Motivated Misdeeds
Munich, Germany They say no good deed goes unpunished and I’m really starting to think that it’s true. Whether it’s warning a friend about a person who is using and manipulating him or helping a random stranger avoid danger on the street, it seems these small-scale heroics carry with them some heavy consequences. At least this is what I discovered on a very bizarre date last summer.
The date itself was what I would now describe as “perfectly average” – a typical first date scenario with good conversation shared over adult beverages. He was a Bavarian living in London, and educated me on the subtle variations between Franconians and Muenchners.
“Even though Franconia is part of Bavaria,” he began, “The locals don’t recognize us. Sometimes when I’m driving through Munich with my Franconian licence plates, people will shout ‘learn how to drive, you Franconian Bastard!’” Of course, it took me all of five minutes living in Munich to realize that Munich considers Munich to be the elite of Germany. So it didn’t surprise me at all that there would be this kind of hierarchy within all of Bavaria as well.
After the date, he walked me to the subway station. He told me he was in town for the whole week and we discussed possibly meeting again, but you know how that goes. The likelihood that we were actually going to see each other again was slim because, as the Bavarians would say, the date was “only OK.”
Just as I was preparing to walk down to the trains, we heard really intense shouting on the street corner. A big, burly man was violently shouting at a tiny blonde woman and throwing things. Eventually the man stormed off down the road, but the woman, who was clearly frightened, hesitated as she timidly walked off along the same path once he was out of sight. I noticed that the woman was acting really jumpy, and would frequently stop frozen in her tracks like she was afraid that the man was going to jump out of the shadows and charge at her and hurt her.
“I don’t think that woman is OK,” I said, “She looks really scared of that guy.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” my date replied.
“Let’s walk to the next U-Bahn station and make sure she’s alright,” I suggested and my date agreed. So we followed behind the woman at a fairly inconspicuous distance making sure that she made it to where she was going, or at least didn’t get attacked by whoever that guy was.
Eventually the man appeared at the next corner and the woman silently rejoined him by his side. My date and I quietly passed them by as I nonchalantly scrutinized their relationship to one another with periodic glances over my shoulder.
“I think they are a couple,” I whispered. “She’s probably fine.” But just as I was finishing diagnosing the situation, my date grabbed me by the hand, pulled me around the corner, pushed me up against the wall of the nearest building and started kissing me.
“Aww… you care about people!” he exclaimed as he kept kissing me, which quite frankly confused the hell out of me. Was my willingness to help another woman somehow a turn on? And WHY for the love of all that is holy would that be a turn on?! I decided just to roll with it because in this city men rarely seem to display spontaneous bursts of passion like this, and I really just wanted to see where this was going.
The next thing I knew I was being pulled very quickly down the road to where my date’s hotel was. Literally two minutes later, the whole thing was over and I found myself lying naked next to a very satisfied Franconian. But then it got really weird, really quickly.
After pretending to be nice for a few moments, he turned to me and said those six deadly words, “I have a confession to make.” I really hate when people preface whatever it is they are about to say like this, because it always seems that my brain manages to come up with all sorts of horrible scenarios in those few dramatic seconds before they finally get to the point. What confession could this guy possibly have to make to me?! I mean, he barely knew me! Was he not the guy he said he was?! Was he stalking me and we didn’t actually meet by chance?! Did he have HIV?! Suddenly horrified, I waited for him to drop whatever bomb he was concealing.
“I am actually in a serious relationship,” the Franconian Bastard confessed.
“Oh…” I replied feeling a bit confused that he would feel the need to even tell me this, as he was in town merely on a business trip. “Well… that was your responsibility, I guess.”
I mean, what could I say? The guy was literally inside me just minutes before. I couldn’t exactly turn back the clock, and I also generally believe that the onus is on the non-single person to share his relationship status when going on extramarital dates with single women. I’m not a mind reader, after all.
“Well,” he explained, “Now I feel guilty.”
“Then why did you do it?” I asked with genuine curiosity.
“I wanted you. But now I feel bad about it and I’m afraid that if you stay here I’m going to do more bad things,” he replied, while apparently kicking me out of his hotel room like a common prostitute. And trust me, there is nothing more embarrassing than doing the walk of shame in a hotel lobby when the front desk staff literally saw you 15 minutes earlier.
On my Uber ride home I kept replaying the events of the night. If I hadn’t tried to help that woman, would I be at home right now? Why did my good deed inspire this Franconian Bastard to do a bad one? The whole thing was just strange.
At the time, I assumed that the actions I took when I observed the emotional state of that woman on the street, were the same actions that anyone else would have taken if they had been there. I didn’t really think that my behaviour was special, noble and definitely not arousing. But some months later, I learned that being mindful of a woman’s safety isn’t something that men seem to even consider these days.
We arranged to meet at one of my favourite hotel bars in Munich, but he was living in town for years. He was a typical expat, and by that I mean he spent most of the date complaining about Germans, and bragging about how he lives his life the right way, the way that the Germans could never understand – yawn. He was South American, so to him this meant he was more warm and friendly, passionate, spontaneous and fun. Haha no. But he looked good and I was thirsty AF.
We decided to leave the bar and go somewhere else, but as we were walking out the door, a man sitting in the lobby called us over. The man was loud and obnoxious and from godknowswhere. He was a guest at the hotel and conducting a very loud business conference call for the pleasure of all those passing through the lobby. He told us he wanted to go to a club and he asked us to join him. My date, whom we shall refer to as Tiny Tail (you’ll see why shortly), and I looked at each other, smiled and shrugged. This man seemed crazy and I definitely thought that the night was about to take an interesting turn.
The man ordered us both a drink from some visibly annoyed and slightly hostile hotel staff, as he continued his conference call. He muted his phone and explained to us that he owned the company and his board members were the other people on the line discussing business. Every once in a while the man would hit the unmute button and jokingly shout at the phone, “WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THIS JUST TELL ME WHERE MY FUCKING MONEY IS!” It went on like this for some time.
Tiny Tail seemed to be enjoying himself, laughing at the strange man and trying to measure up to an ego that was clearly a lot larger than his, but then two other men entered the mix. The strange man was obviously attempting to expand his clubbing entourage and called to the other two strangers as they entered the hotel.
How can I describe these two men… for starters they seemed eerily familiar like they may have been some European models or athletes or just some rich kid influencers, or some other thing I know absolutely nothing about. The strange man engaged in a sort of monetary pissing contest with the new men as a way to get to know each other. The strange man offered the other two men $10 000 to come to the club with us, to which the other two men retorted that $25 000 was more their thing. It was a joke – I think.
Tiny Tail seemed to realize that he was well out-alpha’d at this point, and asked me if I still wanted to go with them. I told him that I thought it would probably be hilarious to watch, and that we could go with them for a bit and leave if it’s boring. Besides, the guy had been boasting that he was sooo spontaneous all night. Here was his chance to be spontaneous. Tiny Tail seemed to be onboard with this idea.
I ran off to the ladies’ room to freshen up, but when I got back to the lobby Tiny Tail was nowhere to be found. I assumed he too had gone to the little boys’ room and that he would be back momentarily. That was when the strange man approached me.
“You’re gorgeous,” he said as he grabbed my head and planted his mouth on mine. I tried to pull away but he kept a tight grip on the back of my head.
“I’m not going to let go until you kiss me back!” the strange man declared, practically licking my face trying to get me to open my mouth. Finally, I managed to get away from him, and told him that I didn’t think Tiny Tail would be happy that he was doing that.
“Oh, your date?! Well, I don’t see your date anywhere around here, do you?” the man laughed in a way that made me suspect he had something to do with Tiny Tail’s sudden disappearance.
I distanced myself from the man while frantically texting Tiny Tail and getting no response.
Where are you???
Did you leave me?????????
Did you actually leave me alone with these men?!?!?!?!!
Eventually, I realized that Tiny Tail was long gone. Either he left me with his tiny tail between his legs because his own weak, fragile ego was intimidated by the other guys’ bravados, and he figured I’d eventually choose one of them as the night went on. Or quite simply and quite creepily, the strange man actually paid him to leave without me.
Whatever the reason, any decent man should have known better than to leave his date alone with three strange men who had already demonstrated that they were beyond sketchy. I certainly would have never entertained an offer to go to the club with that strange man if Tiny Tail hadn’t been with me. And, I mean, look what happened as SOON as he abandoned me – I was IMMEDIATELY assaulted!
What also bothered me were the hotel staff members. There were five people sitting at the front desk throughout this whole ordeal, and all five of them were staring at me with dark, knowing eyes. They sat there with their lips sealed like five muted flies on the wall. They knew my date had left me. They had seen everything, and yet they said and did nothing.
I was in a bit of a daze at the realization that Tiny Tail left me there without a word or text message to at least signal to me that he had left. If he had done so, I would have known to get the fuck out of there and the strange man wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get his hands on me. I mean, if he didn’t want to go to the club, he could have pulled up his big boy panties and just told me. It wasn’t my intention to ditch Tiny Tail for the likes of any of those guys at any point in the night no matter what. It’s beyond shitty that he didn’t award me the same curtesy. Anyway, I snapped out of that daze when the strange men informed me that I wouldn’t be allowed to come to the club with them unless I started smiling. I smiled alright as I walked out the fucking door.
Outside of the hotel an American man was smoking a cigar and drinking a glass of wine, “Those guys are assholes,” he said, “Are you alright?” I told him my story as I waited for my tram to pull up, and reiterated just how stunned I was that Tiny Tail had just left me there. Plus, I honestly didn’t feel comfortable waiting for the tram alone.
At one point the three strange men came out of the hotel when their driver arrived to take them to the club, and they arrogantly offered me one last chance to join them on their VIP clubbing adventure. I don’t think I need to tell you that I declined the invitation.
“I used to get paid to kill people like that,” the American just casually dropped into the conversation.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yeah… have you ever seen the TV show The Sopranos? That was basically my life,” he replied without even a hint of sarcasm.
I’m not sure if that guy was really a mafia hitman or if telling me this was just his own way of trying to swoop in and take what Tiny Tail and the three men had left behind – namely, me. But I suppose I’ll never know, because after talking about mob life for a little while, I spotted the tram light coming up the tracks and darted away to catch my ride home.
I never did hear from Tiny Tail again, although I made sure to send him one final text message to inform him that despite whatever he had to say about German men, they at least had more decency than to do the things that he did that night (in my experience anyway). But you know who I did hear from again? That’s right, the Franconian Bastard.
Not two months after he had cheated on his girlfriend with me and then discarded me like a deflated blow-up doll, he once more slid into my DMs. He was back in Munich on business and wanted to meet again.
“You didn’t learn your lesson the first time?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, “And this time you can spend the whole night. 😉 ”
Unfortunately for the Franconian Bastard, I’m not in the habit of making the same mistakes twice.
The end.