One way or the other, marriage is fatal, and Paris is no place for the fainthearted in love. In this city, the pursuit of love demands a certain degree of flexibility and perseverance. Here is an example: When American porn magazine Hustler offered its first French edition a few years back, curiosity compelled me to buy a copy. Magazine kiosks typically place fashion, gossip, and health magazines on the customer’s left, and hard news, international press, and hobby magazines on the right. The porn is always on the uppermost right shelves where pushy toddlers cannot grab it, and consequently it is too high for short and overly inquisitive women to reach. Wherefore the situation required that I ask for assistance.
“I would like to purchase a copy of Hustler (pronounced ‘Oos-lair’),” I said. “Could you please get it down for me?”
This is not a phrase often posed, by man or woman, in any language.
The kiosk vendor leered genially at me, and shook his head in refusal.
“How come?” I prodded.
“Because such things are not meant for young ladies.”
I tried a few more kiosks, and each time, the vendor refused. When I related this experience to French friends with a request for an explanation, they chortled the French version of the clichéd line, “You ain’t so young, lady.” This unhelpful response did nothing to increase my respect for the French sense of humor. As a result, I have yet to resolve why the magazine kiosk vendors refused to take my money, but there’s no use getting wound up about it. Proprietors reserve the right not to sell to patrons, for reasons they are not required to defend. A friend once visited me with her American boyfriend of the moment, a bossy fellow puffed up with wealth and convinced of his own importance. A few hours later, he returned from a solo shopping trip, huffing in outrage because a pricy boutique had refused to sell him a pair of loafers. He’d shouldered his way into the small store, bellowing orders. Wherefore he was simply ignored, as he had mispronounced the magic word. He thought it was pronounced, “Plat-ee-num Vee-sa.” They were expecting to hear, “Please.”
In the end, I convinced the humorless owner of a tabac to give me the small publicity poster plastered by the entrance to his establishment. Wordlessly, he peeled it down and handed it to me. Clutching my talisman, I marched back to my studio, unrolled it, and stuck it on my mini-refrigerator. Whenever I went for a snack, I had to look at a female mouth amusing itself with a stick candy striped in red, white, and blue, these being the colors of both the American and French flags. The poster wasn’t much, but I liked it because it had required so much effort to get. The entire city seems to be constructed on this sadistic reward principle, with métro strikes, aloof waiters, and bad dates deliberately thrown into your path in order to make you deeply grateful for any crumbs of success.
Now, I wasn’t hoping to buy French Hustler for the pictures. I wanted it for the articles. In order to improve my conversational French (which still isn’t very good), I hoped to learn as many four letter words as I could, and I figured that an American porn mag translated into French would be a splendid way to learn. In English, my cussing tends to old-fashioned expletives such as “gosh!” “gadzooks!” and “golly!” In the larger scheme of things, it was far more embarrassing to wander around Paris, looking and sounding like Mister Peabody, the talking dog in the Bullwinkle cartoons, than to ask total strangers to sell me porn I was too short to purchase.
“But,” you sputter, “porn isn’t romantic!” Love + Lust = Lost without U . . . and a thousand candy hearts start to melt, for romance thrives in the spaces where hope meets confusion. And it is here that things start to get lost in translation, because in French, the word “fiancée” refers to your one-night stand.
Yes, I know. I’m a horrible, horrible person for bursting your bubble. But if you’re reading this sentence, you should be older than twelve—and if you’re not, please show this page to your mother so I can yell at her.
If I wasn’t looking for love, then why was I was bootlegging signal at a café near the Centre Pompidou so I could search an internet dating site? I wasn’t looking for myself. I was trying to help an ex-pat British scientist with a cat named Tara and a heart too soft for her own good. I was tired of hearing Cordula complain that there were no men in Boston where she lived, so I decided to send her a short list of bachelors worth meeting for a drink. That’s when I stumbled across John’s awkward profile. There was no photo, and everything about his information was wrong: almost-divorced dad, soccer coach for his son’s team, corporate lawyer who lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, a wealthy white Boston suburb favored by pedigreed dogs with weak bladders. My brain said no. A dismal fit for my bohemian friend. The back of my neck said yes. But yes for me, though everything he listed seemed a worse match for a girl who shops for groceries at flea markets.
I read his profile again, and the bizarre tingling sensation grew stronger.
Baffled, I sipped my coffee, and finally concluded an email to him wasn’t poaching because my friend had no idea he existed. For that matter, neither did I. ‘J-o-h-n’ was merely a cluster of pixels on a screen. I sent him a message; within seconds, he replied. He later told me he’d been a member of the dating site for fifteen minutes and had received emails from three other women. As soon as my message came, he unsubscribed.
I wrote him that I read everything except for Popular Mechanics and gun magazines.
He didn’t mention that Soldier of Fortune was in his bathroom.
I’m a political Independent with progressive leanings.
He’s a conservative Republican who thinks that liberals are dimwits.
I refuse to marry or have children.
He’s a family man.
Etc.
We were total opposites with nothing in common except the fact that we were both from Maine. I knew the towns where he grew up; he knew mine too. We disagreed about everything. Still, we kept corresponding, because lawyers aren’t afraid of arguments, and that weird tingle up my spine wouldn’t dissipate. My lizard brain knew something I didn’t. What it knew, I had no clue. I was certain he wasn’t a soul mate. I have met them before. The first words out of the man’s mouth are always “Where have you been?” as if I’d popped out for a pizza and brought back beer by mistake. It’s not me but the men who ask, plaintively, “Now what do we do?” Perplexed words slipping out of unaccustomed mouths, for these are the sorts of men who don’t read their horoscopes. Their eyes plead. Their bodies yearn. Wherefore I am unimpressed. So what? It’s not romantic destiny to meet your soul mate. First of all, everybody has banana bunches of them, and if you’ve never met any, it may be time to leave your living room. Second, I find it pointless to pin romantic hopes on a companion who understands you deeply, listens to everything you say, bonds with you on an emotional level, and adores you beyond reason. Such perfection can only be found in a Golden Retriever. Or, says Cordula the Soft-Hearted Scientist, a horse. Not good options for me. (See “Allergies.”) Third, I’ve never felt incomplete, as if I’d lost my other half in the dryer and needed to start taking long, romantic walks on the beach in hopes of finding it washed up and waiting for me. I’m fine by myself, thank you. Stop bothering me.
When I run into a soul mate, I shake his hand and I leave. It’s keys-to-locks and perfect connection, blah blah blah, but so what? There’s nothing new to learn from a relationship with your other half because it’s already all about you. It’s like expecting your left earlobe to teach your right earlobe a thing or two. Plus, if “soul mate” was a valid concept, I should have met one in the form of a hot babe slinging burgers, or a garbage man fresh from a dump. But no, it’s always ridiculously dashing men with swollen bank accounts and a recidivist ability to recite poetry. I turn up my nose and run. This is also why I think reincarnation is 99 percent