Smelly Restaurant Kissing

Written on Thursday 17th December 09

Mr D asked if I wanted to go for a meal with him and some of his French friends - which of course I did - even though this meant getting back across the whole of Paris on the dreaded metro and spending the evening with a group of French people I didn't know and couldn't actually communicate with. The French friends turned out to be very pleasant and almost as bad at English as I was at French which - despite the almost complete lack of any meaningful interaction - made me feel much better about myself.

There was much friendly smiling and laughing at things which may or may not have been funny. Mr D started off by interpreting everything but after a few drinks the interpretation got less and less regular and I just pretended to myself that I could understand. This is easier than it sounds as when I can't understand what is being said in French my brain just fills in the gaps for me. At the start of the evening it generally made up relevant, in context type things which, although may not have been what was actually said, made sense to me and made me feel like I was part of the conversation. Unfortunately later on after an aperitif, a few glasses of wine, a couple of whiskeys and another cocktail - the contents of which remain a mystery - my brain was off in its own little world and I have a suspicion in hindsight that the conversation I heard for the last hour could have been entirely fictional.
The meal was in an appres ski style restaurant - all wooden and rustic. It also smelt really bad in a mouldy cheese type way - this is apparently a sign of a really good traditional restaurant. I remain unconvinced - surely any smell which makes you wretch cannot be good in a restaurant - traditional or otherwise. Having said that the food was lovely - if a bit odd. I had to cook my own pieces of steak in boiling red wine. It took me twice as long as everyone else to eat because being British I had to simmer my tiny steak pieces for about 20 minutes before I considered them ready to eat. The average French person steak -piece- cooking -time was about one minute.

The meal was followed by a number of after dinner drinks - which to me seemed to be pure ethanol but apparently did have some other ingredients. At some point during the ethanol drinking session me and Mr D had a kiss. It was a sort of 'oops, get us, we're so drunk we fell into each other and landed on each others lips, there was nothing else we could do' type kiss. A proper full on snog - which despite being completely hammered was great - the sort of kiss that comes with all the excitement of having been thinking about it for weeks before - as opposed to the one where you met the person 5 minutes before and when you kiss them you find yourself thinking about where to get chips on the way home and wishing you remembered to set the heating to come on.

Anyway to cut a long story short - and because its not that kind of blog - I went back to Mr D's house where I stayed.

A few days later we met up again and repeated the experience - not the smelly restaurant bit - just the getting hammered and me staying at his. When I say ' his' I actually mean his parents' house. I was mortified in the morning - a 36 year old woman waking up in someones' parents house after a one (or two) night stand. I tried to appear respectable (which was hard given the circumstances) and made polite conversation with his mother - whilst feeling like a right slag! His mother didn't seem to feel at all awkward - which made me wonder how often this happened.....