After the show

Monday night’s concert was awesome. But what made it even better was that I met a guy at the show.

Okay, he’s not the love of my life. In fact, I haven’t heard from him since, so I’ll probably never see him again. But it was still a triumph for two reasons. 1) I put myself out there and made it happen: I accomplished the near-impossible feat of meeting a local here in Paris! And 2) We hung out, talking for three hours—en francais!—and I did a reasonably good job of keeping up. Granted, he did almost all the talking and I’m pretty sure I checked out for about an hour of it, but still…

So how did I make 1 and 2 happen?

We were standing next to each other at the show, both alone. I was totally aware the whole time that I was standing next to a single, attractive guy and knew I needed to seize the opportunity. I kept thinking: What would Amee do?? In New York, AJ always pushed me to be open, to make eye contact, to not put pressure on myself and just enjoy meeting people. So I exchanged a couple comments about our mutual idol, Chrissie Hynde, with him. Contact, success. At the end of the show, as we were getting herded out of the sweaty venue, we chatted a little more—he, being very gracious about my butchered French. Once we were outside, he asked me if I wanted to get a drink. I did. So we did!

We went to a café on rue Abbesses, and he did most of the talking. But I was proud and excited that I kept up—probably because we were talking about interesting things like music, traveling, France and politics. He was cool. I liked him. I will say, towards the end, he got very French on me—he was talking, talking, talking, super fast and animated, and that’s when I sort of checked out, wondering if all French people just really like hearing themselves pontificate. Plus, it was like 1:30 and I was ready to go home and sleep. I just didn't want to commit the worst faux pas of suddenly saying 'it's time for me to go' when he was talking about the meaning of life or something. And here in Paris, you can’t rely on the service to come to your rescue. After our drinks were delivered, we didn’t see our waiter until we flagged him down, three hours later.

But at the end of the night, we exchanged numbers. I could text him, I suppose. Amee would. But I sort of feel like things started on a French foot, and it would be too (ugly) American of me to do that. So, I will wait. We’ll see if he likes me, or if he likes me not.