How I acquired an imaginary boyfriend

Something I’m going to ingrain in the minds of my future children is that it is never okay to lie. Not so much because of the immorality of it, but because lying once often leads to more lying when you have to elaborate on your original lie. It just gets too complicated. Thanks to a seemingly harmless white lie I told a few students, I now have dug myself into a pretty interesting hole.

Here in Hechuan, dating is a very giggle-inducing subject. Discussing anything to do with boys and girls interacting sends my students into hysterics, even just the innocent task of asking a boy and a girl to be partners for an activity. For example, when I was explaining the concept of rumors to my students, I staged-whispered while pointing at one of my guys and said, “I heard that Ran has five girlfriends!” I felt like a stand-up comedian. The class could not control themselves with their laughter and it took awhile to regain their attention. My university students sometimes seem to have the emotional maturity of American middle schoolers.

I think you can probably guess where this story is heading. Today I went to lunch with two of my female students. At one point, they were excitedly talking in Chinese while throwing furtive glances my way. I have learned this is something they usually do when they are about to ask me a personal question or bring up a typically off-limits subject. They finally worked up the courage and announced to me, “Mike (one of my male students whose name has been changed) really likes you! He wants to know if you like him too! And he wants to know if you like to date Chinese boys.”

Oh, boy. I knew I had already told them in a previous class I was single, but I had no idea how to handle this. I couldn’t straight out say no without Mike losing face (a Chinese cultural concept you can read about here), and I wasn’t sure they understood the inappropriateness I felt in this situation as I knew teachers at my school had dated students in past years. So I took the only way I could see out. I told them that was nice of him, but I actually have a boyfriend at home. They seemed to take this as a reasonable answer and I felt a bit of relief as the subject changed. That was, until I invited them back to my apartment to share some of my grandma’s cookies.

I got a great deal on photo print-outs before I left so have taped 150+ pictures all over my apartment to make it homey. They enthusiastically started looking at all of them, and that’s when the fun started.

First, they pointed at an awkward prom-style photo I took with my friend BJ at an infamous Frisbee House event called DM:

I’m not sure BJ completely remembers this photo, but the girls immediately picked it out and said, “This must be your boyfriend!”

“Uh, no, no… that’s just a friend.”

Immediately they picked out another photo, this one a group shot, taken at senior formal. They pointed at my friend Vikram, “Oh, so this must be your boyfriend!”

“No, sorry, uh...” I apparently just have taken a lot of dressed up photos with male friends that I now regret putting up, and they were going to go through every one until they picked out my boyfriend. And these girls were quick, because while I was still trying to solve this new dilemma, they pointed at another photo. This one of a trip I took while visiting my friend Eamonn in Ireland. “This is him! Yes!”

Shitshitshit. I continued to frantically wrack my brain for a way out. That really expensive Northwestern education never properly prepared me for situations like this. Finally, it came to me.

“Oh, you know, I don’t think I put up the pictures of my boyfriend yet! I will have to get them out and show them to you next time.”

Great, Lindsey, good thinking, real smooth. So now all you have to do is either fake a pretend break-up and face a potentially awkward situation with Mike, photo-shop a random guy into one of your photos and pass him of as your boyfriend, or convince one of your friends that he should stand in as your fake long-distance boyfriend while you’re here.  (Any takers? The Chinese girls will ooohh and ahhh over you like crazy!)

Not one of my more brilliant moves, to say the least. But hey, it has hopefully served its purpose and gotten back to Mike by now that I am off the market. And it proves that I can get myself into as much trouble in English as I can in Chinese.

(BJ, Vikram, and Eamonn: for the record, the girls called each of you, “Very handsome!”)