on disasterous first dates

I always reuse the same piece of advice when friends are nervous about going on first dates, or lamenting dates gone wrong:

"At least he speaks English, y'all."

No, really. I have recently (sort of) beheld the perils of dating a non-English (or a non-whatever your native language is) speaker, and let me tell you: it is a pretty damn good way of making you FEARLESS when it comes to dating people you can actually communicate with.

You think it's fun at the beginning, when you're basking in the novelty of communicating via simple words, charades and/or hand gestures. Sometimes, conversations will consist entirely of listing various items, which is great for language practice, not gonna lie. But try talking about your feelings or the future of your relationship and you might as well be discussing cracked up scientific investigations into the apocalypse, 'cuz that's where y'alls relationship'll be headin'. It's important to be able to communicate certain baselines, like whether your partner is being a) a douche b) crazy or c) inappropriate (what I wish I'd known how to say last summer: "no you may NOT take me to a motel on our first date... or EVER you miserable piece of shit.")

I was gonna save this story for another post, but looks like it'll have to go here. So I was in Korea last summer. I went to an Electronics market to buy an external hard drive. I didn't know that the market in question was the biggest in Asia. I was overwhelmed and spent 3 hours trying to get the best deal. The guy I ended up buying my drive from sold me the thing and then proceeded to ask me out on a date. Now in Korean, there's a linguistic construct that you use to politely turn someone down. I had learned this in first year Korean, but given that I was a) exhausted b) crazy) and c) totally out of my element, I forgot about all of this and just said yes because I didn't actually know how to say no.

Life lesson #283742872: learn how to say no when you're learning a foreign language.

We met up the next day to get coffee. I didn't realise that the guy was 30 years old, because a) I hadn't asked him b) he's Korean and thus looked like he was 12. He assumed that I was older than 22 because I told him that I was in grad school and probably because I actually do look like I'm thirty thanks to all my sleepless nights at Stanford.

Our conversation was halfway pleasant. We talked about simple concepts because that was all I could manage at the time. Things started going downhill when he started making physical motions to indicate that he was "uncomfortable." I tried to communicate that I was quite happy sitting in Starbuck's cold hard chairs, thank you very much, but he insisted on leaving. He said that he had this hobby where he took pictures of buildings' facades, and as part of this cracked-up hobby he wanted to check out this motel and take a picture of its exterior, so why not check it out together?

RED LIGHT RED LIGHT RED LIGHT RED LIGHT RED LIGHT

Being the brilliant young lady that I am, I figured that I might as well accompany this chap just to make sure that he finds the building. His experience in the military didn't seem to serve him much purpose as his sense of direction was quite horrendous. You know you're a worthless navigator when you rely on me to help you out, brother. Anyway, I walked him over to the building, where he started taking lopsided pictures with his camera phone (I remember distinctly thinking, legitimate hobby fail!) and thought I'd ditch him right then and there and escape with my self unscathed until he suggested that we go inside to "watch a movie."

RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT RED ALERT

Had my Korean been any good at the time, I would've employed any of the following sentences before high-tailing it out of there:

"This is completely inappropriate, you motherfucker"
"How dare you! What kind of lady do you think I am!"
"I am not interested in sleeping with you; I can barely pronounce your first name and I think you are a fucking sleazeball"

Not being able to pull any of these out of my ass, I relied on the art of alternative expression and just told him that I liked women. Complete bullshit, but hey - a girl's gotta work with what she got, yo.

Flabbergasted, he was like, "women?"
Shrugging, I told him that I had mentioned that I was from San Francisco.
He nodded and paused. Then he started slapping his chest while exclaiming "I am woman!" repeatedly. It was the only time he'd used English.
At that point I just walked away because I just couldn't deal. Luckily he didn't follow me home and assault my lying, lesbian-parading self.

So, ladies and gentlemen, take heart when approaching first dates, because chances are that your date is an English speaker. If not, I would consider learning how to say "Ask me to enter that motel one more time and I'mma tase you, bro" beforehand.