by Gina Messina
“I don’t like fucking French yeasty bread,” Layla innocently declared with a yucky face, her eyes glued to Dora the Explorer who was poignantly trying to teach Diego how to tie his sneakers on the television set.
CHAPTER TEN
“Of course, I speak French: Louis Vuitton, Chanel,
Louboutin and Lanvin.”
Unknown
“The strangest thing happened the other day when I was with Layla picking up some bread at this new French bakery that just opened up around the corner,” she announced the following week before she even sat down.
Dr. Harrison yawned then asked, “And, what was that?” Her obvious lack of enthusiasm gave Charlie the distinct feeling that her psychiatrist was losing interest again. Whatever happened to teamwork? she asked herself. Charlie felt like a one-woman show with multiple sets. She knew she needed to revamp her routine to capture Dr. Harrison’s attention and Francois was new material, to be sure.
“The place just smelled so very French. All yeasty and salty and sweet at the same time. It started to remind me of events from my past and of people too.”
“Who did it remind you of, Charlie?” she dully questioned then got up to straighten one of the diplomas on the wall.
“Francois. I hadn’t thought about him in ages and all of a sudden, the smell…it was like I was back in my teenage bedroom with him.”
“Francois?”
Christ, Charlie thought before deciding how much she wanted to reveal to her about Francois. Is it too much to ask for my doctor to show some enthusiasm? It seemed that her psychiatrist was only interested when she was talking about something of a sexual nature!
Charlie decided to draw her back in by telling her everything about Francois. Every last sordid sexual detail! Tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. For some sick reason, she desperately wanted to impress her shrink who she was weirdly forming a connection with despite all of her annoying questions, and who she was becoming quite fond of. Charlie felt strangely protective of both her and her Yale degree which had so far, miserably let both Charlie and Dr. Harrison down.
“Francois was a French exchange student my family hosted for a semester of high school,” she answered. Her voice was filled with a mixture of nostalgia and desire. “He was my first.”
“Your first what, Charlie?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes...yet again. Does she live in a convent or is she pretending to be more innocent than she really is? If this is one of her psycho-babble techniques, it’s not working.
“My first!” she yelled out in frustration. “You know. The guy who popped my cherry, broke my seal, drove me off the lot, swiped my v-card.”
Nothing registered on her doctor’s face.
With an overly exaggerated sigh, Charlie had no choice but to spell it out. “I lost my virginity to Francois.”
Instantly, Dr. Harrison perked up, leaned forward, and moistened her lips-in exactly that order. Then she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out her notebook. It had been weeks since Charlie had seen her notebook. She smiled with the satisfaction of knowing her newly revamped routine was going to be a success! She had her doctor's undivided attention again.
Ever since her visit to the bakery last week she couldn’t help but to obsessively think about Francois. He encompassed her every waking thought. Just the other day, she’d been crossing the street when she noticed an attractive man walking toward her that was wearing a black beret. She literally stopped midway through the intersection and gaped at him. Cars were swerving and beeping their horns all around her and a cab driver was yelling at her to get off the road. She looked like a crazed person. But she just kept standing there in the middle of the street with the image of Francois so vivid, the memories so fresh in her mind.
Charlie had just started her junior year of high school when Francois arrived at her parents’ home as an exchange student from Paris. Just what they had been thinking still miffed her. How could they possibly have allowed a sexy seventeen-year-old French boy who was raging with hormones, into a house with three teenage girls? she asked herself.
The night Francois got there, Carrie, Stacey and Charlie convened a meeting in Stacey’s bedroom to discuss the boy with the long curly hair that fell just where it should and the dark brown eyes that oozed of sex.
“I think since I’m the oldest, I should have him,” Carrie reasoned.
“Nice try, but I saw how those bedroom eyes were watching me,” Stacey pointed out.
“Bedroom eyes?” Carrie and Charlie groaned in unison.
“Yeux de chambre a coucher,” Stacey had called them, flaunting the fact that she could speak his language with a near perfect accent, courtesy of a summer abroad in the south of France. “I’m the only one who can speak his language.”
“Who the hell said anything about talking? I plan on having my tongue jammed down his throat,” Charlie exclaimed. “You may be able to speak French, but I can kiss French.”
They each took a few minutes to plead their case as to why they should be the one to win over his attentions.
Finally, Carrie came up with a solution. “We’re not getting anywhere fighting like this. We’ll never be able to decide. We should draw straws to see who gets to have him. It’s the only fair way to resolve this.”
Stacey offered to run down to the kitchen pantry and grab a box of linguini.
“I won, I won!” Charlie cried out when she picked the longest piece of dried pasta from Carrie’s quivering hand.
“This isn’t fair!” Stacey yelled in typical middle child fashion and looking down at her fist that was holding the shortest piece. “Charlie hasn’t even had sex before! She’s still a virgin! Francois isn’t going to want a virgin,” she cried like a spoiled child then tossed the nearly full box of linguini into the air.
Carrie, who was no more fluent in French than Charlie, shook her head in defeat and looked up at Stacey. “For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, you’re really stupid! A virgin is exactly what he will want. It’s what every boy wants,” she quietly announced in a defeated way that showed in both her slumping posture and her trailing voice.
“Well, I can pretend to be a virgin,” Stacey exclaimed. “He’ll never know the difference.”
Carrie snorted out loud. “You can’t pretend to be a virgin! It’s like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t.”
“Exactamente!” Charlie smugly exclaimed in agreement.
“Christ, Charlie! That’s probably the only French word you know! You don’t deserve him. You’ll whimper in pain the entire time he’s on top of you! You can’t even fucking communicate with him,” Stacey screamed before storming off to her room and slamming the door with such force it reverberated throughout the entire house.
“What’s going on up there?” their mother hollered from below. “Are you girls bickering again? I could use some help in in the kitchen.”
“Why does Stacey have to be so dramatic about everything?” Carrie questioned before getting up and telling Charlie that she was happy for her. “I’m just glad that bitch didn’t win. We’d never have heard the end of it,” she scoffed. She gave her sister a cursory thumbs-up and then got up to help their mother prepare their first meal with Francois.
At dinner, while dining on anemic looking crepes with a floury mushroom cream sauce that their mother had made in honor of Francois’s arrival, Charlie hatched a plan. She studied Francois from across the table as he moved the mushy white crepe around on his plate. It was obvious he would have preferred to have a nice big juicy burger with American cheese.
Winning Francois from her sisters had been only half the battle. She recognized that she had been lucky, picking the longest straw, but just because she had won him didn’t mean she could keep him. Charlie knew she had to get right to work on trying to charm the pants off of him-literally! The first thing she planned on doing was letting him know she was a virgin. According to Carrie, this little tidbit was going to be her ac
e in the hole! As soon as dinner was over, she rushed off to her room and spent thirty minutes laboring and cursing over a French dictionary because her parents hadn’t yet heeded to her repeated pleas for a computer. Of course, Stacey was no help in that department. She spent most of her time pouting in her own bedroom and wouldn’t come out even when Charlie tried to bribe her.
“Come on Stacey, I’ll let you wear my new Donna Karan high-tops this weekend if you help me out,” she pleaded through the door. “I just want you to translate one little sentence for me.” Stacey didn’t acknowledge her but did somehow manage to wear those sneakers to a party that very weekend.
Despite the language barrier, Charlie and Francois clicked immediately! Even before she told him her little secret. Pretty soon they were stealing off to the basement and drinking very expensive red wine right out of the bottle, which she would score from her parents well stocked wine cellar.
“Je suis un virgin,” she panted; on the first boozy night that they’d hooked up for a very hot and heavy make out session that involved quite a lot of kissing and wet tongue. When he finally figured out what she was saying, his eyes widened and he beamed gratefully, as if he’d just been given an unexpected gift or a free upgrade from coach to first-class. Within four days, Francois was sneaking into her bedroom every night where they would do just about everything except have actual intercourse. She would lie in her little twin bed and anxiously wait to hear the door creak open and listen for his feet as they padded across the floor to her bed. When he neared the edge, he would peel off his t-shirt and tight little Frenchie briefs and she would lift up the floral comforter so he could slide in beside her warm naked body.
Francois would whisper into her ear all kinds of things but Charlie had no idea what he was saying. Only a few words stood out and that was merely because a catchy song called “Lady Marmalade,” by Patty Labelle was constantly playing on the radio that year. Everyone was running around singing “Itchi gitchi ya ya da da” and “voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?” but no one really knew what they were singing actually implied! She still didn’t know what the fuck ‘itchy gitchi’ was supposed to mean, but she did intimately know what ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi’ meant!
Then came the night, after they’d tried and done just about everything two bodies could do together, that Francois made his move and stripped Charlie of her virginity, or as she affectionately told Dr. Harrison-popped her cherry.
He started to slowly kiss every inch of her body. He lingered over her hardened nipples and leisurely swept his mouth across her flat stomach, making circles around her belly button with his tongue. When she was ready for him, he slipped his finger inside of her and gently rubbed her clitoris until she was begging him to enter her. When his swollen penis gradually inched into her warm wetness and they could both feel the resistance, there was this clumsy moment just before he thrusted, while trying to be gentle at the same time, that they both felt the pop of her hymen. Francois put his lips to hers at the precise moment that Charlie experienced a sharp, brief pain. His lips tasted both sour and sweet to her, strangely like a Bing cherry, and their bodies crashed into one another’s with such a brute force that her cheeks reddened with embarrassment from the intimacy of it.
Francois kept awkwardly panting “Pardon, pardon,” while he pumped away voraciously at the sole object of his desire. She was relieved when it was over but was also anxious to do it again. And soon!
The next morning when they rolled out of her bed, Charlie sore and Francois rejuvenated, she glanced down and noticed a smear of dried blood on her white bed sheets. She was absolutely mortified but Francois looked at the smear as if he were victorious. Charlie had a momentary flash of him grabbing the bed sheet and suspending it out of her bedroom window for all the neighbors to see. It was like the scene out of The Godfather when Michael Corleone had just deflowered his Sicilian bride, Apollonia, and the sheets were hung from the balcony for the entire village to gawk at like some sort of trophy. She quickly stripped the bed and hastily stuffed them into her hamper before Francois could get any ideas.
Charlie could only imagine what the Italian widow, Mrs. Spumoni, who lived across the street would think if she saw such a thing! She’d probably say a hundred Hail Mary’s while clutching her Rosary and then have a stroke and keel over dead in the street. She was always sitting on her front stoop in her housedress and keeping tabs on the girl’s comings and goings. Sometimes she would dramatically cross herself if one of them walked by wearing a skirt she deemed too short or a blouse that left nothing to the imagination. Charlie would deal with the bloody sheets when she got home from school.
A few weeks after they’d started to have sex (which was all the time), she developed a nasty yeast infection. Probably from all the fucking they were doing. Francois was insatiable! When he snuck into her room the night she discovered the infection, Charlie gently pushed him away. With a sad look of rejection on his face, he froze. Not wanting to hurt his feelings she kept trying to explain, using grand hand gestures and what few French words she had picked up over the course of their encounters.
“No sex, pas de sexe,” she kept repeating. Oh how she wished she’d taken French instead of Spanish! After fifteen minutes she was all but ready to give up. She threw her arms up in frustration and then pointed to her crotch, saying “levadora,” which she knew was Spanish for yeast, thanks to the international themed bake sale her Spanish teacher, Mrs. Castillo, had insisted her 9th grade class host at the school festival the previous year. She was so relieved when he finally got it and smiled up at her with an expression of complete understanding.
“Ahh, you have le sickness of le bread!” he said in his adorable French accent while shaking his curly haired head up and down.
When Charlie was telling Stacey the story the next morning, they were literally rolling on the floor. “Next time you need a translator, give me a holler,” she quipped while holding her side and roaring with an explosive, uncontrollable laughter.
Charlie was confused by her sister’s sudden generous offer, remembering how she had all but begged her sister to translate one little sentence the night Francois had arrived. Why the change of heart? she questioned suspiciously before snickering back, “I bet you’d really like that.”
Stacey was fluent in French, Spanish and Italian. Arguably, Charlie wasn’t even fluent in English as she’d gotten a D minus in creative writing most every semester of high school. But, when it came down to the nitty gritty, who needed to speak anything fluently when the international language of love was understood by all? Too bad for Stacey that Charlie had picked the longest piece of linguini!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Who said romance is dead? Have you checked out my shoes?”
Unknown
Charlie rushed into Dr. Harrison’s office twenty minutes late, apologizing as she breathlessly tried to explain. “I was at my attorney’s office and things are an absolute fucking mess!” she hysterically shrieked. “The cockstar is refusing to let me keep the apartment. He wants to live there with Lizbeth!” she added, then cringed as she vividly pictured the bitch painting her walk-in closet pale yellow and turning it into a baby nursery. She’s going to literally bastardize the most beautiful room in the apartment! Instead of the smell of new leather, it’s going to smell like baby shit!
“I swear, Dr. Harrison, this divorce is going to send me over the edge.”
“Now, Charlie. No one can send you over the edge but yourself,” she reminded her.
“Yes, yes, I know, I know. I’m the only one in charge of my emotions,” Charlie mumbled. Yada, yada, yada. “Can we get on with this.” She was anxious to talk about anything to get her mind off Sean and his knocked-up girlfriend living in her fucking apartment.
“Alright then. But we only have about thirty minutes before my next patient is due.”
Of course, everything is on the clock with her. I bet she schedules sex with her husband, the same way she schedules her pat
ients. Charlie laughed, picturing Dr. Harrison lying on her back with her husband banging away, while she turns her head to check the bedside clock and tells him to hurry up because she’s only scheduled another two minutes for him to orgasm.
“According to my notes, Sean had just met your parents.”
There was no further mention of Stacey and her high-brow Harvard degree. Silently Charlie gave thanks, impressed that her doctor smartly knew better than to travel down that slippery slope. Just talking about Stacey made her feel anxious, angry and sad all at once. Though she loved and missed her sister-she hated her, too. Charlie’s mother had always said, ‘just because you love someone doesn’t mean you have to like them.’ She’d never really understood what her mother had meant by that, at least not until the afternoon she’d caught her sister giving Sean a blow-job. Now, she completely got it. Charlie would always love Stacey because of the mere fact that they were sisters. They shared the same DNA. But at the same time, regardless of genetics, she would also always hate her for what she had done.
“As I mentioned before, no one liked him, not even my sister Carrie who can pretty much tolerate anyone.”
“What about Stacey?”
Well, that didn’t take very long, did it? Charlie glared at her doctor, viciously attacking the palm of her right hand to alleviate an itch. In fact, her whole body began to itch at the mention of her sister’s name.
“You know damn well Stacey liked him. She was always drawn to deviant people. I think she was so smart she could calculate what was in it for her,” she replied.
“Well, I guess you figured out soon enough what she wanted to accomplish with Sean,” Dr. Harrison stated with a look.
“In a way, I think when Stacey hooked up with Sean, she was trying to get back at me for Francois. The fact that I’d spent those twelve glorious weeks with him when we were in high school still haunts her,” she sadly said. “She never got over the fact that I picked the longest straw.”