I just stumbled on the ad below during a random search for writing gigs on Craigslist. It can’t be real, but I’d love to play along in a series of more and more bizarre emails.
I am a 23 year old single male. I am attending Borough of Manhattan Community College. I am taking the English class. I have failed English class three times at my college. I am taking the English class very seriously. I prefer young sexy single blonde female to help me but I accept any female. I will be open up to a relationship with you later on. I need emotional support right now since I am attending a new school and I have not many friends yet. If you are interested, please email me or call me at 646-402-2740.
Did I ever blog about the time in college when I joined a language-culture exchange club?
I was hoping to get an exchange student from Mexico or South America, so I could work on my Spanish. Instead, I got paired with a guy from United Arab Emirates who seemed perfectly nice, though he didn’t speak Spanish. We met at a cafe once, and then he started hounding me on AIM.
I’d sign on, and less than a minute later, I’d receive messages like, “I so desire to embrace you next time we see each other. I was too shy to follow my heart and take you in my arms, my sweet Amanda. Your eyes pierce me.”
I blocked him faster than he’d get profiled at an airport. People can be so creepy.
I, too, had a creepy language partner in Taipei. Unlike yours, however, my weirdo’s perversion took nearly a year to reveal itself. One day he started telling me a story about how he’d taken a study abroad trip to Chicago and been suspected of stealing his female classmates’ underpants at their dorm’s laundromat. The scrutiny intensified when he was caught with a pair of panties in his laundry basket.
As he related this story to me, he kept pronouncing “underclothes” with four syllables (”un-der-clos-es”). I kept correcting him until suddenly I thought “why the hell is he telling me this!?! AND why the hell am I teaching him how to pronounce ‘underclothes’ correctly?” I broke off our sessions after that because, in addition to being pervy, he was also a racist, misogynist, homophobic, classist asshole. On the other hand, my language skills did improve. I’m now pretty good at telling people off in Mandarin.
Ha! I love this. Un-der-clos-es.