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What starts as tragedy and ends as farce?
A little more than two years ago, I got to know this girl we'll call Susan. I was just off a nasty breakup with "Sylvia" (yes, the same Sylvia who I dated through Beijing Blues), and Susan was trying to use me for networking so she could get a job that would let her stay in America after graduating from her masters' program. We went out on a few dates but things went south fast once she started talking about marriage as a plan B if she couldn't find a job and her visa ran out. This came as a surprise to me, because I didn't even consider her my girlfriend at the time.
Anyhow, before things went totally pear-shaped, we went on a double date with her friend we'll call Tara and some Korean guy. Susan's introduction for the double date? She said that line all insecure girlfriends will eventually say:
"Come check out my really hot friend! I'm sure you'll think she's prettier than me."
Tara had just broken up with this guy we'll call Vincent. Vincent doesn't really figure into this story except as a backdrop for why Tara was such an emotional wreck and why she was going on one-week stints with random dudes from her masters' seminars. (Hint: he was an emotionally manipulative, selfish flake. I can empathize).
The four of us were sitting in Bandera, this quasi-Latin place on Michigan Avenue, when Tara and Susan went off to the bathroom and Korean Guy and me start talking. I mention that I've been seeing Susan casually, and he nods, smiles, says that he hopes things between him and Tara will progress to that point. He went on to deliver the subtle line of brag that all Asian guys will say at one point or another:
"So, yeah, she was kinda sad and then she ended up in my room, and then she left in the morning and was a lot happier."
I laughed, pretended to nod along. Tara and Susan came back, we got on our respective cabs, and I broke up with Susan before the cab ride ended.
Fast forward three months. Tara got an off-and-on boyfriend named Frank. When things were off between Tara and Frank, I would call Tara out to have her play wingman (or wing-woman) so she felt loved. I had a long-d girlfriend at that point, but things were pretty strained since I had just quit a very good job to do my crazy dream of a startup.
Things went on like this for another four months. A new school year started and Tara hit year two of her masters program, and started settling down with Frank for good. Sometime around then, I broke up with my long-d girlfriend, and Tara came over to comfort me. We got drunk, but nothing happened.
Frank, however, didn't take this very well. Frank and Tara, you see, were both mutually jealous and mutually flaky--a terrible composition, as inherently unstable as a mix of nitric acid and glycerin. I didn't know it, but sometime around then Frank, through some fucked-up emotional logic of his, started rawdogging it. (To patch things up? Demonstrate commitment? Fuck if I know.)
Anyhow, two weeks later, Tara told me she had broken up with Frank, this time for the last time. Then she told me (as opposed to asking me like normal people) she was going to come over to my place for dinner. She was kinda cute and I was single, so I didn't really care. She decided to surprise me by showing up with a friend we'll call Tiramisu Girl.
Tiramisu Girl was one of those rare Asian girls that was stacked, slim and had a pretty face. Put bluntly, she was gorgeous. I quickly realized this was Tara's version of Susan's test--which was amusing because Tara was pretty cute in her own way too (slim, long-haired elfin lass, she was). So we spent the evening munching on things and getting progressively more wasted. Then I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, Tara was gone.
TG explained, standing in my living room, that Tara and her had flipped a coin to determine which one of them was going to be sleeping with me that night. TG won the coin toss and I dodged a bullet.
The reason I call TG Tiramisu Girl is because every time I would see her afterwards (or at least until she started dating her white next-door neighbor with a seven-year-old because he could give her a green card) she would make me Tiramisu.
Anyhow, things were going pretty good between TG and I. One day I heard from her that Tara and Frank were getting back together. I immediately wagered fifty bucks that those two would be breaking up by the new year. TG then dropped a bombshell:
"They're dating each other because Tara is pregnant. And given how far along she is, you're damn lucky I won that coin toss."
I nearly choked on the espresso powder and mascarpone cheese.
Things were always a little different between me and TG after that. I think it was because she realized how much of a commitment-phobe I was, so she started seeing her neighbor shortly thereafter.
Anyhow, Tara and Frank lasted past the new year and got married. Tara's pregnancy was pretty obvious by that point... and also, by that point, TG and I had regressed to being simple friends with an occasional drunk hook-up whenever her neighbor was out of town. TG tried to collect on her bet, so I doubled down.
"They're going to get divorced within three months of the kid being born."
Two months later, I figured (based on my limited knowledge of biology) that it was about time and I sent Tara a congrats email. She sent me back a single line:
"I've been in Shenzhen for the past three weeks."
Apparently the issue was the financial disparity between Frank's family (Frank was a scholarship kid) versus Tara's family (rich and very cultured). Tara would later tell me sad stories about how Frank put on the most threadbare of wedding ceremonies and how Frank was a cheap bastard who wouldn't even chip in on the down payment for their condo and how Frank's very traditional Chinese family said something like "Tara now belongs to us and should serve us", and I would nod along on Skype while doing Excel work. Frank wrote a twenty-thousand word blog post about how Tara was a terrible wife and how Tara's family was a bunch of snobbish assholes.
Neither of them talked much about their daughter, which Tara left in Chicago less than two weeks after birth. Frank ended up having custody of her. To his credit, he does post a lot of baby pictures on his Weibo and Facebook--pictures which Tara's ex, Vincent, often ends up liking/thumbs-upping in lieu of Tara (who is still not on speaking terms with Frank).
TG still hasn't paid up on the bet. Instead, she invited me to her upcoming wedding. I'm not sure if I should go.
I never heard from Susan again.
  
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What's the lesson here? Be careful whom you date? Keep ladyfingers, coffee powder, mascarpone, and cocoa lying around just in case a girl turns out to be a great pastry maker? Keep coins away from girls who want to get in your pants unless you want to be the first(?) asian guy on the Maury show?
Also, "The reason I call TG Tiramisu Girl is because": it's "the reason is that", not "is because"; just a random comment.
Interesting stuff. I enjoy your short short stories.
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On February 18 2013 12:33 Shady Sands wrote:To his credit, he does post a lot of baby pictures on his Weibo and Facebook--pictures which Tara's ex, Vincent, often ends up liking/thumbs-upping in lieu of Tara (who is still not on speaking terms with Frank).
somehow i found that very funny hahaha
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On February 18 2013 13:05 Aerisky wrote:
What's the lesson here? Be careful whom you date? Keep ladyfingers, coffee powder, mascarpone, and cocoa lying around just in case a girl turns out to be a great pastry maker? Keep coins away from girls who want to get in your pants unless you want to be the first(?) asian guy on the Maury show?
Also, "The reason I call TG Tiramisu Girl is because": it's "the reason is that", not "is because"; just a random comment.
Interesting stuff. I enjoy your short short stories.
The lesson here is that many women want to sleep with Shady Sands 5/5
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On February 18 2013 13:17 Rainmaker5 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2013 13:05 Aerisky wrote:
What's the lesson here? Be careful whom you date? Keep ladyfingers, coffee powder, mascarpone, and cocoa lying around just in case a girl turns out to be a great pastry maker? Keep coins away from girls who want to get in your pants unless you want to be the first(?) asian guy on the Maury show?
Also, "The reason I call TG Tiramisu Girl is because": it's "the reason is that", not "is because"; just a random comment.
Interesting stuff. I enjoy your short short stories. The lesson here is that many women want to sleep with Shady Sands 5/5
hahaha and he's the one talking about some "subtle line of brag" earlier
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How is it a brag? These are China girls and if I'm remembering correctly Shady is an American-born Chinese with good career prospects. He might as well be Hugh Hefner to any mainland girl with a brain. It's really not hard to clinch it with those credentials, no matter how hot the mainland girl is.
I 5/5ed. Funny story. And TG gets extra points for making tiramisu with ladyfingers and mascarpone. That's the way it should be done. Not that cake flour, whipped cream disgusting shit I see sometimes. If she uses sweet marsala too, I'd def have kept her around!
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you should at least credit the worst break up thread for inspiration :p
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On February 18 2013 14:16 SamsungStar wrote:
How is it a brag? These are China girls and if I'm remembering correctly Shady is an American-born Chinese with good career prospects. He might as well be Hugh Hefner to any mainland girl with a brain. It's really not hard to clinch it with those credentials, no matter how hot the mainland girl is.
I 5/5ed. Funny story. And TG gets extra points for making tiramisu with ladyfingers and mascarpone. That's the way it should be done. Not that cake flour, whipped cream disgusting shit I see sometimes. If she uses sweet marsala too, I'd def have kept her around!
How is it not a brag? If you tell it to anyone on the street, they wouldn't care about the circumstances of the gfs, just that he's had a lot of gfs. It's like the white guy who goes to Korea, gets a hot Korean girl, and posts pics about her all the time. People who don't really know the context will be impressed ("omg you have a hot girl!"), while those who do won't be, and he doesn't really explain the circumstances anyways ("mainland girls are way easier if you're American and have a good education with decent job prospects, bonus points if you're not ugly").
Though it's kind of funny in a way. Shady's philosophy about women is colored by the fact that he seems to predominantly date mainland girls, and then he sounds sad and cynical about it half the time when it seems they're in it for the dough. Of course they will seem that way; they grew up in a materialistic, Confucius culture where marrying a rich, decent-looking guy is the ideal path for a girl. If you don't want a gf who seems to only care about you for your money/career, then don't date mainland girls, who will in all likelihood be more materialistic. I mean, yeah, there are exceptions (see: ones who have spent so much time outside the mainland that they're pretty much Asian-American in thought anyways and/or some of the queer ones), but it's common sense, really. >_>
I had this talk a few weeks ago with one of my mainland-born female friends who just got naturalized last year, and she says she doesn't date mainland guys, not because she's not attracted to Asians (she's had Asian-American bfs before and has a huge crush on this Asian-American girl), but because she doesn't like their personalities, since they're often more materialistic, conservative, and career-focused than she likes.
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I always forget how large the culture gap is. I mean I've dated Indian and Asian girls, made friends with and dormed with Asian guys but damn it still shocks me. It feels I'm reading fiction... Oh well, thanks for the story, good as always. I really enjoy your narrative style
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This blog somehow depresses me.
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On February 18 2013 17:14 WaveofShadow wrote:
This blog somehow depresses me.
Every time I read a Shady Sandy blog, I feel depressed.
Maybe he's inured to the pettiness, but I would be foaming-at-the-mouth mad after all he's been through.
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On February 18 2013 17:32 Ooshmagoosh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2013 17:14 WaveofShadow wrote:
This blog somehow depresses me. Every time I read a Shady Sandy blog, I feel depressed. Maybe he's inured to the pettiness, but I would be foaming-at-the-mouth mad after all he's been through.
Why? It comes with the territory
You want someone that looks like this?
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Lin_Chi-Ling_%28cropped%29.jpg/585px-Lin_Chi-Ling_%28cropped%29.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://news.ehomeday.com/eWebEditor/uploadfile/2010121163133284.JPG)
Pony up... unless you can somehow make her fall in love with you when she looks like this
![[image loading]](http://1823.img.pp.sohu.com.cn/images/blog/2011/2/20/18/17/e11473366_12efb32f9fbg215.jpg)
Unfortunately (or fortunately) Asian societies (especially China) tend to be very simple in this regard. Some people even go as far as to say this is why China is such a maniacally economics-focused and selfish society--all the guys are too busy fattening up their wallets to get laid to really give a fuck about anything else.
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On February 18 2013 13:05 Aerisky wrote:
What's the lesson here? Be careful whom you date? Keep ladyfingers, coffee powder, mascarpone, and cocoa lying around just in case a girl turns out to be a great pastry maker? Keep coins away from girls who want to get in your pants unless you want to be the first(?) asian guy on the Maury show?
Also, "The reason I call TG Tiramisu Girl is because": it's "the reason is that", not "is because"; just a random comment.
Interesting stuff. I enjoy your short short stories.
The lesson? Love begins as a tragedy, and ends as a farce. Or maybe it's the other way around. Or maybe I'm just bitter because V-day was a waste of time and I found out the latest girl was just a crazy gold-digger who visited my LinkedIn profile before she responded to my "how was your week do you wanna go on a date" email and asked me, before setting foot in my bedroom, if my apartment was "用现金买的" (paid for in full with cash).
I should just start dating white girls, so much less of a headache
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On February 18 2013 18:37 Shady Sands wrote:I should just start dating white girls, so much less of a headache
Hahahahahaha... no.
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I suppose, but when there's lesson and it's a cautionary tale, usually a normative rather than positive is involved.
Hope you're doing alright. It's definitely tougher depending on your field/environment to find a girl who will be true and open to you after you're out of college and everything, as people are less native/innocent, and more wealth/position-focused after.
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On February 18 2013 19:31 Aerisky wrote:
I suppose, but when there's lesson and it's a cautionary tale, usually a normative rather than positive is involved.
Hope you're doing alright. It's definitely tougher depending on your field/environment to find a girl who will be true and open to you after you're out of college and everything, as people are less native/innocent, and more wealth/position-focused after.
It's not even like the non-mainstream girls are any less cray-cray
I mean, I remember a conversation I had with a one-night stand in bed once
This was all in mandarin
"I think the simplest way for me to live as a girl is to fuck a bunch of guys and make it so none of them knows whether the resulting kid is theirs"
"why"
"Then I can let my kid be supported by a bunch of uncles as opposed to one father, it's less risky for me that way"
Cue a quick check under the sheets to make sure that I was, indeed, protected
And this girl was a Qinghua undergrad too, what the fuck man
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All Asian girls want is any white guy with semen. Debating whether FoBs or ABCs want white guys more has merit!
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On February 18 2013 21:53 Burrfoot wrote:
All Asian girls want is any white guy with semen. Debating whether FoBs or ABCs want white guys more has merit!
Maybe 10 years ago
Things have changed now, believe me
It's all about the money
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Us Asian guys have no chance against white guys. Especially if we're talking Ailee quality females.
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EPT
