After Matt was James*, another Deaf boy I had met in one of the dining halls. Right away, he asked if he could sit down at my otherwise empty table, and I, wanting to make friends, readily said yes. We talked for a few hours, he invited me to his friend’s party, and walked me back to my dorm. He seemed sweet.
Until he insisted on escorting me to my dorm room.
I was cautious, but I figured (hoped) that he was just very interested and wanted to see me safely home—a thought I now cringe at rereading because it is so absurdly naïve. After he invited himself into my dorm room, with a simple “Me-come-in-now” sequence of signs, he promptly took a seat on my bed, looked me square in the face, and asked if I was a Jewish girl.
I signed, Yes. How did you know?
You look Jewish a little. I like Jewish girls.
Uh, that was flattering…I guess?
Then, You want sex now, right?
I both signed and shouted “Uh, no thanks”. James asked me why. I replied, “Because I don’t want to”. He rolled his eyes and left.
That was my first time getting propositioned for sex so outright. In high school, there at least existed the pretense of genuinely liking a girl, but this was college. A whole new ballgame. And a whole lot of sexual frustration and very little patience.
Following James was Joey*. Joey eventually became my first official college boyfriend, and he was the absolute worst. Hard-of-Hearing with both a Cochlear implant and a hearing aid, Joey could speak and sign with equal ease. He was aware of my less-than-stellar ability to “speak” in ASL and, at first, he didn’t seem to care. It would take a very long year and a half for me to realize what a phony little douche he was. Knowing that I couldn’t hear anything, he would joke about me to his friends—right in front of me, about everything from my signing abilities to my bedroom abilities. Then, he would turn to me and, in the same breath, say he loved me, and I would smile happily, not realizing that I was the source of great humor for his little cadre of fellow douchebags.
Over the course of our year-long “relationship”, we would break up and get back together on his own terms, all of which I went along with because he was my first real everything and he knew how dependent I was on him. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even break up with me officially; he would just say one day “We’re just friends, right?”, then proceed to pant after some other girl. Love makes people blind, so I was the only girl on campus not to see right through him for the piece of living scum he actually was.
Nearly every other girl he asked out turned him down.
I would stalk his Facebook page every day we weren’t together during that year and a half for changes to his relationship status.
He wore a backwards hat in bed.
He broke up with me for the final time the summer of 2011, after he had completed his Associate’s and his mother, who I would learn that summer was entirely overprotective of him in a way that was almost creepy, refused to let him return to RIT for his Bachelor’s. She wanted to keep him close. As such, he was bored, and when he was bored, he would come back to me like a very predictable magnet. I was still in the throes of his lunacy so I took him back. We “dated”—as in, we talked on camera and through text, as he lived several states away—for about a month. My family and I went to see him to meet his parents once. They would boastfully talk to my parents about all the “Jewish friends” they had, and called African-Americans “those people”. He would constantly henpeck and make me feel horrible about my Jewishness, stating clearly and with the utmost confidence (possibly parroting his racist parents) that “Catholics are different from Jews”.
I wish I could say I wizened up, but he dumped me. Again. I would spend the next six months obsessing over my “lost love”. I knew he was a prick, but I still loved him. Or so I thought. It took me a long time to understand that that wasn’t love. It was just very messed up.
Fast forward two years, and I’m entirely over that jerkface. Then, a few months ago, after not having “heard” a peep from him for two years, he randomly friends me on Facebook. I laugh and ignore it. He messages me, asks me how I’ve been, then attempts to get my phone number again and asks if I have Skype.
I block him. The end for Joey.
Not long after Joey and I broke up for good, Steve came along. I first met Steve at the local college bar. He went to RIT but was hearing. He didn’t know much sign language, but that was okay with me. He was quite good-looking in that Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club kind of way. We went out on a few dates, Steve and I. Unfortunately, what happened is what often happens when a hearing guy asks out a Deaf girl—we had a very difficult time communicating. We parted as friends, and I still talk to him sometimes.
After Steve was a succession of both hearing and Deaf guys—Scott, Ben, Tyson, Andy, Mark. They all didn’t work out for one reason or another, sometimes attributing to conversation. Scott was a Deaf boy who’d been born Deaf, with Deaf parents, who went to a Deaf high school and had only Deaf friends. He didn’t have a hearing aid, nor did he want one. All he knew was soundlessness. He didn’t know much English and couldn’t speak; ASL was his native language. When he realized that I couldn’t sign as fast, nor as fluent, as he could, he became irrationally angry with me and drove me back to my campus apartment with a scowl on his face.
Ben was nice, hearing, and very shy. To this day, I don’t know if he abruptly stopped talking to me due to communication issues or out of his deep-seeded social anxiety.
Tyson was fun, but spent most of our date at a nearby diner watching football on the overhead television and ignoring me.
Andy just wanted to get laid.
So did Mark, and he tended to “target” Deaf girls because, in his words, “I hear Deaf girls are easy”.
Fast forward again, and I’m home from RIT, one credit short of getting my Associate’s, which I’m completing at home. Unfortunately, RIT abruptly canceled my financial aid, and, at 45+ grand a year in tuition (don’t even get me started on the state of higher education in this country), I couldn’t afford to go back.
At home, I happened to meet a guy on the internet. He’s very far away, but I do like him, so we will see.
That’s what dating is, right? No matter if you’re hearing or Deaf, it’s a constant game of “We will see”. Even though being unable to hear can cause excess complications when you’re searching for that One Guy/Girl, you are bound to have some very entertaining anecdotes to tell as you travels through the dating world. I know I do!
*Names changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent
