International Date Line
A French major with an interest in Francophone North Africa, I somehow manage to find and date any and all available men from a small, North African country that most Americans can’t find on the map. I met X and after a month of dating I was beginning to think he was a keeper. The Sunday of the Gay Pride Parade, I went over to his apartment to meet up and walk to public transportation in order to show off one of the well known local traditions of my region that X expressed an interest in. He was in his pajamas Skype-ing friends back home, speaking a language I did not understand at all, occasionally looking at me and laughing. I sat around while he did this for an hour.
We finally arrived at the parade and met up with two of his friends from his country. Even though they spoke English fluently and I am fluent in French, they chose to speak over my head in their native Arabic dialect for three hours, with X only occasionally stopping to grab my hand or kiss me to demonstrate that he was heterosexual. Needless to say that when I ran into two good friends, I was relieved to have some company at long last after being linguistically excluded from the group I was with. However, this relief was short-lived because he and his friends became bored and wandered off, leaving me stranded in the middle of a giant crowd. Due to cell phone activity at the packed venue, it took 45 minutes to reconnect. I was furious. On the ride back, I found myself seated in-between the three boys, once again being talked over in Arabic. This did not change after I asked to swap seats with X because I did not enjoy being in the middle of a conversation I could not participate in. His response: “Why?”
We returned to his apartment to recoup before the second half of the date, a David Guetta concert with his friends that he got me a ticket for. When his friends came over, everyone spoke French except two other Americans so I struck up a conversation with one of them in order that he would have someone to talk to. X, who had been cold with me since I told him I did not appreciate being abandoned and ignored, became angry and informed me in French that he did not invite me over so that I could hang out with his friends. After some drinking, however, things seemed to smooth out and I was optimistic that the evening might go a little better.
Yet when we arrived at the venue, it became apparent that X had a lot more to drink than I had thought. In between yelling at his friends and picking fights with strangers, he put his hands everywhere on me on a very public dance floor. The final straw came when, while fighting his hands off, I noticed a rather trashy looking girl grinding on two large men. When I turned to X to comment on this absolutely hilarious display, I saw him reach in and grab the girl’s stomach roll because apparently, “she got [me] hot.” This in turn started a fight with the large men that I had to diffuse. After that I gave X a nasty look and wandered off to join his less inebriated, fun friends who were dancing without incident. He decided this was cold and unwarranted so to punish me, he started grinding on, making out with and getting numbers from various girls.
When I finally got him to leave the club after taking down one last final number, he still thought he had a chance to patch things up, stating that if we slept together, all of this would blow over. After I said that would never happen, he yelled at me for being possessive of a man who belongs to no one and acting like a girlfriend. I countered that I expect to be treated with respect by everyone I associate with. Two months after the fact, I am still getting texts from him asking me to join him at group events. I changed his name in my phone to Icky.
