TL; DR In this post I discuss the benefits of gender, the convenience of Godliness, and the disadvantages of being from Iowa. All of these topics could be grouped into an umbrella category Cate on Dates.
I thought about what to write today as I did my daily run. As of today, I have the confidence to run in the bike lanes in the street. I’d seen a couple of professional runners doing that to avoid the crowds, so I figured if the locals were doing it, I could give it a go. Going almost at a gallop, wearing a green Basque T-shirt that one of my host moms gave me, and with my dark curly hair, at first glance no one can tell that I’m some kind of American with a death wish. If I were still running stoned, I wouldn’t have the reflexes to run in the street. But if I keep my wits about me and my ears open for buses, it’s a great way to get past the few bridges that bottleneck this city.
So, I have been in this city for all of thirteen days. In that time, I have gone on four dates. Not bad! It’s been one date with one guy, and three dates with a second. Tonight, I have my first date with a woman. It’s Thursday night, which means that a lot of bars in San Sebastián put on a special called pintxo-pote. You can get a drink and a bread + meat/cheese/egg/fish etc for 2 euros. For context, a one-way bus ticket is 1.80 Euros. Americans might be familiar with this tradition as Thirsty Thursdays.
I hope it goes well! To be honest, seeing men is gender affirming. But on down side, there’s more psychological distance between me and men. Plus, it makes me feel more straight than I claimed to be (think I am?)
The guy I’ve seen three times now is from Madrid. The first date, we went to the beach. The second date, we went to the beach. And the third date, we went to the beach.
This guy is a bit of a weirdo, but he’s funny. Here’s an example:
He takes me up to his place, apologizing in advance for the “poverty aesthetic.” We get to the flat. I see now that he meant minimalist. For just him, it’s huge. He has a white rug (it’s shag, clean, and feels nice on bare feet) and a fridge as bare as a single girl’s. I look around for his books and don’t find any. He doesn’t have any in his room. Then I see one book on the couch.
It’s Lolita. Joder… I check it out. It has a bookmark stuck in it. Apparently, he’s thirty pages from the end. He comes up behind me. I ask him about Lolita. The conversation devolves into talking about God as we leave the flat and walk around the city. God is a good third-date topic.
From what I could tell, the essence of his God is being the one among many. Moments of huge emotion that just hit you. It also seems that he’s a religious man that frequently encounters God. For example, while eating, tortilla de patatas con jamón y queso, and while dry-humping on his couch. Which was, weirdly, good enough for him and me. In fact, he’s pretty conservative about sex. I guess, if dry-humping makes us feel closer to God, then hell. Why not?
The gender roles in this interpersonal dynamic are much more important than what I’m used to. It makes me wonder, if my gender is mostly based on my partner’s; if my femininity is mostly called into play when it’s contrasted against someone else’s masculinity.
In a foreign place, my femininity is one of the things I can rely on. It’s like a fallback. I know how it factors into situations and I know how to control the volume on how feminine / not feminine I present myself to be. Although, because I still struggle to dress myself here, among Europeans in their European Pants, I usually oscillate between slob and whore. It’s a forty-minute walk between his place and mine, and on the walk of shame home I had to wear the date outfit that I had worn the night before. A Thursday morning, before 8am, a translucent white dress (if it had rained I’d been fucked), my denim jacket with a snake on the back, black tights, black boots (Garfield socks.)
It was actually the earliest I had ever been awake in Europe, plus I had to find my way home, and I didn’t have my glasses, so I really had to focus on being observant. I observed that I could hear the buses, so I went that way to a major throughfare, then I could hear the ocean, so I followed it. Then I could see Mt. Ulia, which towers over our flat in Gros, and I was home free.
I went home, activated slob mode, and got coffee in my pajamas. It’s nice to have at least one friend in this city. My last attempt at meeting people didn’t go so well. I took the guy from Iowa to a bar called Iguana, as I had heard from My Fellow Americans it was the place to go. I was hoping we could bond over Iowa things. My dad is from Iowa, so I could pull out maybe one or two pig-themed stories.
It was not to be. Iguana was cool, la vibra was not. It was patronized by a bunch of European college kids on exchange, and there no place to sit. The drinks were about 5 euros each, big as my face, freezing, and almost too heavy to carry in one hand. Like every other bar here, they played Queen / The Temptations / Stevie Wonder / George Harrison. We were the only ones speaking English, and our American accents stuck out. Plus, the conversation was flagging, so we got drunk. Then, we went to the discoteca (club). (At last!)
Yes, apparently they play Bad Bunny in the club here. I don’t know what I expected.
In line, we ran into his so-called friends. If I had suspected it before, I knew it now: this guy was at the bottom of the University of Iowa – whatever pecking order. His friends were masters of that passive aggressive Midwestern thing where you kind of just ignore someone until they go away, but I hadn’t wanted to go away. I wanted to dance with a large group of people, not just one guy. They found a great reason to ditch us immediately. He knew it, I knew it, he felt humiliated, I felt humiliated.
There was only one thing left to do, and that was to ghost him at the end of the night. Even though I told him (while drunk) that sure, of course we’d get drinks again!
I don’t know why it’s so hard to say the truth, or just say how I feel to people. When me and the Madrileño were talking about God, I told him God is change. But of course, like most things I say, I got that out of a book (Parable of the Sower.) So, what do I really believe?
cdzhouse 