The Dodgy Frenchman

Xi'an, China

This has been one of the strangest encounters on my trip so far. As I look for a place to have dinner another foreigner walks past me in the street. I think nothing of it - Westerners are a fairly common sight here. With his casual dress, sleeveless shirt and slightly unkept look he fits the bill of your average backpacker. Suddenly he's next to me again. "Hey, you're a foreigner." Yees...? "Where are you from?" His accent is thick and French. For some reason I'm intrigued. It turns out he is from France, lives in Xi'an, has a little job here. He just came out of the netbar, seems to spend a lot of time there. He points it out. That is the best netbar in Xi'an. We even decide to have some food and a beer together. On the way, he makes it a point to stare at all dressed up the girls that pass us. One of them promptly chats him up. This sets the theme. "In China I fuck a lot", he declares. Then with with a grin: "But then again in France I fuck a lot, too. I'm French." So, he's a cliche. We go to the same place that the tour guide took me the day before. He tells me about the girl he used to date. "She make me so shit", he repeats. They broke up. Now he misses her, wants to call her. "Maybe I'm too romantic." Oh dear, he's schizophrenic, too. The funny thing is: on one side I find him too cocky, too aggressive, too simple-minded, on the other hand we have quite a good time. In the end I find myself exchanging phone numbers with him to meet up when I come back from Mount Hua. I also get his email address for MSN. Again he's very in the face: "Will you reply to me when I talk to you? Sometimes people get my email and when I talk to them they don't reply. This make me shit." Now I almost feel threatened. I reassure him that most of the time I reply. In parting I really wonder - the guy is simple-minded, rude, in your face and all sorts of other unpleasant qualities. Under normal circumstances I'd say such a guy is an idiot, an asshole or both. And still I find myself drawn to him. Is that how his girls feel?