How not to get a date in Paris

My time here in Paris is rapidly coming to a close, and it occurs to me that there is one very important subject that has yet to be discussed in this blog, and that is the subject of your "sketchy Frenchman."

Back in the states, it was always my understanding that French men had a bit of a reputation going for being overly amorous. While I don't want to say anything on the verity of that particular claim in general, I ought to describe to you the particular instances that have come to my attention.

First, I'd like to note that I'm not the only person this happens to. Basically every girl in the Stanford program has a similar story to tell. Wenqi, the girl I live with, apparently gets hollered at in various Asian languages. I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment that I mainly get addressed in French.

My first run-in with a "sketchy Frenchman" was actually back in 2004 when I was traveling with Angelica. We were in a park in Belgium, innocently minding our own naive, adolescent business and playing cards, when a middle-aged Parisian man happened across us. He decided to interrupt our card game by lying down next to us and giving us a lecture on how we clearly weren't paying enough attention in school. Ahem.

Fast-forward to 2007. Over the course of my 10 weeks here, I've had probably about as many questionable encounters, though they seem to be centralized at the beginning and the end of my trip. I have no good explanation for why the middle of my stay here was relatively calm. Maybe the sketchy Frenchmen only come out around tourist seasons. Maybe they went on strike. Who knows. But I digress.

Here are some of my favorite anecdotes:

On my birthday, I was walking with some friends on a bridge across the Seine when the man who was walking in the other direction bent down to basically put his face in front of my chest and made a series of kissing noises. I'm not entirely sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

I once had a guy follow me out of the metro station and part of the way back to my apartment. He compared my beauty to that of a Harley Davidson we walked past, and to the "prettiest flower in the field." When I told him to go away, he told me that I had the voice of an angel. Somehow I don't think I quite got the point across... He also wanted me to know that he'd take me to a bar if he weren't headed to work. Good thing he had other things to do.

Another time, I was sitting waiting for the metro to arrive when a homeless man came and sat down next to me. He wanted me to know that he was Tunisian and wanted someone to talk to. He also smelled pretty terrible. I tried to ignore him, but he asked where I was from. I said "America" because I'm not very good at ignoring people. He then went on for quite a while about how "men in America don't respect women. But I do. I respect you. I respect women. Isn't it true that men don't respect you?" Eventually I told him that I didn't feel like talking, and he said "That's ok, because I respect you." Apparently this is a very important issue for him.

(I had two other metro encounters of note, but they weren't quite as sketchy. Once the guy sitting diagonal from me interrupted my reading to let me know that I had the face of an angel - apparently a comparison Parisian men like making a lot. Another time, I was reading Le Mariage de Figaro in preparation to go see it when a man stopped me to ask if I was an actress. I wish I could tell you that I lied and let him believe I was, but I didn't.)

I walked past another homeless man once who directed a "meow" at me. No, not a cat-call. A "meow."

There was also a time when I was walking with a friend back to the metro one evening. A guy stopped her to ask if she could give him any money, and she responded in English saying that she didn't understand French. His immediate response was to say, in the thickest French accent imaginable, "Are you American? I'm American too!" As I recall, he followed this up with a string of inappropriate statements, in English.

And then there's the run-in that prompted me to write this all up. I was crossing the street on my way back from the grocery store today, chewing on a piece of baguette, when a man stopped me to tell me that "Votre garçon ne doit pas dormir tranquil." Translation: Your boy must not sleep well.

So Paris may be the city of love, and the French may be renowned romantics, but in this girl's opinion, a bad pick-up line is still a bad pick-up line. Any single, male, American readers I may have need not be pressured to follow the French example.