This was too good to not write about.

So my first Friday back I decided I would go to the bar/tabac and get a drink. I had a beautiful day outside and even though I was wiped, I thought it was important that I shove myself out into the community in an effort to connect. I really wanted to get in my jammies, eat my cheese pizza, and binge Emily in Paris, but I reasoned I could still do that after a bit of socializing.

I’ve been to the bar before and never really felt like I fit in. People were nice and polite but I was just observer always sitting at the edge. This night when I walked in, I was determined to join. I was enthusiastically greeted by the owner, Laurent who remembered me. I joined four men at the bar who were sitting sipping their beers and sharing their week’s stories. I hate beer so when Laurent asked me what I wanted I pointed to the Jim Beam. This isn’t the kind of bar that makes cocktails, so I ordered up a shot and was amazed when he offered to put it on ice for me. This is so rare in France and just about unknown in rural France. Laurent ultimately brought me a juice glass with whiskey and two neon colored plastic ice gel coolers he pulled from somewhere in the back. Cheers!

And “cheers” is what I said to the man sitting next to me. He was about decade older than me and had bright blue eyes. He had a helmet sitting on the seat next to me so I assumed he was riding some motorized bike. In French, we exchanged pleasantries. I told him I could only speak “a little French” but he kept smiling and putting his thumb up to indicate he was following. He showed be a photo of his grown children, told me he lived in Vitre, and then stumbled a bit. He also insisted on buying me a second drink which I demurely refused and finally after much insistence, agreed to.

I think if I hadn’t been concentrating so closely on my French I probably would have more quickly noticed that this guy was wasted. Fall down, unconscious, piss-yourself, wasted. Instead, the friendly American enthusiastically initiated a conversation with the wrong person. He wrote down his phone number on a lotto ticket and handed it to me, pantomiming I should call him. I thanked him but told him, “no”. I explained, ” J’adore mon marie” (love my husband) and he just kept smiling with his thumbs up sign. It was at this point that I noticed he was drooling. A lot.

Laurent and the other men in the bar gave me sympathetic looks. At one point Laurent told this customer (who he had never seen before), that I was nice and married and should be left alone. When the drunk man wandered outside for a cigarette, Laurent apologized and they moved his stool further away from me. When he came back undeterred, Laurent said several times, “Non” and told the man not to touch my arm. He then cut the man off from beer which eventually sent him on his way.

Right before he left, he took the slip of paper with his telephone number on it and folded it into an incredibly small triangle. He pushed it at me and smiled as if to say, making the note smaller might somehow make it less inappropriate. I left it on the bar and thanked him for the drink.

After he was gone, the other men and I actually starting talking in my broken French and with their kind ears. They asked me where I was from and I why I lived here. They giggled about the man and we all wondered to each other how in the hell he was ever going to make it to Vitré on a scooter. One of the men told that the drunk man would have to nap first or he wouldn’t see the outside of St. Denis. When new patrons arrived, I was introduced and the story of my drunken motor bike friend was shared with them. For the first time, I felt like I was a part of something at the bar -tragic as it may have been. I stuck my neck out and really tried to speak French and for the most part it worked. Laurent gave me a big hug goodbye before I left, and glided home a bit buzzed feeling like I had finally been a character in the story of this place.