I went out to the Shenandoah foothills to see some friends and their fierce new yurt. They're just back from Baghdad, which, among other things, put Heather in the 'RM is definitely hitting on you' camp. A handful of people have suggested this, and I'd always dismissed it entirely. After the attempted foot massage, I dismiss it 95 percent. It's still preposterous--knowing him, I can see how he can be so inappropriate and clueless at the same time. And I just don't believe he'd be that stupid. But maybe that's giving him too much credit--after all, he's shown a tremendous illiteracy toward signals, as well as an amnesia of past discussions. He's so obtuse to the fact that I don't want to be his friend that it's conceivable that he can't imagine that I wouldn't want to sleep with him. A couple of friends were over last weekend--they were firmly in the 'hitting on you' camp as well. Their take was, 'he sees a single woman and thinks you must automatically want him.' He has betrayed single-bias assumptions before: more then once, when he's asked me what I did over the weekend and I say I did this or that with various friends, he says, “oh, that’s good. At least you had companionship.” You'd think that he'd realize that if I were actually hurting for companionship, I'd pay more attention to him. Except that even then, I probably wouldn't.
Anyway, Heather's perspective was, "You won't believe some of these deployed guys--it's like a parallel universe where cheating isn't an issue. Men will say that they're "separated," by which they mean their wives are here while they're over there." Classy.
I'm still not convinced, and not just because I don't want to be. I really don't want to think about it, though.
***
I shared a handful of the more preposterous RM stories. Since it was Heather that first taught me to change a bike tire, I told her about the time he kept trying to rip the wheel out of my hands to "help," even after I explained that I had to be able to do it myself, in case I ever needed to change a tire on the road...
A.:...to which he said, "if you get a flat, just call me. And if I'm not there, call 911."
Heather: What?? That doesn't even make sense!
A.: I know! I certainly hope he didn't raise his daughter to call 911 in that kind of situation.
Heather: Did you say that to him?
A.: No. I should have. I only think of the right thing to say afterward.
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Hurm, sadly I would have to side w/ your friend. I know a lot of folks that served and even during peace time, it was a bit of a soap opera.
And I'll tell you another story, while I was JYA-ing in China, everyone cheated on their boyfriends and girlfriends back home. And the one guy that didn't cheat, got Dear Johnned, b/c his GF was cheating. I think there's something about being in a foreign country for a long period of time that makes people forget their home country ethics. I'm fairly sure that's why there are so many books that involve people going abroad and cheating.
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