Call Me Naive One More Time

I gave my number to a man on the bus. He never called, which I should have seen coming, because I am not good at correctly identifying when a man is actually flirting with me. I have a long history of Hail Mary passes. I can never be sure of what their intention is, so I figure what the hell, and give them my number.

I may not get called back, but I sure do get called out. By people like my mother.

My narcissistic mother is never happy if other people like me, especially when she tries so hard to convince me that I am the worst. Before she left, La Llorona introduced me to one of the ladies living in the neighborhood – she is my mother’s age. La Llorona was surprisingly candid that this lady could be trusted. This one was less likely to gossip and was okay to hang around.

I was surprised there was anyone left that La Llorona approved of. I should have known there was a catch. This woman has taken a liking to me, has taken me under her wing, so to speak – mostly to have me tag along with her and run her errands. Kind of like a surrogate mother. Except she is more like my actual mother than I expected.

She, like my mother, has accused me of being naive. Why? Probably their way of justifying my unbothered reaction to the opinions and behavior of men. I simply don’t care what men think of me, to the point that even if their thoughts are complimentary, I am totally unaware. Which maybe makes me seem naive, but is it naive or just clueless?

Uh oh, the meet-cute

About halfway into the two months of La Llorona’s stay in Guatemala, we went to lunch downtown. We were sitting in this well-known restaurant when I got up to use the restroom. As I made my way back to my seat, I bumped into a man, and he caught my notice. I looked back at him and saw him checking me out. I was flattered.

That is when I realized, as I sat across from my mother, eating my food, that his table was in my line of sight, but not hers. I caught him checking me out a few more times, and right as he was about to leave, he came over to introduce himself and say hello. He asked for my number, and I gave it to him. We exchanged a few messages right away. My mother was not pleased with the whole exchange. First, she was like, “Do you know him?” What? I’ve been in the country for two weeks. WTF do you mean, do I know him?

She wouldn’t stop talking about it. She was like, ” Must be nice to be pretty.” She was like, ” Are you going to be spending time with him now?” She was extrapolating to the nth degree about an incident that was, in my mind, entirely benign. Because even as he was asking for my number, I wasn’t entirely sure he had not been flirting with me, but was instead fishing for potential clientèle, since he had introduced himself by mentioning he was a lawyer. I don’t know how they do business around here. Maybe that is typical behavior.

Probably wasn’t flirting

Certainly, that was the conclusion I came to as time passed and he did not message me again after that afternoon. C’est la vie. Where I may have been ambivalent about the exchange, La Llorona was obsessed.
She kept talking about it, to the point where a week later, she was convinced that giving him my phone was a grievous mistake and he would be hacking my phone, or going to extort me for money. She called me naive. Really? Me? Naive?

Second verse, same as the first

Last month, I went downtown with my mother’s neighbor friend. We were riding the bus back home, and the bus was packed, as it always is during the afternoon rush hour of people going home from work. I sat next to a man on the bus because it was the only seat open. I had hoped he would remain silent. He seemed to be sleepy or preoccupied. When I sat down, I heard him saying something about whiskey. So maybe he was intoxicated. Great.

I sat there, minding my business. Willing the bus to go faster (impossible in the city at this hour). I could sense his curiosity after he got settled in and noticed me sitting next to him. I am not conceited, but I know I look nothing like most of the Guatemalan women around, despite also being Guatemalan. Ironic. Maybe I’ve lived abroad long enough that I have evolved to just look and act differently. Usually, it is enough to repel most Hispanic men. It’s like they can smell the independent stink on me.

Considering I was not interested in chatting up this man, I opted to remain silent. Not to mention that sometimes the colloquial accent and use of local slang will increase the language barrier, and my brain does not compute half of what he’s saying anyway. I smile politely and hope that he settles into the ride in silence.

Silence is not golden

No such luck. Apparently, my silence was very attractive. He was like, ” You don’t talk much.” Not if I don’t have anything constructive to say, I think to myself. It is times like this that I regret not having a more conversational grasp of the language so I could put him off with words, as is my usual M.O., but no such luck here today.

I pick up a little of what he’s putting down, and he is struck by my looks. I take pretty good care of my skin, but in my head, I’m thinking, dude, you’re embarrassing yourself with this overt flattery. Which will get you literally nowhere. He reminded me of my favorite great uncle (RIP). Which was probably his only redeeming quality because he would not stop talking about how pretty I was, or how much he admired me (dude, you don’t even know me). I knew he was going to ask for my number. And I was like, you know what, he’s not terrible at conversation. He was talking about music he liked, when he wasn’t going on about my looks. I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere.

But the point of all this was the reaction of my neighbor sitting in the seat opposite me across the aisle. She was not saying anything, and possibly even pretending to be asleep. But I just knew she was listening in and would have an opinion about all of it as soon as we got off the bus. I could see the derision all over her face.

Without missing a beat, as soon as we descended from the bus, she began to fuss at me for having given this man my number. She was like, ” Why did you give him your number? Now he’s going to extort you for money; that’s what they do.” Et tu, brute?

I’ve seen this show before. Can I change the channel?

She went on and on about it the rest of the walk to our neighborhood. There was literally no answer that was going to satisfy her, because, like my mother, she was convinced that I was too naive for this world. What? You clearly don’t know me very well.

All I know is that this is sounding eerily familiar. So much so that two days later, when I tagged along to another part of town to run another errand, she brought up the man on the bus AGAIN, asking if he had called me. Why was it so important to her? Not that it matters to you, but no, he hadn’t called. And that seemed to shut her up. The whole conversation was tedious.

The airport incident

Five years ago, when we were on our way back to the US, my mother and I were sitting in the airport bar by our terminal. I was minding my own business when this man sidled up to me and offered to buy me a drink. I was like, sure, whatever.

What’s the worst that can happen? I’m literally boarding a plane flying out of the country. Even if he was on the same flight back, he’s not going to stalk me. There are checkpoints, baggage claim, immigration, so many places to lose a person. I was not concerned.

I’m sitting there, nursing my new drink. He’s talking, but I’m barely listening. It’s the kind of conversation where he’s not specifically talking to me, I don’t think. Talking in general. Besides, my mother kept butting into the conversation, so eventually he was talking at her and not at me anyway. As I sat there in between them, totally uninterested in what they both had to say, the conversation went south, and next thing I knew, my mother was angry about something. She is making all kinds of accusations, calling him a womanizer and some other stuff. What did I miss?

It was just as well. I don’t remember if I gave that man my number. It’s possible I did. Would be very on brand if I had, but the whole incident meant so little to me that I did not commit it to memory. Turns out he was on our flight. I shepherded my mother to our terminal away from the bar. She was like an angry cat, hissing and spitting at the man as we boarded the plane. I am really surprised she calmed down enough to make it past the checkpoint to board.

This was during the height of COVID. There was social distancing on the flight back, so for two and a half blessed hours, I was separated by an aisle from La Llorona. The drama continued after the plane landed. First of all, why was she so mad about it? Was she mad he didn’t offer to buy her a drink? Second of all, I’m not an impressionable child. I was in my mid-forties at the time of the incident. I think I can handle myself. Good grief.

She fussed at me the whole way through the airport, through baggage claim, and as we waited for my brother to pick us up, she called me naive for having accepted a drink from the man.

I hadn’t thought about that incident until she mentioned him again about a week after the restaurant incident with the lawyer guy here in Guatemala. What? Why is she dredging up this incident from five years ago? And has she been thinking about it this whole time? She was like, ” Are you still talking to him?” Huh? What the hell are you going on about? Lunatic.

The Latina Karen

I thought it was just La Llorona, but it isn’t just her, is it? I recognize the type. She’s not as abrasive towards me as my mother, but the pattern is there. Her neighbor friend is the same words, different font.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about this neighbor friend of my mother’s. In my head, I call her Yolanda, because she is the Latina Karen. She complains about everything. Nothing is too far beneath her to warrant a sarcastic comment or critique.

Our interactions are very transactional. She wants me to tag along with her because I serve a purpose, whatever that is. She is not without friends. She spends a lot of her time with other people, her family, and her friends. She has lived in Guatemala her entire life.

I remember one conversation during our first outing, in which I said I had wondered how I would have turned out had I grown up in Guatemala versus growing up in the US. To which she replied, probably would have turned out just like her. I laughed it off, but inside I was like, Oh hell no. We are nothing alike. Not you too!

Unbothered is the new sexy

These accusations of my naiveté feel like something more specific – they feel like a form of projection on the part of these older women in my life. They are surprised that I am not spiraling when these men don’t call. My life, my personality, and my self-worth isn’t affected if those men blow me off.

They keep bringing it up because they expect me to value that attention the way they do. It’s my disregard of the ephemeral something I have, that I don’t value, or even fully see, that has men looking. And they think it’s naive.

It is flipping exhausting having to navigate these interpersonal relationships with older women. Especially when they start to sound like my mother.