by Rozsa Gaston
Then there were the two stunning blond boys, Winston and Cole, ages eight and six who appeared to have stepped off the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. Their less ethereal eleven-year old sister, Reid, was a gangly brunette whose imperfections I could better relate to.
Mr. and Mrs. Griffith were hip, relatively young, and very rich. Their guidelines for my job would have made any other au pair drool with envy. I was to show up twice a week in the evenings to look after the children while they went out; no weekends, no trips to their country home unless I wanted to come, no cleaning because they employed a full-time Portuguese housekeeper, no cooking. Mrs. Griffith did all that and left dinner for us in her own handmade pottery containers in the fridge. No plastic Tupperware for this family. The salary was measly, but so were my duties.
I spent babysitting evenings on the couch with the two oldest children telling me stories in clipped British-inflected tones about the international school they attended, while the youngest cuddled in my lap as I stroked his curly, platinum-blond hair and rubbed his back. A glutton for affection, he was my favorite of the three.
Given the choice of taking the spare room in their seventh arrondissement flat (translation – very good neighborhood) or living on the top floor of the building in the maid’s quarters, a room the size of a postage stamp with a Turkish toilet (that’s a hole in the floor with a pull-chain – it was 1977) in the hall and a sink outside the wash closet with only one cold water tap, I took the maid’s room.
Privacy, it’s all about privacy when you’re nineteen years old and have only been post-virginal for a matter of months. To hell with weekends in the countryside with the family. Paris was my oyster, my aphrodisiac.
I hoped the Griffiths’ family would forgive me for my appalling lack of interest in hanging out with them. They were the most well-appointed, genetically enhanced family I had ever met, precisely the reason I had no desire to spend more time with them. A big, bad, dirty, dark world awaited – the world of my newfound womanhood. And where better to explore it than the sexy, smelly City of Light?
I’d been in Paris for four months. Men pursued me relentlessly on the street: Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians. Then there were the sub-Saharan Africans from Senegal or Cote d’Ivoire. The names of the countries appealed to my sense of exoticism, but not the type. I was looking for a Frenchman. What was the point of spending a year in Paris if not to meet an actual Frenchman? I didn’t want to get tied up with another foreigner who was in the city for reasons similar to my own.
I signed up for a course on French language and civilization at the Sorbonne. My weekly budget roughly averaged out to twenty francs a day, about four dollars. At the start of each month, I’d purchase a carte orange, the monthly bus and metro pass that afforded me my main source of pleasure, exploring different neighborhoods in Paris and, above all, people-watching.
My French language class was given three times a week on an ancient, crooked side street, Rue Cloître Notre Dame, off to one side of the famous Notre Dame cathedral. The lectures on civilization took place at the Sorbonne itself on Rue des Écoles in an enormous auditorium filled with wooden seats and pull-up desks with graffiti etched into them dating back to the nineteenth century.
Thanks to the desktops and bathroom stalls at the Sorbonne, I figured out some key expressions that didn’t figure into my French language lesson books. Bordel, for example, didn’t mean bordello, but more closely resembled mess or fuck-up. Fous le camp was another popular one, loosely meaning, go fuck yourself. I didn’t yet know what my plan was for the rest of my life, but at least I was picking up an education. And who could argue with “studying at the Sorbonne” on a college application form instead of “cashiering at a self-service gas station”?
Blonde, slightly chubby au pairs such as myself were a dime a dozen. We were walking targets for the single North and West African males who roamed the streets. Their opening lines were all the same, “Vous avez l’heure, Mademoiselle? Do you have the time, Miss?”
Come to think of it, that was the line Jean-Michel used, too. But his blue eyes, pale skin, Jean-Paul Belmondo boxer’s nose and wavy light brown hair relaxed my guard. The chances were good that he was a Frenchman. For once, I did have the time, and I gave it to him.
The first moment Mrs. Griffith laid eyes on Jean-Michel was when he picked me up at the servants’ entrance to the kitchen of my employers’ flat. The look she gave him could have frozen over hell. As I watched her jaw clench, I understood for the first time the expression “recoiled in horror.” He was thirty-two at the time, four years younger than her. It was clear that she knew what he was there for far better than I did, and she emphatically did not approve.
These being pre-e-mail days, I wondered if a telegram might be sent to my grandparents warning them I was up to no good with a much older Frenchman.
Frankly, they had nothing to worry about. I was not under the illusion that just because I knew next to nothing about sex, birth control, or pregnancy, I couldn’t get knocked up. I wasn’t a doctor’s granddaughter for nothing. I had taken the precaution of putting myself on the pill not only before arriving in Paris, but one month before my first sexual encounter the summer before.
I was also prepared to turn away from Mrs. Griffith as she tossed a couple of eye-glance daggers at Jean-Michel then shut the door smartly in a manner that told me exactly what she thought. It was one of those moments when I knew I was no longer a child trying to please the adult authority figure in my vicinity. I was on my own, moving into unknown territory, and ready to go. This was no easy feat for a former Girl Scout who had heretofore sought approval from important adults in her life. Teachers, my favorite uncle, my high school guidance counselor – I’d tried hard to impress them all as a child.
As Mrs. Griffith shut the door harshly in our faces, I turned to Jean-Michel and gave him a poker face to let him know I knew what she was thinking, but I was thinking differently. So allons-y. Let’s go.
It was a cold late January day on Boulevard Saint Michel, or Boul’ Mich as it is commonly known, when Jean-Michel and I first met. I was bundled up in a shapeless L.L. Bean winter parka over overalls, my feet shod in dead giveaway “I’m-not-a-Frenchwoman” clogs. My morning lecture at the Sorbonne on French culture was over and I was hurrying home. I’d absorbed absolutely nothing from the lecture, given entirely in French – a language I could only vaguely understand if spoken ten times slower than any French person spoke it. Instead, I was thinking about which pastry to choose when I got to my favorite patisserie around the corner from the Griffith’s flat. Zeroing in on making contact with a creamy hazelnut Breton, named for Brittany, a region in France to the west of Paris on the Atlantic coast, instead, I bumped into a Normandien. That’s a man from Normandy, an area between Brittany and Paris.
“Excusez-moi, Madamoiselle, avez-vous l’heure?” he said, using one of the few French phrases I understood perfectly, having been accosted so frequently over the past five months by men with the same hackneyed line. It was as if I wore an invisible sign reading, “I am a naïve foreigner, please try to pick me up.”
Preparing as usual to blankly stare past the annoying boulevardier – a man who tries to pick up women on boulevards, also known as drageurs or draggers – I noticed out of the corner of my eye the dark blue eyes of the man addressing me. Different. Very different from all the rest.
“C’est une heure et quart,” I said, letting him know it was a quarter past one.
“Merci,” he responded, falling into step beside me.
After a brief pause, during which time I processed his pale skin and a bump in his nose telling me it might have been broken, the inevitable question followed.
“Vous êtes Americaine?”
To be honest, I also frequently got, “Vous êtes Hollandaise? Are you Dutch?” and “Vous êtes Suedoise? Are you Swedish?”
Both guesses probably were due to my clunky workman-style clothes left over from high school years in Maine, a state
not known for its high-fashion sense.
“Oui,” I replied, sticking my short, turned-up nose into the air and away from him while I picked up my pace. The male of the species could be deadeningly predictable at times.
Some other idiotic questions followed, such as “You are a student?” and “Do you like Paris?” Then, a practical one: “Would you like to go for a coffee?”
For once, I would. I was cold, I had been thinking about stopping for a coffee before arriving at my bus stop, and this guy appeared to be French. I was dying to meet an actual Frenchman. I hadn’t met any French women either, but they were not my focus other than as style icons to emulate.
I turned and looked at him briefly before replying, “Oui, pourquoi pas? Sure, why not?” I answered, a response I would never have given in English. But the whole blasé thing was so very French and that was what I was here to learn about, wasn’t it?
Of course, I didn’t smile. Why should I? I hadn’t spent the past five months studying the froideur or haughty demeanor of Parisian women for nothing.
Jean-Michel gave only the faintest of smiles, then silently led the way to a café near one of the many entrances to the Saint Michel metro station.
Inside the café I sat down, carefully concealing my excitement. I had done it! Across from me sat a genuine Frenchman, perhaps the one thousandth boulevardier who had accosted me in the street since I’d arrived the previous September.
Jean-Michel was not overly talkative. I liked that right away. He wasn’t leaning over the table breathing into my face. He didn’t attempt to touch me. He wore a gray wool jacket with a burgundy and navy striped scarf around his neck – something my grandfather would wear. Sitting slightly sideways from the table, he crossed one slender, muscular leg over the other. He had an athletic, skinny build, not too tall, very French.
We introduced ourselves. I told him I was from Connecticut, which he’d never heard of. He told me he was from Normandy, which I had. Finest butter in the world. Once I’d tasted it, I was ruined for American butter for the rest of my life. Great cows are bred in France, the greatest in Normandy.
Wide pauses punctuated our questions and answers. Jean-Michel didn’t fill up airspace asking the kinds of irritating questions I was always getting back home, “What are your plans?” The whole tedious, “What are you going to do with your life?” line I was currently allergic to.
I didn’t know it at the time, but questions about what a person does aren’t usually asked in Europe, especially within minutes of meeting each other. Europeans generally don’t have a huge choice as to what they end up doing with their lives.
Jean-Michel’s classically European, non-interrogative approach to conversation worked like a charm on me. No wonder cafés were invented in Europe. They offered both time and space to talk, or to observe and not talk.
I’ve always loved space: space between musical notes, space between people on a crowded sidewalk, space and time to think about something that just happened.
Now something was happening and the man across from me was giving me time to digest it. Was this a pick-up technique he’d perfected? Or was he just naturally intuitive when it came to women?
I thought it could be either. Whichever it was, I was impressed. He wasn’t breathing down my neck, trying to get my number and address, or tossing out ridiculous, embarrassing compliments. I wasn’t particularly self-confident at that moment in my life so no amount of observations from a man on my pretty face, my blonde hair, or my cute upturned nose would have had much of an impact on me. I was perfectly aware that my broad-boned Hungarian face was too round, my hair prone to frizziness, and my ridiculous perky nose at least two millimeters too short to have any gravitas or seriousness, at all.
I hadn’t yet learned to listen to what a man might tell me. I was too busy fending them off.
After a relaxed quarter of an hour, we’d finished our coffee. I’d had time to absorb Jean-Michel’s smashed-in boxer’s nose, navy blue eyes, and mild manner. While I studied his shoulders, broad but not too broad, he scribbled something on a piece of paper. I knew what it was before he handed it to me.
He paid the bill, gave me the slip of paper and told me to call him sometime. There was no pressure at all. He did exactly what I wanted him to do. He let me know he was interested in seeing me again, but he gave me space and time in which to respond. I could already see he knew his way around women.
I took the bus home, forgot to pick up my usual pastry, and went up to my room. There, I had a long think. It lasted almost a week.
Night and day, I wrestled with whether to call Jean-Michel. Nightly, I’d decide to call, the following day, I’d panic. I was in the Lenten period leading up to my birthday. Every year at that time, I’d reflect on my shortcomings. The year before, I had reflected on the idiotic burden of my virginity and vowed to cast it off as soon as possible post-birthday.
I accomplished my mission five months later, methodically and purposefully one sultry July night with the Portuguese-American boy I was seeing. I liked making love – sort of – but the experience was so new. There was all this unexpected noise and sweat, not to mention hair in unexpected places. Had he noticed I didn’t have breasts like Barbie? Who knew some guys had hair on their derrières? After he’d leave, I’d go out on the back porch of the house I shared with the girl grads from music college, none of whom had found jobs in their field, and crank up Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album on the record player. After a month of frequent assignations, I was definitely ready to run or at least back off in order to absorb all the new information our trysts had provided.
The minute the Griffiths offered me a job, I told him we needed to break up so that I could get ready for my new job in Paris. Sounded good, huh?
That had been my nineteenth summer, but now I was about to turn twenty. It was time to take an active approach to my sex life again – grab the bull by the horns, so to speak. I wanted to shake off my passive bookworm identity, get out of my shell, and get out there. A phone number had been handed to me by a man who understood my need for maneuvering room, and he wasn’t unattractive. The ball was in my court.
Two days after my birthday I called. He knew who I was immediately and didn’t waste time. Would I like to meet him at the entrance to the Louvre Museum workshop at Trocadéro at five on Friday? I would.
He gave me directions, letting me know this was his workplace. This also let me know he probably wasn’t married or currently carrying on with an active girlfriend. If he was, why would he suggest meeting at a place where his colleagues might see me?
Relieved, I spent the next four days planning how things might go. I decided to forego my usual overalls and wear my most flattering jeans; the ones that showed off my curvy backside – the one asset I had that trumped the rear ends of most Frenchwomen I’d seen. I washed my hair the day before, slipping into the Griffith’s apartment during the daytime to take a shower with hot water.
On the appointed day, I decided to walk to our assignation. One of the great joys of living in Paris was how pleasurable it was to walk almost everywhere. Buildings gleamed with pride, the most gorgeous of which were illuminated at night. Attractive people sat at outdoor cafes twelve months of the year. There was something to study wherever I looked, and, for the most part, my eyes settled on beauty. Traversing the Champs de Mars, barely throwing a glance at the touristy Eiffel Tower, I crossed the Pont d’Iena, one of six bridges in Paris which traverse the Seine, and made my way up the slight hill to the twin towers of the Palais de Chaillot also known as Trocadéro after which the film Madwoman of Chaillot was named, starring Katherine Hepburn from my birthplace of Hartford, Connecticut.
Paris, like the rest of northern Europe, was gray and dreary in the wintertime, and it was now mid February. But the gloom of the late afternoon did nothing to diminish the beauty of the approach to the Palais de Chaillot – two long, stately buildings each terminating in a tower stood above a long, oval pool with multiple fount
ains. Skateboarders practiced on ramps on either side of the pool leading up to the grand plaza in front of the twin palaces. I climbed the stairs to take in the view of the Seine, which I had just crossed from Left Bank to Right.
Everything felt right. Going around to the back of the Palais, I searched for a few moments, then found a modest door cut into the solid granite building with a discreet sign saying Atelier du Musée du Louvre in small letters. Nothing flashy. Before I had time to get nervous, the door opened, and Jean-Michel came out. His blue eyes flared as he spotted me. Coming over, he leaned down and kissed both of my cheeks. A combination of not-unpleasant male sweat and faint cologne helped me make up my mind instantly if this was going to go somewhere or not. It was.
We walked to the balustrade of the plaza of the Palais, from whence I’d just come. I’d just leaned over its wide marble surface as a young, clueless foreign girl – drinking in the sight of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower beyond without being in any relationship to it. Now, I was standing next to a Frenchman whose male scent was playing in my nostrils, with whom every potentiality stretched before me just as the wide park of the Champ de Mars did on which the Eiffel Tower was situated. Everything had changed in the space of five minutes, or rather, had the potential to change, given what I chose to do about it. The gods had handed me a cup, and I was ready to drink.
Just as at our previous meeting, Jean-Michel played it cool, there beside me, reassuring me with his presence and an occasional glance from his dark, blue eyes, but not frightening me away with overwhelming intensity or male interest in my young, nubile self. He was a regular New Englander of a Frenchman, perfect for a Connecticut Yankee in the Court of the Sun King.
Slowly, we strolled to a café across the Trocadéro traffic circle. It was cold, with a hint of dampness in the air. Night was falling. We ordered a carafe of red wine. My stomach warmed from the first sip. Our conversation had nothing to do with content and everything to do with checking each other out. Acceptably youthful, virile, and not overwhelming male smell. Check. Moderately good looks. Check. Cool, unhurried style. Double check. Shoes clean and polished. Double check. (Mental note to American males: pay more attention to your shoes on first date.) Hands, medium-sized with long, rather wide fingers, sort of truncated at ends. Check.