* A Shyness That Is Criminally Vulgar

I am a self-avowed “bird nerd” and one of the varieties I missed on my last visit to Aotearoa was the Little Blue Penguin. I knew some nested around Akaroa Harbor so the NPR and I headed out that way (with me driving in typical geriatric fashion).

On the way we stopped at a hilltop restaurant where we met a nice Frenchman who referred to us as “girls.”

The NPR and I went outside to take in the view of the harbor and hills and we stayed out until the Frenchman opened the door and said, “Girls, ze pizza eez redee!”

When I revisit this scene in my mind the Frenchman is wearing a little beret and has a curly mustache. Also his words are modified to say, “Girls! Zee pizza, she is ready! Haw haw, baguette!”

Because my memory thrives on stereotypes.

Akaroa was the sight of the only French colony in New Zealand. This fact prompted the British to quickly draft an agreement with the Maori before the Fleur de Lis lovers could further horn in and Gaullify everything.

Today one sees the Tricolor all over town and many of the streets and buildings have French names.

Everywhere I went people told me it was the wrong season to spot the penguins. Quelle dommage!

I bought a sandwich on a pier and tasted some delicious fish I had never heard of before.

As I was walking back down the pier I passed three guys speaking Spanish.

“Oye!” I shouted after them.

All three of them turned toward me in unison.

I asked where they were from. Two were from Spain (meh) but the one in the middle was from the D.F.

I have never been happier to see a Chilango in all my life.

I told him NZ was a perfect country in almost all aspects except for the fact that it was lacking Mexicans. (Because of this I have gone into tacos al pastor withdrawal.)

It was fantastic to see one of my gente adoptada down here at the world’s end.

By about 3p.m. the NPR had morphed into a cranky pants and she insisted that we go home.

There is a small town called Tai Tapu on the way back and I decided to pop into some of the shops there.

In one of them I met a nice girl my age.

I ended up telling her about my misadventure in the Famous Grouse (the one with the jug of coke, Stud Magazine and the “forever alone” seat in the corner). It turns out she and some of her friends had been in one night as well and they were also ignored.

I felt a little better knowing it wasn’t just me.

She said she and a few friends were going out to Christchurch later that night and that I could come along if I liked.

I accepted immediately and promised to change out of the oversized sweatshirt and dirty jeans I was wearing (I call this look “doctoral candidate casual”).

In my excitement, I ended up driving all the way to the bar with the back windshield wiper going. There was no rain- I’m still just confused between the turn signal and the wiper handles which are on reverse sides in this country.

I arrived early and ended up sharing a table with two women who were very friendly. They left a little after A1 and her friend A2 arrived.

We got some drinks and I remarked that there were a lot of handsome guys around.

That’s when I got a bit of bad news.

“Kiwi boys are all shy and if you want one, you have to make the first move,” A1 said.

“The good news is that the women call all the shots,” A2 added.

“Hello celibacy,” I thought.

I looked around again and noticed all the men were standing in protective groups with their mates.Sometimes they would cast a wistful glance at a girl but if she turned toward them their eyes quickly fell toward their shoes.

We bar hopped to a few other locations and at one point, we passed a group of guys. One of them walked toward us and said, “Do you know about the Regular Show?”

“I do!” I answered thinking of Mordecai and the strange bubble-headed character.

Nerd bait had been laid out and I had taken it.

A1 linked her arm through mine and whispered, “Don’t engage” in my ear. She shook her head slowly and insinuated that we didn’t want those sorts of guys talking to us.

At the next bar A1 became reflective over her gin and juice and told me that her older brother still lived at home with their mum and was extremely co-dependent on her.

“She actually still blow dries his hair,” she told an incredulous-looking pair of listeners. “My mum came home one day to find him with a girl in his room and she said to me, ‘that girl had the nerve to rub around on his chest hair as if it was hers!’”

The hilarity of this was amplified by the way she mimicked her mother’s voice and the fact that the Kiwi way of saying “chest hair” sounds like “chist hiyah.”

Apparently, her mum was also pissed because her son’s hair was all messed up because she had just blow-dried for him that morning.

“I think there’s a movie in there somewhere,” I told her.

A bunch of A1’s guy friends met up with us later and one of them seemed to take a shine to me.

He called me Little Red Riding Hood in reference to the bright red coat I was wearing.

I didn’t know his name so I referred to him as “white shirt guy.”

We danced within close proximity of each other and he bumped into me once or twice. I think this is what passes for “intense physical contact” in the NZ nightclub setting.

I asked him what he did for a living and he said he kept the city safe and clean.

“So, you’re Batman,” I said.

One of his friends was dancing near us and he had tiny girl wrapped around him. At one point her tongue was in his ear.

“He’s probably going to rock her world for a full two-and-half-minutes later tonight,” I said to him.

I was wrong though, a few minutes later the girl had disappeared and his friend retreated back into the safety of his male pod.

I excused myself at one point and went off to reapply my lip gloss in the ladies room. When I came back, white shirt guy was chatting up some other girl. Apparently, any bit of warm estrogen would do—And to think I was actually moved when he said, “Tell me more about your thesis.”

I danced with A1 and A2 for a bit and noticed an older man of a solid farm working build making his way toward me.

“No, nope, no!” A1 said swinging me around and putting herself between us. The farmer shrugged and lumbered off toward the bar.

White shirt seemed to rediscover my existence when our group left the club for another venue.

I walked down the sidewalk with him and his luckless friend on either side of me and they said something snarky about the way I spoke English.

“Well I was told you Kiwis speak English too but I’ve heard no evidence of it,” I snapped back.

At this point, a few of our group wandered off while everyone else decided we needed to catch some taxis and go to a casino.

I quietly told one of the A2 that I had a car but I guess this fact escaped the larger group.

After waiting a bit longer for a cab that never came, I mentioned my car again.

“Well why didn’t you say!?” they all exclaimed.

The back seat of my borrowed car is meant to comfortably seat three adults.

We crammed in four.

The experience caused a brief flare-up of homophobic tension which was only quieted after I threatened to put someone in the trunk.

White shirt sat next to me so he could give me directions.

“Make a lift,” he said.

“I think you want me to make a left,” I answered.

“Yis,” he said.

Christchurch is a bit of a mess after the earthquake of 2011. I had to wind my way through some precarious one way-streets with a heavy construction presence and this was made all the more challenging by the fact that one of the guys started calling me “a Canadian” and another one pulled the head rest off the passenger’s seat.

“You broke it good, eh?” white shirt said.

“I feel like we’re more connected when we talk now,” his mate replied thoughtfully.

White shirt turned back toward me then and, after a moment, he reached out and stuck his finger in my ear.

“What the hell was that!” I yelled.

“It’s called a wet willy only I didn’t lick my finger,” he said proudly.

I dropped the group at the casino and announced that I was going home.

White shirt tried to get me to come in but I said I couldn’t. He asked if I needed help getting home and I said I didn’t. He said I was a bit of a “hard case” and I said I had no idea what that meant.

As soon as I got home I pulled out the Kiwi phrasebook my school gave me.

Hard case: A tough but likeable person; an eccentric person

To recap; my experiences with the opposite sex in this country have involved  one guy insisting that I run my fingers over his crooked clavicle (last year) and another sticking his finger in my ear.

I was telling my neighbor about this and she said she would get on the internet and research the gesture to see if it was some new thing the kids were doing nowadays.

“Tell me what you find,” I said, “I might be betrothed now and not even know it.”

*Title taken from The Smiths song, “How Soon Is Now?”