After the beach, we returned to Chunk to Teresa and Jean who invited us in for a drink after the usual flurry of kisses. While the two little girls continued to play outside. While I started with just a Coke, the rest drank Coke with Long John's Scotch Whiskey, a favorite apparently, and I hadn't the heart to tell them that Scotch and Coke is just ridiculous.

Soon we were joined by two others. We all sat around the table, smoking and drinking. They chatted while I sat and watched. I tried to follow the conversation, to be a part of the gather, but the visitors found my staring silence some what unnerving and so we had to go through the explanation and the lie, yet again, namely that while I understand what is said, I have trouble speaking. I tried to follow the conversation, but it's moments and snatches, like a radio on the fritz. At one point, they seemed to be telling a story about a little boy caught on a step stool blowing into a cow's ear. When his parents demanded an explanation, he told them that cows give more milk if you blow into their ears. Where he came across this piece of misinformation, I have no idea, nor do I have much of a clue how much of translation was accurate, but I found my version funny as they found the original.

The other friends left. We were now deep into the Coke and Scotch making a little nervous about myself, but very nervous about the Sauvage driving us home. But he seemed to be fine smoking and laughing and generally ignoring my presence. The TV was on and the French version of Wheel of Fortune (La Roue de la Fortune) came on. The first puzzle was the title of a piece of literature. The Sauvage looked at me and indicated that I would know the title. Now it's one thing to know literature, it's another thing to then be able to translate that knowledge, or even a title into another language.

The puzzle revealed how difficult that ability is for the solution was : La Case L'oncle Tom or Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe whose house I had visited many times growing up (she lived next door to Mark Twain). It hurt me that not only was I not able to guess, but even after the solution was given it took me a minute to be able to translate the title. But watching the show was absolutely entertaining. The female contestants, regardless of age, seem to have been chosen on the size of their bosoms and their willingness to wear low cut ensembles that made the simple act of leaning down to spin the wheel a lecherously suspenseful act as fabric strained almost to the breaking point The host was decidedly more casual than Pat Sajak and wore a cowl necked sweater. He was accompanied by a little dog, who sat next to him on a podium, and looked like the RCA dog. At one point the dog jumped off the podium, scampered across the stage, and leapt up at the French version of Vanna, a 25 year old blonde in a lovely tiered white dress. The dog managed to grab a swath of fabric and pulled and pulled, while everyone stood around and laughed, including "Vanna". The host finally came and fetched his dog of fabric, finally tearing off the swath. He carried the dog back to his side of the stage and tied the white fabric around the dog's head like a bandana, while Vanna's dress was none the worse for this little incident, and the show continued.

Oh how I loved Roue de la Fortune.

By this time, it was quite late;Teresa and Jean offered to make us dinner. In this case, it would be galettes, another Breton specialty. Galettes are like crepes, only they are made of buckwheat and have a savory rather than sweet filling. These galettes were filled ham, cheese, and eggs. After the galettes, we had local cheese with WASA crackers which our hosts apologetically explained was due to the fact that Jean was on the Atkin diet.

It is my firm belief that all the butter in the French diet goes to one place and arrests the blood flow there thus perverting their ability to be logical. Yes, I think that the French literally have butter on the brain. I just saw him eat a buckwheat galette and certainly WASA wafers, although they taste like cardboard, do have carbs. So I sat there watching him eat the crackers convinced he was being faithful to his diet. Thus the French version of the Atkins diet is simply not to eat bread. Unfortunately, not being able to translate "carbs" into French, I couldn't explain to him that he might as well enjoy the bread as he was just swapping one set of carbs for another.

Regardless of these points, I once wrote that if you are going to be on the Atkins diet in Paris, just don't go. Here in the US where the majority of your carbs are most likely consumed eating mass produced crap, like Low Sodium Triscuits or Sun Chips, going on the Atkins diet makes sense. You are cutting down not only on carbs, but over-processed most likely chemically laden junk food hopefully in favor of something fresh and local, like a fresh garden salad with goat cheese from the local farmer's market and just a touch of oil and vinegar. But in France where bread is an art, and it's fresh as opposed to whatever plastic wrapped, pre-sliced delicacy you pick up from the bread section from the supermarket, the Atkins diet is an anathema. My first French teacher, one of the people responsible for the antipathy I felt about going to France for so many years, used to wax philosophical about French bread-telling us that it was so packed with nutrients and vitamins that a bread and water diet in France would be far from a punishment.

After dinner, we drove Nana home, and he took me back to the hotel. I put on a black lace slip, but when he turned off the light he did not make his habitual move towards me.

"Tu me veut?"2 I inquired. "Non," he replied, "Tu me veut?" Of course I did. I came here for two weeks. I had two weeks to have as much as sex as possible before I went back to my apartment with my large empty bed. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, I wanted sex. I said as much, and he tried to muster the desire, but if there is anything worse than the lack of desire, it is the half hearted attempt to feign passion. As I assured him that I was fine with just going to sleep, I felt uneasy, but I had to remember he was older than I and we had been drinking for much of the night. And as Shakespeare wrote of alcohol "It provokes the desire, but takes away the performance".3

Still, as I curled up to sleep I hoped the next day would begin with the hot sex I had come to expect. And I feared that it wouldn't.

** My translation of the Atkins Diet.
1 According to Wasa's website, Wasa crackers are "a valuable source of carbohydrates, protein and fiber."
2. "You want me?"
3. MacBeth Act II Scene III

Labels: atkins diet

Well, I've been in a great mood since I got back from Paris. I was full of determination to focus on my writing and be more industrious. I hadn't smoked in 6 weeks. I've been, god help me, going to the gym. And even when I discovered that the cleaning crew threw out the final hard copy of the coursebook I've compiled over the last year, I took it in stride. And in a week and a half I was able to rewrite and find old copies of many of the assignments in order to reconstruct it. So I took it to Kinko's yesterday and dropped it off.

And today they called to say they couldn't find it. My reconstructed coursebook. (Why don't I have a back up copy on computer? Because many of the assignments are photocopies from books loaned to me over the years.) This was after looking at my students sad excuses for homework, which are so pathetic I am going to do my least favorite thing. I am going to have to go in tomorrow and yell at them. Say "Listen, not even THREE WEEKS ago I told you that attendance was important and yet already I'm dealing with classes that have huge absences thanks to the Superbowl. And if you think you can afford to miss class, your writing assignments prove that assumption hideously mistaken. I gave you guidelines. I gave you tips. I EVEN GAVE YOU A GOOD SAMPLE. It should have been a slam dunk thanks to the bored been there done that look on your faces when I was reviewing the guidelines in class. So what the fuck were you doing when I was going over this in class, because I know what you weren't doing. And in case you were wondering daydreaming about Beyonce ISN'T helping your writing ability. " And, of course, let's not forget getting hammered by all the Valentine's Day commercials, which OK I left my bf, and sure he wasn't likely to even call me on Feb 14 because it is a holiday that Hallmark invented to make depressed single Americans commit suicide and to create even more advertising opportunities for, shudder, personal lubricant, but I haven't had a good Valentine's day in so many years I can't remember. I go through weekends without talking to a single person unless I go out to a bar, which I'm not doing because I'm trying to be more productive and write posts, which only get comments consistently from 2 people, and even good friends of mine like the Doberman can't find time in their busy schedule to read and leave even the most nominal of comments never mind call. So now I'm so upset I can't even go down to the Apple store to try and potential buy a new Macbook Air to replace my evil cantankerous clearly built on the grounds of old Indian Insane Asylum computer HAL 2.0.

So yeah, my good fucking mood has ended. And far as I'm concerned I've done everything in my power to try and keep good happy Bunni. You don't like me angry and depressed, then you do something about it.

And now I am going to have a shot of jamesons in honor of Mardi Gras.

Added Later: Well I took today off, which was wrong because I wasn't particularly unwell. Spent the day in bed with my cat forgetting that there was a world outside. I have recovered somewhat. Tomorrow I will find out the extent of Kinko's complete and utter uselessness. I will also be oogling a MacBook Air. And cupcakes. I'm going to make a pilgrimage to Magnolia and get the best cupcakes in NYC.

Tomorrow I will be back with another entry in the Frehel diaries. And if you like reading these entries, make sure you leave a comment. Even if it's as simple as "That was great." Trust me, it helps.