Monsieur Mediocre

by John von Sothen

  3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

  And then none of that happened. Macron flashed up on the screen with a 65 to 35 percent split. Le Pen faded into the background. The fever broke. The champagne flowed. And as Le Pen made her concession speech minutes later, I kissed Anaïs and hugged my friends. We’d live.

  My French friends were just as happy as I was, but their reaction seemed more muted. “But of course, we won! We got deees!” they huffed in a lame attempt at American slang, taking me into their arms like a child who’d just run into their bedroom crying about a nightmare. So French. I could have killed them right there. These lucky bastards, I thought. For all their griping and somber complaining about the political process these past years, the French, in the end, found their true north. Mélenchon’s unsubmissives dragged their asses to the polls just like all the penny-loafered Fillonistes did, both whining all the way to the ballot boxes, but voting regardless, adding their own bitter brick to the Republican wall. Perhaps Susan Sarandon could have learned from them, I thought, or Jill Stein, or those suburban moms who’d once voted for Obama and now Trump. True democracy, the French were teaching me, involves swallowing loads of shit to arrive at a consensual second choice we can now all critique.

  Months later, I’d watch as the pendulum of public opinion swung the opposite way, Macron looking like a French Kennedy or at least a French Justin Trudeau. And as I combed through all the American texts and emails that flooded my phone and computer, I sensed jealousy and admiration for my French compatriots, those whom I had originally admired, then written off, and now found heroic. In a way, Marine Le Pen had given me what I’d been searching for since arriving in France, an appreciation of French resolve and a commitment to be an engaged citizen, a promise I made to myself during that 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 countdown.

  Now I hand out coffee to the refugees on some mornings with Anaïs. I know the mayor of the Tenth by name, and I’ve even found an email address of someone on his staff, whom I bomb now with photos of all the garbage sitting on our street.

  And don’t worry. Macron is already in Anaïs’s crosshairs.

  “What?” she told me recently, right after Macron announced changes he plans to implement in the labor law. “I’m supposed to give him a pass simply because he’s not Le Pen? Fuck him! Oh, and you want to know what? His English, which he thinks is really good? It actually sucks.”

  It’s true. I recently heard Macron pronounce the word “engineers” “ehn-gyne-ears,” making them sound a lot like “va-gin-eers.”

  Surfing on a popularity unseen in recent French politics, and now with both the right and left decimated by his centrist En Marche! movement, Macron has been described in the French press not as a French Obama, but as a “French Jupiter,” a young leader who could have his Napoleonic way with France for the next decade. Already, many of his reforms strike those on the left as Reaganite-lite cloaked in a slick left-leaning smile. And the France that Macron is pushing for looks pretty darn American to my eyes, meaning shopping on Sundays with credit cards, fewer public services (meaning late trains, expensive schooling, and long waits at the hospital), and people working multiple jobs, which we all know masks the unemployment rate. For some French, this may seem like a step needed to remain competitive. But to others, the idea that it’s normal to work until seventy-five or normal to have private health insurance could really suck. And for people like me, it’s a total nightmare. Because the goal of every American expat, I’ve learned, is to live a normally modest European life, which we secretly know (but don’t tell anyone) is a rich American life.

  While I write this, Macron is now facing his first true test, in the form of les Gilets Jaunes (the Yellow Vests), a national wave of protestors who’ve seeped up through the floorboards of his first term and who now not only imperil many of the reforms he wanted to implement, but also his government and maybe even his presidency. For the past four weekends, protesters wearing the fluorescent-colored safety vests required by all French drivers to keep in their cars in case of an accident or breakdown have descended on Paris without any union affiliation or organization and no real leader and have wreaked havoc on parts of the Champs-Élysées, protesting the fuel tax Macron’s government inserted into the 2019 budget to help France meet Paris climate accord standards. The fuel tax is just the tip of the iceberg for a large swath of the population who feel France’s working class is once again bearing the brunt of France’s governmental mismanagement, and that, once again, it is they who are paying a bill the France’s one percent or French corporations should normally be picking up. As of this writing, Macron caved to their demands, suspending at least the ecofuel tax for 2019, while also raising the French minimum wage by one hundred euros a month.

  * * *

  Although Macron’s asking France to stay the course on his other reforms, perhaps he should look to the not-so-distant past as warning. In 1995, President Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppé announced a slew of reforms they said would help France become more Anglo-Saxon in the modern sense. And those targeted for cuts—hospitals, schools, and transport—were told to lump it. France was moving forward with or without them. Juppé, an astute politician who never grabbed women by the pussy or faced a looming investigation for election fraud, wasn’t proposing ending a national health-care plan or restructuring a tax code that benefited a micro percentage of the population, nor was he threatening to outlaw abortion or pull out of NATO. He was, however, overplaying his hand. Within weeks, there were massive strikes throughout France, the likes of which the country hadn’t seen since . . . the original Bastille Day. Trains stopped, schools closed, garbage sat on the street, and the countless protests and marches that ensued, temporarily turning the country into a scene from The Walking Dead, ultimately shut down Juppé’s government, forcing him to leave office.

  During my morning café chats nowadays, I’m often asked by those at the bar when the United States will have its own 1995 or Gilets Jaunes moment. “When will Americans rise up and say non! John?” And the excuses I usually give, like “Americans just don’t protest like that,” or, “We no longer have the unions like you guys do,” or, “Well, if you go on strike, you lose your health care, you see,” strike me as a bit half-assed. Usually our TV above the bar is flashing something nightmarish that happened in the States the day before, and often it’s me who’s issuing the que de la merde! grumbles. My resentment doesn’t come just from the daily barrage of vomited hysteria we never thought possible from an American president, or from the horror of immigrant children being separated from their parents, but from the general numbing acceptance by all of us in the supposed “resistance.” The ones who told me they’d move to Canada or France if Trump was elected, but who send five Facebook posts per day instead. The ones who’ve pinned their hopes on Robert Mueller or the 2018 midterm elections, but who, in the meantime, buy their new iPhones or Yeezy sneakers for eight hundred dollars at fashion “drops” or “pop-up stores” because “Dude, you gotta still live your life.”

  And while I sit here holding my espresso, hemming and hawing, I realize I’m not much different. Sure, I want to feel like that expat on the other end of a Radio London call, barking to the boys back home to keep with it and stay involved. But honestly, I’ve done little more than the other guy. And that’s how revisionism works, folks. Everyone’s a hero. Everyone is “juste”—until they aren’t. Personally, I can’t stomach the thought of my descendants one day bragging to their friends how their great-grandfather John, although American, was a French resistant. That just like the French during the American Revolution, he joined the good side during the dark times in America by courageously making podcasts and donating to shareblue.org and retweeting Keith Olbermann videos, all from his precious Danish-designed apartment in the Tenth, right off of the north-south artery, ironically named rue Lafayette.

  No. The one thing I’ve learned from my French confrères and my militant wife and my Dumpster-b
urning daughter is that if you’re going to say non! you better be willing to be non!

  Hold my beer, mes amis. I’m off to bake some pies.

  There’s No Place Like Chez Moi

  Some of the most vivid memories I have of my parents are of the cocktail parties they had. They hosted so often, it was odd if a Friday night passed and there weren’t adults at our door smiling and smelling of perfume. Since these affairs were chez nous, there was no need for a babysitter. Nor was I asked to go to my room. Instead, I was expected to dress up and mingle and “contribute,” as my mother said. I didn’t mind. I liked it, actually—greeting guests and taking coats, weaving my way through all the people who seemed, at the time, taller than trees.

  “Well get a load of this one!” someone would say. “That’s Johnny von Sothen! One of the all-time all-timers!” A heavy paw would land on my shoulder or someone would rub the top of my head. These voices were smoky and loud, but never threatening. “You may not remember me, dear, but the last time I saw you, you were this high!” I’d turn to find an older woman with pearls and dead vocal cords marking a point around her shin. “And already you were working for Kissinger!” Everyone would roar, and I’d smile and laugh, although unsure why.

  On occasion, I’d sit at the table and eat with these adults, observing how they talked, mimicking how they held their forks, noticing how their speech grew louder as they belted back more wine. It was there I learned that at a party you could talk about something horribly boring to someone and they’d still make an effort to listen.

  “Well, Nick Tucker took my notebook this week,” I’d tell my neighbor, Sylvia Ward. “And he ripped out the pages that had my geography assignment inside. And Sally Myers. She just watched.”

  “My land,” Sylvia Ward would fake gasp. “Well isn’t that a shame.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” I’d nod, feeling better already. It was obvious Sylvia deeply cared.

  After dinner the crowd would gather in the living room for a “nightcap” and my father would play the piano and my mother would sing Fats Waller or Cole Porter. Sometimes they’d hand out sheet music with lyrics, but everyone knew the songs already. I didn’t, though, so I’d sit on the stairs and listen. And that was okay, too. I didn’t feel alone or odd at the moment, just someone watching a world not mine, one with its own rules and language.

  When the party ended, if I was still awake, I’d take part in the autopsy of the night with my parents while they cleaned up. We’d discuss who’d impressed and who was a bore. I’d imitate a guest with an adult-sounding voice or make fun of someone, imitating my father’s style. “Jeez, Mr. Langford,” I’d start. “When that guy comes into a room, it’s like someone just left.” They’d laugh and I’d feel as if I’d contributed, even if I had no idea what I just said.

  These situations and these moments would forever hold allure for me, especially when I moved to France, because, I realize now, the life of an étranger is much like being the only child of older parents who hold tons of cocktail parties. You’re embarrassed for being there and it’s obvious you stand out. You’re treated (often) like a child. You don’t know the formal codes and you’re learning on the fly. Since you assume people are feigning interest in you, you pick up tics and quick-witted dodges to make yourself more endearing or to better hide your deficiencies. And in the end, you go to your room exhausted, not really sure if you had a good time, not really sure why you were there in the first place, but content nonetheless.

  This feeling of being on the periphery drives many people nuts. Most need to be sure they understand everything or know everyone there or at least grasp why it is they’ve been invited. Anything outside that realm can seem spooky. Not for me. Talking about stuff I didn’t understand, navigating weird rules, feeling alone but safe, the daily life of an expat basically, never seemed too daunting for me. It was home, actually, something I’d been born for.

  * * *

  When people cite the reason they choose to live abroad, emphasis is usually on the pull part—what drew them to the place. It could be that job. It could be a love interest, maybe a passion for eighteenth-century painting, but rarely do they talk about the fleeing part—what made them bail. And this is odd, considering that the chance to leave is probably the real reason they’re living abroad.

  People think I moved to France for l’amour, and that’s the version I usually provide, only because it fits a nice story arc. But there were other contributing factors, namely my mother and my father.

  Although my parents lived in Georgetown and I lived in New York, I often felt I still lived with them. We’d talk twice a day usually, both of them on the phone at the same time, one upstairs and one in the kitchen. And if you heard their excited voices, you’d think I’d just been released from a Burmese jail. My call was the highlight of their day.

  “Okay, I’m on!” Dad would yell into the receiver. “What did I miss?” The fact we’d spoken that morning was one he’d already forgotten.

  “Well, I was about to say . . .” My mother would then start in, using the call as a chance to give me unsolicited career advice. “John should try to get a real estate broker’s license.” The fact I’d just told her I’d had a piece published hadn’t registered. Nothing could. Their lives on the other end sounded chaotic. Fox News was blaring. The dog was barking. The TV had taken over a large part of their day at this point, and in its wake lay the dinners with friends at the club, or trips to the pool or weeks down at Cape Hatteras. My mother had been diagnosed with MS and my father with Parkinson’s, and although they still lived in the same brownstone in Georgetown, their movement was limited to the bedroom upstairs and the family room downstairs in the back of the house where the kitchen and Rush Limbaugh lurked. The rest of the house sat like an exquisite antechamber at Versailles—meticulous and unused. The dining room, my father said, “you could cordon off with a velvet rope.”

  Both seemed to maintain a sense of humor about their predicament. Parkinson’s to Dad was “some dopey thing, I don’t know.” Mom chalked up her limping and fatigue to arthritis mostly, and since it was just aches and pains, she just gobbled Advil and walked with a cane. A wheelchair, to her, “just looked sickly.” The reason we spoke so much, though, was that I was usually following up on a neighbor’s call I’d received the previous night telling me they’d heard Mom fall down the stairs or that my father looked disoriented at the Safeway yesterday, his pants falling down.

  Eventually these calls would become frequent and my trips down to D.C. multiplied. Soon I was fluent in their prescriptions and I had a calendar alerting me of doctor visits and rehab sessions. I read up on how each disease would progress. There was a stack of powers of attorney forms for me to sign. And during these Amtrak rides or in the late hours of a Saturday night when I’d find a message on my answering machine alerting me to another meltdown, I dreamed of having a sibling, someone I probably hated but who could at least share my mom and dad responsibilities, so I could come back to my NYC apartment, get high, and sleep with a semistranger in peace.

  And when I’d make the trips back to Georgetown, it’s not like Mom and Dad seemed happy to see me. “Why are you here?” my mother would ask. She’d, of course, downplay whatever the neighbor had told me with an “Oh, we’re fine,” and since that was exactly what I wanted to hear, I’d take her word for it and head back up to New York, using age as my convenient out. For the career advice I could tell myself, “They’re old! What do they know?” And for the health fears, “They’re old, they know themselves better than anyone else!”

  Ever since I was a child, I’d defined my parents by their age. They stood out from the others. In grade school, I was embarrassed when someone in my class asked why my grandfather had shown up for father’s day. While other dads had either fought in Vietnam or protested Vietnam, my father had fought in World War II. While other houses had The Who or Beatles albums next to the record player, m
y parents listened to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. There are no photos of my dad with bell-bottoms or my mother with Elton John–type sunglasses. When I found out Josh Byron’s parents were getting divorced, I asked if my parents ever planned on doing the same.

  “No,” my father replied. “We’re too old.”

  And I believed them. They were too old to buy a Porsche or have an affair, too old to drop acid and start a second career. That stuff was for young parents. And as the years passed, I grew to love this about them. All of a sudden, their lifestyle seemed retro to me, and in a way, it mirrored mine. They drank hard liquor still, or “highballs,” as Dad called them. They didn’t exercise or watch what they ate. They kept late hours. They had a rotary phone and drove a fake-wood-paneled station wagon. Although I was in my early thirties, they were the same as when I was ten; elder Dorian Grays, frozen in a hard-driving midfifties lifestyle despite being close to eighty. And like them, I’d remained frozen, too.

  Becoming a father and a husband had thawed me some, sure. But there remained a part of me that still clung to home, home being where my parents were, of course. Even when Anaïs and I settled in Paris, I assumed our time here would be brief, like a stint in the Peace Corps. We’d do our two or three years, maybe have another kid, take advantage of the free health care and something called an “allocation familiale” (a government stipend paid to you each month by the French government for, I guess, being fertile), then head back to reality, the reality being closer to my parents. What I didn’t plan on was the routine we quickly found ourselves liking, and work coming easier than I expected. Soon we were “acclimated,” as expats say, and considering staying on.