I internalized a small list of French objectives:Take a photo with an enormous wheel of cheese; explore the prohibited catacombs; and lose my virginity to a delicious man.The thought of a Parisian lover sounds trite, but still I swooned over his squinty green eyes, locked chin line and the chestnut hair he tucked behind his ear with his thumb.
He was an aspiring photographer, 28, working to pay off his credit card bill. I wanted him to educate me in sensual throw downs and Picasso-positioned fornication. When I made it known that I wanted to get immoral, he responded, “Zat’s really cute. I’m flattered really. But-uh I am too old foar you.”
My ego was left on crutches. I was cute, like some fourth grader that re-writes her name adding her crush’s family name. Mrs. Sarah—Sylvain Homo, Mrs. Sarah Homo, Mrs. Homo. I wanted to retire my chastity for a Homo (pronounced oh-moh).
Then it was 2007, and within two weeks of moving back to Paris for an internship, by chance, I ran into Sylvain in Le Metro.He had just moved since breaking up with his girlfriend, and although we never kept in touch and my return was abrupt, fate (or so I thought) plopped us in the same neighborhood. Newly single and still trying to break into photography, he asked if I wanted to have a drink at his place before he took a holiday in Norway. I was no longer a sexual troglodyte (I had one serious relationship and a few uncouth encounters under my belt), but he still possessed a certain glamour.
Sitting in his narrow bedroom with one unmade twin bed, he clicked through photos of naked men and women in their seventies.Was this his idea of erotic foreplay?
Getting bored, I went to the kitchen to throw out my beer bottle and mentally rehearsed my exit. I didn’t hear him follow me in. As the bottle hit the trash bag, I turned and met his gaze. It was the first time I remarked on his average stature, maybe 5-foot-8. I had fantasized about him innumerable times, but my sanguine imagination had spared me from what happened next.
Sylvain grabbed my head and panted all over my mouth and chin, like a Rottweiler with cottonmouth. Back in his room, he took no time to play with my body and went straight downtown. I should have been writhing in enjoyment; instead, I stared at a crack in the ceiling during those bleak, quiet few minutes. Like biting off the tip of a grenade, he opened the prophylactic wrapper with his teeth.
But the romp session was anything but explosive. If it was possible I was less wet than when we were staring at geriatric softcore porn.
His cross pendant kept swinging into my eye as he tried to move into various positions.With his small bed against the wall, we just kept bopping our heads.
When it was over, he rushed me out because he still had packing to finish. I put my sweater on backward and retrieved my tiger’s eye necklace that fell to the floor during our bobble-head sex. I remembered the clerk that sold it to me saying it signified inner strength. Awesome.
As I fumbled out I heard him mutter, “My muthair would keel me foar dis.” For screwing me? Or for throwing me out? Probably both.
Seven months later, the international booty call vibrated in my pants. I said yes to meeting him for a drink, curious if my unbedded blinders would switch back on.
“Je suis ravi que tu es toujours à Paris!” I am glad you are still in Paris!
Obviously enough sexless time had passed to trump his mother’s voice in his head. It looked like it was a rough winter. His face was bloated, and there were potato sacks beneath his eyes. His grungy appearance and his somnolent leer actually made him seem…creepy. All at once I was grateful my virginal demeanor turned him off from taking me amid greasy aprons and cases of Perrier in the pub storeroom nearly three years back.
After one beer, I said I needed to go, and the waiter came over to give us the bill. Sylvain paused. Maybe he was expecting me to ask if he had any immediate plans. I gave him an inscrutable stare. I watched a loose piece of blue paper fall out of his wallet. There, sky-blue presumption stared right at me. It was a rubber. I pretended I didn’t see, so did the waiter, as the French are so innately dispensed to shrug off sex beyond the bedroom. Sylvain plucked it up and handed over his Euros.
The awkward intercourse, the tacky call, the carelessly placed condom, it all demystified my naive Parisian fantasy.
As we parted ways, he said, “Let’s do it again.”
I mumbled, “Let’s not.”
Sarah Elder is a writer and nanny living in New York. Growing up in California, she left for France so she could miss California, then she left for New York so she could miss California and France.
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