Soy un Pasota, According to My House Sister

I never thought the human language would have a word that would pretty much describe my attitude towards intimate relationships (e.g. girlfriends), but apparently, the Spaniards do. Let us not forget that this is the culture that gave rise to literary works like Don Quixote and Don Juan (El Burlador de Sevilla) which parodied the romantic culture of the times. I'd especially like to focus on Don Juan though, because, given enough devotion and immersion in a lifestyle like his, I could probably be a lot like Don Juan.

Anyways, my house sister Marina and I were talking about how I had failed to compliment her new haircut (as had her boyfriend, for about one hour). Somehow or another, the conversation led to my defense that I had very little practice for recognizing a new haircut or new shoes or something because I generally never have girlfriends. Marina cracked a joke about this, something along the lines of, "yeah, when's the last time you called any of your girlfriends?" (honest response: a few weeks, but they still call me for some reason) After my nonplussed response, she said, "Es que eres pasota!" Reading my confused face, she went on to ask if I even knew what that meant, and I told her I had never heard that word.

We looked up the word on two sources: a Spanish-American dictionary and wordreference.com (a great website for writing Spanish/French/whatever papers). Here's the Spanish-American dictionary definition: "waster, non-conformist." I thought that was a bit odd, but what made me laugh my ass off was this definition, given by wordreference.com: "ese tio es un pasota - that guy couldn't give a damn about anything." I had to laugh, because in the context of maintaining intimate relationships, I generally fail due to indifference or hyper-attention (kind of a poorly-adjusted over-reaction to combat indifference). Its true, when it comes to relationships, I generally don't give a damn. The only exceptions are the really challenging ones, where I have to win over her attention somehow. Hence, I go for girls I can't get, and therefore lack interest in 99% of girls who actually would be willing to have a relationship with me.

I don't necessarily see this as a huge problem, although Mom would rather me settle down already so I can find a nice woman and have a family and a mortgage and all that fun stuff. In fact, I generally like the freedom that comes with NOT having a girlfriend. I cannot tell you how many times I walked into my home the past two years to a "Cold War" or to a "house-rattling fight," complete with yelling, screaming, crying, and the occassional dramatic measure to cement "victory" for one side or the other.

I generally laugh at these things. First, I am amused by how each side decides to take the fight, both choosing the victim side and both arguing that the other just doesn't understand. Second, the dramatics are the makings of reality TV: driving off at full speed, tires squalling, or breaking up one night to get back together the next morning, this could be VH1 material. Third, I am reminded of how lucky am that I don't have to deal with this. Fights over HONESTLY NOTHING with my last girlfriend have reminded me that I don't need to be in a relationship for the sake of having one. I honestly just don't need it.

To wrap it all up, when it comes to relationships, I'm a pasota, the guy who "couldn't give a damn about anything," but instead of being dismayed by this, I just have to laugh. I hope you did too.