Reckless Abandon

The metro can be a lovely place to people watch. But then there is the inevitable moment when you see someone really attractive, and you try desperately to come up with an un-desperate approach to getting their number before they get off at the next stop. My friend has decided to keep it simple and tell cute girls, "Nice shoes!" He thinks it will be particularly charming and witty if the girls are wearing basic Converse sneakers. I told him that they will probably think he is a creeper with a foot fetish.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a lovely girl in the metro, because she tried to offer me her seat and had a luminous smile. We have yet to connect over coffee or a drink, but she texted me back, and these days, that's definitely something.

"I'd rather buy jewelry!"

A friend of mine decided to detox from a year of college drinking by spending his year after university living the life of a monk. He took a position as a history teacher at a secluded boarding school in the mountains of Switzerland, far from anything but lovely landscape and a lot of homemade cheese. He awakes at six o'clock every morning for a refreshing run in the alpine air with the basketball team, and the purity of his day only increases from there.

For a change of pace, he had a jaunt in Paris, and due to his modest monastic salary, he decided that CouchSurfing.org would be the most economical of accommodations. This website connects desperate travelers with random hosts all over the world who offer their couches for free, in the hopes of meeting new people and spreading good karma. Sounds officially creepy to me.

He ended up staying with a 35-year-old Parisian guy who did not have a couch. Apparently the bed was not big enough for the two of them, because in the dark of the night my friend awoke to an unpleasant surprise: his French host was treating him to an unsolicited 'Foot Job.' He spent the remainder of the night in his sleeping bag and returned to Switzerland with a renewed respect for Swiss cheese.

The Pampa Horizon

I was hoping to meet some nice, normal, eligible young gentlemen/gentlewomen, and I was told that the public library of the Centre Pompidou museum is a hot spot to pick up people in Paris. So I stood outside for twenty minutes in the queue, amazed that people actually stand in line for admittance into a library.

Once in the reading room, I seated myself across from the fetching young man whom I had noticed as the only hot prospect in the waiting line outside. He had an anguished-French-philosophy-student-trying-not-to-be-bourgeois look to him, and he was drinking a Coca Light, which made him even more bourgeois. But he never looked up from his 'serious literary work' to meet my glances.

Eventually I exited the library, brain-dead from dealing with the inefficient wireless connection. An overly solicitous security guard shooed me towards his younger co-worker in a deranged attempt to set us up on a date. When he realized that I was from The States, he asked, "Where? Texas? Oklahoma? Idaho?" I had never felt like less of a failure at being a discreetly camouflaged American in Paris.

Ivy League Sheep

The FIAC in Paris is just as any other gathering of the international art world—a time for blind self-importance and a proliferation of designer spectacles. The contemporary art scene tends to revolve around The Three P's: performance, posturing, and pretension. And what better place for that than Paris?

Adrift in a web of cigarette-butt-inspired conceptual art and neon light installations, I was drawn to a large photograph by Swiss artist, Olaf Breuning. It depicted a mass of naked people, sitting in a parking lot and suited up in cardboard boxes. A letter was written on each box, and as a group they formed the question: "Can someone tell us why we are here?"

The other FIAC spectators crowded into the exhibition space, pursed their lips, and feigned serious contemplation. I merely broke out into riotous birdlike laughter, because the photo distilled contemporary art to its essence: an industrial-chic space (the parking lot), an elite guest list (the nude people wearing boxes over their heads), and a message that is almost juvenile in its unabashed directness ("in life we are all just naked followers sitting motionless in an empty parking lot, hoping to find the meaning of it all.")

"You're a wicked girl."

Personal ads are always intriguing sources of entertainment. Some desperate men living in Paris have posted ads in the local bilingual magazine, and their cultural confusion is only exceeded by the vagueness of their romantic expectations:

"Single, 6 feet, sportsman, Architect-innovator, screenwriter; I'm looking for a bilingual woman: French, English, single pour séjours Hollywood (screenplays/contracts) et plus." He describes himself as "an innovator," as though it is a legitimate profession, and I am still unclear as to what "séjours Hollywood" denote. He attempts to alleviate any creepiness from the ad by using the French expression "et plus" instead of the utterly unwholesome English version, "and more ..."

Another fellow claims to be a "45-year-old CEO" who is good with all nationalities of women, although he speaks "abominable" English. He is looking to meet a young girl for "an installation project" in London from December. It is hard to discern if he is seeking a co-creator for a performance art piece, a flatmate, or a lover. Perhaps it's all of the above. Regardless, these two seem like classic mimbos en route to creeper-town.

Yes! Give her a call!

The second that World War II ended Ernest Hemingway (an ultimate pimp) barreled into Paris and headed straight to The Ritz. He entered the bar that would later bear his name and said to the bartender, "I'll have 50 martinis." He ended up staying at The Ritz for the following 3 weeks and basking in the glory of a newly free existence.

The tradition of expatriate writers in Paris is something exceptional: George Orwell took a pen-name because he didn't want to embarrass his well-to-do British family by being such a slovenly thing as a writer ... and a starving writer at that. Orwell ended up being forced to pawn his clothes at the Credit Municipale in the Marais to make money. He lived in a boarding house in Montparnasse that he deemed to be "Very dirty, but very home-like."

There is something to be said for being young, and free, and beholden to no one but yourself, especially when you're in a foreign land and everything seems more intriguing ...

The Boots of Sheitan

Train travel can be an ecstatic experience, even simply on short trips between city and countryside.

Gauche Things to do [especially as a middle-aged man] on a train:

1. Reading pornographic picture books.

2. Drinking alcohol (that you brought from home).

3. Watching The Lizzie McGuire Movie on your laptop. Even more gauche would be to watch the bootlegged version of the new Twilight movie.

4. Listening to music using low-grade headphones that reveal to the entire train car that your playlist includes one or more of the following: Miley Cyrus, Shakira, Lady Gaga.

5. Reading US Weekly or In Touch magazine to catch up on the latest reality television news stories.

"Are you German?"

When a Boston Brahmin moved to Paris for a four-year sojourn, due to her husband's business, she soon became intimately acquainted with a notable family in the French aristocracy, which is, I can assure you, an expansive entity — France has doled out titles of nobility in an excessively liberal manner, and every fifth person you meet in Paris seems to have a "de la" in front of their last name.

Years after settling back into humdrum puritanical life in Beacon Hill, the Bostonian lady returned to France to attend the wedding of a descendent of the aforementioned French aristocratic family. It had been a very long engagement, because the bride had been reluctant to commit to a British boy who, like most British boys of a certain breeding, "Didn't cuddle enough and played too much polo." The wedding took place at the modest château of the bride's family, and the groom's family wanted to contribute, so they paid for the champagne, and the 'tent,' which was more of a temporary 500,000-dollar orangerie. In short, it was a very un-New-Englandy affair indeed.

"Light On His Feet"

Today a semi-sinister man dropped a bundle of business cards on the street in front of me. I picked them up and tried to give them back to him, but he was walking too quickly. And then he dropped an orange Louis Vuitton card case. I picked that up too. And then I realized that he had recently mugged some elegant, unsuspecting Parisian woman and was merely discarding the non-valuables (the Louis Vuitton wallet was scratched and had a small hole in it, so was worthless for re-sale).

I recently heard a story about a French man en route to the airport in New York City to return home. He left a rolled-up poster in the taxi cab, and the cab driver went all the way back to the hotel and asked around for the address of "the French man." The selfless cabbie shipped the poster to France, without leaving his name or address, or asking for any money in return.

For every Wanker of the Week, there is a prince trotting close behind...

A Grab Bag

My friend arrived in Paris ready for a romance of epic proportions. Unlike the typical American who arrives in Paris and conscientiously avoids baguette and butter (out of an irrational fear of carbohydrates and cholesterol), she was ready to have her pain au chocolat, and eat it too.

She quickly met the perfect candidate to sweep her off her feet: a handsome, worldly celebrity, whom she knew during her childhood. He attempted to turn on the charm, invited her to his pimped-out penthouse overlooking the Bastille, and flooded her with tritely alluring text messages like, "You've certainly become a beautiful young woman..."

But it turns out that over the years he not only gleaned international fame but also got married and had a child. Luckily for this Wanker of the Week character, his wife is also a worldwide celebrity, so while she is on location in Texas taking care of their baby, he is free to be on location in France taking care of his own infantile issues.

Cut-Out Gliders That Really Fly

There is just something about young boys; I met a pure and beautiful one on a random Parisian street corner. At first I took him for a creeper and didn't want to remove my sunglasses to look him in the eyes. But then I realized he had a genuine interest in cinema, a flair for languages, and might even be the first prince I have come across in Paris.

On the other hand, I recently encountered a bon chic bon genre (sort of the French version of preppies) boy who dabbles in the world of art galleries, feigns academic studies, and spends his parents' money. He turned to my girlfriend (who is known for dating older men) and said something to the effect of: "It reassures me to know that when I'm old and wrinkled, there will still be stupid young girls like you who will want to date me ... and you'll be their mother." I think we've found our Wanker of the Week, and he's chock-full of spoiled-son wisdom.

Only White Marble

In Paris' famous Drouot district, art experts, collectors, crooks, and coutured ladies make for a delightful mix of characters. At a pre-auction lunch, I met the Parisian version of Hugh Hefner, an 80-year-old paintings expert who is famous for his African art collection and infamous for his affairs with women.

Over the years he has been married three times and had affairs with everyone from singer Edith Piaf, to French novelists, to the wives of Mexican presidents. Now he is settling down with a 24-year-old half-Senegali-half Cheyenne-Indian. He is obsessed by the stories of Colonel Custer and the American Civil War and claims that his new fiancee "has a beautiful scalp," which struck me as an odd choice of words.

In classic pimp form, he refused to finish eating his plate of codfish, declaring, "It has no taste!" and promptly ordered a clafouti instead.

A Zeus Complex

When living abroad, one frequently experiences lost in translation moments, especially in the world of dating. My friend is living in Moscow and recently received the following lovely bouquet of text messages from various disgruntled Eastern-European mimbo-creepers:

1. "Hey! How r u? I m planning to go to outside..club or sth..do u wanna join or do u wanna listen all night ur roommate's peeing..:) :p"

2. "U take1 minute to see some 1, 1day to know some 1, but, I take whole life to get 1 like u."

3. "hi, i needn't anything from u, you are a cheater, i haven't any problems with girls..u are not angel as u showed us.."

which was soon followed by:
4. "CHEATER"