by Rozsa Gaston
“I can’t believe you did that,” he said, angrily flicking the dishtowel in his hands. “What’s wrong with you?”
I stepped away from the dishtowel, not knowing what the rules of engagement were now. All I knew was that I’d broken whatever unspoken rules we’d previously had.
“Nothing’s wrong with me, Jean-Michel. I told you I’m on a diet, and I’m sticking to it.” A voice like steel sounded in my ears. It took me a few seconds to recognize it as my own.
“So you just throw away the present I gave you?” The muscles of his jaw line hardened. His face looked as if it was carved out of Mount Rushmore.
“You weren’t getting it. I told you I’m not eating it, and you said eat it now. What else could I do?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He threw up his hands and turned his back to me. “Do whatever you want. It’s not my concern.”
He sounded just like my grandmother at the end of an argument. But I was no longer a child in an adult’s care. This was my opportunity to really do what I wanted.
I gathered up my jacket and bag, while Jean-Michel pretended to be busy stocking his mini-fridge. In two steps, I was at the door. Unlatch, open, and out. The click of the door shutting behind exhilarated me. Quickly, I sprang down the stairs, praying he wouldn’t follow.
Out on the sidewalk, I took a deep breath. The early evening spring air breathed new life into me. I started for Boulevard Montparnasse. In five minutes, I was surrounded by lights, life, and action. Happy for the anonymity of the crowd, my body began to shake in reaction to what just took place. I was not normally a hugely assertive person, making scenes or dramatic gestures. But I’d just made one.
Who was I now? I slowed down my pace, searching for comfort in being one with the crowd. Relief, pride, and the tiniest twinge of fear churned my stomach. I’d stood up for myself.
Was Jean-Michel no longer my boyfriend? My heart turned over to think I would be the one to make that decision. I sniffed the fresh spring air of freedom and weighed my possible new status as an unattached woman.
Could I manage on my own? Yes. Would I be lonely over the next few weekends? Yes, but Elizabeth had a list of activities she’d suggested we do together before I departed for home. Would a break up throw me into a tizzy of pastry gorging and self-pity? Probably not. Wasn’t it my own decision if I wanted to lose weight or not?
Bile rose in my throat as my mind closed against Jean-Michel like a steel trap. He wasn’t just a vieux garcon – a fussy older man. He was a bully, too.
I began to relax. Looking at the couples around me, I wasn’t as dazzled by their coupledom as I was before. Who knew how many single souls in a partnership were secretly trapped, longing to get out from under their partner’s hold over them? For the first time since I’d arrived in Paris, I felt happy to be single.
A commotion sounded behind me. Someone was coming up on my left, running and breathing heavily.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as, Ava? What’s the matter with you?” Jean-Michel gasped out, falling into step beside me. Was that all he could think of to say? Or was it all he knew me capable of understanding in my limited French?
Ugh. Just when I’d worked it all out and begun to savor my freedom. Now what? I felt embarrassed. What I wanted was not what the man beside me did. I wanted something more. Now that I’d recovered my usual New England composure, I was loathe to engage in any further scenes.
Walking on, I barely turned my head to acknowledge Jean-Michel. It distressed me to see him looking so flustered. I didn’t want to comfort him, but I didn’t want him to look vulnerable either. If only another former American girlfriend of his could have materialized at that moment to restore him to his usual sangfroid.
“I just want to go home, that’s all,” I muttered. I just want to say goodbye was what I really meant but didn’t have the heart to say.
“Cherie, stop being silly. Let’s go back to my place and have dinner. I bought tournedos for us,” he reasoned, referring to the small, tasty steaks Mrs. Griffith sometimes prepared for her family. “Come on.”
So now I was his cherie, his sweetheart. But I couldn’t turn the enormous ship of my resolve back in his direction. Jean-Michel’s birthday had passed a few weeks earlier. He was a Taurean, a fixed sign, but Aquarians were, too, just less obvious about it. My own rigidity was now fast revealing itself in the clarity of my resolve. I had savored my new independence for all of fifteen minutes, and I could live with it. What I couldn’t live with was Jean-Michel telling me what to eat and with what drink, how to dress, how to behave, and how to be comfortable in my skin. For the past quarter hour, I’d felt extremely comfortable in my own skin. I wanted to further explore my new comfortably-skinned self, the one weaned from him.
“I just feel like going home. Don’t try to stop me,” I answered wearily, pushing on toward the Avenue de la Bourdonnais that led to the Griffith’s building on Rue de Belgrade.
“Ava, stop it. Come back. I won’t buy you pastries anymore,” he begged.
I thought about it. Nothing inside me wanted to go back to his place with him. I wanted to be alone to digest the change in our relationship that had just taken place.
“I don’t feel like it, Jean-Michel. I just want to go home,” I said, repeating myself like an automaton. I was a homing pigeon returning to my nest.
He walked beside me in silence for a minute. Then the unimaginable happened. He began to cry. First, I heard sniffles. I glanced at him. His face was red and tear-strewn. I was aghast.
What was I supposed to do? I had no experience with men crying. I felt hugely embarrassed. But under my discomfort, a twinge of anger flamed. Wasn’t he trying to further manipulate me?
The New England men I’d interacted with my entire life didn’t resort to tears to get their way. God only knew what stratagems they used, but they weren’t lacrimonious ones.
My heart hardened further as I quickened my step. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible before some other unbelievable thing happened – like getting hit. I was walking next to a total stranger, someone whose reactions I couldn’t gauge.
My adrenalin racing in fear of the unknown, I raised my hand in a backward salute. Then, I fled. This time, he didn’t follow. In another fifteen minutes, I was in my own room, the door safely locked behind me. There, I flung myself on my bed, spent, and slept.
The next day, I felt somewhat safer. Jean-Michel would be at work and unlikely to try to contact me until after five. Thankfully, I was to babysit that evening for the Griffiths, so I would avoid him if he tried to find me in my room. Still shaky from the night before, I dressed and set off for French class in the Latin Quarter. It was good to have a busy day ahead of me, a schedule to fill my first twenty-four hours of newfound singleness.
It was a soft, beautiful May day. Instead of hopping on the bus, I walked home from class. I needed time to think. Finally, I had a story with a real man. It was energizing to be in the midst of my own dilemma for once, not a girlfriend’s or a character’s in a novel or magazine. But it was puzzling too. Did I want to try to work things out with him? Not in my New England book.
The light May breeze mocked me for my thoughts as I crossed the street to the Seine. I slid my hand along the wide stone railing next to the sidewalk as I walked. “Fake it till you make it” was not my operative phrase on this day. Thrown me up against the hard wall of decision-making, I was resolved. Nothing in the world could make me go back to Jean-Michel. I wanted to enjoy my own company for my final days in Paris. It was enough.
That evening, I went downstairs to babysit the three Griffith children. The youngest, Cole, draped himself across my lap as I stroked his longish, platinum-blond curls. Usually, I tired of his heavy head on my legs after a few minutes, but this time I let him linger, thinking how dear he’d become to me now I knew I was leaving. I studied his older brother, Winston’s, perfect looks and manners as we talked about his plans for the summer. He’d be attending lacrosse
camp back home. His bright prospects for life didn’t seem so alien to me, now that I was on my way to Yale. When Reid, the eldest and only girl confided to me about yet another boy in school she liked, I felt hopeful for her for the first time. If I could get into Yale, then the object of Reid’s crush could like her back. Miracles did happen. It was pleasurable to soak up the children’s details, fodder for a revisionist version of my own childhood to new friends I hoped to make in college.
Couldn’t I appear to have grown up as a Ralph Lauren catalogue-type child to my peers in New Haven? I had the WASP pedigree, replete with blonde hair and blue eyes. My mother was descended from John and Priscilla Alden who came over on the Mayflower. There was the small matter of my Transylvanian heritage on my father’s side. Perhaps I could transform my father into a count rather than a penniless poet whose first job in America was sweeping out a barbershop. Couldn’t he become a poet of aristocratic origins? The cogs began to turn, and I soaked in Reid’s, Winston’s, and Cole’s details so that I could create from them a pastiche of my own.
Passing through Mr. and Mrs. Griffith’s bedroom on my way to use the master bathroom, as usual I admired their low-to-the-floor, funky, hippy-style queen-sized bed. Then, I spotted a book on one of the two night tables. It was the Talahari Book of Massage. Picking it up, I leafed through it. It wasn’t just any old massage book. A couple was massaging each other in the nude in various pen and ink illustrations. Wow.
I glanced back at the night table, where a bottle of massage oil stood next to where the book had lain. It was half full.
Fortunately, the children were watching a long movie, which had only just begun. I rifled through the pages of the book until I came to one where the couple was doing something I didn’t really understand. The man was massaging a part of the woman’s body above her sexe. His hand wasn’t inside, it was on something. I read the text.
One of the surest ways to lead your partner to orgasm is to repetitively stroke the clitoris with the degree of pressure your partner indicates is most satisfactory to her. Do not assume you know what this degree is. Only your partner can tell you. The female orgasmic response typically takes longer than the male’s. You should position yourself comfortably, use a generous amount of non-irritating, natural massage oil and settle in for the long haul. Be sure to ask your partner if she prefers clockwise or counterclockwise strokes. Do not stop, once your partner begins to respond. Apply increased pressure and wait for her to tell you if it’s the right amount. Ask her to let you know if and when she wants to pause. After a pause, do not stop. Resume stroking with slightly increased pressure, asking for her feedback on the level of pressure. Repeat the process of stroking and pausing until your partner has climaxed. You will find the path to her satisfaction after many tries. Once your partner orgasms, she should be able to climax more than once again very quickly. Enjoy the adventure of finding the path to your partner’s orgasm. You can only gain true sexual satisfaction within a partnership when you have satisfied your partner as well as yourself.
Huh… I needed to get back to the living room before the kids began wondering what happened to me.
As Cole crawled into my lap and Reid related to me what I’d missed of the movie, I pondered the new points of information I’d just learned.
Women were able to orgasm more than once during lovemaking? I wasn’t sure I’d ever orgasmed at all, but it was nice to know I’d be able to do it again and again once I finally figured out what it was.
For the first time, I had an inkling of why certain African cultures had a custom of cutting off young girls’ clitorises. They wanted to protect them from becoming raving sex maniacs. Hmm. I had an intact clitoris, yet I was in no way a raving sex maniac. Was I missing something? What exactly was the big deal?
Apparently, the clitoris was some sort of very big deal. Yet Jean-Michel hadn’t really focused on it – nor had my first lover. They had both gone in for the goal, so to speak. But whose goal were they after? You can only gain true sexual satisfaction within a partnership when you have satisfied your partner as well as yourself rang in my ears. How did you know when you’d attained true sexual satisfaction? Was it when you felt pleasantly sleepy after making love? Somehow I didn’t think so. The memory of the woman in the underpass streaked through my brain once again. Her scream had seemed to make the Earth stand still.
The Griffiths returned around ten, and I greeted them with new respect. Clearly Mr. Griffith cared about Mrs. Griffith’s satisfaction in bed. Or Mrs. Griffith cared enough about it herself to alert Mr. Griffith as to how to make it happen. I made a note to determine whose side of the bed I’d found the massage book on the next time I babysat.
On Tuesday, I went to the library at Beaubourg after morning classes. I looked for the Talahari Book of Massage in their English language card catalogue. It wasn’t on file. Then, I looked up “female sexual response.” Nothing in English. I tried “female orgasm.” A book called Female Orgasmic Response was on file, but when I went to find it, it was gone. Too embarrassed to ask a librarian to help me locate it, I decided to read The Story of O by Pauline Réage instead, hoping the “O” in the title referred to the “O” I was after.
Leafing through the book took my mind off my grumbling stomach, which I hadn’t fed since Sunday afternoon, other than with three containers of fromage maigre daily. I was determined to make my break up with Jean-Michel into a success story. I wouldn’t be one of those women who consoles herself after breaking up with a boyfriend by eating boxes of cookies – or the contents of a pastry shop window.
Looking up, I checked to see if anyone was noticing the book I was reading. No one. A scattering of West African men with skin like polished mahogany sat buried in books around the reading room. I was sure they were there to hit upon the foreign girls in the room, most of whom looked plump and blond or blondish. I hoped I was looking on the less plump end of the spectrum at this point. Although I was starving, I was happy I’d squirmed my way into a size 40 pair of French jeans. When I arrived in Paris, I’d gone shopping immediately and was appalled to find the smallest size I could fit into was a 42 – on the higher end of French women’s clothing sizes which ranged from 36 to 44 – roughly equivalent to an American size four to size twelve.
Now, I’d dropped a size. Just then, a West African caught my eye and smiled. I frowned.
Although I was no longer with Jean-Michel, the last thing I wanted was to be with anyone else. It was such blessed peace to regain my solitude. In January, I had been lonely. Now it was May, and I was no longer lonely, I was on my own. It was different. I returned to The Story of O.
After twenty minutes, I put down the book. There was plenty of sex, but not the kind I was looking for. The heroine O seemed mostly interested in submitting to bad treatment from various men her master lover introduced her to. I wasn’t looking for a story about sex so much as I was looking for technical information on what exactly constituted a female orgasm. I wondered if any of the West Africans in the room knew anything about the subject. Were any of them from countries where they cut off women’s clitorises? Since I was already at the library, I decided to find out which countries did. Returning to the card catalogue, I looked up “female circumcision.” A few books were listed, one in English. In a minute, I found it.
Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Central African Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal and Togo had all outlawed female circumcision. That was good, except it was also bad. Why would it be outlawed in those parts if it wasn’t practiced there? I read on. Countries where it was common included all of the above, as well as Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and northern Sudan. At least the French-speaking countries, except for Sudan, had banned the practice. With the former French colonies of West Africa redeemed in my mind, I snuck another glance at the dark-skinned Africans in the reading room. Some of them were pretty good looking. All of them had long, lean, muscular builds. Why would they want their fellow countrywomen circumcised? I returned to my book.
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Circumcision of the clitoris is meant to terminate or reduce feelings of sexual arousal in women so they will be less inclined to engage in pre-marital intercourse or adultery. The clitoris holds a massive number of nerve endings, and generates feelings of sexual arousal culminating in orgasm when sufficiently stimulated.
Aha. This confirmed what I’d read in the Griffiths’ bedside massage book. Orgasm happened through clitoral stimulation. It was good to know. But puzzling to think so many African men didn’t want their womenfolk to experience orgasm. Didn’t they enjoy experiencing it themselves? Maybe that’s why they were prowling in English-language libraries for young, foreign females with intact clitorises. I’d bet they wanted to experience sex with them in a way they were unable to with the women waiting for them at home.
Shutting the book, it was time to return to my room and think about where those men might be who did want their womenfolk to experience orgasm. There must be normal, reasonable men around who possessed enough logical faculties to reason the goose might want to experience the same sort of climax the gander did. But that would also imply there were men out there who were reasonable enough to realize loading and unloading a dishwasher, making beds, doing laundry, and cleaning bathrooms was something women were as equally not interested in as men. For the most part, I hadn’t met any men who did.
As I exited the library, Jean-Michel came to mind. He was the only man I’d ever met who was actually good at activities I’d never seen men do back in Connecticut. He’d religiously washed the dishes after we’d eaten the Saturday or Sunday dinners he cooked. For a brief moment, I thought fondly of him, until my mind turned again to the weighty matter of female sexual pleasure. Why was Jean-Michel good at food-shopping, cooking, and cleaning, but hadn’t yet figured out his way around the female clitoris? It didn’t make sense.