L'Homme Francais

What has me so smitten by French men? I was prepared to be knocked sideways by the much-touted beauty of the French woman, but no one warned me about the men. There is an intensity about them, a glittering fierceness to their dark eyes under dark, bushy brows, and to their proud Gallic features so sharply thrusting forward: the chiseled hawk-beaked nose, the lovely curve of the French man's ear in the nest of trimmed hair now gently mussed and little-boy-tousled. There's a Latin swashbuckle-y-ness to the French man, a swarthiness that exudes grace against all manly odds.

Of course I generalize, as I struggle to paint a composite picture of the quintessential French male. Let us call my French man "L'Homme". L'Homme rushes about with a slightly pained, slightly distracted expression, as if racing to a critical, life-changing, intellectually-stimulating destination. His air of self-absorbtion enrobes him like a force field. His knife-edged piercing glance locks eyes with me for a brief timeless moment, as if pleading for my emotional rescue. If only.

I like to think L'Homme has just left an obligatory weekly dejeuner avec his chere maman at the local brasserie, but is now late to return to the set of the movie he is directing. Hence the graceful hurrying, the crisp clack of his finely hobbed heels on the ancient avenue. His leading lady (think Brigit Bardot--impossibly more beautiful than the woman he wrote the script for: think Sophie Marceau) is likely to storm off the set in a pique feminine if he is a moment late. His script is a work of endless poetic dialogue, charting the initial swirling up (think Paris along the blooming banks of the Seine, followed by steamy boudoir scenes, white curtains billowing, followed by endless cups of cafe and cigarettes) and then the inevitable spiraling downward trajectory (think slanting-sideways rain on the Rue de Lutece, Sophie's tragique French tears as she twists her arm from his grasp, and runs at a fast clip in heels on cobblestones, away, away) of a transcendent-yet-lust-based love, a love-to-end-all-loves. He fervently believes that if he could just finish this clef de roman, he would win his Sophie Marceau away from her husband (think Jean-Paul Belmondo) a second and final time, and back into his 1000 thread count, pillow-hair-tossing bed.

Or so I'd like to think when I pass your Average Joe ou Jacques on the street. Oh, and they have nice calves, too, but that must wait for another post.