Hungry Woman in Paris

by Josefina López

  As I walked to the metro, an older Frenchman wearing tie-dyed clothes and an African hat approached me. He spoke to me in French, but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. Realizing I was a foreigner, he then spoke English.

  “You have a woman following you,” he said. I turned around and saw no one behind me. “She is not a person… she is a spirit … she is around you… I see her following you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, waiting for him to ask me for money or to reveal his scam.

  “She needs to tell you something.” He looked to his side, as if talking to someone next to him.

  “Who is this woman?” I asked.

  “She says she’s your cousin,” he informed me. I stared at him for a second and then I just walked away, holding in my tears. I ran into the metro and hid from him.

  During the third week of classes we were informed that there would be a written exam in a few days. I couldn’t imagine what to study. We had covered so much material. I couldn’t even keep track of the sauces, much less the fish. After class the last thing I wanted to do was study. I just wanted to go home, pig out on the food I’d made, and go to sleep. Despite my ravenous hunger, I was actually losing weight. Being on my feet for many hours each day and sweating up a storm had already made me drop ten pounds. Who knew going to cooking school would be a great diet? You get to eat all you want and lose the weight; this was a story worth including in the National Enquirer! Maybe I could write about my experience and submit it to a women’s magazine, I considered; but then I quickly remembered that I didn’t care about being a journalist anymore.

  Whenever I burnt anything in practical, the smell always took me back in time to either the smell of burning corpses coming from the Evergreen Cemetery when I was a teenager growing up in the ’hood or the burning rubber of a car taking off after a drive-by. Not that I would burn a lot of food; it’s just that working on an electrical stove takes time getting used to. I had to remember to take things off the stove or they would continue to cook and would burn. My brain was also burning; I could smell the smoke coming from it. Although I would follow each step as best as I could, I still could not keep from making a mess and getting distracted by other people’s work. I would try to focus on something, but then I would see someone else doing something and want to do that instead, and I’d end up burning something or overcooking it or forgetting to add salt and pepper. I was so exhausted; I didn’t care anymore. It was just food!!! I had never worked so hard to end up being so mediocre. I felt like such a loser.

  At the end of the week I got on the metro with my many bags of food. Everyone in my group was either going out because it was Friday night and they didn’t want to be burdened with their food or they had simply not wanted their monkfish. That poor fish has a face only a mother monkfish could love. When I arrived at my stop at Charles de Gaulle–Étoile I collected all my bags and walked out of the metro. Ten seconds later I turned around, realizing that my purse was back on the floor of the metro. I ran back, but the doors closed on me. I looked around for my purse, but it was gone. Then some French ghetto wannabe rappers in their twenties started laughing at me. I ignored them and peered into the metro car to see who had it. These boys kept laughing as though it was the funniest thing they’d seen in their lives. My suffering was just so amusing to them. The metro took off. What a wonderful way to end this day: I felt like a loser and I’d lost my purse—how poetic and pathetic. That purse contained everything, except my passport, thank God. I went to the ticket vendor’s window and explained in my horrible French that I’d left my purse on the metro. She tried cheering me up and said that people were very good about returning purses. She handed me a small piece of paper and instructed me to call in two days to see if anyone had turned it in; if not, then maybe I could check the Paris lost and found.

  I felt as lost as a child waiting to be found by her parents after being separated from them in a crowd. That there was nobody in Paris who cared if my purse was lost or found hurt worse than actually losing it.

  I walked toward my building and saw police cars blocking the entrance to my street. A policeman informed me and an old woman walking her poodle that we had to wait because a package had been found in front of the Iraqi consulate and the bomb squad was studying it to determine whether it was a bomb. I secretly hoped that some kind soul had found my purse and left it at the consulate door instead of my building. I waited fifteen minutes with my leaking plastic bags of smelly monkfish before I decided to sit on the sidewalk. I couldn’t wait to go to my bed and cry. After half an hour it began to rain, and I let my tears bathe in the rain. Another fifteen minutes later, the package turned out to be nothing more than magazines in a box someone had forgotten, and the police allowed us to enter the street. I took the servants’ elevator, hoping not to run into anyone, but when I reached the top I saw a Muslim woman with a tattoo of a cross on her forehead waiting there. I automatically smiled, but she didn’t acknowledge me. I realized again that smiling was such an American thing to do and people here frowned upon it because it was inauthentic. Fine, I won’t smile anymore unless I mean it, I told myself.

  I took a shower and sat on my bed. I had lost my cell phone too and couldn’t call anyone. I debated whether to use my last minutes on my international calling card in a public phone to call the credit card company and my bank to cancel my cards and get a replacement immediately. I didn’t want to do it right away because I held on to the hope that someone would find and return my purse. But after a few hours hope gave way to reason, and I called my credit card company and found out that the bag was now officially stolen. The thief had gone to Hugo Boss on the Champs-Élysées and bought himself a new wardrobe. Maybe now this thug could get a real job.

  I cried, wondering how I was going to make it without money for almost two weeks, until my ATM and credit card arrived. I could eat just the food I made at cooking school and walk to school, but I couldn’t do much else. Classes would end in a week, so what would I do for the seven days before Intermediate Cuisine began? How would I survive?

  I unpacked my food and saw that my notebook containing my recipes was soiled with sauce. I cleaned the plastic sleeves protecting my recipes and saw Henry’s phone number written on one of them. How had he gotten it on my recipe without me noticing? He must have written it down when I slipped out to go to the bathroom.

  Since misery loves company, I called Henry, hoping that at least one night of satisfying sex would make him remember me and care that my purse had been stolen. When he answered I heard a woman laughing in the background. I wanted to hang up, since he apparently already had booty for the night.

  “Hello,” he said in his cute British accent.

  “Henry, it’s Canela,” I announced, trying my best to sound cheerful and sexy. He hushed the laughing woman and took on a flirtatious tone.

  “My purse was stolen. I have no money,” I confessed, almost embarrassed to reveal too much. He remained quiet for a second and then told me to get ready.

  In a few minutes, he came over in a taxi and picked me up. I knew this evening would probably end up in sex, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to be alone. I have always been afraid of being alone. I don’t trust myself when I am alone. Sometimes food substitutes as company, but the monkfish was not creamy enough to keep the thoughts of suicide away. Until now, whenever I was not busy doing a thousand things under the guise of saving the world and I ended up alone with my suicidal thoughts, I would call Luna. Every time I would have a major life crisis—which happened often since, according to my family, I’m a drama queen—I would call Luna and she would listen or go meet me at the weirdest locations and oddest hours…

  Wait a minute: she never called me, and now that I really think about it, I was always doing the calling. I never stopped to ask, “How is life with you?” since I already knew it was fucked up, but I’d assumed Luna was strong enough to take it. On so many occasions I’d told Luna to leave and be my roommate, b
ut she wouldn’t leave him, so I’d stopped asking. And then I’d stopped calling… Oh, God, I’m a self-centered bitch! Why hadn’t I called her? Why hadn’t I saved her? Why hadn’t I been a good friend? I missed Luna. I started to cry and wanted to die… Henry would have to be my Luna to keep me from thinking of death.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked. He pulled my hand and led the way past the Algerian teenagers and black rapper wannabes hanging out by a French burger joint on one of the corners of Place de Clichy, and past the rowdy crowds of tourists and locals with mischief on their minds.

  “I’m going to educate you, Ms. Canela. I’m going to give you a cultural experience and then some,” he said with a devilish grin.

  “Yes, educate me, teach me the ways, O great pale one,” I joked.

  We arrived at the museum of erotica and he paid my admission. We walked up the stairs, admiring every form of erotic and sexual expression on paper, oil, photograph, and papier-mâché. He rubbed his hand on my butt when no one was looking. Other times he would rub up against me when there was another couple looking. They smiled at us wickedly, but we just kept moving up the stairs. Henry knew his way around the museum. This was not a tour for him; this was foreplay. I stared at the photographs of women posing in front of their brothels in Montmartre. Brothels had been outlawed in 1946, and there were black-and-white photographs of brothels closing and prostitutes being “rehabilitated.” There were ledgers showing how much straight intercourse cost in the 1900s… Henry translated for me, wishing he could have been around back then when life was simple and all a man had to do was pay instead of pretending he loved women and put up with their drama.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” he said, pulling my hand. I followed him like the black sheep that I am to my family; as long as he was paying, I was along for the ride. Wow, so this is how it felt to be a woman on a typical date: the guy pays, and he gets sex at the end. I never really dated. I was always running around chasing stories and didn’t waste my time dating. Armando was the only man who’d been patient enough to chase after me. After he had caught me, he’d done what every man loves to do when he has found the woman of his dreams: take her for granted.

  Henry pulled me into the Sexodrome mega-sex toyshop, all the way back into a private dance room. Two African-French immigrant women came onto the stage and started undressing each other. Henry kept looking for a waitress, but the tiny room in the giant porno shop did not serve drinks. The tall, skinny woman coughed and whispered something. The poor woman had a cold, but she had to pretend she was so turned on by the other woman, whose teddy was a little too tight on her chunky body. In whispers, even I could tell, they commiserated about how shitty this work was. Nobody was fooled by their passionless acts of foreplay. I felt sorry for them and wanted to interview them instead of fantasize about them. Henry took my hand and we walked out. The cashier at the door told us to wait, saying there would be male-female couples coming up, but I shrugged my shoulders and smiled as we left. Henry and I walked around Pigalle looking for a bar. Pigalle was the red-light district where Le Moulin Rouge and the Black Cat resided. It was the closest thing to Vegas in France.

  “Have you ever had sex in an alley?” Henry asked me.

  “Yeah,” I lied. Technically, I didn’t lie; I just didn’t want to explain how I’d tried. At first the idea is pretty erotic, but doing it is another thing. When I realized that my butt could freeze in the cold, it completely spoiled the mood. Even on a hot summer night, the wind blowing up my butt is not erotic.

  Henry looked into a bar and in seconds he knew he didn’t like it, so we didn’t bother walking in. Down the block an attractive mixed-race couple entered a different bar, and we decided to follow them in. A man dressed in black looking like Zorro, minus the mask, stopped us at the door and told us we had to have membership. We were about to walk away when he stared at me and called me “jolie” and said something in French to Henry, as if complimenting him on his choice of woman. Henry translated and told me it was a libertine club—a swingers’ club. The man in black invited us in. I looked at Henry, who was waiting for me to say yes. All eyes were on me and my heart skipped a beat. Could I really do this? Yeah, I could talk dirty and tough, but could I really go through with this?

  “Do you want to go in?” I stared back at Henry, hoping he would say no.

  He cleverly threw it back at me: “Do you want to go in?”

  I paused to consider what this decision meant, and I thought about all the times I had said no to my sexuality because I wanted to meet a deadline and how each time I did that I’d deadened my senses. I’m in Paris to revive, I realized.

  “Yes. Let’s go in,” I told Henry. Henry looked to Zorro and he opened the door and said “Bienvenu.”

  We went into the dark club with barely a sign on the front.

  The smell of cigarettes welcomed us. The night was still early and there were only a few faces hiding in the dark.

  “What do you want to drink?” Henry asked.

  “Do you think they make margaritas here?”

  “I can ask. What else would you like if they don’t make them?”

  “Anything… fruity,” I responded.

  Henry left for only a few minutes, but I was anxious for him to get back. He stopped to talk to Zorro and they conversed privately in French.

  “What were you asking him?” I asked Henry, trying to stay close to him to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

  “He explained a few rules. Basically, women have carte blanche and the men just have to sit around like chumps waiting to be picked. It’s up to you to initiate things, dear.” Henry handed me a margarita. I took a sip; the tequila was pretty strong.

  “I got you a double shot just to inspire you to get started,” Henry explained.

  “I just want to watch. Can’t we just watch?” I asked, intimidated by the whole thing.

  “Don’t tell me you have never done this before?” he asked in disbelief.

  “This is my first time in a place like this,” I confessed and took another sip.

  “You’re a virgin again!” Henry got excited. “Maybe you need me to coach you a bit so we can get something juicy started,” he suggested.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Henry. Maybe we should go.” I started chickening out.

  “Canela, you are the hottest thing at this club. We’re all counting on you to get the party started. ”

  “I didn’t agree to be the party hostess. I just want to watch,” I interjected.

  “So you’re going to play journalist and let life pass you by like it already has.”

  “What do you mean pass me by?”

  “Canela, if not now, when? This is Paris—it doesn’t get better than this, darling.”

  Henry was right. I had been living my life as though someday I was going to live it. “Okay… You’re right… I just don’t know if I can do this…” I sheepishly apologized. “I can’t do this; I didn’t bring any condoms.” I came up with an excuse and headed for the door. Henry stopped me.

  “No worries, I have plenty,” he reassured me. He saw the worried look on my face and put his arm around me and said, “Sweetie, look around… If there is no one here that catches your attention, then we’ll go to my apartment and do the nasty. But look around first,” he advised.

  I didn’t dare look at first. I tried burying myself in Henry’s eyes so he would notice that I wanted only him. When I saw his wandering eyes surveying the salon I didn’t continue fooling myself into thinking Henry cared about me. This was just sex, I told myself. After I said that I felt liberated. This was just sex. How many times had I wanted to have sex but didn’t have the ovaries to just go for it? Yeah, I wanted to experience sex with a stranger, and the tequila in my veins was finally letting me admit it to myself. So many years of being a good girl and a good little reporter, but now I wanted to be a bad little girl. Maybe Henry would spank me at the end of the night.

  I tried downing the rest of my
margarita without getting brain freeze. Halfway into my drink a man’s face from across the room caught my attention. I wondered if he was part of the couple who’d watched Henry fondling me at the erotic museum. Had they followed us into this club?

  “Don’t they look like that couple we saw earlier?” I asked Henry, but he was too busy checking out the few women in attendance.

  “Hey, the woman he’s with has nice boobies,” he said. “Do you like him? You want to go talk to him? Maybe she’ll reciprocate and come… talk to me.”

  I took a final swig and finished my margarita. This is what it must feel like to be a man who has to initiate things and try out his luck; except the odds of getting laid are pretty good here.

  I walked across the room and said, “Bonjour.” I don’t think language is ever a barrier when you are trying to get sex from a man. Both the African-French man and the Frenchwoman said “Bonjour” a little too anxiously, and I got all intimidated again. I just wanted to get his attention, so I walked close to him and said boldly in my best French, “Voulez-vouz danser avec moi?” Would you like to dance with me? I know you thought I was going to say, “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”—Would you like to sleep with me tonight—but even I am not so bold. I extended my hand to him to invite him to the dance floor. He gave his lover a flirtatious look before taking my hand. He quickly grabbed my waist and we slow-danced on the dance floor. I couldn’t believe I was initiating sex with a total stranger; then again, in some way this was a man I’d known and lusted after for many years.

  Yes, a black man. Call it jungle fever or a Mandingo fantasy, but I remembered that after I’d accepted Armando’s proposal for marriage I’d thought that my one regret I would take to the altar would be never having had sex with a black man. I knew I was going to get punished for stereotyping—he probably has a small penis, I thought—but this was my politically incorrect sexual fantasy and I loved it. He talked to me in French and I tried not to say anything because I didn’t want to ruin the fantasy with my bad conjugations. He just thought I was being mysterious. He moved his chin to indicate his belt. I got the hint and slipped his belt from his pants. I put the belt around him and pulled him close to me. I lifted my blouse and exposed my breasts to him. He buried his face in them and I leaned back holding on to his belt. He licked my nipples and we slowly made it down to the floor.