Francaises fatales

The other night I was cuddling with Julien, like we do, my head tucked into the crook of his neck. I started to say something, whatever it was, and as I looked up into his face I saw that he had been glaring down at me, with the sort of wild, wide-eyed stare you only see when they take photos of serial killers for the newspaper or in movies where Gene Wilder is crazy. Like... he'd just been sitting there, doing that, while I wasn't looking.

The words stopped coming out of my mouth as soon as I realized I was snuggling with a murder-owl, and Julien started, then told me Sorry, he was just "stretching his eyes". Like, as if that's a thing that people do. Stretching their goddamn eyes.

To make a long story short, I just think everyone should know that French people are fucking terrifying.

For instance, to continue to use my husband as an example, he has two differently shaped legs; one is normal if not a little bit knobby (a word that he probably does not know, but if you're reading this it means that your knees and ankles are rounded in contrast to your skinny legs, sweet pea) while the other is this gnarled tree branch that props up half his body like a particularly unlucky pirate didn't have an axe or any sandpaper and had to cobble a makeshift leg out of some driftwood, which all told is not really that scary. The scary part is how he partly acquired his weird crooked leg, and that is obviously through various soccer injuries (read: French) but also by being kicked by a stranger in Paris who broke his ankle and left him for dead.

How could this happen in Paris, you ask? City of Lights, adorable tiny pastries, adorable tiny coffee cups, and an historical architectural landmark that sparkles and sometimes dances on holidays? Well, let's talk a little bit about Paris. It's what my Scottish friend once described as a "donut city", which I'm not totally sure is an actual term, as it may be just a food-based metaphor he used to explain European socio-economics to this fat American person. The Paris that we know--i.e. the Paris used as a short-hand in teen chick flicks for someone who is rich and obnoxiously fancy or super-cultured and well-traveled or as a character to juxtapose with our good ol' American farm-boy who can't speak proper English because of an assumed head injury after I guess a fucking goat kicked him in his big fat American head.... Anyway, that Paris is in the center, where the tourism and financial districts are focused. But all around the city are crazy poor neighborhoods: and I mean actually crazy poor. Like poor, but also goddamn nuts.

Par example, on New Year's morning, Julien was scoffing at the French news (something I do with regularity also, but for different reasons) because the new, transparent government had decided to list the number of parked cars that the citizenry had burned out on the streets by location, meaning that for all intents and purposes the article read like a sports score, pitting poor neighborhoods against each other for the most New Year's celebratory exploded street vehicles. What? Why are the people burning down random cars on the street and killing innocent passersby? "...because it's New Year's." Bonne année!

But the French somehow got this limp-dick cowardly stereotype from Americans who were pissed about World War 2, when the French were invaded by the damn Nazis who were like right next door, and invading the shit out of everybody. I mean, if you're going to be invaded, you might as well be invaded by Nazis. It's nothing to sneeze at, is what I am saying. Meanwhile most of the actual people of France were either too French to notice the invasion or Résisting Nazis with fire and explosions. Just, suffice it to say that you don't get the kind of health and social welfare benefits the French have if your government isn't petrified of what you do when you're mad.

Which brings us to the Revolution(s), which I don't have to tell you were bananas. People sometimes like to make the case that Americans love their guns because we have such a history with them; we won our independence from monarchial rule through the use of our shitty, old timey guns. If that's true, then all I have to say is thank God the French don't feel the same way because instead of school shootings we'd be hearing a lot more about babies crucified on Church doors, etc. etc. It doesn't help that in French, you can pretty much translate any kind of long pointy object (needles, pine needles, pointy sticks, pikes) as pique, which is the direct translation of our word for "pike"... which you'll recognize as a word with the sole English meaning of "stick that you put a head on, and maybe dance around a bit with it for the joy of murdering your enemies in the most brutal fashion available to you". So whenever Julien asks me to hand him a "pike", made that much more ominous by his French accent and the history of his people that it calls to mind, we pretty much just sit, staring at each other in pregnant silence, until he corrects himself or I start to cry.

I suppose I shouldn't have been so shocked that Julien's mom gave me not one but two recipes to cook my pet rabbit...