Two Americans in Paris (13 page)

“Are there any girls from the class you’re interested in?” you ask.

“Um . . . the girls?” My attention has been so absorbed by thoughts of you that I can hardly remember if there are any girls from our class that I find attractive. I need to buy a little time before answering.

You nod. “Girls.”

“Well, I’m picker about women than I am about men.”

“That’s good for me,” you say for the second time, teasing me.

I think of all of the beautiful women in our class. Mere beauty is not enough for me. At a minimum, she must also be smart and sharp, capable of making me think about and respond to the world in ways I never would have on my own. This qualification makes me think of Mermaid, the girl you chatted up when our class went to Saint-Denis. From having spoken to Mermaid myself, I have determined that in addition to being gorgeous, she is ambitious and curious about everything. “Mermaid,” I say, confident in my choice.

“I’m attracted to her too!” Your eyes light up as your mind ricochets with the possibilities of our shared attraction to her. “Any of the boys—besides Professor and me?” you ask with a flirty wink.

I smile, amused by your cockiness. “Besides Professor and you? Well, at first I thought Pig Face was attractive because I thought he was smart. Then I realized he just spits out facts. He doesn’t understand them.”

“No, no. He’s nothing special. Nothing special there.” You shake your head. “A girl would be better. At least, for you. Women are so beautiful. I mean, I’ve been in big hockey showers with males, and some of them have nice bodies. I consider myself a pretty good judge of that, but they don’t compare to female bodies. Girls smell so good too.”

I turn the conversation toward a slightly different facet of my sexuality. “There are times when I feel very masculine, but I like being a girl. If I’m bored in class, I can mentally masturbate and no one knows the difference. If you’re a boy and you do, then people can see.”

“Yeah, but you can just tuck it in.”

“Depends on what kind of erection you have,” I am quick to counter.

In response you tilt your head to the side and your eyes light up at the newfound knowledge of my ability to discern between types of erections. “Freud would have loved you. He would have had to write a whole other book!”

“Hah. Maybe.”

You look down at your empty plate and I do the same, noting all the food I have yet to eat. Since you have already finished, I start to eat faster, which you notice. “Take your time,” you say. Your words are simple but I find comfort in them. I savor each remaining mouthful without feeling badly for making you wait. Once my plate is clean, I catch the waitress’ attention and ask her for the check. She promptly brings it to us.

We combine our bills and coins on the table. You put down three euros more than me, which I take care to point out to you.              

“That’s okay.” You stand up, ready to leave. “You can pay me back with food, sexual favors . . .” You stretch your limber spine backward, taunting me.

Your offer that I might pay you back with “sexual favors” is tempting (except for the favors being a way of repaying a debt—I am not a prostitute). I shouldn’t take your offer too literally, though. You’re relaxed, well-fed, and probably hornier than usual. Maybe your relationship with your girlfriend actually isn’t going well, as I have suspected. Perhaps, too, you desire me more than you have before.

We return to the cool gray and pale gold palette of Paris’ streets, on our way to our respective homes.

“That was great!” you say.

“We talked a lot about sex. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about,” I say.

“It’s a good subject.”

I run my hand over the metal strips pressing into my abdomen. After our big meal, my dress is especially tight. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is take this off.” I gesture to my dress. “It’s corseted—there’s boning, but it’s not bone, it’s a kind of metal—”

“Steel?” you offer.

“Yeah, I think so. See? You can feel it.” I rub my finger across one of the metal rods seamed into my bustier, inviting you to do the same. You rub your finger over the steel strip concealed in my dress, lingering a moment too long. An ache of longing emerges along my ribs and flows through my core like a wave.

“I’m tired. And my back hurts.” you say.

“Are you ever not tired?” I ask.

“I don’t know . . .”

“You’re a little old man!”

“I am.”

There’s a brief lull in our conversation. I decide it’s a good time to explain to you that it’s important to care about whether your female friend arrives home safely after a night out with you. I am careful to be polite but firm in my instruction. “You know, if you’re parting, and you’ve been with a girl, and it’s late at night, you should
probably
ask her to text you when she gets home so you know she got home okay. Like the other night after we saw
Transformers
I walked home alone for more than an hour.”

“Oh. Okay.” You nod, accepting my instructions, although you appear a little taken aback. “I didn’t know it was going to take you that long!”

“Well now you do.”

We reach Saint-Jacques, where our paths split. You wrap your strong arms around my back, pressing your warm chest against mine, and back away, but you don’t head on up Saint-Jacques quite yet. A spur-of-the-moment idea has just occurred to you. “I’m going to pass out when I get home, but if I wake up, do you wanna do something later?”

“Sure! What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Maybe get a drink or something. We’ll figure it out. I’ll call you if I wake up, which I probably won’t.”

“Alright!” I grin. Although you will probably sleep the evening away, I am ecstatic that you are interested enough in me to want to spend tonight
with me when we have already spent all day together.

“Text me when you get home!” You wave goodbye.

I am so proud of you for having already taken my advice. I wave back, “Will do!”

The sun is slowly setting. The undersides of puffy clouds are streaked with cherry pinks and the buildings are glazed with brilliant coppers and apricots. I consider taking the métro, but my body is wired for pinning you beneath me. I have so much energy built up in my system. I decide to walk home along the Seine.

As I walk, I listen to Dido’s “Sand in my Shoes” on repeat. I identify strongly with the song’s lyrics. The girl says she should forget about the lover she recently met, but she can’t shake the thought of him. All she wants is to see him again.

Although we only parted minutes ago, I miss you already. Since we will probably not see each other until class next week, I intend to begin reading
Naked Lunch
when I get home. I know I will feel closer to you by reading the book you love so much.

Chez moi
I text you to let you know I arrived home safely and take off my dress. I lie across my bed and eagerly open
Naked Lunch
. As I read, I hear the sound of your voice narrating the words. I engage completely with the text’s sensuous, dreamlike images, which are made only more erotic by the sound of your voice, until I can no longer focus on the words. I want more than anything to press my tongue between the velvet of your vertebrae, gently waking you from your slumber. To abate my desire, I put my hands between my thighs and imagine what you would be doing if you were here, losing myself in a dream of my own creation.

She wants to blow fire into a dragon's belly and ride off on a shiny pewter hippocampus with swordfish eyes, flying into the bumpy terrain of the raincloud sky

During the two days since we last parted, I have thought of you almost constantly. I have carefully analyzed everything that has happened between us, determining that your interest in me is at its highest since we met. I believe it is possible that in the right context, you just might have sex with me. I intend to do my best to orchestrate that context.

My plans for our next outing are well thought-out. After class this afternoon, I will ask you to meet me tomorrow for a series of activities. I will suggest we meet in the morning at Opéra, where we may buy tickets to see a ballet at a date later this month. Even though you canceled on our prior plans to see a ballet, you said we could go at a later time. From Opéra, we will head off to Versailles for a beautiful day exploring the domain of Marie Antoinette. Then, in my box, the place I have so longed to have you with me, we will have a dinner of Indian food. There is sexual tension between us and I hope our physical proximity, in addition to your being happy and well-fed, will incite you to stay the night. If not, at least I will know you do not intend to cheat on your girlfriend and I can quit wondering if it is a possibility.

Of course, the moment that concerns me most is the one in which it is decided whether we will have sex this summer. If we do, you would be cheating and I would be complicit in this. If we don’t, we’ll stay friends, leaving me to cling to the hope that we will have sex, and maybe more than that, at some unknown later date. The former option is the one I am convinced I want. I know inviting you to cheat on your girlfriend is wrong for so many reasons, and in any other circumstance, I would never do it. My feelings for you are growing at an increasingly rapid rate and I know that unless there is an outlet for them, these feelings will grow exponentially. I know it is completely selfish, but I desperately want to complete my conquest and move on with my life.

Although the thought of having sex with you is enormously attractive to me, I am not unaware of the problem of my conscience. I fantasize that after our lovely day at Versailles and a warm, delicious meal of Indian food, you give into me. We’re heavily making out, we’re going to have sex. It feels great, except for the trails of guilt coursing through my body, causing hesitation with every quickened breath. Would these feelings of guilt be strong enough to make me tell you to stop and go home? I don’t know, but even in my fantasy of how this situation would play out, I know that becoming the “other woman” would feel good but it wouldn’t feel
right
.

Thoughts regarding the morality of the situation are, however, quickly squashed out of my mind by a larger fear. I know myself well enough to know that if we do not have sex this summer, I would not give up on you. You are the only person I have considered to be well-matched to me who has responded positively to my advances. The more time we spend together, the more I like you, and it seems the reverse is true as well. By contrast, the more time my ex-boyfriend and I spent together, the less we liked each other. You may not like me nearly as much as I like you, but the potential is there for something more. If it turns out that I cannot have you now, I would make huge efforts to keep you in my life, to make you miss me so you would still want to see me once we return to the States. I would do my absolute best to be the most perfect person I can possibly be, so that if-and-when you are single, you would turn to me for sex, love, and affection. The next few weeks would be the most difficult of all. The task of arranging any future outings would be predominantly mine, but I prefer having control over this. The hard part would be controlling my behavior while in your company. My feelings for you are like feral animals I must constantly herd so that they do not run beyond my reach and spoil our friendship. There would still be joy in this friendship. I know that. But I would
always
want more from you than you are willing to give to me. I would be clutching so firmly to the hope of romance with you that my life would be built around it. I want to avoid this situation more than anything. Even if there is the possibility of untold joys, this path is fraught with pain as well. My feelings would be bottled-up inside me, always wanting to spill out. I could never be totally myself around you.

And so I have another reason for inviting you to cheat on your girlfriend. If you say no to having sex with me, you might at least let me know that, if things were different, if you didn’t have a girlfriend, you would have sex with me. If I am going to set myself on a path where for a long time I am living on hopes and dreams of being with you, I must know there is a possibility these dreams may become reality. If you at least say you would have sex with me if you were single, I will know my efforts have a chance of yielding the results I so desperately long for.

Our class this afternoon will be at Trocadéro, which has a breathtaking view of La Tour Eiffel. To complement our setting, I have chosen a sleek little black dress. It limns my curves and its elegant neckline follows the line of my clavicle. For your pleasure, I cinch my waist with a wide patent leather belt that exaggerates my curves.

I approach the Trocadéro with a swagger in my walk. Things are going well with you and our classroom for the afternoon has an even more beautiful view than I remember it being the last time I passed by. From here, La Tour Eiffel is a sublime behemoth and an intense pewter color against the azure sky. Most often I see only the top of the Eiffel Tower peeking above the rooftops, but here it is framed like a photo on a postcard.

I find our class gathered on the steps of the left half of the Palais de Chaillot, which sits on the Trocadéro. The white stone esplanade sparkles in the sun like a field of pale gravel. I greet you with a nod and a smile. Your eyes meet mine and, along with the rest of the class, we walk toward the steps between the wings of the Palais that look out over the whole of southern Paris. As we walk alongside each other, I feel that we are bonded together by that invisible tether of friendship I once observed between you and your Frame-twin. Our bond is stronger, though, and its dynamic different. If it had a physical form, I imagine it would be a sterling muscle pulsing with translucent white light.

Almost unconsciously, I allow you to go just slightly ahead of me before we sit on the steps so you will sit a step below me, allowing me to appreciate your appearance without you knowing.

Professor begins class, explaining that today we won’t be having a lecture, but a conversation. The cityscape of Paris will serve as our reference for discussing the conditions and evolution of modernity. Professor first gives a little background on the Eiffel Tower. He tells us it was built for the 1889 Universal Exposition to show off France’s industry and technology as well as assert France’s superiority over the other countries at the exposition. He then asks us what other recognizable buildings we see. Several of our classmates point out both Invalides and Le Panthéon. Their domes rise well above the other buildings, even though they’re not even a third as tall as La Tour Eiffel.

“Yes,” Professor says. “But unlike the iron that was used to build the Eiffel Tower, they were made of stone. The technology used to build Invalides was roughly the same as that of Roman antiquity—the vaulted dome.” Professor gestures to La Tour Eiffel. “The Eiffel Tower represents a turning point in the evolution of architecture. It is a very ornamental skyscraper, on the cusp of modernity. Modernity is that which constantly changes. Modernism is always about new and newness—the speed of the rate of change is incredibly fast. Yesterday’s modernism is a symbol of the past.” Professor pulls out his clamshell cell phone. “This cell phone from three years ago now looks rather . . . sad. The identity of gender has also changed significantly. We’re all sitting here, men and women together—this is rather new.”

Looking around at our peers, most of whom are female, I am enormously grateful to live in the modern era. As a woman, I have nearly the same access as men to the education of my choosing, the places I want to live, the jobs I want to do, and the experiences I wish to have. At the moment, I am especially grateful I have taken the opportunities available to me and have gained the knowledge and experience necessary to befriend and seduce you. Getting what I want out of romance and sex has never been easy for me, but you are special. So long as you continue to respond positively to me, I will do anything to have you.

I find it miraculous yet fittingly modern, given the subject of today’s class, that you and I have met at all. What are the chances we would be in Paris for the same summer taking the same class? In our modern world, we have the freedom to go wherever we wish, provided we have the resources. At the right moment we both chose to be here. The labyrinthine pattern of champagne-colored buildings before us have windows that glint like glitter in the sun. The view reminds me of that movie moment when the king or queen looks out over their capital city while deciding the country’s fate. Mostly in jest, but with a grain of seriousness, I imagine the two of us as a future king and queen of the world, fated to do good on earth. With an eye on the more immediate future, I see before us a Paris built from the experiences we have shared and have yet to share, a Paris unique to us.

Drawing me out of my reverie, Professor continues to explain the conditions of modernity. “Modernism is the culture created by modernity. And the state is a modern political system. It is intended to speak to the people, to a mass audience. The Eiffel Tower was made for the people so they could show off French power.” He gestures to the giant structure. “A lot of the French hated the Eiffel Tower when it was first built. It was built with the intention of dismantling it once the Universal Exposition was over, but it caused such a ruckus that it stuck around. Now it’s the most recognizable symbol of Paris. It was built for the people, for the rising working class.” Professor turns his attention from the cityscape and focuses on us. “I want you to write down examples of modernism that we’ve discussed with a note about why they’re modern. In about five or ten minutes we’ll discuss them. For example, the steam engine used to be an emblem of modernity. Now it would be Twitter. Artists try to be modern,” he emphasizes.

With you in front of me, my mind is invigorated with ideas. I look at my notepad and instantly know what my answers will be. My determination to have you fortifies and empowers the whole of my mind. I actively stretch my intellect in all directions so that even the smallest piece of information may help me provide you with the most enriching experiences possible. In my notes I write down a handful of examples of modernity, along with reasons for why each is considered “modern.”

When Professor asks us to share our answers, Pig Face offers his first, but he is too far away for me to hear him. I share my example of how the development of photography encouraged painters to paint images in ways that photography could not capture. As I speak, I am conscious that you are listening to me and imagine that, though everyone can hear what I say, I speak for you alone.

“Yes,” Professor says. “Impressionism is also about capturing a moment like photography does: an instant impression. At the same time it is doing what photography could not really—color and blurred line.”

You raise your hand to offer your answer. “The Eiffel Tower was made of new materials and was built for the people, instead of the state,” you say. I cannot help but wonder if you, too, speak not only so that the class might hear you, but so that I think of you as even more intelligent than a few minutes before.

“Right,” Professor nods. “Also, in modernity, leisure becomes an integral part of society along with the flâneur, shopping, commodities, and consumption. Haussmann built his grand boulevards and bridges, which were designed to help this new lifestyle flourish. Monet’s
Beach at Trouville
in Normandy shows people just relaxing at the beach. Renoir’s
Café
is of people just sitting and enjoying a glass of wine. It was new that in the 1880’s women were at the bar drinking absinthe. There was also a sense of alienation that is modern, industrial—the revelation where people are together but don’t know how to connect. There are no paintings of people just passing by in the Louvre.” He moves his hand through the air as if to underline the movements of a pedestrian who appears often in Impressionist art but never in any of the art in the Louvre. With this image, Professor has succinctly juxtaposed the Louvre artworks we spent so much time looking at with the modern artworks we have more recently begun to study. It’s the perfect moment to dismiss class. We rise and stretch our limbs before dispersing. You stretch your back, puffing out the breadth of your chest toward me, and stand upright.

I am nervous about asking you to spend tomorrow with me, but only because your response means far too much to me. You have enjoyed our past two outings, so you will probably say yes as long as you don’t already have plans. “So, are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“No. Not yet,” you add, as if awaiting my invitation.

“I’m thinking about going to Versailles again, explore a bit more. You’re welcome to come if you like.”

“Sure.” You look up at me and twist your torso to stretch a bit more.

“So I was thinking we should meet around noon at the métro near Opéra and then go to Versailles and then um, I’ll message you the info.”

“Sounds good.”

As we walk off together, I imagine our classmates observing our newfound closeness and wondering if romance is blossoming between us.