Monday, March 1, 2010

I was strapped to a chair, wearing a sort of Lone Ranger mask with wires attached to the throats of people sitting around me. One by one these people were injected with a truth serum that compelled them to express their deepest fears. Their lips moved, but their words came out of my mouth, and I felt their fears as if they were my own.

And then I found myself in France, walking down an esplanade with a pretty, self-contained Dutch girl, a taciturn Spaniard, and a pudgy, swarthy, curly-haired young man who spoke both French and English fluently. This last handed me a pair of underwear like blue terrycloth Speedos. "Ceci sont de rigueurs pour les hommes en France," he said. Apparently my companions were expecting me to drop my pants and don these outré Gallic briefs right in front of them. I tried to explain that I don't wear underwear--that, comme beaucoup des types Américains, I schlepp around in jeans much of the time, allowing my junk to flounce untrammeled inside them--but the French equivalents of some of these words escaped me, so I appealed to the pudgy one for help. He'd been my go-to guy whenever my French had failed me. On this occasion, however, he refused to oblige. He just regarded me with cool amusement as I mumbled, "Mon membre... les bijoux de ma famille..."

No comments: