Lost Underwear and Love at First Sight

This story is 100 percent true, and certainly one of my most embarrassing “moments”, that lasted for weeks as things escalated with seemingly no end. The result however, was a wonderful love story, but that’s not the point. Let’s dive into the pure horror that I am.

It all started when I moved to Valencia, Spain. I was captivated by the artistic vibes as graffiti lined the streets and traveled up the sides of buildings. When I arrived I did not know anyone, so of course I relied heavily on Tinder. There were two good experiences on this trip, but the one we will focus on is the third experience.

I met this guy from Italy, Vittorio. Now before meeting up with him, I should mention that I had this awful, awful haircut that made me look like a little boy. This collided with my already shy personality, and made me want to hide inside a sweatshirt where no one could see how horrible I looked with short hair. Anyway, when Vittorio asked me to grab a drink with him, I hadn’t yet showered, so my short hair looked a bit greasy so I covered it with a beanie and my hood. I left the house, not knowing what awaited me. When I arrived, he was nothing like the pictures on Tinder of course. It was a mutual dislike, as we realized we both swiped the wrong way. However, we sat down anyway and grabbed a drink. There was a massive language barrier, and whenever I would say something, he responded completely off topic. It was a disaster, but at least I wasn’t alone anymore in a city I didn’t know. After a short while, he said he had to leave because he was going to his friends house. I looked at him and gave him my sad eyes, because even though it was a dreadful date, I didn’t want to go back to my air B and B where I would be alone yet again. He recognized this form of communication, and said “well… I guess I can ask them if you can join” in a tone that I knew meant he did not want me to go. I jumped on the opportunity and said “Well, yes that would be great, but first I need to stop at the store to buy something”.

Ah yes, my period had just started. So as we stopped at the store, I had no choice but to buy a box of tampons and try to stuff them into my jacket pocket. Now I looked very suspicious, with my beanie and my hood covering my hair, and a box of tampons falling out of my jacket.

On the way to their house, I assumed that it was a girls house since he had to ask if I could come. Vittorio had texted Stefan and Mauro, the two guys that lived at this house that we were going to, and told them “Hey guys I’m bringing this girl and she is really ugly, sorry”. I found this out later, as they expected the worst to arrive, and they sure got it. As we arrived, Stefan had just used the bathroom, and not in a nice way. Him and Mauro had joked that hopefully no one had to use the bathroom upon arrival. But of course, I show up with my box of tampons and the first thing I seek out is the bathroom. I avoided eye contact as we walked in the door and I made my way to the bathroom. As I walked in, I was greeted by a hot wave of not-so-delightful smells. I could hear the boys all laughing outside in the kitchen, which I imagined was for this reason. I put a tampon in, and exited the bathroom.

In the kitchen, we made mojitos, and I slowly began to come out of my shell. I made eye contact at one point with Stefan, where I realized there were feelings I had never felt before and I wanted to find out more. Ok basically love at first sight, but I was trying to explain in in a less cliche way. Anyway, I remained fully covered with my beanie and hood, looking like a "gamer girl". After we drank a couple of drinks, I began to share too much information about myself as usual, and about this girl who I had met on tinder that I wanted to meet up with on this night. We all decided to go out.

Now I should also mention that this was during Las Fallas, a festival week where everyone gets completely drunk, sets off loud bombs at all hours of the day and night, and at the end of the week they burn down these wooden statues that they spent all year making.

So we made our way out, and I was very drunk. I hadn't eaten because when I feel shy I can't eat. Luckily alcohol helped and as you can see in the picture that Stefan took, I was smashing a potato into my mouth looking uncomfortable. Then, as we began to search for this mystery tinder girl who was actually a tattoo artist from Vienna, I had my first embarrassing accident. I had slipped and fallen off of the curb and landed directly on top of a metal post, about the height of my thighs. I landed directly on my ribs and cracked them as I fell onto the ground gasping for air. Thank God I was drunk, because it hurt a lot. Vittorio tried to lift me off the ground. I took some moments to collect myself, and eventually was able to walk it off, or drink it off. We found our way into a silent disco club, where we danced and there’s this horrible video of me where I look like I want to eat Stefan with my eyes. My eyes reveal everything about me, there’s no hiding the feelings I have in any circumstance. As we returned to the house at 5 AM, Stefan said I could stay at their house. I of course took this opportunity because it was the most fun I’d had since I arrived. He sent me a text telling me to sleep in his room, but I said no because it was my “girl time”. He thought I meant that I was gay, but in fact I meant that I was on my period. Now I didn't know that culturally people invite you stay to be polite, but they don't actually mean it.

In the morning, I went into the bathroom and put my old tampon in the toilet. I tried to flush but nothing happened. Panicking, I went out of the bathroom and looked at Stefan, desperate for a different scenario. I said “Um… So the toilet won’t flush”. He was about to go in and try to flush it, but I pleaded “No, WAIT! My… my tampon is in there….”. He looked at me and said “Ok… well you can’t flush those here, it clogs the toilet”. I didn’t know this so I said “Well then, I have to fish it out… Do you have a bag or something that I can use”. This was horrifying for me, and it only got worse from here. Because they are boys living there, they don’t have a garbage can in the bathroom. I walked out of the bathroom holding this wet tampon in the bag in my hands and said “So, um, where should I put this”. He looked horrified yet entertained and led me to the main trashcan in the kitchen, which was unfortunately full. I placed the bag on the top of the trash and tried to smoosh it down with my hands. I hoped things would get better from here, but they did not.

We went to party again, after all it's Las Fallas. Stefan had invited me to stay for another night, which I still didn’t know was just to be polite. To his dismay, I did take his offer and stayed with them. He told Mauro that I was holding them back from picking up chicks. I pretended to be a great wing man to help them find girls, because I could sense his sexual frustration. He felt bad for me, which helped my case. We went out to party again, and I found a gin bottle on the ground. When I say on the ground, I mean I kicked it over and slid it out from underneath a street vendor. We stole it and ran. I could feel myself starting to like Stefan, but I wasn’t about to ruin things, I had finally just made friends. And plus, how could he like me with this haircut and absolute drunk mess that I was.

When we got back to the house, I thought I would wash my underwear in the sink. I washed them and hung them out to dry. The place I hung them was not in my favor. I went into Stefans room where I had slept the night before and hung the underwear outside his window on the bar. The window had no terrace, and it was about 5 feet long. It was a windy day, and unfortunately the underwear had blown off. I wish they had gone into the wind or dropped to the ground. Instead, the fell into the window sill. I could not reach them, I tried everything. When Stefan saw my face he said “Oh God, what have you done now?” I said “Well, first I tried to wash my underwear in your sink, and I decided to hang them to try, but now they are stuck in your window”. He said “Well we need to get them out, because I can’t have girls over if that underwear is there in the window”. We ended up using a camera tripod to get the underwear out! Rescued! They continued to dry inside, on display for everyone to see.

On the fourth day, Stefan couldn’t get rid of me. Somehow during this mess of embarrassing moments and with me being a complete mess, we started to fall in love. Now, the only problem was, there was this other guy, Raul, who I had met years ago from Madrid.

NOTE: Those were the embarrassing moments, but I couldn't leave you hanging with an unfinished story, so the next half is what became of it.

A couple years back I met Raul on a bus to Granada, Spain. As my Diary puts it, I saw this hot guy with a mohawk board the bus, and I had hoped that he would sit by me. He did not, but as we stopped for a lunch break, we made eye contact. He began to walk towards me, but then stopped about 10 feet away and turned around. I was very confused by this, but the day continued to get more weird. We got back on the bus and arrived in Granada. We parted ways and I thought I would never see him again. I had checked into my hostel, and decided to go out for some food. I was sitting as this cafe, and I heard a skateboard go by. I looked to my right, and there goes Raul, riding past me. I couldn’t believe it. I looked left as he passed by and he kept going. I thought it was a weird coincidence and was bummed that he didn’t stop. About ten minutes later, I look to my right and see him again! He had circled around the block and now was just sitting there by the crosswalk on his phone. I looked over, but he didn’t look back at me. Five awkward minutes went by. When I am embarrassed I begin laughing like an idiot. So there I was, sitting there alone at the cafe, laughing. I had to get on my phone to make it look like I was laughing at something. Then we finally made eye contact and I motioned for him to come over. He did, and he sat down. He didn’t speak hardly and English. We made do with a translator on the phone. In the end, we ended spending a couple days together, and we kept in touch over the years.

Now the point of this part of the story we are back to the present. Raul had bought a train ticket to visit me in Valencia. He bought it about a week after I met Stefan. Now we are at about two weeks into meeting Stefan and I was feeling very in love at this point. Thank God it was mutual. I told Stefan that I had a friend named Raul coming to see me this weekend. He looked a bit disappointed and said “Ok, so maybe we’ll see each other after that”. I replied “I’m sorry, I wish Raul wasn’t coming, I’d rather hang out with you, but what can I do? He bought the ticket and is on his way”.

So Raul showed up and was going to stay with me for the weekend. At the time, I lived in this shared house with about 40 people. This is not ideal, especially because when the doorbell rings they just let everyone in, which becomes important later in the story. So me and Raul hung out, but I was thinking of Stefan the entire time. Friday went by, and I heard nothing from Stefan. There was an awkwardness in the air between us, and I hoped that I hadn’t ruined anything. After all, what could it be? The tampon, the underwear, the overstaying my welcome, this other guy visiting me... There was so much against me at this point.

Saturday rolled around, and it was about 10 PM. I got a text from Stefan saying I should come to Cafe Berlin, this bar they always went to in Valencia. I later found out that Stefan had told Mauro “If she comes tonight, then she cares for me, but if she doesn’t then we won’t see each other any more”. Stefan texted me that if I was banging Raul all day, then I shouldn’t come. My response was a cover up and said “Not all day”.

Anyway, when I got the text, Stefan said they would only be at Cafe Berlin for 20 more minutes and after that his phone wouldn't work because he would lose wifi. I looked at my map and realized it was 2 miles away. I looked at Raul, who was clueless, and said “Hey, we are going to meet my friend but we must hurry”. I made Raul run and we sprinted to Cafe Berlin to meet up with Stefan and Mauro. When we arrived it was so awkward, yet I was so happy and relieved to see Stefan. Things escalated quickly. Raul went to the bathroom, and Stefan and I started making out. When Raul came back, Stefan was touching my leg under the table, and grabbing my but in secret. It was quite a fun game, but when alcohol gets introduced the subtleness wears off. The night went on, and we became more and more obvious. We all made our way to a night club. At around 3 AM, Raul went to the bathroom, but when he came out, he saw me and Stefan kissing. He was very mad, understandably, and started yelling at me. To try and reconcile the situation I went up to Raul to explain, but accidentally knocked his drink out of his hand. It shattered all over the ground and I started laughing because the more I tired to fix things, the worse they were getting. I couldn’t cover my happiness of being near Stefan though. So Raul went off and found some people to talk to, and me and Stefan carried on.

This is my favorite part of the story. Me and Stefan were standing on the stairs like two kids in high school making out. Mauro came down the stairs with some girl who was super high on some drugs. The girl approached us, touched our shoulders and looked into our eyes. She looked back and fourth between me and Stefan and said “Woah….You guys are like…totally in love….”. Me and Stefan looked at each other and he said “Yeah, I am”. I had a moment of sheer happiness, and I couldn’t believe that he said that. Then he went on in his drunken state, which I hoped was sincere, and said that we should be in a committed relationship. He told me previously that he doesn’t do monogamy or committed relationships so I wasn’t sure what would come of this. Around 6 AM we went to Stefans house, and Raul was nowhere to be found (yet). He wouldn’t respond to my messages, so I decided it wasn’t important.

In the morning, I realized that I needed to find Raul, which unfortunately turned out to be too easy. Me and Stefan walked to my house, and someone had let Raul in the house. As we got closer, I looked up and saw Raul on my balcony flipping us off with both hands and pacing around animalistically. I went up to my room alone as Stefan waited outside for me. We didn’t want any conflict. Raul began yelling at me and calling me names in Spanish that I’m glad I couldn’t fully understand. I tried apologizing and explaining the situation and how I didn’t plan to fall in love before he showed up. After 45 minutes, he left, and that was the end of that.

All of these events that happened led me to the best relationship of my life. Unfortunately it ended after 1.5 years of long distance and traveling back and forth from America to Europe. Although I wish it never ended, I’m glad that it all happened, and I look forward to the next embarrassing story that leads me down loves path.