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Paris Part Deux

I swear, one of these days this travelogue will be completed. I just remembered something that should have been included in the language section. I was kind of looking forward to hearing the French say my name since I thought they’d make it sound fabulous but it turned out they couldn’t say my name- none of them! Numerous times I wrote it down with the accent ague and even threw my “Like Renée with a J” line at them. They had no problem saying Renée but then they’d say my name and it would come out like “Juh-nee.” Totally, totally bizarre to me. I also neglected to mention in the language section that everywhere you go they play American music, which makes it even stranger that their English isn’t better.

The Men

If you are a woman with any self esteem issues, then Paris is the place for you. I’m telling you, I had more men fawning over me than I had even in my early twenties. I don’t know if it’s all that wine they drink or if they just heard that American women are easy but they were showing me some major amour. However, I didn’t find them to be the romantics I thought they were supposed to be, they were merely aggressive. While the attention was kind of fun, it was actually somewhat annoying at times.

Five minutes after I arrived and dropped my bags in my room I was pounced by a guy on the street who then offered to show me around. It continued from there with no less than 15 guys over the course of 10 days either declaring their love to me or outright asking me to sleep with them. I even had one guy wearing a wedding band ask me, “How much?” Mind you, at the time I was wearing pants, boots, a turtleneck sweater, a scarf and a big coat so I was hardly sporting the ho look. I was somewhat flattered, though maybe if I’d found out what I was worth I wouldn’t have been. On the last night, there was a bartender who was all over me and literally begged to go home with me. My polite excuse was that I had to get up in a few hours so I had to sleep, to which he said he only needed 15 minutes (like I said, real romantic). At 3 am my phone blared because apparently in France all you need to know is someone’s first name to call their hotel room. That screwed up the rest of my sleep because every time I dozed off I dreamed that sounds outside my window were him climbing up the second floor awning, which woke me up. Needless to say, the phrase laissez-moi tranquil (leave me alone) came in handy a few times.

Fortunately, the men were quite generous about buying drinks, which honestly saved me at least a couple hundred dollars during the trip (yes, I drank a lot). I realized after I returned that I’d neglected to take a midnight walk along the Seine River but frankly, it was so damn cold that I would have bitched the whole time and it hardly would have been romantic. But I did get a taste for the French experience through some little adventures including one that landed me in an itty bitty studio apartment with a dozen people all smoking with the windows closed (France just passed smoking bans in public this year so they smoked heavily). It was kind of nostalgic for me because it had been many years since I’d been in a similar environment. I hadn’t been able to access the Internet for a few days so I took the opportunity to shoot off a quick email to my family to let them know I was alive. Little did I know that the French keyboard is very different from ours so I was useless with it. It took me about five minutes just to type in the URL to check my email and then all I could get out to my sister was, “In Paris. More later.” After I sent it I wondered if such an unusual message from me would concern her more than hearing nothing at all.

Viva la France

They certainly owned up to terms attributed to them, like french fries. They serve french fries with everything. I’m pretty sure even an ice cream cone comes with a side of fries. Luckily for me I didn’t know the French words for “side of ranch” or else I would have gained quite a bit of weight (side note: I thought I must have gained a few pounds from the alcohol alone and was shocked to return home and learn I hadn’t gained any weight)! I also have to give them props for the best french onion soup and quiche lorraine I’ve ever had.

I learned why we borrowed the term menage a trois from the French. I had two pairs of guys offer me that opportunity and if I thought my room could even hold three people I might have taken them up on it. And plenty of guys offered up french kisses as if they were souvenirs every American needed to have. Maybe I didn’t need to have them but when in France…

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