A Conspicuous Lack of Red Flags

I am incredibly naive.

The following is an accurate portrayal of a conversation I had with a young Guatemalan, with emphasis on the moments that should have given me pause, and the utter cerebral failure to register the patently obvious.

(Scene: I, having just jammed for a half-hour at Cafe No Se, enter the back dining area to finish reading Michael Crichton´s Disclosure. I sit, and am approached by a Guatemalan from the opposite table. I cannot tell if he/she is male or female.)

Guat: You speak a Spanish?

Cerebral Failure #1: the Guat´s tone of voice does not betray his sex. No Red Flags raised.

Me: Si, puedo hablarlo.

Guat: ¿Como te llamas?

Me: Nathan.

Guat: ¿Nick?

Me: ...Nato.

Guat: Hola. Me llamo Oto.

Me: Mucho gusto. ¿Trabajas aqui?

Guat: No, solo con amigos. ¿De donde es?

Me: Estados Unidos.

Guat: Oh. ¿Casado?

Cerebral Failure #2: He/she just asked me if I was married. No red flags raised.

Guat (in Spanish): Girlfriend?

Me (also, obviously, in Spanish): Nope.

Guat: None?

Me: Nope. That´s why I can travel.

Cerebral Failure #3: He/she is looking awfully strangely at me. No red flags raised.

Guat: How long you here?

Me: No, just a few more days. I´m going to visit my dad.

Guat: When do you leave?

Me: July 7.

Guat: Ah.

(long pause)

Guat: You like girls?

Cerebral Failure #4: My god, you are so dumb. Where the hell is the Red Flag man?

Guat: Where are you staying?

Cerebrum: That´s it. Someone go get Red Flag Man, and tell him to go do his job.

Me: Posada Ruiz.

Cerebrum (after stunned silence): Oh_my_god.

Guat: Ah. I know where that is.

Cerebrum: You know what? Let´s just kill him. I hate my job anyway, working for this idiot.

Guat: You like boys?

(At this point, the Red Flag Man received a severe kick from Subconsciousness Man, but was still too groggy to realize what was upon him.)

Me: No.

(Red Flag Man: Hey, guys...what´s going on?)

Guat: I like boys. Especially the handsome ones.

Red Flag Man: Holy crap!

Guat: Do you have e-mail?

Red Flag Man: Why the hell wasn´t I informed of this?

Cerebrum: You´re fired.

Me, after thinking quickly: ...no.

Guat: Oh. Well, here´s mine.


After much thinking, therefore, I have decided that I need to pay more attention to my surroundings.

Honest Opinions

I need a little help on a tattoo decision:

This, with undecided caption...



Or this, with undecided caption (suggestions appreciated)...



Or this, with caption reading, "the world is mine..."



Or this one, with caption reading, "born free."



I'm quite torn.

Tattoos

Come Tuesday, I'll be sporting a Calvin and Hobbes tattoo on my back. Calvin is running naked from his mother, who is angrily trying to get him to take his bath. The caption reads, "born free." Will post a pic when done.

Solitude, and it's benefits

After this next week, I fully intend to seclude myself in some isolated place for at least two weeks a year.

Yesterday I did the following:

-composed two songs
-wrote some of my funniest material yet
-learned a great deal of Spanish
-consumed a disturbing amount of coffee
-caught a flick ("Snatch") at a theater
-drank with some Israelis

I'm getting so much stuff done. I love it.

The Game, and Losing

Last night I watched the first half of the Spurs-Pistons game, and the ass-kicking the Spurs received. I completely missed the second half, even though two wide-screen TVs were in very close proximity. But it wasn´t my fault.

On a whim, and because I´d never tried it before, I bought someone (female) a drink in hopes of getting her to talk to me. The bartender´s instructions were to give her another only if she asked, and then only point to her benefactor. That way I was spared the difficult and embarrassing task of walking up to her and almost immediately walking away should she spurn my advances.

As it happened, however, it worked. Which shouldn´t have surprised me, I suppose, given that there´s probably a reason the technique is so well-known and widely practiced. She came over, introduced herself, and we talked for the next hour and a half, and I totally forgot about the game. Most of the conversation dealt with music (and a little about Darfur). We both were overly excited upon learning that the other listened to the Philosopher Kings. She´s played the violin since she was six. And I was incredibly happy, given that there was no ambiguity whatsoever in her signals - she liked me. I was definitely in for a date sometime in the future.

And then her friends got up and switched bars, and she invited me along, and we spent the next two hours in a hookah bar listening to Indie Rock. And, for some still-unknown reason, she stopped talking, stopped smiling, and barely looked me in the eye as we all left, raising her hand in a brief wave as she voluntarily and quickly parted ways. I knew enough about signals to know that this one had abruptly ended, and I didn´t press a request for seeing her again.

Since it was an attempt I´d never tried before, I was rather proud of myself. And since it appears to have failed miserably, I wonder if there´s a great deal more to the rules of this Game than I´m aware of.

I tried my best later that night to avoid being a woman (no offense intended) and refused to analyze what had happened, or imagine how things could have been different had I made it a little more obvious that I was very interested in her. I put it out of my mind (successfully, too - another first), where it will stay until I get some more helpful information.

Which brings me to my question, for any woman reading this who might have any insight into waht women want - what the hell?

(Or, put more aptly, what do women want, and how do they want it served?)

Please help. Or tell a funny similar story; either is good.

Highlights

After Elliot left, Bjorn and I headed down to Lake Atitlan to visit the small town of San Juan, where I´d most likely be teaching English sometime during the next four weeks.

The town is terribly small - one main street, one restaurant, and absolutely nothing to do but talk to the natives. That, fortunately, is entertaining enough - as a rule, all the women are entirely too trusting and all the men are players of the first order. Even the pastor´s sons had several girlfriends, none of whom knew of the others. One of them had composed several lines of poetry expressing his utter devotion to whoever the recipient would be (most likely several people), and it was by far the sappiest love poetry I´d ever seen ("Words cannot express my love, but I´ll try anyway"). It was funny insofar as it was pathetic, but insofar as it actually worked (which it did, apparently), it was rather infuriating ("We have words to describe people like you in the US, best translated cabron in Spanish").

After arriving in San Juan, Bjorn and I hiked twelve hours into the jungle to visit a few of the native fincas, most of which had never seen white people before. The pattern in each was roughly the same - everyone would stare, and all the children would follow us a safe distance away, running away screaming (delight or terror) if we turned around and waved. Bjorn´s camera was by far the most frightening thing most of them had ever seen, and it took good deal of coaxing for them to approach and have their picture taken. Once they discovered how it worked, they never tired of it.

Here, smiling with delight:



And here, crying in terror:



It should be noted that this little girl, after crying for three minutes at the white people with the camera, abruptly stopped crying to snatch a gumball I handed her mother to pacify her, and then immediately resumed crying.

Our guide took us to see his family in one of the more remote fincas, one without electricity. They were among the poorest families I´d ever seen - dirt floor, incomplete walls, one candle, and at least fifteen people living under the same set of three rooms. Their generosity was incredible - I ate two of the best meals I´ve had here on the table below:



For a family that eats meat once a week, serving it twice in 24 hours to two foreigners was an incredible gesture. Bjorn and I returned it as much we could, buying medicine for them (things like cough syrup, pills for indigestion, etc., that they usually cannot affoard) and leaving it in their house.

The highlight of the trip occurred around this table at breakfast. The family´s baby girl, one Maria Elena, was - and without exaggeration - the happiest child I´d ever seen. She was also the only one who didn´t have any fear of white people. She had been carried around by Bjorn and I the previous night, and so knew that if she came up to either one of us and smiled, she would be picked up and carried around. After making the rounds with Bjorn, she came over to where I was sitting (just across the table) and grabbed my leg as a way of demanding attention. I complied. After five minutes, I put her down again, at which point she circled the table and grabbed my leg again. We repeated the exercise about three times until it was time for Bjorn and I to go, at which point she refused to get off my lap. I finally had to pick her up and put her in one of the large fruit baskets the family had on hand, something which she found unbelievably funny and demanded a repeat performance.

Am now back in Antigua. Bjorn leaves tomorrow.

Oh, and here´s me with our guide, trying desperately to keep out the rain.

Why Women Everywhere Should Be Clamoring to Marry Me, or, Barring That...

...be initiating sexual relations with such rabid ferocity that instant virility is guaranteed:



Yeah.