French Toasted
Bottles of Cristal, faux heirs, and spending the night in jail are things made for rap videos. Sipping rose martinis among Parisian fashionistas at the uber-chic bar at the Plaza Atheneé is more my style. Nonetheless, in the past week, I have experienced both with only residual scarring.
When I arrived in France, I was extremely arrogant, but it’s not the type of arrogance most of the world expects from Americans abroad. Instead of blindly criticizing French culture and extolling the virtues of the USA, I have tried to blend in and adopt a Parisian attitude. I assumed when I got to Europe that—with a passing knowledge of French and a good deal of cultural sensitivity—I could fast-forward through the homesickness and adjustment anxiety which the Office of International Programs and my French program had described at length. I was wrong.
For the first two weeks, it was smooth sailing. I could get by well enough to talk to my landlord, the program directors, random shopkeepers and cute guys on the street. I was loving Paris and everything about it. A quiet dinner and a trendy Parisian nightclub changed all that.
I had finished my language orientation for the day and I headed over to my friend Danielle’s apartment for a cute French dinner. After dinner, I sat on her couch and watched Cruel Intentions until it was time to meet up with some other friends. Shortly after arriving on the Champs-Elysees, I met up with a friend from my program, Ashley, and we proceeded to VIP (or, as the French say, “veep”).
VIP is like a typical nightclub from New York. As we approached the front of the line, a woman with a clipboard scanned our outfits. “C’est bon.” As we made our way into the pseudo-cavern, I felt the pumping beats of the aged hip-hop. We were already pretty buzzed when I tried to get the DJ to play “Hey Ya!”—to no avail. We bought one drink each before we realized why a cool club like this has no cover (they’re typically 20 euro). An hour or two after we had arrived, Ashley had migrated to a table in the back VIP section. She was courting some French guy who was accompanied by a man with dark sunglasses—at first glance I confused the companion with the deceased Ray Charles.
Ashley’s target told me that he liked her and that he was the heir to the Fiat car empire. Because VIP is a posh nightclub and this guy had a Ray Charles look-a-like by his side, I believed him. In between dancing with some other friends, Arnaud Poulain (the French guy) told me that he wanted to buy a bottle of champagne. After a mediocre attempt on my part to dissuade Ashley from ordering Cristal, she told the waiter her selection. While the sparklers in the Cristal cork were going off, Arnaud gave me the first sign that he may not have been driving a Ferrari when he arrived at “veep.” “I am a personal friend avec Jean-Claude Van Damme,” he said in broken English.
I shrugged it off and drank a couple glasses of Cristal, basking in my newfound hip hop star status. When the bill came, however, it was a different story. Arnaud suddenly hadn’t ordered the champagne and the Ray Charles look-a-like kept repeating “she ordered it” in French.
Ashley tried to reason with Arnaud, but he wouldn’t pay. After a couple of minutes of negotiation, she gave up and gave the server her credit card to pay for the 500 Euro bottle. I don’t know if the server was a moron at processing credit cards or if there actually was a problem with her card, but for some reason it would not go through. Having just paid my rent that day, I gave her the 60 Euros in my wallet.
At the same time, I got a phone call from a friend who was at the door trying to get in. I went up to the entrance and walked out in order to reason with the bouncer. Lo and behold, I was not allowed back in.
Freaking out at having left Ashley behind, I tried calling her cell phone, but I couldn’t get through. My other friends tried to calm me down by reassuring me that they don’t put girls in prison over bottles of Cristal. We found a little cafe and sat down to chill out. Ironically, I was eating a beef carpaccio salad when I was able to get through to Ashley, who had in fact been taken away by the police in a paddy wagon.
The rest of the night is a haze. I do know that I frantically called parents, friends, and the program director (who had given an incorrect cell phone number). I had lost contact with Ashley and eventually I passed out at my apartment at around 8 a.m. At 11 a.m., I woke up realizing that I had just missed the TGV—French for “very fast train”—to Provence with my program. I also had no idea what had happened to Ashley. It turns out that she had been kept (with Arnaud and his constant sexual advances) all night by the French police, who refused to let her go to an ATM until the morning.
After she finally paid the bill, we met up and took a later train to Provence to meet the rest of our program.
I was a complete wreck. I didn’t want to speak French or be around anyone who did. All I wanted was to be home and not have to deal with the situation.
After going to bed early that night, I woke up with bumps all over my arms. Instead of enjoying the countryside, I took a Benadryl and knocked myself out in the back row of the bus.
Returning to Paris, I found out that the cute French dinner at Danielle’s apartment had also given me a nasty case of bedbug bites. By Tuesday, I had broken out in hives, my first ever allergic reaction. I was given four medications, prescribed by a dermatologist at the American Hospital in Paris. Life sucked.
As I recovered from the hives, I realized that I too could be one of those “idiot Americans.” Whether it’s missing the greasy Peking Ravioli that I used to devour at the Kong or crying at missed friends or family, culture shock is not an avoidable phenomenon. But as I slaved away on last minute preparations for Fashion Week at my internship with W magazine, I slowly regained my confidence and began to feel slightly Parisian again.
This past Monday, I bounced back. The perks of being an intern with a major fashion magazine launched me into the real Mode á Paris. I got front row seats at the Lutz and Undercover fashion shows.
As the models strutted down the runways and I sipped champagne, I realized that I would get a taste of the dreamlike Paris after all. After the first party at the Place Atheneé I returned nervously to VIP. DSquared was having a big bash and I had invites for a couple friends. This time, I may have been drinking Moet, but that’s okay. I’ll leave the Cristal to the rappers.