Tonight at dinner, my host mom started talking about the security of the apartment building we live in, and how she doesn't mind paying a little extra for the protection that 24-hour security gives; something with which I completely agree. When she started talking about how respectful the security guards here are though, I had to interject. Since tonight provided such an easy opportunity, I decided to tell her just what I think about some of the security guards that work in the building.
Most of them are great. There are three regulars, all of whom I absolutely adore. They are some of the nicest people I know here, and are always willing to help me out or entertain me with jokes. A few, however, are not so great. I'll start with William.*
When I first got here, I used to talk to a young-ish security guard named William. He gave me pointers on where to find domestic workers, and offered to put me in contact with some that he knew himself. Unfortunately – as I probably should have expected – he did not actually want my phone number to send me contact information for the people he knew, but rather to send me a series of aggressively flirtatious (I think this is a good description) texts over the next few days. The one I found the creepiest was this, which I received after having gone upstairs to my apartment (translated): "You know that you're beautiful and I would like to kiss you. If you want to, come down now." Telling him I had a boyfriend in the US (not technically true) did nothing to stop his advances. It got to the point where if I knew he was working, I didn't want to leave the apartment. And once I did, I would wait until I knew his shift was over to come back.
This sounds worse in writing – I never felt in danger at any point, it was just annoying. But he was a sub, and didn't work often, so I didn't have to deal with him too much. And once I started ignoring everything he said or texted to me, he shut up pretty quickly (at this point, if he is working, he won't even make eye contact with me as I come in or out). I haven't had any issues with him in weeks.
Juan is a different story. He began work here a couple weeks ago, right about when my roommate arrived, and seemed fine to begin with. One night last week, I came in late, and he started speaking to me in (broken) English, telling me that he was learning English from movies, would love to travel to the US someday, etc. I complimented him on his drive to learn English on his own, but when he asked me for my email address to stay in contact and practice his English, I politely made up an excuse about not having my business cards on me at the moment, and that I would give it to him later. I had no intention of giving my email address to him until I was sure that he was not going to use it for William-like goals.
Apparently however, he didn't need me to give him any information in order to contact me. When I first got here, I was asked to write down my name in the book of the apartment building's residents, and I can only assume that Juan used that to find me online, both here on my blog and on Facebook. He started by commenting on a blog post here – an innocuous comment, but one that I found disturbing given the fact that I had given him no information about myself (he has since deleted the comment). I told my host-sister Deb about it, and she advised me to talk to my host mom or the other security guards if it continued. I didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time though. After all, searching people online is far from uncommon.
But today, I received this message from him, via Facebook. No friend request, nothing, just this message:
"Brianna, here in Buenos Aires I whould love to make you love all night very sweetly and very embracing dawn and wake you up with breakfast to your bed before you return to United States and going for a walk and wacht movies in a cinema and drink and ice cream or wine together, I hope you like, and give you a bouquet of red roses, you are a romantic,, lovely, very nice and pretty, JUAN"
That, I thought, was too much. Especially given the fact that, unlike William, he is nowhere near my age. So when my host mom started talking about how respectful the guards are here, I had to let her know that it was most certainly not the case with some of them.
I'm not entirely unsurprised with what happened next. After having me translate the message into Spanish for her, she marched me down to the security desk (in the middle of dinner, in my slippers) to talk to one of the good guards then on duty. She got the number of the head of security and is calling him tomorrow, and she is determined to get Juan fired. She wanted to put in a complaint about William too. But since he is around my age... and I did give him my phone number... and he stopped bothering me once I made clear my lack of interest... I asked her not to mention him in her complaints to the head.
While I wouldn't have wanted to get Juan personally fired, I don't have a problem with him potentially losing his job over this. Using the apartment registry to search people on the internet and then send them suggestive messages is not appropriate, no matter how you look at it or what cultural differences exist between the US and Argentina. I'm leaving in a few weeks, I could deal with it, but he could easily do it again with another unsuspecting host student. Security guards are paid to make people feel safe and at ease – and he certainly wasn't encouraging either of those aims.
*all names have been changed in this post, due to the fact that the people they are concerning could be (and even likely are) reading this right now
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