The dog days of summer are here, lazy days are coming to an end, but before you start planning your September, and I invite you to take a trip with me down to the South of France. Excerpts of this story was published last fall when Séb invited me to Loire for the weekend, and I was nervous to travel with a new boyfriend outside of Paris because of my experience in Nice. I try not to re-post stories as I do want to keep the blog fresh with new adventures and personal growth, but this tale has turned into such a summer classic that it's worth another spin, especially on a warm last weekend of summer.
I suggest getting a glass of wine for this one...
Picture it. Nice. My first summer in France.
It was like I was living in a movie. My cute new boyfriend invited me on vacation to the South of France. I could hardly contain my excitement as I had always wanted to go to the French Riviera, ever since Madame Moureau’s slide show in 6th grade French. I had my bags packed with all my cute navy blue summer dresses, a chiffon pink scarf tied around my head, and my cat-eye sunglasses on. I was ready to go. Monsieur Flâneur said he'd be at my apartment in the 15th at noon to hit the road. He didn't show up until 7 pm. So he was seven hours late. Who cares, I was in love and was going to Nice for the week!
After a 12 hour drive from Paris in Monsieur Flâneur's driver's ed car, we arrived in Nice. And it was pouring rain. We hadn't anticipated that the overnight drive through the entire country of France would be so exhausting, and we could barely keep our stinging bloodshot eyes open. Luckily, the landlord of our vacation rental was waiting for us under an awning of a cafe to give us the keys, and we didn't have to wait around. We let ourselves into our home for the week, a lovely three bedroom apartment equipped with a full kitchen, dining room, living room and balcony filled with flowers in colors of magenta, rose and violet. It was perfect. The only activity on the agenda was sleep, and I wasted no time in making the bed in the master bedroom that looked out onto a well-maintained garden. While MF was out on the balcony smoking his tenth cigarette that morning, I was nestling under the covers with a Belle France pain au chocolat that I picked up from a rest stop on the autoroute, when the doorbell rang. MF answered the door, and suddenly an orchestra of double kissing noises, ça vas, comment va-tus?, and ça fait trop longtemps could be heard in the foyer. It was MF's Nice friends whom he hasn't seen in over a year. Okay, I said to myself, what's another hour or so? In spite of my exhaustion, I pulled myself out of bed and made some coffee to perk up. These were his friends from his childhood vacations, as well as friends that I had heard so much about, and I genuinely wanted to meet them. How could I deprive him of seeing them?
Meeting the friends was more of a challenge that I had expected. With my sleep deprivation, and my at the time inability to follow the language with ease, especially with their Niçoise accents that has different inflections than the Parisian accent, I spent the morning feigning comprehension with nods, smiles and laughs. Looking back, I probably should have just gone to bed, but I wanted them to like me. I was still in that phase of seeking approval in my relationships, and wanted to be the cool girlfriend. I have since abandoned this characteristic and now listen to myself.
The arrival of his family certainly was not a coincidence, this had been planned, and MF had just given me the courtesy to tell me that they were vacationing with us. His skill of not communicating anything with me would become the theme of our relationship, and this was only round one. Now that his family was there, the other two bedrooms had made more sense, I moved our things into the smaller, modest bedroom to give them master suite to his parents. They must have thought I was such a diva for selecting this room when I "knew" they were coming. MF swore up and down that he told me that we were going on vacation with his entire family, but I stand by the fact that he did not. My French at the time may have been shaky, but I surely would have understood "ma famille vient" Come on, venir present tense, that's like Alliance Française level A1.
Essentially, I was on vacation with a bunch of strangers whom I wanted to like me, and to think that I was smart, well-spoken, and good enough for their son. No pressure. I bucked up and said to myself, "I can do this, I'm Italian, we invented the art of breaking down boundaries and comfort zones". I was armed with my Becherelle should I come face to face with a conjugation crisis now that I was expected to speak in the formal vous.
Just as the shock of his family's presence was wearing off and was changing the sheets with MF's mother who thought I was insane to even consider sleeping on the linens provided without washing them first, there was another knock on the door. Who could it be now? It was Caroline, MF's 40 year old friend from Paris who stormed into the apartment hysterically crying. I was starting to believe that we in fact never left Paris, by just how casual everyone's pop-ins were. Mind you, we said dramatic goodbyes to Caroline 24 hours earlier but alas, there she was, in Nice, crying about her relationship with her former soccer star boyfriend. Blatantly ignoring my request to sleep, MF had planned for us all to go to a discotheque that night in Cannes because Caroline was upset. The night before, she had discovered that the man she was living with was still inviting prostitutes to their home in the Marais after she told him not to, and he was now flying down to Nice, and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do? So going to a night club in Cannes was the answer. And is it just me, or wouldn't finding a hooker, hired by your boyfriend, in your house the first time be grounds for a break up? Maybe I'm just uptight.
The following morning, on a gorgeous sunny day in the South of France, I decided to just blow off the irritation from the day before as a result of exhaustion, and MF and happily went to meet Claire, a girlfriend of mine that I knew from Paris for lunch. I felt like France was becoming my home because on our little vacation, I too had people to see and was proud to bring MF with me to meet one of my friends. The lunch didn't turn out at all how I expected. It was awful. My "friend" whom I met in English, suddenly didn't speak it anymore and was only able to communicate
The fun didn't stop there. Oh no. On top of him not telling me that his entire family was coming to Nice, him hiding his communication with Claire, he also didn't tell me that Nicole, his friend that I liked the least was in Nice, and he surprised me the following day with a lunch on the beach with her. She was one of his friends that I tried my very best to tolerate but she made it so difficult. This was the girl who would say snarky, sly things to me in English so MF wouldn't understand. Goodies like "You don't have to be jealous of me. MF doesn't like girls with large breasts." or "Make sure to keep him happy otherwise he will always have me to fill his emotional void." and her favorite, "Before you, we used to talk on the phone for like five hours a day, we're soul mates."
At the café on the beach, I swear she purposefully left her bathing suit top off, leaving us to have small talk for almost 45 minutes with her bare breasts jiggling in our face. I was so uncomfortable, and I didn't know where to look. It's like when someone has a lazy eye and you can't help but look at the one eye you're not supposed to. For the record, I'm not prude, I sunbathe topless too but if a guy friend of mine is coming to meet me with his girlfriend, I'm not going to sit there and nonchalantly sip on mojitos while strategically letting the glass rub up against breasts, allowing the condensation to drip off my cold, hard nipples. Call me old-fashioned. To give them time alone and to rise above her catty games, I left them at the beach café to catch up while I went to get a blow out with his mom at a salon in town. The plan was to meet them at his friend's brasserie two hours later. This should have enough time for them to catch up...even though we saw her a week ago in Paris.
As planned, I arrived at the brasserie and had a seat at the bar. I was feeling fabulous and refreshed with my thick curly brown hair blown out straight with the humidity giving it a slight beach wave (very Bardot), nothing was going to bring me down. Since MF and Nicole hadn't arrived yet, I ordered a coffee and chatted with the barman who had been serving us all week. They arrived shortly after and MF couldn't resist commenting that he preferred my hair curly. I brushed off his annoying comment because I was buzzed off the fact that Nicole was leaving soon, and knew that my hair looked great. So did he. Nicole was finally leaving, and was going back to her hotel to meet her boyfriend whom by the way, I had never met. My buzz came to screeching halt when MF ordered "un café pour ma chérie, s'il te plaît!". The server who certainly knew we were a couple was confused, who was chérie? Certainly not me in this context, I for one was already drinking a café. The barman looked at me and then at Nicole who looked satisfied as if she was a cat who just pissed on her territory and said with a girlish giggle, "C'est pour moi." A coffee for his sweetheart?! His baby? His darling? I know in France this word is used more loosely than it is in the States but on top of everything that was happening, I was reaching my fucking limit.
I kept saying goodbye to Nicole, as a hint to get her on her way but she was never leaving, and as we were walking back to the apartment, she followed along. At this point, hiding my irritation was becoming more and more of a challenge. I was pissed at MF, done with her, and just wanted to snap my fingers and be back in Paris. Nice was turning into a nightmare. At the apartment, he then told me he was driving her back to her hotel. En plus. "How did she get here?" I sharply asked, "And where is her boyfriend?" It was only 5 pm, the sun was out, she had gotten to the beach on her very own and I was fed up with lending my boyfriend out. "She's wearing heels, chérie, she can't get back on her own," he said, trying to reason with me. Now I'm chérie again. How convenient. Oblivious to my aggravation, he left me in the apartment alone. His brother and girlfriend were taking a sieste as was the dad who was sleeping on the couch in his underwear, and his mother was out grocery shopping. I sat on the bed in our room and tried to read a book but just looked out on to the balcony at the waving palm trees wondering if I was being too sensitive or if he really was being completely ridiculous this entire week. I later found out that Nicole took the car ride as an opportunity to tell MF her concerns about me. "Elle n'est pas normal. Excuse-moi mais..." I'm not normal?! I'm not normal because I don't want my new boyfriend calling another woman baby in front of me, because I don't want to be called dramatic when I am exhausted after driving for 12 hours over night and don't want to go clubbing, because I don't like to be ignored at a lunch of three people when I'm the person in common, because I don't want my boyfriend flirting with my friends in front of me, because I don't want to look at her boobs, and because I don't want to be left in an apartment alone on our vacation while she feeds him bullshit on how I am not normal? Again, where was this girl's boyfriend?
MF came back three hours later, and as you can imagine I was not in high spirits and was quietly having dinner with his family who had all quietly expressed that they thought it was out of line to leave me there alone. Three hours? Where was her hotel? Italy? I was pissed and he knew it. Everyone knew it. After being called dramatic, insecure, erratic, selfish and ungrateful by him, I spent the rest of the vacation walking on eggshells, half believing that everything was my fault. A day after returning to Paris, I fled to New York like a bat out of hell. I needed a French break. A break from the language, the country, and a break from MF. At the time, I wasn't sure if this was an extreme case of culture shock or if MF really did suck. Fast forward three years later, I have my answer, and rest assured, I have never had an experience even close to anything like this with Séb.
It's such a shame that my first trip to the South of France ended up being such a disastrous mess, but now that I am over MF, the story of Nice makes me laugh and almost nostalgic for my first summer in France. Saying that, I look forward to seeing Nice again, but this time with better company.
Bon week-end!