Chapter 4 - Northern Europe - Niki fulfilled

I just love shopping with Niki. She tries on everything. There are mountains of clothes outside the changing rooms and she makes me try on everything too. She tells me her opinion, but sometimes I disagree. She just shrugs her shoulders, no big deal. Totally different than shopping with Mom who won’t allow me to buy what she doesn’t like. Mom always buys me tons of clothes, but they are never things I like. Or that I think look good on me. The clothes I buy here are totally different than the clothes I have at home. Niki and I both felt a bit geeky in our wide legged jeans and platforms among the stove pipes and stilettos here. Paris is really progressive. I bought a pair of bright green high heels and can barely stand up in them let alone walk. I kind of dread Mom’s reaction to the new me, but I also kind of look forward to it.

Over a lunch of Croque Monsieur and an orange presse (really just a ham sandwich and an orange juice but it sounds so classy in French), I asked Niki about her parents’ jobs because they sound interesting. I’m starting to think about things like jobs more now that I’ve finished my first year of university and have to consider my future. Niki seems to know virtually nothing about what her parents really do. Nor care that she doesn’t know.

“Oh poo, they just go out and do things for people who they don’t even know or build things that don’t do anything really practical. Big deal. It’s not like they save lives or anything. Well, Mom does sometimes but not every day for crying out loud. What I want to know is what got your Mom into that cool job?”

“Singing for a funeral parlour? She says it was either that or the opera. And the stage is all very well to visit, but it’s not a very respectable profession. In her opinion anyway.”

“You go on the stage. What does she think of that?

“Hardly go on the stage! Playing in an amateur youth orchestra is not exactly the same thing, but if I ever wanted to take it up professionally or go into something like acting she’d probably freak out. I don’t know if it’s because she doesn’t want to see me act or if it’s because I don’t have enough talent to act well and then she’d be embarrassed seeing me up there in front of an audience.”

“How do you know? Why don’t you just do it? I would.”

“You forget who you are speaking to! You are a confident woman of today, but I am not. I couldn't possibly get up in front of a bunch of people and pretend. I'd be mortified, but my mom would be devastated!

“I think you make her out to be worse than she is. Ok so she kind of hovers around us and tries to get into our conversations. But she’s always nice about it, at least when I’m around.”

“That’s because you know the right things to say.”

Niki laughed. “I always know how to get around grown ups.”

I asked Niki about her brother. “Every time I see him he has a different girlfriend.”

“Oh him. He’s like you, in love with being in love. The minute he’s not, pfft, that’s it, he finds another girlie.”

“Maybe he hasn’t found ‘the one’ yet.”

“You don’t believe that garbage about there being just one person out there for each of us do you? Ye Gods and little fishes, it’s utter crap."

My romatic image was stung but I kept it to myself as Niki carried on. "Mom and Dad of course go all psycho-babble about why he always goes out with the same kind of girl.”

“Why? What do they think?”

Niki sounded like she was reciting some often heard and memorized book passage. “He has not truly matured as a person and that’s why he goes out with girlie girls who are always so much younger and stupider than him. He's a metaphor for their older brother or father and he’ll only find true happiness if he goes out with someone who was his intellectual equal. Mom's take is he finds it hard to live up to the example set by his 'brilliant' psychologist father and so goes out with girls who won’t challenge him or confront his imagined sense of masculine inadequacy.” Niki shrugged. “I think he’s just a guy who wants a lot of sex with a lot of girls. What’s wrong with that? Besides, who cares about brothers? Unless they bring home studly friends, what’s the point? You're lucky only having sisters.”

“Why do people always think it’s lucky to have something they don’t have, without knowing anything about it?”

“I’m tired of talking about my boring old brother. Go on, tell me about your sisters.”

“Well, we share the same mother.”

“No, I mean, what are they like?”

“Well, one’s like Lady Macbeth. The other, um, more like Medusa. But in a good way. We get on ok.”

She laughed. I always feel good making her laugh. Just then a group of guys came into the café, saw Niki and came to sit down at our table, sparing me more conversational bon-mots about my family. The guys were French and we started to chat with them. Well, Niki did. I tried, but I always get mixed up with my French verbs. It’s much easier to avoid making embarrassing mistakes by not saying anything at all. Niki doesn’t care, she just barrels along making tons of mistakes. I wish I was like her. After awhile she said we had to go, but not before we were asked out this evening. Niki was all excited about getting a date in Paris. Even though it was only 3 o’clock in the afternoon we went back to our place to get ready. I never realized how long it can take to get ready for a date! Niki is so much more experienced about these things. She did my makeup and put a whole lot more on than I usually do, but it did make me look older and more sophisticated.

At 7pm three guys showed up at our meeting place and we went to a club where we had a couple of drinks and a couple of dances. One of the guys asked if we liked Abba. Did we have a choice I wondered? It’s all we’ve heard anywhere since we arrived in Europe! I mean I do kind of like them, but I am getting a bit tired of hearing the same tunes. Niki said she prefers Rod Stewart. I’ve always been a fan of Joni Mitchell but none of the guys knew who that was. We went outside and walked around, sort of in couples even though there were five of us and I tried not to favour one guy or another so that no one would feel left out. I always feel sorry for the odd one out. Probably because it’s usually me. The most handsome one, Marcel, latched onto Niki. She has taken to talking English with a French accent, which I think sounds affected but no one else has said anything. “Come zis way. Ze river is so beautiful in ze moonlight.”

One of the others, Pierre, poured himself over me. He couldn’t speak any English, but I got the feeling he wasn’t too worried about speaking at all. It felt like he had a lot more than 2 hands. After awhile the other guy, Jean-Marc, just sort of wandered off. Niki and Marcel went to sit under a tree and Pierre and I sat under another tree. Pierre obviously wanted to do more than just kiss but this is not where or how I want to have sex for the first time. I thought I always wanted to try sex no matter what but now that the opportunity presents itself I realize I want to have it at a certain time and place and not just randomly with some guy I don't know. Besides, I don’t know what to do. Of course I can’t tell Niki I haven’t done it yet. Or anyone else. No one would believe me, or worse, they would believe me and snicker about it. Learning how to kiss is enough for me right now. Pierre and I kissed a lot. Even though the taste of his cigarette smoke was disgusting, I finally get what all the fuss about kissing is. His lips were soft and moist and we made a bit of a vacuum with soft sucking sounds, and my heart sort of jumped inside with excitement. I could feel a sort of ticklish, damp, warm feeling right down inside my deepest insides. Pierre kept saying “Je t’aime, je t’aime.” over and over. I said it too because it’s foreign and it didn’t feel like I was really saying “I love you”.

At about 1:00 in the morning Pierre walked me back to the pension. He pressed me up against the door to our room and I could feel a lump through his pants. It made me nervous and I wouldn’t let him in because I was afraid he wouldn’t leave so I kissed him one last time, really long and passionate with my tongue and everything and then quickly went inside and locked the door. Niki had given me the key because she wanted to stay out longer and I promised I’d listen out for her and let her in. When I got into the room, I was shocked to see the mascara on my eyes had smeared and my lips looked like I’d lost a fight with several ripe tomatoes. I looked like Alice Cooper! How embarrassing! Had Pierre seen me like that? Had Niki or Marcel? No one had said anything, but I was shocked and embarrassed. Maybe they were all outside right then laughing at me and how ridiculous I looked. And here I thought I was being sexy and sophisticated. I quickly washed it all off and turned out the light so I wouldn’t have to look at myself any more.

My heart kept beating fast as I lay in the dark and relived the evening in my mind. I could still feel the pressure of all those kisses and taste the smell of cigarettes and my face felt sort of rough, like it was sunburned. I guess it was from Pierre’s beard. My insides felt weird too, sort of restless, and uncomfortable, but in a way that also felt, well, interesting. Good interesting, not bad interesting. When I lay in bed and thought about Pierre, the good interesting feeling got bigger, then so huge I could hardly stand it. Like fireworks inside me going off in slow waves of heat. Terrible and wonderful. It lasted about a minute then slowly went away. I wondered if I could ask Niki about it without appearing totally ignorant. I feel like this whole sex thing is a mystery that I have only got little clues to work on.

It took a long time for my body to relax but once it did a wave of sleep started to wash over me. I tried to fend it off by planning tomorrow’s train route in my head, but I got confused and kept having to start over. I must have fallen asleep because I didn’t even hear Niki get back at 4:30am. She told me later that she had knocked as loudly as she dared, but when I didn’t answer she went down to the lobby and started to sleep on the chair there because there was no one around. A cleaner saw her and tried to throw her out, and she used all her language skills to convince the cleaner she was a guest but didn’t have a key. Niki can be very persuasive, and the cleaner finally let her in. It’s just as well that I didn’t wake up at that point because Niki was furious with me for falling asleep and might have used violence. At least that’s what she told me when we woke up this morning and talked over the evening. I was contrite and apologized over and over. I had no idea I was such a sound sleeper and promised it would never happen again and she could keep the key next time. She said she wasn’t as mad as she was last night and that she hadn’t realized she’d be out as late as she was.