Do I smell French yet?
Last night we went to dinner at the home of a colleague of JB's. Friends of ours, 2 of which also now happen to work with JB, had also been invited. It wasn't the first dinner we'd enjoyed in their new home on the outskirts of Paris, or the first evening we'd spent laughing, eating and drinking in their company. But half-way into the apéro I felt myself pining for dinner parties where English reigns and repartee does not include subjunctive clauses and nouns with genders.
The afternoon preceding our excursion to Brunoy, Katia and I wandered languorously from Gare St. Lazare to her appointment in the Bastille, exploring unfamiliar streets, yarn stores, and bouches de métros. We discussed everything from our mutual obsession of extracting ingrown hairs, to cult French films, to overcoming shyness in a foreign language- in French.
Abandoning her to hot wax on rue des Taillandiers, I stopped into a nearby bookstore, picked up a short novel I'd been recommended, and headed home.
I commenced my usual pre-soirée ritual of purification and mint tea. Opening up the deliciously girly gift-set from Sephora that Katia insisted on buying that afternoon as my belated b-day gift, I pinned up my unruly mess of hair and stepped into our standing-only shower. Letting the steam unclog my nostrils and coax my pores into releasing the day's rationing of street gunk, I felt my sore feet relax and tried to imagine what hors d'oeuvre I would create for the potluck. Squeezing a 2Euro-sized dollop of crème douche into my palm, relishing the odor of new perfume, I scrubbed, rubbed, bubbled my limbs to a state of pristine hirsuteness hitherto unparalleled (I'm next in line for the hot wax torture). Mazzy Star's depressed ballads wafted into my sanctuary of Sephora, and I hummed along drowsily as I lathered on the corresponding lait de palme.
With an hour of prep time before me, I allotted myself a half hour of reading a few short stories. It is no indication of Aimee Bender's ability to tell a titillating tale that within a matter minutes I was passing into stage 2 of the sleep process.
A bizarre dream involving olives and Lancel briefcases was in full swing when my vibrating cell phone - knowingly nestled in the pocket of my robe - jerked me back to semi-consciousness. It was Katia and I was expected in 10 minutes at her apartment. We are not neighbors. I rushed into a pair of jeans and a bulky sweater, grabbed a bottle of wine and raced toward the métro.
Slightly hungover and stomache still churning from foie gras and porto, salmon and Bourgogne Aligoté, magret de canard and Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune, and galette des rois and Champagne, it is now clear that I would have been better off returning to my strange R.E.M. digressions. We arrived at our friend's at 21h and by 22h I was having a hard time stifling yawns and keeping my eyelids open. My brain had reached a French language saturation point of level red and I found myself increasingly ignoring the work stories that endlessly bandied around me or the fact that my verbal contributions to the conversations were decreasing by the minute.
I loathe being the silent guest at French dinner parties. I knew things were getting dramatique when I thought to myself that my métro reading was only an arm's reach away and that nobody would mind terribly if I relocated to the couch for a bit.
My antisocial attitude wasn't entirely my fault, though. The topic of conversation repeatedly reverted to shop-talk, and even took a nauseating turn for the worst when opinions on a physically well-endowned co-worker (female, obviously) went from flattering to befitting an episode of "Guy Talk."
Ah well. At least I had the crook of my arm to sniff, reminding me that even if I didn't act French, at least my odor aura might indicate otherwise.
The afternoon preceding our excursion to Brunoy, Katia and I wandered languorously from Gare St. Lazare to her appointment in the Bastille, exploring unfamiliar streets, yarn stores, and bouches de métros. We discussed everything from our mutual obsession of extracting ingrown hairs, to cult French films, to overcoming shyness in a foreign language- in French.
Abandoning her to hot wax on rue des Taillandiers, I stopped into a nearby bookstore, picked up a short novel I'd been recommended, and headed home.
I commenced my usual pre-soirée ritual of purification and mint tea. Opening up the deliciously girly gift-set from Sephora that Katia insisted on buying that afternoon as my belated b-day gift, I pinned up my unruly mess of hair and stepped into our standing-only shower. Letting the steam unclog my nostrils and coax my pores into releasing the day's rationing of street gunk, I felt my sore feet relax and tried to imagine what hors d'oeuvre I would create for the potluck. Squeezing a 2Euro-sized dollop of crème douche into my palm, relishing the odor of new perfume, I scrubbed, rubbed, bubbled my limbs to a state of pristine hirsuteness hitherto unparalleled (I'm next in line for the hot wax torture). Mazzy Star's depressed ballads wafted into my sanctuary of Sephora, and I hummed along drowsily as I lathered on the corresponding lait de palme.
With an hour of prep time before me, I allotted myself a half hour of reading a few short stories. It is no indication of Aimee Bender's ability to tell a titillating tale that within a matter minutes I was passing into stage 2 of the sleep process.
A bizarre dream involving olives and Lancel briefcases was in full swing when my vibrating cell phone - knowingly nestled in the pocket of my robe - jerked me back to semi-consciousness. It was Katia and I was expected in 10 minutes at her apartment. We are not neighbors. I rushed into a pair of jeans and a bulky sweater, grabbed a bottle of wine and raced toward the métro.
Slightly hungover and stomache still churning from foie gras and porto, salmon and Bourgogne Aligoté, magret de canard and Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune, and galette des rois and Champagne, it is now clear that I would have been better off returning to my strange R.E.M. digressions. We arrived at our friend's at 21h and by 22h I was having a hard time stifling yawns and keeping my eyelids open. My brain had reached a French language saturation point of level red and I found myself increasingly ignoring the work stories that endlessly bandied around me or the fact that my verbal contributions to the conversations were decreasing by the minute.
I loathe being the silent guest at French dinner parties. I knew things were getting dramatique when I thought to myself that my métro reading was only an arm's reach away and that nobody would mind terribly if I relocated to the couch for a bit.
My antisocial attitude wasn't entirely my fault, though. The topic of conversation repeatedly reverted to shop-talk, and even took a nauseating turn for the worst when opinions on a physically well-endowned co-worker (female, obviously) went from flattering to befitting an episode of "Guy Talk."
Ah well. At least I had the crook of my arm to sniff, reminding me that even if I didn't act French, at least my odor aura might indicate otherwise.
Comments
Of course, I always *hope* I come across as mysterious and profound, but who am I kidding?