We’ll Always Have Paris
Touching down at what is 2:30 a.m. your time, but what is almost dejeuner their time, after a nine-hour flight makes you question whether or not those bunnies you saw on the runway of Charles De Gaulle were actually there. (They were.) My flight landed an hour before my then-boyfriend C’s, and I easily blew through that waiting time by panicking at the sight of AK-47s strapped to airport security, practicing the possessive avoir in my head, checking and re-checking that I hadn’t lost my passport, and updating my Facebook status in a way that is all-too braggy but rightfully so.
I’m from a small town in Kentucky. When I told my mother that I’d need her to take me to the airport so I could meet my boyfriend in Paris, she was so proud. “I can’t believe you’re seeing the world at 19,” she said, beaming as she kept her eyes on the road to Louisville. Sure, I had planned to absorb all the museums and wine and beat culture that I could (I’d watched “Funny Face” no less than five times the week before the trip and memorized each lyric to “Bonjour, Paris!”), but mostly I was eager to start my mission to lose my virginity in the most romantic city on earth.
One month before the trip I began a liquid diet and steadily increased my cardio and weight training regimen as suggested by some pseudo-health magazine. I purchased exactly three cute lingerie sets from Vicky’s Secret — just in case I got lucky each night of the trip and wanted to keep my newfound sexcapades interesting. For some now absurd reason I needed this to happen then — and why not? I was a cute, smart, adventurous college girl meeting up with my long-distance, devastatingly handsome boyfriend of eight months. It was all hopelessly romantic.
The first day in Paris went swimmingly. We stumbled over ourselves trying to find our minute hostel in the 9th arrondissement, the locals immediately noticing our stunted pronunciations and switching to English to offer assistance. After stopping in a bakery (oh so French) and laying down for a nap, we quickly lost five hours of the day. Jetlagged, we decided to forge the metro system and ended up at the Centre Georges Pompidou to watch the sunset engulf the Eiffel Tower. We rekindled what had been a three-month hiatus in physical contact. Hands held hands. Lips kissed lips. I was living a rom-com about two unlikely kids from the south taking over France from its heart.
Then he suggested we get Mexican food.
There are many reasons not to order Mexican food in Europe. First: There’s a direct correlation to imitability and proximity to the country of origin; nachos are just too far away to taste as good as they might in Texas. Second: French food is amazing and should really be the only thing you consume while in France. Third: A lot of romance is sucked out of the room when you get the shits from the chef’s inexplicable need to add green olives to your burrito.
I did not get laid that night.
We awoke early, taking turns showering, and watching some cartoon about an environmentalist red panda. I decided to put the moves on all day so as not to have another abstinent evening. I gave him a nibble of my croque monsieur, snuggled closer at the Notre Dame cathedral — hell, I even let him take me to a museum. I photographed him in the sands outside the Louvre, and he looked so happy holding up his Orangina with his crooked smile. I tried to stay chipper, but I felt this distance that only expanded once inside the great rooms of the famous museum. It could have been the jetlag and it definitely could have been the emotional blue-balls. I really don’t know for sure. Anyway, after deeming me a “bummer” he abandoned me near the Mona Lisa. I sat on a bench and waited for him to find me for another two hours. In lieu of the sex I had been dying to have that night, I had a teary heart-to-heart about how I thought I was in love with him (“Isn’t that what we’re doing here??), how I thought he’d liked the pretty girls on the streets of this country more than me (“I’m not going to be skinny like that. They are LIVING on cigarettes, C!”) and how he had no expectations whatsoever for this trip (“I would have come for spring break either way!”). He was a good listener. He spooned me until I fell asleep.
The last day blew by. We checked out the Sex Museum (ha), had the best gelato of my entire life on the treacherous walk up to Montmartre and went to the Musee D’Orsay, which for some odd reason didn’t stir those feelings of existential dread quite like the other museums had. We packed, and rested, and cuddled, and shared a cab to the airport at 6 a.m.
I wanted to cry. I really did… I wanted to have some big monumental “Garden State” meets “Casablanca” farewell, but we didn’t. I kissed him goodbye and bought some chocolate in the terminal. I slept most of the way back to America.
Our relationship didn’t last much longer than that. We had a brief reunion in Washington D.C. (more museums!), and called it quits over the phone in a very sterile manner. I later learned exactly why he wasn’t interested in me sexually, and it had less to do with my myriad of flaws and more to do with feelings he hadn’t yet resolved inside himself.
Even still, Paris is my favorite city on earth — because you can love unafraid, even when there’s no love returned. Because the city insists that you will love again.
(It should be noted that while I don’t loathe museums outright, full days of them depress me for reasons I’m still trying to uncover. Maybe it’s the fact that they are so expensive and so subjective. I mean, the audacity of an institution to tell its benefactors that what they are looking at is the best shit, even though it’s all made of the same paints and primers you can buy at a craft store… It could also be that the amount of non-Eurocentric art is shocking, which causes me to completely stop identifying with the human emotion it took to make the art after approximately 120 minutes. The jury is still out.)
