Never Date a Guy from the Bus

Welcome to another post in my Dating in Buenos Aires series!

Today’s Subject: Andrés

Andrés is not actually Argentine, he is a Colombian who lives in Buenos Aires. Due to my past failures with Argentines, I thought this would be a plus. Sadly, I was wrong.

Bus stop bonding

My first few months in Buenos Aires, I worked in the suburbs and the terrible bus 60 was an unfortunate necessity in my life. I spent a lot nights standing alone at the bus stop in the suburbs, waiting for the unreliable bus to show up. In fact, I even wrote a poem about it once while I was waiting. One night, there was another person there. At first I was slightly annoyed by his presence, as it meant I could not rock out to my iPod, meaning no dancing and singing in the deserted streets. However, once we started talking and joking about the slowness of the 60, I thought perhaps it was a worthy trade off.

Andrés politely asked if he could sit next to me on the bus. I accepted. We talked a bit, mostly about how he, a Colombian and I, an American, ended up in Buenos Aires and on the worst bus in the city. As he told me about his job as a graphic designer and mentioned his roommates, I thought to myself “a job and he doesn’t live with his parents? Could this be?!”. He asked me for my email and that was the end of our first interaction.

This is not a movie

Now, in a movie, this would have been an adorable beginning to a relationship. Two expatriates meeting on a terrible bus, bonding over moving to a new country and immediately finding that they have endless things in common. Instead, this morphed into some gchatting and eventually, a lunch date.

Douchey sunglasses and eating a German

Andrés asked me to meet him near his work so we could get lunch on his break. He showed up wearing Ray Bans even though it was quite cloudy and when he finally was able to remove them, he kept them in a fancy case. I found this to be incredibly annoying. No man should care enough about his sunglasses to spend $200 dollars on them and carry an expensive name brand case to hold them in. I realized that this is a weird thing to be annoyed by, so I tried to let it go.

When he asked me what I had done that week, I told him I had gone to a goodbye party at a grill for my German friend, Micha. He asked “did you like it?” I was confused by this question and said “well, it was just a small get together for Micha, yeah, it was fun. Micha is a cool guy.” He then looked at me like I was a small, confused child, stopped walking and put his hand on my back as he laughed a oh isn’t your confusion cute sort of laugh and said (very slowly) “No, sweetie, how did it taste? Did you like the German?”

I realized immediately that he had misunderstood me and thought that I had eaten German food, not eaten food with a German. However, I was incredibly irritated that his inability to listen resulted in an incredibly condescending response. Listen, asshole, I speak Spanish and understand yours just fine. Do not treat me like one of your ditzy trolls you probably take out on a regular basis.

And then he tried to feed me

We quickly picked a restaurant and sat down to order. On the way in, I had noticed that someone had a particularly leafy looking salad. As Argentines define salad as any cold vegetable on the side of your plate, I was excited to see what I considered to be a real salad. Andrés ordered some super creamy chicken and whatever dish while I ordered a chicken breast salad. Andrés stared at me and laughed. “A salad? You are going to eat a salad?” I did not understand why this was such an issue. “I like salad” I said simply.

When the plates arrived, he continued to mock my choice. He continuously tried to convince me that his order was superior to mine and that I should really try it. I repeatedly refused and said I did not wish to try his food. Eventually, he simply loaded up a fork and tried to force it into my face. I was appalled. I don’t let boyfriends feed me, much less guys I am on a first date with. Get your creamy chicken up out of my face!

OCD Messaging

After our lunch date, I went home and got online. Within seconds, Andrés was chatting me up, telling how pretty I am and how he had a great time. I gave him one-word answers, but allowed the compliments to flow. He then friended me on Facebook and liked photos of me from 3 years earlier. That takes a lot of Facebook stalking to get that far back in the photos. I tried to convince myself that he was more interesting than he was. For days, he chatted with me anytime I was on gchat and constantly asked when we could hang out next. I always had an excuse. However, he knew that I lived mere blocks from his workplace, so he would always ask if he could drop by just to say hello. I didn’t really want him to know where I lived, so when he suggested meeting for ice cream, I finally caved.

I’ll do a lot of things for ice cream

Andrés I did not have a great time on our first date, but I convinced myself that most first dates are a little awkward and I shouldn’t rule Andrés out completely. He did manage to remember that I am absolutely obsessed with ice cream, after all. His conversational skills via gchat did not intrigue me much more than our first date, but I really wanted that ice cream.

As I scarfed down my delicious ice cream cone (banana and dulce de leche being the flavors I chose that day), Andrés told me about the Green Day concert he went to and how he was planning on seeing Linkin Park soon. Every band he mentioned seemed to be worst than the last. When I did not comment, he asked if I liked them. I responded, quite simply “I think Linkin Park is garbage” and continue to eat my ice cream.

No bus stop stories for the grand kids

Andrés slowly realized that all of our gchat conversations turned into me mocking his horrible music taste and never responding to any sort of flirty comments. He slowly faded out any interaction. Later, I saw him on the streets with another girl. They had matching Ray Bans. I bet she is a huge Evanescence fan and they sing the girl and boy parts of the songs together. Now that is a story for their lame grand kids.