One year after college graduation,
faced with my now-or-never moment,
I bought a one-way ticket to Paris. After years of fantasizing about
life abroad, I was about to take the first leap into my destiny as
an international adventuress. That was the title I introduced myself
by, for lack of more concrete plans.
I was seduced by the idea of making a fresh start. Being able to
say, “I live in Paris,” would render even the act of
waking up a little more blessed. (Read: “I’m waking
up poor and unemployed in my dingy flat, IN PARIS.”) I harbored
the secret thrill of knowing that the fascination most people had
for the city would, by extension, leave them in awe of me.
“Living abroad will teach you so much! You’ll turn
into a real woman — refined and sophisticated.” My friends
and family were swept up in the possibilities of my upcoming journey.
But by departure time, I found myself all knotted up and personal
growth the last thing on my mind. My mood dipped from excited to
gloomy. I was sure that my first trip to France the previous summer
had sapped the newness of the experience. I had visited the monuments
touted on the tourist postcards. Already scampered across cobblestones
with Gene Kelley enthusiasm.
This time, I would have no friends, no job visa, no plans, just
a scary blank slate. With my anticipation dampened by pessimism,
all I had left was the dreaded realization: I’m moving to
a foreign land, and I have to make it work.
After pooling my savings from a series of meaningless jobs and
waving a falsely cheerful goodbye to friends and family, there was
nothing left to do but leave. During the first few weeks of my arrival,
I spent days shuffling around the apartment in my pajamas, taking
fearful peeks out the window between spoonfuls of Nutella. I didn’t
have a problem with Paris or French people, but the risk of being
a walking ball of foreign faux pas was daunting. Having taken a
year of French in college meant that I should have been able to
manage without resorting to “parlez-vous anglais” but
fear of conversing in raw, unadulterated French froze me entirely.
My only line of defense was shrugging my shoulders and pleading
“I don’t understand, please go away” with my eyes.
Improving my language skills was an emotional process. I would
spin around in a mental dance of self-congratulation whenever I
got through a conversation without turning red from stuttering.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t masochistic enough to willingly humiliate
myself on a routine basis. The amusement as well as flashes of impatience
in response to my mangled abilities held fast in my memory and deepened
my diffidence.
I poured over guidebooks on French culture but made a general effort
to avoid social situations. Food markets seemed like a lovely concept
but was quickly designated off-limits. How would I ask for unlabelled
items? What if people actually wanted to talk to me? How would I
explain to the fruit lady that I hadn’t understood her well-meaning
advice on figs? The impersonal packaging of supermarkets was the
most reasonable option. Instead of practicing my French, I practiced
making myself invisible.
Meanwhile, the ordeal of keeping in touch with friends and family
back home had taught me that evasion was the best policy. In principle,
email updates from abroad should include a generous dose of “What
I’m up to,” with a subtext of, “Don’t you
wish you could be here?” or more subtly, “don’t
you wish you could be me?” Contrary to what people back home
expected, I refrained from gushing. I hoped they would interpret
the lack of news with a little misguided imagination and enthusiasm.
If they would only try a little, they could imagine me coiffed and
chic, romanced by a dozen chain-smoking young Europeans over an
assortment of croissants and paté.
I was tempted at times to pack up and leave but failure was more
frightening to me than staying in Paris. The little voice in my
head whispered “and what would folks back home think if you
were to give up?” After all my singing about being an international
adventuress, early retirement was not an option.
And then savior came in a most unexpected form. Two months into
my stay, I was in a grocery store on the Champs-Elysées.
As I was getting personal with the cookies and cakes aisle, my reverie
was interrupted by the raised voices of confused Americans. A couple
was struggling to get assistance from overworked cashiers in no
mood to straddle languages. I shook my head. Substandard service
was a cultural norm and speaking in English only made things worse.
In an act of compassion, I swept the tourists under my protective
expatriate wings.
The source of their confusion was in the range of electrical outlets.
“We don’t know which one to pick. We don’t want
to risk exploding our second cell phone as well.”
“You won’t find what you need here,” I told them
authoritatively. “You have to go to the 12th district, full
of computer shops. But no one will understand what you are talking
about and will send you away. You’ll need to head to the one
just a bit off, by the river.”
“Ah merci, merci! Do you have a name?” they asked,
tearful with gratitude.
“No. And if you find the right plug, it will cost you a lot
of money.” I walked away with the glow of one who had done
good. My assortment of embarrassing mishaps had allowed me to accumulate
what could be interpreted as Important Information. For the first
time since arrival, I was able to demonstrate competence. Meanwhile,
coming face to face with people more stranded and scared in this
country left me on a delicious high. Suspecting that this could
hold the key to a greater truth, I decided to make it my duty to
sniff out tourists in their moment of desperation and come to their
rescue.
My most memorable victim was a little balding man stranded in the
Metro’s maze of underground tunnel. Shoved by the rush of
afterwork passengers, he looked ready to cry. “Vous avez besoin
d’aide?” I asked him, then tried “Um, do you need
help?”
“Thank goodness, someone who speaks English!” said
the tourist, who turned out to be from Kentucky. He explained that
he had been following his tour group through the station for a metro
change but lost track of them when he paused to give change to musicians.
“Our tour guide was taking us to a pizza place. Somewhere
south, I think.” He didn’t have the name of the restaurant
or the metro destination. “Maybe a taxi driver would know
of a pizza place south of here.” I stared at him, amazed and
almost charmed at his naïveté.
He decided it might be easier to just return to his hotel, but
he had forgotten the name: Hotel Est, maybe, or Est Hotel. He sifted
through his pockets, pulling out crumpled wads of American dollars
and euros, a department store map, dirty tissues…but no hotel
information.
For a quarter of an hour at the information booth, the attendant
with the Yellow Pages read out the names of 20 hotels containing
the word “Est.” Frustrated, Mr. Kentucky tried his pockets
again. This time, to the disbelief of me and the attendant, he uncovered
two crisp business cards from the hotel.
It occurred to me that I finally had an anecdote funny enough to
write home about and yet, something held me back. Because as much
as this guy was a nuisance, I found that I needed him and all the
other helpless tourists just as they needed me. For he and others
who mistook me for a local, I was the Good Samaritan who helped
them through their most vulnerable moment. Perhaps made a positive
difference in the way they saw France. To be honest, I needed a
bit of that optimism myself. And when I didn’t denounce the
man, something happened. Instead of retreating into invisibility
to cope, I felt alive. I may have caught a tingle of that international
adventuress glow.
[originally published in INTHEFRAY.COM / July 4,
2005]
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