better than hamlet

Shame, shame, shame

2006-11-01T12:43:00.000+01:00

I can't help but point to this, my article!. ...Soon, soon, a BTH post. But something exciting needs to happen first. Sadly, recently it's just been metro, boulot, dodo.

Magnificent Jules Joffrin: a sentimental post for a rainy Paris evening

2006-10-06T19:40:00.000+02:00

Some time ago, I had a dream that put me on a podium before a sea of adoring faces. They had all gathered at some nondescript park – there was grass but there were no trees. The only moments I remembered upon waking were the two exclamations that ended my oration, “I love you all! … AND I LOVE THIS CITY!”

This last phrase was accompanied by a sweeping gesture, arms extended from head to waist, elbows awkwardly locked at 135 degrees. The crowd cheered and applauded, and I thanked them, thank you, thank you.

My subconscious apparently thinks very highly of me.

But it’s no coincidence that I made this dream in Paris (sic). My love for this city lives on, and I really do love Parisians, although it’s a love of the unrequited variety.

--

It had been a rough day. (So many of these posts start off that way.)

Defeated after trying to adjust to a new work environment, I abandoned my Seat Vulture prowess for a more scientific approach to the metro. Research has shown that if a packed train arrives after a moderate wait, another will follow close behind, almost empty.

And so as the quai filled up with rush hour commuters, I sat down. Since time had taken a toll on the row of conjoined seats, I planted my feet. The seat slanted slightly downwards. Annoying, yes, but I stayed there as a train came, filled up, and left. The only people left on the quai were of the drunken and/or crazy variety. I listened to the tunnel and ignored them.

Soon a woman in heels came to join me, waddling unsteadily down the quai. She plopped down hard into the seat next to me, sending a jolt through the row of chairs, thereby dumping me onto the floor of the metro.

I was quite surprised to find myself, in business attire and holding a book nonetheless, sitting on the filthy floor. My stupid black synthetic pants had seemed slippery against the plastic, but I hadn’t realized to what extent I needed to hold on for dear life. In an instant, my social status had been lowered to that of the drunk and/or crazy. One of them sent me a friendly smile and nodded as I clamored back into the seat of doom.

The woman didn’t so much as glance in my flailing direction. Had she seen me sit there as the train pulled away, and dismissed me as some thing that was already unstable, in spite of her earthquake-inducing grace? Or had she just not realized that she caused my fall?

In any case, I hated her. So I glared at her while she studied her electricity bill. Her bare neck had pockmarks all over it. Bare neck – maybe she wasn’t French. I readjusted my own scarf, which is key to fitting in whenever the temperature drops below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. She didn’t know. I started to forgive her. The next train came, empty, my mood improved only slightly, and the ride was uneventful.

--

Minutes later, I trudged up the steps at Jules Joffrin, a diversion from my normal path. It’s a magnificent place where everything is always right for me, an instant cure for a bad mood. (Even while walking there once after a sobbing incident, my eyes all swollen and red, a man stopped me to say, “But, frankly, you have some beautiful eyes!”)

The area around Jules Joffrin has never done me wrong, and I’m convinced it never will.

I’m convinced that it’s perfect. Every time. Last night the setting sun cast a warm glow on the Mairie. Children laughed from the small carousel. The fall wind pulled the smell of cooking crepes in my direction. With Nutella. Fall is here, and the air feels cleaner. I clicked by with purpose – I was heading to the market, rue du Poteau.

I always walk on the right side of the street. First: shopping baskets, cheap pots and pans, rickety furniture. I step aside to avoid the man who still asks for money, and a small caress if possible. I continue, turn sideways to get around the mother breaking a pain au chocolat between her whining offspring.

Roasting chicken, I wonder what it tastes like. All sorts of meat in parts, no saran wrap, no clean white Styrofoam packages. Just piles of red meat, and plucked, skinny chickens hanging from their feet. A more realistic look at what’s for dinner.

Next: handmade pasta on display in greens and creams and salmon, stacks of pasta boxes in blue. The French clucking their tongues against teeth while choosing a wine to complement their meal.

And then, I cross the street past the knick knack stand to an explosion of color: vegetables, fruits, in giant piles, brightly lit in the fading sunlight. My favorite time of day to be at the market: dusk. The odor from the fish market comes in waves from across the way. The smell lingers even on days when the fish are put away.

I buy vegetables without any idea what I’ll make for dinner. I just love to have them weighed and pay so little. Green beans: 36 cents. A squat yellow pepper: 42 cents. Four tomatoes on the vine: 75 cents. Here the cucumber tastes more like cucumber. The tomatoes smell more like tomatoes. There’s no other way to say this. And here, I love this city.

I listened to the music coming in my headphones and heard one line, again and again.

Everything will change.

And so it will, I thought. Here I am, twenty-six years old, living in this Paris, in these months, in this time. Then I return again to the States. And when I leave this time, I don’t know when I’ll be back.

I wonder what I’ll be pointing to when I’m sixty and I say, and this is where I used to buy the vegetables. And this is where Nicolas and I used to meet to drink a glass of something or other. And this is where I used to walk. And this is where I used to love.

Paris is a museum, Nicolas announced one night.

He meant that people come to Paris to see what once was great. He was talking about art and the art scene and tourists and where it all happened. And it’s not happening anymore, he said. And it’s true, to some extent. Picasso isn’t stepping out of his ratty apartment to buy bread. Hemingway isn’t walking through parks to avoid the smells of food.

But the woman next to me is examining each avocado and chatting idly with the fruit seller about what her children did over the summer. And the vegetable guy is calling out for people to buy his mushrooms. And Nico is at the library waiting to come out. And they will be here tomorrow, and they will be here next day.

So this is my museum, I think, and I am like a tourist. I must try to record everything, and come back to see what once was great.

Faking it French: the pharmacy

2006-09-28T16:53:00.000+02:00

On my walk to the pharmacy, my good ear listened to this man playing from his balcony while the woman danced.

The minute I woke up, I knew I was in for trouble.

I scratched my ear. Nothing. I yawned forcibly. Nothing. I scratched my ear even harder. Nope. I couldn’t hear a thing. My ear was useless to me, totally stopped up. Which meant I’d have to take a trip to a French pharmacy.

Generally speaking, when it comes to all things France, I do pretty well. My accent is good enough to fool most people into thinking I’m French…which leads to awkward situations.

Taking a cab last week, I chatted with the driver, who was ridiculously upset to learn that I didn’t know what terminal I was going to. “I’d guess Terminal 2, because that’s where most of my flights leave from,” I ventured. I didn’t really care. I’d get to the airport and figure things out; the plane wouldn’t leave for another three hours. “But! What! Look at your ticket!” I don’t have a ticket, it’s an e-ticket. “Look at your confirmation!” That’s on the computer. …After all this, he asked where I was going. (To the U.S.)

“Oh, so you speak Roast Beef?” Yes, I do. “Well, it’s a must,” he said, “because no American ever bothers to learn French, no no! You must speak English to travel over there!”

And so the debate kicks off in my head. I’m flattered and proud that this guy thinks I’m French. So I could either a) let the lie continue and pretend to be French, or b) be a diplomat, tell him I’m American, thereby breaking every stereotype he’s ever had about the United States, give him new insight that would trickle down through his social network, defusing general hatred toward Americans, and finally thwart plans for what would become WWIII.

Faced with this kind of choice, I almost always keep the lie alive. I am French! (“Shame!” says Nicolas, when I asked him what to do.) ...The point of all this is to let you know that my French is pretty good.

Except when I'm confronted with brand new situations, like leaky plumbing, needing to get stitches removed, and, well, anything sickly.

As I brushed my teeth and prepared for departure, I debated how to go about my pharmacy visit. French pharmacies are not like CVS – you can’t just waltz in and browse the gamut of home healing products in peace. (Unless, of course, you’re looking for miracle cellulite cream, sunscreen or tampons.)

If you have a problem, even a common cold, you must describe your symptoms to the pharmacist, who will then disappear to the cabinets and come back with ten products, two of which you actually need. (No, I am really sure I do not want nose spray, thank you.)

My problem today was mostly likely a build-up of ear wax. I knew how to say wax, no problem. ...But wait, was that just candle wax? I certainly didn’t want her to think that I’d gotten candle wax in my ear. So I would just say, my ear is stopped up. But... stopped up? I knew how to say that my nose was stopped up, but maybe the same vocabulary didn’t apply to ears.

My ear is blocked. Ahem. I can’t hear. ...I can’t hear because my ear is blocked. So I need a little…?

That’s my secret language skill at work. When vocabulary goes missing, just describe the situation, and then trail off. The interlocutor always fills in the blank with the necessary vocabulary. Here, it’s ear drops.

(As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that perhaps I would save myself time and fretting if I just bought a dictionary.)

I arrived at the pharmacy, walked up to the counter, and confidently said, “Hello. When I woke up this morning, I couldn’t hear. My ear is blocked. So I’m looking for a little…?”

She just blinked at me and waited. Crap!

“My ear is blocked so I need a little…something to unblock!”

She nodded and came back with a product called ODI Soft. It sounded like deodorant, but she told me that it was made from marine products, and would dissolve human wax.

Missing vocabulary: cérumen. Sounds like "human wax." How beautiful.

Once back home, I read the box and was immediately frightened. ODI Soft. Solution for auricular pulverization.

I would like to direct your attention at this time to the word PULVERIZATION.

Put the bottle’s arm in a horizontal position and introduce it gently into the ear, holding the aerosol straight. Press down for 1 or 2 seconds. That’s right. I was supposed to gently introduce that thing into my ear, and then blast it with an aerosol spray.

All sorts of cautions from every doctor I’ve ever visited started ringing in my one good ear. Don’t ever use q-tips! Don’t stick your fingers in your ear! Get the water out after you swim! Nothing goes in the ear smaller than an elbow! (That was actually my 6th grade science teacher.)

Though none of this advice applies directly to aerosol sprays, I couldn’t possibly imagine that a full, two-second blast could be good for the ear.

But I couldn’t hear anything.

I finally rationalized that the French must use this thing, and that it would have been discontinued if they all sprayed away their eardrums. So I pulled my hair back, stuck the horizontal arm in my ear, and sprayed, just a little.

Nothing happened. I still couldn’t hear, but it didn’t hurt or anything. So I put the thing back up to my ear and blasted away.

The power of the aerosol was great. It exploded all over my ear, my head, the bathroom mirror and sink. And my ear was full of foamy stuff. So while hanging my head sideways, I mopped up the mess and hoped that the marine products would be good for my skin, too.

Two minutes later I could hear again. So I’m stashing away the rest of ODI Soft and hope they won’t confiscate it at customs.

--
Fifi and Mme Baustinette update:
While I wrote this today, Mme Baustinette watched, at extreme volume only tolerated by the nearly deaf, what seemed like a hilarious comedy show that revolved around a man who stuttered. A lot. She later left for 20 minutes without Fifi, who cried and cried and whined and cried for the duration. Upon returning, she cried for having left her dog. "Did you miss maman? Did you miss your maman? You maman missed you. Your maman will never leave you again, Fifififififi."

On a sad note, I think it was the earplugs that caused the wax build-up.

Rush Hour

2006-09-19T23:54:00.000+02:00

Short update on the Fifi situation. I don't know how to say "earplug" in French. The words "ear" and "plug" don't quite make sense when combined. I couldn't find them at Monoprix, but couldn't ask the equivalent of, "Excuse me, do you know where the ear socket is?" ...I will investigate, and maybe look into nose plugs, too. As I type, Fifi's smell is wafting in through the window. I'm not kidding. I can't wait until it's cold, for two reasons: Scarves and lessened Fifi smell. Now onto the post.

It had been a long day, I had a ways to ride, and it was rush hour.

These three facts combined meant my competitive pulse was raging by the time the metro pulled into the station. I wanted a seat, bad. But when the train pulled into the station, my two competitors turned out to be two elderly Chinese tourists. Disappointed, I realized I couldn’t fight them.

Okay, so that’s a lie. I was definitely going to fight them. Rules are rules, and I didn’t think these guys were over 75.

But when the doors opened, the two of them bumped me out of the way and were seated before I could even spot the empty seats. The whole thing played out like musical chairs – there was just one person left standing in the car, and that person was me. And that person was sad.

After a few stops, though, a noticed a vacant seat. The vulture standing next to it apparently didn’t want it, so I rushed over and sank down into the spot.

Just a few seconds later, I realized why the woman didn’t want the seat. No sooner than I sat, the eleven year old next to me moved uncomfortably and groaned.

A giant fart sound escaped the seat. I was upset, but I didn’t want to stand.

His classmate started laughing, and the boy complained, “Stop laughing! My stomach really hurts. Aie!”

As he let out that last cry, he jumped again. Again, a loud fart.

I waited for the smell, but it never came. I figured the wind from the tunnel was sucking the smell out the window. So I kept my seat.

“Stop laughing, Thomas, my stomach really hurts, it’s not funny.”

Again.

But wait.

The third sound, even as I tried not to notice, sounded strangely similar to the first two. The woman across from me and I exchanged a small smile.

“Are you studying music in school?” I asked them.

“Yes, those are such charming melodies,” she said.

The boys looked uncomfortable. And then they produced the Fart Machine.

“We have tricked you! It is again the great Fart Machine! We are the kings of the Fart Machine on the metro!”

The Fart Machine punctuated the proclamation with another mighty noise. The passengers in the car smiled very small Parisian smiles.

Until the announcement came:

“Hello, passengers, I have to things to tell you, so let’s hope I can remember them both. First and foremost, the next station, that is, the station Abbesses, is closed for renovation. So if you were hoping to descend there, well… you have no luck. Secondly, appearing on my list of things to tell you, on which there are two items, is that the elevators at Lamarck-Caulaincourt are broken.”

The elevators at Lamarck-Caulincourt are broken. The smiles vanished from the passengers’ faces as they remembered the sign at the bottom of the stairs: Warning! There are 112 steps.

Ouch.

Madame Baustinette: the lunacy, the dilemma.

2006-09-16T16:39:00.000+02:00

A photo of a blurry picture of the dog downstairs. The photo is taped right above Madame Baustinette's doorknob. The dog's leash sits on the floor below, and the dog's smell can be enjoyed anywhere in an approximate one-mile range of this apartment.

7:30 a.m., I discover that Madame Baustinette is hard of hearing. Very hard of hearing. The television downstairs is blaring at ridiculous volume. I can't make out the words through the floor, but I hear the rolling intonation of a French newscast.

I debate what to do. Should I go ask her to turn it down? I mull this over for a good hour and a half before the TV shuts off. And then I hear it.

9 a.m., The dog's name is Fifi! Madame Baustinette coos the name again and again. I sit up in bed. "Fifi, Fifi, my little cauliflower, would you like to go for a walk? Do you like to walk?" Do you like to smell so bad your odor drifts up through the windows upstairs?

Fifi was the name of the mad aunt's dog from my French textbook in high school. Tante Georgette carried her little Fifi everywhere with her, and obsessed over her. I didn't realize that my French textbook would ever prove so accurate. (As I type this, Mme Baustinette is saying, "Fifi, Fifi, not the drapes. Not the drapes. It's not possible! It's not true! Good, my little love.

3:30 p.m., I come home and Mme Baustinette is blocking the doorway, staring listlessly at the bottom step. "Excuse me," I say, and she jumps ten feet. "Oh, la la! You scare me!" (She didn't hear me coming, even with the grocery bags and boots.) She turns, still standing in the doorway. "Yes?"

"Euh... I just wanted to get by. I live upstairs."

"Oh!"

Nothing. "So, could you please move over a little?"

"Oh! Yes!"

As I set off into the hall, she called after me, "Wait! Wait! Mademoiselle -- not without the light!" It was bright daylight, but I said thank you anyway as she turned on the light.

-----

...After three mornings of super-loud television, I don't know what to do. Should I a) walk downstairs and ask her to turn it down, or b) suck it up and buy some earplugs?

Apartment Investigation

2006-09-14T12:51:00.000+02:00

I walked into the apartment at Rue Girardon with that sinking feeling of showing up for an Internet date. Things were almost, but not quite as they had seemed on the World Wide Web.

The tall, dark and handsome face from the Internet was in reality pockmarked and yellow-teethed. I vaguely remembered selecting a cute thing from the masses (I hurriedly selected an apartment during last quarter’s finals), but alas, I had been too reliant on the reality of photography, whose tricks can lend a certain beauty to cheapness.

Unforeseen Item #1: Martha Stewart’s rage

As Nelly chatted away on her cell phone, I toured the apartment (which was in reality about 30 percent smaller than it appeared in the photos). It dawned on me that I hadn’t seen any close-up shots.

People like to post close-up shots if it’s the Real Deal. They want you to know that they really do have flawless skin, or that they really did buy Versace throw pillows for the bedroom. Had I closely inspected the photos, I would have perhaps noticed that the chic, modern décor was Ikea quality. I’m no stranger to Ikea. The apartment seemed to be in good condition. I signed here and here like Nelly said.

But a closer inspection came -- after locking myself out and then eventually settling in. The photographs from the Internet are decidedly dated. Many of the apartment’s nicer items have proved to be fragile. The bed groans like a toad might. In low, enthusiastic hiccups. The hollowed stair to the bathroom (see Item #2) bends under my weight.

Worst, though, are the gifts left by previous tenants not depicted in the pictures. Bits of dinner stuck to pots. Crusted toothpaste runoff on a mug in the bathroom. Half-emptied sacks of rice and bottles of soy sauce. And how could I forget the chunks of dismembered cockroach scattered here and there. (There is bug spray under the sink, my roommate points out.)

Solution: It’s called a cleaning and organizing rampage. Trinkets and other useless items have been stored away (see Item #4) to restore that cleaner, modern style. I can now sit on the couch without feeling itchy.

Unforeseen Item #2: The Vacuum Cleaner.

Found it located in a secret panel under the step. Ridiculous, maybe, but convenient.

Unforeseen Item #3: The Neighbor

Coming into my building, one thing is immediately obvious: the neighbor’s dog must be perpetually wet, and constantly rubbing itself into the wall and stairs. This is the only viable explanation for the odor from the hallway.

I leave in the morning. Dog. I come home in the afternoon. Dog. I step out in the evening. Dog and chicken dinner. Oh, and cigarette smoke.

I have yet to see the dog in question (maybe it’s ten dogs?), nor its owner. But I have been able to deduce by peeking through the neighbor’s window that the smell of the dog has driven the neighbor to depression. The towering stacks of knickknacks, magazines, gardening tools and plastic dolls suggest a serious lack of motivation to clean.

Breakthrough thought as I write this – perhaps the dog isn’t wet all the time. Perhaps it’s never been wet! This would explain so much. The woman doesn’t have the will to clean, not even her dog. The dog has smelled so bad for so long that her olfactory senses have been dulled over the year, and she can’t figure out why her neighbors look at the dog with disdain. They must be jealous of its cuteness, she thinks. (The leash sitting out in the hall could only fit a small yipper of a dog.)

Solution: Undetermined.

Unforeseen Item #4: The Ironing Board.

Found it located under the bed, whose mattress flips up to the sky to reveal a hidden storage space.

Unforeseen Item #5: The Children’s Crusade

After a bout of cleaning I slumped onto the couch, which is also my bed. I was jetlagged and desperate for a nap.

It was at that moment that the sounds reached my ears: the shrill voices of a children’s playground. My building is surrounded by them. Children. Shrieking. The school is just below us on the hill, and a park sits on the other side of the building, hosting a younger collection of hysterical tots.

Solution: Undetermined.

Unforeseen Item #6: The Army of One

After a failed attempt to shut away the children’s cries by shutting the window, I retuned to the couch to nap, finally. I happened to glance toward the window. There, on the rail that prevents me from falling, was the world’s fattest pigeon. Staring at me. Two inches from being inside my apartment.

I stared back.

Through the jetlag haze emerged the possibility that the pigeon might actually decide to come in. That my gaze could be misconstrued as inviting. That he knew this was a good spot for cockroach bites. Visions of a crazed pigeon slamming its body into the walls of my newly cleaned apartment danced in my head.

“Absolutely not.” I said loudly and sternly to the fat, fat pigeon.

He just looked at me.

So I stood up. A challenge.

The pigeon ruffled its feathers.

I took a step toward the window, and he flew off in a flutter.

The windows haven’t been opened since. But I’ve seen him outside, on the roof opposite my window, watching. And every time I glare at him, he flits away. I wonder if the dog lady downstairs is feeding him. I will investigate.

(Solution: Undetermined.)

Paris loves me, this I know. For its people tell me so.

2006-09-12T01:07:00.000+02:00

Paris initiates its newcomers with small pokes to the gut. It’s the city’s way of making sure its inhabitants are tough enough to walk the streets.

And so it was no surprise that my cab driver, despite my urging and repeated map-pointing, refused to believe that I could be dropped off at my front door.

“It’s complicated, the eighteenth! Too many stairs, not enough streets. That is not a street, it is a stair! So I drop you here. It is here where we say good-bye.”

Here was at the bottom of one of Montmartre’s steep, long staircases. I complained that I had a lot of bags with me, and told him that even though I have giant muscles, the bags were still cumbersome for someone of my frame. I begged him to take me to the top.

“Mademoiselle, it is not possible.”

And so I found myself standing at the bottom of the stairs, strapping one bag on my left shoulder, one bag on my right, and carrying two others in each hand. I started climbing. Slowly.

Hurried pedestrians ran down the stairs, huffing and glaring when they reached the barricade that was me. I tried, in my own jet-lagged way, to give them sympathy-inducing smiles, but they simply muttered “oh la la” and “c’est pas possible!” before ducking under the rail to the other side of the stairway. (Not one of the strapping young French men offered to help me with my bags.)

Wheezing a little, I reached the top and dropped the two heavier bags.

“Hello?”

I looked up. Some random French woman had paused mid-step and mid-phone call and was speaking to me in English.

“Hello.”

“Do you look for Rue Girardon?”

I was indeed looking for Rue Girardon, the street home to my new apartment. If this woman knew this, she was, logically…my guardian angel. I was excited. I always knew my guardian angel would be a crazy French lady with her neck wrapped in a giant summer scarf.

“I am Nelly,” she said, which roughly translates to “not your guardian angel.” Nelly was my new landlord, the woman I was supposed to meet at the apartment. I explained to her that my plane had been a few minutes late, and that I’d had some arguments with my cab driver.

“Oh, you speak French,” she pouted, and with that, she was off, leaving me to (attempt) to scurry behind her. She told the caller on the other end of her cell phone about how she had given up and had been leaving the apartment when she found the American girl in the road.

She was leaving?! This meant, had I shown up five minutes later, or had my cab driver dropped me off anywhere else, I would have missed her altogether. I would have arrived at my apartment (on top of the freaking hill nonetheless) to find no one. Apparently the average patience of French landlords is approximately 15 minutes. Not very good for a guardian angel.

In the apartment, Nelly was in a hurry (once she got off the phone).

“Sign here, and here, and give me the money, I go, and then you explore the apartment!”

That’s when I told her: I didn’t really have any money. I was worried about being late, so I came directly to the apartment. (And with good reason, apparently.) So she offered to drive me to the bank. She thrust a key in my hand, locked the door, took me to her car, drove me to a bank, counted my money, and sped off.

Wait, where was I? What time was it on my body clock?

Before leaving the apartment, I’d dumped all useful things out of my bag: cell phone, map, phone numbers, address of apartment.

I wandered around for a bit, but by the time I found the apartment 30 minutes later, I had realized something else: I didn’t know how to unlock the door. I tried and tried, but the door wouldn’t give. Not even close. French locks are tricky, and generally speaking, initiate some sort of freaky Pavlovian response in me that makes me have to pee (1).

My first thought was that I needed Nicolas and Chris. They could help me. So I headed back down the hill to find a café (with a bathroom), an internet café (to retrieve their numbers), a tabac (for a phone card) and a pay phone (to call the boys).

As I walked down the hill, it dawned on me. Paris was giving me my first test. And I was passing! I was locked out, sure, but I had all the tools to help myself. Or, more precisely, to find people to help me.

Chris picked up the phone, and shortly after informing me that he was naked (it’s good to be back), told me that I should give the key another try. Try for ten more minutes, he said, and if that didn’t work, he’d get dressed and come meet me for coffee.

Genius. The ten minutes worked. The door, after much cursing on my part and slamming of my body weight into it, finally yielded. I was home and could begin exploring, as Nelly said. And in any Parisian apartment, there’s much to be discovered.

--

(1) While studying abroad in 2001, I lived in a “chambre de bonne” – maid’s quarters – on the eighth floor of a building with no elevator. There was no bathroom in my room. The shower was in my host family’s apartment on the third floor of a different building, and my toilet was behind a locked door on the hallway of my floor. So whenever I had to use the restroom, I had to fight with a skeleton key and lock. Now add the complication of a broken light bulb in the WC itself and a timed light in the hallway. That’s right – hit the light and HURRY or else I’d be stuck in the dark. (Cue: somewhat traumatizing third grade memories of Bloody Mary.)

The moral of the story is this: over the year, my body learned that the sound of a key in the door meant that I was about to be able to pee. So now, when I unlock any door, I run for the bathroom. …Is this too private to share on a blog?

What's the opposite of Blackout?

2006-09-06T01:32:00.000+02:00

The obvious answer to the question is Wite-Out, that gloppy liquid that smears over mistakes in a term papers. But let's be honest: the error is still usually visible, and the pen ink looks sloppy and shaky when written on unevenly applied Wite-Out. The future reader of that paper is going to think that the writer is either a) sloppy and lazy, or b) an environmentalist. Any way you cut it, Wite-Out is no good.

Wait -- that's not what this is all about. (Though, I'll tell you that as a one-time sloppy environmentalist, I tried to disguise my hand-writing as typeface, quite unsuccessfully.)

It's one year and one day after my last post, "Blackout," on Better Than Hamlet.

One year later, I find myself 26 years old, about 7 pounds heavier, and living with a boyfriend and two cats in Chicago, IL. I've spent a draining year chasing stories and learning about things like "winter" and "layering."

But Friday, I'll be back on a plane to Paris, France for a four-month stint with a news wire service. It never felt right to continue BTH while in Chicago...but I'm hoping Paris will provide me with four more months of post-worthy shenanigans. See you on the other side of the pond.

(PS. Life update for old readers -- While visiting Paris in the spring with my New Boyfriend, I ran into Mme Monnaie on the street, who asked about Matt. The lie continued, even while standing next to New Boyfriend, who was justifiably upset that I didn't take the time to break the age-old myth about my love affair with Matt. Later, I snuck up my old stairwell to show NB where I lived, and found that the doorknob to the old apartment had fallen off. Through the hole in the door, I discovered that I'd left my favorite dish towel behind! Other than that, no big news. Dishes, generally speaking, are still a major problem.)

Blackout

2005-09-05T22:31:00.000+02:00

Paris and I are splitting up, and it’s breaking my heart.

Here, there is no clear line between day and night, but the walking pace slows from noon to two. I know what’s in season because it’s cheap and displayed on my vegetable vendor’s right. The lights at Beaubourg and Sebastopol are timed so that if you walk fast enough, you can make it. The place with the best baguettes is closed on Thursdays. If you need anything at all past one on a Sunday, you just can’t have it.

The guy on the corner of Rambuteau doesn’t ask for money, but he spits at your shoes. The newspaper vendor by the Pompidou is missing a thumb. At the late-night snack shop on my street, you’ll get a free piece of candy if you smile at the boy behind the counter.

The Four is the hottest line, and the Twelve is too loud for a walkman. Connections are never the length they appear to be on the map. The man who sings at Concorde is always flat; no one sings on the One.

Hard-boiled eggs with salt are displayed for the taking on just about every coffee bar in the city. Incidentally, coffee is cheaper if drunk while standing. It’s customary to throw your sugar wrapper on the floor. These are only swept up at close. And coffee is espresso.

If you don’t say bonjour, you won’t get served, and if you don’t say au revoir, the server will talk about you once you’re gone. Generally speaking, menus are for tourists. You know what you want when you head to the café; they all serve the same things.

Flowers are for Sunday lunches and wine is for Saturday dinners.

My apartment faces west, opens to a wasteland in the middle of the Marais. I can see the Pompidou, and the remnants of some former neighborhood that I like to call medieval France. A black cat naps in the middle of the grass, but only from six to eight. When the windows are open and the people across the way lean out their balconies, their conversations echo in my living room.

Tonight, the echo is deeper; my apartment is empty. Nicolas is on his way to help me with my things.

Wednesday I'll fly back to the States, my skin still steeped in Paris’s filth and splendor, but slowly, it will wash away. Time to move to a new city, start a new career, and look forward to my first visit back. I’ve already booked my ticket.

(Stay tuned for tales from Chicago...)

Stitches

2005-09-01T19:55:00.000+02:00

Only as she was telling me to put my clothes back on did the nurse think to ask me a question. “You are going to be here in ten days, aren’t you?” No, I told her, I was just in Atlanta for the week. She shrugged and told me to go to my neighborhood urgent care center in ten days to have the stitches taken out.

My neighborhood urgent care center? Did France even have those?

When I got back to Paris the following Monday, I came into the office with two questions ready for my colleagues. How do you say ‘stitches’, and where do I go to get them removed?

The answer came from Kamila: “Les points de suture. The hospital.”

The hospital. I apparently didn’t have any choice in the matter. If I waited too long, my mom said, the skin would grow over the stitches. Gross. I looked up the hospital nearest to my house and set out on the tenth day.

On my way to the hospital, I worked out the speech in my head. I reviewed my medical and stitches-related vocabulary, and thought of the various ways the conversation could play out. I should have known better. My fictive conversations never come out accurate.

I got to the hospital, and walked in. Jackpot: a reception desk, and just the place to put my speech into action.

Emily: Hello.
Receptionist: Hello.
Emily: I don’t know if I’m in the right place for this, but I have three stitches in my back, and I need to get them removed.
Receptionist: Do you have a prescription?

And with that, my imagined conversation was already thrown off the mark. I tried again.

Emily: No, you don’t understand, I have stitches. I need them taken out.
Receptionist: Do you have a prescription?
Emily: What?
Receptionist: You need a prescription to have stitches taken out.
Emily: No I don’t.
Receptionist: Yes you do.
Emily: Really?
Receptionist: It’s the law.

Emily: Well I don’t have a prescription.
Receptionist: Then there is nothing we can do for you. Have a good day.
Emily: Wait! My skin will grow and cover my stitches!
Receptionist: Then I suggest you get a prescription.

Emily: Okay, but is it okay if it’s in English?
Receptionist: I don’t understand.
Emily: I got the stitches in the United States, and so the prescription will be in English.
Receptionist: (in English) Help!

This, too, was particularly unexpected. Then the reference became clear.

Emily: Excuse me?
Receptionist: Help! I need somebody! Not just anybody!
Emily: Umm…
Receptionist: (in English) Okay, I do it. Come with me. (in French) I’ll take out the stitches, but I’ll have to do it for free, so there will be no record of your being here.
Emily: That’s nice of you to offer. But shouldn’t a nurse take out the stitches?
Receptionist: I am the nurse.

Sure enough, the receptionist/nurse led me past the waiting room into a treatment room, where she took out the stitches. Since I knew it would be free, I was expecting some sort of rapid to-go service, but instead, she pulled out the crunchy paper, had me lie down, got out all her tools, and did a slow and thorough job. This, I know, because she kept me updated the whole time, even commenting on the thickness of American stitching thread.

It was beautiful. Until the very end.

Nurse: Oh, hm. Did you know that you’re allergic to [insert unknown vocabulary]?
Emily: What?
Nurse: You are allergic to [repeat unknown vocabulary].
Emily: Oh… okay.

I have no idea what I’m allergic to, but my guess is a special kind of thread used for stitches. Oh well… they’re gone, and now I know where to go for free, illegal medical care. Vive la France.

More Perils in the Kitchen

2005-08-30T23:16:00.000+02:00

Time: three hours ago. I'd just run up the stairs ten minutes ahead of my colleague to do a quick clean up before he arrived. I chucked the junk mail in the trash, and was ambushed. They were everywhere. Floating, and from the looks of it, covered in germs. Fruit flies.

My logic was this: I hadn't noticed them before, so they must have not been flying around. They hadn't been flying around then because they hadn't been disturbed by flying junk mail. Conclusion: if I don't disturb them, they will not fly around, and my colleague who has never been to my apartment before will not know that I live in a state of filth.

I backed away from the kitchen slowly, and sure enough, when Steve buzzed ten minutes later, it was as if the fruit flies weren't there. I conveniently blocked the kitchen door and escorted him into the living room.

Time: forty minutes ago. Every speck of dust which landed on my skin seemed to me a fruit fly. I imagined them everywhere. In my hair, on my face and feet.

Google search: kill fruit flies.

Informative webpages introduced me to my enemy, told me that they are most common in the late summer months, and offered to sell me different chemicals that would rid me of the pests once and for all. I didn't have time to order over the internet. It felt like one had just landed on my foot. I needed results, and I needed them immediately.

I thought back to what I'd eaten and cooked over the last week. The most probable culprit was the middle of a canteloupe I'd had for breakfast about a week ago. Fruit. Flies. Yes, it was all becoming clear. The flies were in the trashcan. I could just locate the lid to the trash can, cover them up, and take out the whole trash in the morning.

The problem, I soon discovered, was that Chris had apparently thrown out the top to the trash can while I was on vacation. I searched every closet, corner, and top of wardrobe. I then wrote him an email asking where the lid was. In the three minutes I waited for a reply, ten imaginary fruit flies landed on my nose and crawled on my scalp.

I sat back down on the couch. Garbage bag. Cover entire trash can with garbage bag, flip, and then tie a knot really fast, trapping fruit flies and offensive garbage inside. Checked the kitchen. No garbage bags. Back to couch.

I thought of other bug methodology. Ushering them out the window. Option not valid: self greatly outnumbered by fruit fly army. Then, there's the method of trapping a bug under a cup, sliding a piece of cardboard under the cup, and then releasing the bug outside. I looked around the apartment. I had a cardboard box for moving that could possibly cover the entire trash can, but then nothing large and sturdy enough to carry it into the courtyard and release the whole swarm. Plus, I would probably receive complaints from the neighbor via the diplomatic concierge.

Then I saw it, my solution: packing tape. Genius.

I took the roll to the kitchen, and, extremely slowly and ever so gently, covered the entire top to the trash can, one strip at a time. The poor fruit flies had no idea. When I was done, I shook the trash can, hard, just to be sure of my success. No fruit flies. Victory was mine.

Rather pleased with my genius, I resolved to attack the pile of dishes I'd been ignoring for a full week. As I went for the sponge, I noticed--I kid you not--a spider web, complete with a spider. Method of attack: pot of water. When I grabbed the pot, the world's largest moth flew out from underneath and flapped against the light fixture. World's largest moths make a hell of a lot of noise. By the time I realized what it was I had already fled to the living room.

Spider and moth will wait until tomorrow. So this is what it's like to live by myself.

--
PS. As I wrote the last line, email from Chris: "Under the sink?" The one place I didn't look.

I Walked By Bike : Florence

2005-07-28T23:59:00.000+02:00

(Part of the series Very Very Sometimes. Click here to read the Intro.)

Note: Florence’s lines are to be read at full speed in the worse French accent you can possibly conjure.

“Oh, yes yes yes! There is long time, I am au pair at the State. I have little girl, I park, I car, I school, it is to the all good for to go with baby. I have full of friend American! I speak English all of the time with the person and I ponder hey! I doesn’t lose it!”

There was nothing to do but blink. It was the first question of my placement exam with Florence. Where did you learn English? After further questioning, I discerned that, a long time ago, she was a nanny in the US, and had never had any formal classes.

Level two: false beginner.

Florence possesses the unique ability combine loquaciousness with nonsense. When I stop her and say slowly, “Florence, I understand absolutely nothing,” she just laughs and continues talking. She is a nightmare and I love her for it.

The other day, I took away the magazine pictures she was describing and replaced them with a grammar exercise. I had to prove to her that she needed my help. It worked. Zero right answers after seven questions.

“This I no need this! You stand me I speak!”

“You do need this. You need to learn grammar. What did you tell me about people on the phone?”

“They say me ‘Manager please’.”

“Right. I think that if your grammar was better, they might want to speak to you and not the manager.”

“Fine. Could you please repeat.”

“What’s your brother like?” (She needed to differentiate between to be like and to like.)

She thought a moment. “He like sea fruit?”

“Umm…” I made my incorrect-response face.

“He like the fish?”

“No, the problem is that you’re telling me what he likes and I want to know what he is like.”

“He likes the fish?”

“Okay, listen to me. The question is: What’s your brother like? I’m asking for a descrip—”

She grabbed her head with both hands and shouted, “Stop! I must ponder!” I thought she might cry.

After a few minutes, she told me, “Is difficult! So many people which one who want to speak past time!”

I decided to go with what I understood. “Yes, it’s difficult.”

“Yes. I must ponder.”

“Please. Ponder.”

And so she did.

“He likes fish.”

I had no choice. “Good.”

“Sanks.”

Pulling Teeth

2005-07-25T20:56:00.000+02:00

(Part of the series Very Very Sometimes. Click here to read the Intro.)

“Since when do they have mechanics working on Wall Street?” I wondered out loud.

“Maybe if something breaks. Like an elevator. Who’s going to fix it, certainly not the bloody CEO?”

“Bloody CEO. Crazy Irish. You kiss your students with that mouth?”

“Bloody’s not vulgar, it’s normal. And cultural.”

Tim and I were getting ready for our first week’s classes, and one of my new companies was filled with mechanics. I went to the great filing cabinet, which promised to have ready-made sheets for conversation classes with every type of student. Except for mechanics.

“What the hell do I do with mechanics?”

“I don’t know. Talk to them about machinery.”

“Right. My vocabulary is limited to the word machine. On. Off. Go. Push the button.” I thought of other possibilities. “Wheel? Axel?” Did those count? My idea of complex machinery was apparently limited to wagons. “Pulley? Catapult?” This was going to be a disaster.

I finally concluded that although these people were mechanics, that I was sure we would have other things to talk about. I would just go and rely on my natural ability to converse with people. I could chat it up with anybody for an hour.

My first hour as an English teacher scared me senseless. Pierre and Bernard limited themselves to yes or no answers. When I tried to push them, Pierre responded with, “What do you mean why? It is like this! It is all!”

“You mean you like science fiction films because it’s like this?”
“Yes!”
“Not everyone likes them. You must have a reason.”

They stared at me.

“You know, this is your conversation class, so that you make progress with your language skills. My English is fine. I don’t need to practice.”

“You are English girl?”
“No.”
“French girl?!”
“No. American.”
“Heh.”

Nothing. They didn't even ask me if I liked Bush.

I waited for them to get uncomfortable and say something. They didn’t.

“Have you ever heard the expression, pulling teeth?”
“Non.”
“Great! Something I can teach you.”

I jumped up to the board and glanced at the clock. Over the next twenty minutes, I carefully taught them new and essential vocabulary for their jobs. I pointed at my teeth. I drew a little boy on the board.

“What happens when he grows up? His baby teeth must be replaced by permanent teeth.” I realized I knew some more vocabulary. I taught them the names of different teeth. Molars. Incisors. I drew a mad dentist on the board with some pliers. The verb to pull in big, bloated letters.

“Now,” I concluded with one minute left on the clock. “Is it easy to pull a tooth or is it hard to pull a tooth?”

“Ar.” God bless Bernard. No h and no d, but good enough for me.

“Good! So… when something is very very difficult, you say it’s like pulling teeth.”

They looked at me blankly.

“So...Conversation with you two is like pulling teeth!” I concluded, triumphant. It was as if I had solved the world's most complicated geometric proof.

"And that's the hour. Thanks for coming." I smiled a nice, big, toothy smile, shook their hands, and showed them to the door.

Very Very Sometimes

2005-07-24T23:14:00.000+02:00

French has become my second skin. It didn’t happen on a particular day, but at some point during my time here, I stopped straining. I was able to register what others were saying at nearby tables, even when I was engaged in a conversation of my own. The background noise took shape; the effort became superfluous.

Often I wish I could go back. When I didn’t understand, I was able to imagine what witticisms the Parisians were laughing about when we passed one another on the sidewalk. But now I mostly get bits of conversation like, “He did?! It’s not true. I must be hallucinating—it’s not possible!” and “so I said, you’ve got a small dick and one big ball and you don’t know what to do with either!”

The Capretz Method set me up. Every week in high school, my French class sat before the television, eagerly waiting for the next installment of “French in Action.” On the weekly videocassettes, Mr. Capretz (of the infamous Capretz Method) sat as the anchor of his own French programming, spewing correct French grammar with wild gestures that threatened to rival the expressiveness of his coiffure.

Over four years, I watched him break down the weekly episodes of a linguistically dumbed-down soap opera revolving around Mireille, the blonde and braless parisienne, and Robert, the love struck American.

I spent hours in the language lab, my ears crushed under the awkward headsets, repeating bits of dialogue, which remain stuck in my memory today. Take, for example, the Marie-Laure catch phrase, “Mystery and bubble gum!” I understood this to mean “Beats me!” and that it is most effectively delivered when popping a gumball into one’s mouth and looking knowingly into the camera.

The first time I heard this phrase used by a French person, albeit, a French person in the United States, it not only confirmed the genius of Mr. Capretz and his method, but also convinced me that I would have no problems interacting with the French. Indeed, I would be able to pepper my speech with colloquial expressions like, “Do you have the peach?”, or better yet, “Do you have the potato?” (Apparently, the peach and potato are symbols of vitality in France. If you have the potato, it means that you’re in good spirits.)

Capretz Method confirmed, I memorized countless catch phrases. I was ready to jump onto the French scene like a loveable and non-threatening sitcom character. Whatever the situation, I was ready to react. The French would never be able to guess that there was an American lurking beneath all those linguistic frills.

My first opportunity to show off came shortly after my arrival in France, at the dinner table with my new host family. When the littlest boy complained about the food, the mother looked to me for support. There was my cue! I smiled knowingly and said, “What a crosspatch, that one!”

Instead of hearing the comforting laughter I’d come to expect after this phrase, my Paris début was met by the laughter of ridicule. I went over grammar rules in my head. I tried to smile along with them and asked, “Is there a problem with my sentence?”

“No, dear, your sentence was perfectly correct,” my host mother reassured me.

“Yeah. Perfectly correct if you’re an eighty year-old woman!” My host brother laughed; his seven siblings joined in. I wanted to kick them. All of them. And I wanted to find Mr. Capretz and make him sit down to dinner with the ten members of my host family and give them a talking-to about proper French expressions.

Over the year, I realized that colloquial expressions weren’t my only problem. Issue number two was my pronunciation. I wasn’t just speaking into a mic in the language lab—these people responded, and differently than the recorded answers. They were often confused.

Thanks to French vowels, instead of asking the pharmacist for a band-aid, I asked for a big pinching. Instead of telling my friend I’d lost two sweaters, I told him I’d lost two of my hen. That week, I also hurt my flea instead of my thumb. The list goes on. And each time they laughed, I was both embarrassed and furious. I told them, “You try to learn your language! It’s not easy!”

But oh, how things have come full circle. I spend my days teaching English to adults whose former textbooks have long since been out of print.

I understand that speaking a foreign language takes guts. You’re reducing the expression of your intellectual capacity to the language of a two year-old. So I try not to laugh.

For the most part, it's easy. Many of my students’ mistakes are boring. They translate directly from French, so end up telling me, “I write at the chief and he say me that he is not agree of live tomorrow.”

I take a moment to translate what they said back into French, and then confirm, “Oh, so you talked to your boss and he says he’s not letting you leave tomorrow after all?”

“What is after hall?”
“Nevermind.”
“Sorry? Mine?”
“Let it fall.”
“Okay.”

But then you have the champions. My favorite students. The ones who very confidently say obscene things. I love them for it.

And so here, at the end of my one-year contract as a teacher in Paris, as a tribute to my favorite students and because, well, I like to have the last laugh, I’m posting a new series: Very very sometimes. Portraits of my students. Stay tuned.

Charades

2005-06-15T00:16:00.000+02:00

In the beginning, there was the question. What do we tell Monsieur et Madame Monnaie?

Back when we signed the lease, it seemed simple. They wanted to rent to a couple? We were a couple. Matt and I had been dating since 1997, when we met one magical summer at camp. We were at the camp to learn (imagine us looking longingly into each others’ eyes at the landlords’ dinner table)… French. How could they resist renting to such a young and adorable couple, who, after seven long years of distance, was coming to the world’s most romantic city to make a home?

Over the next week, Matt and I put together the details of our fake romance just in case the Monnaies asked questions. With the landlords for next-door neighbors, we had to be oh-so-careful. Soon, though, we realized the grand fault of the scheme: Matt was planning on moving out in May, but I was staying on. How would we explain the break-up?

As early as January, we floated plans over the tables of Paris cafés. Perhaps we could stage a messy fight. I would cut up an onion and head next door in tears, sobbing about failed romance and Matt’s imminent departure.

Or, we could let them catch Matt with his girlfriend in the hallway. In this scenario, Madame Monnaie would take it upon herself to invite me for afternoon coffee and reveal the double life of my lover. I would cry (if I could muster the tears) and tell her that there was only one action to take: I would have to make Matt move out. In May.

Or, Matt could simply leave me. They would pity me and my sad face—a result of the deep depression that would follow abandonment—and let me take a new roommate.

In the end, since Matt remained hopeful of a fall return to Paris, we had to reevaluate. What was I going to do, take him back? Not after what he put me through. There was only one card to play: the family emergency.

“Pick someone who’s already dead,” I told him. “That way you won’t jinx it. What about a great aunt or something?”

“Nah, I have a great aunt.”

“Okay, what about grandparents? Who could die again?”

And so we chose an already deceased family member. Matt would have to return to the United States to help out. We didn’t know when he would come back. He was still sending me checks from the States, of course, and in the meantime, well, since I don’t like to be alone… What a coincidence. My friend Chris was looking for a place to stay, and I didn’t mind the safety of an attractive, strong man in the house. We imagined the landlords exchanging skeptical looks. “Have you met Chris?” I would ask. “I don’t think he likes women…” Their faces would slowly register my comment, and all would be well in the world. Or at least, at 41 Rue du Temple.

When the time came, unforeseen obstacles thwarted our well-rehearsed plan. We didn’t count on Mme Monnaie’s extended stay in the Looney Bin. She was supposed to be my shoulder to cry on. I couldn’t imagine myself having a heart-to-heart with Monsieur. Matt was his favorite, the guy who kept him company during his many visits to fix up the apartment.

And so I did the only thing left to do: opt to keep it under covers.

Matt’s departure happened quickly and went unnoticed by the neighbors. Chris moved in a few days later. In addition to a few duffel bags, though, Chris brought a quite remarkable shift in mood to Rue du Temple.

Where Matt listened to rock on his headphones, Chris blasts timeless classics by Whitney Houston on the speakers. While Matt enjoyed the giggles of someone who could have been mistaken for me, Chris enjoys giggles of someone whose register is a few octaves lower than mine. Surely the Monnaies have heard this, or at least heard the rumors. The gardienne has seen us together on many occasions, be it heading out for groceries or a night on the town. One recent evening we saw the across-the-hall neighbor halfway down the block, so we broke into a sprint so as not to fall into step with him in the courtyard. Panting at the top of the stairs, Chris officially changed his name to Anne Frank.

That was the last sentence that I’d typed this evening before shutting my computer and heading out to Dinner Club.

At the other end of the courtyard I saw Monsieur Monnaie. I was convinced that I’d jinxed myself by starting this essay, and that the grand finale was coming my way.

I kept my eyes on the cobblestone, looking up at the last minute to offer a hurried “bonsoir.” I was golden. He returned my bonsoir and continued to examine his mail as we passed each other.

A few more steps, though, and I heard “up up!” I paused. He remembered my name and called it. “Emily!” We walked back toward each other. I was determined to play it cool. He mostly just likes to hear about how much I love this damn city. But then I noticed that he was uncomfortable.

“Emily, well, I have a question to ask you. I just… I just need to know what’s going on.”

I was rehearsing the speech in my head and doing my best not to look like a big fat liar. Matt back in States. Short time. Working papers? No. Relative. Right. Be vague. Family emergency. Do they say that in French? Coming back soon. Still paying rent. The other guy? A friend. Of ours. Speak of self in we form. Right. New roommate not new lover. Not cheating on Matt. No way no how. So sad he’s gone. Miss him. Cue tears.

Monsieur Monnaie was still gesturing awkwardly, beating around the French bush, preparing himself to ask me how long we’d been pulling the American wool over his eyes.

“And, well, I just need to know, as your landlord.”

Here it comes. I smiled my most innocent smile.

“How long are you planning on staying? Two years? Three? I just need to know if I have to rent the apartment to someone else in October.”

He didn’t know?! “What? Oh! Yes! Well, it’s sort of up in the air, but we hope to stay. I’m changing jobs, and trying to get that worked out, but I’ll be able to let you know in a few weeks.”

“And your boyfriend?”

He didn’t mention Matt by name, so I took care of that, and fast.

“Matt. Yes. He’s planning on attending school in the fall, here in Paris, so we’re just working on getting all our papers sorted.”

Monsieur smiled and told me that his daughter was still at university. Ah, a common bond.

“And how’s the weather? Not too hot over there?”

“No, not at all, though I think it might get worse in the next few weeks.”

“Yes, you have the afternoon sun.”

“That we do. …Well, have a good night.”

And with that, he returned his attention to his mail, and I was left to wonder who he meant when he said your boyfriend. Once again, it’s only a matter of time before the sad truth is revealed. The truth about Matt cheating on me with a Turkish woman, fleeing the country to live in Istanbul, and leaving me alone to raise his unborn child.

Paris Poor

2005-05-19T19:58:00.000+02:00

Headed out the other night, Matt and I stopped in the foyer to check the mailbox. A twist of the mailbox key this evening revealed not just rejection letters, but a bill. EDF: Electricité de France.

“Should we open this now or later?” I asked.
“Later, definitely.”

And with that, we enjoyed a fun-filled evening at l’Art Brut. We returned to 41, Rue du Temple a bit tipsy, and merrily ripped open the EDF bill. 315 euros. Talk about a buzz kill. We stood there for a moment. All our previous bills had been around 50 euros. As it turned out, these bills were just kind estimates from EDF of how much an apartment our size, equipped with our appliances, should consume. This new bill was the result of what we’d actually consumed in the past four months.

I did some fast calculating. Half of this bill effectively brought me to an account balance of zero for the rest of the month. It was May 7. It was time to put the emergency plan into action.

Emergency Action One: Inform close friends you are poor.

When you see close friends, tell them that you’re having financial difficulties. Bring up your electricity bill, accept the blame for your unreasonable desire to be warm at night, and melodramatically announce plan to eat nothing but tomatoes for the rest of the month. Say that you’re already too thin. Mention that you might get scurvy. Compliment your friend’s [insert recently bought item]. Dinner invitations will be issued. Accept; finalize dates on which you will be fed.

Emergency Action Two: Secure dates.

Feminist notions of paying for oneself, or Going Dutch: out the window. Rack brain for names of recent or not-so-recent dates. Locate numbers buried somewhere on desk. Send text messages and emails expressing desire to see these people again. Wait, answer phone, schedule dates. Order cheapest item on menu. Smile and thank date when he offers to pay.

Emergency Action Three: Maximize Kitchen Potential.

Remember that can of corn you bought on a whim in November? Eat it. For dinner. With sides of a hard-boiled egg and some beans. Learn that Mexican spices, when mixed with ketchup, can indeed make a fabulous pasta sauce. Expiration dates are merely a marketing scam; the yogurt that supposedly went bad a month ago probably tastes quite good. When feeling like you want to splurge, go to ED and buy 30 eggs for three euros. Invent egg-only diet. Write a book about eggs as secret to thinness. Sell copies outside Weight Watchers so that you have means to abandon egg-only diet.

Emergency Action Four: Work the Ticket Resto (1) magic.

Ask every food store if they accept Tickets Resto. Consumer pressure will one day lead to widespread acceptance. Find places that illegally give change for tickets. Buy cheapest item on menu. Spend change on something else, like a beer or coffee with friends. (Add sugar to coffee; you’ll need it.)

Emergency Action Five: Invite people to free couscous.

Free couscous: the Chope’s gift to the young and poor. Recruit friends for Friday and Saturday nights. Head up to the 18th; get there early to save table. Insist on only buying one bottle of wine for the table. Ignore Egyptian couscous Godfather who passes and says “those who do not consume to not return.” Don’t bother looking for dates; everyone here is as poor as you are. When the barman rings the bell, raise your hand fast—you might get a free beer. Enjoy collective spirit of the broke and young. Drink plenty of wine, bought with change from your tickets (approximately three euros for your share).

Emergency Action Six: Abandon dreams of new socks and sweaters; find mending kit.

Determine if hole in article of clothing is noticeable, or if it can be disguised by clever folding. If not, or when hole gets too big from neglect, rummage through plastic bag of hotel toiletries from parents’ visits. There, you will probably find a mending kit. Fix the hole. Ignore old American credit card that begs you to instead buy a new sweater or sock.

Emergency Action Seven: Cut Corners Wherever Possible.

Interpret the word complimentary in the broadest sense. Toilet paper, for example, is complimentary in bathrooms at bars and cafés. Stock up; you will run out by the end of the month. Sugar is another fine example. Most cafés will give you two or three packets with your coffee. Stuff extra packets, including those left by other customers, into your bag or pocket. They look nice in a dish when you invite people over for tea at your house when they suggest going to a café that you can’t afford.

Emergency Action Eight: Limit Activities to those which are Already Paid for, or those which are Free.

Review items that you already pay for monthly: international newspaper, pass to museum, pass to library, pass to cinema, child in Africa. Make list of potential outings; suggest them as activities when going out with friends. Note that walking is also free, as is sitting in parks, and going to monuments without going inside.

Emergency Action Nine: Take advantage of this moment to apply for financial aid.

Note that you are dirt poor. Realize you are going back to grad school in the fall, and that this costs an exorbitant amount of money. Apply for financial aid. When asked about stocks, write zero. When asked about trust funds, write zero. When asked about assets from farms, write zero. (Remaining 17 eggs do not count as assets.) When asked about value, today, of cash, checking accounts and savings, write negative one hundred twenty-seven euros and thirteen centimes. With any luck, government will recognize lack of funds and give you money. On second thought, make negative sign extremely bold.

--------------------------------------
(1) Tickets restaurants are food coupons given to workers in France for lunches eaten during the workday. Generally speaking, they are of seven euros in value and you receive a book of twenty per month. They are accepted in virtually all restaurants in France.

Cosmopolitan Corner

2005-04-28T00:11:00.000+02:00

I’ve never been one of the women who refer to Cosmopolitan as her “Bible” or who use its nickname “Cosmo.” No, my familiarity with Cosmopolitan is limited to extraordinarily lengthy layovers in airports and doctor’s offices. But it only takes a couple flip-throughs before you get the gist. This month’s features are “Bedside Astrologer” and “Cosmo’s Stud Search”. Their attempt at Grrrl Power is limited to a few snapshots of Women of the Month.

Cosmopolitan attempts to package my gender into a 198-page, glossy magazine, full of exclamation points and cutesy writing. Though I may experience problems similar to those of Cosmopolitan readers (“Eek! New boss is hotty—what do I do?!), their regular appearance in Cosmopolitan has led me to deny my traditionally feminine traits and trials—namely, girl stuff.

And so you get me: a woman with a secret love of products who will punch you in the face if you ever mention this in public. I don’t have any female friends in Paris. They're too girly. I’m waiting for another Susan--that is, another woman who will promise to puke on your shoes if you use the word “panties”--but I don't think she exists. Without her to keep me in line, I find myself drifting into cattiness.

Enter conflict, stage left: the ex and the ex’s new love.

A brief background. Before he was the ex, when I was the new love. My love for Takrit was of the all-encompassing, teenage variety. (Yes, I made up the name.) That’s to say, more intense than I would ever allow myself to feel nowadays. I stalked him for a full three weeks before he became my boyfriend for a full three years. Ah, my first love. Being sixteen, I was sure that I would spend the rest of my life with him.

But I would only spend the first few months of college with him, before I realized that I wanted to date someone else.

I broke it off. He tried to win me back, even appearing dressed in a suit at the train station, carrying flowers. In Cosmopolitan’s world, I melted right then. We’ve been married for six years. In my world, I said I couldn’t get back with him, no matter how nice the suit.

Takrit and I remained friends. It was rocky for quite some time, but we eventually came to a point where we could be in the same room without arguing or making the other one cry.

It’s now been five years since we broke up. Takrit and I have been in other relationships since then, but, living in different cities, we’ve never had any real interaction with each other’s newer flames.

Leave it to the marvels of technology to bring this tradition to a close.

The other day, I saw Takrit online, and, having not talked to him recently, sent him a message. No response. He was probably asleep. I went about my online business.

Two minutes later, a response came, with a muffled ding:

Her: Takrit’s not here. This is Shirley, his girlfriend. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet me? Time to exit, quick.

Me: Nice to “meet” you too. (Nothing like cyber humor to break the ice.) Just tell Takrit I said hello.

Her: Ok. How does he know you?

Shit. There was no good way to answer the question. All the responses made me look like a jealous goon.

Me: I’m an old friend of his from Georgia.

Her: Cool!

I couldn’t resist.

Me: Emily. I imagined the sirens going off in their apartment.

There you had it. The Very Polite War was on. Her objectives: to stake her territory, show me who’s the boss of Takrit, rightly so. My objectives: to get out of the conversation as soon as politely possible.

I was suddenly engaged in the Cosmopolitanesque battle of New Girlfriend vs. Old (“My boyfriend’s ex is always messaging him—is it right to ask her to stop?!”).

Half of me wanted to get accidentally disconnected, and the other half wanted to make my presence known. Rationally, I knew this was dumb. Emotionally, I wanted to rank above her on Takrit’s list of Great Girlfriends. I was sampling the leftovers of a sixteen year-old’s jealous rage, dwindled down over the past five years, from shaking-angry fights on the telephone to passive aggressiveness typed on Instant Messenger.

We spoke briefly about Paris. I asked if she had ever lived abroad. She responded that she and Takrit were planning on moving abroad in several year’s time. “Several years?!” I shouted to no one, “We?!” It might seem innocent, but my Cosmopolitan side was telling me otherwise. She might as well have said, “Oh, and we’re planning on getting married and having a million babies, all named after me. You can come to the wedding—we need someone to serve the punch.”

I had to get to the post office. I cut the conversation short.

Several days later, I saw what appeared to be Takrit’s screen name signed on. I sent the tentative “Takrit?” A few minutes later, a message from an unknown sender popped up.

Her: Takrit’s still asleep.
Me: Well, just tell him I said hello.
Her: Will do.
Me: Thanks.
Her: I’m sorry if it was awkward talking to me the other day.
Me: No! Not at all!
(pause)
Me: I mean, a little, just in that I’ve never really met someone on Instant Messenger. (I’d decided not to go into the details of my recent Internet dating extravaganza.)
Her: Well, quite by accident, I saw what you typed to Takrit the other night.

Shit. What part of the conversation? The part where I recounted my conversation with her and said it was really awkward? The part where I talked about jealousy with regards to previous loves? The part where we reminisced about the Good Ol’ Days?

I had taken this classic Cosmopolitan saga to a new level. I had ruined the Very Polite War by employing Very Impolite Maneuvers behind her back. Sounds of cats fighting played in the background of my make-believe soap opera.

Leave it to Nicolas to break it down for me: “Emily, what do you care if she doesn’t like you? I mean, seriously. What do you want? To get back together with Takrit?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem here?”

I thought about it. The problem was that I’d behaved badly. I’d let jealous impulses lure me into a conversation, which, despite all polite appearances, was catty. All my Cosmopolitan bashing went straight down the tubes. I had neatly dug a hole for myself, that of the jealous and bothersome ex-girlfriend. That was the problem. I had inched away from the carefully constructed identity of Unassuming Friend.

But whom was I kidding. First loves die hard. My cousin once told me that I shouldn’t shy away from intense, teenage emotions, because those felt later in life would pale in comparison. And so I cherish my fading sixteen year-old state, in which I was wrought with love and angst and jealousy. It’s good to know that she’s still alive and kicking-- kicking Shirley’s ass, and kicking myself.

Twenty-Something Crisis

2005-04-20T21:22:00.000+02:00

The Prologue:

Emily: So I’m writing a piece about the mid-twenty-something crisis.
Nico: Ems, your blog is the mid-twenty-something crisis.

The twenty-something crisis is defined as “the state of simultaneously wishing to be old (and therefore taken seriously in steps along the career path), coupled with intermittent pangs for a quickly disappearing youth.”

Signs of the twenty-something crisis include: weekends spent at home in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee and a good book, followed by a brief panic that leads to a week of late-night drunkenness and shenanigans; simultaneous repulsion by and envy for a stable home; the constant tweaking of The Perfect Resumé; the constant fear of being seen by one’s colleagues and clients in one’s natural state; wistfully referring to, and attempts to recreate, the college days; general disdain for loafers and briefcases; idealization of high school and college romances; hangovers now related to bedtime and not to quantity of alcohol consumed; and, the phrase pull it together appearing as a priority item on to-do lists.

Part One: The Seeds of Dissent

My resistance to the twenty-something age can be traced back to high school. Former students would visit the school, and I could hardly believe that the few years that separated us could yield such a difference.

The women that returned were together, pretty. They had pocketbooks and heels. They tossed styled hair back over shoulders and spoke in a lower, more tempered voice. These women—the same that had come to high school dressed in baggy corduroys back when grunge was in style—now matched the throngs of black-panted twenty-somethings that swung their hips on the streets of Buckhead.

Part Two: Boot Camp

To convince the Working World that I belonged, I needed to make a few changes. The reality of the situation was that I looked about sixteen, but was getting ready to début as a teacher to businessmen and women in Paris. My preparation for the conversion was nil. I’d spent the summer at camp, often wearing my hair in braids and acting cool for fourteen year-old girls. One day, I happily realized that I was twenty-four years old, and was dressed like Mary-Kate Olsen. A less anorexic version.

So when I returned home in August, I had all of five days to become a professional businesswoman. Day five, my mother and I stood in the mall and assessed the collection of bags from the day’s trip to the mall. Dress shirts? Check. Skirts and nice slacks? Check, check. Shoes? Check, check, check. All I was missing were pantyhose.

The process was complete. I’d spent the past few days arguing with various saleswomen, rejecting preppy, lilac tops that matched the fine stripes of a skirt, turning up my nose when presented with sweater sets, refusing to buy a blazer. When I’d walked into the store and requested something professional, the saleswomen had often and knowingly replied, “College interview?” My mother snapped back, “First real job. In Paris.” Eyebrows shot up. Dollar signs appeared in their pupils. I frowned as I was thrown into the fitting room, but always left with a full bag.

I’d been to the beauty salon. I’d sat in the chair and firmly requested a hairstyle that could double as both professional and hip. (It turns out, there’s no such thing. My new haircut shouted, “I’m thirty!”) As I stood frowning at the makeup counter, my mother had explained, “We need to make her look older.” Women gathered ‘round. “It’s all in the makeup.” “It’s all in the hair.” By the time we had lunch, I was having a tough time concentrating on anything besides my reflection. I scrubbed my face with the paper napkin while my mom reassured me that she couldn’t even tell I was wearing any make-up.

Part Three: The Crisis

There are things that simply cannot be taught. Take the erratic nature of hairdryers for an example. Soon into my stay, I’d already gone through two. One day, in a pinch, I borrowed Nicolas’s landlord’s drier. It, too, wheezed and overheated. My new salary was now devoted entirely to styling products. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to coif my new thirty-something hairdo.

I struggled with belts and roaming skirts and blisters from heels. I became that bad static-cling commercial. I spent afternoons on Nicolas’s couch complaining about professional attire while he made me tea.

But then it happened. About two months into my new life, as I walked back from work, I caught sight of myself in a store window. All the signs were there. Black pants, sweater top. Straightened hair neatly pulled back in a neat ponytail. Fifties-style pea coat. High-heeled boots. In my grocery bag were wheat crackers, low-calorie breakfast bars, and a bottle of Diet Coke. Perhaps the only sign of my former self came in the form of an accessory: a bright red umbrella. My hopes were soon dashed when I realized that the umbrella matched my bag.

It hit me hard: Not only did I look like a twenty-something, I was twenty-four. I was a twenty-something.

Part Five: The Resistance

I immediately called Nicolas for support. I went over my plans for the week and concluded that I was still hip. The revolution was born.

I now allow myself ten minutes for pre-work primping. All attempts at blended foundation and blow-drying have been abandoned. Often, and I don’t even shower for work. Some of you may be cringing, but I consider it my personal “screw you” to Corporate France. I can no longer find my button-down shirts and wear different t-shirts under the same black cardigan everyday.

I reassure myself that I’m different from my fellow twenty-somethings. I’m not married. I’m not in med school. My friends are dreamers. We drink cheap wine and argue. We sit on floor cushions and munch on cheese. We live in Paris. I am in no way boozing it up with my former sorority sisters.

True validation came a few weeks ago, when preparing for a day’s work at The Bank for the Complicatedly Wealthy, I resuscitated a skirt from the fall. I rummaged through my closet to find a clean pair of hose. I found some, and tried one of the preferred methods of applying them to legs.

As I grabbed hold of a bunch and pulled them over hips, my middle finger punched through the material. I ripped them of and threw them in the trash. Found another pair. These ripped just below the knee because of a jagged nail. Found another pair. Ripped those on the second leg. Moved dirty clothes from closet to floor; I had no choice but to wear a dirty pair.

As it turns out, I no longer owned a pair of un-ripped hose. I smiled as I grabbed a pair of wrinkled pants. I was happy to ditch the skirt, and figured any twenty-something who actually has it together knows how to successfully put on a pair of hose.

Part Six: Peace Talks

Just this week, across the desk from a senior manager in his sixties, I chatted with a client. An intelligent man and well-spoken even in English, he’d taken to debating with me about politics during our bi-weekly conversation classes.

This particular day, he provoked me. I unprofessionally ended the class on a rant about American policy on AIDS in Africa, stuttering about the ridiculousness of promoting only abstinence, and not safe sex. The man didn’t agree.

Before he left the room, he asked, “How old are you?”

I immediately blushed. My cover was blown, and it had nothing to do with my wrinkled pants. I shuffled through some papers and replied, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

He thought for a moment and said, “I think you’re twenty-seven. You have the education, but you don’t have the experience.”

Flustered by the low-blow, I stammered, “Well, my mother is older than me, and I bet she’d tell you the same thing.” He smiled and closed the door behind him.

That’s right, Emily, way to go. In defending my honor and maturity, I’d resorted to the comeback of a seven year-old, quoting her mother as the ultimate source of what’s right.

As I sat in the empty conference room, I thought about what he’d said. Twenty-seven. Over mid-twenty. The twenty-somethings aren’t fooling anyone with their slick dress and tempered speech, especially not this seasoned veteran. Twenty-something is nothing. Just wait ‘til we’ve lived what he’s been through: the mid-life crisis.

Swank Launch Party

2005-04-18T15:47:00.000+02:00

Guest author Nicolas of Metro Stories fame

Emily:
Last spring, I wrote reviews for Time Out Paris, the small, English-language section that appeared in the back of Pariscope. The publication has since gone under, which is a feat in itself, since the magazine largely exploited unpaid interns, like yours truly, anxious to see their names in print. After a few short months, I was fired after the stressed-out editor came back from lunch to find me absent because of a migraine. She told me on the phone, “This just isn’t working out.” I swallowed my pride and wrote her a long and apologetic email, asking for another go, to which I received no reply.

In March, her name appeared once again in my inbox. I was cordially invited to the launch of a new magazine, headed up by my ex-editor. I figured it was probably a mistake, that she’d not realized I was still on the mailing list. But hey, open bar and a chance to do a little networking? Yes, please. I accepted, and asked to bring my security blanket and partner in crime, Nicolas.

Nico:
As we stood in line to get in, Emily whispered in discrete Southern Belle fashion, “I bet she left me off the list. I bet I’m not even really invited.” She was Emily’s former boss at Time Out. Her prediction proved true: the tall and scruffy Future Fired Intern fumbled with the guest list but failed to locate us. Emily casually dropped the party organizer’s first name to indicate our insider status, and off we went, up the dramatic marble staircase, all severe 1930s Deco angles and neo-Grecian proportions.

It became rapidly apparent, however, that we were anything but insiders. Emily was Fired Intern; I was Tagalong.

Emily:
Insiders walk quickly and with a purpose. They see colleagues and friends, smile, and give the customary check kisses. They compliment new skirts and blazers. They mention the last swank get-together.

As soon as we hit Grand Party Central, my flight-or-fight instincts pushed me toward flight. After all, what was my claim to fame? I was the Fired Intern. I currently teach English for a living. My most-recently published article was about my experience with Internet dating.

Nico:
Taking matters into my own hands, I steered us toward the open bar and surveyed the scene. The Asymmetrical Neckline Brigade was out in force—that requisite starlet cluster that forms a mobile galaxy of retro eighties chic, as necessary to a Paris opening as potted palms are to a Hyatt lobby. Chest-collapsing jewelry and white vinyl boots abounded. The situation was grim.

Our goals: look cool, network, plug our blog, and get Emily to say hi to her former boss.

Three cocktails later, things were looking up. People were arriving in droves. We conversed with a contemporary music sound engineer from Amsterdam. I was enjoying being surrounded by cute French creative types.

Emily:
I am a lightweight, I admit it. My friends like to say that they’ve never seen me finish a glass of wine at dinner. There’s a good reason for this. After one glass of wine, I’m tipsy. After a cocktail, I’m drunk. Note that Nicolas said that we had three cocktails.

Still uncomfortable but at least happy about it, I saw a work colleague from across the room. Excellent, I thought, an official ‘in’, even if it was the lame, work variety. I walked over, smiled, gave the cheek kisses, and oozed I-belong-here.

Soon, though, I was asked, “So how do you know Jennifer?” I responded that we worked together at Wall Street. Jennifer’s face grew momentarily panicky, then transformed into hatred. Oops. How was I supposed to know that she’d been lying about her day job? She quickly left the conversation huddle, but thanks to my fourth cocktail, I didn’t mind. We now had people to talk to.

Nico:
We auto-promoted ourselves from Fired Intern and Tagalong to “freelance writer/soon-to-be journalist” and “freelance-conference-interpreter/writer”. Flush with confidence, traversing the crowd, we said bonsoir to a passing freakish, frizzy-haired Brit. Conversation with him failed to take off, however, as Emily spotted a dreamboat wearing a yellow Ethiopia tracksuit and we veered off to the left.

Seconds later we realized that this had been a fatal miscalculation, as the Brit was trailed by cameras and what looked like a real live model (blonde, giggling, anxiously casting around for her next bit of blow).

Emily:
We watched from a safe distance. How could I have been led astray by such a beautiful, yet tragically-dressed Ethiopian track star? I had ruined our future fame forever by passing up the Brit’s easy smile.

Nico:
We slouched together against the railing, eyeing Brit man and the cameras, planning a new approach. We were now drunk enough to begin speaking in punctuation marks.

N: Slash, girl gots to clear out. We need to be on camera.
E: Lessons learned, colon, always talk to old people. They’re important. Slash, Track Suit just checked me out.
N: Parentheses, we should have brought business cards, close parentheses.
E: Do we even have business cards?
N: Response colon no.
E: New paragraph, the secret to becoming a wannabe model in Paris is to wear dramatic knitwear and get a euro-mullet.
N: Comma, wear leg warmers, comma, shift weight constantly from one foot to the other, comma, twirl end of mullet with finger. Wash, rinse, repeat.
E: Slash, go go go! Move in! Model on the move!

Nico:
We went on the offensive and accosted Frizzy Brit, who turned out to be some sort of comedy show producer. We not-so-casually mentioned our blog’s write-up in Le Parisien, pretended to understand his jokes, and ten minutes later realized that his business cards were printed on Xerox paper.

My attention soon shifted to a man wearing a blue Mao suit, covered with several military-looking pins. He talked to no one, hands behind back, pacing back and forth. I half-expected a Red Detachment of Women to spring out from behind a pillar.

Emily was getting antsy but I issued a unilateral declaration that she was not allowed to leave the premises without at least trying to say hi to her former boss, who was clad in some kind of flowing asymmetrical thing which made her look like a lopsided butterfly.

Emily:
I had imagined the conversation. There were two versions, the one where I spewed some sort of indignant Fired Intern credo, and the one where I humbly thanked her for a lovely evening and wished her good luck with the new project.

Nico:
Seeing Ex-Boss alone and unguarded in a corner, I thrust Emily forward. We dodged the clumps of franco-british metrosexuals, clouds of smoke, and giggling models and made it over to the bar where Lopsided Butterfly was between congratulation sessions.

I retired to nurse my fruity cocktail whilst Emily engaged the enemy in preliminary conversational maneuvers. These came to a quick close as Lopsided Butterfly decided, “We’ll keep this brief.” Right. A quick handshake, final free cocktail down the hatch and we were ready to bail.

So much for networking, so much for business cards, and so much for our plans to each cart home a cute, scruffy Frenchman. I realized, as we stumbled down the staircase and drifted across the Palais Tokyo lobby, that our main problem was that we just didn’t speak the same language as the tribe we had just spent two hours observing (read: making drunken bitchy comments).

Emily:
Open parentheses, and speaking with punctuation, close parentheses.

Nico:
We didn’t understand that “freelance” means “unemployed”, that “aspiring” means “loser” and that “blog” also means “loser”. We needed to develop a new vocabulary, one that would bewitch and excite the moneyed and powerful. One that would make giggly models and Frizzy Brits swoon. Put that on your to-do list, Emily, right after “clean The Dish”; I’ll put it on mine right under “pull it together.”

Quick and Apologetic Update

2005-04-17T11:18:00.000+02:00

Hello, boys & girls, men & women, and anyone in between.

Just a little note to promise that I'll be posting in the next two days. I've received, ahem, some emails and comments suggesting I post again. I'm working on it.

The past few weeks have been ridiculously busy.

In the meantime, check out Nicolas's and my new baby.

In sum, I promise I'll be good from now on.

Love,
Emily

The Science of Internet Dating

2005-03-30T15:47:00.000+02:00

Purpose
(How I Ended Up with my Face on the Internet)

Phase One: September. Matt and I listened to a recap of Maria’s recent dates. We’d just arrived in Paris, and this Italian stranger had lent us her apartment for the weekend while we conducted our housing search. Over tea, she described the wonders of web dating. We concluded she must be crazy, but asked questions to be polite.

Phase Two: October. Matt, Nicolas and I hatch a plan to write about internet dating. We would go on ten dates over the course of a couple weeks, and document our experiences. All we were missing was a lesbian to have full coverage of the internet dating scene.

Phase Three: Mid-October. Phase Two is completely abandoned by all parties in question.

Phase Four: November. Matt signs up for an internet dating service, and when made fun of, reminds us that he is “just looking for love in this cold and dark world.” He goes on several unsuccessful dates, including two in one night. As things get crazy with a couple women, the situation looks grim; his subscription runs out in a month’s time. When all is said and done, he finds himself a nice girl. This was December; they’re still together.

Phase Five: January. Cousin Professor also finds a woman. Before settling down and ceremoniously removing his profile from the internet, he sends me the low-down on each candidate via email. Surprisingly, they seem normal. Experience seems similar to shopping for a new car.

Phase Six: March. Phases one through five somewhere in the back of my mind, bored one afternoon, I make up a profile, post three pictures. Call myself Lily after a character on my younger brother’s SuperKids tape. I decided I would, from a purely scientific standpoint, of course, go on a few dates. Worse case scenario, I get to practice my French.

Testing Conditions

I picked the most popular French site, a veritable smorgasbord of cyberlove outlets. I took the site tutorial. You could search by selecting criteria, so if you wanted a well-educated vegetarian who likes Japanese food living within five miles of your house, you could pin them down. (Search results: 0.)

Once you find your dreamboat, you have a variety of ways of contacting them. For the shy or the lazy, there’s what’s called a “flash”. (On the site Matt used, this was called a “virtual kiss.”) The person in question receives a list of flashers, that is, those who liked his/her profile.

More bold is the message option. (See samples below.) Yet even bolder and perhaps the most annoying of the options is the chat option. (Dew u hv a webcam?! …Rule number one: Don’t talk to people who spell like this.) Aside from these contacting options, you can put people on your black list, put people on your elite list, see whose lists you appear on, and so on and so forth.

Procedure

Thirty-six hours after their posting, I had received no fewer than eighty-four emails. I ended up deleting all eighty-four, though I did read them all.

Here are some of my favorites (translated):

Hi Lily. I find your photos charming. Your smile makes me tingle. Look at my profile. (delete)

Lily, I’m a forty-three year-old, attractive man with a girlfriend your age. We’d like to share an experience with you. (delete)

Dearest Lily, I would like to propose a night of musical love. I have two tickets to the Kylie Minogue concert in April, and a hotel room nearby, just in case you want to take a rest. After the concert, we will sleep together. A night of love-making and shared music. What do you say? (delete) From the looks of this guy, I doubt he’ll have any takers. If anything, some Kylie fan will go with him to the concert and then get lost in the crowd. Poor guy.

Lily. I permit myself to write to you because I feel you might be my soulmate. I know that I’m thirty-seven, but I act a lot younger. I think that maybe I’m actually twenty-six, and that’s near your age. Please write me back. (delete)

Lily, I’ve written you a poem:

Onto your page, my look so befell
Seduced by your beauty, and your profile
To thank you for this experience so great
I offer you verse--are you my soulmate?
In all sincerity, I write these lines
In the meager hope that you will be mine.

Like you, awhile back, I boarded this train,
Walking around this mysterious plain,
I look for everything, nothing and all,
Wond’ring what fate has in store for us all.
At the station of love, I will debark,
Along with my soul which is no so dark.
The question is this: will you be with me?
Only your heart can answer this plea.
(delete. This wasn’t a joke.)

Results

I decided that rather than be shopped for, I’d do the shopping myself. I picked a twenty-five year-old journalist (no photo), a cute twenty-four year-old vegetarian (so rare in France), and a soon-to-be PhD in some sort of science. Within twenty-four hours, I’d scheduled three dates.

The Journalist.

“Emily, get a photo.” Wise words from Nico and Matt. Rather than tell him the truth (I’d like to screen you for our date), I asked Journalist to send me a photo so that I could recognize him when I got to the café. The return email came: I’m on the right, in black. My internet hopes were dashed as soon as the file finished loading. The guy was huge, and hugely unattractive. The photo showed a man with his red eyes partially rolled back, halfway sticking his tongue out of his enormous face. Upon reflection, this description is mean, but accurate.

I hit a serious case of what-have-I-gotten-myself-into. Though my friends told me to never respond and confirm the date, I couldn’t let the guy think that his picture had scared me away. And so last Saturday, I went out for what is now called the Sympathy Date by the locals.

I made sure not to give him my number, or even my real name. Call it female intuition, but I had a feeling this first date would be our last.

And it was. I found myself largely unable to concentrate on his words, distracted by the floating goatee--the only visible sign that the man actually had a chin.

He turned out to be less of a journalist than he’d let on. In fact, he was out of work and working on his novel, some story about a guy who finds old things in the basement and starts to live in the past. It’s a novel about the past, see, and the present, and how they’re actually the same thing. The guy’s twenty-five, and having some sort of early mid-life crisis, so he wants to live in the past, which is actually the present. It’s me, you see? I’m the main character! Sounds interesting. (delete)

The Vegetarian

Now this guy, I could go for. He was just my type: a scruffy-faced, long-haired, sloppily-dressed vegetarian. Old habits die hard, what can I say.

Though the above qualities rendered me temporarily blind, the realization eventually came: this guy was dumb as a post. Our conversation was punctuated by remarks like, “I don’t really like reading”, “My all-time favorite actor is Jean-Claude Van Dam”, and “I’m a security guard.”

As it turns out, I’d met him before; he was the security guard a newspaper office I’d been to before.

After coffee, we saw a dubbed version of Hitch. By the end, neither one of us had learned enough about love to sufficiently secure a second date. He was more attractive than me, and I was smarter, and well, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The PhD

Here comes the anti-climax, the exception to the rule that makes this report largely inconclusive. He’s smart, he’s good-looking. Instead of providing me with more material for this post, the guy kept me interested for a full three hours. Our date was fun, full of good conversation and lacking in awkward silences. I tried to understand the thesis of his dissertation, he listened to me babble about postcolonial identity in Francophone literature. We drank a couple of beers, and he even let me pay for myself.

Conclusion

Despite all the hype, Internet Dating sucks. Let’s do the math. I spent about seven hours total on the site, reading messages, looking for interesting people, weeding out the losers, etc. Add in the other five hours of bad dates, you get twelve.

7 hours internet time + 5 hours bad date time = 12 hours of my life gone

3 hours, those spent with the PhD, were enjoyable.

With a ratio of 12:3, or 4:1, the reader can easily see that the amount of boring-time was approximately four times the amount of interesting-time.

Hello, Pervert!

2005-03-26T20:27:00.000+01:00

Perhaps pervert is a little harsh. I understand that the internet and the privacy of one’s home, or internet cubicle, or whatever, has allowed thousands of people to attain sexual confirmation and comfort through a simple Google search. Whether it’s mosquito netting or fruit, superglue or the blind-and-deaf that turn you on, type in your fantasy into that magic search box, and two seconds later you’re bound to find a website devoted to men or women with fantasies just like yours.

My internet lovin’ has been, sadly enough, limited to my blog. In my efforts to find a readership, I’ve thrown myself into the blogworld. Time that should be spent reading a good book is sucked into the ramblings of the bloggers worldwide. Entire hours disappear. I hit the “next blog” button compulsively, always wanting more, frowning at chunky paragraphs with little punctuation and smiling at the pride of stay-at-home moms who have posted photographs of homemade Easter wreaths. Not so secretly, I too share the Martha Stewart Dream.

In my early blog days, I installed an innocent counter at the bottom of my page. Innocent to you, the unsuspecting blog visitor. This little tool, though, allows me to see a little part of your web roving. Sure, it posts a number at the bottom of the page. But on my page, it tells me your location, how long you stay on the site, and perhaps most importantly, where you came from. I'm sorry. It's for marketing purposes only. Really.

In the beginning, there were only links from emails (result of my shameless begging) and links from comments on other blogs (result of my shameless plugging). Soon, though, Google and Yahoo! became aware of my existence. And thus, my blog was miraculously included in the searches.

Most people have done a search for my name or for my blog title. Ah, my friends, thank you. Recently, though, through no intention of my own, I’ve had some visitors who were certainly searching for something other than non-fiction essays. My pieces include the words lessons, exposed, kissing, boob, pantyhose, stocking, and masturbating, though not in that order.

One recent search was for “Kissing + Lessons + Girl.” How beautiful. I imagined a young teenager, ready to go out with that Someone Special, wanting to get it just right. I hope that he quickly moved on and found the help he was seeking in time for Saturday night.

I laughed at other searches that had led to my page. One was for “pantyhose OR stocking OR falling pantyhose OR ripped pantyhose PLUS falling down.” Another was simply for "boob". Yet another requested “exposed himself to me.”

But this morning took the cake. I looked at the links that had led to my blog yesterday, and discovered that my blog, Better than Hamlet, is the number one hit for people searching Yahoo! for “Slutie little 9 year-old”. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. And thank you, Yahoo!.

The Great Glitch

2005-03-22T18:21:00.000+01:00

Hit rewind. It’s September. I’m standing on a street corner next to the canal St. Martin. Among picnicking couples, bouncing joggers and panting dogs, I’m the only one crying. I sob and choke into the phone. My misery? French bureaucracy.

I’d just been back to the Foreign Labor Office and seen a different woman who’d told me yet a different story. In France, the visa laws change depending on which employee you see. I’ve been sent away six times to find various Life Documents, all originals with original signatures and official seals and stamps and insignias. This is my seventh attempt to obtain working papers. I’m armed with every document that’s ever concerned me, from my birth certificate to my passport entry stamp.

Quite simply, the Foreign Labor Office is a madhouse. When I arrived that morning, a hand-written note was taped to the locked door: “Due to the high volume of visitors, we are no longer open all day. We will now receive visitors from 9am to noon. –The Direction.”

I reread the note several times to be sure I understood correctly. More people need papers, so they are open less often. It was 8:30am. I took a place in line.

Let there be no doubt: the French have no respect for orderly lines. There is no good translation for “wait your turn” or “single file”. When the doors opened at 9:15, a dozen people streamed out of the McDonald’s across the street and joined the funnel of people clamoring for working papers. I elbowed my way to the ticket distributor, which had, by that time, been knocked to the floor. Of the nine windows, only two housed state employees. The ladies blinked at us from behind the glass.

Eventually, one of them punched a button and a number appeared above her head. The skinny boy squatting next to me had just won the French lottery.

After two hours and sixteen sitting positions, my number was called. The woman took one look at my papers and said, “You’re in the wrong office.” I assured her that I wasn’t, that I’d been there six times before, that I had just been missing my pay stub from ten months ago. She looked at me and pushed a button; my number vanished from above her head. A pushy redhead with a nasty accent appeared beside me. The woman asked for her documents as I yelped, “You have to at least tell me where to go!” She pushed a paper with a new address my way.

And so I ended up on the quai of the canal, unable to begin work and angrily crying on the phone to my mother for just 2,34 euros/minute.

Fast forward to present day. Last Thursday, I was back at the same address the woman had given me, ready to renew the working papers that I’d received six months prior. I’d scouted it out earlier that week and had learned that the office was now only open Tuesdays and Thursdays from nine to eleven. I could call the office to ask questions, but they only answer the phones on Mondays from two to four. I had also discovered that because of a new rule, you had to apply to renew your working papers, by correspondence only, two months before their expiration date.

My expiration date was Saturday. I did the calculations: two days, not two months. Visions of deportation had haunted me all week. Would they at least let me pack up my things? Who would pay for the ticket?

As I sat down in Mme Dufournil’s chair, I feared the worst. I’d planned to lie about my dossier, telling her that I’d sent my renewal request months ago. Had she lost my papers? The French postal service was certainly to blame. After all, they had been striking recently.

Instead, I heard myself spilling my guts to her open-mouthed frown bearing clenched dentures. I was sorry. I didn’t know about the two-month limit. Please, Madame, don’t kick me out of the country.

She sighed, and finally asked, “When is your appointment at the Préfecture?”
“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
She flipped through my documents, and concluded, “Bring me your last three electricity bills and your last pay stub. Be here at nine tomorrow morning. I’ll have your papers ready so that you can be at the Préfecture at ten.”

Brilliant. Through some glitch in the French bureaucratic system, I was golden. I could stay in France legally for another six months, and then would have the option to renew. I thanked her at least eight times before I left. I texted my friends to let them know that I wasn’t to be deported. Life was great and I was excited.

The next morning was magic. I walked to the front of the line at nine, told the angry Russian that I had an appointment and gave a solid knock on Door 623A. Mme Dufournil greeted me by name, we exchanged Life Documents, and I was off to the Préfecture... who informed me after my hour-and-a-half wait that they’d lost my file.

I spent the day walking back and forth between Ile de la Cité and my apartment, photocopying all the way. So it wasn’t a complete fairy tale ending, but I’m here for six more months. The exciting news is that, through an unrelated glitch, I was overlooked for my Visite Médicale at the Immigration Office. You know what that means. Sometime in the next six months, I’ll be the proud owner of lung x-rays.

Lessons in French Courtship

2005-03-09T12:16:00.000+01:00

Perhaps my initial mistake on the French dating scene was assuming that Pepé Le Pew was a fictional character. He seemed fictional enough; he’s a cigarette-smoking, beret-wearing, stinky skunk. Not to mention, a cartoon. A slave to his little skunk heart, he woos a lady cat with classy lines like, “You are my peanut; I am your brittle.”

But as I’ve come to realize these past few years, Pepé is far from fiction. I should have known. That fabulous French accent is a dead giveaway. Ah, oui, Fransh... ze language of love.

As a six year-old planted in front of Saturday morning cartoons, I was taken in by Pepé. I never imagined that someday I’d be living in Paris and would be surrounded by real-life Pepés with moves that put the ingenuity of peanut brittle to shame.

Okay, so maybe I did.

Maybe I wanted to be someone’s peanut brittle. When coming to France for the first time, I laughed at the idea of finding French men’s courtship off-putting. Even as I listened to warnings about French men during the orientation to my study abroad program, I readied myself for moonlit strolls down the Seine and strawberry picnics in Les Buttes-Chaumont. I wouldn’t run like that ninny of a cat—no, I was ready to taste French romance. Why not perfect my French and my French kissing.

How things have changed. Unfortunately, I was overlooking one obvious obstacle: I’m a prudish American. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve been informed that it’s out of my control, that my country’s Puritan background is to blame. Indeed, the French have explained to me that because of their Mediterranean blood, French men are natural predators. Yes, a giant and unwieldy force lies deep within the French gene pool. I asked why I couldn’t be a predator, bemoaning the cheesy come-ons I endured on a daily basis. If I were a predator, I could come up with some better material. They told me to stop complaining. I had to understand that I was the prey, and that prey would be preyed upon.

Was it really in my nature to be immune to the predatory tactics of French men? Was I genetically unprepared for French love?

The more I thought about my nature, the more I blamed my nurture. Perhaps Pepé Le Pew was to blame for my indifference. Indeed, the cartoon had proved to me that true love between cats and skunks was impossible. Even in the end, when the cat finally surrenders to Pepés endless attempts and trades in her own scent for that of a skunk, she finds that Pepé has also undergone an olfactory reversal, and now can’t stand the smell of her.

What a sad fate. Ultimately, the lady cat and Pepé weren’t meant to be. Maybe this is the case with me and French men. Call it my country’s Puritan roots, call it my feminist education, call it years of playing an equal in the (American) game of cat and skunk--but something about French come-ons seemed downright comical to me.

And so in this, my third year in France, I’ve decided to outline the major differences I’ve come to understand. Consider it an anthropological study on heterosexual male strategies of courtship, as studied from 2002 to 2005, coming in five easy installments.

(Move on to Lesson One)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Two)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Three)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Four)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Five)

Lesson One

2005-03-09T12:11:00.000+01:00

First Lesson: Every Moment is a Special Moment.
(part of a series, beginning with 'Lessons in French Courtship')

I come from the South. People smile, call each other “Sugar”, and wave from the front porch as cars pass on the street. We engage each other in conversations in the elevator and say hello when passing strangers on the sidewalk. This is no exaggeration.

I quickly learned that Southern hospitality has wondrous effects on the French population. Or at least, the male population. During my first week in Paris, five different Frenchmen followed me off the metro into the halls, allured by my Southern charm.

Each time, I’d noticed a man staring at me from across the car. So I did what I’d always done. I gave them a tight smile that was meant to say, “I can see you’re staring at me. Please stop.”

In France, however, this smile is mistaken for, “I am madly in love with you, Metro Man. Please come talk to me.” The men came up behind me on the quai as I made my way to the exit, getting close to my ear. What’s your name, chérie? Where are you going? Let’s walk a little bit of your path together. Just a little bit of your path. Your path of love. After all, we shared a special moment.

A special moment is defined by any moment in which a woman, accidentally or not, acknowledges the French stare. Whether it be a tight smile, an aggressive glare, or merely a remarkable discomfort as the woman runs out of other things to look at, the very recognition of a stare is special in itself.

As far as I can tell, special moments can only be avoided if sleeping, unconscious, or wearing some sort of protective helmet which covers the eyes. Not easily lulled to sleep on the train and too poor to purchase hats, my special moments in Paris have been plentiful, though very rarely shared with good-looking men in my age bracket.

Only the old and/or sleazy choose to strike up conversation. And without fail, they always cite the special moment as grounds for the debut of a metro love affair. But now I know what to tell them as I stand to move away: that I’m going to miss my transfer, and that, besides, every moment is a special moment.

(Reread the Intro)
(Move on to Lesson Two)
(Skip ahead to to Lesson Three)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Four)
(Skip ahead to Lesson Five)