Variety

Hours later, I was going from door 1 to door 3 (up half a flight of stairs) when I saw him standing next to do the door. The following conversation ensued:

Him: Is this your office?
Me: No... I wish. Are you waiting for her?
Him: Yeah, I was told she would be here, but she's not. She's the only person who has the key to the door up there (motioning three flights up) and I need to get on the roof.
Me: Oh, well... um... normally she's here. We can ask at the store where she might be, they usually know.
Him: What store?
Me: Follow me.

We go down into the hallway and he leans over and says,
"You have the body of a gazelle. Did you know that?"

In certain circles, this is a compliment. And usually I get severely creeped out when people do this kind of thing, but I actually found it very endearing - probably 70% of that was related to the fact that he used the word "gazelle." Plus, I felt gross and was sweating and just overall crusty, so this was a particularly odd moment for me to be on the receiving end of his attention. And? I had already decided he was sort of hot, so the whole exchange was appreciated.

My answer, "Yeah, I've been told that before."

This is a technically bitchy response, but it was absolutely necessary as the conversation could not continue on this train as I walked into the store. I don't think this guy had figured out that we were entering my place of employment, because my boss said, "Can I help you sir?"

And his response was, "Oh, I'm with her."

I clarified the situation and he ended up getting taken care of by the boss, but it was sort of funny for him to come to realize that I worked there. He had been "tutoi-ing" me for the whole previous exchange, and then suddenly he changed (with a bit of a smirk, I might add) to the more formal "vous."

We were both sort of in on the joke, and it was all quite goofy and silly and flirtatious, but fun.

I can only be comfortable in those sorts of situations for a maximum of five minutes before I start to panic and blush, so I eventually beelined out of the store in search of other tasks.

Later, we crossed each other in the hallway as I was leaving work and he was carrying large pieces of heavy metal somewhere (yum...muscles...). "Done for the day?" he said, and I just smiled and said, "Oui, bye bye!"

4. On that same note, I mentioned this interaction to The Boy today and I added that at least three-quarters of the men that hit on me are black (the above not being an exception). This was a phenomenon I had already noticed in the US, but that has postively exploded since I have been in France.

Regardless, I told The Boy that somewhere I think that everybody has a general "type" of person who is attracted to them. Some people I know, for example, attract musicians and artists. Others attract fashionable hipster types. I apparently attract Africans (and to a lesser extent African-Americans).

This lead us to discussing various cultures' ideals of beauty. I like this conversation because The Boy makes it VERY clear that he is not into skinny chicks, which is cool for me because I'm never gonna be one. "You probably just attract Africans because you're round where women are supposed to be round -- nobody's going to mistake your for matchstick."

I sort of got gloomy about the prospects of never being a matchstick (you would think I would have fully accepted this by now), when The Boy turned to me and said, "Africans want their women to have merchandise. No merchandise means no interest."

I'm qualifying "merchandise" as the equivalent as "junk in their trunk" -- and for the rest of the evening he kept saying, "There goes the merchandise!" whenever I walked by.

I think I'm kind of in love with that expression. Because, really, I've got some merchandise. And it's really empowering to think of your ass as your merchandise, let me just tell you that right now.

And then lter, he said, "The spongier the better."

Which sort of traumatized me.

And then he added, "If your ass doesn't go ::::: insert the sound of jello jiggling here :::::: then we're not even going to look your way."

Which I am sort of trying to pretend I never heard.