10-13-07 Getting Hit On

While I was using the Internet near the beach today I found myself victim to a grave misunderstanding. A man walked up to me and said something incomprehensible, then rephrased the previous sentence so that I sort of realized what he was saying, finally asking me, “Entiendes (do you understand)?” Now, I thought he was referring to the previous sentence, so I said, “Sí.” He plopped himself next to me and started talking to me about “amor libre” (free love) which was a little odd, but I smelled alcohol on his breath and I thought maybe he was a little depressed and wanted to talk to someone. So, why not let him vent, right? Well, just a little bit after we started talking I noticed the pierced right ear, with an earring, and no such earring in the left. Now we talked for a bit and then I finally realized that he was completely hitting on me. After we talked about love, the perfect world, and relationships, he asked me what would happen if we were together, or perhaps were to go to bed together “hypothetically” (suuure, hypothetically…). So I tried to say no thank you, I don’t swing that way. He then asked if I was going to go out tonight. I said yup, but with my friends, not you. Then he asked if I wanted to get a drink. I said no. Instead of taking the hint he got closer, asked me name, touched my shoulder and grabbed my hand, after which I promptly got angry. I am in NO way a homophobe, but I don’t like it when people assume they can start to invade my personal space when every answer previously was a no. I pushed him away, told him off, and he finally got the point. After he left I remembered how the conversation had started and felt pretty stupid. When he said, “Entiendes (do you understand)?” as we learned during intensive Spanish class but I neglected to realize, he was really asking, “Are you homosexual?” My response prompted the intent, but definitely did not garner the persistence. That was something very Spanish that made me have much more respect for the girls here and in our program that deal with that sort of attitude constantly. I guess you learn something new everyday, here were my two lessons:

1. REALLY understand before you say you do.
2. Women in Spain deserve a lot of credit for what they have to put up with.

According to my ‘mom’, what I did was very polite and much much less intense than it would have been had one of her sons been approached. That man would have received a nice black eye so I hear.