This weekend I went to a friend's birthday party. He was actually born on the same day as me (i.e. last Tuesday if you didn't get the memo) but five years later. His party was really great, with a full dinner served at a lovely table set up outside and dance music blasting and a trampoline and two snakes! One of the snakes curled around my neck and hung out with me for a while. It was funny to watch the boys squeal and squirm.
At a little before midnight, we all set out for a club in Paris. That is, we started to look like we were setting out, but we didn't actually get in cars and start going anywhere for almost an hour. I find that the French people I hang out with are not good at getting moving. I don't know if this is a national phenomenon or if it just bothers me more in France because I can't follow the apparently completely absorbing small talk going on around me. Either way, I was standing around in the freezing cold for a really long time, not understanding why we weren't going anywhere. Then, when we actually arrived at the dock where the boat that had the club in it was moored (yup, a floating club on the Seine!), we waited outside in the freezing cold for another twenty minutes, waiting for everyone else! There was a moment or two when I seriously doubted my sanity in joining this expedition, but the dancing made up for my turmoil in the end. :)
Funny thing. Of the nine of us who boarded the club, I was the oldest by a good three years. At least. And guess who was the only one carded. The bouncer who looked at my CT driver's license asked me if it was real. But I suppose the age I claimed to be was so wildly older than I looked that it had to be true! In the end, I got in.
Later, as I was joining my friends on an upper deck, the same bouncer called me over to tell me that I was a "very beautiful woman". I thanked him and started walking away (I like my compliments without strings attached), but he started some small talk. When I told him that I was only here for the summer and he said, "So we only have two months to amuse ourselves?", I figured he wasn't the kind of guy I'm looking for. He asked me out for drinks sometime, and I told him I'd think about it. Too bad I didn't happen to see him again for the rest of the night...
By the time the dancing was winding down (around 4:30 am), the birthday boy asked me how I was getting home.
"I'm staying at your house"
"You are?"
"Yeah, you said I could when I asked you on Facebook."
"I did?"
Groan.
What followed was very stressful for me and the birthday boy. I was the sixth person going back to his house, and the one car that was supposed to get us there didn't have space for all of us. If you ask me, we could've squished in, but apparently the car would have ridden really low to the ground and if the police had pulled us over the driver would've gotten in trouble. Of course this is the same driver who drove back down a one way road on the sidewalk to get to a parking space. He didn't seem too concerned with legality then, but oh well. He volunteered to make two trips to get us all back.
Everything worked out in the end, but I felt like a horrible guest to my host and a horrible co-guest to those people who waited around for the second trip, even though it wasn't my fault!
I went to bed around 6:30 am. At least there was a cute little cat who curled up next to me and purred me to sleep. And the host didn't hate me too much, because as I was crawling into my sleeping bag he told me how charming I am and how he can't understand why I'm not married yet (more on this theme later), which I am determined to take as a compliment.
What a night.
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