I’ll say it upfront: I love the way that French men smell.
I had this thought for the first time when I was 17 and riding the metro in Rome during World Youth Day. I was boxed in by a group of French. Boxed in does not adequately describe the crowdedness. My head was very nearly shoved up a French man’s armpit.
When we left the metro, a person I was with complained that the French smelled horrible. “They don’t shave their armpits and I swear to God they don’t wear deodorant in that damn country!”
My reaction was quite different. It was more along the lines of, “Mmmm, I want myself a French lover.”
Sadly, this was the last time I would smell French armpit for quite some time.
Eleven years later I read an article on CNN which confirmed that I’m not quite mad. According to several large-scale studies, appreciating a person’s natural smell is a sign that you are genetically compatible with them and would produce healthy offspring:
As it turns out, scent may be the main way in which women literally sniff out genetic compatibility with a potential mate. How we smell is an external expression of the genes that make up our immune system.
Like fingerprints, each of us has our own unique “odor print,” which is part of a region of genes known as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Women prefer the scent of men whose MHCs are different from their own.
So when we say that opposites attract, we may not be talking about differences in personality, but rather differences in immune systems. This is one of Nature’s ways of ensuring that we produce the healthiest offspring.So, according to this article, I should move to Paris, find myself a nice French man and get to work having children.
But anyway, now that I’ve completely blacklisted myself, where to begin…
I adore Paris.
It is, without a doubt, the best city I’ve visited on my trip. There have only been three cities that I fell in love with at first sight: New Orleans, Seattle, and Tel Aviv. Paris was the fourth. And as I write this I can already predict how much I’ll miss Paris, even though I haven’t left yet.
In three days, I’ve come to appreciate French culture, a culture that some people have described to me as pompous.
I understand now that the French are not so much pompous as proud of their culture and determined to preserve every vestige of it.
There are also cultural differences that may account for this misperception.
I notice that people don’t smile at me on the street. Someone explains that the French do not believe that you have to smile in order to be polite. A smile is only rendered when the person legitimately feels like smiling. It’s not like America where we give each other hundreds of forced, fake smiles each day because we feel we must.
And I see that the smile analogy extends to other aspects of French life.
Things are not done out of obligation but because the person genuinely wants to do them. People don’t buy mass quantities of healthy food. Instead they buy small quantities of their favorite foods — the richest, most decadent foods — and they savor them over three-hour long meals.
So many things endear me to Spain’s cooler cousin. I’m enchanted by the lyrical, cooing, whispered way that French words sound as they swirl out of someone’s lips.
And the incredible artwork, the chic boutiques, the lazy Seine, the sun-dappled tree canopies, the smoky Bohemian cafes, the bottles of vin, the male cyclists in spandex shorts.
I mean, even Jim Morrison is buried here!
One evening in the Montmarte neighborhood of north Paris, I met a painter named Aloin. And I let him sketch me in charcoal.
It reminded me of that picture that Danesh, the motorcyclist, took of me at the Monsoon Palace in Udaiper on Valentine’s Day. I want to save Aloin’s sketch so that I can look back on it and see an image of myself when I was still young and “almost fearless,” still idealistic, living at the cusp of my early 30s.
I’m finally old enough to know how young I still am.
Aloin and I shared a bottle of rosè (blush wine) on a lawn near the Sacrè Coeuer.
He conversed with me in French, and in two hours I relearned everything I absorbed in a semester of French classes at West Point. I’m amazed at how easy it is to learn a new language when a Parisian painter and a bottle of rosè are involved.
Ever since I heard that song on the way to work one rainy morning, I’ve wanted to take a sailing expedition around the Southern Islands.
After the bottle of vin was consumed, I left Aloin and walked the dark streets of the City of Lights.
I knew then what I’ve known about so many things in my life. It was not a revelation reached in a logical, systematic, connect-the-dots sort of way. Rather, it was a spontaneous leap of consciousness: it was my intuition.
I made a pact with myself somewhere on those dark streets of Paris: I will learn French when I return to America.