Altercations with Strangers in Foreign Lands

My reservation at the Meridiana only lasted til Firday night, and wouldn't you know it, they were booked full on Saturday night. After scrambling to get the deposit down on the flat most of the day Friday (heh, it turns out, if you want to wire money from an American account, you have to do some leg work ahead of time, which of course I did not do), I sobered up to the possibility of being homeless come Saturday morning. But Argyle Square is rife with B&B's, so I started my search right there. It just so happens that right around the corner was a little place called the Globe Hotel.


Now, this is probably one of those "universal signs for RUN AWAY!!", but the hand-lettered sign on the door said "Single Room, 20 pounds per night". That's about $36 bucks a night, very close to the center of London - a suspiciously great bargain, cheaper even than some of the hostels. It looked a bit divey, but they said there was room Saturday night, so I told them to hold it for me and I'd be over in the morning.

So the divey part - dark lighting, ancient creaking furniture, and what were those sticky spots on the carpet - is not new to me. This beat the room I stayed at in La Paz for $2 a night per person, where the door was just set into the frame without hinges and the bathroom was mostly just a sloped tile floor with a drain in the middle. In several stages I hauled my gear from the Meridiana to the Globe, where I had (big bonus) got a room on the ground floor, thus avoiding a repeat of my jet-lagged gear haul up two flights of narrow stairs at the previous hotel. All was good, I was moved in and set to spend the sunny afternoon exploring, until I walked out of my room.

On the staircase, a man was staring at me. Not the just-glancing benign kind of stare. The stare that makes you understand that someone hates you, very much, for reasons that I was entirely unclear on. After all, I had never seen this dude before.

So he's staring.

So I ask him, "Can I help you?"

He looks confused.

I say, "You're staring at me. Is there something I can do for you?"

"Uh, no."

"Then quit staring at me."

And at that he blows his top. I can't remember what his first words were, but within a couple of sentences (with no further input from me) he is shouting over and over, "I stare at you because you are girl! I stare at you because you are girl!"

I should interject here to say that I'm not aping his accent; this is exactly what he said. And I couldn't say for sure where he was from, but he was definitely of Arabic origin. And actually, I think what he really meant was "I stare at you because you are white girl," since I sincerely doubt he would have done this to someone of his own race. I should also interject that while I have an occasional tendency to dress outlandishly (as anyone knows who has seen my gold lame pants), at the moment I was in the rather frumpy combination of unflattering-at-any-weight jeans and a black fleece sweatshirt - really, not a whole lot to stare at.

I didn't say much more - probably told him to cut it out again - but he just got more enraged. He's on the stairs shouting, "What, do I insult you?" - a prospect which seemed to please him very much. After harping on that theme several times over (to which I replied "Nah, you just annoy me," which did not seem to help the situation), he changed his tune. "What, you are one of those weird people?" This, on the other hand, seemed to horrify him. I'm not entirely sure what he considers "weird", but after a few go-rounds on this theme, I sort of got the idea that he meant something along the lines of - well, she doesn't like men staring at her, she must be - oh, horror of horror! - gay. Which is always kind of a funny assumption on the part of homophobic men - as if my not wanting big, paunchy, balding, middle-aged men with anger management problems staring at me has any kind of bearing on my orientation...clearly, if I'm not attracted to that winning package, I must be gay!. It's also funny, 'cause, ya know, I'm boringly straight.

During all this yelling the manager (also with a thick accent, but probably more eastern European) had happened onto the scene, at which point the dude on the stairs started barreling down the stairs and toward me. I'm not sure I had time to consider what exactly he planned to do when he got to me, but in any case, he flew by me and through a doorway and down a flight of stairs to the basement. The manager was still standing there - he shrugged and told me that this guy had been living there for a year and was really a nice person. Uh huh. To paraphrase - oh, I don't know, it was probably Elizabeth Wurtzel or someone like that? - the guy who is nice to you but mean to the waiter is not a nice person. Similarly, the guy who is nice to men of his background but a raging jerk to women of other backgrounds - ya know, not on my list of "nice" people.

I asked the manager if I had reason to feel that I and my stuff would be safe staying here, and he said, "No." I must have looked really surprised, because he immediately asked what I'd said again and then said, "You should be fine." OK, I guess I'll have to take that on faith.

So I go out, half expecting my room to be trashed (not that I'd know how to tell...maybe more stains on the carpet?) when I get back. I considered moving again, but really just didn't have the energy for it, and besides, I was adamantly not giving up the 20-pound-a-night bargain for some guy who couldn't keep his hostility to himself.

Of course, this interaction begs the question underlying all intercultural conflict: I know, I know, I'm supposed to take weird interactions with strangers as a sign of clashing cultures, of misunderstandings based on different norms, things that could be worked out with open communication, all that cliche. Just like they told us at the international students' orientation, eh? But chalking this up to cultural norms pretty much means claiming that grossly a**h***-ish behavior is a norm for Middle Eastern culture, and I'm not really willing to go there either. It also helps to remember that every society, every culture, every group of people has its jerks - individuals that bother the heck out of everyone even within the cultural group.

So I don't know what this guy's deal is. I'm sure he's been through something that gives him the feeling that it's ok to take out his aggro thing on white chicks; I'm also quite sure that I have no intention of putting up with that quietly. But at least for the day, he hasn't trashed my stuff or shown up on the stairs to glare at me again. It'll be a few days before I can move into the studio, so we'll see how it goes until then...