TEFL in Ecuador

So I’ve had an Ecuadorian girlfriend for almost three months now. My little pequeñita. She is like a bloodhound puppy, charitable and loyal.

I thought she had a limp until just recently, when I watched her more closely and realized she doesn’t. Sometimes when I recall her, I picture her with a wooden leg and an eye patch; I don’t know why. From her small size and obliging, childlike nature, I had guessed she was very nearly my youthful age. Later I discovered she is ten years older, but that doesn’t really bother me. Still, dating her  just doesn’t feel right. We have little common ground, but on the other hand, we do share an uncommon amount of uncommon ground.

Actually, it is difficult to remember how we ended up together in the first place. If I recall correctly, it all started during a pizza date. I looked at her and was sure she wanted to date me. To test my theory, I asked her if she would like to date me. Then I realized my yes or no question actually sounds like an offer. Doh!

She said she would like to date, but she needed more time to get over her ex. That was a relief. A classic rejection line. But not even a week later she decided to take me up on what she took to be my offer. In the end, I decided it couldn’t hurt to play along. There was no one else I was interested in at the time, and to be safe, I made sure to add I didn’t intend to be serious with anyone in this strange land and reiterated my resolve to leave Ecuador at the end of five months no matter what.

At first I wasn’t trying to be the best boyfriend, just good enough so I wouldn’t break her heart. I must have overshot it a ways because she continually tells me how much she appreciates me, although I still haven’t figured out why. We haven’t done much of anything that distinguishes a regular friendship from a more serious relationship, but she still calls herself my girlfriend.

Honestly, I can’t see what she would lose from breaking up with me. Once I joked with her about the idea to gauge her reaction, but she did not appreciate my sense of humor, and I was forced to repent of my malfeasance. Later she told me her heart was in my hands and to take good care of it, which, for me, feels a lot like playing hot potato by myself. Wait, wait, wait…hold on a minute here, Yesi. What about casual dating do you not understand? Cripes.

So now I’m trying my best to be a good boyfriend, and I am a great boyfriend—and you couldn’t ask for a more faithful girlfriend—but nothing is clicking. It’s because, among other things, the whole universe is built on the foundation that people like Yesi and I will stay out of one another’s affairs. However, this is not a good enough reason for Yesi to give up on us, and I really appreciate this obstinacy, which I do not personally possess.

At one time she told me that she wished there was only one way to express love. The absurdity of this statement surprised me, notwithstanding the fact that I rarely agree with her on anything. Before that, she told me she wished people were more like computers because they are so much easier to understand. What a geek. It was at that time that I decided to break up with her, and I have been dabbling in the idea for the past few months. The problem is that deciding to break up with Yesi is exactly like deciding to kick a newborn puppy. You might reel your foot back a little bit, but you can’t bring yourself to do it. Then you feel bad for even thinking about it.

I never had high hopes for our relationship, but somehow I still ended up being disappointed. I had at least hoped to get some affection out of the deal, but she does not show it in any way that I can recognize. Touch is an important part of intimate expression for me, but my every gesture seems lost in translation. She doesn’t recoil, but neither does she react warmly, until I am left cold at the end of our time together, when she usually says how good it makes her feel to be with me. On rare occasions she abruptly kisses me with all the grace of a jackhammer. At least it’s not sloppy.

As far as I can tell, her love language is complaining about her job—and she loves me a lot. I was sure there had to be a passionate Latina within her just waiting to get out, but that was just because I so badly wanted it to be true. I gave her time to warm up, dropped a few hints, tossed a few eyebrow raises her way. But she didn’t respond with anything more than amusement. Finally, I had to ask her why she refrained from affectionate behavior when we are together, and she told me that we can’t behave like a couple anywhere where someone from work might see us, which is everywhere in Riobamba, because that would reveal that she isn’t dating her friend Julio, who is gay, but pretends to date his friend Yesi as a cover, because if people found out, they both would lose their jobs. Riobamba, Ecuador is a very traditional place in that way. I am excited to feel that I am entangled in local scandal and a multi-layered ruse, even if it is hard to understand.

Whatever the likelihood of the whole plot unraveling, Yesi is one to play it safe and act like we aren’t actually dating, which makes the relationship mutual. Yesi doesn’t like scandals or multi-layered ruses, which is ironic, since she is simultaneously pretending to be in one relationship that she isn’t in and pretending not to be in another relationship that she is in. That’s to show you where playing it safe will get you.

I have been dropping hints to get us into places where we can be alone, but she doesn’t pick up on the hint. For example, I will suggest we go to my room and watch a movie. She says a movie sounds great, but she would prefer to watch it on the big screen in the lobby because of her cataract. I did not know she had a cataract. That must be why I pictured her wearing an eye patch.

More often, we will spend time together as a threesome with our mutual friend Julio, which comprises an interesting little triangle. Yesi and Julio are supposed to be together, but they both dig me, the alleged single. Meanwhile, the fact that my relationship of dubious commitment remains a secret to the public allows me to secure coffee dates with new friends, all of whom happen to be women, or Julio. Yesi has speculated that I must have an irresistible aura, as evidenced by how her dog prefers intimacy with my leg to that of a bitch in heat. A lot of good that does me, I think, to receive more affection from my girlfriend’s dog and male friend than from her. I will not pry into the matter any further.

Back to the story:

At the moment we started dating, she stopped having time for me, until the 3rd week of January, by which time we will have been quasi-dating for four months and will have one month left before I leave. Maybe it’s tragic, or maybe it’s just funny. But what’s not funny is that she has to spend all her time on a Cisco Systems certification so as not to be fired and to lose her meager salary. Her boss works her like a slave, pays her less than her lazy coworkers, so she can’t afford to live anywhere but her parents’ house and she can’t afford to quit because she doesn’t have any other opportunities. Furthermore, she has just had her heart shattered by a man for the first time and is concerned about becoming an old maid in a decidedly misogynistic society. Hence she is exceedingly grateful for me and tries to spend most of her free time with me, and she starts crying just thinking about me leaving, which she seems to do more than enjoying my presence. One would have to be heartless to leave her and I fall just short of that qualification.

Meanwhile, I have a lot of free time not to spend on her. Sometimes I will go out with a friend. That is usually when Yesi will call me and the hotel clerk will tell her I am out with some woman. Then I have to explain to her later it is no big deal and that I will spend some time with her whenever she can set some time aside in advance. Then she says she will call me in the afternoon. So then I spend five or six hours in my room waiting for her call, and finally decide to go out to check my e-mail or something, at which time she calls. Then, by the time I get back, she typically has no more time to spend with me. These little hitches are fitting, like moth-eaten bows and twine on the crumpled-newspaper wrapping paper of our relationship, which is still worth maintaining, if only because it satisfies a sick curiosity in how it progresses.

So there isn’t much more I can do. Her utter helplessness and dependency is annoyingly endearing. Besides that, she is cute and funny. And extremely nice. She is so nice she makes me feel like a bastard in comparison, and I’ve always thought I was a pretty decent guy. It doesn’t help that she is jealous and overprotective either. When I was sick, rather than caressing me and cooing in my ear, she told me all the things I was not allowed to do until I returned to health. One of those things was going out with her. Then she chastises me whenever I break one of her multitudinous set of rules and tells me I deserve to be sick.

Whenever I go to a party without her, she asks me to promise I won’t drink or fool around with other girls. I tell her I will only drink a little and the girls I will treat only as friends. However, I have discovered a loophole the people here call amigos con derechos, or “friends with rights.” That means I can do whatever I want with whomever I want and still be considered friends, which I know is probably a serious deviation from Yesi’s intentions, but I have decided that if Yesi can misunderstand my definition of a casual relationship, I am allowed to misunderstand her definition of friends.

Despite these rationalizations, I haven’t quite been able to cross the line into cheating, which, frankly, disappoints me in myself.

I think that if I was more of a bastard I would certainly be enjoying myself more, and if I was less of a bastard I would probably have more self-satisfaction. Sadly, I am exactly the same amount of a bastard, which leaves me hanging in awkward limbo between the two ideals. I’m absolutely dying for some tenderness and affection, and it doesn’t seem fair of her to deny me the affection she won’t let me have with anyone else. Still, I can’t get her to see it my way. I definitely can’t break up with her.

While being faithful hurts, I do it to repay Yesi her loyalty to me. When everyone here was pretending to appreciate me, she really appreciated me. She is the only person I can always count on to set aside some time for me, which I can always count on being mundane. Moreover, she is one of the few people I know here that isn’t full of shit. In fact, what I just said about repaying Yesi’s loyalty was a load of it. I just tell myself that to make me feel like a good person. I’m faithful to her not for the sake of faithfulness, but because I am more drawn to the challenge of opening up Yesi to intimacy in order to pump up my ego by being the guy to crack such a hard case. At least, that is one interpretation of the facts at hand.

In the end, however, considering the best interests of everyone involved, my solution to maximize overall well-being is to keep this relationship going without denying myself and others opportunities for a more mutual relationship, and to do my part to make sure Yesi never finds out if anything nice happens that she would not personally approve of, and of which I will only partake in the condition that it corresponds with the laws of love mandated by God and the universe. A studied ethicist might say there is a flaw in my moral reasoning. But I’m not a studied ethicist nor is there one handy.

Unable to pick out a virtuous action among those afforded me, I’ve finally decided the only real virtue here is to shrug my shoulders and develop my sense of humor. I never feel like a bastard when I’m laughing. Think about it—who ever looks at someone who is laughing and says “look at that bastard!”?

At any rate, now that you are already laughing at me, I may as well join in.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.