Charming, My Dear

Once upon a time I was pretty damn useless with women … 

Actually, I’m still quite hopeless. 

I don’t know, everything always just gets real fucked, real quick. The vacillation between coquette and crazy, which is (I’ll never rationalise why) one of the main attractions of the gentler sex, has forever been a shitty mystery to me. One I’ll never be able to solve.

It’s confusing. 

It pisses me off, but at the same time hurts so good, you know? 

In an attempt to remedy all this, I came to Paris. If I can’t fall in love here, then I’m fucked. I may as well fling myself into the Seine – but as that other crazy, serendipitous bitch, Fate, would have it, love has me flinging myself into the English Channel instead. 

I can see you’re confused … Let me attempt to elucidate. 

I need an out! I need to get out, fall back away, and out from love and everything it had done to me. You can’t ask my why. This little rabbit just needed to run is all.

I grew up with Disney and I know now it’s all bullshit. These animations weren’t just escapism for me as a child, more than that, they were the building blocks of my morality. I was raised to believe that I was Prince Charming and I needed to crawl through the belly of the beast to find myself a Snow White, or a Belle. Pocahontas to Mulan; I knew I needed a princess. I didn’t care who. I was prepared to go to Arabia and face the evil Jafar to take my girl Jasmine on a magic carpet ride. I would have let her rub my magic lantern to meet my genie, if you know what I mean? I’d practice holding my breath in the bathtub in case I needed to swim down and snog Ariel. 

Cartoons had me prepared to go the distance to get the girl. I mean shit; at the end of Beauty and the Beast even Lumiere got his wick lit. And I heard one of these French bastards say to me (not too long ago) that love is friendship set on fire. I realise, too late, that he was completely correct, because that’s what it is – it’s a fire. It’ll mess you up. Once you’re ablaze then you’re as good as dead. 

I wanted it all so bad, but I never had any true patience for this romantic nonsense. I went to an all-boys school, so it was a stupid idea to try and wrestle with a love-lion when I hadn’t even petted a kitty before, if you catch my drift? 

There’s a pussy joke in there somewhere, but I’m way beyond that now, because I’m trying to tell you something. I’m trying to explain to you that French women, these love-lions, are a terrible idea. They’ll tear you to ribbons, because there is no endgame. It goes on forever. 

I thought it was the end, but ‘happily ever after …’, that’s only the beginning, and all I’m ever after is a happy ending. 

Don’t do it, I say!

Unless you want to be married until you die, you should stay well away from these girls. They take all that ‘better or worse’ and ‘sickness and health’ shit as seriously as I took my vows with a grain of salt. I see you shaking your head, but hey, you can’t blame me. The marriage certificate and the ceremony were all in another language, and all I know how to do in the lingua franca is ask for a ménage à trois, which I won’t ever get to ask for now, because I’m fucking married!

I’m in Paris for three months. I’m young and equal parts horny and hungry – of course I’m going to wed the first coquette who whispers her voulez-vous into my ear. What the hell else was I supposed to do? 

She was a Lady, and I wanted her to do something with me, this Tramp. 

We ran down to the town hall and signed the papers without second thought, because the building looked a little like a castle and she looked a little like Cinderella.

I met her on Tinder, she was my Tinderella. 

By midnight she had lost her shoe … though she was drunk, so maybe that doesn’t count.

It’s her fault if you think about it, really. I don’t know why she said yes. I mean I’m not a Frenchman, what’s her excuse? I was infatuated. I don’t know why she fell for me. 

Maybe she’s just a fool for love? 

Well she’s my fool now. My dear. 

Her name is Maïder, pronounced my dear – or at least she lets me pronounce it this way. These are the concessions married couples make. 

She’s Maïder, she’s my dear, and I’m her fool. And foolishly she straightaway told her parents about our contractual obligation to love, honour and obey each other until sweet lady death gives one of us a big old smooch. 

She wanted to show me off to her family. She wanted them to hear me speak and thereby prove I wasn’t a fellow countryman in disguise. 

Or worse: an Englishman.

So up we went, up to Calais, where her family lived. It’s on the coast, and on a clear day you can see Britain, if you squint. I suppose they moved there to keep a better eye on the British. But, it was a clear day when we arrived, and I was squinting all the way over at England and I got to thinking – Christ! I could truly see myself spending the rest of my life with this woman. 

The rest of my life! You realise what that means?

Maybe it was because I was staring that expansive body of water, but all at once, and much too completely, I realised the totality of what I’d done in taking this woman as my lawful wedded wife.

As soon as we got to her parents’ house I was on the Wi-Fi checking Ryan Air for cheap flights over to London. Hell, I was even checking flights to Manchester because I was well past the point of caring. I was willing to fly anywhere; I didn’t give a fuck anymore. 

Maïder busted me, naturally – well, I told her about my plans to run away, because I’m a married man and I now have to share everything I do with my dear sweet wife. 

She responded exactly as I expected her to: by charging into the kitchen with my passport and burning it over the gas flame on the stove. As I said, I’m a married man now and I share everything with my wife, even my papers.

No planes for me then. 

I discovered her father works at the ferry terminal. He quite literally guards the crossing over to Dover. She told him what I was scheming, and the sonofabitch took a screenshot of our wedding selfie off of Instagram.

Instagram I hear you gasp. 

Well, shit guys, I’m not made of money, and I’m certainly not paying for a photographer when I have a perfectly good camera on my phone, thank you all to hell.

Regardless. 

He’s taken the damn photo off the web, printed it, and has plastered my face all over the ferry terminal. So now there’s no chance of me sneaking across, stowing away on the Spirit of England, because they’ll be looking for me there too. 

No boats it seems. 

No Channel-Tunnel either, because the idea of being underground, under the sea, in a car, on a train, is far too unsettling for my delicate nerves. 

I mean shit, I’m too fragile to even handle true love. 

Maïder and her family have been French for generations, so they’ve all got this blood-memory of running away, a real deep-seeded knack for fleeing, and that’s why I think they’re so good at blocking all my means of escape. 

I told Maïder that smart-arsed little quip, and she didn’t laugh. 

I’ve been trying that too, to no avail: pissing her off until she gets fed-up enough to kick me out of this happy, snug, safe little existence we’ve etched out for one another. Our life built on affection and support and patience and understanding and oh, sonofabitch it makes me want to stick my fingers down my throat thinking about how sickly sweet it all could be – how fucking perfect our marriage. 

Her folks threw us a slap-up shindig when we arrived. A proper wedding reception I suppose, because wifey was whinging so much about not having one back in Paris.

Spoilt little … 

Anyway. I got unduly intoxicated on cognac and started flirting, savagely, with all her female relatives. Even that one great-aunt who smelt like either fantastic cheese, or terrible meat – I couldn’t tell because, hey, it’s France. But this lascivious ploy of mine didn’t work either. All Maïder did, all she does still, is keep reminding me that we’re in this till the bitter end, for better or worse. 

It’s not helping, nothing’s working, so I’ve come to the realisation – I’ve come to this conclusion, that I have only got one option left.

Well I suppose I’ve really got two options, don’t I? But I tell you now friends and neighbours, I’m not staying married if I can help it. 

We came down to the beach today, and while I was kicking sand in Maïder’s face, and she was gazing up at me lovingly, and her Papa was glaring at me like a serious bastard, I was staring off into the middle-distance, over the channel, at the white cliffs of Dover. 

‘Happily ever after …’ was sloshing the waves of my stomach. But I could see it. It wasn’t even over the horizon anymore. It was just there: freedom, dead ahead. 

If you can see it you can walk to it, right? What am I saying? The horizon is only 4.7km. You can totally walk over the horizon. And if you can walk to it, you can swim to it. People swim this piddly little channel all the time.

This was what I was thinking, and as soon as I was finished thinking it, I took off my shirt, dropped my towel, and strode out into the waves. 

Once I was far enough out into the drink, I turned to look back at France, and the beach, and my wife; and my father-in-law, despite his malicious glare, seemed perturbed that I was slowly floating away from out his life. 

I guess he was growing accustomed to the idea of having a foreign son-in-law to despise? 

I don’t know.

I do know that at the end of the day my French-fling was merely escapism. I needed to escape my Disney designed morality in the end. 

I’m no Prince charming … and that’s fine for me, because I can’t go through all those channels of loyalty, bravery and honesty to earn the love of a princess. The only channel I’m willing to brave is this fucking freezing English one, and the only Princess I’ll ride is the Mary or whichever of those other ferries I can, to earn my passage towards home and the freedom I hold dearer than Maïder. 

My poor, sweet dear. 

I looked back at my wife one final time as I splashed about. I blew her a kiss to wish her a kind of ‘happily ever after …’, and waited for her response.

But she gave me nothing. 

I was leaving her life forever and she didn’t even give me a wave. 

I’ll never understand women.