Toxic Friends

So it seems I abandoned the backstory a little while ago, but I intend to pick it up in bits and pieces whenever I run out of other material. Such as....now.

When we last heard of our heroine, she had just met her desi beau. Over time, he was introduced to her family, friends, etc. Even though he had been in America for three years, he was still very different than I was used to. I had to ask him to repeat most of what he said because of his thick accent, and he had to ask me to repeat things because I spoke too fast for him. He lived in a tiny apartment. He would cook in bulk and eat the same thing for weeks. He never went out to eat, he didn't own a car - or even a cell phone. 

Things changed pretty quickly, though. Within a month, he had a cell phone and we both signed up for those "in" calling plans. We spent literally hours on the phone with each other every day. We just enjoyed each other's company so much. I found him fascinating. He was just so different from everything I'd ever known. And not just the cross-culture stuff. He was also studying for his Ph.D, which is like a whole different universe too. Different terminology and language, different idea of time. Suddenly I was proofreading conference papers and journal submissions - and I knew what the difference between them was! I remember one of the first times we hung out after that first week was when I was going to drive him to the airport for a conference. I showed up early and we spent almost two hours going over his oral presentation and explaining his poster for the conference. It was like a whole new level of geekiness. 

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, though. Some stuff was decidedly unpleasant. Sometimes conversations would venture into things I just couldn't understand. Money, for instance, was a big deal. He was a poor grad student, and I made more money than he did, but he refused to take even a dollar from me. And then there was the thank you thing. Every time I thanked him for something, it was like I'd offended him. He even told me that he never wanted to hear me say thank you again. Also, we often got around to various issues about the treatment of women. He'd talk about his sister - who was attending medical school - wasn't allowed to take the family camera to school because she was too likely to break it or lose it, or how she couldn't drive or walk home from school. But she was an adult - and in medical school! 

We'd also get into talks about religion. That was never a great idea. He always looked like he wanted to vanish into the wallpaper when that came up. He did a horrible job of answering any questions I had, anyway, so eventually I stopped asking any questions at all, and started looking for my own answers. Which sometimes did more harm than good. 

But the weirdest thing was always the friends. Well, the three best friends in particular. After the first initial reluctance to meet me, it got a little better, but I never knew where I stood with them. Sometimes I would be around the four of them together, and it seemed like we were all friends, having a good time. Other times I was decidedly the unwelcome outsider. Sometimes they seemed to encourage our relationship, sometimes the seemed to be actively trying to dismantle it. 

I wouldn't know until later, but the truth was the were ALWAYS trying to actively dismantle our relationship. And not for any righteous reason, either. Two of these guys, S and M, had come to America when they were just teenagers, and while the third, O, had also only been around for only three years, he was from the upper echelons of Pakistani high society and he probably knew more about American history than I did. The three of them were much more comfortable and adapted to American life than M was, and they'd been actively trying to cultivate him for some time now. It was their influence that had convinced him to stop putting coconut oil in his hair. M had even taken him to a barber and showed him what to tell the stylist in order to get a better, more consistent haircut. S had showed him how to pick out clothes and shoes. O had been the one to help him think of "Brunei." And all three of them were there the night we met, egging him on, trying to get him to meet girls. 

Girls. Plural. Apparently after we went to that first movie, T had even sat down with M outside the movie theatre - just minutes after my friend and I had left - to tell him that this was a good start, but that he shouldn't get attached. He should start looking for more girls immediately. 

It didn't stop there. I now know that I was under constant attack when I wasn't there. M would talk about my kindness or generosity. They would say that all girls are like that. They would try to get him to go to dance clubs (and worse).

The really amazing thing here is that one of the reasons these guys told M he shouldn't continuing talking to me was because what did he expect - that he was going to MARRY me??? All of these guys were (or tried to be) playboys. All of them sought out white girls. But all of them thought that marrying a white girl was NOT OKAY. 

One day, I guess they'd been talking about me again and M had been defending me, and T had said something like "Man, the way this guy talks about her - you'd think he was going to MARRY her or something." I don't think M had ever thought before then that he was going to marry me, but something - I don't know what - made him stand up that day and say: "So what if I do?"