Thursday, August 5, 2010

Alive and Kicking

No, Mr. Charleston did not bury me in my yard (and if certain unnamed concerned citizens followed me on twitter, they would know that). In fact, we had a lovely time very much like the lovely time I had with Mr. San Francisco, lots of good food and cocktail crawls that lasted several hours and covered multiple neighborhoods. The only noticeable difference through the cocktail haze was that there was a lot more talk of restaurants and food and a lot less talk of board dynamics and the perils of angel investing, and by the time Mr. Charleston left, I had discovered all these great places I never knew about because he's in "the biz."

Shortly after Mr. Charleston's departure, I headed for my friend's place in Ptown for another week because I thought it was such an artsy place that I would feel like a real, live author just being there and would actually make some headway on the book. I was a little distracted by the gorgeous lesbo beach calling my name every day and exhausted from fending off creepy "straight" couples looking for a third every night, but I did manage to make some progress and now have a grand total of 70 pages down.

I might fall off pace a little next week though because I'm headed to Paris with an old friend (making good on the promise I made in Napa), using some of those miles I racked up bleeding through my life savings. This trip came about when I met my friend for dinner a few weeks ago and somehow the conversation turned to an absolutely stunning lesbonic bartender at my favorite girl bar in Paris and how for all our eye contact and flirting (mind you this was languageless flirting, like winking, unnecessary touching and refusing to let me pay for my drinks) we never got together because the only words we both understood were "oui", "non" and "Jack Daniels." Pretty much everything else we tried to say to each other got lost in translation.

Now, I have been working my way through the rosetta stone program since I got home, but so far I don't have much french that will actually help me chat with this woman, unless of course, I have to excuse myself to go to a costume ball, because I now know how to say that in french. Also, if she drinks my fruit juice, I know how to accuse her of drinking my fruit juice and then when she fesses up, assure her that it's no big deal ("ce n'est pas grave") even though I just threw a fit about it. Finally, if she tries to sell me a geisha robe or a package of beef, I know how to ask how many yens it costs and on the off chance that she comes out from behind the bar and tries to walk straight forward, I know how to tell her that she is not allowed to go straight and that she must turn right or left.

When I told my friend about all the french I had mastered and asked her how far she thought it would get me, she diplomatically suggested that we go back to Paris to find this girl together and offered to act as my translating wingman. Perfect. And if we can't find my girl, I'm sure that having a translating wingman will still come in handy, particularly in helping me avoid a repeat performance of finding myself in bed at 5:30 in the morning with a girl who is telling me that her older sister is 22. yikes. Now in my defense, (a) I thought this girl was at least in her mid, if not late, twenties just based on how fashionable, sophisticated and wildly cynical she was, (b) she was absolutely beautiful (think Neve Campbell's face on a model's body) and everyone in the bar was vying for her affection and a good number of those people were my age or older, (c) whatever english words she used to describe what she was studying in school left me with the distinct impression that she was in the german equivalent of grad school (she was visiting from Berlin), though it would seem that she was really talking about the german equivalent of college. At any rate, when I found out her actual age, I was a little rattled and I'm looking forward to having a translating wingman to help keep me out of this sort of trouble on this trip. Also, just in case my translating wingman runs off with some woman and leaves me to fend for myself, I have recently added, "quel age as-tu?" to my conversational french arsenal, bringing the grand total of phrases in said arsenal to about six and a half.

Look out Paris, here I come...