Torch Song Trilogy

Two things I learned about food last night:

1) Vanilla beans were at one point prized like diamonds, and those who knew the location of a bountiful harvest protected it through subterfuge and/or violence. The things are also still insanely expensive – the bean dangling from my roommate's blowtorch (she uses them in crème brulee) costs around 13 bucks.
2) The possibly Egyptian guy at my sandwich bodega is madly in love with me. I know this because when I asked him for two hardboiled eggs, he looked away dramatically and mumbled, “Of course my love.”

I've long suspected this. Sometimes he gazes at me intently while giving me a lingering handshake, oblivious to other customers when they approach the register. Sometimes he has this fluttering unwillingness to look me in the eyes. Also, it takes him 10 minutes to make my sandwich even when there's no one else in the store. At first I took this for cultural  unhurriedness – like maybe in Egypt slow sandwich making is akin to the leisurely consumption of tea – but in retrospect it might be part of a plan to keep me around longer. Which is fine, because I can catch up on US Magazine, and learn that British GQ has just named Jon Hamm its “International Man of the Year”.

Anyway, by itself, a gay man being interested in you is obviously no big deal – I'm generally flattered-but-not-interested (but-secretly-wishing-I-was-interested-because-it's-not-like-women-are-beating-down-my-door).  But it's tough to know how to handle

1) a gay man
2) from a foreign country
3) who makes your sandwiches
4) and speaks limited English
5) and might even be considered a little odd back home, gay or straight, though maybe the oddness is partly due to being gay in a place like Egypt...
6) who's actually infatuated with you

Ultimately, this is also no big deal. True, after he finished making last night's roast beef & mozz hero, he presented it to me lovingly and pronounced it “very firm”. But I think he was just proud of the sandwich, because when he handed over the hardboiled eggs, he made no sexual innuendos, and everyone knows how important a man's eggs are to his sexual satisfaction.

It's just that it's not a good idea to avoid addressing any lingering situation, and I don't know how to say flattered-but-not-interested in Egyptian Arabic.