The Professional Girlfriend Part 1

People come far and wide to experience this grown man’s adventure land; a culture underpinned by our proto needs of survival and replication. Everything is more or less driven by sex and money. The more you have of either, the better and more readily available your options manifest. To adapt, you need to welcome a paradigm shift.

There was a time where you heard about the Việt Kiều male parading his exploits from his recent trip to Vietnam. “They [Vietnamese girls] go crazy for you. All you have to do is flash your US passport”; the shit he spewed from his mouth usually fell within this subtext. But now, shit’s different. My perspective is different. There’s a subculture here that’s the backlash to the ways of yesteryear. The game has been reinvented. Women are pretty spectacular social creatures, and now more than ever, they’re showing it. Through mistakes made, hearts being broken, and expectations left unmet, they have been able to adapt and more crucially, benefit from the rules of the game. Enter, the professional girlfriend…

Most “pros” fit a certain profile; model-esque features with three different phones--one being an iPhone--and if they played their cards right, a Hermes Birkin. Their Facebook pages are just a first-to-5000-friends brouhaha, with status updates that talk about how sad they are, or a poor attempt at writing some Engrish cliché, and usually have a melodramatic song lyric to boot. If you’re trying to go after one of these girls, have your rebuttals ready for the laundry list of excuses they have to let you down…without sounding bitchy; it’s to test your persistence! “Xinh loi ne a, e ko di dc. E phai ve hue. A thog cam ne? hix hix, huhu” yadda yadda yadda. They’ve seen it all. They’ve been implicitly offered penis since they were 13 years old. In the words of Chris Rock, “Every time a man's being nice to you [women], he's offering you dick.” Their caked-on makeup is to mask the battle scars of the wars they’ve been through that show on their face. They’re usually 23 years old, look like they’re 31, and have the gumption of a 35 year old.

In Saigon, there’s hardly any sexual tension, no build-up or letdown, only the preservation of dating norms. There’s only what money can get you, and you can have a girlfriend if you’re willing to shower her with gifts, a monthly allowance (I’ve heard of allowances up to $15K USD a month), or a new car/motorbike. It’s the harsh reality. There’s no one to blame. Somewhere, the norms got shifted, and the chicken-and-the-egg argument comes to pass. What came first, the arrogant bastards who’d fellate themselves if they could or the once-romanticized-turned-callous women who love to be with them? In any case, Mars and Venus continue to be at odds.

My word of advice: Have your fun. But keep hoping for hope. It’s a romanticized world, and if you become too hardened, you miss all the opportunities and experiences it has to offer. One day, things are peachy. Then the next, you meet someone that might flip your fucking world upside down. Being upside down with the blood rushing to your head…it’s a beautiful letdown. Just remember that you can swim in the sea of pointless pussy, just don’t drown.

DL