Saying It

I know I said I'd cool it, but I only lasted an extra 24 hours without him.

On saturday TMI and I took a train about 20 minutes out of Dijon to visit the little and lovely wine village of Beaune. We explored, shared a salad with toasted chevre and a small chocolate cake, I marveled at the new experience of standing in a hollowed out tree, and moments later, discovered what it was like to receive a line of warm neck kisses in one. It was like making out in a living, creaking, coat.

Back in Dijon and curled in the sheets together, I initiated the unexpected. I had been sure it wouldn't be me, sure I wasn't feeling it or ever going to feel it, yet, for the last week, there it was: rolling around in my mouth like a piece of gum I'd been chewing way too long and needed to spit out. After a bit of provocation, I told TMI I loved him. I told him exactly that sentiment; that it had been waiting in my mouth, and he confided experiencing the same thing. Where I didn't expect to feel anything I felt like I'd bumped an electric fence. He asked me to say it to him with his name. I did. He said it back.

Then, for roughly the next 30 hours, we had unbelievable sex in every sense of the word; literal, suggestive, and up for interpretation.

When I walked back to my place this evening, thinking about possibly being in love, I passed a shoe store and glanced Harry's shoes in a display window. Something instantly tugged in my chest, and I wondered. TMI and I have both conceded that we don't have the butterflies. We don't have the exhileration we believe "love" is supposed to have. And yet we wanted to say it to eachother, maybe without knowing what it meant.

So I asked myself.. what are we feeling that puts those words in our mouths? What puts any words involuntarily onto our tongues, waiting to jump out? The only other thing I could think of that does that is music. Why are those three words such infamous escape artists? After a block and half of fervently trying to put my finger on the sensation I jotted it up as the day's mystery.

Confessions

OK so, turns out, I have a problem, and I'm gonna spill. I've gained about 6 pounds since coming to France, and, as a petite woman with a small frame, broad shoulders, and an ugly as sin mug as it is, it doesn't suit me. I've gotten unhealthily obsessed with this fact and have, for the past two weeks or so, been so ashamed of my physical appearance that I can barely leave my apartment. When I'm outside, I'm so embarrassed I literally break an anguished sweat and often catch myself running, seriously, running, back to my apartment so I can hide.

It takes me hours to get dressed, the whole process often interrupted by me bursting into a sob as I lean my forehead against a wall. Yes it's retarded, yes there is infinitely more to life; people with real problems; starving children in the world, not to mention good literature, relationships, and beautiful aspects of existence demanding attention, but all the same I'm indulging in this ridiculous misery.

The worst sensation of all is in a store or in the streets where I can see my reflection in a window or a mirror, and I'm hit with an overwhelming wave of shame. I just want to curl up and hide. Those are terrible moments. No one should have to deal with that silliness, seriously.

So I'm thinking of telling TMI that I need to cool it with him until I work it out. You can't love someone else until you love yourself, or so they always say. So there's that.

A Miss Who Misses No Opportunity

So last night at my ritualistically horrible English lesson, my student Scratchy was so moved upon learning the reality of my French existence: a pitiful stipend of €15 a week while surviving off of bread, special K, and green beans from the can while having little purpose in my life other than dancing naked in my apartment to Lady Gaga, writing, and philandering shamelessly with the opposite sex, that he insisted he "show me France" next Thursday. He's on vacation for two weeks starting tomorrow, he insists, and, as he works full time as a mason, has "some money," and wants to pick me up at 9am and whizz me off into .. uh, France, on his motorcycle.

If my mom is reading from the Pacific her heart just skipped a beat. For what it's worth I asked him if he had a big helmet for me and protective gear.

What I'm hoping is that this means a fun filled day of sightseeing to little outlying French villages and hopefully some good food and wine on him. What I'm worried about is that it's going to be bugs in the face, sunburn, and an all day hostage situation. But weighing is for grocers! So I said "you bet your bottom dollar I'll go!" And he was like "...quoi?" and I was like "tout a fait, m'sieur!"

"Let your youth have free reign, it will never come again, so be BOLD and no repenting!"

Indepedance

This month is a slightly unusual month for me. Normally, like hundreds of thousands of other women, as I approach the 4th week of the month I start gripping my sheets and whining and kicking like a little kid, pleading that the universe grace me with just one more week, one more day, one more hour, before the dreaded menstrual cycle.

But this month, something flat out magical is happening. As I tweeted a few weeks ago, Yasmin oral contraceptives are around €5-8 a month in France. Without health insurance, one packet in the US is gonna cost at least $60. So! Before heading to the South week before last, I made a doctor's appointment, pretended to understand a bunch of medical French, picked up my prescription at the pharmacy, and have since been literally rocking on my heels waiting for the cramps to kick in so I know I can start the first pill.

I took oral contraceptives when I was younger and here is what I'm pretty much ecstatic about getting again: 1) WEIGHT LOSS. Dear god, yes. Just, yes. 2) Bigger Boobs. 3) Easier, more regular periods, and, the reason that started all of this, 4) TMI and I can have sex anywhere, everywhere, and all over the place. It turns out a mutual turn on is going for it where we absolutely should not go for it, (trains, stairwells, movie theatres, crumbling architecture from the times of antiquity) and fumbling with a condom is a serious mood breaker.

But this is all "silly and inappropriate for blogging." Ahem.

So what I really want to say is that, yesterday, I put myself on a bus that led me out of the medieval bubble I live in and into the civilized world, where, at the French equivalent of Walmart, I bought a printer. This is important because now I no longer have to venture into the stinking cave of B to print my exercises each week for my English lessons. This IS NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT. When I arrived in France, I was completely dependent on the guy: I needed him for food, French, a place to stay, moral support, everything. Now, with the purchase of this printer, I have at last snipped that last shred of umbilical cord that kept me connected to that mess of a person. And it feels great.

The Sheets of Scrutiny

For anyone not in the know, IFFTP is a secret. It is written under a pen name and linked on no personal social networks. This is necessary for me to harbor even the smallest hope of a functional relationship on any level, let alone not having to talk any lovers down from the ledge.

Alas, the current squeeze has found it. And, while I long ago made the decision to plow forth uncensored and unashamed, I'm getting the strong impression that IFFTP has irreparably scarred TMI. Knowing that our life between the sheets is currently in publication has seemingly put the pressure on to such an extant that the poor guy behaves like he's going to jump out a window each time the sex is anywhere below mind-blowing.

Frankly I feel terrible. I would hate to be trying to make love to anything under such assumed scrutiny.