Monsieur Bruno

I arrived almost 10 minutes early, eager to meet my date, a man I had met a few nights beforehand. My First Date with a Frenchman. We made out in the smoking room ended up eating some pizza around 3 AM. There was nothing too special about Bruno, in fact I had been more interested in his English friend. Bruno entered his number into my phone before we parted ways. Normally I wouldn't have bothered calling.

And yet... I had been single for 4 months in Paris, so I figured that I might as well give it a shot. I only had a month left and I had not been courted. 

As I'm waiting for my Prince Charming at Place St. Michel I want to give a good impression, so I roll a cigarette. As I was searching my bag for my smoking paraphernalia I saw a large man approaching my general area. He asked, a bit aggressively, for a lighter. When he found out that I did not have one, to my complete surprise, he placed his hand around my throat and squeezed. Hard.


This was not a good way to start off my romantic Parisian rendez-vous. In retrospect, I probably should have run away after being choked in a public place. 

At the moment the crazy man released my jaw/neck from his massive paw,I saw Monsieur Bruno seated, tranquil, next to the fountain a few meters away.

This all happened in a short time frame.The crazy began to snort like a bull. I'm not sure what his next move was. I turned and scrambled over to Bruno, breathless, and tried to explain to him what had just happened, in terrible French. He was painfully disinterested by what had just happened to me. Instead, he placed his arm around my waist and kissed my cheeks. I looked over Bruno's shoulder, which was not hard as he was a few centimeters shorter than I, and saw the Crazy Man. He was still staring at me.

Bruno shrugged it off and said, "ziss iss Paree".

What?

This is, once again, a point in the night where I should have left.

Instead I tried to play it cool. Talk myself down. I can take a couple blows. He told me that he was taking me to have an apéro on a boat.

Then he told me his age.

Instead of telling Bruno that we were perhaps not on the same page and leaving, I told myself that this was normal and the French are known for their indifference to age. I smiled and finished my beer. I didn't eat the peanuts because I still wanted him to know how cool I was. At this point, I was still trying to shrug off what had happened to me earlier at the fountain and it seemed as though the magic of dating, of a date in Paris, on a boat in the Seine, had rendered me impervious to anything Bruno said, no matter how obviously incompatible we were.

Eventually, we found our way to Le Marais. He had picked out a restaurant for me, which was sooooooo adorable (still blinded by the fact that I'm actually on a date, in Paris, with a Frenchman). After an awkward moment of me explaining to Bruno that I do not eat meat and trying to decipher several large chalkboard menus, we decided on an Italian style resto instead of the one that he had previously recommended. Because there were no available spots, he proposed that we sit on a bench. This is the point in the date where we ran out of things to talk about.

Also, before Bruno sat down, he systematically opened his newspaper and started to gift wrap the bench.

This is the point in the date where I start to realize things are not going so well.

I had already sat down, so he awkwardly offered me some newspaper. Non merci Bruno.

So now I'm thinking, "I need some wine" and we are sitting down, elbows touching our neighbors, on one of Paris's famously crowded patios. He's asking me if I like wine. So we order a bottle.

Things went from awkward to worse after the wine, indeed. The conversation turned flat, not because of a language barrier but because we had nothing in common. He liked watching Grey's Anatomy, How I met Your Mother and his favorite band was Radiohead. He thought Midnight in Paris was hilarious, and some other details that I don't care to remember. I tried to explain to him how television rots your brain. I couldn't think of the French word for rot.

and then, after finishing his raw meat patties, he drops the bomb.

*sidenote: We are speaking in English at this point because my French is not so great and we have actually opened a second bottle of wine.

So now, Bruno is telling me that his wife and he have just split. He has no more home, in fact; he is currently sleeping on a friend's couch. She kicked him out of his house. They had been together for 10 years. And some other details.

Ouh la.

He looks like he's going to cry. Poor Bruno. Part of me feels terrible, the other part is telling me to RUN AWAY.

And now he's proposing me a tour of Paris in his car the next night?

At this point, the red lights are flashing, I'm ready to book it. We are leaving the restaurant and he is telling me he has missed the last train. I told him that dinner was great, thanks, buhbye.

Safe to say, I denied the second date and deleted his number out of my phone.