Paris Day 15 - me talk pretty Sunday

My conversation date was even prettier than this Marc Younan building in the Villeman Gardens behind the monastery

The work hours flew today. The work I'm doing is comparatively easy although increasingly demoralizing as I read through the second draft. Part III is the oldest, longest and worst of the four parts of the novel. This is the advantage of putting the novel away to mold for 18 months - when you pull it out you really know what stinks.

Fixing it will be a bitch, but for now all I have to do is criticize, analyze and outline. Karenin could do this work in his sleep. I intend to get working on the hard part in my sleep, mulling intractable problems before bed and waking up to find beautiful solutions drooling peacefully at my side.

Relief from all of this came in the form of a conversation date with a 23-year-old Parisian named Marc whose photo had to be inaccurate - nobody is that good looking. Actually it was inaccurate for a different reason - he was even cuter in person. I had to wait five hours to discover this, as he was late to our two-thirty rendezvous and at two-fifty I gave up and exorcised my disappointment at the nearest boulangerie. I'm cell phone-free and loving it! By email we reset the date for after dinner, met at le Chat Noir in the Eleventh and spent at least six minutes speaking French - his English, learned from American TV, makes him sound like he was born and raised in Cleveland but maybe had some dental work two or three days ago. This devoted subject of the Empire seemed to think in American English - twice he had to struggle to remember how to say something in French, but not once in the language of Jerry Seinfeld. In any case it was painful to look at Marc for 90 minutes (think Ryan Philippe's much cuter younger brother), and while we left the door open for a second date I would feel guilty if anything developed with him. James specifically said I should find a Parisian boyfriend to help improve my French.

Sunday I see the judge around lunchtime, and will speak French whether I like it or not.