Françoise

I can smell it now in my imagination  - Channel #5 …and then I was back in Millville and it was the first week of my senior year at Millville Memorial…

Thankfully, football camp was over on Labor Day and we had one day of rest.  My sore muscles had sore muscles.  Camp was always hot, tough and those who never played the game will never understand the sacrifice it takes to play it well.

We “hazed” the freshmen as they arrived (Freshman Dazes would not happen today – as for some reason making newbies sing an alma mater has been found to harmful and this could lead to anxiety, insomnia and dandruff in later life.)  I kept my eye out for a couple of South Millville kids to torment – I had been waiting three years for this and it pure and innocent fun for all.

Several days in as I walked to class I spied a gaggle of girls who were having a very animated chat filled with “Oh no, you got to be kidding” and then giggles echoed through the hallowed halls of learning.  I saw Barbara, an art class buddy, “Hey what’s up?  I asked quietly.

She whispered that the whole school was talking about the French Exchange Student, Francoise who was genuinely from Paris.  She had just finished her first gym class and her classmates were “agog completely agog” as Babs said.

Why?  I intelligently responded.

It seems that Fran actually took a shower, walked to her locker naked and the most shocking fact of all – her underwear (what there was of it!) was absolutely see-through all black lacey stuff.

“Yikes” was all I could muster as a French postcard photo danced in my grey cells.

Later that day I saw her outside room 215 history class.  She was tall.  Looked so much older than the girls she was talking with (with that great accent I had only heard till now in the movies).  And she smelled great.  

This was a woman among little girls.  And they flocked around her as if she were a mother hen tending to adoring chicks.

As fate would have it or just blind luck, Gus announced after football practice that he was having a “Going Back to School Party” at his Union Lake house.  Gus celebrated almost everything with a party – Arbor Day, National Cupcake Day – it didn’t matter and usually at least 40+ arrived at his summer home on Saturday sundowns – all hoping that someone, somehow had copped a half keg, or even a pint of something evil.

I arrived fashionably late – and the party was at full bore.  

Laughter, cigarette smoke (produced by the non-athletes of course) drifted from the ancient cottage on the lakefront.  I made my entrance and took my place with my closest friends on the front porch and began to regale them with my never ending nightclub standup act of one-liners.

After an hour of this “fun” and one sip of someone’s flat beer – the party quieted as couples drifted off into the surrounding pines for some more intimate communication.  Bub and Ellen left me alone on the porch.  

And then it happen.

Francoise had come alone after all and she slinked (she did not walk, she slinked) out on the porch, trailing a haze of real French perfume, not Avon's.  She saw me and said, “Why bonsoir Cal Veen – I know of you, and is nice to make your acquaintance…would you care for a cigarette?”  She removed a pack of Gauloise Rouge from her pocket (the French cigarette that I would later try and would find tasted like horse manure, but that’s another tale)

I said, “No thanks but merci,” using my best Boyer impersonation and one of the only French words I knew.  Francoise laughed gently, “Oh bon you speak French!”

“No afraid not, but I did have two years of Latin,” I dumbly mumbled.  

Frankly, she held me in a spellbound state…I for once was actually speechless. After a few minutes of one-sided small talk and me bobbing my head,  

she said, “Woid you like to take a valk vid me?” spoken in a way that sounded like the rustle of bedsheets to my racing Id.  My heart rebed up to double time.

“Me?” I croaked like one of the lake frogs.

“Of course YOU”, she said and took my hand.  Immediately I thought this can’t be happening.  I must be dreaming.  Did someone spike the beer. (No “roofies” were not of my generation - so relax) 

  And so I walked along the beach with her and we talked in the light of a very romantic moon over the lake's romantic waters.  Suddenly she stopped.  “Calvin, I miss Paris…I miss my home…my boyfriend…I miss…."

She then kissed me, fully on the lips - I almost fainted right there in the water’s edge.  With tears in her eyes she smiled at me,  pulled back and ran back to the party.

I sat down on a soft bed of pine needles, stunned.  

I learned two things that night that would last a lifetime.  One, what it was like to kiss a real woman.  And two, that the French really do kiss that way!

Fran left school a few weeks later and returned to Paris - I never did talk to her again after our brief rendezvous  – but I never forgot out walk or the scent of Channel.

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