LET''S BE FRANC WITH EACH OTHER...

One evening, very recently, I was in the midst of a simple home repair (the slatted bind cord-lift mechanism had rusted to pieces out on the lanai) when I found myself unable to proceed further without a certain specific screw. And no, I am not referring to a sudden urge to send Captain Willie out on a scouting expedition to dazzle any fecund female within squid-poking range into a nocturnal dalliance of the coital persuasion, but a Phillips head slotted screw of a specific diameter that was all that kept me from fixing the blasted blind’s winder mechanism.

These moments occur with surprising frequency over the course of my life, I have found, most perhaps being attributable to a vestigial fragment of ADD (attention deficit disorder) left over from keiki days (childhood). Whatever the cause, there’re fewer annoyances as great as having to suddenly interrupt whatever you are doing to scuttle down to the local hardware store for some small widget or thingumbob that, although small, poses an insurmountable technological hurdle to successful completion of the latest project. Fortunately, such moments don’t often occur while romancing Betty Jo Bioloski (or Audrey Weenfinkle, or Lelani Kulomea, or Maile Cuernevaca, or…well you get the tidal drift), save an all out emergency in which the supply of KY Jelly and condoms has run out; usually the catalyst is far less beautiful and seductive, but none the less vital (like an unplugged carburetor or an unoccluded septic tank outflow) to pleasurable living in our modern times.

And so, screwdriver in one hand and draw-cord in the other, I was faced with the need to take a quick trip into the ville to find the right bit of helically machined metal with which to complete the job. Fortunately, it was still early and although the sun was just about to plunge into the glittering waters of the Kalohi Channel’s expanses, it was still light enough to enjoy a leisurely putt down to what passes for a hardware store in K’kai. Hey, it’s Hawaii, local stay-go ‘slo-mo’ rules apply, always.

At any rate, as I pulled into the parking area, out of the corner of my eye I was vaguely aware of a small, ‘local’ bookstore that I have somehow never managed to enter for a lookabout. Since my lanai’s blind would wait patiently enough for my return, and this being Molokai, on a sudden whim I decided to deviate off course and go take a look at this little hole-in-the-wall bookstore I had so often seen and ignored, but never actually visited.

Predictably, a rather loud cowbell jangled my nerves as I pushed the door open, since cowbells seem to be almost as common a fixture on small shop doors as they are in the rooter stands at U of H’s football games. Probably a lot more common, in fact, than they are in actual use among herds of bovine-hoofed steaks-to-be. This particular one would likely have wakened whole ranches, let alone the drowsy proprietor of a small book shop, but as the last jangle died out, I refocused my attention on the shop and walked in.

The first thing that caught my eye was not books, but a rather lovely wahine who looked about 35-40, in extremely good shape, and wearing a flower behind her right ear! Not the usual, haggard Hawaiian volcanic mountain wearing slippahs and a mu’umu’u out on an evening visit to the Friendly Market (a long-time local grocery store), but a trim, fit and pretty wahine wearing shorts and a snug-fitting sports-bra. Her long, dark, straight hair suggested a healthy increment of Japanese or Chinese ancestry (more likely the former, since there are far fewer Chinese in the islands, and most of them are on Oahu) mixed into the typically diverse cultural admixture one finds in the islands.

Most importantly, she was alone and not conspicuously being herded about by some monstrously large local bruddah looking for ‘beef’. And, she was looking at books (both of these dynamics being beyond ordinary value in my world, of course). Hot damn. A beautiful ‘young’ (and ‘available’ , as in ‘flower behind right ear’) woman in a bookstore, poking about the dusty shelves. It just doesn’t get much better than that in my world (unless you run into dakine on some isolated Molokai beach, surfboard in hand, and unattended by local ‘koa’).

Since I am a hopeless bookaholic who practically becomes mesmerised anywhere near the vicinity of old books, every time I walk into a book store I instantly become a bit shaky and disoriented. A mood somewhat approximating the sort of irresistible fascination I would imagine Dante Alighieri might feel upon entering hell (crossing over from its ‘First Circle’ of indifference to the heated lustfulness of its ‘Second Circle’) seizes me.

It’s not all that dissimilar from the sense of awe I would imagine a tourist might experience walking into the massive Gothic cathedral that dominates the Zentralplatz in Austria’s Salzberg and gazing up into the black depths of its ethereally gloomy magnificence. Yeah, pathetic I know, but books just do that to me. It’s hard to explain exactly why books affect me like that, other than to say that they represent the hard-gained knowledge of centuries of human development and are an important veneer of civilization that helps (barely) mask our baser primitiveness.

So, two primal and fatally alluring concurrent dynamics were at work here: 1) books, since they represent knowledge and enlightenment; and 2) sensual, female beauty, since women are the ascendant nurturing essence that fosters and permits all human life to perpetuate itself. Wowie-zowie. We talkin’ archetypal…no, primal…forces here, brah.

There I am, taking in these two formative elements of meaningful life in that little store, my missing screw (no pun intended, but perhaps there IS a certain aptness to the allusion, after all) completely forgotten in the surging maelstrom of feelings evoked by my confrontation by these personal catalysts. Finally (and most reluctantly) managing to tear my eyes away from the perky abundance of that gor’jus wahine’s ample rack, I began to wander the small and confined aisles, pausing here and there in front of each subject area to graze. Predictably, I didn’t make progress of more than a few feet before I found a book (or two or three) that less than a few minutes ago I couldn’t have imagined being able to live without.

Finally, after some 20 minutes of bemused wandering, laden with books, I hauled by booty over to the counter. The rich diversity of my selections would be immediately apparent if you happened to see some of the titles, but by some bizarre chance, right there on the top of my stack lay a book titled ‘An Illustrated History of Torture and Execution Throughout the Ages’. The previously referenced and well-oogled wahine was standing right there in front of me at the counter as I walked up, and she turned briefly towards me as I came to a halt behind her. Suddenly, the beautiful, warm smile on her lovely face instantly froze. It was if her entire face had been suddenly dipped in pure liquid Nitrogen (at about -196 degrees C.), so obvious was the change in attitude now engraved on her alarmed features. For my part, I was momentarily flummoxed…until, that is, I saw her glance again at that book on torture and execution, sitting so prominently on the top of my stack.

All the Irish charm in the world would have been of no avail to me in that instant, as I am convinced she was by then experiencing rapid-rewind serial flashes of memory about all the news articles she had ever read about psychotic killers, seriously deranged father-rapers, imbalanced mother-stabbers (Arlo Guthrie’s terms), and perhaps even substance-addicted, sociopathic pederasts in that single instant of horrifically miss-communicated body language.

Arrrgh! No one else in the world could possibly have had the sort of incredible bad luck I had just had in creating such an irreversibly and profoundly negative impression without even saying a single word! So much for that priceless (and increasingly rare) opportunity to meet an intelligent, lovely woman, now shot down the tubes of a cosmic black hole of existential chance! Whereas some of us mortals seem to have a unique talent of putting foot in mouth to effect such a denouement, I am blessed with the ability of achieving the same disastrous effect without even opening my mouth!

Her subsequent departure from that small shop was so rapid and so complete that the shop’s owner had barely managed to ring up the first of my books, as the sweet fragrance of her convective slipstream wafted past both of us, as the cowbell marked the moment with its cacophonous din. “Fortes Fortuna adiuvat”, perhaps, but as we all know, “Fortuna caeca est!” (‘Fortune favors the brave’…but ‘fortune is blind’). And that begs the final question: “Volo, non valeo” (‘I am willing, but unable!’, which could almost be allegorically paraphrased ‘…a Viagra moment’).

OK, so my rather too broad range of interests and proclivities had apparently chased this wahine off, however unjustly. Shouldering my load of bargain books, I returned to the well-worn old Porsche air sucker (a 914, natch!) I tool around in and headed it back up the King Kam V Highway to the hale. Imagine my surprise when driving over the home berm to find that not only had I lost this unique opportunity to connect with a lani wahine, I had ALSO totally forgotten to pick up the screw that had precipitated the whole adventure in the first place. As I entered the hale, the broken blind on the lanai stared balefully back at me with its inanimate air of remonstrance as if to say "Ya fergot the screw, idiot."

Making a mental note to return to town tomorrow and dropping the pile of books onto a table on the lanai, I spent a few moments reflecting on the fact that the missed connection rather more perfectly typifies my life than not, with a few notable exceptions. By this time the sun had completely disappeared into whatever hole in the reef setting suns on Molokai normally sink, but there just the gentlest of soft evening trades playing amongst the coco palm fronds and it promised to be another beautiful night on the island.

Now, by my table on the lanai is a small stack of other books, all in the process of being read, since I am a bibliographic omnivore who reads many at the same time. More ADD fall-out, I’m sure, but whatever the dynamic at work, I cannot typically pursue more than a few chapters of any particular book before two things happen: 1) my sense of imagination starts becoming inflamed, and 2) I become restless. This is usually what catalyses yet another blog entry, since I become so over-stimulated thinking about what I’ve just read that I am no longer capable of calm reflection and contemplation.

On this particular eve, still reflecting sadly on how nice it would have been to have that classy wahine over for some cheap mainland wine, I absently picked up a mostly-read copy of one of UK writer Stephen Clarke’s delightfully droll accounts of his adventures as a British expatriate in France (this one was titled ‘A Year in the Merde’). Indirectly paralleling writer Peter Mayle’s somewhat gentler and more genteel ‘A Year in Provence’, Clarke seems to have hit on a formular approach to both entertaining us Anglophiles And taking the French to task for their being…well, just for being so ‘French’. The subject has substantial meaning for me, as an Anglo-American of Irish, French extraction and Austrian who (strangely) has always felt much more at home in German-speaking Europe than in those nations colonialised by La Belle Francaise.

Clarke’s accounts of encounters with the natives of Gaul are both entertaining and amusing, since unlike Mayle’s more circumspect tale of dealing with the exasperating habits and traits of the French as relocated British cottage buyers in Provence, Clarke’s experiences are an equal mix of English-French business interactions and his personal campaign to shag every French woman who returns his randy gaze.

The French, who have so often been accused of exemplifying their legendary Frenchness in everything they undertake, are truly worthy of every one of Clarke’s journalistic barbs and much more (in my opinion), based upon my own (admittedly limited) experience with the Frankish tribes of Normandy. I admit, from the git-go, to a somewhat secret bias against them, despite the fact that another part of me secretly envies their guiltless resolution to reinterpret every possible reality to suit their national expectations.

I suppose part of this personal Francophobia results from my studies in international history, in which there is seemingly always a hidden Frenchie in every woodpile and a frustratingly devilish Frankish undercurrent running contrary to everything that Anglo-America has traditionally stood for, in the past several hundred years of English-French relations. How ironic, then, that I am part French Huguenot in my own ancestral make-up.

Be all that as it may, Stephen Clarke’s accounts of interacting with the French, on both a professional and personal level (in the latter case, almost always horizontal), is a worthy and considerably entertaining read to undertake. Aside from describing the sort of typical French hypocrisy French men hew to in a delightfully unsubtle manner, his unending efforts to penetrate the deepest figurative recesses of French womanhood are particularly illuminating in their contrast to English and French coital preferences and practices (Liberte! Fraternity! Conjugality?...perhaps Marianne, that voluptuously endowed iconic symbol of French nationhood, would demur on that last set of points, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it).

One relationship in particular that Clarke (35) describes involves a young woman in her mid 20s whom he literally moves in on, and in with. After their relationship has been active for 6 months, he suddenly learns from her that she has a boyfriend who is returning from the Middle East (where he was a physician working for ‘Medicine Without Borders’); therefore would Clarke please remove his things from her flat at his earliest convenience? Clarke, as the product of a decidedly English traditional Protestant moral ethic associated with coital relations, emotional fidelity, and the implied status of permanence, is thus aghast to learn firsthand of that uniquely French tendency to regard sex as a mere physical appetite that requires periodic servicing, much as one’s stomach is used to being filled at regular intervals; hunger may be assuaged by any of a wide range of foods, of course. But emotional ‘exclusivity’?, mai non! To the French, Clarke learns, sex is merely an pleasurable itch that needs to be regularly scratched, a hunger that requires cyclical satiation, and has no more component of empathetic exclusivity than the random rutting of dogs (French Poodles, perhaps?) in the street.

The example in reference is supported by several others Clarke details amusingly, including a regular shagging of his French boss’s young daughter (he actually lives with her for a while, despite the fact that she regularly has other boyfriends over for the night).

Reflecting on all of this, it isn’t hard to see the parallels extant in the United States, another Anglo influenced nation that derived most of its original morals and ethics from Mother England. American men of my generation, the product of a repressed Puritan standard of morally appropriate inter-gender conduct, have formerly spent decades fooling each other with the pretension that casual sex is cool, all the while fighting an uphill battle to have that casual sex with good little girls from upwardly aspiring, religiously conscionable families who had been taught to ‘save themselves’ for marriage.

Although more recently, both young men and young women in our increasingly less Anglo-Saxon (read: more ethnically diverse) society have adopted far more casual attitudes about sex, likely consequent at least in part to the lessened hold conservative religion has had on them (in marked contrast to as few as several decades prior to the present), there is still a strong element of ‘Playboy Era’ sexuality to be found in America (read: highly fomularised, rigidly defined ‘tits and ass’ norms of behavior—complete with an undiminished paranoia about homosexuality).

In France (and much of Europe) casual sex of every type and description has been regarded for centuries with about as much seriousness as sharing a baguette and a bottle of local varietal with others on a bicycle ride through the countryside. Contraceptives are consumed like vitamins in America, condoms are part of every individuals basic gear, and there is none of the near-hysterical moral American hand-wringing associated with the occasional necessary abortion.

OK, all the above necessary preface to one experience of my own of the French kind that occurred in mid-1985. I was working in the Middle East then and had taken a couple of weeks to take a leisurely drive through the German-speaking countries, since my German, while not perfect, is adequate to not send the local populations of Germanic peoples screaming to the hills with perplexed annoyance.

I had rented a Porsche 911 on arrival and had just wrapped up a two week tour of Austria and Switzerland, ending up in Munchen, where my flight out and back to Saudi Arabia was to depart. Checking in at the Kempinski luxury hotel Vier Jahrzeiten on (one of the most exclusive in the whole berg), I unpacked for a last night on the town before leaving the following day. Donning my favorite old flight jacket (a Navy G-8 WEP), I began a stroll through picturesque, ancient Munchen, a city that has always been delightful to me.

A number of the younger local people regarded me with a certain suspicion, I am sure, thinking that the flight jacket marked me as a US military person. At that time there was a big moment by Euro socialist activists to force the US to remove its short-range tactical Pershing nuclear missiles from European soil, so perhaps wearing the jacket hadn’t been a great idea in retrospect. However, there were no direct confrontations as the evening unfolded and I greatly enjoyed wandering from district to district and from historic site to storied edifice.

I had just passed by the great Feldherrnhalle (‘Field Marshals’ Hall’), a monument built in the early 1840s by King Ludwig I, the Bavarian king, and was turning the corner after admiring the large old structure for a protracted moment or two. As I rounded the corner, I literally collided with a rather beautiful young woman. With long dark brown hair, a slender but perfectly proportioned figure, and dark brown eyes, she would have easily mesmerized any man. I, however, had just about knocked her down, so I helped her up and apologized profusely for my clumsiness in not seeing her in front of me. With perfect gracefulness, she accepted my murmurs of apology and smiled about something I had said (I think). My imperfect German? Instead of apologizing, had I somehow described myself (auf Deutsch) as a prematurely matured cabbage made of sodden burlap?

At any rate, after observing the obligatory formal niceties, we parted, each of us going in the opposite direction. For my part, I was headed to the Schwabing student district, originally known as the artistic quarter located in the north part of Munchen, but I couldn’t help reflecting on what a yummy woman I had had the sheer bad luck to nearly knock on her pretty ass. She was definitely still there inside my ruminations, a tantalizing scent from her still lingering in my mind, when I rounded another corner near the Leopoldstrasse and B*A*N*G, I ran into her again! The same lovely brunette who had survived my first accidental onslaught!

This was too much of a coincidence, but being the somewhat formal and properly brought up lad that I was, I simply chalked the latest collision off as sheer random luck. What were the odds that this sort of encounter should happen? However, once again I excused my clumsiness and made my apologies, although not without exchanging a decidedly bemused look with her as we both thought about the chances of two such collisions occurring on the same evening! Reluctantly, I again took my leave, and headed back to the Frauenkirche for a look at the delightful Glockenspiele that displays a musical rendition of the time each hour.

This time, I found myself acutely focused what had just happened, as there was no question in my mind she was an absolute stunner. Practicing a mental shrug, I was very near the Frauenkirche, watching the clock there, when I turned to my right briefly and once again collided with this same women! Unbelievable, I told myself, but this time, as the hour rang out and the Glockenspiele’s array of animated figures paraded by on their track, I made an attempt to engage her in some conversation, since I was now certain that some cosmic deity or another was trying to get something across to me, total dunderhead that I am.

It didn’t take long, nor did it completely exhaust my poor German, to learn that she was not a German citizen at all, but a French woman, a student at some ecole or another in southern France where she was studying ‘le danse’. Her name, she told me, was Danielle, and she lived on a boat off the Cote De’Azure with a boyfriend. She had apparently decided to use a term break to hitch-hike up into Bavaria for a short tour, much as I had decided to take a two week course through Austria and Switzerland.

Well! This was quite interesting, to say the least, and as it turned out, neither of us spoke the other’s native language. She spoke no English and I spoke no French, although we both spoke rudimentary German. Thus, the evening began in a sort of always slightly puzzling but eventually clear linguistic limbo. I told her I was an American, taking a break from the Middle East. To keep things simple, when she asked about the flight jacket, I told her I was an instructor pilot, working with the Royal Saudi Air Force, which was naturally enough a complete fabrication. However much an out and out lie that was, I certainly looked the part, so the beautiful French dance (ballet) student named Danielle accepted the handsome American pilot’s invitation for some drinks and we left the Frauenkirche, both bemused by the unexpected turn of events.

Since I’ve never been very brave around women, I’m afraid that I had to imbibe more than a bit of the whatever we were drinking before I inquired as to where she was staying, being a hitch-hiker and all. She mentioned that she had been staying at youth hostels and Nautrefreundehaus hostels, so adequately lubricated with a quantity of good German brewed ‘Irish’ courage, I proposed that she come and stay with me that night at the Four Seasons. It was a rather swanky place, of course, and there were two King Size beds in my suite (I traveled first class, always) as a pretext for being so bold, so before long we found our way back to the hotel.

Long story short, the sheer, overpowering sensuality of that night remains in my mind to this day with crystal clarity (despite all the German beer and wine I had consumed, earlier in the evening). As I had guessed, when it was time to turn in, lovely, gazelle-like Danielle slipped away briefly into the bath and emerged, a short time later in all her natural splendor. Her body, obviously a well-honed instrument toned by several years of serious dance study, was just mind-boggling in its agility. As a result, viewed in retrospect, beautiful, brunette, German speaking Danielle remains as perhaps one of the most exotic intimate encounters I have ever had with a woman…bar none.

In the course of the next hour or two (she would probably describe it as being 5 minutes at best, hee-hee), Danielle taught me things about ‘love’ I hadn’t even known existed. Her incredibly limber and perfectly fit body assumed positions I am certain even the Kama Sutra had never fully described, as we lost each other in a tsunami of pent-up, raw sexual energy. Or at least I got lost in hers. For her part she most likely regarded me as strictly an amateur by her advanced standards, but at least one who was an eager (if slightly drunk) and willing student of her favored exotic coital couplings. Wow. That’s really all I can say that describes that night. Her scent (pheromones, of course)—a natural and exquisite complement to her physical beauty—seemed perfect to me, and I probably could have slept the entire next day (not just due to all the wine and beer consumed, either).

However, it was my last evening and so at dawn I was up, reluctant to be leaving Danielle behind, but bound to return to Saudi on time or lose my all-important entry visa (they’re very strict about visas). Danielle, for her part, packed up her things and I then drove her down to the Munchen Bahnhof, where she would catch a train home to southern France and her Cotes de’Azure boyfriend on his large, run-down sloop-rigged boat.

It had all been so perfect, so very perfect, but then, in keeping with my rep as a cheap Lothario, I managed to screw things up terribly at the last moment. As Danielle retrieved her things from the trunk, prior to catching her train, in a moment of what now seems to me to have been perfect madness, I pulled my wallet out and naïvely pressed a hundred Mark note into her hand, saying that “It’s for your trip.” Yes. I actually did that!

Dropping her backpack, my lovely Danielle managed to slap me silly with her strong, sun-tanned right hand, as a look of sheer disbelief, followed instantly by a look of disgust spread quickly over her lovely Normandienne face. Her opinion of all Americans (D-Day notwithstanding) must have, at that second, plummeted to the very bottom of the well, given this insulting display of thoughtless behavior on my part. I, of course, being a naïve American, had merely been giving her a small present, since I was making bazillions over in Saudi. Never for the slightest second did it dawn on me that I had just insultingly insinuated that Danielle was no better than a common prostitute, for having slept with me the previous night.

By the time I got some feeling back in my bright red cheek and a bit of understanding of the grievous gaffe I had just made, lovely, gazelle-like Danielle was gone, disappeared into the cavernous bowels of the Munchen Bahnhof and forever gone from my life except for those wonderful memories of her intimacies that I carry with me to this day!

And that’s just one example from my own catalogue of experiences with the French, but there’s not enough time to spin any further stories at the moment about ‘Obscene Francine’ (for example), the gorgeous blonde French-Canadian woman who wound up my clock in the King’s gym in Riyadh…or Sooks, an equally stunning Korean-Canadian woman whom I have actually written about elsewhere at AD…or dark haired (also a Normandienne) Celine, a French helicopter mechanic working for Aerospatiale at King Fahad Air base, who although typically covered with grease and hydraulic fluid during the day, was so lavished decked out in silks, perfumes, and diamonds at the embassy in the evening that every male head there could simply stare at her generously endowed form with awed stupefaction! Perhaps some other time. This is, after all, only a journal entry…not a novel.

Perhaps the foregoing will help make clear at least partly why the French remain a little-known enigma to me to this very day, despite my ancestry. Oh yes, if you get a chance to read any of Stephen Clarke’s amusing books about his own experiences with the French, by all means do so. They’re available at Amazon and just about everywhere! Bon soire, mes amis!

PS: Always remember, when doing the Grand European Tour through Germany, "Scheissen Sie Nicht in der Lederhosen!"

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[NOTE: This journal entry is pulled from my files today, 19 Jun 24, as I turn another year older...as much to mind me of the fact that I myself was once a much younger, vital person than I am now than for any other reason. Hopefully it will entertain you somewhat and mayhaps also serve as an advance warning that the bloom and blush of youth fades all too soon, so get out there and boogie while you can!]

And yes, I am WELL aware that ''LET''S'' in the title shouldn''t be using an exclamation mark instead of an apostrophe to signify a contraction, but for some inexplicable reason, this VERDAMMT WYSIWYG software refuses to accept a correction.