normally, as soon as i tell someone that i live in spain, ´they ooh and aaah´ about how they love spanish men. the myth of the tall, dark, and handsome latin lover is alive and well. but in reality, i've come to discover that that man, tall dark, handsome latin lover with rhythm and a slick tongue, really only exists in the south of spain. unfortunately, with this difference, comes identifying cultural features, values assigned to these differences and a hierarchy created where some people are better than others.
mixeddutchgirl's boyfriend once articulated the difference, as spanish people see it, in the following 'joke':
3 spanish women get together to talk about their inattentive husbands, who want to be fed and fucked, but never want to help out with the kids or around the house. they don't even clean up after themselves. the three women are sick of it. they decide, together, to boycott sex until their husbands pull their weight with the housework.
the women come together a week later to share their stories of how their experiments went. the first woman, from the catalonia, said, "the first day. nothing happened. i didn't cook. he didn't cook. nothing was cleaned and we didn't have sex. but i didn't back down. on the second day, my husband picked up his dirty clothes off the floor. on the third day, he cooked dinner. and by the end of the week, he was helping out so much around the house, i had to give him some. what a success!!'
(though mdg's boyfriend did translate the joke into english from catalan, he doesn't say shit like 'give him some'. i'm totally paraphrasing.)
the second woman, from madrid, said, "it took my husband until the third day to start helping, but by the end of the week i had to give him some, because he was cooking cleaning and helping out so much. what a success!"
the third woman was from adalucia. "well," she said, "the first day, nothing happened. on the second day, i had to give him some. by the third day, i could open my left eye, and on the fourth, i could open the right eye . . ."
*****
so the story told by the northernmost parts of spain is that the men of the south are less tolerant and sophisticated, more sexual, hot-tempered wife beaters. it can't be a coincidence that their physiognomy, accents, and dialects of the south are likened to those of the latinos of the americas.
let's look at the evidence. spain's southerners tend to have darker coloring. the women have bigger asses and the men are taller. everyone smolders just a bit more in that j. lo/chayanne/eva longoria kind of way. they glide right past the 'd' in the final syllables of regular past participle verbs, so that cansado (tired) becomes 'cansao'. they speak more quickly. more rhythmically.
of course, values are assigned to these differences and a hierarchy created where some people are better than others. southerners are cast in the 'darker' role physically and psychically. like the andalucian husband in the joke, the most macho and ignant of the macho and ignant, who lays hands on his wife cause she won't cook. now, with the obvious exception of the wife-beating, if i say that i prefer the men of southern spain because they are darker and more fiery, am i reinforcing the stereotype?
indeed, you don't have to live in spain for long before you can spot them a mile away.
i went to madrid last weekend to celebrate a good friend's birthday. we ended up in a sort of vaudevillean cabaret of a dance club called 69 petals. the dj wore shades and a leopard print jacket, looking like dude from the B-52's. he had a whole crew. most were dancers, like the gay twins with spiky gumbos, checked shirts, overalls, lipstick and teddy bear backpacks; or the stacked asian girl with glittery panties. and there was the one i really liked, a bad ass blonde bongo drummer in a pink spandex outfit. she had no ass, but she could play those bongos, and my love for the drum has been well documented here.
i walked in, dropped my shit off at the coat check. headed to the bathroom to make sure everything was in its place. headed to the bar to pick up the 'complimentary' drink that came with a 15 euro cover. then we all headed to the dancefloor. i spotted him immediately, dressed casually in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. he looked a bit like che guevara, with the 5 o'clock shadow, chiseled features, and long hair. i thought, 'that one'.
he made his friends take a picture of him and the fat woman woman dressed like a viking. he grabbed her around the waist, and pretended to bite her boob as the flash went off. within 5 minutes he was introducing his fine andalucian self to me. within three hours, we were at his apartment, where he poured me a glass of some flat coke, whipped out the family photo album, and then totally try to ride without a hat.
seemed kind of . . . well . . . who, in this modern world, goes raw on a one night stand? especially if you're young, gifted, black, female and statistically contracting HIV at rates faster than any other demographic? he tried every trick in the book. from talking really dirty in that beautiful accent, to whining and complaining that condoms didn't fit him. he said he 'normally' doesn't use condoms, and assuming this was not his first casual encounter, i wondered about the women who let him get away with this. those women, probably smart and together when it came to careers and friends and things. oh, the choices women make (or don't) for the sake of male attention and affection. my will was done, in the end. we stayed safe, and it was the best of both worlds. actually, we're both dark and tropical people, exoticized in similar, complimentary ways. it was more like parallel universes colliding.
in the aftermath, i cannot stop thinking about that 'joke'. i cannot stop thinking about the legendary, nobel-prize winning james watson, who started a firestorm of controversy when he, among other things, publicly speculated on the sexual prowess of tropical people. if the man who identified the damn double helix makes sweeping generalizations, how can the rest of us escape it? in what i'll call a final james watsonian twist, he was packing. we tried 3 different condoms before one fit.
