Officially the 17th, although it is a tragedy that today has not ended for me yet. I can't fathom the events that have just passed just yet. Sleep. Write tomorrow. Good night.
Right. Last night was ridiculous.
Where...do I begin? I guess since I first got here it's no secret that I like to dance. I'm not particularly good at it, but I'm better than everyone thinks I will be before they see me. So naturally, a la gringa le encanta bailar, the gringa loves to dance. Merengue, cumbia, salsa...maybe not so much bachata, but I'm trying. It is true that I love to dance but man, that was in the beginning before I got marked.
Marked, like...a wildcat peed on me? Not quite, but it's the closest thing I can think of when I try to describe what happened in terms of territorialism and just how frustrated and wierded out I was (just imagining...if a trigrito, a puma peed on me, I might feel like this). Ok so the first month in my town, my host sister and I would catch a ride from a guy in the next town over, my ''cousin''. I happen to take the host family relationship more on the serious side, so the first time he said he was in love with me – the fourth time we had spoken to each other – I was kind of grossed out. ''Mae, you're my cousin.''
He's also the only family member under 40 with a mode of transportation. I told my host sister that our cousin had confessed his undying passion for me and we had two or three weeks of talking about whether or not I felt the same. Or rather, she kept asking if I was absolutely sure I didn't like him. That was the gist of every conversation we had about him.
But, because he had promised not to make any advances after I told him in a rather blunt and ergo rude fashion that I was only interested in being friends, the three of us kept going out to dance on the weekends. Only I realized that slowly, my partners were dwindling. What the hell, I thought, How come the same guys from a few weeks ago won't take me out on the floor? I asked my sister if I looked alright when I was dancing, if I was doing anything wrong and she knew exactly why I was asking. She said that the reason why these guys had stopped asking was because our cousin was making it seem like he and I were an item.
This information on the heels of yet another text from this guy telling me I had him going crazy. My commitment to not go dancing with this guy ever again was concrete. How long would it take me to distance myself from him so people wouldn't believe we were together? When would I be able to go out dancing again and have someone other than my cousin ask me to dance?
Well, then I started dating my boyfriend and he doesn't like the bar atmosphere where most of the dancing takes place, so I took a break for awhile. But my sister really likes dancing and I felt kind of guilty I hadn't been her partner in crime for awhile, so we (by that, I mean she) decided to go out last night. She told me, Great, you can call our cousin and get a ride. Ahhhhhhm, I said. No, I really don't like owing that guy favors. You call him and arrange everything and I'll go, but I'm not about to ask him for a ride. I realized why my sister was so desperate that I not reject him at first...I think she was afraid that he would start to avoid me if I was harsh and that as a consequence she would lose her ride to dances. Oops.
Just to kind of shed some light on his character and the situation, real quick: I don't think he's a bad guy by any stretch of the imagination. He's totally respectable and well liked in his town and ours. It's just that for every three times we talk, the fourth time he all but proposes marriage. My host sister says it's because I haven't told him yet that I have a boyfriend. I say, Should I have to? Should I have to have a boyfriend or another love interest to not be head over heels for our cousin? Because obviously I must want him if I'm single.
Anyway.
Last night my boyfriend leaves my house because he knows we're going out and about five minutes later this guy shows up and we get going, around 10:00 pm. When we get to the bar/dance floor that's about ten minutes away we realize that because it's a rainy Friday and the band is not particularly well known, NO ONE IS THERE. On a good night, the dance floors are so crowded that you can't move. On an okay night, there's maybe ten couples dancing. On a shitty night when it's drizzling and you could be in your pajamas and in your house reading One City, there was one couple dancing. One. Eight people total inside up towards the bar. And maybe ten people outside, debating whether or not to go in. We were three out of the ten and we stood and chatted for awhile. I didn't think it was a big deal that I didn't eat dinner – I was hungry, but we clearly were not going to be staying here for long. I'd be back home by 10:45 and grab something quick from the fridge before snuggling into my couch with my book.
WE STAYED STANDING OUTSIDE IN THE RAIN FOR TWO HOURS.
Two hours. Watching a movie starts to get old at two hours, much less watching this one couple dance. Conversation lasted twenty minutes. I'd forgotten my cell phone, so I couldn't even be maintaining a text conversation to take my mind off the minutes that were ticking by, smacking me in the forehead one at a time in little bursts of agony like some kind of invisible Chinese water torture. After we hit the hour mark, I made all the physical signals that show boredom, sleepiness, incredulity and impatience. Finally, at two hours, I just walked away to sit on some nearby benches, put my head between my knees and tried to block everything out. Maybe I could sleep sitting here, forgetting that I'm hungry, forgetting that it's raining, forgetting that I could have spent more time with my boyfriend if I'd stayed at home, forgetting how awesome my friends at home are and how we don't say at a place if we're bored out of our minds, forgetting that I don't have my own car and thus am trapped here by this guy who thinks that face time is the equivalent of MiracleGro on our budding romance.
My host sister came over to tell me that she was going to go for a walk to talk about some things with a guy she's been interested in for awhile who was over at the bar. I told her not to worry, that the weather was great and she should take as much time as she needed, that the bench was really comfortable and I could probably spend the night here if need be. She said, ''Ay, Lily, haha...'', what people say to me nervously when they're not sure if what I'm saying is supposed to be funny, usually accompanied by eyes darting around to the other people in the group to see what their reactions are. I was the only person there, though, and I'm pretty sure she gathered from my expression that I did not think anything was funny at that point. Whatever, the music was loud enough and I was sitting close enough that no one heard me scream, ''This is
SO.
DUMB!
GAAAAAAAAH!!!!!''
But never fear, there was still someone hanging around who took it upon himself to come over and keep me company. My cousin came over and joked about my host sister's romantic entanglement with this dude she was walking with and as much as I was like, don't say anything back, just ignore him, silent treatment, don't do anything that could be considered flirtatious...I mean, what am I going to do? The night had been so miserable. I laughed. I laughed because everything until that point had been so ridiculously uncomfortable and hellish and because what else am I going to do. I made my own joke and he laughed. He asked me if I wanted to go into dance and I said sure. It was 12:30, so there was only a half hour left before the band would pack up and go home, so what was the harm.
At 1:15 my host sister showed up from her walk. My cousin and I were sitting outside, silent, and I asked her...So, wow, you had a 45 minute walk, you worked things out, right? No, she replied. But we agreed that he would come over on Tuesday and we'd talk about things.
A deep breath. ''Okay.''
And then we're at the top of this blog post. What lessons have I learned from this... Something about how dangerously passive I am, how I need to speak up when I'm not having a good time. Need to speak up and say, ''No, I'm not going out tonight, I don't want to.'' That it's within my power to choose the direction my life will go and that this is an excellent example when I failed to take control. Yet another reminder that I need to tap my inner Alcock and stay firmly in control...or is it just as Alcock to suffer in silence and be righteously angry that no one is paying attention to the way I want to do things? Well, whatever. Maybe it's one of those things.
Or maybe I just need to start carrying cookies in my purse for when I get cranky.
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