Initials, initials, initials wtf????

You know something about girls from the north of France? They're fucking insane. I still have good friends from those years in Paris I was writing about last week. Only one of them, recently, has been a real live northern French girl. Maybe I was phenomenally unlucky in who I got to know, but they're so high maintenance – they give new fucking meaning to the term. Even the hippies, even the career women, even the academics. Jealous, obsessive, bitter, needy – and that's to other women.

When it comes to men, it's that times infinity, and I've seen them note what sort of credit cards their prospective mates use in the same the way mentally healthy women note how pert his ass is or how kind he is. There's a reason even fucking ugly men from the north of France manage to pull beautiful tourists so consistently; they're trained to be so browbeaten and miserable by their women that when a halfway normal chick comes into their lives it's like they're born again. And being the cause of someone's renaissance is irresistible, of course. I have no doubt that's why they fuck around like sparrows - must be a perpetual, desperate instinct that there's a relationship less soul-crushing out there. It's an unhealthy societal gender dynamic altogether, like so many societal gender dynamics are, but northern France is the only society wherein I blame the women.

Anyways, the worst thing about chicks from northern France is that when you have a quarrel, they accept your apology when you haven't made one. I hate that. There's nothing better calculated to get my goat that doesn't involve stabbing me or otherwise threatening my life. That's on my mind today because the last northern France girlfriend just bit the dust, because she just accepted an apology I didn't make.

This one is still a bit raw, and stupid into the bargain, so instead I'll tell you the story of the end of the affair with the second last one, which is old enough now to feel more anecdotal than personal. This was years ago, when I was still with Bluebird. One night in Paris she and I went to a club alone, because Bluebird wasn't into dancing but I was, in those days. She'd told me it was jungle-y, but it wasn't, it was a fucking top 40 meatmarket. I hadn't been totally unsuspecting it because she was a bit of a cougar, so fine. She found a pair of men who claimed to be a professional tennis player and his trainer or coach or whatever you call them, and tossed me the player while she ground up against the trainer. So I danced with him, and when he started rubbing his cock against me I stopped, and when he followed me off the floor, kept rubbing his cock against me and stuck his tongue into my mouth, I told him to leave me alone, I was going home alone that night.

Fine, right? Or at least I thought so. That's the nature of a top 40 meatmarket. That's why I don't go to top 40 meatmarkets except when my cougar friends need moral support. The men there are gross and horny, and you have to be brusque to make them leave you alone from time to time. But Tennis flipped out and rushed over to his trainer or coach or whatever bullshit they'd invented and wanted to leave. Carried on a bit, apparently. I didn't notice, because the club started up a Jackson 5 half-hour and I was dancing my arse off with the first real live black man from Virginia I'd ever met; a big thrill for a young girl from northern Canada. My cougar friend came over, shook me, and asked what I'd said to make Tennis freak out. I told her, and she got pissed and told me to apologize to him; I thought she'd lost her mind, so I shrugged and kept dancing with the real live black man from Virginia. A few minutes later she plucked me away whilst he was telling me exciting tales of his business dealings in Japan in that beautiful accent, maybe the most beautiful accent in English. 'Come on,' she said, 'I got us a drive home.' It was Tennis and his trainer. Uncomfortable. But I was British about it and made them drop me off close to my flat.

So the next day she called and started yelling about my bad manners in being so rude to poor Tennis, and I hung up on her. Mature? No. But it seemed like the best thing to do at the time as anything I would have had to say would have been nasty. The incident was the last straw, as far as I was concerned, after a bunch of other episodes like calling me at four in the morning from her ex-boyfriend's driveway and telling me to get over there so I could confront him with her about what an asshole he was (a call I could have accepted much more easily if she hadn't been sober as a fucking judge at the time) and repeatedly trying to get me to fuck other people behind Bluebird's back whilst talking shit about him - okay, since then I've talked my share of shit about Bluebird, but I still think she was unfair to him, and I didn't get why she was so anxious to start me cheating on him, it seemed creepy - so I didn't call back. And I didn't take her calls, either. Mature? No. But again, it seemed like a better option than explaining to her what a big loser I thought she was.

Anyways, after a few days I'd cooled down, and she invited me over for dinner, and I went, and she said lots of lovely things about what great friends we were, and we were having a jolly time, and then she said she'd accepted my apology for all that had happened because she understood I was from a different social class and hadn't had the same education she'd had. That sewed it up, of course. I left and never talked to her again. Although the bizarre thing is that she told mutual friends I had. And not in an angry way, either. She'd tell them about whole friendly conversations we'd been having about absolutely random subjects. It was strange.

So that's the story of the second-last one. I've often felt sort of bad I just got real quiet on her. And she's not the only one I got real quiet on. There's a small trail of women from the north of France who I got real quiet on. If northern French women are dastardly bitches courtesy of the horrible things they say, caker women like me are dastardly bitches courtesy of our way of going real quiet.

It's a difficult bad feeling, because I'm not exactly sorry. I didn't want to spend any more time with them, I didn't want to talk to them anymore, I don't miss them, and I don't know if it's my pride or my fondness for order in the time/space continuum of the universe or both that would make it difficult for me to apologize to them for going all quiet when they've already accepted my apologies that I hadn't made yet, especially when all I'm sorry for is going real quiet, and not when I'm sorry that I don't talk to them anymore; and I wouldn't really like to talk to them anymore, except for a brief conversation about how I'm sorry for having gone real quiet. You see? The implication of all this being, with this final northern French girlfriend, I will not go real quiet. I'll tell her what the problem is. As bleedingly obvious as it seems. And then I'll go real quiet.