This is Why

I owe Jane and Xiaodi an explanation for my paralysis last night.

There’s a guy at work that always used to ask whether I had a girlfriend. I’d always respond, rather sheepishly, with a muted “no, not now.” He would ask me this a few more times on a weekly basis at the onset of my internship. Then the probing promptly stopped. I think it was about right after I brought Eddie to the staff BBQ.

How do I explain to him that, in all probability, I would, but cultural factors inhibit me from doing so?

There is a grain of thought that goes that if a male doesn’t have experience in a serious romantic relationship – say by age 21 – then that man will be handicapped for life. He is doomed to awkward clumsiness in his future interactions with women, because he will have failed to accrue those critical dating/relating/romancing skills at a young age, when one’s mind is flexible and still amenable to change. As one ages, one becomes more set in his ways, and a guy who hasn’t dated by this age is doomed to failure.

Adultery is low in my community, and when I observe the elder generation of those in my ethnic group, I can’t help but think that it’s because these guys couldn’t smooth-talk a woman if their lives depended on it. The younger brown guys – the ones that didn’t grow up here and smell a mile away – are no better. The socially awkward FOB brown guy stereotype that Russell Peters so adeptly skewered (I’m PIMPING! / We’re going to get the bitches tonight!) is not without merit.

But this is what you get when you’re socialized by your parents not on how to talk to girls, but how to stay away from them. When you’re schooled by your mom that the girls here are manipulative two-timing whores who’ll only get in the way of your studies – and when you’re a naïve wide-eyed kid who is scared shitless of your despotic mom – you keep your head down and obey. And when you grow up in a South Asian enclave and socialized predominantly with haplessly single teenage South Asian boys whose moms also told them the same thing, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

College though was a different story. Suddenly I saw a lot of couples on campus. Even brown ones. How is it that that fat hairy brown porker has a girl, and not me? I realized that high school Sen was a shy gangly neurotic kid because he had to come home to Sri Lanka at 4pm every day. College campus Sen had the potential to morph into a different animal. This sentiment was abetted by the sudden awareness that a few girls actually took a shining to me. But I never took the plunge – partly owing to a Woody Allen-esque neurosis, but mostly owing to all that cultural baggage.

This harkens me back to Chris Rock’s insightful narrative line from I Think I Love My Wife – that much of your life outcomes are decided even before you’re born. You can’t choose your family, you can’t choose where you’re born, you can’t choose whether you’re born rich or poor or black or white. It’s all a matter of dealing with the shit fate dealt you. But I do wonder about the person I’d be now had I been reared in a middle-class white/black/East Asian household, where parents are actually proud when their sons bring girls home, not mortified. I’d have parlayed that wit into a suave charm, sans the moral guilt and several millennia of cultural programming designed to preserve the endogamous fucking inbred-caste structure. I’d be more popular, more smooth. More importantly, some lucky chica would be privy to Sen’s awesomeness.

If there was a social expectation that I should have a girlfriend and I didn’t or never did, I’d feel like the grand loser of all losers. And so attributing my present state on cultural factors absolves me of responsibility in that respect. My parents and my ethnic community would be upset and I am afraid of them and I don’t want to go against the grain as I am averse to conflict and rebellion (as pathetic as that sounds). At the same time, knowing that one possesses the requisites for attracting girls – semi-decent looks, earning potential, an understanding of male/female evolutionary psychology – but that factors beyond my control inhibit me from acquiring one – is somewhat disheartening. I don’t know what’s worse – knowing that you’ll never get one, or knowing that you can get one, but can’t.

Either way, it’s a damning predicament, all the more so because so much of a young male’s sense of self-worth and social validation comes from his relationships with the opposite sex. It’s a good feeling knowing that someone has considered you worthy of being their significant other. Others will respect you for it. But if a guy isn’t hideous or broke or a complete train-wreck socially, people can’t help but wonder whether there is something wrong with the guy. There is a social stigma there, and I’m sure this is what the dude from work is thinking. Well that or he’s ascertained that I’m gay.

At some point though, things will have to change. For the time being, and I can take solace in knowing that I have a convenient excuse at the very least I have potential, and that things will change with time and an alphanumeric, and, of course, when the right person comes along.