The Incident

Paris Tommy is just like American Tommy. He puts his hot pink long underwear on one leg at a time, puts on his rather tight jeans on top of said pink long johns one leg at a time, throws some product in his hair after donning his tight French sweater, and nonchalantly tosses a purse over his shoulder on the way out the door. On second thought, American Tommy is probably somewhere laughing at Paris Tommy, calling him effeminate and making jokes about the rigidity with which he may carry his wrists. I’ve come to terms with this, though, despite my original discomfort with the tight jeans and sweaters, they have gotten more comfortable and I have become quite a fan of carrying my purse (I upgraded purses a few weeks ago to this snazzy black purse [see below (parenthesis inside brackets inside parenthesis again!)] that is the ideal size for a small notebook, a book, plus all of the former inhabitants of my pockets – wallet, keys, change, metro card, etc.) and my hot pink long johns have aided my survival in the windy, rainy Parisian wintry wonderland. This systematic acclimatization to new social norms and the gradual abandoning of any concern for my “masculinity” proved fortunate given yesterday’s incident in the metro.

I hugged a stranger. It was an accident. It was mildly awkward. I’m not talking about a greeting or anything, I hugged the guy’s back. It all happened so fast, before I knew it my arms were wrapped entirely around this poor 65ish year old innocent bystander and my face was momentarily nestled in the middle of his upper back. It was brief, the man pretended not to notice, and several stops later we parted ways, him probably never to speak of the incident again and me to…well…share the encounter with the world wide web. How did this happen, you may ask?

Well, you see, I hypothesize that our metro conductor had consumed the better half of a bottle of vin rouge that morning for breakfast and was accelerating and braking at random intervals throughout our commute. Additionally, the car was packed as it tends to be whenever I am in a hurry. In my attempts to avoid landing on people during the driver’s frequent and abrupt changes in pace I was holding on to the pole in the middle of the car for dear life. Enter the man who would soon be hugged.

The man entered the car as the leader of a pack of roughly 40 people who all intended to share the same cubic foot of space available in the car. The man was shoved between myself and the pole in the space formerly occupied by my left arm. With his navel touching the pole my arm became bent and I began to lose my grip on the pole, necessitating that I change hands. Fearing a loss of balance due to our erratic driver, I did not want to let go of the pole with one hand before I had my other hand secured around it. Mind you, I did not consider the fact that the arm grasping the pole was also wrapped a little more than halfway around this rather large gentleman and that I would have to wrap my other arm around the remainder of his person in order to grasp the bar by way of his other side. Before I realized it, I was hugging him. I quickly grabbed the bar, released my left hand and was no longer hugging a stranger. I then forgot about the incident and went about my day, until I realized at lunch that I had actually hugged a stranger and that neither he nor I seemed the least bit fazed by it. It’s not like he tried to snatch my purse.

thanks for reading



Old Purse (left/gauche) and Snazzy New Purse (right/droite)