Nope.

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Last time I travelled Europe, Maya and I used couchsurfing to find lodging. In England we stayed with a six foot tall anarchist with self tattooed flames on his wrist. While at first slightly concerned, this fine gentleman was one of the nicest people we met on our travels. He worried about Maya’s dietary restrictions, and he took the week off from work to show us around London. This was highly useful, as the transit system in London is far more complex than that of Toronto’s, and we surely would have been lost for hours (and not in a fun way) without him.

I met Stefanie when she was couch surfing in Canada. Stefanie makes the German language sound sultry, and she is just a fun person to hang out with. She was gracious enough to show us around the Red Light District of Hamburg, as well as take us on a tour of the artist’s squats in the middle of the business district. The buildings surrounded you with art installations and beautiful graffiti, the buildings contained a martial arts gym, a film festival office, and a communist style photography studio (using the pay what you can model).

In Berlin, Barack and Daphna were kind enough to keep Maya and me from sleeping on a park bench, as all the hostels were booked. Barack cooked us the best shakshuka I have ever had, and took us to a bar with red shag carpeted walls. Daphna used my phone to take hundreds of beautiful pictures of the abandoned DDR hospitals we explored together.

Maya and I went to a couch surfing meet-up in Paris, where a man told me I looked 30 and unfashionable. We stayed with assorted friends and friends of friends for the duration of our trip, and we only had to pay for hostels in Barcelona and Madrid.

This time, when I contacted Peter about an internship, he offered to let me live with him and his wife for free. I instantly agreed and added his address to my visa application. Upon arrival, it was the small differences that reminded me I was no longer in Canada. A lot of the houses have enclosed mud rooms, many of the streets are cobblestoned instead of paved, and the speed limit signs are circular instead of rectangular. I was confident I would fit in and quickly make new friends. It took a week before my lack of friends became frustrating.

At home, if I want to go get a drink, go to the movies, go to the grocery store, or even just watch Netflix in bed, I have at least six different people I can call to join me. If I’m walking home alone, I can call at least fifteen others just to catch up on the way. Here, at first, I only had Barack and Daphna. They were welcoming and had me over for the weekend and Daphna ran errands with me that Saturday. However, the best way to maintain friends is to also give your friends space, and not insist on spending every moment of your free time with them.

I decided to put an ad out on couch surfing. It was titled, “I have no friends.” It read, “I have no friends in Berlin. I am here for four months. Message me if you would like to be my friend.” My inbox was instantly flooded with messages, 19 out of 20 were from men. This was normal, I have been a woman on the internet before, and there are always more men who respond to a woman’s post. I decided to sift through everyone and find at least one or two that I may have more in common with.

I found Rafael. He spoke Hebrew, German and English. He had lived in Israel and India. He had a glowing reference. I had nothing to do on Friday, so I responded to him.

He and I message back and forth and he says, “What do you want to do tonight?”

I reply, “I really just want to go to a bar”. I wanted to be surrounded by the ambient noise of a busy bar in a foreign country, with dim yellow light and cold draught beers.

Rafael says “Okay, see you soon.” He gives me an address where I am to meet him.

After dinner, I should leave, but I’m a bit nervous. Or lazy. I can’t quite tell, but the feeling was more lazy than nervous. I say to myself, “You could sit on your ass on facebook, like you do every night, waiting for your friends to finish work, or you could go out and do something new and interesting! Besides, you meet people from the internet all the time. You couch surfed before and it was awesome, you moved in with Peter after five emails, and you met Alex on OKCupid. Strangers are just people you haven’t become friends with yet!”

I arrive at the address and it’s an apartment building. I assume that I am meeting him here and he and I will go walk around. He comes up on his bike and says, “This is my friends’ apartment, I am taking care of it while she’s in New York.” He then asks if I’m allergic to cats, which I am not. It’s his ex girlfriend’s apartment, with his ex cats, and he is feeding them while she’s away. We go in, and I assume that we are just stopping in while he feeds them. I take off my shoes to chase the cats halfway up a ladder to a loft bed. Rafael comes in with cat food and casually touches my thigh, which is at eye level for him. I’m wearing my muscle pants, so this only seems a little weird. Most people want to touch my muscle pants. I think maybe he just doesn’t understand the social convention of not touching people you just meet.

He says, “Do you like anatomy?”

“Yes, I think bones and muscles are really interesting”.

He seems to find this funny. He pours us both a cup of wine. At this point I was confused and a little tempted to leave. I was sensing something was a little off, but it wasn’t quite tangible. My body was not signalling danger, just strangeness. I decided I wasn’t going to let my life be ruled by unfounded fears. I sat down and accepted the cup.

I am now going to say that this story does not end with me getting raped, mugged or murdered. I hope you feel a little bit better now, because if you’re anything like my mother you are getting severely worried.

We then started getting to know each other better, and Rafael mentions that he was in a polyamorous relationship. I got excited, because we actually had something interesting to talk about. I mention Maya, who has been in a successful and healthy open relationship since high school. He talks about his passed relationships, and I talk about the swingers club I worked at in Toronto. I mention my boyfriend, Alex, and how he and I are definitely not poly or open (in case you were worried, Mom, now you know), and an open relationship is not really my style. I talk about Alex for a bit longer, because I will find any excuse to go on about him for as long as I can before people’s eyes start to glaze over from boredom.

Rafael and I talk about the different sex clubs that are in the city, and he mentions that going to a poly event is different when you go alone versus with a partner. We talk about how German guys are so polite you can’t even tell when they’re into you. Too bad Rafael isn’t German.

Then he says, “Do you like massages?”

I have never turned down a massage in my life. I think, “Please for the love of God tell me he is going to just say that his friend is a massage therapist and they’re having a deal.” No such luck.

I say, “Who doesn’t, why are you asking?”

He offers to give me one.

I say, “No, thank you.” Then to blunt the sting of rejection I playfully say, “I just don’t want to fall asleep”.

He says, “Why not?”

I say, “I have to go home eventually, and it’s over an hour to get back.”

He says, “You could just go back tomorrow morning.”

I look him in the eye and say, “No, thank you.”

My no should have been enough.

He tries again to proposition me for sex.

I said no, and then remind him of my boyfriend in Canada.

“He’s not here right now is he?”

Ugh. This is the third time I’ve heard that in three weeks. It’s the millionth time I’ve heard that in my life. Many girls will say they have a boyfriend as a “soft no”. They don’t feel comfortable or safe to flat out say the word no, so they talk about their boyfriend. This is a form of saying no. In my situation, there is no confusion. I have said the words no. Now I’m bringing up my boyfriend. Could I get any fucking clearer?

I try The Scare Tactic.

“You really want to know why I’m not having sex with you? I’m not having sex, at all, while I’m in Europe. Every time I have engaged in any sort of hookup or casual sex, it’s been terrible. Guys don’t know what they’re doing the first time with a new partner, and it’s not very good. Also, I’ve had Chlamydia from a person I trusted, because the condom broke. So even when it’s not just a casual thing, it’s still not particularly safe. Why would I ever want to have sex in a country where I don’t know where I can get tested, which won’t matter anyway it just tells you if you’re diseased, when the sex is probably going to suck anyway?”

Rafael, I quickly realize, is not very smart. He asks me, “Does Chlamydia go away?”

“Yes,” I sigh “You take a pill and it goes away”. Not that the stigma around STIs ever will.

He asks follow up questions. I have to give him a brief sex Ed lesson. This man is 30 years old, and I am educating him about safer practices. This is why I stopped trying casual sex.

He finishes all this with, “Well, we can just do things above the clothes.”

“No, thank you. Besides, did you miss the part where I said that it’s never fun for me?”

“I see it more as a sharing, not a taking.”

I look him in the eye again and say, clearly, “No, thank you.”

I really wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to feel like I was running away. I waited until I had finished my drink, and politely mentioned the lateness of the hour (it was 10:30) and confidently walked out.

At home, my extended family teases me for being a Feminist with a capital F. I don’t like current gender dynamics, I don’t like how gender is portrayed in the media, and I don’t like being told I can’t do something because of my biological sex. I am not quiet about my views, both metaphorically and literally, considering I have volume control issues. I read way too many articles about rape and slut shaming. I have always said better sex Ed would improve everyone’s ability to see the opposite gender as actual human beings, and not a collection of imposed stereotypes. The sexual education curriculum was just reformed in Toronto to include discussions of consent. The No means No model was not working, and sex Ed has been changed to talk more about the need of asking for a Yes. What floors me about this situation is that I clearly said no. I said no many times. I said no from the beginning. I said it clearly, I made eye contact, and I used an authoritative voice. I didn’t use a “soft no”, which some men choose to misconstrue. I said no.

My no wasn’t valid. My no was taken as an invitation to cajole and convince.

While I was lucky that this man did not rape me, I was still demoralized. To many people, I am a walking vagina. While we had a “connection” based off my thoughts and ideas and conversational skills, it was just foreplay before The Sexual Relations Attempt.

Some people may read this post and say what I should have done, including not have met strange men in the first place. I want to live in a world where I can meet someone of the opposite gender and not have them assume it will be about sex. I want to live in a world where no one will try and shame me for trying to make new friends in the first place.

Why am I a feminist? I believe in equality, and it bothers me when both men and women perpetuate Patriarchy. I am a feminist because I expect more from men and women, but sometimes, like after meeting Rafael, I need to expect more from just men. Couch surfing is a wonderful tool to meet new people, but I can’t be on that website as a woman without having to worry about whether or not my No will count next time. I can’t be a woman in the world and have my voice valued. I am a feminist because as a woman, when I say NO, it should matter, and right now, it doesn’t.

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