Life in a couple has its challenges. French-American. Men and women have enough troubles communicating so add a language and culture barrier and it's mighty interesting at times. Still, our relationship probably resembles many and when this morning, I stooped to pick up a pair of underpants which had made their way pretty close to the laundry hamper this time, I stopped, dropped them and thought about what it was it was like to be single. In France....
Speed-Dating: A Day at the Races
A friend of a friend and I arrived for our maiden race, our first and for me, my last, speed dating experience. The men breezed and snorted in the back corners of the bar's upper room while the women trotted off to the restroom to get saddled and ready to parade themselves before the race began. I had a long look at myself in the mirror, adjusted my black-framed glasses, which looked more like a horse's blinkers, goggles to keep me from shying away from objects and other horses, and wished for the umpteenth time that I'd bothered to order new contact lenses. Ding. A bell sounded. I felt like I was in still in school.
"What do you do?" asked my first "date".
I didn't think Frenchmen usually asked what one does for a living. That's what I read before moving here, anyway. It's meant to be rude. And there it was, out in the open. The din of the bell still ringing in our ears.
"I'm a teacher."
Uh, oh. I'd done it. How much more un-sexy could I make myself. I just can't lie.
"Tell them you are writer who is supplementing yourself teaching. You can make yourself sexy and alluring. I've seen it when you sing. That's you," my sister Skyped me from Chicago as I was getting ready to leave."
Out of thirteen men Sunday night, I marked four as being potential matches. Men who were funny and intelligent and in five minutes managed to somehow engage me.
"What were they like?" my sister asks, again on Skype the following evening, half listening to me as she cradled my little nephew in her lap.
There was a nice guy with whom I laughed and laughed and laughed. A guy who asked me over and over and over about me. And a guy who was so nervous he shook, I took pity on him and another guy who looked me steadily in my eyes as he answered my questions. Good bloodline, nice pedigree, at least 14 hands high...Well, of those four men, I had NO matches. That basically means that of four men, not one of them chose me as a potential second date.
"What the hell is my problem?"
"Well, what was wrong with the other nine men? Who didn't you write down?"
I did not put down the non-starter, the gorgeous gelding who was about as dull as a lead balloon. I left his badge number blank on my betting card. I did not tick off the springing young colt who laughed at everything I said as if I were a comedian on Saturday Night Live and threw back his mop of a mane anytime another filly caught his eye. I left off the dark horse who insisted we speak French while the whole experience was geared toward English speakers. And I did not put down Mr. Also-Eligible who when asked about his background proceeded to talk about himself and only in the last few seconds bothered to ask something about me. And in a dead-heat for last place, I managed to leave off the long shot who smacked his bubblegum like a cow chewing its cud and never once looked in my direction.
My sister is reassuring. "Some women would do really well in that five minutes but you, you're complex. There's no way you can reveal who you are in five minutes. But perhaps other women that's all they have in them: five minutes. They can appear sexy, vulnerable, vivacious and available in five minutes."
"Me, no. I just scare them."
"Please tell me you didn't smoke your pipe?" my mother pleads, her face becoming pix-elated as our Skype connection breaks up. I hang up. It's no use explaining why in my mid-thirties after living overseas for ten years I'm still single. She's convinced I'm gay.
I honestly feel I did well. Tried hard not to seem too intelligent. Too scary. I remembered to ask questions and most of the time I was the one listening and not the one talking.
But what about the men I judged in five minutes? What of the Dutchman who was amusing in his challenge to see who'd visited the most countries in the world but who when we stood up at the end of the evening managed only to come up to my chin?
Who am I to judge anyone in five minutes?
It's not the environment for me says my sister. I am not a "five minute" girl.
Well, then. I need to find myself a non-five minute man. And when I find him, I'll be betting on him to win, place and show.
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