If you want to get to the root of this whole ¨adventures in dating in Paris¨ thing, I suppose you'd have to blame it on my neighborhood café. At the end of my street is a swanky Parisian café and bistro haunted by the likes of government ministers, tourists passing to nearby sites such as the Musée d'Orsay or the Rodin, locals, and on occasion, Ina Garten, otherwise known as the Barefoot Contessa. I learned this one weekend walzting to the métro and shivering underneath my jacket in the brisk December air ( I am, in some ways, still very Californian) and had to do a double take when I saw her and her husband Jeffrey enjoying breakfast. I later learned that this is one of her favorite places to eat in Paris. I, however, until April of this year had never been.
I'd spent eight months int he neighborhood, passing to-and-fro on my way to class, to the laundromat, to work, to the grocery story, to the post office, but never daring to go. I'd admired the gendarmes guarding the intersection with austere determination and I occasionally enjoyed turning their heads. Once in a while they were cute and they'd smile. It wasn't until one of my best guy friends in the whole world (if not the best) came to visit me for ten days in April that I finally sat down at this place for a coffee.
And then, heaven opened up and God shone down and said ¨Let there be pretty garçons du café¨ and the most gorgeous waiter I have ever seen served me one of the best café créme of my life. In a porcelain cup with full fat milk, steamed. When he left I looked across at Best Male Friend and sighed. ¨He was cute,¨ I looked down at the bill. In Paris, occasionally your server's name is labeled on the addition so I found it. Hmm. Did he look like his name? Best Male Friend responded with ¨He looks a little young, doesn't he!?¨ Oh silly Best Male Friend and your silly American Male Ways. I love you all the same. I left exact cash and we got up to leave.
I went back to this particular café when my Mom came to visit me at the end of May. Paris was like a ripe peach blushing under the full light of approaching summer and I was there to drink up her nectar. We were hungry the first day she arrived and tired, decided to go do my corner café. I admitted to her that there was an adorable Frenchy McWaiterboy. She was then determined to get me a date. This is why I ( let's steal a word out of Mr. Big's book) abso-fucking-lutely love ma mère.
Frenchy McWaiterboy ended up being our server, suggested excellent wines, and then insisted we try the most incredible meringued lemon tarte I have ever tasted ( You can't take the American propensity for hyperbole out of me, sorry France!). We went back nearly every night my mom was there, so much in fact we got to know the staff, and she strategized ways for me to ask him to get a drink. We were there one night with my adopted American uncle over here, my Diplomat. Diplomat took one look at him, then at me, and burst out with:
¨My GOD, he's pretty. He's prettier than YOU!¨
¨Thanks. Thanks Dip,¨ I shrugged jokingly.
¨No, really, those lips! And it's not like any single one of his features is prettier than the other, it's all in harmony. He's beautiful! Are you sure he's not gay?¨
My Mom and I chuckled and I replied that I didn't know. We three kept brainstorming ideas.
I then came up with the brilliant beyond brilliant idea of taking one of the fancy paper drink coasters and writing ¨ Un verre, peut-être?¨ on the back and leaving it for him. I stole one that night.
It took me all week to work up the courage to do so, but I finally did my mom's last night in Paris. Then nothing. I thought maybe he hadn't gotten it, and I told B, the BAFFIP ( Best American Female Friend in Paris) everything. We decided to get coffee one Saturday afternoon at my café so I could a) show her Frenchy McWaiterboy and his sexy sexy self and b) work up the nerve to ask him what he was doing that night.
He saw us, came over, served us our standard café crème, and B admitted he was very pretty. She then tried to get me to ask him what he was doing that night. I froze. I seized up. I couldn't do it. We were on the verge of leaving. We got out of our chairs and I lingered on the corner. I then, in the most effing awkard way possible, way to go Lindsay, asked him what he was doing that night. GAH.
¨I'm sorry, I'm not available.¨
I walked off down the street with B. At least there was no more doubt. Either he wasn't interested....or he was totally gay. Spotting gay men in Europe is nowhere near as easy as it is in say....America. Men here are in general a touch more effeminate and OK with dressing well and grooming well. What we consider ¨metrosexual¨ in the states is pretty much normal here. And unless you're hanging out in the Marais, which somehow happens to be Paris' gay AND orthodox Jewish neighborhood (puzzle me that one...), it can be hard for what my mom dubs her GAYDAR to function.
¨He's probably gay,¨ B said.
¨Yeah, probably.¨ I sighed. It didn't take the sting away. You see, dating and I, up until it seems now, have never been good friends. I have deliberately avoided it as much as possible because it has been nothing but a thorn in my side that saps me of my positivity. I generally tend to see the glass half-full, but there is well of emotional memory loaded into my psyche from years of school teasing and coping with my own intelligence.
At a young age, I was identified as Gifted and Talented and sent to special programs. I knew I was smart and I've never tried to hide it, but that meant in junior high (in tandem with normal pre-teen girl worries) braces, glasses, and a frizzball of curly hair that could rival Hermione Granger's, I never felt at ease. Dances in the 7th grade left me in tears, because no one ever asked me to slow dance.
Things got better in high school, where I felt more at ease among the smart kids, but I was still the girl the guys called to ask for help with homework. Occasionally they told me they had crushes on my other, adorable friends and they wanted my help, so I set them up. Then there were the Queen Bees, waterpolo goddesses who ruled the social scene. I didn't care so much about being popular, but their ease of cuteness irked me. My senior year, the Queen of Queens of these girls, a waterpolo player with whom I shared a Calculus class, didn't get into her first choice college, and I had: UC Berkeley. This particular university has a reputation for admitting brilliant students and it's a prestigious school, but it is said equally that the women who attend are less than aesthetically pleasing.
Queen of Queens was discussing the less than pleasing aesthetic reputation of the young ladies at this university and looked me up and down, head to toe, like a scanner at a grocery store check out, and blurted out carelessly:
¨Well Lindsay, I guess you're not bad...for Berkeley.¨
I held my tongue and restrained myself. What the hell was THAT supposed to mean? Years later, two Berkeley diplomas with honors in hand, I think Queen of Queens can shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
At Berkeley, things weren't any easier. Between strands of go-no-where immature college dates and lack of luck with older alumni friends who I felt more in tune with, I doubted myself. Adding to this doubt was a long on again off again saga with a good friend who claimed he wanted to be only friends, but treated me otherwise. I thought I was crazy, inventing things in my head, that he didn't really feel anything for me. But I was so in love with him and so naive that I supposed one day he'd figure things out. He eventually did this past December, but I had figured out too that I didn't deserve the way he treated me, and I did one of the hardest things I've ever had to do: I had to cut him out of my life entirely. After 13 years of friendship starting in elementary school, turning someone you know THAT WELL into someone you used to know is hardly without heartbreak.
But I did. And this is the emotional baggage I carried with me when Frenchy McWaiterboy turned me down. I was so down and out I called the Diplomat and we got drinks that night in the 6th. We both had difficult life circumstances at the time and we both needed to wallow. We wallowed our way from the Pub St. Germain to Café Mabillon to Café Conti and by that time, I was rather intoxicated. He reassured me, after some absinthe at Café Mab, that I am worthy and that hell, no body in their right mind would want to pass me up.
¨You're just a two percenter,¨ he explained.
¨A what?¨
¨A two percenter. You're smart. You're cultivated. You don't play the ' I'm-an-easy-lay-you-can-sleep-with-me-tonight' game. You don't give off that vibe, it's not who you are and you shouldn't, but it turns a lot of guys away who just want sex.¨
¨I see.¨ He basically summed up what I've known for a while: I am the kind of girl you take home to meet your mom and not necessarily the girl you have a one night stand with and then ditch.
¨Take X for example,¨ X was one of our mutual acquaintances. ¨X plays the 'silly, airy' type sometimes. People pick up on that.¨
I smiled half-heartedly. My love life has always been difficult. The thought of me being compatible with only a mere TWO PERCENT of the straight male population depressed me. Nonetheless, the Diplomat claimed that if he was younger, much younger, ¨he'd be all over¨ me. I laughed. I hardly wanted to picture my adoptive uncle Diplomat like that, but it brought my spirits back up. We kicked back another absinthe-grape juice cocktail and then when home for the night.
I decided then and there I wouldn't melancolicaly mourn Frenchy McWaiterboy's rejection. I'd get back out there, and fast....
And that's when I asked E to drinks on Facebook.
We all know what follows.
No comments:
Post a Comment