Teaman and Lili and Kekes

I went to a teacher’s meeting the next day, and ended up sitting between Don Julio, who fidgeted non-stop, and “Teaman” who seemed to get a lot of pleasure out of teasing me. Teaman (he doesn’t actually drink tea, but his name reminds me of the French word for teapot) is a lion of a man, broadly build with fly-away hair, and almost always clad in stretched out cotton collared shirts. Like most of the teachers, he doesn’t speak more than a word of English. When I met him, an image of the cowardly lion popped into my head and it’s stuck. haha. He’s constantly messing with people, and during meetings he’ll suddenly start chuckling or smirk at people because he finds a sexual subtext in almost any phrase. It all goes way over my head - all I know is that suddenly everyone around me is in hysterics. Augustus told me with a laugh that he loves women of all kinds, and that the staff often calls him ‘the sexual predator,’ I just stared at him, and Augustus had to back track ‘no, it’s a joke, of course! He’s really nice!’ When Teaman got impassioned about some subject during the meeting, he’d seize my arm as well as that of the woman on the other side, and not let go until he was done with his tirade. It would totally get him fired in an American school. It’s true though – he’s so good natured, it’s hard to mind. At one point during the meeting, he started inspecting the notes I was jotting down in English, then darted his hand over my shoulder to point at a random spot on the page. “You made a mistake there,” he crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, nodding at me like ‘Aren’t you going to fix that, huh?’ Haha. I think his personality is summed up in an exchange afterschool on the playground:
Student: Are you here for study hall?
Teaman: No, I’m here to make pancakes. Get inside.

I spoke a little to S before the meeting, and to the rather standoffish teacher, who I’ll call Lili. I asked her what she was doing that weekend, and to my surprise she immediately invited me to come with her to a handball game on Saturday. I wrote down my phone number in bold letters on a scrap of paper, which made her laugh. Halfway through the meeting, Lia and I went to a classroom, ostensibly to work on English lessons, but we ended up drinking tea and goofing off with cursive script on the board. Lili came by and invited me to hang out and eat dinner with her later in the afternoon. I was surprised by her sudden change in demeanour, but it turns out she was just insecure: ‘I saw you talking to S in English that first day and I thought, oh my god, I don’t speak any English, what am I going to do? But you speak French, so it’s okay.’

We met up at Augustus’ house, and took a quick tour of Soissons. Conversation was pretty tough at first. I felt like I was babbling, and I’d lost hope of connecting with her until I happened to tell her I’d studied Darwin. “Darwin?!,” She cried, “My dog is named Darwin!” Darwin, as it turns out, is an adorable little white puff ball, who lets me cuddle him whenever I go over to her apartment.

Lili lives in an apartment above an elementary school – the very same one she went to when she was a little girl. I can’t even imagine that. My elementary school has been completely gutted and revamped, and any of the teachers I felt attached to in elementary school or high school have long since left. The woman who inspired Lili to become a teacher still works there, and apparently has little or no inkling of how motivating she was to her old student.

We hung out on her couch and chatted awkwardly some more. I felt like I was stumbling over my words, and perpetually at a loss for what to say. I started talking about life experiences in a revealing way that would have embarrassed me in English, but I felt disconnected from what I was uttering in another language. Having limited access to vocabulary renders me naked. I can’t dress up a plain sentence with odd verb construction or unusual adjectives; I can’t spin a mildly interesting story about the grocery store into a grand epic about devastating consumerism or why tortilla chips are symbolic of life’s struggles. I don’t even know how to say guacamole in French for Christ’s sake. I’m forced to speak about concrete events or feelings in the most pellucid and straightforward of terms. It disconcerts me, but maybe that’s a useful feeling. I have to live grand moments, rather than forge them in artifice. And I have to be very honest most of the time. How do you equivocate when you’ve got only a partial vocabulary? They don’t teach that shit in the French for Reading Comprehension, now do they?

Anyhow, at some point things started to click as we talked about American high schools, movies like Mean Girls, and started sharing some of our favourite sitcoms. Apparently “How I met your mother” is obscenely popular in this town, and I haven’t seen a single episode. Her boyfriend came home, and he seemed so like Stephen Fairchild, I had to look twice. I asked him a few questions, and as we ate dinner, he revealed himself as a stealth comedian, quietly making bizarre faces and comments that made me bark with laughter.

On Friday, I invited myself back to her apartment, jogging alongside her bike and chatting about various friends. She'd showed me a series about a group of nerdy guys the day before (Big Bang Theory? Anyone? I'm sure it's not paricularly funny in English, but translates well to French), and I swear to god, guys, the major players are all gross characatures of Nate, Jack, Tim, and Dan. I mean, one guy was wearing a 'The Flash' t-shirt. So I started showing her some photos of said friends on facebook, and then we started generally sharing photos back and forth. It was amazing to her that all of my friends pretty much looked and dressed the way her friends did. ‘I still have some stereotype of Americans in my head. It’s good you showed these to me.’

She showed me some of the wedding albums she'd put togther, and some of photos of her friends' children. Her boyfriend came home and went to watch his handball team practice. Her team was finishing up their own practice, but Lilli is still recovering from tearing her ACL, so she’s not yet fit to play. It’s a pretty cool sport – about halfway between basketball and baseball, only there’s some undefined right to beat the shit out of the offensive players. I’m thinking about playing, but after seeing so many people thrown to the ground, I’m going to have to register for supplemental insurance first. Not kidding.

After practice, I learned about “Kekes” from Lili’s friend of the same name as we ate mussels and fries. (At first I thought they were saying “Kiki” and I almost flipped for you Lauren, but there is more of an “ai” sound to the whole thing) Apparently it’s their expression for a guy who seems really awesome at first, but turns out to be a total fucking creep-tard loser. These also tend to be the type that Lili’s friend falls for – so much so that her friends have crafted a song for her about that very thing. Mostly it goes: LILI LOVES KEKES! OH THE LOVE OF THE KEKE!!!! in french.

I asked Lili about how she met her boyfriend, and after she’d finished her complex story, she turned to me and asked if I had any stories of great love. I shook my head. And she, incredulous, prodded until she intuited that I hadn’t ever had a real relationship. ‘What about kissing?’ She demanded, then in English “French kiss?” I laughed and when she kept at it, I told her to shut up. "Oh, I'm joking," she said. I’m not sure quite how she managed to figure it out so fast, but it was way more info than I wanted to give her. It’s not exactly something you want to reveal about yourself at first. Yeah, sure, I've made out with guys, but I haven't been in love with any of them. I didn't even like one of them. Not exactly epic romance story material. I believe people often assume there must be something very wrong with me when they hear that, and without knowing me well, they would have no reason to think otherwise. I mean, even I wonder at other people in my situation. (Sidebar: I wonder if men really are particularly straightforward in Europe, or whether I just get hit on more here simply because I'm a semi-exotic foreigner?) I managed to get the conversation on to her friend and her experiences, and she took it up in hilarious style. “Oh the Kekes I have loved…”

I went to their official handball matches the next night, and had a pretty damn good time. Lili’s friends cleaned themselves up and stayed to watch the men’s match, and I was struck by how similar their humour was to ours. The whole atmosphere reminded me of the games at St. John’s; everybody knew everybody well enough to joke about their playing, to scream out obscenities, and genuinely appreciate the match. One girl started repeating sentences she’d had to learn in English class as she riffled through the first aid box: Vere is Brian? Brian is in ze kitchen…with ze umbrella. Don't vurry, be happy. Brian is in ze bathroom…who ze fuck is Brian?” Lili turned to me “I’m sorry. They’re all nuts.” They promptly started singing obnoxiously in English.

We drove over to a bar, where the men ordered a giant tube of beer with a tap, which is called a giraffe for reasons I’m sure you can surmise. The guys kept joking about “French kissing” and one girl’s husband kept shoving his tongue at one of the other guys, who promptly started attacking back with his own tongue, and it was pretty much a horror show from there, until the girls started hitting them with their menus. “Yup,” one girl said, “that’s my husband…all mine…” I won them over a little with my terrible dance moves, and we spent the night listening to bad music and laughing. Lili’s boyfriend kept making fun of her taste in music, turning to me often and saying “No, it’s okay, you can tell me. It’s terrible isn’t it? You can tell me…here, just whisper it in my ear.” Hilarious.

So...Lili is pretty much awesome. She’s invited me to a girls’ night on Friday, and I sincerely hope she’ll still want to hang out with me even if I don’t end up working at the school. Here’s hoping.