Another Lebanon story in case you're interested

I figure slowly but surely I will tell you all my sordid stories....this is about how I hooked up with Mr. M. ...these stories are not travellog worthy so if I don't tell them here they will be lost forever...so they get priority....

So it was only like a few days we had been in Lebanon, staying at Mr. M and his parent's place, when he started taking me and my sister out every evening. Not really anywhere in particular, just out driving around the village or to the nearby town for ice cream. But it was fun because it gave me a chance to act more like myself, and to try to communicate in arabic.

My dad of course immediately picked up on the fact that Mr. M was interested...said he looked at me a lot. So I told him (and I meant it at the time) that he needn't worry because nothing was going to happen. What he was worried about was people wanting to find a way to move to Canada. Anyway, he felt better after the talk, I could tell. And on my part, I knew that marriage was completely out of the question so it wasn't an issue. And given that people in Lebanon, or at least our village, don't date, I felt fine saying this. I was certainly not goign to marry someone before I got to know them.

This is really only relevant because my computer was going haywire....which meant that I went to Beirut with Mr. M one day, just the two of us. My dad was not thrilled about this, but since Mr. M works at a computer store it seemed to make sense to me as a plan. Anyway, the worst of all possible outcomes happened. WE WIPED MY COMPUTER AND DIDN'T BACK UP THE HARDDRIVE!!!! Devastating...thank God I backed up my files the night I left (though not my email I soon learned which caused havoc for the course I am TAing and grade records - but its all good now).

So we left for the day with Mr. M feeling terrible and me feeling a bit more terrible...and the good thing about feeling terrible is the intensity of it. So on the trip home from Beirut there was a good deal of, shall we say, electricity...all the psych classes I've taken tell me that I was just transfering the arousal of losing all my files to his presence, but that really takes the fun away from it. Add in a tablespoon of knowing I'm not allowed and bam! I was having a wonderfully dramatic time, if only in my head.

So there was lots of apologizing and don't worry-about-its...but that day was significant because I think we started to really notice the other was interested....and then a few days later I learned that Mr. M has been drinking unbeknownest to his family for 14 years...that changed things a bit too. Now we have someone worth kissing...

Don't get me wrong, I don't consider drinking a past-time necessary for romance, but I started to see that Mr. M was more like me and less like his other Lebanese counterparts...a little more like your North American 24-year old.

So we went to the coast one day and I had arak (kinda like sambuca, but drank with water and ice) and he had vodka coolers, and we had cake and nuts and watched the waves...and it was the best date I'd had in five years. And he didn't kiss me and I didn't kiss him...but we were definitely thinking about it.

A few days after that we were hanging out in the evening at his house and he walked me home...and there is this long road that passes in front of my house but is waaaay down the mountain from it...and that's where he kissed me...and we walked up and down that road for about three hours....misbehaving, or as my pal likes to call it, "shaming our families"....I'll always remember that road. It was perfect cuz it had almost no traffic and no houses near it to cast light.

It was great too because he just kissed me. In that masculine way where he sorta had his arm over my shoulders and then just turned me so I was facing him and kissed me. It wasn't the most amazing kiss ever, but it was good. And I didn't have a chance to say "I can't cuz I promised my dad" which is good cuz I'm not sure if I would have said it anyway...

So that's that...now I was definitely being naughty but was having WAAY more fun.