So I’m walking home after a night at the clubs with friends. It’s about 5AM, which means I left the clubs early. In Spain, the clubs close between 5:30 and 6:30, so I left before the club closed.

As I reach the block before mine, I’m approached by two white people. They look drunk. They try to speak to me in Spanish. “Donde esta Sepulveda?”

Me: “Excuse me? Are you British? Would you prefer to speak in English?” Let’s just say the accent and their features made me realise that they weren’t Spanish.

“Oh, thank God!” says the woman (about 30 years old) while giving me a big hug. “You speak English! You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Yes”, I answer. “Look, I’m going in that direction. I’ll show you where it is.” I only made this suggestion, because it was obvious that they were very drunk, and after explaining it twice, they still didn’t understand what I meant when I said it was only 1 block away.

So as we’re walking, a Spanish guy comes up to me and asks us all (in Spanish) for a cigarette. I’m the only one that understands him, and I happen to have cigarettes, so I give him one.

The girl looks at me kind of weird, turns to me and asks: “You’re not a drug dealer, are you?”

Apparently Marlboro Lights are now contraband.

I’m very annoyed. Playing the Good Samaritan to drunk tourists has its limits. I say: “Are you crazy? I went to Yale. My education cost $300.000. I didn’t bust my ass in school so that I could end up a common drug dealer.”

Her boyfriend, who is obviously a Ph.D. from Oxford, tells me: “Yeah, but if you spent so much on your education, that means that you need to pay it back. Maybe that’s why you’d need to sell drugs.”

My response: “The reason that you spend that amount of amount on your education is to have access to certain jobs–so that you have more options. My CV means that I can get a job paying me a decent salary without selling drugs. I have options, and I’ve done nothing to suggest that I sell drugs.”

The drunk girlfriend, obviously inspired by my indignant response: “You’re so precocious”

Me: “I don’t think you’re using that word correctly.” I walk with them to the street that they were asking for and then wish them a good night, still smiling and trying not to be too annoyed. I feel like the black yuppie guy in the movie “Crash”.

The drunk girlfriend gives me a hug.

I leave, annoyed to have a very fun night ruined by a well-intentioned, but drunk and ignorant tourist asking for directions and finding a way to stereotype me as she gives me a hug and assumes I’m a drug dealer with either a heart of gold or a built-in GPS system. It’s obvious they weren’t threatened by me–the girlfriend hugged me 4 times. But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t find a way to try to assert their racial superiority as they asked for my help. Maybe the next time I’ll just tell drunk British tourists to piss off, rather than trying to help them get home. I don’t need this. Sometimes being an asshole helps you avoid being pissed off. Say what you will about Spanish people, but in 7 years here, it took a couple of drunk Brits to assume that I was a well-intentioned drug dealer looking to help them find their way back to their hotel. If I were a drug dealer, would I really have taken the time out of my drug-dealing schedule to walk them to their block rather than service my clients? And if they really thought I was a drug dealer, why were they hugging me and following me? I just don’t get it. Sometimes racism is so ingrained that its subconconscious manifestion simply doesn’t make sense in the conscious world, not that it ever makes much sense . . . .