CHAPTER 4
My Last Tango in Paris
Her name was Marie Claire.
She was cute, in a European way, you know—style without being overtly stylish, not slavish to the latest trends. She spoke French perfectly, which I expected because she was French. I spoke some French, with the accent on some. It was enough to get me through a first date of dinner and whatever silliness might follow. It was the silliness that interested me most. It was a double date with my American friend Arthur, who was very fluent in French because he was going to medical school in Toulon, and his French girlfriend Suzanne, who was also bilingual. So, it was unlikely that I’d find myself underwater in the dire straits of a foreign language.
Language, that night, would not be the problem. In fact, at the beginning of the date, no problems were on the horizon. “How could there be?” I asked myself, after all, I was young, comfortable with my growing grasp of the ways of the world, and feeling good about just about everything. My personal horizon was expansive, but the only one that mattered was the one in front of me that night. And on that horizon, I could see The Eiffel Tower. Yes, this was Paris, and Paris is for lovers, and I’m thinking that might apply to first dates as well.
Every minute of that evening was memorable, and I will help you, dear reader, with envisioning it yourself so that you can sense the excitement, the electricity, and the promise of romance on this night and then, sadly, the sudden descent into what would be for years an unforgettable night, regrettably unforgettable.
Alas, the night held so much promise, not because it was my last night in Paris before returning to the fall semester of graduate school in the States, but because it was a gloriously balmy August evening in the City of Lights. It was a perfect night for a date, and romance was the language we all shared that evening.
It began when Arthur and Suzanne brought Marie Claire to meet me in my tiny hotel on the Rue de Napoleon in the heart of the city. My hotel was a narrow four story two-star hotel just down the street from the ancient Saint-Sulpice church. We met there, at my insistence, because I had a room with a petit terrace on the top floor that had a wonderful view of waves of clay tiled roofs and Le Tour Eiffel, and we were there because I wanted to get the evening started with a bottle of my favorite vin ordinaire. Arthur and I were in graduate school, and budget played into this decision, particularly since we had agreed to take our dates to a very French restaurant on Rue Ste. Jacques. Very French, of course, meant very expensive—always has, always will.
Marie Claire was not only cute and flirty, she had a way about her that got my attention right away. We quickly got past the introductions and propelled ourselves into a conversational tone of old and dear friends, chattering about what we’d been doing the last couple of days. Marie Claire wanted to know about my visit to Paris and other cities in France. She told me a bit about her job as an account liaison in a Public Relations firm. She loved her work and especially enjoyed the excitement of putting out fires from clients’ blunders. There was a serious side to her too, and I liked that. We hit it off right away. I think she was pretty happy with our foursome, and me in particular. Surely she felt some of the chemistry I was feeling.
It didn’t hurt that Marie Claire was a tall brunette. She was unusually tall for a French woman—about five feet nine or ten inches tall with heels, which is tall to most people, but not to me. She was thin in an elegant way, with a graceful carriage and flawless creamy skin that enhanced the soft features of her face without providing too much definition. Her hazel eyes were languid over her high cheekbones and spaced perfectly over a thin, petite nose, which was atop small yet inviting lips. She had a particularly beautiful neck, framed by two fragile looking collarbones. I remember noticing her collarbones, something I never usually noticed about women. They were both demurely showing, just above the neckline of her light green silk blouse. She wore a black linen skirt and high heels. I wore khaki pants, a blue button down Brooks Brothers shirt, and a wrinkled navy blue blazer. That’s the best I can do on recall. It was her face that I remember most, a face I wanted to get very close to, a face I wanted to hold. Maybe after dinner. Yes, I thought, as soon as possible after dinner!
We four merry souls left my tiny hotel room and an empty bottle behind, plus the four empty water glasses I’d lifted from a maid’s cart earlier that day. In the spirit of hospitality, I also provided my guests with some brie with crackers and some grapes and apricots that I’d purchased from a local market up the street from my hotel. The detritus included a second empty wine bottle from the night before, which served as a vase for some flowers I’d picked in the park an hour before the threesome knocked on my door—anything to set the mood, although Paris, itself, succeeded in doing that.
Five blocks and three hours later, all four of us were fairly bombed on the tail end of a very French dinner at a very French restaurant. Marie Claire and I spent the last thirty minutes at the table, seated opposite each other, with fingers entwined on the tabletop. Our gazing at each other lingered well beyond the conversational tempo set by Arthur and Suzanne. They knew, as we did, that it was time to go, and on a night like this—my last night in the City of Lights—there was only one place to go: The Eiffel Tower. That would be the setting for the beginning of the end.
We walked along the banks of the Seine, both couples connected every minute of the walk in some way, alternating with shared laughter and private whispers. The river lapped along the quay below us. I could hear the notes in “The Last Tango in Paris” from a soft saxophone loosely drifting overhead, curling on gentle wafts of the summer air. I was totally attentive to Marie Claire and wondered if it was possible to fall in love with her right then—and I decided it was because it was that kind of night. I was sure the feeling would escalate, maybe even be shared. Of course, what I expected had little to do with reality’s plan—it’s almost always that way. What the Fates planned was unknown to me at the time; all I knew was that I was suddenly kissing Marie Claire, and we were standing under the Eiffel Tower late, late into the Parisian night. Arthur and Suzanne were embraced as well, standing a mere ten feet from us. A true foursome, which unbeknownst to any of us, was about to become a threesome, but in a way one could not imagine.
Marie Claire was in my arms, fully. And my lips were on hers, fully. It gave new meaning to French kissing. Surely I was lost in love, though not so lost that I ignored a small warning from another part of my body, a modest pressure that was quickly interpreted as what one might call a “church fart” in the making. Surely you know: a tiny little thing, a minor expulsion, hardly worth one’s attention, though attention-getting enough in an embrace, were it to make itself known to both parties. I felt safe in what could only be called a controlled, miniscule, and hopefully silent release. Seconds later, one small part of my conscious state had notified my brain that I’d achieved the silent part, but totally failed on controlled and miniscule. To put it bluntly, while in a lip lock with the alluring and tender Marie Claire, I had a sudden and totally unanticipated attack of diarrhea. It must have been the apricots. There are no words that could describe my state of mind at that very moment, but it wasn’t my mind I was worried about!
At this point, dear reader, what would be your next step if you were in my shoes? This was clearly not a good situation. Confronted with this date-ender, the question hung over me like a noose: “Now what?”
The instant my pants filled, my mind went blank. This was not a case of denial—denial was an impossibility. This wasn’t a situation where I could draw upon experience for a solution. I stepped away from Marie Claire—the tantalizing, chic, seductive Marie Claire—and she didn’t have a clue why I pulled back, thank God! But she would, and soon. I said to her, “Excusez-moi, Marie-Claire. Un moment,” and retreated ten more steps and called to Arthur, imploring him to join me in a petite conversation. He reluctantly disengaged from Suzanne, joined me, and said, “What?” Behind him, I saw Marie Claire and Suzanne move toward each other.
Th
is is virtually the exact conversation I had with Arthur that abruptly ended my evening with Marie Claire, Suzanne, and Arthur:
“Arthur, I just dumped in my pants.”
“What! Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Oh, shit!” he softly exclaimed.
“Exactly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s only one thing I can do,” I replied, “Walk away. I’ll just walk away. No choice. Tell her I got sick, but don’t tell her more than that,” adding in a desperate whisper, “Please,” not wanting the embarrassing truth to get out. “Get her home for me. I have to go now. I’m feeling worse by the second. Goodbye.”
I sheepishly turned from Arthur and from the girls, not glancing at either, and walked away into the night as quickly as possible, heading for the nearest street corner where I could be out of their sight. My stomach was protesting with gurgling spasms, and I knew my situation was getting worse. I just didn’t know how much worse. I never looked back.
After the longest minute of my young life and the longest walk, I turned a corner and disappeared from their sight. It was three in the morning, the tree-lined street was quiet and very dark and very empty. I was in a very uncomfortable predicament, to say the least. It was a sobering experience, though clearly I can’t say I was entirely sober. I quickly decided to duck into the privacy and shelter of a building construction site, rest a moment, breathe deeply, assess the situation, and clean up as best I could. My hotel was twenty blocks away, which was too far to walk without some drastic measures, so drastic measures began immediately. Little did I know that my discomfort was about to put me in peril.
Well off the sidewalk, sheltered in the darkness of the site, tucked alongside an unstable scaffold, I carefully removed my shoes, socks, and sport coat, making it easier to manage the subsequent careful removal of my endangered trousers. That done, standing in my shirt and underwear only, with some difficulty, I stood on one foot and gingerly removed my underwear. That’s when my predicament took a sudden turn for the worse. I lost my balance and, in what couldn’t have been more than a blink, I fell onto the uneven ground and rolled down a steep incline, which tumbled me into the excavated building’s basement of water, which was over six feet deep. I knew that because I couldn’t touch the bottom. I struggled while treading water, trying to get a fix on my salvation. With haste and desperation, I clawed up an angled side of a slippery mud wall, feeling (and looking, no doubt) like some ancient muddied life form, emerging for the first time from the water onto terra firma. Back on solid ground, gasping, slimed, and wondering how I could go from the bliss of Marie Claire’s lips to being an unimaginable mud monster in less than five minutes left me truly perplexed. All this, and there was still some work to do before I could walk into my hotel lobby!
Naked while leaning on some scaffolding, I cleaned myself of mud, etc. as best I could with my socks and soaked shirt, tossed them on the ground, and dressed myself with the remainder of my clothes: shoes, trousers, and a blazer. Shirtless, I weakly walked out to the sidewalk and turned toward my hotel for a very long walk back, one I hoped would not be interrupted by another episode.
About a block later, feeling feverish and shrouded in despair, I spied a large puddle of water curbside. Needing a little refreshment and relief from my fevered state, I crouched and, with a scoop of my hands, splashed a bit on my face. With this little splash, my pathetic physical state took yet another turn for the worse. Moments later, as I stood under a street lamp, my reflection revealed that I’d erroneously mistaken a puddle of oil for water. My face and hands were now black. Yes, black! Life as I knew it was spiraling downward, out of control. Marie Claire’s lips were now a distant memory. Ever resourceful, I removed my blazer and, using the back of the jacket, wiped my hands and removed the oil from my face, careful not to get any residue on the sleeves or front of the jacket. You see, I was determined to walk into my hotel with a jacket on, managing my appearance as best I could. So what if the oil stains on the back of my jacket provided the last impression of me; it was the first impression that mattered!
Thirty minutes later, I walked into my two-star hotel, passed the sleeping (thankfully) clerk at the front desk, took the elevator to the fourth floor, staggered down the hall to my room, entered it, and stripped. Cursing, I mindlessly threw my stained clothes out the window into the alley below and then collapsed into bed, near dead, begging for a total loss of memory. Fatigue quickly overwhelmed me and a fitful sleep followed, interrupted by frequent visits to the W.C. down the hall. Down the hall? Did I say two-star hotel? Maybe it was a one-star.
I missed my plane the next morning and spent two more days at my hotel, staying within reach of the W.C. On the third day, I boarded a plane back to the States. I never got in touch with Marie Claire or Suzanne, nor did I ever hear from them. I didn’t hear from Arthur either, until six months later, when I met him on campus. (His parents lived in town, and he was visiting.) Arthur said he’d told the girls I was feeling really sick. He also said he didn’t tell them any more than that. I didn’t tell anyone about that night with Marie Claire for at least ten years. Now I’m telling you and a lot of other people. Isn’t life funny? I wonder what Marie Claire is doing? I guess I’ll never know. Maybe now she’ll learn the truth about my hasty departure.
What would YOU have done if you’d been me? And what could Marie Claire have been thinking when I walked away without an explanation or even a goodbye? As the French say, C’est la vie!
∞