Gringo Guide: Mexican Dating Culture Pt. 3 – The Date

For those just joining us: Part 1: How To Date A Mexican and Part 2: The Rules

Without further adieu, my totally scripted date with a Mexican man

Three months ago now, I was working on a month-long assignment in Atlanta, Georgia. My first time really being in Atlanta and coming in I didn’t know a soul or what to expect. Much to my surprise however, I quickly assimilated to this really beautiful, cosmopolitan town and made a handful of instant friends I still keep in touch with regularly. Truth be told, from the plethora of ordinate neighborhood bistros, frequent soft rains over the metropolis and gorgeous wine bars, this town is pretty much exactly the type of town I’ve always pictured spending my thirties in. If it had better shopping.

A coworker, Jeremy becomes my nightly tour guide and with his impeccable insight on the city and his “down for whatever” personality, we get along well. Jeremy runs with a really cool group of people in Atlanta all of whom I instantly adore.

Especially a Mexicano we’ll call Alex.

As soon as I notice Alex among a group of friends in a bar in Midtown Atlanta on a Thursday night, I know we will become fast friends. He has a kind of style that I can appreciate and oozes the type of Latino charm that despite my best efforts, I tend to be a sucker for over and over again. He tells me he could tell right away that I’m Mexicana. I call him a liar. No one ever assumes I’m Mexican.

To make a long story short, after a night of chatting over red wine, he tells me about the opening of a new taqueria this weekend and suggests we check it out. After giving it a brief thought, I oblige.

While I know I will never live in or anywhere near Atlanta, Georgia, I decide to use the opportunity to run a bit of a social experiment in response to the traffic scoreboard on the blog which shows almost daily traffic to the site as a result of Google searching the terms, “how to date a Mexican man,” or some variation thereof.

So after doing some, oh so throughout, research, I develop a guide to follow on my dinner date, based on society’s “rules” for successfully dating a Mexican man. I tell myself that in the name of science, for the night I will stick to these rules 100% and resist the temptation to stray into my own dating habits.

In other words, no being myself because these “rules” are ridiculous:

1. Brace yourself for machismo. In fairness, the most obnoxious thing anyone has ever said to me in my recent dating history enough to stick with me was actually by a Mexican man. But while he was Mexican by blood, he wasn’t really the type of Mexican man I consider a Mexican Mexican. There’s a big difference between a first generation Mexican and a person who’s parents went to school and college in the states. In this regard, I always felt much more in tune with my Mexican heritage than he was. Regardless, I’ll never forget when he picked me up for our first official dinner date, and mentions that he’s in a bad mood (awesome opener) because he just lost $100,000 on a football game.

$100,000? $100,000?? I don’t care how much you love your mediocre college football team, who bets $100,000 on a game?! And more over, who complains/brags about it on a date. The first thing that came to mind was Mexicano machismo and although we hung out for some time after that, it seemed we never hung out without some similar comment involving large sums of money coming up. It was something about him I never really could get past.

Alex is waiting for me in the lobby of my hotel with a single rose in hand. Jesus. Like a stereotypically charming Mexicano, he opens my doors, pulls my chairs et al. Throughout the night I am hanging on his words waiting for him to say something obnoxious so I can giggle at it like an obedient servant, but turns out, outside of his ridiculously sick Lexus, Alex is refreshingly modest. Fuck. Of course.

2. Smile a lot. ”You have the most infectious laugh,” he tells me early in the night. Actually, I get that a lot. I laugh a lot. It’s a habit I’ve been called out on for as early as I can remember. I laugh when something is funny, I laugh when something is stupid, I laugh when I’m nervous, and I laugh when someone asks me something in Spanish and I don’t understand what they are saying.

“Thanks,” I smile back. Something about Alex is making me go into nervous mode. He has the kind of charm that I recognize in other Mexican men that makes me slightly uncomfortable. It’s just a certain combination of a look and smile I’ve always been trained not to trust and has thus always made it hard for a Mexicano to get to me. I feel myself closing him off.

“And smile,” he says.

Check and check.

3. Use body language. Midway through dinner I realize I’m sulking back in my chair, arms crossed with wine in hand. It’s something of a subconscious “keep your distance Mexicano” pose I’ve utilized before. I snap into consciousness and set my wine down and lean in. He soon starts mirroring my body language. I never get the guts to do anything obnoxiously flirty.

4. Relate to their culture. Being Mexican is the tie that bonded Alex and I and he’s playing into it hard. I think being in Atlanta and not a heavily Mexican populated area, he’s actually starving for someone to relate to in that way. And for me, what I do love about first generation Mexican men is that they get me. Because of my father’s odd relationship with his family, I don’t know my white family at all. Everything I know about being a daughter, niece, cousin, etc., I only know from my Mexican family.

In fact, in the four years I spent with my very white, midwest bred boyfriend, one thing that was hard on me was that I never felt I bonded with his family. He came from a very sweet, close family and I adored his mother, but I always felt like they looked at me like an alien that they had to be fragile with. Even as I gained seniority among the in-laws, I never seemed to mesh as well as they did and I never understood a lot of their traditions and beliefs. That was my first realization of just how out of touch I actually am with white culture.

Alex and I cover the basics, Catholic guilt, crazy mothers, testing each other’s Spanish and big, big Mexican families.

And then it happened.

“So do you want the whole big family thing someday?”

Wow really, so not what I’ve ever categorized as first date conversation. My personal date checklist: avoid marriage and kids talk like the plague. But in honor of the Mexican checklist, I give him the honest answer. “Yeah I used to think I wanted just a boy and a girl but now I want like five.”

“Me too!” He genuinely proclaims.

Wow really? So not the reaction I was expecting. What I was expecting was more like, “check, please.”

Worth noting, I have a tendency to date a certain type a guy. Since high school I’ve always been into admitted commitment phoebes mostly so I can bask in the comfort of knowing I’m not going to be pressured into something serious in which odds are, someone is going to end up hurt. More than once, I’ve also for some reason had the affect on these guys that in fact lead them into pressuring me into something serious, only for everyone to get hurt soon after and leaving me distraught on how the plan got so messed up when the whole point of dating these guys is to never end up in this mess.

Today I find myself involved again with a guy who first posed “the question” two weeks after meeting which also happened to be my birthday thank God so I was able to play off being too drunk to comprehend. A rocky on-again, off-again year and a half later (mostly related to my traveling), our status is still completely ambiguous and while he’s hinted at it from time to time, I have yet been convinced to go FBO (Facebook Official) and as we all as know, until you both go FBO, it’s not real.

But back to Alex … There’s a part of me that’s starting to think if I lived in Atlanta, I could actually date this guy. And there’s a part of me that’s doubting this guy is for real. That’s the distrusting Mexicana in me.

5. Learn how to dance salsa. Atlanta isn’t a heavily Latin influenced town and a quick search didn’t pull up any kind of salsa bar that didn’t seem sketchy, but next door is my absolute favorite spot for cucumber mojitos and the bartender loves me because he remembers on my first visit I was wearing a cashmere beret.

We score a corner booth, I order my usual, he orders German beer. I keep reminding myself that at some point, I’m going to have to dance. I get how this is supposed to go. We’re supposed to be in a packed, sweaty club where the music is saucy and we have no choice but touch. But in reality, this isn’t Dirty Dancing and when a sexy Ralphael Saadiq song I love comes on, I do a quick shake before I have to laugh at myself and play it off. Then I knock over my mojitio spilling it all over my new boots. He loves it.

6. Be a slut. Eventually I make a comment about having to work in the morning and he takes that as our cue to call it a night. He has me back at a respectable 12:30am and even though I tell him he doesn’t have to, he valets his car letting the attendant know he’ll be just one minute.

At this point, the experiment is over and I’m back to reality. A friendly hug and an awkward goodbye make it pretty clear this is where the night ends. He asks when I’ll be back in Atlanta and I say soon. I haven’t been back since.

I still talk to Alex from time to time, we’ve become good FB friends (of course). But I’m still undecided on my findings. Would I barrage this list as my official “how to” win over a Mexicano? Yes and no. While combining this experience with other things I know about Mexican men as a generality, I think when taken literally, yes, it’s a perfect checklist to secure a one night stand.