The History of Sex: Seville -- Why Men Are Don Juans -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 16)

Wright ended his night with the 'white slave trader' in the bar where I'm sitting now:

'And in each place, he signed up girls to work in the whorehouses of North Africa.'

Now, as with the Inquisition, it's not common knowledge that Seville was a hub of sex trafficking under Franco, with white católicas willingly venturing to Africa to sleep with dark-skinned Muslims.

How many family homes in Seville must have been bought with the proceeds of prostitution? Granny, where were you in the Fifties?

It's not a particularly polite question to ask a proud sevillano.

And anyway, I'm here to find out about Don Juan.

DON JUAN IN THE FLESH

Alfonso Sanchez played the legendary womanizer in a local theatre production that combined three incarnations of the Don on one stage: Molina's hellbound original, the wise-cracking atheist envisaged by Moliere and the most popular version, Jose Zorrilla's religious romantic, a man who's redeemed by the love of a good (Catholic) woman.

In casting the main character, the director told me that her Don Juans had to look like they'd give a girl 'the best sex in the world.'

I'm not the best judge, but Alfonso is dark and bearded, and what he lacks in height he makes up with poise, carrying himself with actorly self regard.

What's more, Alfonso's an actor with a brain.

Alfonso and a musician
outside the historic Bar Citroen

'I had a bit of a phobia about playing Don Juan, because in my life, it's always been present,' he admits. 'My father is a total Don Juan. So I've lived it. And it has its light and dark sides. I was also a little afraid of confronting my own ghosts.'

While we're exorcizing our demons, I suppose I should confess that there was a time when I was called a Don Juan, though it never seemed much of a compliment, mainly because it sounds synonymous with 'male slut.'

After centuries of cogitation about what makes a man a mujeriego—mother issues, arrested development, being an incurable romantic, etcetera—the best reason I've been able to come up with is far more prosaic: Don Juans cheat because they can.

If men weren't indulged as rogues, victims or sex addicts, if they were stigmatized in the same way that—oh, I don't know—'bad' women have been repudiated for ages—well, I reckon the fanciful Don Juan 'gene' would quickly die out.

'THE GREAT TRAGEDY'

Alfonso doesn't disagree with this view, though he reckons there's a strong cultural element to being a Denomination-of-Origin Don.

'In the culture of the south, the myth of Don Juan is ever-present, especially in relationships with women. It turns into a relationship of conquest. Everything is conquest. You go to have a coffee, and you arrive at a moment of conquest. It's as if it makes you more manly—in theory. But it's self-destructive.'

He shakes his head when I mention guides like The Game and its Spanish imitator.

'That's fascinating,' he says. 'It's the opposite of the process I've gone through.'

Instead, he recommends a cure for Don Juanism: playing the Don onstage.

'It forces you to be conscious of your own limitations. Because the things you do without thinking about them, out of a tradition that obliges you to be a Don Juan, or a need for conquest, you realize that isn't the essence of who you are: you're searching for something else.'

'The great tragedy of Don Juan is that he's constantly searching for God—or rather, pure love. And he doesn't find it—until he meets the love of his life.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Seville -- Flamenco and White Slavery -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 15)

Having set the standards for the rest of the world during the Inquisition and launched a mission to save Catholicism under Franco, it seems ironic that Spain should now be so desperate to ape the mores of traditionally Protestant (if largely secular) countries.

Meanwhile, alarmists talk of Muslim immigrants—and Spanish converts—establishing a 'New Al-Andalus' in Spain: the historic stronghold of Granada opened its first mosque since the Reconquest in 2003.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a Spanish novelist wrote a mock political manifesto outlining how to make Spain 'the most dynamic and innovative service society in the new, global trans-national order:' 

'Spaniards! Those young people who sow their barely adolescent bodies on the curves of our highways every weekend. They're not a problem; they're a solution… Let's not go back to wasting the gold of America… Let's illuminate the world once more with a new Golden Age… Now is the time to convert ourselves into a BROTHEL OF THE DEAD.' 

'I YOU GO AFRICA'

That notion is only slightly more offensive than the real reason I've chosen the Bar Citroën to meet a modern Don Juan.

The bar sits on the corner between Seville's Moorish-style Plaza de España and the family park that hides the spot where the Inquisition used to cremate people alive.

Like the Plaza, the Citroën dates from the Spanish-American Expo of 1929: the small, circular building was actually the carmakers' showroom.

Now a pitstop for tourists and pedestrians, the Citroën was more of a nightspot when Richard Wright came here over half a century ago.

A shady compatriot had offered to show him 'enough flamenco to last you a lifetime' but ended up taking him on a club crawl.

As a black American, the author was surprised to find sevillanas throwing themselves at him, saying: 'I you go Africa.'

Laughing, his guide explained the joke: 'I'm organizing these girls to take them to Africa next week. They think that you are the boss. You see, you are dark. They think you own the cathouses in Casablanca.'

'You mean they want to work in the whorehouses in Africa?'

'They are dying to go. I got the pick of thousands. I can't sleep for the women in Seville begging me to take them to Africa. Two years' work over there and a girl can buy a house in Seville.'

Don't twist my arm:
Contrary to pulp fiction,
Richard Wright found that many sevillanas went willingly

The History of Sex: Seville -- 'Ten Tips on Caressing the Female Breast' -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 14)

Given this backstory, it's no surprise that when sexual liberation came to Spain, it arrived with a bang.

Tragically, the country returned to democracy during one of the most vacuous periods in Western history: the Age of Disco.

By that time, Sixties platitudes about bettering society had been all but discarded in favor of full-blown self-fulfillment: it's all about me, baby!

On the same day in 1975 that a democratic Don Juan was named King of Spain, the #1 song in America was 'That's the Way (I Like It)' by KC and the Sunshine Band.

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

So when it comes to sex, you can't blame modern Spain for being a bit conflicted: having swung from religious totalitarianism to total secular freedom, who wouldn't be?

LOCO ALERT

'THE PSYCHOSIS RETURNS' declared the TV this morning as a pillow-lipped presenter announced the latest outrage: un loco has tried to molest a teenager in one of Spain's beach resorts.

And while I'm rushing through Seville to meet a modern Don Juan, I do a double-take outside a newsstand not far from the plaza where the Inquisition used to condemn its victims.

It's not the run-of-the-mill porn that catches my eye, but a self-improvement title called Sexologies.

Just above the teaser for '48 Hours of Sex Shopping in London' is the main article: 'Ten Tips on Caressing the Female Breast.'

As opposed to man boobs, I guess.

Buy the magazine, get the vibrator for free

At first, I assume the title is figurative, or maybe I'm misreading it—it's probably more along the lines of 'how to touch a woman's heart.'

But no, the list is literal, including Tips #2 and #3: 'Take Off Her Bra' (always a good start) and 'Look At Her Breasts As If You've Made A Great Discovery.'

Of course, every would-be Columbus of the Bosom has to learn some time.

But if you need a science-lite magazine to tell you how to caress a breast, I'm guessing you're probably not ready for penetration—and you definitely shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a woman with the fuchsia, battery-powered 'Rabbit of Love' that comes free with the magazine.

It's enough to make you say a prayer to the patron of the Internet, St. Isidore, who analyzed sex as the Bishop of Seville way back in the seventh century.

'INCREASE YOUR COLLECTION OF
LITTLE RABBITS OF LOVE
Which is your favorite type of man?
The voting begins!

The History of Sex: Seville -- Rape as a Weapon -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 10)

That claim that would have appalled the late 'Generalissimo of Spain' and self-styled 'Leader of the Last Crusade and of the Hispanic World.'

Not that he was a big fan of Don Juans.

Francisco Franco's father had been a womanizing military man who was often away from home (has anybody seen my daddy?), leaving the future Fascist to cling to his devout, bourgeois Catholic mother.

Like most dictators, Franco wound up running his beloved Motherland into the ground. But it wasn't meant to turn out that way.

In launching his coup against Spain's anti-Catholic government in 1936, Franco's goal had been to restore España to its glory days as a global power, adopting the 'Catholic Monarchs' who founded the Inquisition as his role models.

The Last Crusade: Fascist propaganda from the Civil War
Franco vowed to make Spain the 'Spiritual Guide of the World'

The Fascists aimed to bring about not just a political and economic revolution, but also a moral one, rejecting liberalism—particularly the relativism of Rousseau—and restoring the Church to the center of Spanish life.

Decadent Italy and the Vatican might be the Pope's home, but Franco's Spain aimed to implement the purest form of Catholicism on the planet.

And right from the beginning, sex was a weapon.

Seville was one of the first cities to fall to Franco's coupmongers, and the officer who conquered it bragged about the rapes committed by his troops.

For men who viewed women as either virgins or whores, of course, violating a godless Communist wasn't really rape at all: she was already a whore.

After the war, these false ideals became the focus of the Fascist regime.

'In the Spain of National-Catholicism, the accent on immorality fell almost exclusively on sexual sin, so much so that the multiple forms of theft and corruption were forgotten,' according to a fascinating history of Sexual Repression in Franco's Spain, which argues that 'the autarchy's sexual repression also had its Torquemada:' the Minister of Information and Tourism, a 'super-Catholic' who supposedly kept fiscal accounts of how many souls the Fascist regime saved each year.

Spanish Civil War poster:
'Avoid venereal diseases: They're as dangerous as enemy bullets'

The History of Sex: Seville -- Was the Original Don Juan Gay? -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 9)

Other men like Moliere and Mozart quickly turned the Latin lover into a universal archetype, but there were specific reasons why Don Juan premiered in Inquisition Spain, where sex was literally a matter of life and death.

As in the rest of Europe, the ancient Roman rules about shame and honor had never really died out; if anything, they'd probably been crystallized by eight centuries of Islamic rule, particularly in the Moorish south.

'There is in Seville a class of useless, idle people usually known as men about town,' wrote the novelist Cervantes, a man who'd done time in the city's jail himself before giving the world that other product of Inquisition Spain, Don Quixote.

One of these gadabout sevillanos was just a toddler when Tirso de Molina's play made its debut in Madrid, but he grew up to embody the stereotypical Don Juan.

Fortunately, Miguel de Mañara's life had a happy ending.

Staggering home through the Old Town one night, he bumped into a funeral procession.

De Mañara snuck a peek at the corpse—and saw his own dead face staring back at him (other versions claim his wife's death straightened him out).

De Mañara forsook his sinful ways, gave his riches to the poor and genuinely became a force for good. 

However, the more likely real-life inspiration for Don Juan met a sticky end.

THE 'REAL' DON JUAN?

The Count of Villamediana—Don Juan de Tassis y Peralta—was murdered in Madrid in 1622, having offended so many people with his satirical poems that his killer was never caught.

One theory is that Villamediana had peeved the king by consorting with the queen.

But a far more intriguing theory maintains that the 'real Don Juan' wasn't a ladies' man at all.

Now, as with the rumors about 'Osman' in Istanbul, the homosexualization of historical figures is practically a cottaging industry in its own right. In modern life, you're no one until you've been outed in death.

Still, the 'Gay Don Juan' story is a good 'un: according to this conspiracy theory, Villamediana was killed while riding in his coach with a teenager who was also a relative of the king's right-hand man.

What's more, shortly after Villamediana's demise, the Inquisition seems to have found evidence linking the count's household to a ring of homosexuals: two of his servants were burnt as sodomites, alongside a duke's page, a black slave… and a 'pet dwarf.'

Not this dwarf: a court buffoon from around 1626

Unfortunately, this account is based on research dug up by a Spanish historian over three centuries later, in 1928.

When a British successor, Robert Stradling, tried to find the same source material in the archives in 1986, he discovered that 'the papers had vanished:'

'The evidence had been removed, evidently by an authority… concerned to preserve intact the myth of Don Juan. A gay Don Juan evidently threatened the integrity of every Spanish male, even the identity of Spain itself. It had to remain a state secret. I had encountered a case of cultural cover-up.'

Or an administrative cock-up.

But Stradling is convinced—in italics—that if the 1928 account was accurate, 'no doubt can exist that the accepted prototype of Don Juan, most potent of all myths of heterosexual male seduction, was a promiscuous homosexual.'

* * *

The History of Sex: Seville -- Tricksters and Conquistadors -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 8)

Though prone to corruption, a devil's advocate could argue that the Inquisition served as a check on decadence during Spain's 'Golden Century.'

Even after England thrashed the Spanish Armada in 1588, Spain ranked as a global superpower, with vast territories encompassing Latin America, the Caribbean, Florida, California and the southwestern US (without forgetting the Philippines).

The Spanish Inquisition also influenced fashion throughout Europe, though Continentals eventually ditched the rich-but-dour look for more revealing styles (even as the Spanish bizarrely took to binding their daughters' chests with lead plates to make their breasts 'as flat as a sheet of paper,' according to a French contemporary).

At the same time, Spain popularized the Cult of the Virgin, forcing women back up on an even higher pedestal.

Seville still prides itself on being MUY MARIANA: VERY MARIAN.

At least two centuries before the Vatican made it official, the home of Don Juan touted Mary's Immaculate Conception, a doctrine that took the concept of female purity to the extreme: not only had the Mother of God been an eternal virgin, she'd also been conceived sans original sin.

NONCONFORMISTS VS. CONQUISTADORS

Crucially, the riches that made this age 'Golden' for Spain weren't so much earned as stolen, with the conquistadors taking far more from the New World than they put in.

Consider the settlers of New England versus New Spain.

The former were Calvinist nonconformists who risked their lives for an ideal: to be able to practice their beliefs free from religious persecution.

In contrast, the semi-literate brutes who conquered 'New Spain' (like the English fortune-seekers who settled the American South) risked their lives solely to get rich or die trying.

The mountains of gold and silver they shipped back via Seville fostered generations of aristos with no real purpose but to waste their fortunes and amuse themselves by exploiting others.

It's this decadence that produced the character of Don Juan.

Miguel de Manara, often cited as the 'real' Don Juan

The original Trickster of Seville was a straight, wages-of-sin cautionary tale, penned around 1630 by Tirso de Molina, a monk turned playwright.

Don Juan Tenorio is a rich young blade who gets his kicks tricking women into bed.

Catholic to the core, he seduces and double-crosses his way from Naples to Seville, cynically boasting that he'll seek God's forgiveness with his last breath.

The supernatural twist is that the ghost of a man he's murdered—the father of a dishonored woman—kills Don Juan and drags him off to hell before he can repent.

The History of Sex: Seville -- Home of the Spanish Inquisition... and Don Juan -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 4)

So our thrifty anti-hero decides to change his luck with women by tanning himself 'dark as a Zulu,' switching to contacts, depilating and sculpting his body, learning how to dance and perfecting his 'devastating smile:' 

'Simply put, I was adorable.'

And I can vouch for that, having marveled at his author's photos and online videos, revealing a guy so cute, he probably poos curlicues.

In fact, as muy macho as he and his manicured brethren no doubt are, whenever I read about these avowed womanizers, I can't help but wonder if their braggadocio isn't a form of protesting too much.

I reckon it's only a matter of time before one of these DIY Don Juans, these 'polyamorous' young men comes out and confesses, 'Y'know, what? I actually prefer taking it up the bum—and I don't mean with a strap-on dildo.'

Funnily enough, there's also a theory that the real-life inspiration for Don Juan liked men more than women, a notion so offensive to Spanish masculinity that it supposedly inspired a governmental cover-up (though Don Juan did make his debut around the same time that Castilian dandies adopted their lisp).

However, the main shock for me is that Spain's famed lotharios would need a 'Bible for seduction' at all.

Are Western men so maladjusted that even Spanish ladykillers need help?

* * * 

The modern capital of Andalusia is loud and proud about being the fictional home of a murderous heartbreaker, but Seville is uncharacteristically quiet about a far more important fact from its history.

Up until the opening of a museum on the subject, you could live there for years without stumbling across the city's dirty secret.

But it's true: the city of orange blossoms, flamenco and Don Juan was also the home of the Spanish Inquisition.

And being Torture HQ was no small thing.

Next to the Reconquest—the epic battle to expel the Moors from their last foothold in Western Europe—the Inquisition was one of the institutions (if not the institution) that made Spain and the Spanish what they are today, uniting the country religiously and politically for more than three-and-a-half centuries until a succession of foreign rulers finally put a stop to it.

The Spanish Inquisition was effectively a law unto itself, setting the moral code for Spain and a precedent for the rest of the globe, from Europe to Latin America and even Asia.

As one of the world's great powers, Inquisition Spain cemented the link between sex and sin (if not death) in Catholic culture and revived the virgin-whore dichotomy, exporting all these beliefs via Columbus and the conquistadors.

Importantly, the home of the Inquisition became the gateway to the New World; paradoxically, it also produced 'the world's greatest lover:' Don Juan.

The History of Sex: Seville -- Has Anybody Seen My Daddy? -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 3)

Of course, this isn't the first time in history that the leader of a newish movement says one thing (like 'give up your riches and follow me') and his followers do another (viz. the pre-Reformation Popes).

The problem is, once you start teaching people to bend the rules, there's no telling where they'll stop.

The Game has fathered at least one TV series, countless DIY Don Juans and—perhaps most surprisingly—even a Spanish imitator.

Like the original, which was published as a Bible lookalike in America, its Latin copycat also has a black jacket and purports to be nothing less than 'the Bible of Success with Women.'

In addition, the cover of Sex Code: El Manual Práctico de los Maestros de la Seducción sports a female silhouette in the crosshairs.

As with American MPUAs, the author of Sex Code tries to justify his actions by regurgitating sub-Darwinian gobbledygook from celebrity philosophists like Richard Dawkins, with plenty of supporting parables from pop-culture sources like The Matrix.

In the beginning, you see, evolution hardwired us to crave certain traits in mates ('The Promiscuous Woman Does a Disservice to Her Genes' declares one heading), but scientific advances like the Pill have made our bodies outdated replicating machines, transforming 'the battle of the sexes' into nothing but 'a game.'

Though it may defy logic, brethren, we can have our cake and eat it. Evolution is all-powerful, but we're so clever we can also outwit it:

With this knowledge, ye shall be as gods! 

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME

Whereas The Game is constructed as a typical underdog-to-topdog story—Strauss is just a little guy pursuing the American wet dream—Sex Code begins with the author explaining why he's 'consecrated his life to the study of seduction' (I was going to serve the poor but instead I consecrated myself to poonanny).

The scene-setter is straight out of a B movie: Mario Luna wakes up with a whiskey bottle in one hand and a woman in the other.

While he's smoking, the girl stirs, so he rolls her over and pulls down her panties.

And as our hero ties off yet another used condom, the girl tells him: 'That'll be €120.'

'I'd paid to fuck—again,' he muses.

Then he adds, in case the reader has mistaken him for a missionary:

'There wasn't anything altruistic about my behavior. Blowing my salary on whores didn't have anything to do with charity. I knew perfectly well what had driven me to waste my savings on prostitutes: my low self-esteem.'

Has anybody seen my daddy?

The History of Sex: Seville -- A Pox Upon Your PUAs -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 2)

'Style's' sexploits climax with him acquiring a 'harem' of ten and coaxing a couple of girls to have a threesome in which they spitball his sperm between their mouths.

He also hobnobs with celebs in LA ('Tom Cruise was teaching me more about inner game than my father ever had') and finds true-ish love in the form of a rocker girlfriend who keeps his penis hard (for a while—they've since broken up).

Towards the end, he even reaches a cod-epiphany of sorts (though notably after a teary encounter with another male PUA): 'Perhaps it was really shared emotion and experience that creates relationships, not seven hours of routines followed by two hours of sex.'

Ya think?

But because this is inevitably 'Coming to a Multiplex Near You'—it must have been like this in the Middle Ages, waiting for the plague to hit your village—Strauss is keen to keep reassuring you that deep down, he's not a sociopath; he's a really nice guy: 'All I wanted was an evolutionary edge.'

We geeks should get to pee in the gene pool, too!

And he really loves women. Kinda like Jack the Ripper loved prostitutes:

'One of the tragedies of modern life is that women as a whole do not hold a lot of power in society,' he empathizes out one side of his face, then adding out the other: 'Sexual choice, however, is one of the only areas where women are indisputably in control.'

And me and my buddies are doing our best to take even that away!

Having been among the first to cash in on the trend, Strauss can then afford to take the high ground, proclaiming himself shocked—shocked—that teaching other pretend-men to 'neg' women and treat them like 'targets' causes them to, well, have a negative attitude and treat women like targets!

It's uncanny, dude! I keep pumping rubbish into these men—and they turn into rubbish men!

Poseurs or PUAs?
VH1's reality show for pretend-men

The History of Sex: Juan for the Boys: Sex and Death in Seville -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 1)

Chapter Six
JUAN FOR THE BOYS
Sex and Death in Seville 

'Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave:
The coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.' 

--The Song of Solomon, translated into Spanish c1560 

If only the car nerds could tap into some of that old Don Juan-ismo.

Now that we're well into the new millennium, it's becoming clear that the leitmotif of many a twentieth-century thumbsucker—the son's archetypal (and often self-pitying) conflict with his father—has begotten an even more desperate twenty-first-century descendant: the son versus his virtually non-existent father (has anybody seen my daddy?), a void that's spawned countless surrogates offering to turn boys into men.

For a price, naturally.

Enter The Game by Neil Strauss, an American journalist who uncovered a secretive brotherhood of 'pick-up artists' united by the Web and a love of acronyms.

Strauss' previous contribution to the culture was How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, a memoir by Jenna Jameson that spent six weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List.

In The Game, then, Strauss starts out as a poor little bestselling author, a mere AFC or 'average fucking chump' who transforms himself into 'Style,' a globe-hopping 'Master PUA' who cons women into bed largely by preying on their weak spots.

A key tactic is to insult or 'neg' a 'target:' 'the purpose is to lower a woman's self esteem.'

And that's just the beginning.

The History of Sex: Geneva -- How Not to Pick Up a Booth Babe -- (Chap. V, Pt. 18)

Rather than force me to walk round and round to talk to them, the Skoda girls suggest I hop in the backseat, with Nikolina 'driving' and Jessica riding shotgun.

'You must get lots of guys hitting on you,' I venture.

'With guys hitting on us, it's easy, because we have security here, so they ask them kindly to go. But you get these—weird people.' Jessica wrinkles her nose.

'We had an experience with a man who was French, and he had some food left on the side of his mouth. And he was with his son and his friend. And he was talking to me so nicely. And his friend was trying to take a picture, and his boy was getting into the picture, and he was yelling at his son—'"Francois, get out of the picture!!!"'—she switches back into nice-guy mode, nodding attentively—"Yeah, yeah, I work in Bern, it's really nice"—"Francois, get out!!!" And when he turned his face to me—he was so—so friendly!'

She giggles.

'And he was also spitting.'

'A lot of guys say, "Where are you going tonight?"' Nikolina adds. 'And I always give answers like, "Somewhere you're not." Or "I don't speak French," "I don't speak English"—Whatever. I don't want to be rude. We smile, but it's not so easy all the time.'

'Do you ever get any corny pick-up lines?' I ask.

Jessica groans. 'The one everyone says is "Are you included with the car or do we have to pay extra?"'

'We usually say we'd be too expensive. You couldn't afford it.'

As the convention crowds continue to revolve around us, I mention that I've been surprised the atmosphere isn't more, um, glamorous. Without putting too fine a point on it, where have all the babes gone?

'You should've come the first two days, the press days, which aren't open to the public,' Jessica explains. 'Every car label has its models, it's only press here, and then there's really a bit of glamour. Then, when it starts to open to the public…' she shakes her head and smiles '…it stops.'

Tomorrow is the last day of the Motor Show, when thousands will forego church to spend their Sunday lusting after earthly goods in the erstwhile Protestant Rome.

As I step out of the revolving Skoda, I can't help but recall an oft-repeated phrase in Geneva: poor old Calvin must be spinning in his grave.

* * *

The History of Sex: Geneva -- Weeding Out the Weirdos -- (Chap. V, Pt. 13)

As for Rousseau, his love-hate relationship with his hometown is reciprocated to this day.

A little island in the middle of the Rhone is named after him, but the even tinier Espace Rousseau museum is chronically underfunded, consisting of just two small rooms.

And as scientists increasingly question whether we have souls ('Is the Genome the Secular Equivalent of the Soul?,' asks a boffin at the University of Geneva), the notion of the soulmate still haunts the popular psyche like a ghost in the machine, summoned up in countless personal ads—even if some modern lonely hearts, like this twenty-nine-year-old in Geneva, come across as anti-soulmates: 

'Just a man searching for attachments-free good sex. Why? Well, i don't believe in love anymore, so i am looking to enjoy life until the end, and that's all.' 

Notably, this guy's online photo, obviously snapped in an internet dive, reveals him to be bug-eyed, eggheaded and bushy-browed.

Online, though, he's 'OrigPussyLicker:' aka 'Don Juan de Marco.'

'More like Don Juan de Weirdo,' Lena observes.

To help weed out the weirdos, a Dutchwoman in Geneva has launched an upscale dating agency that marries atavistic Calvinism with modern materialism.

Trea Tijmens is a former corporate headhunter who charges 4,000 francs—around £2,000 (upwards of $4,000)—to introduce professionals to potential merger candidates, or 'life partners,' as she tells me in a local café: 'I think everyone hopes that their life partner will be their soulmate.'

The full-service SuccessMatch membership fee lasts for eighteen months, with each arranged date costing a further 250 francs.

It includes professional headshots, an in-depth interview and a Myers-Briggs personality test, with clients signing a contract and non-disclosure agreement swearing that they've told the truth.

'THE ONLY THING I DON'T TALK ABOUT'

So having NDAed them and Myers-Briggsed them, I ask, 'What about sex? Do you ask them what they're looking for in a relationship?'

Trea starts to laugh nervously, as if I've mentioned something unmentionable.

'Sex?'

Well, yeah, I shrug. I'm shocked that she's so shocked. She's even blushing.

'You're Dutch for God's sake!' I tease her.

'That's the only thing I don't talk about. We speak about money. We speak about religion. We speak about past relationships. We speak about their whole childhood—what type of family they had and where they grew up. I know them better than their own friends and relatives. The only thing I don't speak about is'— She can't even bring herself to say the word again.

'Why is that?'

'Well, probably because I wouldn't be comfortable speaking about it. Because I'm very Calvinist. That's how I was raised. Very prudish. So I probably wouldn't be comfortable speaking about that.'

A cultural Calvinist to the core, Trea also urges her clientele to be pragmatic about love.

'Some clients have this idea that once they meet the right person, they'll sweep them off their feet and live happily ever after,' she laughs. 'I don't want to scare them off, but it isn't easy to make a relationship work. It's a lot of hard work.'

* * *