Dating in Asia, part 3 of 3

*The Korean who lied about his marital status.  We met on the first day of Kwanzaa at Zion, a club that plays reggae and Afro-pop, which a friend had dragged me to.  When he came over to chat me up I asked him if he was married and or had children.  He said no.  Two dates later, he confessed, “You have an honest face, so I must tell you.  Remember when you asked me if I had a wife and if I had children?  I do.”  So I’m like, Thanks for the belated honesty.  It was nice knowing you. He then went on to tell me that he was unhappy with his fat wife (I saw her photo; she was barely chubby.) and was only waiting until his younger child finished high school to divorce her (six years).  Then he would marry me and we could have a baby together.  Don’t know how I didn’t laugh in his face at that last part.  There are too many men in the world for me to sit around waiting for a married one.  And how stupid do you think I am to fall for these promises?  We’d hadn’t known each other long enough for me to become emotionally attached. 

And if I hadn’t had “an honest face” how long would he have continued leading me to believe that he was free and single?  This man was tenacious.  After I made clear that I wouldn’t see him again, he called me regularly to try to convince me to give him a chance.  When I stopped answering his calls, he sent me text messages every day saying that he missed me and KakaoTalk messages professing his true love.  This continued for about a year and a half.  Then I moved to Japan, and my Korean phone number went to someone new, so my KakaoTalk account, which was attached to that number, was disabled. 

*The European who bored me to death.  I met him on my way home, one night, standing on a median trying to cross a multi-lane street.  He greeted me and introduced himself as an engineer from Greece who worked at the shipbuilding company across town.  I’d guess he was in the 45-55 age range.  I accepted his invitation to meet up at Starbucks the next night.  Conversation was underwhelming, and his Korean was better than his English, which meant that I had to concentrate really hard to understand him.  I decided to give him another chance because he had seemed nervous. Maybe next time he’d relax and be better.

When our schedules finally lined up, I trudged through freshly fallen 40-centimeter deep snow to his huge, sparsely furnished three-bedroom apartment.  He served me snacks.  I found myself carrying the conversation until he turned on the television to watch CSI (police procedurals are not my thing, but the Korean subtitles gave me good reading practice, if nothing else).  When the second episode ended, he was surprised I was ready to leave. He said he’d enjoyed my company, and now that I knew where he lived, I was free to come any time, even when he wasn’t there.  Then he caressed my face in a way that felt kind of creepy.    

A year later I ran into him while buying strawberries at Home Plus and he asked why I hadn’t called him.  My phone number had changed, I said (it had).  To which he responded, “Yes, but my number is still the same.”  He had a point. 

*The military officer who wasn’t done playing the field.  I was introduced to him by the same person who had dragged me to Zion.  He was a handsome divorced father of three.  The second child’s birth with another woman was the catalyst of his divorce.  The third child was only a few months younger than the second.  He’d gotten a Korean woman pregnant less than two months after his arrival in Korea.  [How can you be so reckless with your penis?  As if STIs don’t exist.]  He was upfront about all this information.  His line of questioning made our first date feel like an interview. So much so that, at one point, I asked him if he was interviewing for a nanny.  He laughed and said no, but he’d like to have custody of all his children and wants to make sure that whoever he marries is okay with handling mothering duties.  Oh, I see.  He was interviewing for a wife.  

Even knowing all of this, I continued to talk to him.  When I asked him why he had cheated on his wife and he said that he did not know.  He had wanted to work things out and stay together, but she was through.  We had really interesting conversations.  Intelligence in men is very attractive to me.  Unfortunately, his intelligence didn’t extend to what he did with his penis.  I discovered that two of the women I used to hang out with (including the one who’d introduced us) had been his sexual partners.  No sloppy seconds for me, thank you.  Also, he had mentioned that he expected his wife to live in the same house as his mother.  I don’t know much about Liberian culture, but I know that two women cannot be in charge of the same household.  As I visited him on the air force base, I began to realize that the whole idea of being a military spouse is unappealing to me.  To have a government entity dictate what I can’t and can do and when I can do it is not something I’d want to sign up for.  Initially, I’d had other reasons for not wanting to date an active duty military man, but now I had more reasons to add to the list.  Still, it took a conversation with my girl Aisha to solidify in my mind that this dude was NOT the one for me.   

Since Japan has less restrictive immigration laws, there were more options, but I was living in a very rural area, with little chance of meeting anyone until I began making regular trips to Tokyo.  Men in my small village were out of the question because if I’d dated any of them, EVERYONE would have been in my business. 

Imagine my surprise when I found myself with three dates booked for the weekend at the end of Golden Week.  Saturday night dinner with a Ghanaian on a diplomatic visa, Sunday brunch with a Sao Tomean graduate student and a coffee date with a Japanese man who’d lived in Australia for seven years.   While fun at the time, that’s not something I would do again.  Although all of them were casual dates, it was too much to keep track of.  I don’t know how my gay neighbor was booking six dates per two-day weekend whenever he went to Tokyo.  It was exhausting just to hear about.