Some men speak only when spoken to. Others (the best kind) only speak when they have something valuable to say. And then there are the third kind, the ones who think that every trivial thought in their head is worth articulating. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet The Voice, a man who’s pretentious Queen’s English still rings in my head like an incessant buzzing bee, threatening to morph into a fragment of my paranoid nightmares.
Being back in New York is bringing back memories. Mainly, of how cool I used to be.
Maybe not that cool. But fun! Yes, I was fun. I used to get dressed up in crazy outfits. I used to hang out at The Beatrice Inn until the same wee hours that I now wake up for the Equinox MetCon3 class. I used to be the muse to socialite Latin musicians and run around pantless on Mulberry street, asking random men to jump-start my car.
Yeah, you heard me right. Now sit back and enjoy.
The Cross Bearer: The guy who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. In the hierarchy of men (working on it!), falls somewhere in the Hipster category. Yet, his problems are far deeper than the average hipster’s, as his are the problems of humanity.
You know this guy, we all do. If you think you’ve never met him, give yourself a pat on the back, as you are smart enough to disqualify him exactly for who he is: a miserable, brooding waste of time. He’s the guy standing in the corner of the party, face masked by greasy shrubbery, sulking like a a pubescent adolescent stuck in the terrible sixteens. He’s the guy who mostly grunts en lieu of normal communication, making mid-meltdown Joaquin Phoenix seem as put-together as Obama. He’s the guy your stupid naive friend is intent on “saving”, blaming his lack of life skills on the tragic childhood issues that have been plaguing him for the past 20+ years.
Editor’s Note: This story is brought to you by Jordan Nadler (@Nadleresque), the wunderkind behind French Medicine. Today, Jordan loses her douchebag storytelling virginity, proving, once and for all, that she has a true calling in life. Enjoy.
Fact: Going surfing with a French male model is a TERRIBLE idea if you are aggressively bad at surfing and haven’t mastered the “sexy drown.”
Once Upon A Time I was sleeping with a male model I met on Tinder this summer because I sporadically pepper my life with unfortunate decisions. His profession would be completely irrelevant if it wasn’t for the fact that his face was everywhere when we met. After the clusterfuck that was our last week together, I couldn’t even walk into a pharmacy to buy a tube of toothpaste without seeing his squinty-eyed mug selling moderately luxurious shaving cream. It was like God’s way of physicalizing the fact that my questionable choices in men do, in fact, haunt me.
Sometimes, I find that my dating history can best be compared to the archives of an old French couture house like Dior – the minute you think you’re flat out of inspiration, there it is, the forgotten ‘pass partout’ suit or the show-stopping jungle dress! (Isn’t it great that all my fancy fashion education is paying off?!) Sticking to the analogy, this story can be best compared to a denim saddle bag from the Galliano days: tacky and cliché, but fun nonetheless!
It was my first year in France and I was on a school trip to Milan with two girlfriends, one of whom happened to be a little French firecracker a few years my junior. After four days of “studying” at Bocconi University, we headed over over to Florence and Rome, a foreign-student-bucket-list of a trip that was just calling for a team of sleazy Italianos. After a quick Facebook shout-out, a friend’s friend of a friend hooked me up with the exact object of my desire, a guy we will Luigi.
As the only human left in Paris in the month of August, alongside the SDFs, tourists, and alcoholics, I have had a lot of time to reflect. A lot of time to wonder through deserted city streets and speculate about the delicate balance of baroque buildings and puff pastry skies, to smile creepily at random older folks who seem rightfully content to have the city to themselves, to reminisce days of Parisian past… My past, that is. On August 15th, on a French holiday known as Assomption, I had a vivid flashback to the same time exactly six years ago, when I kick-started one of the biggest fiascos of my dating career, not to mention my first one on Parisian turf. Without further ado, this is the story of Aaron, the Original French Douche who stole a year of my existence!
