I've been lucky so far. Haven't met any pesado men and only two really sweet guys. Trouble is they are so much younger than me. Big boost to the ego that at my age they are interested but that grows old after a while. It gets frustrating when you are no longer interested in some casual b.s. and when the cute guy who you thought was probably at least 32 and who thought you were only 30, turns out to be 28 and finds out you are 39. Isn't there a man here who is my age, and not looking for a sideline?
Well, I've just met him. Maybe the only one in Sevilla. He's nuts.
So due to not having the nerve to call my friends, I was walking past the usually proper and polite Abaceria on my way home. A guy was leaning down explaining to a child something about going onto the road, and looked up just as I was passing, using me as a random example of a passerby, to tell the kid something. Without skipping a beat, he segued directly into chatting me up and him and his friend asked me to have a drink. I appropriately refused a couple times, but was lonely and they were friendly and so I said yes. Unfortunately, I would have to call Andres pesao. There is a small sidewalk outside the Abaceria, and he kept pushing me down it, by talking to me inches from my face, and me continually moving away. At this point in my life, though I am not a lot less timid than at 16, I can handle it, and while I am in a situation like this, I am laughing at the hilarity of it, and treating it like a social experiment. I keep on hanging out, to see what he will do next, because I can't get my head around it.
Upon exclaiming that I could be his girlfriend and looking with super sparkling, genuinely excited eyes, he asked how it was that I didn't have a boyfriend. So I asked him, and since he was 42 and not married, how come? Ninety percent of the men here cheat on their wives, he said. I don't want to do that, so I never got married.
He is utterly unabashed and seems to just say or do whatever come to his mind first. This kind of man really and absolutely DOES NOT EXIST in Canada. It fascinates me because at home no one would ever do what he does, unless they were revoltingly slimy. I don't necessarily like his manner, but it is not slimy at all. It is like a child. He tells me to come to Portugal with him, he is going this week. Not that I need an excuse but I am going to Cadiz, and probably Jerez. He repeatedly says "dame la mano", because my hands are cold and he wants to warm them. He even sticks my hand in his back pocket at one point. He is pretty harmless, despite being over the top. But the worst problem for me is what this might appear like to the good and proper people of the neighborhood. In Anglo culture, a guy would let a girl suffer, or look after her own cold hands, unless he had a serious romantic purpose (which would have to come out very subtley and slowly, the hand warming being a fairly serious gesture, and agreement on both sides that something is going on - more like a pretext). Here, there wasn't any subtlety. So no real need to use handwarming for any purpose. In many ways he was being a lot more genuinely nice. His friend says that I've come along on this rainy day, from Vancouver, and look now, the universe has done something and the sun is coming through the dark clouds by the river. It's because you came along.
He says I will call you this week from Portugal, no I won't it's my company's phone. I'll call you when I get back. Can I call you? Will you go out with me? I say I don't know. He says do you want me never to call you? I say, I'm not sure. He gets upset, and says I've said I don't want him to call me. His friend comes along and he goes off for a minute. His friend says, Andres doesn't believe in God. He doesn't think he has a reason to live, and he was asking God to give him a sign and you came along. Now he has a reason.
Andres comes back. His phone rings and he drops his wine glass on the sidewalk in order to reach into his back pocket to get it. He doesn't bother about the wineglass. His friend comes back and says, in Vancouver, Grizzlies? It takes me a second to realise it is basketball he is talking about and not orsos. He mimes basketball (he is in the middle of the street - okay lane) and mentions his playstation. He says, is Andres giving you a problem? Andres says, if I give you a problem, he will hit me. And if he gives you a problem, I'll hit him. Then his friend (who is probably in his 50s) says he is an Angel (his name is Angél) Guardian. Angel is a lawyer, but has been a soldier, in Africa, Lebanon, Afghanistan, China. And everywhere he's been, he's taken this little figurine. He gives it to me and says if I ever have a problem to talk to it. It seems rather important - too large of a gift, having been through so much with him so I refuse. Andres, whispers that he has several of them, so I finally take it.
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