I Thought It Was a Date. It Wasn’t.

A few weeks ago, I went on what was supposed to be a simple date. Nothing dramatic or risky, just lunch with someone I had been speaking with consistently for about two months.

By that point, it didn’t even feel like meeting a stranger. We had been introduced through a work connection and built what I thought was a genuine rapport. We texted regularly, exchanged voice notes, and slowly shared small pieces of our everyday lives with each other. The conversations weren’t surface-level or transactional.

We talked about work, about family, about travel, about the kind of random thoughts you only share with people you’re beginning to trust. At some point we even exchanged holiday photos, the casual kind you send when you want someone to feel included in your world.

In my mind, that kind of steady communication meant something. It suggested friendship at the very least. It suggested mutual curiosity and respect. I wasn’t imagining fireworks or a grand romance, but I did think this was someone I could know properly; especially as he had verbally expressed interest in a romantic connection. It felt grounded and human.

He happened to be white and middle-aged, visiting Africa for work, but that detail didn’t feel particularly significant to me at first. My life and career are international. I meet people from different countries and backgrounds all the time. Cross-cultural friendships are normal in my world. So I simply saw it as meeting someone I’d already spent weeks talking to.

Still, somewhere along the line, I remember asking him, half joking and half serious, whether this was some kind of African-woman fetish situation for him. I remember using the words “I'm not some ‘exotic African woman’ from Wakanda” . It was the kind of question you ask lightly but hope to hear answered clearly. He also jokingly dismissed it and said no, not at all.  “In general, I find black women attractive. And in case you're wondering (or worried), not in a fetishized way.” were his exact words.  I took him at his word. At the time, that felt fair. (Silly me. lol)

When we finally agreed to meet, the plan seemed straightforward. We agreed to meet at the hotel where he was staying, and I assumed that meant we would meet in the lobby and then head out for lunch in the resturant. That’s what most adults do on a first date. You meet in a public place, sit across from each other, talk properly, and see how you feel in each other’s presence.

When I arrived, he wasn’t in the lobby. I waited for a few minutes and called him that I was around. He came downstairs in a casual T shirt and shorts and suggested that we go upstairs.

I remember feeling a small knot of discomfort form in my stomach. It wasn’t loud enough to be an alarm, but it wasn’t comfortable either. I tried to reason it away. Maybe we’d talk briefly and then go out. Maybe I was overthinking it.

Before we could even get into the elevator, the receptionist stopped us and asked for my ID. They made a copy of it and mentioned, quite casually, that if I was staying the night there would be an additional charge.

That moment was deeply embarrassing in a way I hadn’t expected. I suddenly felt like I had been placed into a category I didn’t choose. I wasn’t being treated like someone meeting a friend or going on a date. I was being processed like a potential overnight guest. Like something transactional.

What struck me later was that the hotel staff weren’t suspicious or rude. They were simply experienced. They had likely seen this exact scenario play out many times before. A foreign man. A local woman (never mind that I wasn’t exactly local to the country) Straight to the room. To them, it wasn’t ambiguous. It was routine. I was the only one who still thought this was just lunch.

Upstairs was where the first major red flag revealed itself. He leaned in to hug me while saying “now let me welcome you properly”. I hugged him back. 

Then he leaned in to kiss me. It wasn’t tentative or gentle or the kind of first kiss where you read each other’s cues. It was sudden and invasive, a full tongue-in-mouth kiss that caught me completely off guard. I froze more out of shock than anything else. I hadn’t mentally or emotionally arrived at that place yet.

I was still mentally processing what had just happened but doing my best to maintain a cool exterior so I sat down and we talked for a while. The strange thing is that the conversation itself wasn’t shallow. We talked about politics, about our individual lives, about our adventures and the different experiences that had shaped us. On the surface, it sounded like two adults having an intelligent, thoughtful exchange. If someone had overheard us, they would probably have assumed we were old friends catching up.

And yet, even while we were talking, I couldn’t shake the sense that the conversation was secondary for him, almost like a formality. Like something he was willing to tolerate rather than genuinely interested in. It felt as though he would have preferred that we skip all of it and move straight to sex. The talking did not feel like a connection.

We had been talking for more than an hour and all I had been offered as a guest was a bottle of water. At some point, I asked him if he wanted to go out for Lunch. He said yes and I stood up to go to the door. Then he leaned in for another awkward kiss.

When I didn’t respond the way he expected, he said, almost lightly, that he had been expecting more enthusiasm.

That word left a sour taste in my mouth. Enthusiasm.

It implied that something had already been agreed to. That my presence there meant I was supposed to be eager. That he had earned a certain level of access simply by virtue of the time we had spent talking.

It wasn’t a request. It was an expectation.

And the more I reflected on it later, the more I realized how deeply that expectation was shaped by race and privilege.

Because I kept asking myself a simple question. If I had been a white woman meeting him for the first time, would he have behaved that way?

Would he have invited her straight to his hotel room instead of planning an actual date? Would he have assumed immediate physical access? Would he have shoved his tongue into her mouth and then criticized her lack of enthusiasm?

I don’t believe he would have.

With a white woman, he would likely have moved more carefully. He would have paced himself. He would have been more respectful of boundaries, more conscious of how he might be perceived. He would have treated her like an equal whose comfort mattered.

With me, he assumed availability.

That difference isn’t accidental. It’s classic white privilege. It’s the unspoken belief that your whiteness, your passport, your relative financial advantage give you leverage. It’s the assumption that African women will be more accommodating, more grateful, easier to impress, less likely to say no.

Even when someone appears polite, those assumptions can still be present. And to be fair, he was polite. He wasn’t aggressive or loud. He spoke gently. He smiled. He offered water and gave me chocolates he had clearly bought at the airport. But politeness and good intentions does not cancel out entitlement. You can think you’re a decent person and still be moving through the world with unexamined privilege that harms others.

By the time we eventually went downstairs for lunch, I felt lighter simply because we were back in public. I could breathe again. We talked some more, and then I left.

Looking back now, I also have to take some responsibility for my own expectations in that moment. Not responsibility for his behavior, because that was entirely his choice, but responsibility for how long I stayed after my instincts had already told me something wasn’t right. 

If I’m being honest, I feel a little embarrassed that I didn’t simply walk out after that first awkward kiss. Everything in me had gone still. My body had registered the discomfort immediately. Yet I stayed. I kept talking. I tried to smooth it over and be polite, to avoid making things awkward, to preserve the version of him I thought I knew from our conversations. I think part of me didn’t want to admit that I had misread the situation so badly, that the connection I believed we had built wasn’t what I thought it was. So I lingered, hoping it would somehow reset into normalcy. 

That instinct to be accommodating, to not “cause a scene,” to give someone the benefit of the doubt even when they’ve already crossed a boundary, is something many of us women are socialized into. Still, when I replay it now, I wish I had trusted myself enough to stand up, say no, and leave immediately. Not because I owed him anything, but because I owed myself that clarity and that protection.

After that day, the steady rhythm of our conversations faded. The texts slowed down. The voice notes stopped. It became clear that what I had interpreted as friendship had, for him, been something else entirely. Once it was obvious that I wasn’t going to play the role he had imagined, the connection no longer served a purpose.

That realization hurt, but it also clarified everything.

Because real friendships don’t disappear just because you didn’t sleep with someone.

Only transactions do.

That experience forced me to confront a pattern I’ve seen too often but hadn’t fully named. There are men who come to Africa not simply to work or travel, but quietly expecting intimacy to be easier here. Expecting women to be more accessible. Expecting their money and foreignness to carry weight. They frame it as preference or admiration, but beneath that language is a belief that women here should be more available to them.

When desire is built on inequality, it isn’t romance. It’s exploitation dressed up nicely.

Africa is not a playground, and African women are not experiences to collect. No amount of charm or “good intentions” changes the fact that privilege shapes behavior. If your interest in someone is rooted in what you think you can easily get from them, that isn’t connection.

It’s entitlement.

And sometimes, it’s simply sex tourism with better manners.