On the Cali Boy
A week and a half have now passed since I got back to Shanghai, and the US trip is already a fading if pleasant memory. Amongst the pleasant parts were getting to meet the Californian Boy I met online and had developed a substantial crush on.
The summary: he's very geeky and not particularly attractive, has a funny little voice and that peculiar asexual manner particular to Californian-Asian guys. But I don't mind those things, and found him quite charming and appealing. Cute, quirky, good sense of humor, interested in a lot of different things, and able to converse intelligently on things he knows nothing about, tries far to hard to not come off as a complete geek, fails anyhow, which I found quite endearing...Yeah, I like this one, and could be very interested. That is, IF I get a chance to know him better, and IF he is interested back. Both very, very big IFs.
We met for lunch first during my initial brief leg through LA. The Cali Boy lives in the same neighborhood where my dead brother used to, and it totally weirded me out to meet up with Cali Boy in places near where I used to have incredibly awkward meals with my dead brother. As if having a crush on an American I'd met online was not weirding out enough. Anyhow, I was initially off-put by Cali Boy's geekiness, not-that-cute-in-person-ness, the voice and the asexuality, and his utter Americanness. Rather painful outfit on him, too, a dress shirt with an open neck and a loose tie hanging awkwardly. "I don't normally wear a tie," he apologized, but explained that, since he works from home and sometimes forgets to get dressed at all (a practice I quite relate to!), he instituted dress-up Fridays, as opposed to the usual corporate dress-down Fridays. Well, it's sort of endearingly goofy.
And the endearing goofiness proceeded to grow on me, like a nice moss. Historically, geeky ABCs were my poison long before flashy, gorgeous Mainland men took over. The Cali Boy reminds me a lot of the boys I grew up with, particularly my two adopted little brothers, Taiwanese doctors both, and late-bloomers with the ladies. Cali Boy is even more asexual than they in his mannerisms (which is probably why he's desperate enough to be prowling sad web dating sites), but on the other hand is a lot more interesting and socially adaptable. Along with reminding me of them, though, in terms of persona and mannerisms, he also reminds me a lot of myself, in terms of interests, occupation and lifestyle. Self-employed, SOHO, compromising between the creative and the commercial, have entourage of assistant, cleaning lady and pet, and very interested in the arts. He also, like me, has a very expressive, animated face, complete with permanently half-cocked eyebrow.
The problem with nice Chinese-American boys, and a large part of the reason I gave up on them in favor of their far less repressed motherland cousins, is that they're frigging impossible to read. For whatever reason, a certain innocuous politeness, part of that larger asexuality, is ingrained into them, and makes them so inscrutable when trying to ascertain interest. So, I have NO IDEA what the Cali Boy thinks of me. I don't even know whether our meals qualified as "dates", these Americanism baffle me, although he insisted on paying both times, which according some means they were, but then what does that mean? His body language was promising, we both seemed fairly nervous, and he was fairly enthusiastic about meeting up for a second time when I passed back through. On the other hand, follow up since has been quite meh, but he has already established himself as a rather impassive emailer. So: I have no idea. Not that I was that obvious in expressing any interest on my part either, tried to keep it fairly neutral, since it's not like I know him well enough to stick the old neck out.
Which makes it all a great big maybe. If anything, the Cali Boy is a long-term, back-burner eventual possibility, and probably not even that. I need to be dating in the here and now, have some fun and get some action in the short-term. If Cali Boy takes some initiative, accepts my offer to come visit Shanghai, otherwise shows any interest, well, fabulous, and I'll be thrilled. If not, well, I've resigned myself to that probability. At any rate, having a crush has gotten my gears motivated again, and has put Vixen back on the prowl.
It was funny, right after I returned, and was still sighing over Cali Boy, I bumped into an old friend, a middle-aged artist who always tries cutely to pry into my love life. (He was Jifu's high school teacher, so feels entitled, I guess.) I mentioned that I had met this guy in California that I quite liked. "ABC, huh? Does he speak?" No. Not that I think race has to tie to language and culture, but try telling the Chinese that. "He doesn't speak?! Vixen, you're way too Chinese to date a banana. We need to find you a nice Shanghainese boy." Hee, and ouch. But a point: my greatest objection to the Cali Boy is not geography, not geekiness, but that he's so very American, and not remotely culturally Chinese. I don't know that I could deal with that, relate at all to that. Not that it's more than a purely hypothetical, but still. The problem is that there are no perfect cultural "fits" for me. I'm such an oddball, and at this point am way too Chinese.
