COLUMNISTS

Deidre Dare

If there is one thing both Western and Russian men seem to agree on, it is that Russian girls prefer dating men with lots of money. And in our city it is the expat men who have the cash.

"We call these women ‘spongers,'" my Russian friend Dmitry told me. "I don't know the precise English equivalent for those girls who make their living on expats' donations - there is a whole social class of such girls and they can show an orgasm every five minutes only looking at the expat's wallet or imagining how she will go shopping to TsUM spending his money left and right."

An Aussie guy I know had to agree when he received this e-mail from his new Russian girlfriend: "Baby - Why you never give me anything? When a man loves a woman, he gives her presents. Nothing special, just little things she might like, like chocolates, flowers or diamonds."

What awful gold-digging bitches these Russian girls are!

After all, we Western chicks are much more evolved. We look for a sense of humour and intelligence. Or, if we err towards the shallow, a nice ass and a six-pack. For us, questions of wealth are an irrelevant throwback to a time when women were economically dependent upon men.

Or at least I thought so until I started to date men without money.

Up until I was ostracised from the Investment Banker/Lawyer World, I only dated rich men because I only met rich men. In my current circumstances, most of the men I meet are poor. They are writers and journalists and artists and the ilk. Their entire yearly salary isn't even a quarter of what my last lawyer lover's semi-annual bonus was.

Dinner and Moet at Pushkin? Forget it!

On a date these days, I'm more likely to end up either not eating or grabbing a questionable hotdog from a street kiosk. As for the champagne, it's Soviet all the way now - at only 500 roubles a bottle at Gogol, it's the best deal in Moscow.

I've gone from getting Chanel overnight bags as gifts to receiving the trinkets sold outside the Barrikadnaya metro stop.

The truth is that no amount of intelligence, humour or muscle-bound glutes really makes up for a lack of ready cash. If anything, rich men have cornered the market on those desirable traits as well. Wealthier men can be very funny and they're obviously intelligent, or they wouldn't be wealthy in the first place. And rich men can afford personal trainers, so their butts and abs are usually the best in the business.

There are other downsides to dating poor men besides the overly sweet taste of Sovietskoye Shampanskoye. They sometimes need to borrow money. They visibly wince if you ask them to run out for a nice bottle of wine for your dinner party. They make you take the metro late at night in your Dior high heels. They can't get into the better clubs because Feis Kontrol can sniff them out a mile away. And they're all socialists, so you have to endure endless conversations about the "oppressed".

(The only men I ever met who actually did something for the "oppressed" rather than talk about them were rich men. Revolutionary Socialism made sense in the days of inherited wealth and power but it doesn't when the richest men I know all come from poor, immigrant families and made their fortunes purely by their own hard work).

I'm thinking of designing a button for us Muscovite ladies to wear on the new furs our rich boyfriends are going to buy us this winter.  Against a white background and spelled out in US Dollars would be my latest slogan:

I'm a Sponger and proud of it!

xxoo, DD

Deidre Dare's novel "Expat" and "Moscow Moment" video reports can be viewed at: www.deidredare.com