to have a family some day I’ll probably have to make some changes.

“I don’t want to work 40 hours a week doing the same thing to be insulted with a 3% raise and a pat on the head every year. I don’t want to count down the days to the weekend where I punish my liver because my week was so lifeless. I don’t want to wait until Saturday to take a book to a coffee shop and lose track of time. In college they should sit you down on your first day and say: ‘Ladies and gentleman, your mission in life is to make the days of the week irrelevant.’ What day is today? I don’t know. Days of the week are bar and club names for me now, places I know are good. Sunday: Casa Rosa. Wednesday: Casa da Matriz. Thursday: Democratica. Saturday: Rio Scenarium. I feel like I’ve made it because I don’t care what day it is.

“Americans are lazy but they’re not. When it comes to money they’ll work like fucking mules. You’ll never see someone put in as many hours as an American, kiss ass like an American. They’ll do anything to make that extra dollar to get that plasma television or dine in some frou-frou restaurant that got a good review by some idiot on the internet. They’ll grin and take it in the ass when the boss asks them to stay in on Saturday morning a month before performance reviews are due. They will work and barely complain when you tell them they can’t take a long vacation. Hell, even if you give them a lot of time off they wouldn’t know what to do with it. They’ll take a trip to the Caribbean or some pre-programmed cruise to be trapped with a bunch of whales, one handshake from projectile diarrhea.

“When it comes to anything else Americans don’t want to lift a finger. I mean look at heath care. Americans think it’s pills and MRIs. Why aren’t many people connecting the dots between the American diet and health care? Americans eat like pigs, look like pigs, get sick with diabetes, heart disease, god knows what else, and then complain that health care is too expensive. Their lifestyle makes it expensive. Don’t get me wrong I believe the government should provide free health care for its citizens, but exercising four times a week is my health care. Eating vegetables, cooking all my meals, avoiding junk food, drugs, stress—that’s my health care. I probably spend more hours a week on my health than on making money. Americans don’t cook or simply take care of themselves because they’re too tired from making money. They want to pop pills with side effects to keep eating ‘comfort’ food and sit on their asses. After putting in a tough eight hours or more with the man that’s all they have the energy to do.

“And the women… ‘I don’t need a man. I’m independent. I don’t need a man, I got my own money, my own job. I don’t need a man.’ The result is that an American girl thinks it’s weakness to show a man how much she needs him. I don’t know if you had a corporate job in Denmark, but dating an American woman is like dealing with coworkers. They’re very careful with what they say. Every laugh is meticulously orchestrated—she must’ve laugh too hard now or you may think she thinks you’re funny. Every word’s use was analyzed and judged—she mustn’t show too much interest because that’s weakness. ‘Shit I just showed too much interest I have to be cold now—let me make fun of him about something.’ I’m lucky I’ve spent enough time down here to know that that simply isn’t real. That’s not how women, as in women of the human race, really are. Those American girls are basically programmed to be more distant than their nature. And they wonder why they’re so unhappy. Nature is a powerful thing, and you’ll always lose when you go against it.

“The other night I went out with this Brazilian girl. Very cute girl, a few years younger than me. It was our second date and we went out to some gringo bar and after our first drink she looks at me and says, ‘If you were leaving back to America right now, I’d come with you. I’d take a chance and do it.’ Other Brazilian girls have done and said similar ‘weak’ things, and Colombian girls as well. And that’s real, because the nature of a woman is she needs a man. These girls here understand that. They don’t hide it, and I don’t punish them for it. A girl that knows she needs a man, that that’s the point of her existence, will treat men very well. She’ll pleasure him, make him happy, hold onto him a little tighter at night. You think an American girl will ever say something like that?! If I tell an American girl some of the things that the girls down here have said to me, she’ll be shocked, ‘But but that goes against the book! They’re showing too much interest! They’re showing weakness!’

“You remember that American girl I brought back a couple weeks ago? Okay I know I’m in Brazil and fucking an American girl looks bad, but truth is American girls have become perfectly designed for easy, meaningless sex. It’s like one step above jerking off… no emotions, just business—like getting with a prostitute. It takes just three hours to get them in bed, and you’re fucking her for the first time and she says cunt this, cock that, like she’s in a porno movie, because she watches that too. I just met the bitch and she’s moaning that she likes how much I’m beating her pussy up! Look that’s fun, like how jerking off with your left hand is fun, but it’s not normal. A normal girl will be quiet the first time, will be self-conscious, will wonder if she’s pleasing you properly or not.

“The Western culture has broken the women. A girl wakes up and she’s 30 and has no man and no hope for a man, yet she already passed on several who didn’t give her the tinglies or butterflies in her stomach or whatever the fuck term she uses. Because of course the culture gave them this sense of entitlement as well, to think that with mediocre looks and ten extra pounds they can get a hot stud like they see in the magazines in line at the grocery store. And then they get old and have to compete with younger and prettier girls. They can’t win. They won’t. So what do they do? They throw themselves on young guys who still value older women as ‘experienced’ and ‘mature.’ But those guys age and get a clue, and then you see the woman going on 40, working hard at the gym, desperately trying to fight the sag, bragging that she fucked this college guy. What a miserable existence.

“My parents aren’t American but in the end I’m a product of that culture and it takes a lot of time and effort to fight the programming —to do what nature intended you to do. Unfortunately I think I’ll always be tethered to America. My family is there and I can’t even talk to my mom on the phone without her guilting me into coming back and taking care of her, even though she doesn’t need taken care of. I don’t know… I’m going to go back and the first month is going to be great with my family, and my friends, and then after that they’ll be nothing for me. I don’t fit in there, and I don’t exactly fit in anywhere else either. What am I going to do in the States—get an American girlfriend? Get a 9-5? Fuck that. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”[culturewar]