Men

I seriously cannot get my head around the way people think and feel here when it comes to relationships, and more particularly fidelity and the expectation of fidelity and male behavior.

Last night I was out with $helly who's someone I met through @lden a few years ago. She comes down here regularly on vacation, is about my age, and has been coming here since she was 14. She's married with 2 kids and is a lot of fun. Looking at her, she doesn't look like someone I'd hang out with and I'd think she was not my type of person. But we've had such a fun time the past couple of days and nights; I really like her. It's been really great to have a woman to pal around with; I really miss it.

Anyway, I took her to the club to see the strippers. Normally I sort of lurk in the shadows there. I might be overly sensitive, but I feel like it's a gay club for gay men and although all the guys are nothing but nice to me, I feel as a straight woman, I am privileged to be accepted into their space. I don't like it when the strip shows have a bunch of ogling women up front and center and then the "I'm straight" strippers start catering to them. But I figured one night was ok, so we got a seat at the bar up front. Three Mexican women came in and pulled up stools next to us. $helly caught on quicker than I did that the woman sitting next to me was the girlfriend of one of the guys. He was working the crowd and when a guy tipped him, he showed it all to him. So when I tipped him, I was a bit surprised that he was more demure and sort of turned away. So I said, no show it to me, but he didn't. It was at that point that his girlfriend said to me (in Spanish), "Please have some respect. That money is for our children." Upon further inquiry, they're married (or they at least call each other "husband" and "wife" which can simply mean down here that they live together), have kids, and she's pregnant again.

I'd had a few beers and couldn't let this go. All my experiences with Mexxican men sort of came flooding back and especially my experiences with @merica. So I had to know. I told her how I really don't understand what the wives and girlfriends of strippers and other men who work in the nightlife really believe is happening. I said I don't understand what Mexxican woman believe and why they don't know and understand the culture even though it's there culture. How I believe I understand what's really going on better than they do. That these men aren't faithful. I could feel her emotion as she explained that she understood herself and was comfortable with herself and valued herself and knew that her man was faithful to her. That there had been times in the past that she found out he was with another woman for money and she confronted him and he cried and cried and cried and told her how sorry he was, and how much he loved her and how he was the only one for her. That she was the princess in his life, the only one.

I didn't want to get the guy in trouble. So I held my tongue and didn't tell her how just days earlier when I questioned him about an American girlfriend that he was going to live with in the States, he asked, "Which one? The one in Phoenix? The one in LA? I have a few." and then laughed. God, it made me feel kind of dirty that I barely even know the guy, but I know he's got all these girlfriends circulating around and yet the woman who calls herself his wife, his princess, the mother of his children is so utterly clueless.

So what is it? Why is the denial so strong? It's almost like a psychological reaction to an abusive situation. Where the response to something bad is to create a fantasy world, completely removed from the painful reality, and that is the way to survive, to feel ok about life. But what's more mindblowing to me is how pervasive this is in the culture. It's not just a person here or there, it's rampant. Later I was talking to one of the hustlers I'm friendly with and he told me his best friend (who I also know from the club and who's also a hustler) actually has a wife at home and she has no idea what he's out doing at night. I said, ok that's one thing but when you come to the club and see your husband working and see the environment, I don't understand how you can't know. But he explained how if the husband knows she's there, he's not going to act the same way and she'll only see what he wants her to see. It all becomes an even bigger act.

It seriously makes me wonder if I can ever have a relationship with a Mexxican man. Ok, these men are particularly bad examples of things because of their line of work. But as I've said before, even though I think all cultures have infidelity (obviously including the US), at least in other places, people think it's wrong and a bad thing. It really feels like here, it's the expectation and women just have to learn to live with it. Wow!