And it must be said, she had good reason. Date #2 was appealingly bookish in his photos, straightforward and forthcoming in his emails, and even sent her the Sophie Calle questionnaire (posted in previous entries in both English and French), a sign the FB took to mean he was thoughtful and original. Date #2 also suggested a meeting at the café in the Musée de la Vie Romantique, George Sand's house, which, of course, appealed to all her 19th century tendencies.
Bird's eye view of the café
Café
The Museum
Portrait of George Sand by Auguste Charpentier
So to the museum she went. It was one of the beautiful summer days that Paris has been enjoying lately. Roses were in bloom, bees buzzed, people chatted over tea and cake, and a few students and writers wrote in notebooks and on laptops, their feet propped up on green metal chairs that dug into the white gravel with a satisfying crunch.
Date #2 appeared. He was a paunchy, doughy-faced man, which is the FB's genteel way of saying his photograph and reality hadn't spoken in a while.He was friendly and natural, however, greeting her with a cheek-kiss and a smile and immediately offering to buy her a fruit juice. They sat on a bench in the shade.
The FB was seated to his right, which afforded her a stunning view of the large gap in his dentition, which she quickly realized was not a natural separation but rather the gaping maw of a pulled tooth.
Permit the FB to be very American right now: WTF?
Date #2, though divorced with two children, made a comfortable living. He owned his apartment in Paris and shared a country house with his siblings. He used a computer and a Blackberry.
He did not live on a desert island where he had to perform emergency self-surgery on an abcessed tooth with pliers from his shipwrecked boat's toolkit in order to survive, nor did he live in a century before prosthetic teeth. The FB is not talking about a molar: this was the first premolar next to the canine (yes, the FB went and looked that up so she could sound like she knew what she was talking about).
In other words, the FB is sorry, but the gaping hole was a shock (and apologies for the graphic description, but this was not a freshly dug eyesore). It reminded her of the time she met an elderly French cousin, whose front tooth stuck out at a 45 degree angle from his mouth and was a mahogany brown due to years of pipe-smoking. But said cousin has had said tooth repaired, or so FB has been told.
The FB is sorry to sound so superficial, but this is not about requiring potential dates to have Chiclet-white, perfectly gleaming choppers: this is about paying some basic care to one's appearance.
That said, the FB and Date #2 managed to talk about photography, art exhibits, travel, and heirloom tomatoes, but the conversation did not flow. Though the FB is well-known for being able to make conversation with even the most stubborn of boulders (it is her way of relieving the stress of meeting new people), she decided not to shoulder the entire burden of the conversation because it gives people the wrong impression: namely, that things have gone well, rather than the truth, which is that she has labored like the dickens to keep the conversation afloat. In one of her 19th century lives, the FB imagines that she was the hostess of a literary salon (if everyone else is going to claim to be an ancient Egyptian princess in his or her former life, the FB feels no compunction in claiming this for herself).
This was a big lesson for the FB: resisting the urge to manage social interaction with a stranger. But doing so resulted in a number of long, awkward silences. Aside from the fact that Date #2 was not appealing physically to the FB, there was no chemistry in their conversation. In fact, "agreeably desultory" would sum it up.
Date #2 walked the FB back to her bicycle and asked her out to dinner. The FB resisted the urge to accept out of fraudulent politeness and instead, listened to what she really wanted, which was not to go out to dinner with him. Unable to say so, however (baby steps, baby steps), she suggested a museum exhibit.
He took the suggestion in stride and never got in touch with her again, leading her to understand that either he'd understood her meaning and/or that the lack of interest was mutual.
Date #3 to follow...
No comments:
Post a Comment