Fun with Social Interactions

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. When those things are in a foreign land with different customs more often than not things have a way of completely surprising you. So in theory what followed after Davíd asked me on a date shouldn’t have surprised me, but  did it ever and as it is now a year after our one and only date every thing should be laid to rest, right? Wrong! 

Let me take you back the beginning. 

Out with some friends one night last spring I met Davíd. I had never seen him before, but he certainly wasn’t someone you would miss walking down the street. Davíd was quite the looker in my opinion. He was a friend of my friend’s boyfriend. You know how that goes. 

Anyway, Davíd began talking to me and the very fact that he was listening to my less then stellar Spanish won him major brownie points right away in my book (in addition to the points I’d already given him for being cute). 

The night went on and everyone was having a good time. 

Before leaving Davíd asked if he could call me sometime. At first I wasn’t exactly willing to give up my phone number, but as my mother is always telling me to give people a chance I gave him my number. 

A few days later Davíd and I made plans to get a drink. I chose a week day, because although I was willing to give him a chance, I wasn’t willing to give him the option of staying out all night. If I was having a horrible time I wanted an escape plan. “Opps! It’s 11 o’clock and I have work early in the morning I have to get home.” I thought this was very smart planning on my part. 

As the actual date progressed I was actually having a nice enough time, although I knew I didn’t want to go on another date. Nice guy, but not too much in common. You know if you begin describing the guy to your friends as a nice guy that things aren’t going much further.  I tell him I need to get home (not at all using this as an escape plan) because it was getting late. It was about 1 a.m. when we got back to my home. 

Notice I said “we”, because this threw me off. As I had understood the Spanish dating scene at this time walking a girl home from a date is reserved for your girlfriend. Being our first date this made me reach for my keys even faster. All I could think was, “Whoa! Slow down there killer. We are still getting to know one another. I mean I know I’m fantastic, but hold your horses.” Turns out I was wrong again. 

Davíd wasn’t walking me home because he thought of me as something serious in his life, oh no!, he was walking me home to come into my apartment. Talk about an embarrassing conversation. I know how this conversation goes in English, “Not going to happen in a million years buddy!”, but what was I suppose to say in Spanish. 

The next day when I was relaying the happenings of my night to a friend she fell clear of the stool from laughing at me. Finally when she was able to compose herself she gave me a mini lesson in Spanish dating. 

First and foremost you should never accept an invitation on the first offer. She told me that generally Spanish women are mean to men they don’t know. (My friend is from Málaga, so I’m taking the word of a Spanish girl herself.) When someone is too nice, ie. accepting on the first offer, men think that the girl is, let’s say, looking for more than a nice conversation. 

The very fact that I am foreign apparently is of no help either. Most foreigners (especially Americans) have a reputation while abroad that what they do in another country stays there so they’re going to live it up. They won’t be around long enough to deal with any consequences later. I, however, planned on returning to the same city months later and wasn’t willing to deal with any thing of this magnitude. 

Flash forward to to last weekend. 

I’m downtown at a bar with my friend catching up, exchanging stories from our summer apart and simply enjoying a cold drink. In walks Davíd. Out of all the places he could have gone that night he walks into the same bar. I see him and immediately hide my face in shame. How was I suppose to react to him? Should I say hello, or would that be too forward of me? Thanks to our awkward date I now question every thing I do when around 

Spanish men. 

He went to the bar to get a drink and the moment he turned around our eyes crossed and he came over to my table. We spoke for a few minutes while it felt like a million little green army men were marching around in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, slap him in the face and tell him I was sorry for the misunderstanding all at the same time. 

As I was unable to string together anything remotely sounding like actual Spanish Davíd spent most of the time at our table speaking with my friend. The entire time he sat there I was completely preoccupied by my thoughts. What does he think of me now? Is he going to ask for my friend’s phone number? Is he going to tell his friends at the bar that we are (my friend by association) the type of girls that accept dates of the first offer? Why am I 

even giving this person another thought? Why is he still sitting here? 

By the time I reconnected with the world around me Davíd was tugging at shirt, picking up his glass, diving in for the dos besos (the traditional form of greeting and leaving someone) and then walking away. 

I’m sure if I had been able to blink he would have already been walking away, but it felt as if he had been sitting at our table hours. 

Constantly looking over my shoulder my friend knew something was wrong. We finished out drink and proceeded to go outside. 

I explained the situation to her, she told me to stop being a girl and not to worry about it. She said Spanish men have a short memory and that he has probably already forgotten about the awkwardness of that night. (Her words, not mine.) 

It seems that it doesn’t matter how much time you spend trying to mentally prepare yourself for living in another country things you never even imagined could throw you for a loop. Who really stops to think about dating customs in another country? We prepare ourselves for the language barrier, different foods, different history, but I never once 

thought about the differences in social interactions. I suppose I should have.