210. For the defense of the travel romance
When life passes you the ball out of nowhere, hell, just run with it. I've had many romantic stories and heard many romantic stories from good friends and fellow travelers in my little life. I would say that my existence is a genuinely wholesome product that stemmed from a travel romance, so I would say that I'm just a little biased.
I liked that my parents met at the beach. My dad was just a young traveler and my mom was with her university friends on a girls' trip. One of the romantic advice that my dad told me was, "sometimes you just have to say yes to a group of pretty girls, your mom was the one to invite me by the way, and then you just be polite and open-minded and respectful and just see what happens." My father is quite wholesome, but I'm not sure what went down and how they kept in touch (during the 90's)! I don't need all the finer details of course. To me, it's just so romantic and adventurous.
I've been trying to search for every nook and cranny for some semblance of amorous and whimsy like that. I've been protecting my heart quite a bit as of late. I think I just need to let loose a little bit. I usually am hesitant when I get along with someone really well, especially when they're a bit transient. I always seem to end up in silly situations and hastily try make goodbyes a lot less sad (for me. I don't know about the other person, in my experience, they usually don't really give a shit, unfortunately). I don't know man. Sometimes people just might surprise you.
So my most recent date I went on - he was lovely. I was a little bit on a tear actually. I definitely out-Kayla'd myself on our first date (during our 2nd one, I was a lot cooler... maybe.). I felt that I was "way too myself" (overshared quite a bit, but so did he, in my defense.) The reasoning behind this silly little phenomenon of "lore-dropping too much" on the first date is due to several factors:
- We're both attractive foreigners with a good sense of humor (I don't want to toot my horn too much, but my sparring partner could keep up with me and I enjoyed that so much);
- I took him to several swanky cool bars that I liked and alcohol was flowin' (but crazy enough, we did not drink that much. I had a really big carby meal and only had a beer and a cocktail! I swear, you guys!);
- We both have that face that "you can tell anything to". I feel like we're independently safe spaces for people to spill their guts to, and in turn, that made us more open and freely sharing anything and everything.
Perhaps the guy was looking for something fun and refreshing (as am I, always and forever) and it was one of the most fun first dates that I had in a long time (I've had a lot of fun first dates as well!). It's the shared language I guess, both linguistically and humoristically. Dating people who don't share the same native language as you is a challenge, but I don't mind it at all. Culture-wise, however, we are a little different.
He's a Northerner... Midlands... person? He met me at a cute coffee shop, with shitty food and equally as shitty coffee. As an uncultured American swine, of course I'm not quite sure the geography of the UK all too well. Also, all of my sad British friends are from the South! I like my friends, of course. They're reasonable and good people. However, I've met a lot of Southern folk around SE Asia, and they aren't the creme de la creme of Britain, in fact I hate some of them. I sometimes hate to see some lads on tour. Menaces, a majority of them. Some are genuinely sound people, but I've came across some ridiculous ones that can't even hold their liquor. A disgrace to Britain.
For northerners, I have had no exposure whatsoever except for a penpal from Middlesbrough that I had when I was 16. He told me to listen to a bunch of Oasis and alt-J songs (I appreciated this culture exchange, of course) and thought that I was good company. How I met my penpal- we played this trivia game together called QuizUp and we kept matching up in geography question matches. After like 30 games consecutively over a course of week of nonstop playing, we exchanged WhatsApp contact info and it was cool. I'm literally trying to reconnect with him as we speak. I need intel lol.
I looked at several maps of the U.K. North and South divide (shown below). I am starting to get a better picture of the "vibe" of certain folks there. As of this moment, I, for one, prefer Northerners to Southerners (sorry in advanced). I might have a biased standpoint in this, of course. I've only really ever been to London. I must write about my trip to the capitol, but I'm putting all these little stories on the backburner because I have to sort a lot of things :)
Links to: Map 1, Map 2 , Map 3
Anyway, when I was in London, the only strangers that I had a genuinely lovely time talking to were random Northerners that talked to me on the tube. No one ever talks to you on the tube- that was a statement that was thrown around too often around my Southern friends. People just approached me and had a conversation with me on the metro and I found it so startling (but genuinely heartwarming). The people that talked to me were all from the North.
A middle-aged guy from Liverpool talked to me for half an hour about his recent trip to Thailand and then he told me he found me pretty (lol). A frantic, but really nice lady from Hertfortshire (she said her family's a little bit closer to Bedford-Cambridge-ish area and up further north so I'm like... "so...you're not a Londoner, right? and she was like "Oh god, no. That'd be horrid if I were. I just commute back and forth." ), she had a conversation with me on the train and I was a little bit lost, but fumbled about on Google Maps. This woman literally walked with me, guided me to my stop, and waited with me for a little bit before she caught her train out of the city centre. I was so impressed and very grateful. I literally got a taste of Northern hospitality in one of the most heartless, yet culturally-vibrant, UK cities imaginable. What a genuinely good collective of people.
It seems like I'm bashing the southern Brits a lot, but I don't know man. I got a bitter taste in my mouth. My thoughts are summarized in this Reddit comment:
Another thing I'd like to mention is that a lot of life is just improvisation. I really enjoyed reading this Medium article by Fabienne Fong Yan. Deals with a lot of the things I face when it comes to stuff like this.
"So far for one bitter end. That’s when you start wondering: what just happened? Did I make the wrong decision? Why did we even talk about meeting again? Didn’t it mean anything to each other? Did he lie to me? Was I a complete fool? What am I even doing here?
The answer is: life happened. Love happened. And travel happened. The connection did exist and we’d loved each other, in the broad sense of the term. But timing was right only for… a travel romance!"
Me updating my friends again
Dating is fun. Finding out what you like and don't like- it's supposed to be fun and not mind-numbingly sucky like how some people make it out to be. Dating sucks because the people suck, ok? Sometimes you just have to filter out the bad apples until you find a good egg. Yeah, it's terrible when people are bad communicators. When I'm out and about and hurt from a stupid lover, I can heal. One of the best advice I've received is that if you're in a social situation and it's kinda dead air and bleak, "if it's not fun, you make it fun." and I've taken that advice to heart in everything that I do now.
Quite frankly, I'd say that my ideal relationship is having banter similar to the parents from the movie Easy A (2010). Not going to lie, I want Stanley Tucci, but not bald. Sorry. I'm racist against bald people (for legal reasons, this is a joke).
So essentially- I just had a small taste of something delightfully British. Take me to a bloody pub and give me a warm meat pie (I had a very terrible and cold pie, about a 1/4 slice, in London and I will never forget it, it was £6- I was livid.). Take me to a Premier League footy match, I will be so tuned in and do all the chants and shit omg. Take me to the middle of a messy bog filled with drugged-up youngsters, pitch a tent with me, watch me go apeshit in a live music festival. Take me to a Sunday roast dinner, I would love to literally eat an entire Thanksgiving spread with friends and family I enjoy.
I have not much to say on the personal side of things. I really want to keep things to myself and my circle of friends. However, what I can say is that it felt like a wonderful fever dream. The level of comfort was astounding for a first date. There was no judgment that passed between the two of us and if there were a comment so absurd and odd (not like, insane though, heh), then it's met with genuine intrigue, rather than strangeness.
A part of me is telling me to just roll the dice and go if they're showing enough interest and you see potential. You literally only live once. Another part of me is just to hunker down and just stay put. I should just let this one pass. I shouldn't get too involved too quickly. He told me it takes a while for him to be emotionally invested (I am the same way, but I like to see the good parts of people more often and way too quickly). I'm just here, vibing. I'd say I'm a pretty consistent friend, to say the least.
So goddamn refreshing. Like I said, we'll see what happens. Honestly, I was on a bit of a tear lately. The best way to come down from a series of high, uplifting moments (I've been going out with friends, meeting new people, having a lot of fun) is to have a completely heart-wrenching cinematic romance rendezvous with some vaguely Mediterranean-Latino-Arab looking Brit and have a bit of a laugh. My heart hurts a bit, but a good hurt- like similar to the pain that suffering artists experience. It really helps them make one of the most poignant masterpieces they've ever made. I feel like I'm writing pretty well today :)
But I'm just vibing, who really knows what will happen? He really was like, "Don't worry I won't ghost you." and "At the very least, we could be really good friends." and "Oh I'd like to call you, every week or so if time is willing!" Okay, yeah buddy. I'll believe these statements when I see some action.
Wow, I simply could just be the biggest idiot on the planet and was just played by yet another stupid man. He's out and about and I know the vibe of what's going to happen if things go awry. Maybe I just made this random dude's night, and honestly that's fine with me.
Or we could just see how things unfold. I'm trying not to be too cynical these days. We're so conditioned to be bleak and melancholic due to the state of the world. I wish that we could have some fun and just be happy that things turned out well. I'm genuinely happy this happened to me.
~ you're alright,
<3 K