Flavor Of The Week: White Lies and a Turkish Girl

Melese. Not Milese. That was the name of my Turkish girlfriend. She told me that if I got her name wrong again she’d break up with me. I thought she was serious. What’s ironic is that the only honest thing about our relationship was that I had practiced saying her name numerous times aloud in an attempt to get it right. I met her at a dive bar in the East Village; it was almost midnight. Most of the girls clustered in groups that included a guy, so I didn’t want to approach any of them. Then she walked in alone. She had full lips and straight brown hair with blond streaks; her skin was blotched, smooth, oily; she had big, intense brown eyes and a shapely body.

Smiling broadly, I grabbed my bottle of Blue Moon and approached her. She was seated on a stool at the bar with her own bottle; it was my perfect in.

“You like Blue Moon?” I asked.

“It’s my favorite—it’s all I drink. I don’t like Coors Light or Bud Light or any of those simple beers,” she replied with a Mediterranean accent.

I asked where she was from.

“I’m Turkish” she replied proudly.

I thought quickly, and out came my first lie. “I’m Greek.”

We talked for about an hour, and she told me about the days when Turkey ruled the world under the Ottoman Empire. She complained about the European Union denying Turkey membership. She said that Europeans are afraid the Turkish people will take their jobs because they’re willing to work for less.

I asked her about Turkish food and she said, “Some people in this world eat to live; Mediterraneans live to eat.” I loved her passion for her country, and I hoped it would translate elsewhere.

I got her number and called the next day. We met up and watched Turkey beat the Dutch in the European Cup soccer tournament. She cheered Turkish goals and cursed the ref. She knew all the players’ names, positions and skill levels. She made the game fun.

We hung out all month and I found out a lot about her: She stayed in her cousin’s apartment in Hoboken; she’d been in New York for four years; she’d graduated from a small private prep school in Pennsylvania; her mother had abandoned her at a young age and her last boyfriend had been an unfaithful jerk.

I lied (again) and told her that I, too, had already finished college. She was confused, however, when she went on my Facebook page and saw a different graduation date listed. But I told her it was just a computer glitch.

I loved hanging out with her. I’d make a lame joke, and she’d laugh at how stupid it was. We held hands and leisurely walked the streets of New York. We went to free concerts in Central Park and got muddy. On the weekends, we slept in, had great sex and took breaks to feed each other mint chocolate chip ice cream and strawberries.

I lied and told her that I was an assistant financial advisor for Smith Barney. In reality, I was a summer intern. She thought that I had money because of my great job, but I was so broke that I ate my roommate’s leftovers. Sometimes the food was expired, and I didn’t realize this until I was sick.

She never found out that the apartment I was staying in wasn’t mine; it was my older brother’s. He would stay at his girlfriend’s on the nights I saw her—otherwise, I stayed on the La-Z-Boy downstairs in the cramped living room.

I let her assume that I lived in New York City permanently. But actually I had to go back to Tallahassee in the fall to finish my senior year of college.

Despite the fact that I lied to her almost constantly, I started to have real feelings for her, and I knew she felt the same way. I had no other choice but to plot my escape.

I planned to tell her that I applied for a job at the Tallahassee Democrat, the local newspaper back home. That would solve the problem of my plans to leave halfway through the month.

I’d tell her I’d received positive feedback from the newspaper, and on my last day in New York City, I was going to tell her I had to go to Tallahassee for an interview. I’d pack up everything and leave for good. Once there, I’d tell her that I got the job and that I couldn’t miss the opportunity to live out my dream of being a writer.

Begrudgingly, she’d be OK with it—I thought. She never got the chance to be OK with it. Instead, I incessantly told her that if we ever broke up, she should find a nice guy, a guy who treats her well. Annoyed and confused, she refused to speak to me. I wanted to tell her everything, to release my guilt, but I couldn’t.

When she finally spoke to me, she made it clear that what we had wasn’t a relationship; it was just a fling.  I had no choice: She gave me an out, and I had to accept it. We lost touch soon after our talk. She never found out I had been lying, but it ended badly anyway.

Daniel Vahab is the Assistant Views Section Editor for the FSView and Florida Flambeau newspapers, a freelance writer and a blogger for [hillelatfsu.com].