Tech Support Drone

Here’s what my relationship with Lin is like at the moment: She tells me that she likes me and wants to be with me, but still insists that she’s in Tokyo. In reality, she is in Berlin. I pretend I don’t know about this, and try to encourage her to make up her mind and stop the pretense. I feel very annoyed and depressed by all of this. It isn’t so much the suspense of not knowing what’s happened inside the box; it’s just that at my age I feel tired of this type of game. I am almost at the point where a dead cat wouldn’t bother me so much – sure, it would be sad, but at least it’s a kind of closure.

Am I taking the analogy too far?

But why do girls have to make everything so difficult? Why couldn’t she just say, “hey, I will study German in Germany, when it’s all done I’ll visit you because I really like you”? Or just do her German class and stop pretending to like me. And it’s not like I had a weak moment and professed my undying love for her, and she’s just trying not to hurt me – she started it.

I am much simpler. If I like a girl, I’ll either tell her or shut the hell up. If a girl tells me to get lost, I get lost and never bother her again. If a woman likes me as well and we start a relationship – no matter how tentative – I do my best to make it work. And I never, ever tell lies to a girlfriend. Nothing on the scale of pretending to be on the other side of the world for months when I am basically next door.

I’d just tell Lin to go to hell – except that, unfortunately, I like her. So I let her walk all over me. What a pathetic geek I am.

I may be a terrible geek, and rather plain-looking too, but I can proudly say I have had plenty of relationships over the years. However, it seems that most of these relationships are really, really weird.

My current “girl of interest” is a Chinese girl who lives in Japan. Let’s call her Lin. She isn’t officially my girlfriend – the distances involved are way too large for this. However, we spent some great vacations together in the past, in Japan, China, Thailand, France, Germany, and a few other countries; and we talk to each other almost every day.

Of course we’ve discussed the problem of distance in the past, without any real conclusion. It’s just very hard for me to learn Japanese, or Chinese for that matter; and even if I did it would literally be years before I could speak the language well enough to live there.

Things have moved ahead a little recently; two months ago she told me that she signed up for German classes, which would begin in May. She claimed there was no deeper reason for it. “After I was in Germany, I simply became interested in the language.”

Right.

That’s not the weird part yet. Near the end of April, she suddenly disappeared for a few days. I was already starting to get worried, but she showed up online again and everything seemed back to normal. Except she replied to my text message with an email, didn’t want to be called on Skype, and significantly changed her behavior online as well.

I finally figured out what is going on, partially at least. Her email shows that she’s currently located – get this – somewhere near Berlin. She’s completely avoided mention of this, pretending to still be in Japan; and she hasn’t showed up here in Munich either.

I am fairly certain she didn’t find herself some other guy in Germany; and when I asked her why she’s acting so oddly she said she would explain it soon, but it “wasn’t anything bad”.

I am not sure whether I should be happy – because she’s learning German – or angry – because she’s not telling me what’s going on. I guess I just have to wait and see what happens.

My relationships have always been weird and, you will be surprised to hear, in all of my life I have never actually dated a German woman.

It seems there are three types or stages of women. There are the teenage wrecks: Young women here oftentimes tattoo or pierce themselves. There’s nothing wrong with a tasteful tattoo, although I wouldn’t ever get one myself, nor with ear rings, but pierced lips, tongues, eyebrows, and noses are instant turn-offs for me. Let’s not even mention nipples or certain other parts of the body; that you usually don’t even know about when you meet them. Wouldn’t want to date one of these girls even if I got paid to do it; when they spit on the streets or talk in slum slang it gets even worse. Young women – say anybody born after 1985 – seem to be severely uncultured. Luckily I can always tell myself they are too young for me anyway (although a girl born in 1985 is now 23 years old and perfectly OK to date for a 31 year old guy). They also usually smoke because they think it makes them look cool and grown up.

The second type is the emancipated bitch. Usually 20-30, they have two states: They’re fiercely single at times, too good to date anybody lower in standing than Prince Charming himself, which is followed by them hooking up with some kind of macho jerk who’ll treat them badly about which they’ll complain to you, wondering loud what the hell went wrong for this to happen. Once they finally figure it out and decide to dump the guy they’ll revert to the first stage of militant singleness. They’ll also usually smoke because they think it keeps them slim.

This is usually followed by the over-forty leather goddess type, women who spent their younger years going to the sun studio every week until they look like Larry Niven’s Protectors – wrinkled, leathery skin and all that. Even if they wise up by this point – fat chance – you really wouldn’t want to touch them anymore anyway. They’re usually smoking because they are addicted and depressed. Never mind that they’re a bit old for me anyway, thank goodness.

And while some Germans are very open-minded and global in their views and attitudes, a lot of Germans will have trouble looking beyond their own plate. I have moved to different cities three times in ten years and travel as far as I can as often as I can. What would I have to talk about with a girl who’s never been further away than Mallorca and wouldn’t consider moving from their home town if you put a gun to their head?