Home The China Adventures of Arielle Gabriel

Paris, France Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Age 16   I am sixteen yearsa old and it is Christmas and I am all alone in a budget hotel on the Left Bank.   My father has rushed off to meet a friend in another country and left me alone with botched plane reservations.  This family mix-up will later cause my mother to argue with my father for some time to come.   I like the hot chocolate in a pot for breakfast.  I like the croissants and the unsweetened butter, and the rickety balcony on our bedroom, and the plaintive sounds of jazz as I fall asleep dreaming of quietitude and adventure.    An older American man, old to me and probably only in his mid-twenties, asks me to his room the next day to have a glass of Christmas wine.  He is from NYC and wears glasses.  I accept and sit delicately on a wood chair by the window.  It is snowing lightly.   There are French people all around to hear us if I scream and I feel lonely away from home.   Would you like to spend the night, he asks.   Do you know how old I am? I am only sixteen, I say.  I smile slightly.  He smiles slightly.   You look much older, he says regretfully.   This is only because I am tall and study the pages of Mademoiselle and Glamour to see what the latest fashions are.  Already I have bought French shoes, French hand-bag, and a black flower-sprigged slip.  No one accept my mother will ever see me in that slip!   We continue our drinks peaceably enough.  I am impressed with my calm and sophisticated handling of this overture.  At high school, I am known for sophistication.   He is not that type, but then again, most men are not that type.  However, some men are that type, and I would never be as lax with my own children as my parents have been with me.   I never tell my family about this adventure!

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