You Should Date An Illiterate Girl, short essay

[publicduende]

Randomly found on the Web, and a witty explanation of why so many love the idea of being with the dull, subdued type of girl.

---

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl
By Charles Warnke

"Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you."

[Jonny Law]

JONNY LAW APPROVED!
Asian refugee camp ladies are for me! ROHINGYA
1. Cannot Read
2. No Education
3. No Shoes
4. No Electricity
5. NO BULLSHIT!

[publicduende]

JONNY LAW APPROVED!
[/b]Asian refugee camp ladies are for me! ROHINGYA
1. Cannot Read
2. No Education
3. No Shoes
4. No Electricity
5. NO BULLSHIT!

What's an "Asian refugee camp"? Kazakhstan?

[Jonny Law]

Love the post!
I LOVE ILLITERATE GIRLS SO MUCH!

ILLITERATE GIRLS ARE AMAZING!

Please know that the military runs refugee camps. Getting into them takes courage. Some laws are worth breaking !
1. The largest refugee camp in Thailand is Mae La Refugee Camp!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_La_refugee_camp

2. Bangladesh is building the world's largest refugee camp
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... 0-rohingya

[Yohan]

There are plenty of poor girls around in South East Asia and in many other parts of the world. You don't need a refugee camp to understand that.
However this story was written as a satire.

About refugee camps and Vietnamese boat people, I still remember them around 1978 or so in Southern Thailand in Songkhla.
There were about 2 million refugees, but about 500000 perished - there were pirates and other criminals everywhere.

A sad part of history with many many dead corpses washed to the shore or found by fishermen outside in the sea - almost every day Vietnamese people were arriving on small wooden boats from Vietnam, many of these refugees were in terrible health condition.

At that time those refugee camps in Thailand were not really so isolated - you could enter the camp, walking around, talk to everybody and it was possible for those refugees to leave the camp - one less or so, nobody really cared.

However there was a lot of misuse and mistreatment going on. Guards always took some bribes to look away. Human life at that time had little value.

I think, now still existing refugee camps are closed to the public, no visitors allowed and those people also are not allowed to get out. You cannot contact them and they cannot contact you.

It's not anymore about personal contact or giving some people a little money or food. All is now regulated by large 'human rights organizations', They all tell you, to isolate you from them is about to prevent misuse and human trafficking. However those organizations are also very corrupt, much money which should be used for the poor, is stolen or misused, shared among charities and corrupt politicians. We live in a sad world.

[Jonny Law]

Yes Refugee Camps are closed to the public!
This is Great! It keeps the Law-Followers away! Better for me

Jonny Law Says:
SOME LAWS ARE WORTH BREAKING!
f**k THAT! ALL LAWS ARE WORTH BREAKING!

[Yohan]

Yes Refugee Camps are closed to the public!
This is Great! It keeps the Law-Followers away! Better for me

I don't think it's better for you, as all your refugee girls while in isolation in the camps will be re-educated for many months, especially about human rights, women rights, children rights, they will be able to read and write, even in foreign languages and especially also able to calculate in USD the amount of alimony and child support in case of marriage/divorce.

They also will get a lot of US-junk food and will soon be slightly overweight and gaining more and more weight and will look soon like a whale. NGO-feminists will teach them how to respond to men - in the rudest and vulgar English vocabulary you can imagine. What's still missing to her happiness of your refugee princess after her release from the camp are a few brand items and designer clothes. I presume, your wallet is full with bills waiting to be spent.

I warned you!

[Jonny Law]

That is not true.
Refugee ladies treat you great! I love them

NEWSFLASH!
In the WONDERFUL Refugee Camps, refugees have limited educational and training opportunities and no official means of earning an income. While education in the camps is far better than any education available to civilians inside Burma, there are limited opportunities for higher education, which also largely remains unrecognized outside the camps.
https://www.burmalink.org/background/th ... gee-camps/

[Contrarian Expatriate]

Clever satirical piece possibly meant to encourage the opposite.

Most here should already know that an "illiterate girl" can be an uncontested nightmare. They are more prone to whims, emotional thinking and even magical thinking.

I have had my share and some of them were fun to be around, but women who know nothing of the acquired great lessons of the ages might just be as bad as they come.

[Jonny Law]

Yes if you take a refugee lady back to America your gunna have a bad time
Stay in Thailand where she has no rights!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ls5j5iz2eA

[Yohan]

.....should already know that an "illiterate girl" can be an uncontested nightmare

This is correct, same as you I met such women, more than you maybe might think, somewhere in Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia ...

However I heard stories much worse than my own experiences in Asia from travellers visiting Africa and Latin America.
I also heard from a friend living in Lebanon horrible stories about such people in camps along the Lebanon borders.

Many of these girls, refugee or not does not matter - about the same. They are living in deep poverty and are in miserable health, some of them drug abusers, beggars, thieves, prostitutes etc. and the first sentence is usually something like 'Give me' 'I need'..

If such a girl is a bit more advanced, she will say 'Give me - or I do not love you'. Not so few of them have plenty of low-life boyfriends, often violent drug dealers, burglars etc., others are married but have a lot of children or even worse they were abandoned, the man disappeared and they all are now living in the street in cartons or in the cemetery, under a bridge in the port or such places.

It's not a joke anymore if you face suddenly a gang of dirty street children who are about 8 to 12 years old and acting like adult gangsters - boys and girls, with broken glass bottles and pieces of sharpened sheet metal in both hands and are telling you 'Give me money, I am hungry' and they will quickly cut your face or at least smash your car if you don't pay them protection money. They are lost, hopeless...

I know Philippines best with its 2 million streetchildren, as I take care of a Filipina fosterdaughter and also help some poor people next to her since many years.

However it was not so easy to find impoverished 'honest' people who are genuinely grateful to a foreigner helping them and are willing to study and to work hard to improve their own situation.

Many of these poor people are poor because they are unwilling to work anything productive, others are into alcohol and gambling, others are plainly lazy, others are turning out as criminals - future jail in and jail out. - I met all kind of people, adults and children - in Philippines these children by social workers are divided into 2 groups, and they are called either 'bright' or 'dumb' - and you cannot help 'dumb' people of any age, it would be a waste of time and money.

[Yohan]

Yes if you take a refugee lady back to America your gunna have a bad time
Stay in Thailand where she has no rights!

Nonsense, who says, she has no rights. - Be careful about Thailand, there are plenty of Western foreign men in jail in Thailand, because they were thinking something like that.

There are also plenty of Western foreigners, who were thinking, Asian girls are so honest and they gave them all their savings, and finally they had to ask for money from other foreigners for the bus to the airport...

[Jonny Law]

Dating a Thai woman is FULL RETARD!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAKG-kbKeIo

Refugees in Thailand are more appreciative and have far less:
1. Rights
2. Education
3. Employment Opportunities
4. Material Possessions
5. BULLSHIT

[Jonny Law]

You say: there are plenty of Western foreign men in jail in Thailand, because they were thinking something like that.

JONNY LAW SAYS: If you are afraid of jail you don't need to go to jail. You are already there.

[publicduende]

I know Philippines best with its 2 million streetchildren, as I take care of a Filipina fosterdaughter and also help some poor people next to her since many years.

However it was not so easy to find impoverished 'honest' people who are genuinely grateful to a foreigner helping them and are willing to study and to work hard to improve their own situation.

Many of these poor people are poor because they are unwilling to work anything productive, others are into alcohol and gambling, others are plainly lazy, others are turning out as criminals - future jail in and jail out. - I met all kind of people, adults and children - in Philippines these children by social workers are divided into 2 groups, and they are called either 'bright' or 'dumb' - and you cannot help 'dumb' people of any age, it would be a waste of time and money.

That is absolutely true, Yohan. Many of us land in the Philippines with all the best intentions and they somehow harbour the "kind savage" myth, that all these people are poor but make up by having a kind heart and a keen desire to get out of poverty. Reality is, as you say, most of the poor don't really do much to improve their condition. In some cases they inability to act is the very reason why they and their families are so destitute and hopeless.

Filipino families know this very well and, as I pointed out on previous posts, they tend to distance themselves from the "masa". They don't hate them or anything, but they consider themselves above all that. A mix of stoicism and cynicism. Of course they are, themselves, not immune from hypocrisy, corruption and unadulterated evil. From my experience in Davao and even Manila, most middle, upper or elite class families are "good people". I have seen many more "bad people" among the poor, to be honest.