Christmas has come twice this year! Latvia’s biggest news site Delfi asked me for an interview and I happily obliged. I already blew my load trolling the Lithuanians so it was a bit harder this time around. I’m afraid some of my answers were more mean than funny, but I think there are a couple laughs to be had. Enjoy…

In your book (at least about Latvia) you never call yourself a sex-tourist. But other guys are sex-tourists. What’s the difference then?

The main difference is that ultimately I’m searching for love. Until I find this love, I want to have sex with every girl that can give me an erection. My testosterone levels are so high that I have an erection for most of the day, even when I’m walking in public. In America we call this “walking boner.”

Latvia was one of the worst countries for sex-trip, but how many Latvian girls you banged totally?

More than 1 but less than 10.

Do you know, how many girls you have banged? How many girls have you banged at least twice? Can you tell a proportion/percentage between one-night-stands and at least two-night-stands?

I would have to hire an accountant to sift through the actual number, but I’d be surprised if it was under 500. I think maybe only five or six times did I bang a girl twice. It’s hard to pick one girl when there are so many more girls that would voluntarily have sex with me.

Do you have a girlfriend? How long was your longest “normal” relationship (without cheating)? Have you ever been in love?

No. I’ve never had a normal relationship. I think I was in love but I’m not sure.

Do your parents know about your hobby? If yes, what do they think about it?

My dad doesn’t care but my mom has practically disowned me. She thinks that I’m the head of some type of “army” that teaches thousands of “sex soldiers” how to take advantage of women like the Muslim men are doing in Norway and Sweden. I keep telling her that I don’t advocate for violence or forced blowjobs but she is getting old now and her hearing is not so good.

Have you ever asked to any shrink why are you so obsessed?

Yes I did. She told me that I was overcompensating for a youth when I didn’t get a lot of sex and that I need to meditate on my youth or some stupid stuff. I tried to have sex with her and then she told me I couldn’t get treatment anymore. I haven’t seen a shrink since her.

You began your career as an industrial microbiologist, but now you are more like traveler and writer. Or maybe you still have a regular job? Anyway, since there are millions of sex-tourists in the world, have you sold a lot of your books?

Yes, I have sold almost one million books. I didn’t make a lot of money when I was a microbiologist, but now I’m a millionaire teaching guys how to have sex with women. Can you think of a better job?

Are you a well-respected sex-tourist? How many people, in your opinion, really listen to your advice?

Dude I’m a LOVE TOURIST, not sex tourist. My web sites receive 3 million page views a month, which I think is greater than the population of Latvia. Just curious: how many hundreds of people read your news site? [Reporter actually answered my question]

How often have you been beaten up during your sex trips? Have you been an object of sexual desire of some gay-sex-tourist? Have you caught STS during your crusades?

Yes I have been beaten up many times, usually when I talk to a girl who is with her boyfriend. I need to stop doing that. When that happens I beg them not to destroy my beautiful face, because this is my main strength in getting with women.

I don’t want to disclose my medical history with the public, but yes I’ve had many STSs. In fact, I think I have one right now and am looking for a doctor. But it’s not AIDS.

You said that you don’t mind to bang fat and/or ugly girls. Have you ever failed to succeed to bang a girl only because of her ugliness?

I don’t remember saying that. But yes I’ve failed with ugly girls that maybe even you wouldn’t bang. It’s okay to have sex with a fat girl, but only once in a while. One time a week is okay.

What are the most valuable virtues in girls in general? What are the best character features in Latvian girls (if there’s any)?

Their eyes, I guess. I don’t like Latvian girls because they kept trying to take my money.

For example, you said that in “Essential” club you didn’t see any self-respecting local girl? Who would you call a self-respecting girl?

Today girls are very lazy. They get money and go shopping and spend all day in front of the mirror. The perfect girl would live on a farm and do manual labor with a plow. She’d raise chickens, milk the cows, and clean the barn. She’d also cook and clean. The girls in Essential don’t know how to plow, cook, or clean. They’re useless besides for sex, and even that they’re not good at it.

How long is your dick and dos it make any difference?

I haven’t measured in a long time, but my nickname for it is “baby’s arm.”

Do you think you’re somehow special, or with absolutely the same success it could by any guy in the world?

Any guy can have my success, as long as he approaches 100 girls a week. The world can be his!

—

The above article was adapted from Don’t Bang Latvia, a 63-page hater travel guide that teaches you how to sleep with Latvian women while simultaneously convincing you not to go. It contains tourist tips, game advice, sex stories, and hate. Click here to learn more.

UPDATE: The $3 deal is over. You can now grab the Baltic Trilogy at its regular price of $9.99. Thank you to everyone who bought it on release day.

I’m happy to be releasing three new books: Don’t Bang Latvia, Bang Estonia, and Bang Lithuania. For today only I’m selling all three in one package for $3. After today, this combo will sell for $9.99. In total you’ll receive 140 pages of Baltic stories and travel advice. All three books contain the following:

• Historical and cultural backgrounds that help you understand the mentality of each country
• Detailed descriptions of the women, including both appearance and personality
• The amount of work and time you’ll have to put in to get your flags
• Game breakdowns on meeting and laying Baltic women via internet, day, and night methods
• Detailed city guides on when and where to find women
• Sex stories that add color to the optimal game you’ll need to spit

Many travelers treat the Baltics as one entity, but each one can be quite different, forcing me to write three separate books instead of one. Here’s a review from a reader who received advance copies:

This trilogy isn’t Roosh’s finest work but contains enough gems and nuggets of useful information to make it highly recommended for any man planning to plunder the Baltics. From his writing you feel Roosh is at heart a nice, cool guy looking for a place in the world that still has the beautiful, feminine women of yesteryear. This makes his writing all the more poignant as he isn’t a dried up, cynical, exploitative pickup artist, looking to get as much action as he can and then move on, he is truly looking for connection in his life.

The highlights for me were without doubt the stories, evidence of just what a good writer Roosh is becoming – in my opinion the finest in the manosphere. Just reading them made me experience the loneliness, the homesickness, the daily struggle to understand foreign women, the constant uprooting as he goes to a new country. It really made me think twice about going for very long extended stays in foreign countries were I don’t have contacts nor speak the language well and that’s the mark of a great writer, that he makes you feel truly and deeply through his words.

A slight disappointment at the short length of these books and that he didn’t cover Vilnius in the Lithuania book (my preferred destination) but apart from that, this is another recommended installment from the world’s most eloquent love tourist.

I stayed in each Baltic country for one month, which is why I agree with the above reviewer that these aren’t my strongest travel guides. Nonetheless, I do think it has the right mix of travel data and stories to bring value for men who are interested in Eastern Europe. I picked a price point today so that even if you aren’t immediately interested in traveling to the Baltics, you feel that you’re getting your money’s worth.

Today’s special is sold via Paypal. It contains the PDF, ePUB (Nook), and MOBI (Kindle) formats that are DRM-free and loadable onto any device. After submitting your payment you’ll be instantly forwarded to the books’ download page. Click one of the following links to continue:

• Learn individual details about Don’t Bang Latvia, Bang Estonia, or Bang Lithuania (including paperback option starting at $10.97)
• ORDER THE BALTIC TRILOGY FOR $9.99

Coming up in a couple months is Bang Ukraine. I also have to drop blog posts on Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Croatia.

After Luigi left, I saw Riga in a different light. I felt like every responsive girl was playing some sort of angle and wanted to get to know the monetary part of me instead of the real me. It seemed pointless even to try.

But my dick. It wanted to fuck something. It didn’t care that whatever I fucked would probably try to scam me. It needed release inside a real vagina.

I went into a quiet coffee shop for a couple hours to catch up on work. I walked out late, around 11:00, and stood in front of the door to zip up my jacket and put on my scarf. It was a Tuesday night, not the best day to go out. A girl with brown pigtails walked by, giving me eye contact. In an instant my hand went up and made the universal “wait a moment” sign. It took about three more seconds for an opening line to enter my head.

“Do you know a good place to go on Tuesday night?” I asked.

“Actually, I could ask you that. I don’t usually go out on this day.”

I eliminated her as a scammer since she was alone (they always operate in pairs), but something just wasn’t right about a pretty girl walking alone trying to find a place to go out in her own city. Even so, I decided that as long as I controlled most of the variables, I’d come out on top.

“There’s a bar near where I live that usually has people,” I said. “How about we go there for a drink?”

She agreed. She didn’t hook my arm or grab my hand, a telltale sign of a scammer, but my guard was still up.

“What do you think of Riga?” she asked.

“It’s hard to find a normal girl here. In a lot of the places I’ve been to the girls are working, trying to trick guys. I know there are a lot of sex tourists here who don’t mind that, but I just want a nice conversation.”

I told her about the scammer clubs and she said she had never been to them before. I wanted to think she was telling the truth, but I had decided not to believe a single thing that came out of a Latvian girl’s mouth.

My apartment was next door to the bar. I told her that I wanted to drop off my laptop bag.

“You can meet me at the bar or come in with me.”

She decided to come in, which I thought was peculiar. She had only knew me for ten minutes. How did she know I wasn’t going to rape her?

I couldn’t help but ask once inside my place. “How do you know I’m a good guy?”

“You have an honest face. You seem like a nice person.”

She unzipped her coat to reveal a thin body. I brushed my teeth and changed my clothes. When she saw me shirtless, she gasped, “Oh my god!”

“What?”

“You’re so… hairy. It’s amazing. I love hairy men, but I never meet them. It’s hard to find that here. You’re like a bear.”

“Not many girls like it.”

“No, it’s very nice. I have hair, too. Do you want to see?”

Was she about to show me her vagina?

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

She slipped one side of her dress off and showed me an armpit full of hair. I can’t say I was expecting that.

“A lot of guys like it,” she said.

“I find that hard to believe, but okay.”

Everything else about her checked out, so at that moment I still thought I could bang her. During the sex act I wouldn’t even see her pit hair, but I wished she hadn’t shown me. Curiosity killing the cat, and all that.

Before leaving for the bar I showed her a bottle of champagne I had in the fridge. It was my afterparty move since finding out that girls in this part of the world went crazy for bubbly.

At the bar we sat on a couch, getting to know each other a little. As I told her some of my recent travel experiences, I noticed that she was much more comfortable with silences than I was, something I had noticed about Eastern Europeans in general.

I said, “We Americans have a need to talk constantly. When we hear a silence, we get this urge to fill it. I know it’s something that’s a product of my culture, but I can’t help feeling that silences are weird.”

“So everyone just keeps talking?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s a little different if you’re in a big group. Then it turns into a competition to talk. People have a list of things that they want to share and then, at the hint of silence, they blurt them out. So everyone is talking about their own thing, but hardly anyone is giving feedback to what was just said.”

“That’s stupid. There’s nothing wrong with silence. Sometimes you can understand a person more with silence than with words.”

“I’m starting to see that here.”

I told her that the biggest challenge for me was understanding a culture as quickly as possible, not only so I can write about it, but also so that I could get along with “the people.”

“When I go to a country,” I said, “I like to notice what’s different. How human beings, even though they’re the same animal, have a wide range of culture, beliefs, and behaviors.”

“So you see a lot that’s different, but what have you noticed that is the same?”

My mouth opened, but no words came out. I wanted to say sex, but that can actually be quite different. I mean, the act of sticking your dick into a woman is the same, but the moment leading up to it and what a girl does during the sex act can vary widely.

“You know, I don’t really know,” I said. “That’s the first time a girl has ever stumped me with a question. I’ll have to think about that.”

She smiled as if to say, “See, I’m not a typical Latvian girl.”

She said she was only 26, but I was sure she was hovering near 30. Earlier she had mentioned having a boyfriend, so I followed up to see what the deal was.

“I live with my boyfriend,” she said. “He’s 55. He’s a famous artist who has published a lot of work.”

“He doesn’t mind you going out alone?”

“He doesn’t care. Our relationship is open. I think the best relationships are open, or else the passion dies and it gets boring.”

I started to relax, convinced that she was just a horny chick out for an easy lay and not running a scam. It helped that she wasn’t talking on the phone to coordinate with a potential accomplice and that I was in a bar I had been to many times before. All seemed right in the world, except for the armpit hair.

When I came back with a second round of drinks, our faces got quite close and she kissed me. Then she asked, “Do you want to fuck?”

Trick question?

“Maybe,” I replied.

“50 lat.” [$100 US]

Oh, come on.

I maintained my composure. “Look, I don’t want to waste your time, but I’m not going to pay for sex. You should move on to another guy.”

“I’m just joking,” she said, kissing me again. “I like you.”

My shields were now fully up. I figured her Plan B was to get me so turned on that I couldn’t help but pay, and that was exactly what she tried to do.

We talked for another half hour and she didn’t bring up money again. She was actually an interesting girl, raised in the school of hard knocks where she tried to take advantage of every situation. I wanted to proceed with the interaction, not necessarily because I was dying to bang her, but because I wanted to see what would happen. As long as I watched her like a hawk, I was straight.

We went back to my apartment to open the champagne. We sat on my couch and she started stroking my dick through my jeans. She took off her dress and sat in her bra and panties. I wasn’t surprised to see a carpet around her vagina. With her panties on it looked like a mustache. I still had a boner, but I can’t say I enjoyed the hairiness. It was more novel and weird than gross, like something out of an old porn movie.

She went to the bathroom and asked if I wanted to watch.

“Why would I want to watch?” I asked.

“I don’t know, some guys like it. They pay me 5 lats.”

She came back and I asked if she normally tried to get money for sex.

“I only did this one other time, with an English guy. He was a doctor and very nice. I think he was a virgin.”

“Only one time?”

“I swear. But I’ll have sex with you for 50.”

“I’ve never paid for sex in my life,” I said. “I want to see how long I can go until then. Tonight isn’t the night I’m going to do it, sorry.”

“You never paid for sex in America? Girls don’t ask for money?”

“No, they don’t ask for money. If a girl likes me and my personality, we have sex. There is a song that goes, ‘The best things in life are free.’”

“Well, that’s stupid. They should ask, because if you ask you get to have sex and you get money, too. It’s normal here to ask. A girl should always get the best deal possible.”

“I don’t know if that’s really sad or really smart.”

“But I like you, so if you don’t want to pay then just give me an orgasm.”

“And how do you want me to do that?”

“Lick my pussy.”

I looked at her vagina mustache. She moved her panties over so I could see a little bit of pink. She started playing with herself and making fake moaning noises.

“Is there a third option?” I asked.

“No, orgasm or money.”

“Maybe my dick will give you an orgasm.”

“And if not, you’ll fall asleep, and I won’t have orgasm or money. I’ve learned that a man must give you one of the two upfront, so no matter what, I get something out of the sex.”

“Yeah, I’m never coming back to Latvia.”

I turned on the television and we watched some music videos. When she realized I wasn’t going to give her orgasm or money, she started telling me a sob story. The government had just levied a 1,000 euro tax on her. Her parents were suffering in some shack. Her boyfriend didn’t give her passion. She started crying and said it was my fault that her parents were poor.

“Why is it my fault?” I said, unmoved.

“Because your parents have a pension. Your pensions fucked up our economy!”

“Neither of my parents have a pension. They work for themselves. Good try, but it’s not my fault.”

“Okay, fine, but help me. Give me some money.”

She was crying and shrieking, doing the whole bit. There were actual tears, but the only way I could have been more disaffected was if I had been snacking on some popcorn.

“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend for money?”

“He won’t give it to me!”

Smart man, I thought.

Then she leapt up and snatched 25 lat that was sitting on my dresser.

I grabbed it back and said, “Look, I’m not a charity. I’m not giving you money. I told you an hour ago to go find another guy. Go to Scandal where guys will pay you to fuck.”

“But I like you. I’m scared that if I have sex with you I’ll fall in love with you.”

“Right. Hold on, let me call the Academy to nominate this performance.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

It’s interesting that telling a whore you don’t pay for sex doesn’t discourage her. She thinks she’s more seductive than the other whores and can get you to open your wallet. Whores probably think a guy like me is just being coy.

As she put on her dress, I heard a crumpling sound and instinctively reached for her pocket, thinking she had stolen something. Inside were four condoms.

“You’ve only done this once before?” I asked. “It seems like you’re mighty prepared.”

“Okay, well, tonight I wanted to make some money. I’m just in bad situation right now.”

“Why don’t you get a job?”

“There are no jobs.” What she actually meant was, “I don’t want to work in a coffee shop. Tricking guys for sex is a whole lot easier.”

The whole charade was starting to bore me. My dick had been soft for quite a while. If we weren’t going to fuck, I wanted her to leave me in peace so I could jerk off.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” I said. “I want to shower and do some other things.”

“Go ahead and shower, I’ll wait,” she said.

“No, that’s okay. It will be a while.”

“Do you want to hang out tomorrow with me and my boyfriend? We can show you some art.”

“Sorry, but I have plans.”

She persisted in seeing me again, in what I think may have been a genuine desire, but I’ll never know for sure.

The thing I had been hating most about Latvia was the acting. I thought I was good at detecting lies, but Latvian girls were on a level I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know what was real or not, so I assumed they were acting about everything. It wasn’t a good way to build any sort of connection or normal relationship, but at least I wouldn’t be surprised.

After she left, I scanned my apartment for missing items. Nothing was gone. Then I thought about what she had said, how it was stupid for American girls not to ask for money before sex. Was it possible that the sexual culture in America and other Western countries is fantasy, and that the best move for women was to get as much as she could out of a guy? Or was she just lying about Latvian culture to make me feel better about giving her money?

It makes logical sense for a girl to get paid for something she was going to do for free anyway, but it would change everything—the dynamic, the game, and even the sex act. To me it’s unbearable to think a girl might be spending time with me only because of money, something that isn’t an inherent part of me. If she was into me solely for my looks, I’d more be okay with it. I wonder if I’m being insecure for thinking this way, but I’d rather play in the fantasy world than in a place like Latvia.

—

The above article was adapted from Don’t Bang Latvia, a 63-page hater travel guide that teaches you how to sleep with Latvian women while simultaneously convincing you not to go. It contains tourist tips, game advice, sex stories, and hate. Click here to learn more.

PREVIOUSLY: PART FOUR

The following night Luigi and I met at the TGI Fridays and ordered burgers. It was his last night in Riga.

“So what happened to you after I started talking to the girl?” Luigi asked.

“The bitch tricked me,” I said, “but first tell me what happened with the blonde.”

“I fucked her,” he laughed.

“How did it go down?”

“Remember last night I was telling you to sell these girls a dream? Well, my energy was really high and I was telling her that she was so beautiful and her hair was so soft. Then I said, ‘Look you’re a pretty girl. You like me, I like you, how about I give you 20 lat and we go to my place and hang out?’”

“And what did she say?”

“Of course she say yes. I told you, these girls are crazy about money. So I took her to my place, less than one hour after I start talking to her, and I fuck her. I even fuck her in the ass! It was so tiny.” He cupped his hands to accentuate the tightness.

“And you gave her the 20 lat?”

“No, I didn’t even give her! In the morning I could tell she wanted to ask me something, like she wants the money, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t bring it up.”

“What would you have done if she brought it up?”

“I would tell her that I didn’t have the money and I have to go to the ATM later. What is she going to do? Call the cops? These girls don’t have pimps.”

“So you scammed her. Amazing.”

“Yes, remember, I’m from Sicily.”

“So while you were scamming a chick, I was getting scammed.”

“Yes tell me what happened. I saw you talking to a nice blonde.”

“I approached her and we started dancing. After a while we agreed to go somewhere else. I was going to take her to the Latvian club we were at earlier, since it’s normal and the music is good, but once we got outside, she wanted to take me to a bar in the opposite direction.”

“Uh oh.”

“Exactly,” I said. “She didn’t want to come to my bar because she didn’t trust me. I said, ‘Trust? We’re going to a public club, not my apartment.’ She insisted on going to her bar.

“I told her, ‘Look, don’t try to screw me. I’ve been in this city for a month and I know what goes on here. If you want to screw me then go right back inside and find another guy. There are many guys there who don’t care about getting screwed.’ I basically told her I wasn’t an idiot and that she was wasting her time if she was trying to con me. She got offended that I’d think of her that way. She stopped walking and then our faces got real close, like we were about to kiss.”

“So she was sincere?”

“Yes. I was convinced she wasn’t a scammer and that she really liked me. Either that or she was the best actress I have ever met. We walked and walked, just like with those two chicks from our first night out. She kept saying it was close, like they did. I was getting a little anxious, but not too much because I believed she was real. Then we finally arrived at her club. I walked in and it looked fine—nice bar, DJ, big dance floor—but there were only two people in there.

“I went up to the bar and asked the bartender how much a Finlandia vodka cost. Usually it costs 2.50 lats, even in the good clubs. Well, he showed me the menu…8 lats. $16 for a shot of average vodka. I went back to the girl and said, ‘Do I look stupid?’ She didn’t answer. I raised my voice. ‘Look at me! Do I look fucking stupid? I told you not to screw me, and now you bring me to this fucking scam bar. What the hell is wrong with you?’”

“So she is bitch?”

“Yes, she is bitch. She broke down and started crying. I couldn’t tell if she was faking. She said, ‘I feel ashamed.’ I told her, ‘If you want to come with me to the normal club, we can go now. Yes or no?’ She didn’t give me an answer, wanting to talk instead. I could tell she was trying to stall, that she wasn’t really attracted to me, so I left. It was almost 5:00. I thought it was hopeless, but I didn’t give up. I went to another Latvian club and met a thirty-year-old who was sitting alone at the bar.”

“Alone, that’s like a jackpot.”

“Yes. I got her to my place, but we didn’t fuck. I couldn’t get her clothes off.”

“At least the night wasn’t a total loss.”

“Yes, it was. What happened last night was something I would rather not have experienced. I was being genuine to a woman that I was attracted to, wanting to have a good time, and she was acting the whole time like she was starring in a movie. She saw me as a piece of shit. The whole thing was completely fake. This whole city is fake. I don’t know why you keep coming back.”

“Because I see them as the bitch they are. In this city one person is always doing the scamming. So if you’re not scamming her, which last night you were not, then you get scammed.”

“I understand that, but I don’t want to be in a place where that’s the reality. I prefer the fantasy world of women wanting to have sex with you just because they like your sense of humor or personality. My culture is different.”

“I already told you I’ve been burned here many times. One time I take home a girl and when I come out of the bathroom she made two drinks. She made a toast ‘to our health.’ All I remember next is waking up the next morning with the worst headache of my life. She stole my phone and passport. Another time some guy on the street stole my passport, and then there was the girl who stole my laptop.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah but it’s part of the game. You fuck her before she fucks you. I’m good at this. Well, at least now I am.”

“You were walking directly into a trap on Wednesday night, dragging me with you. I saved your ass,” I said with a laugh. “Are you sure you’re good at this?”

“Last night I was good!” he said, smiling broadly.

When our burgers came I realized why Luigi loved Riga so much: he was a scammer himself. He got joy out of tricking girls at their own game, even though he had lost the game many times. For him the fun wasn’t just fucking a girl, but tricking her in the process. He made me feel prudish in that I wanted to be honest and just have some fun sex without any scams, tricks, or money attached.

“So what do you want to do tonight?” he asked.

“Sleep. I’m tired.”

“When I walked by Scandal there were some people inside. Let’s just go for a drink.”

“Oh, no, I’m completely done,” I said.

“This is my last night here and you’re going to say goodbye to me in front of an American burger place? Let’s have one drink to our friendship and that’s it. Come on. I don’t want to be alone. Oh, and let me tell you some more reasons why I love America and the American dream…”

Twenty minutes later we were walking to the club. I already knew how the rest of the night would go.

—

The above article was adapted from Don’t Bang Latvia, a 63-page hater travel guide that teaches you how to sleep with Latvian women while simultaneously convincing you not to go. It contains tourist tips, game advice, sex stories, and hate. Click here to learn more.

PREVIOUSLY: PART THREE

In all fairness, some of the girls were rather cute. Out of the three categories of women in Riga, two were present: bitch and desperate. The desperate girls were easy to spot: they were fat and poorly dressed. The bitches were always sexy.

“Hey, look at that girl,” Luigi said, pointing towards a fat brunette. “On Badoo she asked me 150 lats to fuck her.”

“That’s $300. Are you sure she didn’t mean 1.50 lats?”

“No, I’m sure.”

“If she’s asking that much, I guess that means that there are actually guys who have paid. Fucking sex tourists.”

Luigi said, “This is my last visit here. Let’s get a drink and try to have a good time.”

By “let’s get a drink” he actually meant “how about if you buy me a drink?” I figured his funds were tight since he was always complaining about the high drink prices.

I handed him a vodka and Red Bull and he immediately started talking to a short blonde. She was a country girl with below-average looks. I put her in the desperate category. When they were still talking five minutes later, I knew he was in. All of a sudden I felt alone and in need to chat up a girl. Going out with Luigi I actually talked to very few girls because I was so busy talking to him.

I saw a tall blonde standing by the dance floor. She was wearing heels and a mini-skirt—a typical scammer chick, but she had a girl-next-door vibe with Princess Leia braided hair and a plain face. Because I knew all the scams, I felt immune.

I approached her and said, “You look like speak English.”

“A little,” she said.

“Are you Russian or Latvian?”

“I’m Russian.”

“I’m actually learning Russian now. I’m studying one hour a day. It’s a hard language.”

She didn’t seem impressed and turned away slightly. I glanced over at Luigi. His girl was laughing. There were two foreign guys for every Latvian girl, so I had to try to make this one work.

I looked at her and said, “Do you want to dance?” She said yes.

After a couple minutes on the dance floor I put my hand on her hip, but she stepped back and made an X with her arms. Okay, relax, no problem. She eventually warmed up and we were dancing somewhat close.

I said, “This club is awful. I want to kill myself for coming here.”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” she asked.

“Yes. I know a normal club we can go to.”

“Then let’s go.”

I felt like we were two lost souls, stuck in a club we both hated, extremely lucky to have found each other.

I can’t believe how naïve I was.

CONTINUED: PART FIVE

PREVIOUSLY: PART TWO

The taxi driver made a left turn onto a deserted road surrounded by abandoned lots and buildings. I went into fight-or-flight mode. This was how otherwise smart people get fucked, by putting their trust into someone else and letting their guard down at the exact moment they shouldn’t. It was my opportunity to escape, new friendship be damned.

I grabbed the cab driver’s chair and yelled, “Stop! Stop the fucking cab right here!”

The taxi driver was rattled and pulled off to the side. Everyone got out and Luigi and I paid the driver.

“Alright, I’m gone,” I said. “This is bullshit.”

“Don’t be nervous,” the tall girl said.

“Oh shut up. Both of you are scam artists.”

Luigi took me aside as we stood next to an empty lot by the side of the road. “Look,” he said, “this is probably a scam. I agree with you. I can smell the shit, but I want to see the shit to make sure.”

“You want to rub your nose in it? Are you fucking insane? Jesus Christ man, just give them your money now.”

“The bar is right around the corner,” the tall girl said.

“Let’s just go walk there,” Luigi said.

“No.”

“You don’t want to check it out?”

“No. Look at that corner—the burned-out building, the lack of lights. You really think there’s a bar there?”

Nothing was going to convince me at that moment.

Then the tall girl gently took my arm, telling me it would be fun, but I backed away, checking my pockets to make sure everything was still there. I looked at the girls and said, “Do you know how I know this is a scam? Because I’m calling you out, insulting you, yet you still want me to come with you. You’re total amateurs.”

I started walking away. Luigi yelled, “I beg you as a friend to stay and come with me.”

“You’re asking way too much for a two-hour friendship,” I said. “Even if you were my brother, I’d say no.”

“Okay, just wait for a second.”

I waited for a minute by myself, off to the side until he reluctantly joined me. The girls disappeared into the darkness.

“You know I saved your ass, right?” I said.

“Yeah I think so, but the brunette was so pretty. I was only thinking with my dick. I knew something was wrong when we went into that neighborhood. I used to live there and it’s not a place you want to be.”

“So why did you want to keep going?”

“Because I wanted to see the shit. I wanted to be 100% sure so I could cuss at the girls and call them bitch. I wanted the evidence in front of me.”

“I think in that case getting the evidence would have been too costly. Maybe there were guys waiting with bats.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Okay, let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s go back to the club.”

We walked back to the Scandal club in Old Town. I bought a round of drinks, happy that we were out of danger. I looked at the crowd and was surprised that there were more girls than guys. It seemed strange for a Wednesday night.

“I can’t believe there are so many girls here,” I told Luigi.

“Think about it. It’s two a.m. on a Wednesday night. These girls don’t have jobs and they don’t go to school. They’re full-time bitch. Their job is to go out and take as much as they can from foreign men. The game is to fuck them without getting fucked.”

“That’s a new game for me.”

“Well not for me. I’m from Sicily. I learned very early that to get anything you have to be smart and fuck other people before they fuck you. This is the same thing, but with pussy.”

Twenty minutes after we arrived, who showed up but the two girls who tried to scam us. They had lied about not being able to get in. I saw the brunette flirting with the DJ, eventually writing her phone number for him on a piece of a paper. I was offended that she had considered us marks, stupid enough to fall for her amateur hour scam, while a local guy experienced the normal version of her. What got to me most was the acting—how a girl could make up a completely new persona to get paid.

As an experiment, I bought a drink for a girl Luigi said was “definitely bitch.” That one drink gave me twenty minutes of her attention, where she smiled at me, danced with me, and grinded against my cock. But when she realized that I wasn’t going to buy another drink, she went off to another foreign guy. Looking around, I noticed that all the girls were in pairs, which Luigi said was “the sign of the bitch.”

His lessons made it easy to categorize the girls. If I saw a pair of girls who were decked out in sexy clothes and heels, talking little between themselves and giving eye contact with everyone, they were bitches and could be bought in some way. But if the girls were smiling and dressing normal, hanging out in large groups with an occasional local guy, they were normal girls who had to be treated as such. Looking around Scandal, I saw no normal girls.

“The bitch,” Luigi said, “doesn’t care about you at all. Look at how I’m dressed, very simple, no? The bitch doesn’t know style. Look at that guy over there with the champagne bottle. He looks like shit but he has a hot girl, right? All they care about is what’s in your wallet.”

“But the normal girls don’t care about that.”

“Yeah they don’t, but good luck getting anywhere with them. You need to give up on meeting a normal girl who wants to talk like girls in America. That doesn’t exist here.”

He was presenting me with two extremes that lacked any middle ground. I didn’t want to believe him, but he was making a strong case.

Toward the end of the night there was a commotion at the bar. A large woman fell from her stool and rolled onto the floor. It was the fat girl Luigi had approached on the street. She was trashed. She walked up to him and he turned to me and gave a sour face as if saying, “This girl is gross.”

When I was ready to leave, Luigi said he was going to stay a bit longer. The next day he told me that he had taken the fat girl home and fucked her four times.

—

The following night we went to a bar I usually went to, a locals-only spot with girls who were tough to crack.

“Do you think American girls like money?” I asked.

“They do, but it’s in a different way. They just talk about your job or career. In America the girls ask about your work faster than anywhere else.”

I started to wonder if he was living a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s going into every environment thinking that girls only wanted money, so of course he found only that. He was in one of the most notorious sex tourist cities in Eastern Europe, a place he knew was stacked with semi-pros and corrupted by money, with girls trying to run scams nightly, yet he begged for more. I asked him about the contradiction. Why did he keep coming if he hated it?

“Well here I can fuck every night,” he said.

So whatever his values were, being able to stick his dick into something was above finding a normal girl. I couldn’t say the same.

To continue my experiment from the previous night, I bought a young Latvian girl and her friend a shot. Like before, there was a burst of friendliness for a time, but then a male friend eventually whisked her away.

“See how buying these girls drinks makes a major difference?” Luigi said. “You got to buy it within the first few minutes, even with normal girls. They don’t like cheap men here.”

“I would never do this in America,” I said.

“Yes, because in America that doesn’t work. Find out what the girls want in the country you’re in, then give it to them.”

“What do the girls in this bar want?”

“A Latvian man. It’s obvious. Look around. Do you see any foreigners?”

“No, we’re the only ones.”

“Be smart. Why do you think that is? The girls in this place don’t want foreigners. In other countries, girls would die to get the chance to kiss your feet, and in the past it was like this here, too, but things have changed. Now you have to go to bitch clubs to get laid. That’s just how it is.”

I started seeing the futility of it all. Luigi was right. His words were matching almost perfectly with my experience, and the saddest truth of all was that the scammer girls would provide you with more action than the normal chicks.

“How about the fat girl you porked last night? What category would you put her in?”

“Desperate. Ugly girls here will fuck anything.”

“Why did you take her home?”

“I hate being alone. Every night I need a woman in my bed. I can’t even go out alone. I didn’t call you five times today because I want your dick but because I want to make sure you come out with me. I need to be with people, to talk to them. I don’t like it otherwise.”

Luigi was the first man I ever met who was so needy that it actually helped him take girls home. I thought I was persistent in staying out all night to get a girl, but Luigi simply wouldn’t go home until he found a girl. When we parted ways at around 4:00 a.m., he went to every other club that was open until he finally found a girl to take home. She didn’t fuck him, but he was satisfied nonetheless.

—

I didn’t see him on Friday. He met a girl from the Internet, had a cappuccino with her at the coffee shop, then took her home and fucked. When we met on Saturday night I asked him how she looked. “She was fat, but not as fat as the girl from the first night!”

For him it sounded like being with anyone was more important than being with a reasonable chick, but since those girls were giving him boners, I could argue that life was easier for Luigi than for myself.

We started at one of my favorite clubs. As expected, we were getting blown out left and right. I knew why, but it didn’t take away the sting of failure.

Luigi said, “In Latvia you have to sell the dream, the fantasy, that you’re her Prince Charming. Your energy has to be positive, you have to keep the drinks coming, and dance like it’s the last night in the world. Then you ask her to come to your apartment. If she says no, forget it, the dream ends and you must find another girl, because it must happen the same night. She maybe ask for money when you get to your place, but then you can bargain her down to a low price. If a girl asks for 20 lats, give it to her. She’s poor and has no money. That’s nothing to you.”

“That would be $40 to fuck a girl that for the most part will treat me like a normal guy instead of a john. That sounds reasonable, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Even if you can do it, it’s not going to happen in this club. There is no bitch here. Look, last night I fuck a girl from only buying her a cappuccino, because she wanted to fuck a foreigner. Do you see any foreigners here? The girls don’t care about us. I know of another place.”

“What’s it called?”

“Essential.”

It’s impossible not to hear about Essential after setting foot in Riga. It used to be one of those foreign-friendly places where a girl wanted to meet an Italian dude for the night, but word on the street said that it was now scammer central. I made it a point not to go there.

I said, “I hear Essential is where all the prostitutes go.”

“Yeah but they love foreigners.”

“Prostitutes who love foreigners, how romantic.”

“Roosh, do you think you’re going to pick up in this club tonight?”

“No.”

“Can we at least check out Essential? It’s still early so if it sucks we can come back.”

I admit that I was at least curious about the club and wanted to see what it was all about. After paying $15 to get in, we walked into the main hall. Every single guy in there was a foreigner. Every single girl was a local. I felt like I was in Help in Rio, the infamous club where prostitutes went to get business from gringos. Essential might as well have been their Eastern European franchise.

CONTINUED: PART FOUR

PREVIOUSLY: PART ONE

He walked with me to my apartment so I could drop off my laptop and wash up. He said there was no time for me to take a shower, so I just brushed my teeth and scrubbed my armpits over the sink. Once back on the street, he started telling me about his method.

“This isn’t like America where you have to go in circles to talk to a woman. They want a strong, direct man here. Give her a good look in the eyes, smile, hold it, and then ask her how she’s doing. That’s it. You’ll know right away if she wants to talk to you or not. Let me see your smile.”

I smiled.

“Okay, fake smiles aren’t so great, but that’s a good start. Just smile and look her in the eyes. Don’t be scared, and don’t look away first.”

After I went to an ATM to withdraw some cash, we saw two girls coming up the sidewalk. One was cute and playing with her dog. The other was a land whale who had managed to fit into a party dress two sizes too small.

“Want to demonstrate?” I asked.

He stopped next to the girls and said, “Hi, ladies, how are you?”

The fat one responded instantly, complimenting his accent and asking where he was from. Even the cute one was friendly, so we all engaged in small talk. The fat girl turned into a bit of a stalker, however, following Luigi and me for a block until finally getting the hint.

“That girl is too fat,” he said. “I just wanted to show you what I mean.”

“What’s funny is that those girls were more receptive than I would have thought. If I approached them alone, I doubt if they would have responded like that.”

“The girls here think it’s weird when you go out alone. They don’t like it.”

“It was the opposite in Poland. I’d go out alone and the girls would commend me, saying they liked my confidence.”

“Yes, because Poland is a normal place. Remember that we’re in a shit place and things are different. I teach you so you understand.”

We walked to the front of a tourist club called Scandal, debating whether we should go in or not. Then a pretty brunette said hi to us. Wow, I thought, being with a friend really improves things. Luigi took over the conversation and asked what her and her tall friend were up to. They said they couldn’t get in because the brunette was too young and the bouncer she knows wasn’t working. They asked if we wanted to go to another club where she could get in. Luigi enthusiastically accepted.

I always do research on a country before I fly in. One thing I read about Riga is that a girl will lead you to a bar of her choosing where prices are grossly inflated. She gets a cut of the proceeds and slowly drains your wallet while pretending she likes you. By the end of the night, you’re broke and she goes home with the excuse that she has to take care of her mother. I’ve read some horror stories where a guy unwittingly buys a bottle, gets a bill for an absurd sum, and isn’t allowed to leave until he pays up. Burly Russian types escort him to nearby ATMs to make the withdrawal.

The two girls were extremely friendly, asking questions interview-style, where during the previous two weeks I had trouble finding more than one girl who acted that way. I was skeptical. I didn’t want to discount the power of being with a friend, but their vibe seemed off. While walking to their club, the brunette hooked Luigi’s arm and the tall girl, who wasn’t at all attractive, hooked mine. Without any doubt in the world, I knew something was wrong.

“So what do you think of Riga?” the tall girl asked.

“It’s a weird place.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, you have the Latvians and the Russians, and they’re completely different people. It depends on where you go, I guess.”

“Where have you been so far?” she asked.

“Just to a couple clubs in the center.”

“Do you have a favorite?”

“Not yet.”

“What other countries have you been to?”

On and on it went. The conversation wasn’t natural because Eastern European women don’t ask rapid-fire questions. What’s funny was that she was talking to me the way I always tell guys not to talk to women.

Five minutes into the walk, I said, “Hey, Luigi, can I have a word with you for a minute?”

“Yeah buddy wants up?”

“This doesn’t feel right. I think we should go back.”

“Why, man? These girls are cool.”

“Nah, I think it’s a scam.”

“No, man, you’re just being paranoid. I’ve been to Riga twenty times, I’m not an idiot. Let’s just see where they want to go. Trust me, I’m not the last boy scout. I won’t let anything happen to us.”

He was a convincing little man. We resumed walking with the girls.

“So, where are we going?” I asked the tall girl.

“Don’t be so nervous,” she said. “We’re just going to have fun.”

“Does this place have a name?”

“Don’t worry about it!”

“Well, how far is it?”

“It’s close. Just a couple more minutes.”

She kept asking questions to keep my mind off the bar we were going to, but her awkward conversation style just made me even more suspicious. We made a left turn, a right, and then another right, which was the city equivalent of going three blocks to walk one.

“So do you know where this bar is or not? We’re walking in circles,” I said.

“Don’t be so nervous!” she said, but all my brain heard was be so nervous.

“Hey, Luigi, come here for a second,” I said, drawing him into another conference. “You know we just walked in a circle, right?”

“Yeah, it looks that way. Strange.”

“Look, this is a fucking scam. I’m 100% sure. We’re wasting our time.”

“It’s okay. Let’s just check out the place and if it’s a scam, we’ll leave.”

“So you want to continue wasting our night just to confirm it really is a scam? I have my ATM card on me and a lot of cash. I don’t feel comfortable at all.”

“Don’t worry, man.”

“Yeah, famous last words.”

“Look, they say it’s close. Let’s just check it out.”

“They’ve been saying its close for the past ten minutes.”

“We’ll just look at it from the front. I agree that it’s starting to smell like shit, but if it’s shit, we won’t go in.”

We went back to the girls. I didn’t even bother to put on a fake smile. Luigi really thought his girl was intensely attracted to him and walking us across town because she eventually wanted to fuck him.

Ten minutes later, we were approaching the worst area of the city, with no signs of civilization in sight. I stopped all conversation with the tall girl. If I got scammed on my own, having been honestly tricked, I’d take my licks and learn from it. But in this case I had seen the scam a mile away and was allowing a new friendship to suck me in way farther than I would have otherwise gone. I was putting my fate in Luigi’s hands.

“Alright, I’m going back,” I suddenly said. “Luigi, this is bullshit. We’ve been walking for twenty minutes and now we’re in a shit part of town. Even if the bar isn’t a scam, I don’t want to go.” Then, I added in a whisper, “I don’t even like the girl. I don’t want to fuck her. She’s not even cute.”

“So you’re going to leave me here alone?”

“You’re welcome to come with me if you want, but I’m not going to do something I don’t feel comfortable with.”

Luigi got stern with the girls. “Hey, ladies, this isn’t some bar where a bottle costs 500 euro, eh?”

Their cheesy smiles tried to assure him. For a guy who supposedly had so much Riga experience, I couldn’t believe that he was still indulging a scam that was going down word for word the way I had read about on the Internet (it wouldn’t be until the following night that he revealed he had been scammed multiple times in Riga).

“Okay, Roosh, I talked to the girls. They say it’s just three blocks down. How about we get into a taxi and look at it from the front? If it’s not good, we’ll drop them off and go back to club we were at.”

That sounded reasonable to me, especially since we would pick the cab. I hailed one on the street, but the driver didn’t speak English. We got in and the girls gave him directions in Russian. We had unwittingly given them complete control over the situation. They had told Luigi that the bar was only three blocks away, but just like on foot, we started going in circles. Either these girls were such amateurs that they had forgotten where the scam bar was, or they were deliberately trying to disorient us.

“I used to live here. This is a very bad area,” Luigi said.

“No shit,” I said. “Hey girls, do you know where this bar is or not?”

The pretty girl said to the taxi driver in Russian, “He doesn’t understand,” followed by a little laugh.

The taxi driver just smiled, understanding what was going on. The scam was definitely on and my heart started racing.

CONTINUED: PART THREE

My mind was already on Ukraine. I could stick a fork in the juicy hype that was buzzing around it. “Learn Russian,” the guys who had been there would say to me. “Go before the Euro 2012, before it gets spoiled,” they’d add.

Every night I’d grab my mp3 player and take a walk outside in Riga’s Old Town to knock out an hour of Pimsleur Russian, the steady cadence of my footsteps acting like a metronome to keep my brain focused. I started the nightly walk in Poland and carried it into Riga.

“Every word counts,” my language motto goes. Winter’s arrival made the walks cold, but strengthened my resolve. Like a bodybuilder, I was working hard in the off-season to show a lot of new muscle when it was time to take off my shirt in the summer.

The Old Town of Riga was deserted during the week. There was no one to hear me doing my Russian courses under my breath, saying things like “Excuse me, where is the central square?” or “My wife and I want to drink something.” I’d put myself on a loop that would take me past coffee shops, office buildings, and residential apartments that had somehow escaped the ugly Soviet-bloc style of architecture. The occasional taxi would roll by on the cobblestone streets, looking for a tourist to scam with their rigged meters and “Euro only” payment demands.

One Wednesday night during a walk I saw a short man with dark features approaching me. He stopped a few feet away. I hit pause on my player, only two minutes left in my lesson, expecting to resume it shortly.

“Do you know a good place to go tonight?” he said in a thick Italian accent.

A sex tourist, I thought.

I took off my headphones. “Wednesday is a tough night. There’s a place called Milk, but you have to take a taxi. Besides there, I’ve never been out on a Wednesday night. Things don’t get started until the weekend.”

“How about in Old Town? Where can I go?”

“You can always try the Colonel. If that place doesn’t have people, I doubt anywhere else will,” I said.

“Where are you from? Are you American?”

“Yeah, I’m from Washington DC. And you?”

“I’m from Italy. You’re traveling here?”

“I’m staying for a month. I’ve been here for a couple weeks so far, but I don’t like it too much.”

“You’re walking like you are upset. I could see in your face that you’re not happy. Look, what are you doing right now? Did you eat?”

“Actually, I was right about to go to TGI Fridays to get an American burger. I haven’t had one in the while. You’re welcome to come with me.” He stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Luigi. We walked to the restaurant and got a table.

Whatever image you have of a stereotypical Italian wouldn’t be far from Luigi. He was short, not more than 5 feet 4 inches tall, with a slightly round belly. He had a clean face with wide eyes that made him always seem curious. He talked exactly like the mobster types in Hollywood movies, with the same hand gestures and Italian filler noises like the teeth sucking and the “Ah’s” and the catch phrases like the “Oh, come on!” and the “Don’t-uh bullsheet me!” and “I swear on my seester!” He was one year older than me and could probably have passed for my brother.

He said, “Before I came up to you, I was positive you were Italian. I was going to speak Italian, but at the last minute I changed to English because of your clothes.”

“I get that a lot. When I was in Poland, most of the girls thought I was from Spain, but Italian was the second most popular guess.” He nodded and I continued, “I had a great time in Poland, but so far Riga has been a huge disappointment. So many guys said this place was amazing for women, but I’m just not seeing it, and I feel like I’ve been everywhere in the city. I’m ready to give up.”

“Look, I’ve been here twenty times. If you came five years ago, the women would throw themselves on you, but now it’s shit. I don’t know what happened, but I swear on my seester it used to be better. Every girl wanted a foreigner, but now they don’t care. Riga is finished.”

“So why are you here?”

“It’s like a drug, I just keep coming back because I’m stupid, because I know the city and I’ve met so many women before. I fell in love one time here with a girl, four years ago. She wasn’t blonde, but she had the beautiful blue eyes. She looked like a doll. I told her I want to be with her forever. I pay for her to come to Italy, I introduce her to my family, I treat her like my queen, and then in the end, she fuck me. She left me for another guy who had more money than me. These girls, they are obsessed with money. They don’t care about you, how you look, your job, your personality, just if you have money.”

“How did she screw you?”

“Before she came to Sicily, she said she wanted to see Rome for two days. Why do you think she wanted to go to Rome? Because she has a cock there. These girls have cock everywhere—you can’t trust them. So she came to Sicily but she changed. In Latvia she think I was a rich man, and compared to men here I was, but in Italy I am normal. She knew that and right away tried to get a better man.”

“Is that what you’re looking for here? A wife?” My burger and fries arrived. Luigi was on auto-pilot now.

“No, I have a girlfriend. I come here just to play. We live in Ireland because I hate Italy. Look at me, do I look like typical Italian white trash? I know you’ve seen the Italians here. They are nothing, they are shit. Back at home they live with their mother and father until they are 40 years old. They don’t have a job and come here because flight is cheap. I don’t want to be like this trash. I want to be successful. I want to have class. I have a good job. I have my iPhone at home. I want to travel. I want to experience the world. When I go home and visit my family they don’t understand me, why I do this. I don’t want to be like an Italian.”

“Let me tell you,” he said, “I love America. I love America with all my heart. The people there, they believe, they are optimists. ‘Yes, we can!’ Your flag is on the moon! You are the biggest country in the world. Americans can do anything they want. You don’t know how lucky you are to be one, how much power you have.”

“Maybe in the past it was great to be American, but I think our time is gone.”

“No, it’s still here. America is a dream that people still believe in. It’s the fantasy, the movies, the music, New York City, Las Vegas, Miami. Come on, man, you’re American. Be proud! Girls here love America. I will die for your passport.”

“I’m not sensing that. The girls here don’t seem to care.”

“That’s because you’re going to the wrong places. We will go out, I’ll take you to the right places. I come to Riga and I get a girl every night. Tonight we will meet girls. We will do it.”

“But it’s Wednesday. Where can we go?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, we will find a place. We will do it!”

Was an Italian man selling me the American dream? Yes, he was—and I was buying. This was part of his infectious nature, his game. He made you believe in yourself, selling you fantasies, and even when it turned out that those fantasies weren’t true, you wanted to go back to hear more. Luigi gave me faith in myself, shutting down the voice of logic and reason. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that my American passport mattered in Latvia, where every one of my experiences so far had contradicted that.

“I went to New York City many times and they don’t care about my accent. I go to a bar and I try to talk to the girls, but they don’t talk to me. I love America but I don’t understand American women. ‘Do you want to smoke? Do you want to talk? Do you want to do dance? Do you want to drink? Do you want to fuck? What the fuck do you want?’ Then I go to Canada and I talk in my accent, like Tony Soprano, and the girls they like it. They compliment me. I can’t live in America because it’s hard to get a green card, but I will move to Canada. Close enough, just no guns. But I still love America.”

“What do Latvian girls want?” I asked.

“They want money! It’s their sickness. It is so sad that you have beautiful girls here and they will give you pussy for a couple drinks and 20 lats.” [20 lats is $40 dollars.]

“Yes, but you keep coming back. You’re part of the problem, no?”

“Yes, because I love the blonde girl here. They are my dream and I come here and give them what they want. I sell them the dream and I fuck them, and if they ask me for 20 lat then I will give it to them as long as I can fuck. I’m going to marry my girlfriend one day, she is going to be the mother of my child. This trip is my last one here. This is… how do you say in America when a man is going to get married?”

“Bachelor party?”

“Yes, this is my bachelor party. Please teach me the English, all the slang. I want to know it.”

“So all these girls are prostitutes?”

“Yes and no. These girls are not prostitutes, but they are looking for opportunity. So either you sell them the dream, the future with you in America, or you give them the money. But you don’t go to a girl and say ‘How much?’ Maybe she asks you before sex, maybe she asks after sex. Maybe she never asks you. It’s not always so clear.”

I had long ago started taking notes with my pen on what he saying, jotting things down on my paper placemat. He knew I wrote travel guides, so he stressed important things by adding, “Put that in your book!”

I said, “In American slang, we call girls like that semi-professionals, or semi-pros. They’re not full-blown prostitutes, but they’re not normal girls, either. The line is blurry and you’re not sure what you’re getting. But I only want a normal girl.”

“You want a normal girl in a fucked-up place? Roosh, this is not America. This is not Italy or Sweden. The people here have no class. They don’t care about who you are as a man. They want money and they want a future. They want to trade their beauty for something, for something they can touch and feel.”

“I guess that explains why the first Latvian girl I fucked had lived in England for a long time. She seemed more Western than Latvian. I think there are normal Latvian girls, but they’re just hard to talk to.”

“Yes, they are hard because they think you are a sex tourist. The normal girls only want a Latvian man. So we have to deal with the girls who are bitches, who want money. Those are the two types of girls here, the normal girl and the bitch. You are going to normal clubs and getting nowhere, right?”

“Right.”

“You must go to the bitch club and treat those girls like a bitch. It’s very easy here, I will explain it to you.” He took a dramatic sip of his mojito. My pen was ready. “They don’t like cheap men. Very early you have to buy her a drink.”

“Right away?”

“It depends. I like to start with conversation, but you can even go up to a girl and say, ‘Would you like to have a drink with me?’ This is why in Latvia it’s important to go out with a friend. That’s why I talked to you outside. I don’t want to go out alone. I hate being alone. Two is perfect here because the girls are always in twos. That’s how you know a girl is a bitch because she won’t be in a big group. If ten of her friends are making a big party, she’s a normal girl and you won’t get anywhere.”

“Yeah I always get cockblocked when approaching a girl who’s part of a big group. They don’t even let me finish my opening line. Right away a friend comes and takes her away, like she’s trying to save her from being raped or something.”

“Yes because they think you are a sex tourist.”

“Do you think I look like a sex tourist?” Maybe I was putting out a sex tourist vibe.

“No, man, you don’t look like a sex tourist, but you’re a foreigner. The normal girls do not like foreigners anymore. Forget about it. Look at the time, almost 12:00. Let’s get the check and go. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

We paid the bill and left. I was ready to follow Luigi’s lead.

CONTINUED: PART TWO