30

A new neighbor joined my desk group at work: a contemplative Parisian art director named Chaya who wanted to improve his English in exchange for helping me with my French.

By that point, my fluency had gained turf. But I still had trouble. Proper nouns were pains in the ass; I’d think someone had conjugated a verb in the subjunctive, but they’d simply mentioned an eighties French sitcom I didn’t know. And slang went right over my head. Chaya and I decided on a system where I’d post words or phrases I didn’t recognize, and Chaya would attempt to translate them into English.

Une bouffe—a meal.

Pourri—nasty, rotten.

J’ai le spleen—I’m bummed out.

We soon covered the wall behind my desk with sticky notes. When I put up “Faut pas pousser mémé dans les orties,” Chaya had trouble. He said in English, “This means, I think, Do not push the grandmother into the garden.” He consulted his French-English dictionary. “Sorry, not garden, ‘nettles.’ What is this, nettles?”

“Something British,” I said. “Anyway, what the hell? Why would I do this?”

“You do not do this,” Chaya said. “It is … to illustrate an idea. It means you push your chance.”

“Your luck?”

“Your luck? Ah, okay. Faut pas pousser mémé dans les orties: Do not push your luck.”

“Or your grandmother,” I said.

Five minutes later, Marc stopped by with a suggestion for the board: Chier dans la colle.

“It means,” Marc said, “‘to shit in the glue.’ But you do not want to do this.”

I asked Chaya to explain. He thought about it for a moment. “You know when a project here goes slowly? This is the glue. Then when some people—” He looked around, then whispered: “When some people is asking stupid questions, and it goes more slowly in meetings? This is the shit.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Marc said. “The glue is the scenario—it’s life. So when the scenario is already, how do you say, sticky?”

Chaya nodded. “Then you make life worse when you put your shit in it.”

We all dwelt on this wisdom.

“Okay, next,” I said. “BCBG—the clothing chain?”

“Ah, no,” Marc said. “BCBG, it means ‘classy.’ Sort of. You would say ‘preppy,’ maybe? Bon chic, bon genre. It’s kind of passé.”

Soon, according to Chaya and Marc, I was much more Parisian for using my new lingo. Sort of a tough guy now, Chaya said, me telling people where not to shit, pushing their grandmothers around. In two weeks, we’d added:

Ta gueule! Shut up!

Qu’est-ce que tu racontes? What the hell are you talking about?

Quel con. What an ass.

Laisse tomber. Leave it alone.

Ça arrache la gueule! That burns my mouth!

J’ai les dents du fond qui baignent! My teeth are soaking in something liquid, and it might be vomit!

Among other things to learn: when entering an elevator in a Paris office building, it was customary to say hello, even if you didn’t know the other people. Then perhaps you’d mention the weather. When exiting, you wished the other passengers good day.

I explained to coworkers that this behavior did not occur in the United States. One girl said, “That is because Americans are very cold.”

In our office, it was also obvious that men were in charge. Well, no surprise. But French businessmen were different from American businessmen—and not just when it came to black cocks and Jews. French businessmen, at least in advertising, were uniquely moody; conniving men who were easily wounded, doing deals or not. They fell in love constantly—with women, with objects—and they did it with their bodies and souls. Perhaps it was a balance exclusive to our one office, but the attitude was, boys will be boys—boys will be spoiled, indulgent, grabby garçons. As Julie would say, men in our office got to play both Doctor and Madame Bovary. And meanwhile the women held careers, cooked dinner, raised the children, and dressed like the world’s best, and still they trotted around Paris unrecognized, exhausted, losing out to their inherited rapport de force.

During a meeting in early April, I called one of our bosses a stupid ass. He wasn’t in the room and he was a stupid ass, but Pierre was shocked; he was also impressed by my fluency. In the hallway afterward, Sabine asked, “Where is this coming from?” Sabine was another project manager on Louis Vuitton. I told her about Chaya’s sticky notes and slang lessons. Sabine frowned. She said she didn’t like the new me very much; I was becoming obnoxious, “just another one of the boys”—another man she was required to coddle. Sabine said she’d speak to Chaya about tempering my instruction.

Basically, Paris office life was an old boys’ club with female lifeguards.