That cruel game called dating- Part II

Veni, vidi, vici


Tonight, husband is watching “Belly of the Beast”. You just know it has to be good. Honestly, how many movies does Steven Seagal make in a year?


So this friend lived in Hungary for a while. We were talking about him dating Hungarian girls.

I have never been to Hungary and never knew that they might have such a fascinating way of picking up girls. My friend was telling me about meeting this gorgeous Hungarian girlfriend, and mentioned that he ‘grabbed her‘ as she walked past him in a bar.

Grabbed her?

If anyone tried to grab me in a bar, a date with that man would be the least likely outcome. The very thought of a stranger grabbing me in a public place out of the blue, without at least some sort of verbal foreplay, makes me quite uncomfortable.

So of course, I wanted to know more. How is that possible? Did they really end up going out after such an introduction?

My friend explained that he would not have had a chance had he tried any of his more subtle, western approaches. In the US, he explained, it would be the norm not to call the girl for a couple of days after you’d met; not to appear like a desperate stalker. In Hungary, unless you grabbed the bull by the horns, you lost your chance. You have to act quickly, without any hesitation. No games are played. No prelude. You come, you see, you conquer. He saw this girl in a bar, they made an eye contact (Oh, that’s OK then.) and so, as she walked past him, he just grabbed her.

I thought of back home, and my dating days. Oh, those sweet and sour days...So many years passed since then!

Nobody ever grabbed me as I was walking past. To be honest, I never really liked meeting men in bars. Must be a cultural thing. Azeri girls spend all their lives fighting off strangers. Because we are so used to harassment at every step we take.

You chat to a taxi driver and he will assume you want him right there and then. You smile to a waiter and he will ask for your phone number. You walk past a construction site...Well, you just don’t walk past construction sites.

So if you are a cool chick back in Baku, you are probably very good at brushing men off. It is an automatic reaction.

Once, a long time ago, in my single days, I was visiting Druggie in London.

She and I were in a pub, having a few drinks, when this bloke just appeared out of nowhere. He must have been sitting nearby for a while, but I had not even noticed. He walked up to us and, looking straight at me, asked if I would have a dinner with him the next night. The conversation lasted a few seconds. He barely had time to finish the sentence. I glanced at him quickly, said ‘no, thanks ‘, and continued with my conversation. Druggie was shocked. She thought I was incredibly cruel and rude.

“Poor bloke must have been sitting there for ages, gathering up the courage to walk over here!”- she said.

But I just shrugged my shoulders. Back home, guys expect you to say ‘no’. At least once.

From my experience, unless you meet someone via someone, who knows someone, who worked with someone, it is just not worth it.

But that is back home.

A secretary at my very first job in London was telling me how she met her boyfriend. She came out of the gym one night. He pulled up in a car and asked if she wanted a lift. She glanced at him and thought she might have seen him in the gym. The car looked good too. So she got in.

I listened and smiled. I was so incredibly happy for her. Happy that she was not raped, cut into a thousand tiny pieces, placed in a suitcase and thrown down the Thames.

So yes, I have heard a lot of interesting dating stories in my life. But this Hungarian one beats them all. It goes against everything I thought I knew about men and relationship, against my instincts. I always thought that certain basic principles work everywhere. But this? A man grabs you in a bar, and you smile, land on his lap, snog him, have sex with him straight away...and he respects you and does not think you are a bit of a blyad?

Wow. I really want to be open-minded here. But either I have no idea about these things, or my friend was hanging out in a kind of a bar where you meet that kind of girls. There are plenty of bars like that all over the world.