A Courting We Shall Go

To the query "You'll have to explain to me just what the process of 'courting' is like," the answer goes something like this:

1. Guy texts my phone saying "I love you always" in Tagalog.
2. Then Guy respectfully talks to my host father and asks, "Can I date her?"
3. Host father respectfully replies, "You'll have to ask her."
4. Guy takes that as a whopping "yes" and comes to my home, unannounced, with a bucket full of fried chicken and waits for me to consume it all.
5. Katrina says "I don't want to date you."
6. Guy thinks to himself, "Isn't she great?" and goes home a smitten kitten.

Never have I agreed to go on a date since coming to this country, but on occasion I have been duped into one. . .which is exactly what led to the Second Worst Date of My Life (the first being the other time I was duped, after which Beboy asked me if I would mate with him).

A local police officer who has a "thing" for me regularly texts my cell phone, often stops by the house, and searches for me in my local haunts (a.k.a. the post office and the municipality dump site), always pursuing the same interest: will I go out with him on a date? Just one date?

No. I will not.

But we know each other, and I know he has an English competency exam coming up. In a last-ditch effort to be in my breathing space and, therefore, close to me, he proposes that we have an English-speaking study session. Eager to make English speakers of them all, I agree under the strict terms that we are studying and we are pals only. A handshake, a spit in the dirt, and a pinky swear later, we are on for studying at the local market among pig carcasses and the recent squid catch.

First, let me say it before anyone else does: I'm an idiot.

I realize things are going south when the books close a mere five minutes after they are opened, and he says he must "quickly pick something up in the next town." Ever the faithful teacher, I go with him to......a local disco. He wants to dance. Can't fight the feeling.

Me, I refuse. There will be no dancing. Can we just sit somewhere and talk, he asks. I'm tired and want to go home, I say.

Well why don't we sleep right here, he asks with a wink.

And then I proceed to make him cry in shame and embarassment.

"You are very disrespectful. You are a liar and you are treating me like a prostitute. You are not respecting me or my family. God will judge you harshly for treating a foreign visitor this way. Shame on you. Your English is very good."

I add the English part because I read somewhere that you need to add something positive to every criticism.

He cried and cried and cried because I hurt him so. This was the second time in my life that I made a grown man cry, and it was no less satisfying than the first. Does it make me a bad person if I say that some people just deserve the humiliation? It was so awful in the greatest kind of way, the kind of way when crushing someone with the emotional calibur of a 14 year-old makes you so happy and proud of your cruel self.