Cliff Notes

It’s about time that I introduce you to a “friend” of mine. Though normally I give guys I write about a nickname, I can’t resist the opportunity to title this post Cliff Notes. So we’re going with his real name this time. Introducing: Cliff.

I met Cliff a couple of weeks after I arrived. He’s a local artist (painter), and we had a mutual friend who introduced us casually at an Art in the Park event.  He wrote to her asking for my number.

Fast forward a few months, and Cliff’s portfolio of livelihood options had expanded from artist and sign painter, to taxi driver. With this expansion, comes an obvious increase in not only mobility but also access to money to buy credit for his phone. I know this because I started to get daily text messages, often multiple. 

He calls me Angel, which proves how little he knows me, though he did learn pretty early on how unimpressed I am when his calls or texts wake me up early in the morning.

Right from the start, I wasn't interested. For a variety of reasons. A wide variety.

But after a few months this strange thing happened and a couple of people started questioning my resistance. “He’s hot” they said. “I really like the way he’s been courting you for months” a close friend said. I laughed them off but the seed was planted and my mind started working against me. 

On occasion we’d see him while out and someone would comment on how sharp he was looking. I tried to ignore it.

There was a point when my resolve started to waiver, but that went away. I blamed it on his age – he "says" he’s 26. I told him I have a rule.  But it was about way more than that.

But because this is a small town, you need to be careful. You bump into people all the time. It’s probably a coincidence that his taxi is often parked on my route to work, and harmless that whenever he see's me or my car around town, I get a call or a text about it what I’m doing or how lovely I look doing it. It’s also probably just a bit of over eagerness that inspires him to stay up all night when he knows I’m at a party and might need a ride home at 5am (calling me every hour to make sure I haven’t called another cab and to remind me that he’ll come whenever I need him), or that he’s been parked beside my car waiting as I come out of a restaurant, or that I get messages apologizing for sending so many messages, followed by more messages. Interestingly, he won’t ever approach me in public if I’m with expat friends, but he’ll text right after to tell me that he wanted to talk to me but he’s ‘scared’. He’s also quite open about being scared of me in general, which I think I should explore further at some point because he’s not the first guy to tell me that he likes me and is scared of me all at the same time.

In some places we would likely refer to this as stalkerish, but I don’t feel threatened so I’m just going to label him as keen.

Either way, my friends and I here often sit around reading some of the messages that I get, so I've decided to share some with you. This is from just after the night that he told me he was 26 and I told him I was too old for him and that he should stop saying he loves me.

PS. There won’t be all that many of these to share because I’m actively trying to ignore him. It’s really for the best. You gadda know.