Hombres

Wondering what my Saturday night out with the Spaniards was like? I have one word for you: sodomy.

L and I arrived a bit late to the restaurant because one of the trains we needed to take wasn't running. There was a 40-minute wait and no Spaniards. Turns out they'd been there and left and from the looks of things, they'd ditched us. After a phone call we figured out they were at a pizza place up the street and that they'd brought another friend so now we were up to three Spaniards. Let's call them Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.

Nina is the guy L met on the train. He meets us on the street. We crowd into the tiny restaurant where Pinta and Santa Maria are waiting. Pinta is Nina's roommate; Santa Maria is their friend. A waiter rudely tells us to wait outside so Nina, L and I move to the breezeway while Pinta and Santa Maria stay inside.

Eventually we are seated where we find the restaurant serves three kinds of pizza which serve one person and cost 21 bucks each. L aptly notes this is the Soup Nazi of pizza joints. The Spaniards start yelling and acting like a bunch of wriggly puppies, which is fine. Pizza and wine is ordered; pizza for all, and wine for the Spaniards. I am seated against the wall and Santa Maria is across from me. L is across from Pinta and Nina is at the head of the table.

I spend most of my evening being talked to by Santa Maria, who is lovely-looking, with pale skin and fine features. Unfortunately for everyone he is a pig. He starts out the evening by refusing to say what he really does for work, although he does get one small point for telling me he's going to be a virtual dentist. I try hard, really, really, really hard to get into the vibe of his conversation style and tell myself it is because he is Spanish that he is acting that way and hey, you're in New York! But then he starts talking about how impossible it is for men to be monogamous and how in Spain men have no rights and then...

And THEN he rolls into his main conversation topic for the evening: Sodomizing women. Delightful! Also he cannot seem to understand what an alcoholic is and keeps trying to get me to drink wine. All I could think was, just how stupid does he think I am? Is he meeting a lot of stupid women? Does this work on any of them?

I didn't talk as much to the other Spaniards, although Pinta told me he was working with bankers on the bailout and that they were "humble." Uh-huh. Luckily for L it seemed like Nina was a good guy, and Pinta, too. But when we split the bill at the end of the evening I wondered if Santa Maria was trying to get me to drink wine so I would have to pay for that, too.

Which isn't to say that it was a horrible evening; it wasn't. It was an experience.