Big, Dumb Animals

My grades started slipping in our weekly tests. The first week, I got a low B. The next week, it was an F. I was exhausted, and JJB wasn't helping matters.

When I wasn't in class, I was with JJB. Every day, we would meet after school, and go for dinner somewhere in the city. It was great, but it was also draining. I wasn't getting enough rest or "down time". JJB had an insatiable energy to him, which I simply could not keep up with. At the same time, he could afford to party hard every night, because he didn't get up for class at 7am every day. "We're at WAR!," he would plead with me as I struggled to go home early and take care of myself. "We could all be DEAD TOMORROW!"

While he had a point, this was still rather dramatic.

Of course, I would go back to our little flat and be too exhausted to learn Arabic. And, in the moments when I did manage to escape to the library and really do some hard studying, he would call and send endless text messages to me and insist that I take a break for him and have dinner. This cycle felt endless.

On the few times I even suggested that I needed more sleep, he would apologize profusely for being such a "big dumb animal".

"I'm a big dumb animal, baby," he say to me. I'd laugh, because, honestly, he was. At least we could both have a sense of humor about this.

On the only occassion that I ever suggested that I stay at my own place for a few nights during the school week so that I would have better rest, he acted like I had taken a sword to his masculinity. "How are we going to spend the rest of our lives together, if we can't figure out how to make this summer work?", he said.

Because I had, in fact, not given him a proper "yes" to his very improper "marriage proposal", it seemed that he was using my own argument of "Let's just see how this works out" against me. At that point, my choice was to either live in a very nice, smoke-free, air-conditioned (with a proper shower) place with a guy who took me to nice dinners but never let me rest, or resort back to living with my 19-year old fundamentalist Christian roommate in stinky, disgusting dorm hell. Either way, it wasn't like I was going to get much personal time. However, the choice was obvious. With JJB, I could eat a nice catered breakfast every morning, and I was a 4-minute walk to class. I was even able to take long baths in our very nice bathtub. Aside from the fact that living with him was like living with a cartoon character, I honestly did have fun with him. Plus this, he brought me flowers. And, he did my laundry.

Everything is a matter of compromise, I continuously reminded myself. And so, I compromised--I let myself be completely and senselessly spoiled.