While sitting in my apartment and writing a paper, contemplating the best ways to spend my day, I got a phone call from my little sister. Like me, she gets easily frustrated with things that she can't immediately benefit from. Like me, she's a bit irrational. And, like me, she always needs a sounding board for her anger. I suppose what goes around comes around after all.
"What's wrong, kiddo?"
"Jack, this is bullshit! I have to take two semesters of a foreign language to graduate!" I could hear the sounds of traffic and voices in the background, breaking through the static and distortion of the cell phone. "I'm in America, they should learn English to come here!" I held the phone away from my ear while she went on her tirade. Matt turned and looked smug that I was the one suffering through petty, impotent rage for once. Bastard, I ought to cut his brakes.
"Are you even listening to me?" she half-shrieked into the receiver. "Gawd, it's no wonder you can't get a girlfriend, you can't listen worth a damn. You're so self-centered, you know that? I've got a problem and you're ignoring me!"
I sighed and put the receiver back to my ear. "Ignoring the irony of that statement, you've known about those requirements for two years. You're a junior, when did you miss that part?"
"I knew about it! I just didn't think it'd be so hard! Other languages are retarded, everyone should just speak English."
"Aren't you taking Spanish or something?"
"The hell? No, I'm not taking Spanish. Fuck Spanish," she said. She spit, hopefully onto the sidewalk. "I'm taking French. It doesn't make any sense, and besides, when am I ever gonna need to know that? I'm not going to Paris anytime soon."
"You never know, it might come in handy..."
---
Marie
I met Marie in high school. She was, and still is, an extremely attractive woman. She had an amazing rack and the kind of body that not only flatters it, but suits it entirely. Brunette and with pouty, full lips, Marie was one of the most attractive women I'd ever seen when I met her my senior year of high school. She was an exchange student from Belgium who had elected to do another year of high school in America rather than go to college in Europe. Having realized that I was never going to manage to have sex with anyone that actually knew me, I immediately decided that Marie was my best prospect. She was foreign, she was attractive, and I had been taking French since freshman year. The problem with this set up was that Marie had met a good friend of mine, Lisa, who was not on the same page as me with this endeavor.
"Jack, I can't let you hit on Marie," she announced one morning before class in the cafeteria. I roused myself from half a hangover and focused on her. "Explain."
Lisa came up next to me. "Look, you know we're, like, best friends in the world. But you can't hit on Marie." She looked at me with wide doe eyes and smiled. God bless her little heart, she was a charmer. It would take more than beauty and the fake promise of sex I could never have to derail me.
"Why can't I? I'm not some random scum bag off the street," I said. The fluorescent lights above me were burning out my retinas and the headache was beginning to pound. I could have hosted a tribal fertility ritual in my head.
Lisa sighed and put her hands on her lap. "Let me level with you. You're a nice guy and all, but she's not American. Most of your charm gets lost in translation." She began to look around for someone to back her up, but our friends at the table had chosen their sides. As the desperately lonely intravert, my needs and wants eclipsed hers, and the crowd swung against her. Her boyfriend, Marco, a small Portuguese guy, unceremoniously pushed her aside.
"Don't listen to her. Go for it. Marie's hot. You can do something with this." He glanced over his shoulder at Lisa. He leaned in to whisper to me, "You realize I'm not getting laid because I want you to get laid. Do it." The other guys around the table nodded sagely at Marco's brave sacrifice. The game was on.
Marie walked in a few moments later and sat down. She spoke English exactly as your fantasies would want her to -- unsure of herself, making cute mistakes, the accent playing with pronunciation and emphasis as an abstract sculptor would shape the human form; familiar, recognizable, but hauntingly different. I wasted no time in sidling over to her conversation with Lisa. I cleared my throat. "Hey Marie."
"Allo Jacques! Ow are you?" she chirped. The crowd watched and waited, eager to see how I engaged. There was no way an ordinary man could accomplish this. However, like all extraordinary men, I had an ace up my sleeve.
"Tres bien, je pense. Ca va?" Marco and the rest of the guys were interested. This was an interesting gambit, one that was only rarely used in the New Jersey suburbs. Legends of its success rang through our collective memories, tales told by older cousins and uncles about the women they slept with when stationed in Germany or studying abroad in Spain. Marie, however, looked pleasantly surprised that an American was speaking her native language. I assumed I was in the clear.
Then she began to speak.
I still smiled pleasantly and nodded, but I was lost. Good God what had I done? The look in my eyes tipped off the Guy Council and they took on the countenances of pallbearers. I had just condemned myself to death. Lost in my own defeat, I hadn't noticed she had stopped talking. She looked expectant. Had she asked me a question? Shit!
"Quoi? Qu'est-ce que tu a dit?"
She rambled again. I could only catch a handful of words. I was positive I heard "cute" and "talk" and "phone number." Holy shit, maybe it was working. With renewed confidence, I boldly said, "Oui!"
Marie rolled her eyes at me and turned around. Rebuked, I returned to where I had been sitting. It was only after several minutes that I realized what she had said:
"You only tried speaking French because you think I'm cute and wanted to talk to me and get my phone number, didn't you?"
Marco turned and glared at me. "Look what you've done. Now no one gets laid."
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