Thank You Craigslist

I put an ad on craigslist here in Paris and got a delicious surprise.

I know, it's dangerous. Little black girl in Paris alone eliciting strange people to talk to her and perhaps make her have to do a few loads of sheets and towels in her fabulous Parisian apt.

But I did it. And I won. After my friends left I realized I hadn't "been carnal" in a little bit and I’m in Paris. The city of light and lovers. And I’d never had “the relations” on foreign soil. I decided this was the time for that to change. I’d actually decided when I bought my ticket, got the apartment and went to the ob/gyn to make sure I didn't need any shots or anything. I love her. She said, "Take your own condoms". Intrigued. "Why? Do theirs not work?" she calmly replied "different latex, different lube. Nothing ruins a trip faster than a broken pudenda."

I knew I should have gone to med school.

Anyway, I started rapping with this dude who says he went on craigslist to rent out a room in his apartment and "just happened" into the who wants to get laid portion of said list. We emailed each other all day and it was really nice. I was beat from 4 days of walking this great town and the flirtations were a welcome respite. He loved my English, I loved his English. It has a French flair that I really thought lived in French movies from the Alain Delon days.

So he came to pick me up. He was cute. He looked like the pix he'd sent, only his hair was a little thinner than I’d expected. Who cares? I have cellulite. I’d been taking baths the last few days so when he got here I’m all fresh, clean and had drank almost a bottle of wine alone and watched Mad Men and a little internet diddling (great use of my time in Paris, right?).

It was cool being in a car in Paris. I hadn't been in one I didn't have to pay for yet and we were so busy talking about hip hop (I was going to go to a concert the next night with wordsworth and masta ace... but I couldn't fathom coughing up hard earned Euros for hip hop to globally bone me) that he didn't give me the full tour. Actually, we talked a lot and he likes a lot of the same things I do. He loves the Wire and Entourage too (although I haven't watched all of the Wire yet). He lives by Bastille. I saw it. It’s a statue. No bones rattling around, no jail, a statue. Cool. Done.

We got to his flat that was as big as my apartment in Brooklyn and it's cute. He travels a lot for work and thus the list visit. He’d already told me he used to grow "greenhouse plants" in his bedroom, but now simply aided others in the relinquishing of their said plants. We partook. He rolled his funny cigarettes with Marlboro tabac. He’d said that he didn't smoke but we went through almost a pack. We drank a bottle of champagne, he made caprianias (he had that crazy rum from brazil- cachaça), we listened to some of his favorite hip-hop, and looked at some propaganda Hugo Chavez left in the VIPs lounge in the Venezuelan airport. He also talked about his masters’ thesis which sounds mad cool and we ended up talking for a couple of hours... and then the games began.

I thought I was gonna stay away from such talk in an open forum for whenever I run for president, or just so my dad doesn't have a heart attack, but this was too good not to go for.

(Besides, the whole "finding my own voice thing" this is my voice, it's vulgar and crude and mortifying to most of my family; but I can't wait for them to die to tell my stories, right?)

Anyway, the thing that made it so good was the chivalrousness of it. I asked him last night/ this morning if he's always like this? He said yes. And I’m like damn. I can't get a return phone call in Brooklyn. Now granted I usually fuck with severely fucked up individuals that I find charming until I have more than a 5 minute conversation with them. Thus the relations sans relationships. But this felt different. Sure I was probably a little drunk and a little stoned- and in Paris. But I wasn't that fucked up. And as the evening wore on and the soberer I got, the better it got. Then it happened.

Somewhere in the middle I stopped trying to do my best porn star impression and we started making love. Slow and sweet. With kisses everywhere. He literally kissed me everywhere. It was a delight, and the worm turned. I became inspired. I like wanted to cook breakfast in a French maid's costume and start washing dishes. Once I saw that he got off by getting me off I wanted to do the same.

Needless to say the sun was suddenly up. He had to be at work at 9. It was after 6a. We slept for a little bit. He took a shower, I brushed my teeth and did my first ho stroll in Paris. He was going to the country to visit his family for the weekend. Jaded me thought, "yeah, sure. Your family."

I was sure I’d never see him again, and then like clockwork, he sent me an email yesterday afternoon. I said something dirty (and wrong) in French that he said made him hot all day. I liked that. I went to dinner with a friend of a friend. We went to St. Germaine and the Latin Quarter. Listened to some jazz. I met Memphis Slim's drummer and when I saw him as he was entering and I was leaving the bathroom, he took my head in his hands and kissed me in the mouth. I apparently have a way with French men. The friend of the friend looked like he was a little in love with me too by the end of the night and was trying to kiss me in the mouth as I got out of his car. Easy boys... let a girl catch her breath.

Besides, I’d just gotten a text from my boy and wanted to get back to him as quick as I could. He said he couldn't wait to have me in his arms and I needed to get to my translator to shoot a "right back at cha" to him in French.

I came home, drank some more wine, texted the boy back and he was here in 30 min. We went to sleep at 6a again. He has all kinds of meetings he's rearranging and friends he's blowing off cause I’m here. We’re having dinner tonight. I have to wash more sheets and towels.

We said we'll tell people we met on Facebook. Friends of friends... of Craig.

Wine

Ya know, wine is the same all over the world. Some wine is better than other wine. Some wine you have to spit back in the glass and lick your tongue out a few times to get the idea of it out of you head.

But not in Paris. You can buy wine from the grocery store and it's delicious. You know how I know. Well padawan, I know cause I've done it. I've walked that line and came out ahead. I also eat seafood when everyone else is shaking their heads and threatening not to take care of airplane shrimp's vomitous return. I'm a risk taker.

But buying and drinking grocery store wine for 5 euros is not a risk. The French drink wine all the time. It would be cost prohibitive of them as a culture to make wine unaffordable. I'm an American. Our beer is cheap. That's why we all weigh almost 200lbs each. But beer is delicious and after being in Copenhagen where there's the delicious Carlsburg (and little else) I saw the detriments of beer.

1.) You don't get drunk. Unless you purposely go in on an empty stomach. Then you get really drunk, really fast and sick a second after you realize you're drunk. No Fun.

2.) All the clothes I packed shrank in my suitcase after a few nights of beer. I wasn't going to bootcamp and spin class. I was walking around one of the dullest towns I'd ever seen to go present a paper to people who were rolling around in the ground in newspaper. Then it rained and was cold and beer doesn't warm you up.

3.) And this is one I learned at home by living over a bar. Beer drunk makes me evil and sleepy.

Therefore, the world should be made out of wine. And whisky. Cause wine makes you go to sleep and whisky makes you forget all the bad things you did to your friends when you drank it.

Wine is great.

Paris 1

I love this town. I love everything about it.

Yesterday I sat at Café Flore where Baldwin finished Go Tell it on the Mountain and where he had his infamous falling out with Richard Wright. I had a glass of wine for Jimmy. Then had several more for myself. We went to Bar and had several more glasses of champagne. I talked to some locals- in French (I'm apparently fluent with a little wine in me).

Earlier in the day we'd gone to Notre Dame and Museé d'Orsay. I'm more Manet than Monet people and I can finally tell the difference. I also got to see the strokes on the Van Gogh's and he was totally dropping his basket.

We walked around St. Germaine de Pres and it's mad expensive and cool as hell though. I have to find a way to live here. I haven't done much writing, but when my traveling companions leave me tomorrow I'll have more time.

Right now they went to the Folies Bergere to do a little Josephine Baker hunting. I'm going to meet them at the Louvre in a little bit and we have a salon to attend tonight.

I love Paris.