¨I WILL ACTUALLY have some LIBERTY!¨ I exclaimed to Monsieur Lawyer over dinner Tuesday night. It had been over a week since I'd seen him (and only for five minutes at that) since he was in Belgium to see a dissertation defense. We were in the Marais at a Basque tapas restaurant where the menu was almost entirely in Spanish.
Monsieur Lawyer has a dark handsomeness to him that stems from his Spanish origins...his paternal grandparents were both Spanish and fled in the 30s under Franco to come to France. I have a thing for dark and handsome and he wore a black blazer and black sweater that only made his eyes seem a deeper shade of onyx.
I could've kissed him right then and there. Date number four and I still haven't been kissed. Granted, I know I could just make the move, but I get the sense he wants to do it (France is still very patriarchal) given he pulls out chairs and refuses to let me pitch in for dinner. He still greets me with a bise on the cheek when we meet up, but this evening he cupped one cheek with his hand and pulled me tight to plant a solid bise on the other cheek. Just kiss me tonight dammit!
¨What are you going to do with your liberty?¨ he joked. His is rightfully and fully in the know about my Insane Nannying Job.
¨I don't know!¨ I exclaimed.
¨ Nothing planned?¨
¨Nothing. I don't know what to do with myself.¨
He paused, said I should reserve my Saturday so we could do something, and then got onto the subject of my work schedule. He coyly asked ¨So even if say I proposed to you that we go away for a weekend on one of your off weekends you don't know if you could go?¨
Oh boy you do not say things like that to me and not expect my head to start churning.
¨ If I gave enough advance notice I'd just tell my boss I'm going away and not available that weekend.¨
He nodded. I added that I have my work schedule through March. And thank Jesus I only have eight more months of this nanny nonsense, but then I have to find another way to fund my time here...not to mention a visa. Give me a job somebody please?
Job hunting stress is even more stressful here given my job has to come with a visa attached. And getting a visa means that a business is willing to essentially pay what amount to ¨import taxes¨ on me and that business has to justify to the French government that here is no Frenchy who can do my job. What this boils down to are jobs that need native English speakers. I recently interviewed for a job with a digital communications agency looking for an American native English speaker with a visa sponsored by the French American Chamber of Commerce of New York (FACCNY). THIS IS NOT AN EFFING SMALL DEAL. I was so excited to interview! THIS IS MY TICKET! I told myself.
Onllllly I found out this past Friday that I didn't get the job not due to my CV or interview but because they reformulated the position and are now looking for an anglophone freelance journalist. Guess that's what the economic crisis will do to you, right?
So Monsieur Lawyer has been trying to come up with ways to keep me here, and his latest proposition is to pass the national teaching credential examination for university level (l'agrégation). Eighty percent of French people who pass the agrég come from brutally difficult grandes écoles and even after I asked my Masters thesis adviser, whom I love dearly, about passing the agrég, she was frank in telling me I probably wouldn't pass it not due to a lack of intelligence ( I have my Master 1 summa cum laude from la Sorbonne and intended to graduate summa cum laude again this year...) but lack of training in the French system. I explained this to Monsieur Lawyer.
¨ NO, don't pass the agrég in French! PASS IT IN ENGLISH!¨ he laughed. Passing the agreg is huge. It means I could get doctoral funding from the state. I hadn't thought about passing it in English.
¨Are you serious?¨
¨Why not!?¨
¨I'm not the product of the French system! I can't pass the agrég!¨
¨You might not know all the material for the English program this year....but your English is spotless,¨ he chuckled. ¨I wager you would pass the agrég in English.¨
Then for the second time that night he made my head churn. If I can get into ENS and pass the agrég in English then I could...
* * *
After dinner we walked down the rue de Rivoli. It was a beautiful, if warmer than usual, October evening in Paris and the night sky was crystal clear. Paris is stunning lit up at night and we made our way past the Hôtel de Ville, across the Seine to the Left Bank, toward the Académie Française. Kiss me dammit kiss me. We wound our way through the 6th to my studio in the 7th and he escorted me to my front door. It was near 22H45 and as always, we chatted. People walked down my street to the café on the corner and I wished sincerely that it was deserted so he would make a move.
So we chatted and chatted. Just kiss me.
¨Bon, ma belle Lindsay,¨ he said. It was time he got going and he moved in...And firmly cupped my face in his two hands and planted two lovely bises on my cheeks.
Either he is dragging this out to torture me and it's working or we are both just timid. But what I can tell you is he's smart as hell, culture, and very sincere. And I really like him a lot.
Next time, if he doesn't kiss me, I'll just have to do it myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment