Rasmenia

I hate flying. When I was a kid, I traveled by plane often, as many children of divorced parents do. Back then, it was a fun & exciting adventure. Because I was a wee one traveling alone, I received special attention. The flight attendant would bring me a little plastic pin with wings on it. “A gift from the captain,” they’d say.

I’d read my books & listen to my Walkman. The person sitting next to me was always nice. Or, at least quiet & polite.

Over time, things changed. I got bigger. My legs grew longer. My patience, shorter.

I take more international flights now. The airlines have changed, too. Now there’s a lot more seats crammed into a single airplane in order to squeeze more money out of every flight.

Flying anywhere — even a 2 or 3-hour flight — has become a fucking ordeal that one must survive, rather than a fun & exciting adventure. It’s no longer the happy beginning of a vacation to a new & exotic place. It’s a goddamn penance that must be paid for having the audacity to leave your home.

That’s without getting into the bullshit about customs, body scans, TSA & the inquisition of foreigners in the U.S., which I won’t get into here.

Most of my flights going back & forth between France & the U.S. have been a headache. Once, a crazy lady sitting next to me on a flight to Paris instantly poured out her life story to me & Olivier. It got to the point where we started speaking French to one another as a civil way of asking her to shut the hell up.

On another flight to Paris, the woman behind me got out of her seat & started shrieking at me in irrational hillbilly-speak, causing a scene on the plane, while her husband was scolded by the flight attendant for referring to the attendants as “honey.”

There was also the little old French lady who fell asleep on me on a flight to Paris, but she was nice to me, so I let her sleep.

All of these things were quite pleasant compared to our recent Air Europa experience.

About a month ago, Olivier & I, along with a couple of his coworkers met up at Orly airport in Paris for a flight to Buenos Aires with a stop in Madrid. We knew it would be long, but we planned ahead with snacks, gadgets & books.

Like any flight, we had to bum around the airport for a few hours before boarding. Lucky us. While waiting for our boarding time, who should walk by right in front of us with a couple of police officers but former French Presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen.

She strolled by, smoking a cigarette. Yes. Smoking a cigarette. In the airport. Because of course, the law doesn’t apply to everyone.

Paris to Madrid went smoothly. It was about 10pm in Madrid when we arrived, so the place was mostly deserted. Our flight was delayed, so we ate potato chips & Oreos as we marveled at the long line of passengers waiting to board the flight. Dozens of passengers who were using fucking trolleys for their carry-on luggage. No, I’m serious. They had too much carry-on luggage to carry.

Olivier & I, each with a single backpack, were stunned.

A little after midnight, we finally boarded our flight to Buenos Aires.

We got to our seats, which unfortunately, were located in that shitty middle section of the plane on a full flight. Immediately, I discovered that the guy next to me had already been discarding trash, blankets & pillows on my seat, leaving me with a pile of shit to deal with before I could sit down. Once seated, the douchenozzle in front of me reclined his seat. Sure, sure… you’re allowed to do that during certain times of the flight — usually once the fasten seat belt light has gone off. Reclining before take off, during the meal, or not putting your seat back up before landing is dickish. If I were boss of everything, they would never recline at all.

Of course, none of the Air Europa flight attendants seemed to be too concerned with safety regarding seat back position, or people’s garbage & bullshit cluttering up the aisles.

Not to mention the fact that Air Europa has the smallest seating area of any plane I’ve even been in. I’m 5’7″. My knees were touching the back of the seat in front of me before it reclined. Once reclined, I had about 6 inches between my face & the seat in front of me.

The trash dumper next to me was encroaching. I became enraged. Claustrophobic. Olivier switched places with me, being much larger & much better at counter-encroachment. He won the turf war, but we discovered that Trash Dumper was also a nose picker who liked to chew gum with his mouth open. I don’t know him, but I hate him.

So, I’m in my new seat. In front of me, the seat reclines. I don’t want to lean back. It’s uncomfortable to me. But I have to, in order to get this greasy, bald scalp out of my face. I turn in my seat, giving the polite, “I’m gonna lean back now” look, then slowly put my seat back… & the douchenozzle behind me tells me, “no” I can’t do that.

Seriously… fuck these people.

After 2 weeks in Argentina — which I’ll get to later — it was time to fly back to France via Madrid. I began dreading it about 2 days before we left Argentina. Incredibly, the flight & cast of characters we encountered on the way home was even worse:

- A couple at the airport in Buenos Aires, pushing & shoving to the front of the check-in line. “We have a passport problem,” they said. Really? So why wasn’t an airline employee assisting them, rather than letting them piss people off at baggage check-in?

- The couple to our right on the airplane, wiping the little plastic dishes from their meal with their tiny napkins, shoving them into her purse. They cleaned all the plastic cutlery & took that, too. And she kept stretching her legs out, putting her feet on every chair they could reach.

- The lady sitting to our left who kept crying, bouncing around hysterically, opening several boxes of creams, perfumes & bullshit, rubbing them all over herself, stinking up the plane & tossing the empty boxes everywhere. Oh, yeah… then she blew her nose & collected her snotty rags on her tray table.

- Whoever shit all over the toilet seat in the airplane lavatory.

- Whoever pissed on the floor in the airplane lavatory.

- The dozen people who were having some kind of party, drinking yerba mate in the aisles, being loud, sitting on other people’s armrests while they were trying to sleep & preventing anyone from going to shit all over the toilet seat.

Yes, it’s delicious, but no excuse to be a tool.

- The chick in front of me who kept reaching back & hanging her hands behind her head so that they dangled in front of me, covering the little movie screen that was too close to my face when I was trying to watch The Words, forcing me to flick her fingers out of my face.

- The weird & very large lady sitting in front of Olivier who decided to stand next to my seat, her body oozing into my tiny bubble of personal space, hovering close enough for me to smell her weird large lady scent, leaning one hand on my headrest & the other hand on my fucking movie screen while I was trying to watch The Words.

Bradley Cooper is terribly overrated, but I prefer him to the hands of weird, rude strangers.

When we caught our sunrise Madrid-Paris flight, I thought I’d finally get an hour or two of sleep. Wrong. We were sitting right in front of the shrieking, seat-kicking kid whose parents did nothing except attempt to placate their howling larva with loud, musical toys.

And I didn’t even mention how the baggage handlers like to go through the side pockets in your luggage to steal shit.

Luckily, the two weeks we spent in Argentina were nothing like the flight there & back. Quite the opposite. But, like I said, I’ll get to that. This is enough for one day.

You have two ways to know right away if someone is an asshole; two infallible personality tests that can tell you right off what kind of a person another human being is.

The first one, as you already are aware, is how they treat the waitstaff in a restaurant.

The second is how they behave on a plane. If they respect personal space, use some common courtesy & have a modicum of common decency, they’re all right. There’s still a chance that they’re shitting on the toilet seat when no one’s looking, but, hey… at least they don’t interrupt the movie.

Before I even get started, let me warn you that if you get squeamish when it comes to chatter about doctors poking around in lady bits, then this post will not interest, amuse or inform you in any way. You’ll likely be too preoccupied with all of your squeamishing to to focus on reading, so… off you go while the rest of us talk.

Like a great many people, I’ve never cared much for going to the doctor. Any doctor. For anything. I’m not afraid of doctors, but in the past, I usually had to feel as though I were at risk of coughing up my aorta, or maybe shitting out a spleen or several yards of intestines. Even when I had broken bones, I was reluctant. I didn’t mind carrying my broken wrist with my good arm if the alternative was sitting in the emergency room. A busted eye socket… well, I didn’t even go to the hospital. Luckily, I didn’t end up paying for my stubbornness with a weird, crooked face.

Admittedly, a weird, crooked face can be quite endearing.

As I got older, I realized this is fucking stupid. I had a good job with fairly decent medical insurance, so it made sense to take better care of myself. At least as much as my insurance would let me.

But that was nothing compared to the socialized medicine in France. With socialized medicine, there is no reason whatsoever not to see a doctor when something hurts, snaps, makes weird noises, or when you have demon possession vomit & rapid-fire machine gun poo.

My first doctor visit in France was in Paris. I didn’t speak any French at all, so like most English-speaking expats, I found an Anglophone doctor. She was British, I’m American, so we could chat about those French quirks that only Anglophones find amusing or irritating. Communication wasn’t a problem & she seemed nice enough, so I decided that she was worthy of poking around at my body & my lady bits with cold, metal tools.

“Alright, then. Go on and drop your trousers,” she said.

“Um… right here? Now?”

“Yep.” She laughed. “Go on, then.”

Wait a minute. What was this shit? Where was the nice assistant in the lab coat to lead me into a small room with a paper-covered table? Where was the 5 to 10 minutes of alone time for me to strip down & where in the hell was my giant sheet of tissue paper to cover my nakedness?

After a mild jibe about my American modesty, British doc had me on display on her table.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, “I’m out of swabs. I’ll have to make due with something else.” I watched her come at me with a tongue depressor. I’d like to say that she vanished from sight, but since I didn’t have that nice barrier of tissue paper, she had nothing to vanish behind, leaving me with a front-row seat to my pelvic exam. After a brief moment of scraping my insides with a stick, she popped her head up & said, “Sorry ’bout that! The bleeding should stop by tomorrow.”

What. The. Fuck.

I got dressed, got my shit together & a few minutes later, I was sitting across from her at her desk again. We were in the middle of the usual post-exam small talk when she suddenly stood up, turned off all the lights in the office & said that I would have to go, as she had a party to get to & didn’t want to be late.

Yes. She kicked me out of her office.

Okay, so that was only one doctor. I decided that day to find a new general practitioner with an ample supply of cotton swabs.

Or one that looked like this. Whichever I could find first.

However, with the free health care, I found myself going to the doctor for every ache, pain, sniffle, snuffle or discomfort. I began to feel like a hypochondriac, even though I’ve never been like that at all. And with free healthcare, you don’t see your regular doctor for everything. Migraines? Here’s a note. Go see a neurologist. Allergies? Okay, here. Go tell it to the allergy specialist. Oh, you wear glasses? Go see the opthamologist. All of this has made it possible for me to get acquainted with all sorts of colorful characters from the French medical profession.

Like the crazy dermatologist in Paris who screamed at people on the phone, snapped at my husband repeatedly, then was soft-spoken & kind to me when no one else was around.

There was also the nurse at the pathology lab who scolded me repeatedly because I peeked under the wad of cotton on the inside of my elbow after having some blood drawn for a routine blood test.

Most recently, it was the dentist who splatters my face with water & my own saliva so much that I always make sure to wear my glasses to our visits, just for the eye protection.

Is this to say that all French doctors are crazy? No. But, there are differences. The appearances aren’t the same. I haven’t seen a lot of those white smocks & lab coat looking get-ups. The environment in their offices & waiting rooms isn’t as sterile, or reeking of pine cleaner. And yes, their bedside manner is different. Absolutely. Even the ones who seemed batshit crazy ultimately solved my problem – quickly & efficiently, without insisting on more tests, visits & procedures. They’ve all seemed to really know their shit, so if they are insane, it seems to work.

The only disappointment I’ve had with any doctor in France has been with the Anglophone doctors. I hate to say it, but that’s been my personal experience. I’ve been to one other since the tongue depressor incident – an American opthamologist in Paris. Both of these docs overcharged, made me feel like a number & didn’t solve my problem.

So, I gave up on that. Now it’s all small-town French doctors for me.

It’s been a few years since I was splayed out on that English doctor’s table in Paris, so recently, I had to go in for my routine examination – with my new, small-town French doctor. I talked with her using my ridiculous imitation of the French language as I watched her remove the metal stirrups from a cluttered storage closet, then fasten them to her examination table.

By now, I’ve abandoned my American modesty at the doctor’s office. I’ve given up hope of ever getting another sheet of tissue paper. Now I just drop trou & hop up on the table.

“Okay,” she says. “You make a fist.”

“A fist? Like this?” I hold up my fist. Until now, I’ve never been told to make a fist in the middle of a pelvic exam. I briefly wonder if this is some European, turn-your-head-and-cough sort of thing for ladies.

“Oui.” She nods. “Now you put it under your butt.”

Oh. Of course.

So, there I was, propping up my ass with my fist, sans tissue paper, thinking that no matter how fucking bizarre this might feel, at least she knows her shit. At least I’ve got excellent medical coverage & she has a plentiful supply of cotton swabs.

Wave a hand full of these in my face & I’ll love you forever.

If you’ve ever suffered through any humiliation or ridiculous incidents at the doctor’s office, please feel free to share. We’ll only laugh at you a little bit – mostly we’ll be laughing with you.

Mostly.

I live in France. I don’t live in Paris. I used to live in Paris.

People sometimes ask me about something going on in Paris. I can only answer with, “Um… I don’t really know the details about that. I don’t live in Paris.”

Occasionally, I’ll be asked, “So, how’re things in Paris?”

“Well, fine as far as I know. But, I can only guess because… I don’t live in Paris.”

A little over 6 years ago, I stepped off a plane at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Olivier was still my husband-to-be & I was not yet Madame Massoud. He fetched me & my Cat at the airport, along with all the possessions I could bring along with me.

He took us home, to his apartment in Montmartre. All of you who are either already familiar with the area, or who are Francophile Amelie geeks, know that Montmartre is located in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. For the rest of you, here’s a nice picture:

The three of us lived there, smooshed together in that tiny one bedroom 4th floor apartment, for just over 2 years. Somehow, we managed to get out of there without assaulting our rude & noisy neighbors with a lance. (Shut up. I could have a lance. You don’t know.) We survived the smog, the noise, daily treks across the city in the métro & being able to look directly into other people’s apartments.

Proof that all Paris apartments do not have a view of the Eiffel Tower.

Then, at the beginning of 2008, we moved. We stopped living in Paris.

Where we went: Sucy-en-Brie.

Okay, so it’s not too far from Paris. It’s about 10.5 miles away from Paris. 17 kilometers if you’re a metric speaker. Then again, you can’t get anywhere in France by moving in a straight line, so those 10 miles end up being a lot longer than one might think. After taking a bus to the train station for about 10 minutes or so, I then jumped on a train & after a total of 30-40 minutes, I was in Paris. Once I arrived in the city, I then needed to take the métro to reach my final destination.

So… for a little more than 3 years, we enjoyed our place in an apartment complex situated in the quieter, calmer suburbs of Paris. We still had smog, though a bit less of it. We still had noise, though it was different noise with less obnoxious sounds & fewer blaring car horns. We had better neighbors & a bit more space to move about in.

During our time in Sucy-en-Brie, when I’d mention that we were going out to eat, a common response was, “Wow, Paris has so many great restaurants.”

“Indeed. They do. But we’re not in Paris. We’re just eating somewhere nearby.”

“What? What’s the difference?”

“Nevermind.”

While we lived close enough to get to Paris on a whim, we did not live in Paris.

The suburbs were pretty nice. We had everything we needed, but we began to outgrow our apartment. Our nicer, quieter neighbors eventually got just as irritating as the obnoxious & loud ones we had before. We wanted to get a dog, but had no yard, only a small balcony up on the 3rd floor.

But any balcony is a great place for having booze & snacks.

We decided it was time to do that thing that grown ups sometimes do. We bought a house.

We ventured out of the suburbs & all the way to the French countryside. To put it in American terms, it’s sort of like we moved to another county. Lower prices. Different scenery & architecture. I had to get a new carte de séjour made, much like one would have to do with their driver’s license in the U.S. when they relocate to a new state or county.

True enough, Paris is close enough that we can get there easily by car or train.

But, this takes us a while. We have to REALLY want to go to Paris. No shit. We once sat in traffic for 3 fucking hours trying to get into the city on a Sunday afternoon.

Some things are consistent no matter where I live in this country. I have plenty of wine, the scent that wafts from the cheese in my kitchen reeks with the stench of a warm pile of sweaty socks. I have great health care. The natives shrug & make a fart sound with their mouths when I ask questions instead of providing a real answer. Everywhere I look around me, it’s as French as French can get.

But, it’s not Paris. That’s a place 50 miles away. A place where I lived 4 years ago. And in so many ways, another planet compared to where I now sit.

Gone are the noisy neighbors that are an expected part of apartment living in a big city. They’ve been replaced by the quiet countryside neighbors who smile, wave & invite us over for a coffee & a chat. The honking horns & smog are miles away. Now it’s all birds, squirrels & blue skies.

We definitely do not live in Paris.

In Paris, squirrels do not come knocking at the front door.

Now, when we’re meeting the locals, they spot me as a foreigner as soon as I open my mouth & reveal my terrible accent. Like anyone would do, they ask me where I’m from.

“I’m American. From Colorado.”

“Eh? Colorado? Where is that?”

“The West,” I say. “The Rocky Mountains.”

“Oh. I have a cousin in San Francisco.”

“I’ve heard San Francisco is very nice. I’ve never been there.”

This is where they look at me like I’ve just barfed up a live toad.

“What? Well… what’s the difference?”

So, like the natives, I shrug & make a fart noise with my mouth. Because I live in France.