Life As Performance Art 81

This afternoon I will be having coffee with a young Chilean for language exchange. This will be our first meeting. One never knows what to expect on first meetings. I suppose that he will show up, perhaps a bit late, but who knows? Not all Latinos are tarde, or, I mean to write tardy, but the Spanish has so colonized my brain that it often overlaps with my native English. Some Latin Americans are very punctual. So punctual that they make Canadians look careless and sloppy. This Chilean knows that I am old enough to be his father. It says so on the webpage, with my profile. Aaron. Age 63. I find this annoyingly ageist. We are meeting together for language exchange, and not for bodily fluid exchange. This is not a dating, mating or hookup site, though I think there is legitimate concern, for a lot of women who use this page anyway, that there are plenty of dumbass males around who don't know how to think with their brains and will jump at any excuse for a cheap date. There was even one idiot in Panama, age 24 who sent me an image of a naked man. I gave him a good scolding and told him that we can only proceed if he promises to respect boundaries and not try anything like that with me again. It turns out that he is gay, has to live in the closet, and lives in a very homophobic culture and lives with depression. After several months of texting back and forth, we did manage one video call on Skype. He stayed in the dark and I could hardly make out his face. Even if his manners were civil and above the belt, I still felt creeped out around this guy. NEXT! It can be really difficult negotiating around sex and sexual orientation with a lot of Latinos. The older ones are usually very conservative and homophobic, and the first question they usually ask is if you're married. This could be for them an ice-breaker, or it could be a screening process. If you are a mature male and unmarried in a lot of those countries, it is assumed that you are likely going to be gay. And a lot of those Hispanic homophobes simply are not going to give you the time of day unless you can assure them that you are, shall we say, as totally normal as they are. With the young ones it can be a bit dicey. They tend to be a lot more progressive than their parents, but for a lot of them it's still a matter of don't ask, don't tell. Some, perhaps a lot, are still going to be severely homophobic, and I have had to deal with some of those idiots. One young man from Bogotá simply wouldn't talk to me again because I had mentioned spending time in areas of his precious city known to be gay. Others are curious, closeted, or looking for opportunities. There was one nineteen year old (with a girlfriend) from elsewhere in Colombia who seemed to enjoy Skyping with me while wearing nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around his waist as he lay supine across his bed.. Of course, I didn't bite. I didn't even nibble. It was for me, just embarrassing and nothing else. Some of them seem to like older white guys (like, HUH???!!). On the whole, I really don't care. I no longer answer questions about my marital status because I am Canadian and for Canadians that is considered a nosy and intrusive question, and if they don't like it, then they can just go away, because they are not going to be worth my time. If they are quite blatant about being attracted, I play coy and dumb, redirect and keep the focus on language. If it turns out that we really, genuinely like each other, regardless of attraction, then none of that really matters. We usually end up dropping enough of our guard to start really trusting each other and we actually end up becoming friends, and this is also occurring with a couple of individuals, anyway. We stay focussed on language. We might even be attracted to each other. But first we are friends helping each other learn or improve in our respective languages. If anything else is going to happen, it can wait till later, if it's going to happen at all. But in the long run, it really doesn't matter if anything happens are not. We have each found a new friend, and our language skills are improving. Nothing else should matter. And usually, it doesn't.