I took a cab home from the Man Hat last night with a friend. I always thought cab drivers must have the funnest stories so I asked who his favorite cab ride of the night was. He responded by asking if we wanted to know how to turn a girl off. Assuming that this was purely a mistranslation, we clarified: “You mean how to turn a girl on?” No, our attempts to clarify were unwarranted. He wanted to explain to us his method of turning women off. Curious we allowed him to continue. “You find the g-spot, you know right at tip top of vagina and then you jam your finger very hard on it. You poke her very hard with your finger.” Astonished we asked him to again clarify that he was explaining to us how to turn a girl off by putting her in pain. He didn’t understand why we were so confused. We asked the obvious question of why you would want to turn a girl off as opposed to on, to which he responded: “You know, for experiment.” No, I don’t know. I get that this may follow the scientific process to a certain point, but the conclusions you come to should be useful in some way or another. Before I could voice these opinions he started in with his second way to turn a girl off “You bite her nose really hard.”

He then got a phone call and my friend and I spent the rest of the cab ride coming up with ways you could turn a girl off using physical pain, insults, poop, and inopportune use of the word “love.” There was an endless supply because there are an infinite number of ways to turn women off, and I’ve done most of them.

I think something gets lost in translation. When people are forced to understand their desires and motives through two different cultures and two different languages, sometimes I think the mix becomes too convoluted and sometimes harmful. Thus: This. Obviously I’m not going to turn this into a rant against integration, but rather a rant against our culture that doesn’t provide ample support for those attempting to integrate (See 2:20 of this). When we make people feel as though our culture is not compatible with other cultures than it makes it hard when those people attempt to mix the culture they are now a part of, being in the US, and the culture they come from. They are bound to get confused and angry and bitter. And that’s what turns me off.