(The Long Process of) Winning Petra Over

(I did not set out to write a ten-page story. It just kinda happened. Like life.)

When I went off to college, I tried to win over college girls.

When I went off to camp, I tried to win over camp girls.

When I went off to Colorado, I tried to win over mountain girls.

When I went off to North Carolina, I tried to win over southern belles.

And six months after landing in Hungary, I decided that I should probably try to win over Hungarian girls, as long as I've got this bachelorhood to enjoy.

It's only when I'm feeling a bit forlorned that I consider all the criteria, the long list of age, beauty, compatibility, and Deutsch or English Foreign-language-proficiency standards that I should aspire to in selecting a woman to win over. But in reality, I'm rather optimistically flexible with any one, or perhaps even a couple, of those demands. When you look out from behind a half-full wine glass, there are lots of possibilities, lots of candidates.

I met Petra one night at the disco. The fun, sleazy one, not the ritzy one. She overheard my foosball partner and I speaking in English and she introduced herself. The first thing I noticed was her blond hair. The second was her English.

We took to talking, as happens sometimes between a boy and a girl. She had graduated from Heves High the year before, and was now studying English at the university in Debrecen, she said. I liked listening to her English. And fancied that she looked a little like Madonna when she smiled.

In a moment of bravado, I asked for her phone number. We exchanged some text messages, and then some e-mails, mostly extolling the grand virtues of being able to communicate in English. We both thought it would be a good idea to meet again.

And so two Fridays ago we met at a new bar and talked for hours. I thought it was very nice to have a friend. She smiled a lot, so I walked her home. She doesn't live that far, so the investment was purely emotional. I kissed her right cheek, I kissed her left cheek, I kissed her right cheek. And I liked it enough to want to linger a little longer.

But I was rebuffed.

I'm just romantically optimistic enough to be resilient. The next day I pecked away a text message inviting her to my apartment for dinner, I offered to cook. Here we must translate "cook" as "make spaghetti," which any fool, or even a bright monkey, can do. She agreed, and I set a bottle of sweet white wine between the window panes to chill.

She came at 7, after reading Robinson Crusoe all day. (I just thought of this now, what a realization!! Perhaps she was using me as research for English class, an attempt to better understanding DeFoe's book, trying to get into the psyche of a man, stranded alone, on some sort of a deserted island. Maybe I'm nothing more than a case study!) She looked pretty, and she had a mother-made dessert in one hand.

I gave her a tour of my apartment while the noodles boiled. It didn't take long. In the hopes of impressing this gal, I went to the great lengths of heating the store-bought spaghetti sauce on the stove, rather than in the microwave. I was feeling that confident. But not confident enough to turn the lights out as I set the piping hot spaghetti on the table and lit the candles.

Over the spaghetti, we decided that the wine was very good. We talked all through that first bottle. We got half way through the second before we had finished washing the dishes.

She collapsed on my couch, the left half of my bed sans blanket, grabbing a book on her way down. It's a black leather book. Not of all things important, just the only important thing. She flipped through it, smiling at my handwriting. It's a parade of stories, all mine, all written by my hand. All happen to be on love. I thought it was a good sign.

She fingered the edge of the last page with writing on it, maybe a third of the way through the journal. She recognized the word Zsani, pointed to it, and looked at me with a mischievous smile of playful accusation. "Zsani?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

I smiled a sheepish grin back, an attempt at adorability. I like to think that girls find it cute, but upon closer examination of years of evidence, I might need to reconsider that.

"What is this?" she dug deeper, just as I was hoping she would.

"Stories." I paused. "That one is about Hungarian girls." I thought this was the same story I had offered to you online, but apparently this one never made to the Internet.

She handed me the book, then rolled on her back, hands under her head. "Tell the story to me," she said, smiling up at the ceiling without looking at me. I smiled, too.

"We took to talking," I began in a story-telling whisper, "simply because she spoke English." It was just like a telling of Sam McGee, except a little different.

"She was in Heves visiting a friend," I said, reading slower that I would normally. The story starts at the same disco where I first met Petra, just a month or so before. She had already flipped over so she could see the words as I read them. After each sentence, I'd offer a short pause, long enough for her to point a long, nail-painted finger to any word that she didn't understand. Sometimes she'd whisper them.

Foundation. "Umm, basis? The concrete a house is built upon?" Sometimes I waved off a word and said that it wasn't really important except for artistry.

Lingerie. That was easier. I pointed to her clear bra strap peeking up and over an exposed shoulder. The Hungarian girls like the clear bra straps a lot. My American teacher lady friends make fun of them for it, but I don't. "It's a fancy word for bras and underwear."

Ubiquitous. "Everywhere. All the time. This is a good word. Use it in class and you'll impress your professor," I promised. She smiled.

Flirtatious. "Very flirty." I probably tried to casually brush a finger against any portion of her bare skin at that point.

Swooned. Some words are easier to demonstrate than to explain. I put a star-struck look on my face and tilted it while looking up at her face. She nodded, but meaning was probably not conveyed.

Spun. The story turns to the dance floor, so I grabbed Petra's hand. Reluctantly, she stood and joined me. We turned my 1970s army green and squash orange rug into a dance floor. I spun her. She was a good spinner.

Twirled. I was beginning to enjoy the game. I urged her to her feet again so we could dance. There was no music. I invented a difference between spin and twirl. When I spun her, I pushed her out, two-arms-lengths away, and pulled her back in, all in the space of two revolutions. Twirls, on the other hand, featured a stationary Petra revolving with my encouragement. Back to the couch.

Lobe. Words are useless without context, I insisted, when she fell for the bait of pointing at lobe. The whole phrase written in that book is "I brushed my lips against the lobe of her ear." I smiled, she certainly must have known what was coming. With a gentle brush of two fingers, I pushed the long blonde hair on one side of her head to the back side of her shoulder. I probably closed my eyes as my lips brought the words to life. She wears dangly earrings. And I think she knows what lobe means now.

I pointed back to the story. I know how it ends.

Tenderly. Zsani and I were still kissing tenderly when the lights came on a little before 4 am. I read it aloud, the climax of that story of a previous evening.

Then I turned to face her, smiled, and said, "This is the English word 'tenderly,' Petra..." My boy-radar located the target, those red lips so close to mine. I closed my eyes, I leaned into her warmth.

And my lips met hand.

I was rebuffed.

Again.

"I know what 'tenderly' means!" she pleaded in horror. She backed away, pushing off with her emergency hand against my still puckered lips. I sighed. I withdrew. To escape, I finished reading the story. It's rather anticlimactic after the tenderly moment. I held the last word of the story out, rather poetically, but mostly because I didn't know what she would say when I stopped talking.

"I know what 'tenderly' means, you don't have to teach it to me," she repeated. I rolled my eyes. "Fine, no more lessons for you," I said wistfully.

Disappointment didn't curb my chivalry, I walked her home for the second night in a row. This time we didn't linger with our good-night cheek-kisses, they were rushed. It was snowing.

On my own walk back home alone, the irony of boys walking girls home, I sent an exasperated text message, typed with gloved fingers, to Eva. "Ugh, what's up with Hungarian girls?" I bemoaned. "No luck after two rather nice evenings with a girl!"

When I woke the next morning, later than usual, there was a new message waiting for me. "Be patient with girls. We let boys kiss on the third date. Give it another try."

Petra went back to school, I went back to school, and a week passed. We texted, we e-mailed. I'm romantically resilient. Perhaps hopelessly.

We met on Friday after a long week. In a usual week, I teach 20 classes. Last week, I taught 30, subbing time and again for sick teachers. By Friday, I was ready to relax, and third hour I got the ticket. A personal invite to the party everyone in Heves was talking about, a private bash at the disco. The only bad news is that it was a student's birthday part, an 11th grader who has passed out of English class, but I have been in Hungary too long to worry about specifics like that. Petra and I danced quite a few dances before saying goodnight.

The next morning, a busy Saturday morning at the supermarket, I had a craving for meat. Something more substantial than the powdered meat flavor of Ramen Noodles. I went to the long glass counter of the meat department. All processed meats and sausages. I went to a different story, one step up the quality-rung. At this store they only had what appeared to be pork. I'm not really good at identifying meat.

So I got on the phone, in the middle of the store, desperate to get advice from a woman. I tried three numbers before an American teacher abroad picked up the phone. Even though she was in the middle of a museum tour with her mom and sister, Harpswell guided me through the purchase of four frozen chicken thighs. I sent Petra a text message. I didn't give her the option of joining me for another supper. The only choice I gave her was what time she would arrive. She picked 6:30.

After an afternoon of "floorball" in the school gymnasium and karnival cheering, I came home to my defrosting thighs. I like to grill. I love putting a hunk of beef over the coals, sprinkling some seasoning salt as the juices broil out, and coming back twenty minutes later to claim the prize. But this was different. I had to call more girls to get more instructions, and they concocted an intimidating plan. This was ripping chicken skin off a hunk of meat still attached to a bone. This was slicing tendons and fat and all the non-goodness from the goodness. This was sophomore year of high school fetal-pig-dissecting, without the smell. This, I was sure, was the best possible way to impress a woman.

She was a little late, but I still hadn't gotten around to putting a shirt on after taking a shower by the time she arrived. Again she was at my doorstep with dessert in hand. Instead of banana-pudding-cake-something like last time, this week her mother had whipped up apple strudel cake.

After she hung up her coat, I flourished my hand toward the stove, as big a flourish as my little kitchen will allow, and grinned, "Tonight, I will be making you chicken!"

Into the biggest of my little pots, I threw a liter of water. Jenna and Laura, experts on womanly living, had recommended that I put sunflower oil and some spices into the water. To show off, I added honey, too. I thought that would be a good touch. It began to boil as we recapped our thoughts on the previous night's party.

For five minutes, we boiled two whole thighs and the meat of two other thighs, neatly diced into bite-sized hunks. The seasoning was smelling good, and the fries were goldening well in the oven below.

The meat turned white, I thought that was a good sign that we were well on our way to avoiding the bird flu, and we threw them into a frying pan. Petra insisted that I keep adding more and more oil. I felt like we were frying donuts or watching meat swimming lessons, one of the two, but I went with her womanly wisdom. She didn't protest when I keep splashing the seasoning into the concoction.

Perfectly browned, closely inspected for any lingering pinkness on the inside, we turned the burners off with a smile. I only own two plates, we heaped the chicken onto one, the fries on the other and set them down at the candle lit table. We were content to share, to eat off the same plate.

This time I turned the lights off. I was confident. We clinked our wine glasses in an 'egeszsegedre.' She said she liked the lighting.

We ate and ate and ate. We ate it all. It was phenomenal. The Hungarian phrase for "It was delicious" is "Finom volt." It was very finom volt. She said she was impressed. I thanked her for helping. We collapsed onto the benches after the superhuman effort of eating so much goodness, lazily popping grapes into our mouths in contentment.

We didn't do the dishes right away this time. We were too full to put that much effort into anything so unrewarding as cleaning. Instead, we slid to the couch. On the way, she grabbed the black book again. "Do I get to hear another story?" she purred. I smiled. Believe it or not, I like telling stories.

She opened the book to the second-to-last story. For some reason, Petra and I are progressing through the book backwards. She handed it to me and settled with her face against the side of my arm so she could read as I read aloud.


The story was the craziness of love in mind. It was promised to you long ago, back with War and Peace and stories of CETP craziness, but it is probably too crazy. And that's exactly how I prefaced the story for her, I was probably to crazy for others to understand. She just shrugged.

I read to Petra the story of a fall spent abroad, all the sources I drew happiness from, all the loves I knew (even if briefly), and what I thought about love in Hungary. I would pause periodically to help her understand the verbose words I like to use for spice and clarity.

I read until the last word, again. I closed the book, again. I didn't know what she would say, again.

"Did I hurt you when I didn't let you kiss me last week?" she asked softly, in grammar that may or may not have been that precise.

I laughed it off, as I tend to do. "Naw, I didn't want to catch your cold anyways." She had been sick the week in between our visits, but was feeling better now. "But I was a little sad," I admitted. I told her about my confounded text message to Eva. "But Eva reassured me, she said that Hungarian girls let boys kiss them on the third date."

She looked puzzled. She began to number her fingers, starting with her pinkie. "Is this the third date?" She might have bit her lip in thought.

I grinned. "Well, there's one way to find out," I said, beginning the slow tilt of my head in preparation.

"Say it again please?" she asked.

"There is one way to find out," I said, enunciating each syllable. This was far too important a sentence in the course of my life to mumble it away.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

Damn. I sank my head into my hands in defeat. I groaned. "Ugh! Why don't you understand, do I need to draw a picture? It’s simple. If you are a Hungarian girl, then you let the boy kiss you on the third date. If this is our third date, then you will let me kiss you. So, if I try to kiss you, and you let me, then it is obviously our third date!!" I was probably gesticulating with my hands.

"Oh. I understand now," she said simply, as if any of that would make any sense to anyone other than a boy trying to logic his way into convincing a girl into kissing him.

"Yes, it is our third date."

I was flabbergasted. Green light. But one of those green lights like the kind that come after a ridiculously long wait at a railroad crossing. You've turned off the engine, you got out a good book, you maybe even took a short nap, only to awake when the cars behind you are honking their horn because you haven't realized there's a green light. You floor the gas pedal in embarrassment.

We kissed. She swirled her tongue in my mouth for a minute or two, she was big into that, and then stopped. I smiled as I traced a finger down her jawline and ended at the point of her chin.

"I like third dates with Hungarian girls," I cooed. Yes, cooed. I was beginning to like this.

"I like tenderly," I added. It has been an unpleasantly long time since I'd last really kissed a girl, I was ready to make up for lost time. I'm sure it fits somewhere under the rouge of sampling the culture. "Want to learn some more words?" I asked flirtatiously.

"I don't think we should do this," she dropped casually.

Double-take, I caught myself. Darn it, you need to move slower, Jeremy. Get those nasty thoughts out of your brain and focus on just tenderly kissing this gal! Make her feel beautiful, make her feel liked! Convince her you are a slow, delicate, sensitive kisser! Build upon the chicken-dinner-momentum, step-by-step!

"I don't think we should kiss."

Oh?

"I think we should just be friends."

Oh.

"Sorry."

Oh...

I was rebuffed. Again.

We use different words in English for different phenomenon, matching verbs with nouns in a delicate poetry of preciseness. Balloons can be popped. Dogs can be put to sleep. The elderly, in sensitive countries, can be euthanized. Dreams can be crushed. Buildings can be imploded. Cattle can be slaughtered. Governments can be overthrown. Armies can be annihilated. Flames can be extinguished.

Boys can be told that they are just-friends.

She said she liked it the way it was, without kissing. Just-friends. I grimaced. I rubbed my eyebrows slowly. Usually I run off on a new adventure before I have to deal with just-friends, but here in Hungary, where I can count all my friends on my fingers, they linger. And I've learned that I'm quite bad, maybe even mortally-flawed, as a just-friend.

Friendship is a flowchart, I guess. Upon introduction, on first impression and the immediate aftermath, I seem to diagnose those of the female-persuasion as either girl or friend, never both, even though its linguistically possible. The friends, the majority, I win over with warmth and humor and caring. The girls, on the other hand, I try to win over with warmth and humor and caring. Just like you can't read the difference, they can't see it. It's only in my mind, my level of investment in being loved in return.

Just-friends doesn’t work for me, I can’t switch feelings, or even the hope of feelings, on and off. Just-friends are expected to capture the romance, the glory, the excitement of a new love-interest and make it permanent. Just-friends must freeze the moment of flirtation forever. I can’t do that, not with nothing in return, unless I still harbor those nuggets of desire, which isn’t good at all. Plus, just-friends can’t be sad or wallow in self-pity, and I like self-degrading attempts to highlight the humor of life.

I walked Petra home again. I wondered, in bittersweet resignation, whether that’s something just-friends do. She broke my concentration by stopping me mid-stride on the sidewalk at a random intersection. She kissed me. I was confused. I looked at her like I was confused. She giggled, "I’ve never kissed anyone in front of the police station," and skipped on.

Boy, do I know how to pick ‘em.

I went to the bar after kissing her good night, one cheek at a time. It was not even midnight. I played foosball with my German student Robi until my right hand, already tender from floorball, was blistered. But I was exhausted, I couldn’t even put forth a half-hearted effort into winning over a new girl to come home with me and wash the pile of dirty dishes still on the table.

Winning girls over is proving to be hard work…