Is that hand on your knee a flirtatious come-on, or a culturally distinct approach to personal space?
Is splitting the bill a nod to equal gender relations, an unforgivable challenge to your date’s masculinity or the sign of an incorrigible tight-wad?
I run a business from my laptop so I’ve got that kind of flexibility.”The first encounter: Bar Seis in Palermo Viejo for my first Coke and Fernet, the signature herbal liquor of Argentina.
We peered into his i Phone where he showed me his pet project, a curated and mapped listing of businesses in Buenos Aires. The Retiro district is where professionals stop for drinks on their way from home from offices downtown.
When not armed with his i Phone, he had a nervous habit of reducing styrofoam cups into a pile of equal pieces on the table. Like colleagues, we started talking about travel, our degrees in tourism, and our strangely parallel careers.
Is it just me or is the mere thought of dating Argentinian men kind of appealing? Most men and women live at home till finishing university and usually for a while longer.
Maybe it’s the tango, the accent, or the hot temper, but there is something to be said about Argentinian men, isn’t there? You might have to repeat the phrase ‘no’ repeatedly if someone isn’t to your liking. This means that some men leave their mother’s nest at the ripe age of thirty.
There are so-called love hotels, or ‘telos’ in most cities. Because people live at home for so long that it becomes a problem when they are dating someone and can’t get it on in their bedroom at their parents.
Smooth talkers or ‘chamuyeros’ are what we would call players. When charming and innocent foreigners come to town these men will tell them exactly how beautiful they are, how much they adore them and want to be with them, how in love they are and so on and so forth. As in any country you will simply have to be aware of the players.
Many an Argentine have rejected this stereotype solidified by former generations and have pursued gender equality.
This is evident in the roll call of the city’s biggest firms, where female first names sprinkle the roster; in the power couples dominating the creative startups about Palermo and El Centro; and of course apparent in the governmental lineup.
And you have to know that the “I love you” after two weeks of dating is not the same “I love you” as after six months of dating. Maybe they’ve watched too many soap operas or their Latin temper is as heated as the sun, but Argentinians can be the jealous types and they don’t mind starting a fight over it. so I thought I knew flakiness first hand – people will promise you anything and not deliver.