CULTURE CLASH

It’s a difficult thing being a tomboy in China. First of all, I’m not at all what they recognize as female. However, they are willing to grant me leeway on my androgyny for the political advantages I would provide as a wife. Secondly, the rules between men and women are far too isolationist for my good.

My masseur is a lovely man who is hell bent on marrying me. I have time and time again turned him down. I have even told him in no uncertain terms that we will never be together. I have tried to switch to another masseur at the gym but he keeps switching me back. I would stop going all together but I have a highly painful pinched nerve in my neck that needs regular treatment. And, frankly, I’m tired of switching masseurs. I’ve switched several times before this masseur and it always ends up with the masseur asking me to marry him.

Nevertheless, I went to my massage session yesterday and this time he asked permission to kiss me. Yet again, I told him “no” and I even went on to explain that we want different things. He wants to me to be his knight in shining armor and rescue him from this life, marry him, protect him, support him, bear his children, and adore him. Forever. To be honest, I’m so sick of being the physical embodiment of “The American Dream.” It is a dream that is so over-hyped that it can only disappoint in the end.

Frankly, I have come to find the notion of marrying a Westerner less intimidating because my divorce of a Westerner, while devastating emotionally, isn’t devastating politically. Our union would be about us and it would remain together because of us, not because he needed it to work for his parents, society and country. I don’t know that I can live with someone who needs me because his society tells him he’s nothing if one of us leaves and not because the thought of a life without me is too much to bear. It’s too much of a burden to make the whole of China happy with the inner workings of my marriage when I’m not sure I even want to get married in the first place.

But I digress.

Nevertheless, I finally understand where the line that I’m crossing is (in the “I’m leading him on” sense) but I find myself, well, screwed because I’m just not constantly conscious of that line. As an American tomboy, I’m accustomed to speaking with my male friends about all sorts of things, including sex. I’m simply not self-conscious about my male friendships. My super feminine Chinese girlfriends, however, would never dream of having a social relationship with a man who wasn’t related to her (or about to be). And, while most of the time I can maintain those limits very well, when I’m on a massage table with the express purpose of relaxing, it’s a bit harder to remind myself to remain vigilant. When I relax, those filters simply come down.

And I don’t know what to do about that. Ultimately, it’s simply a place where the two cultures don’t mesh and it’s simply what is but I loathe coming out of the very relaxed state of having my pinched nerve released to overly polite sexual requests. (A man who literally asks my permission to make sexual advances nauseates me, as I am one for the slightly more confident/brutish type. I’m not in high school anymore. I’ll say “no” when I want him to stop.) It’s really getting on my nerves to come out of a state of high relaxation to revolting sexual advances.

And, I can’t complain because he’d get in some serious trouble.

It’s days like this when I wish I was just a super feminine girly girl.