Jacques Le Greasy Frenchie

As a rule, I usually prefer not to dicuss the fatuous exploits of my social and sentimental life, because, Number One, who cares? And Number Two, as the vaguely forgotten pop star Ben Lee once sang, a lot goes on but nothing ever happens.

Still, a lot does go on. And sometimes it's too absurd for words, too cliche to believe that it's actually happening to me, and yet so real that I have to begin to wonder who the fuck up there finds this all so funny.

I won't even mention Nicolas the juvenile Serbian architect whose best answer to anything was to smile broodingly and insult me...or Ricca the bubbly manager-slash-artist who treated me to dessert...or John, the earnest artist who thinks there should be more good news--awww--in the world...or even Jean-Pierre, shirt designer-slash-project manager-slash-Ecuadorian-Colombian-Francophile who kept me from physically assaulting Nicolas.

No, let's jump straight ahead to the end of the evening, and to Jacques. A few weeks ago you may have read a story in the New York Times, in the magazine's new funny pages, about a filmmaker named Jacques who accosted the story's author on an F-train home to Brooklyn, flattered her Frenchily, asked for her number, took her to the movies at the Anjelika, and then let out with a passive-aggressive anti-semitic screed directed at the author whose most defining feature was, apparently, looking semitic.

Guess who still rides the F train to Brooklyn? Jackie!

But Jacques didn't even flatter me Frenchily. He just followed me out of the subway and said, deadpan, without even an introduction: "Kin I 'ave yohr nohm-bear?" Jacques was under-dressed and greasy. Jacques was too greasy-looking even for a Godard movie. And Jacques had to be fucking kidding. First of all, I'd read about the anti-semitic dickwad in the friggin' New York Times. Second of all, Jacques, you must have been smoking a friggin' crack pipe on the F train home, because you are going to have say at least one really really nice thing about me before I'll even tell you my name. LET ALONE MY NUMBER, YOU GREASY VICHY COLLABORATOR.

Maybe Jacques and Nicolas should have a drink, not that assholes and antisemites have anything in common.