ugh disgusted

I wrote this my second week in Beijing but forgot to post it. So keep in mind that when I say "Friday," I really mean Friday-three-weeks-ago.

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Friday, I got an email from this guy asking if I wanted to get some drinks with him and some friends. I met him last Tuesday at our college's young alumni mixer event. There were five or six of us at the event who live in the same neighborhood, including him and me, so we exchanged emails to stay in touch. Several group emails went around, and off of those, he replied to me to ask about Friday night drinks. I found it a bit strange that he would single me out, but I didn't think too much of it.

When I first met him at the alumni mixer, he was there very obviously with a Chinese girl. He held her coat out for her, talked to her closely, basically looked like he was dating her. I am indeed heeding Broadway's repeated advice to be more skeptical of boys' motives and generally assume they are evil, but when someone like this guy has a girlfriend already, I am definitely not as on-guard.

So Friday night, I met up with him and his (male) friend around 10:30. Looking back, I should have realized fairly early on that he was trying to hit on me. But in typical friendly fashion, I denied it and chalked it all up to "just friends going out together." (Broadway would gester wildly at my utter lack of awareness right about now).

To make a long story short, I was completely annoyed by the end of the night at this guy's ridiculous attitude, repeated antics, and multiple ill-concealed ploys to get in my pants. Several things happened:

1) Several random girls came up to his friend to talk to him at the bars, but no one came up to him. He turned to me several times to say something along the lines of "You're the only one who I'm paying attention to, and look how scared these girls are of you." Oh puhlease. He's just upset that he's not getting as much attention as he usually does as a tall white guy at a Chinese bar.

2) He obviously thinks he is a total hunk and God's gift to women and acts like the stereotypical (and despicable) fearless foreigner-in-China. Whenever he introduces himself to women, he says, "Hi, I'm Blah, the good-looking one." Every single time, without fail, and you know that he is only half joking. This arrogant attitude persisted throughout the night. He bragged about his muscles (again, only half jokingly), and make me feel his flexed arms as a (half) joke. Ugh ugh ugh, puhlease.

3) At one point Friday night, our ages came up. I said that I already gave him clues to my age since I told him I graduated in 2004. He did some mental math and asked, "27?" I nodded and then asked how old he was. His friend offered, "Didn't you graduate in 2006?" To which he answered, "Well technically 2005. It's complicated, I'll tell you later." Going off of 2005, I asked if he was 26, and he nodded.

So, why is it complicated which year he graduated in? Turns out, thanks to Facebook the next morning, he is only 23 and graduated in 2007. I never thought I would actually meet one of those young guys who lie about their ages to older women in bars. That's absolutely disgusting that he would claim to be 26 just so he would appear more attractive to me. (It's also an sad indicator that I am old. Sigh)

At the end of the night, he insisted that we all take a cab back together. I'm hesitant, and he is very insistent. Okay sure whatever, we are going in the same direction. In the cab, I give the driver directions and ask him to drop me off first. He immediately corrects the driver, "Oh, we all live very close together. Just drop us all off at this-this-this address."

Then to me, he says, "We're going to watch a movie at our place. You should come up."

Uhh ... Puhlease. NO THANKS. At this point, I'm so pissed that he re-directed the driver to drop us all off at his apartment. We do live fairly close to each other, so the cab had already passed mine so it was too late to get dropped off first.

I snickered at the suggestion of a movie and said, "No thanks, I'll just walk home."

After the cab dropped us off, his friend wanted to go to the 7-11 to get a snack. It's on the way to my place, so he then decided to come along since we're all walking, and I think to myself, "When will this guy ever go away and this night be over????"

When we get to the 7-11, his friend veered off, and I kept walking to go home. HE FOLLOWED ME. WHAT????? He claimed he wants to walk me home.

Really? I was so incredibly skeptical of anything he said at this point and swore that he was trying to walk me home to create an opportunity for me to ask him to come up to my apartment.

Seriously, where did this guy come from? He is so full of himself.

Fine, if he wants to walk the extra block, he can do whatever he wants. As we walked, he asked about my roommates, and I told him that I live with two guys.

He replied, feigning concern, "Oh really? I don't know how I feel about you living with other guys."

I snapped back, "What is it to you?" and kept walking.

When we got to my apartment, he actually respectfully said goodnight, at a distance, turned around and walked off.

What an asshole. I couldn't believe it. I feel dirty just thinking about the whole thing.