Sex, Cheese and French Fries--Women Are Perfect, Men Are from France

By Carine Fabius

Set in Hollywood, California, Sex, Cheese and French Fries is a witty look at relationships, using as premise an American woman's life with an irreverent Frenchman named Pierre Bonsoirno.

Beautifully illustrated by noted Los Angeles artist Jeannie Winston Nogai, each chapter of this book takes the reader on a journey of adventure, comic miscommunication, and ultimately the sublime rewards of falling â and staying â in love, as long as the partners are willing to work for it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780978500344

Book preview

France

1 - My French Husband

Help! My husband is French!

Some people disagree with me on this, but I say relationships are work. That’s not a negative comment on how hard it can be to maintain your sanity when you live with someone who seems bent on driving you crazy. Work is not a bad thing. Most things worth having require time, energy, patience, and a good nighttime mouth-guard for all that teeth-grinding, and relationships are no different. But my husband is French, so I feel that puts me in a special category, as in, I have special needs. Why? Although I’m happily married, I have to say that the French can be…difficult? That question mark is not indicative of a real question. It’s more in line with that way we Californians have of inserting a question mark at the end of any statement because the speaker seeks your agreement? In any case, it’s true that the French are special, even though I admit that the more I hear women talk about their husbands, the more it seems we’re all married to a bunch of crazy foreigners.

Pierre Bonsoirno Is Born

In the war between the sexes, it’s good to have allies. When your husband tells you that he took the dog with him to visit friends who raise chickens because she needs to learn that she can’t eat live chickens! with the same intensity as If you want to see a therapist you can go by yourself!—you know you might need to stock up on boxing gloves. You also know that you might need a little help along the way.

My husband’s name is not actually Pierre Bonsoirno. It was our friend, Jackson, who started calling him Pierre—more like Pee-erre, really—whenever he went into insufferable French mode.

"Listen, Pee-erre, I’m not finished," Jackson says one day, voice raised and aggressive after being interrupted by my French husband (MFH for short) eight times in five minutes. He then turns and looks at me to make sure I know he is kidding. I start giggling at the Pee-erre thing, and like a six-year-old, happy with his audience’s reaction, Jackson turns back to MFH and gets even louder.

"I’m sick and tired of you thinking you know every goddamn thing in the world, Pee-erre. Yeah." He turns to look at me again and we all start snickering, including MFH, the busted Frenchman.

I’ve known Jackson about 22 years, and MFH has known him as long as he’s known me, which is about 17 years. Jackson looks like the long, skinny character named Jack in The Nightmare Before Christmas—just add neck-to-ankle tattoos, always impeccably polished-red toenails, piercings everywhere but in his hair, which is spiky, purple, striped, twisted, braided, or shaved off, depending on the month. He’s a rock-and-roll musician; a genius, really. Knows how to play 20 instruments if any, and he’s usually broke, or in the money, big time. Jackson was around, back in 1990, when MFH and I came up with the idea of turning our home into an art gallery. We’d been to the Caribbean island of Haiti on vacation and returned with dozens of paintings that quickly filled the walls of our house. Friends kept asking if we would agree to bring art back for them on our next trip, if they fronted the cash. Around the same time, someone told us about a guy she had met who made $100,000 the year before, selling African art out of his home. I found the idea appealing. I was in the public relations business then, and something about selling art felt more attractive than dealing with journalists, who despised publicists as a rule, never returned your calls, and made you take them out to dinner and beg before writing a few meager lines about your hateful, self-indulgent clients. I know this sounds like a dream job, but a few days later I cornered MFH in the hallway.

I was thinking that maybe we should sell Haitian art out of this house; what do you think?

I was just thinking the same thing yesterday, he said.

Next thing we knew, we were on a plane to Haiti, borrowed up to our hairlines, to buy our first collection of Haitian art.

Those were heady days. We’d just come back from the Caribbean with our treasures, trying hard as we could to stave off the panic of having to come up with enough money to frame the work, install a lighting system, print up invitations, finance the mailing, and pay for the grand opening’s obligatory wine and cheese. We also felt—in a serious way—that a couch in the living room, rather than the futon mattress on the floor, was in order. I had already quit my day job. MFH wasn’t bothered, since he’d never worked for anyone but himself. He knew the money would show up when we needed it. I wasn’t feeling so tout est possible! about it all, but I was excited nonetheless.

Right around that time, Jackson and I were in the car together, on our way to Home Depot, and I was feeling really high about our new project. I was groovin’ on how we would barely mark up the prices on the art in order to sell it at super-low prices that anyone could afford.

I know! I said. We’ll call the gallery ‘Affordable Art for Everyone’!

He never lets me forget that. Ten years later, it’s a standing joke.

Hey hon, he’ll say, out of the blue, you know what I think?

What?

I think you were right.

About what?

I think you should have called the gallery ‘Affordable Art for Everyone.’

No one else ever thinks it’s funny, but the three of us do. Jackson was the one creeping around up in our dusty crawlspace to help install the lighting system, and staying until six o’clock in the morning to help get everything ready in time for the gallery’s grand opening. We have a history.

So, back to how Pierre got his name.

Several years ago, Jackson and his Japanese girlfriend, Miwa—the one with blond dreadlocks and devil horns sewn permanently into her head—go on vacation to Paris, where they are held captive in customs for 12 hours in separate rooms, made to strip naked, searched up the you-know-what for drugs, and generally abused and brutalized by dumb-ass French goons with time on their hands and steel for eyes. After that heady little introduction to the city of lights, the Eiffel Tower became for them the I-full-of-shit Tower, the Louvre Museum the Louver Door Musical, the French baguette a scumbag-ette. You get the drift. And every time someone says, "Bonsoir, they respond with bonSOIR!" in their new favorite, exaggerated, obnoxious, American accent. Eventually they get over it and settle into enjoying their French vacation, but something sticks.

"How you doin’—bonSOIR," Jackson greets MFH upon his return to the States.

Right away I start giggling, and so does MFH.

"Bonjour to you, dud, MFH says, meaning dude."

Next time around, it’s "Listen, Pee-erre, you know nossing, okay? Jackson loves it that the French turn all their th sounds into ss or z."

"But we don’t ave any words with t-h in them! MFH tries in vain to explain, inhaling his h in the process. Keep going and see if I don’t kick you in the hass!"

"Don’t start with me, Bonsoirno, or I’m gonna have to get rough."

"Bonsoirno" seriously attacks my funny bone and I start chuckling through my fingers. Then we all start guffawing. The name sticks and, just like that, Pierre Bonsoirno is born.

2 - The Reasons I Need Help

Ooo, you’re French! most people say to Pierre when they find out he’s from France. "I took French in high school! I only remember a little bit, but I just love the language. It’s so romantic! I think I can still say, ‘Parlez-vous français? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’"

Pierre is nonplussed.

Why do they always feel this need to tell me the only three French words they know? What am I supposed to do about it?"

"Je ne sais pas," I say.¹

Loving the French

Pierre’s extreme French-ness is a bonus with clients, sometimes. They love him and that accent. All his idiosyncrasies seem so cute; his strange ways automatically forgiven because he’s French, after all; plus he’s an artist! Exaggerate your accent! I remind him as he leaves to meet with a wealthy female patron. Be extra charming! I’m just kidding, though. It would be cruel for him to inflate his accent, since people barely understand him to begin with; and charm toward the female gender is a given, since he’s Parisian. It is not unusual for him to bow when complimented, kiss a hand upon introduction, and offer working for a pretty lady as inspiration on the job. And he means it, too. That’s why he can take six months to deliver a simple piece, and the client will brush aside my apologies, reminding me that it’s the artistic process at work.

Hating the French

But the flip side of it is that people also love to hate the French, their superior attitude and arrogant ways.

Pierre hangs up the phone one day, smiling and shaking his head. When I ask why he looks so smug, he tells me that upon hearing about our upcoming trip to Lisbon, his brother Jean-Marc noted that getting impressed with other cities is hard when you come from Paris.

And he’s right, too, he adds.

I think Paris is beautiful, too, I say, "but if I were you, I wouldn’t say stuff like that in public.

Why not? If it is true?

Because it sounds obnoxious, I say, and you know everyone thinks the French are obnoxious.

Because he’s French, my husband likes to argue for argument’s sake, but he can’t argue that one with me. He knows it’s true.

I am reminded of the truth of this mindset against the French at my friend Patty’s birthday party. She’s having an intimate, all-girl affair in her colossal mansion in Beverly Hills—90210 area code, land of tall, skinny palm trees waving prettily at botoxed women driving Mercedes-Benzes to the Tiffany & Co. store for a clever knickknack as birthday present for the family nanny. Patty is a former world-class ballerina whose body looks like a long, swirly black licorice stick and, but for me, most of the women come from the world of theater. It is over dessert that she tells everyone I am writing a humorous book on relationships, using life with a French guy as premise, and Pierre as my foil. A general conversation about my husband breaks out and the woman sitting next to me—an older, heavy-set woman with thick glasses whom I only remember meeting once before—says:

"Oh yes, he’s so French."

When did you meet Pierre? I ask her.

Don’t you recall that Patty had us all over for Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago? she says. I remember him very well.

The way she says this makes me suspicious that he might have been on bad behavior that day.

Really? Why is that?

Well, you know how he is….

To put her at ease, I laugh knowingly and tell her that I am collecting anecdotes for my book, and would love to hear anything he might have done that was particularly French.

Was he offensive? I prompt.

Oh no! He wasn’t offensive at all, she says. Then she leans into me, and whispers as if she is talking to me about my husband behind my back. He was just, you know…being French…like a know-it-all.

Oh! I say, relieved it wasn’t anything more serious, and happy that she’s not going to launch into a diatribe against him. Was he talking non-stop and preventing anyone from getting a word in edgewise?

Right! But don’t worry, she says, patting my hand in a motherly way, just before dessert, he pulled out a joint and we all liked him just fine.

The Accent

Pierre is on the telephone, having a conversation with a new British business contact. At one point, the guy wonders about the accent.

I’m French, he answers. Don’t hang up.

In truth, Pierre is French in every way but his accent. He finds zat veri French accent so ridicule! You know the one that sounds like someone trying very, very hard not to lose his native flavor to the point of caricature? So, to his credit, Pierre has made much effort to add American character to the way he speaks, which confuses everyone because after 20 years in the States he is, at times, utterly incomprehensible to anyone. Someone once asked me if he is Cajun. Most people don’t bother trying to guess, they just ask straight away where he’s from. He’s always surprised.

You can’t tell I’m French?

No, actually. Your accent is really hard to decipher, is the usual response.

Add the confident way he expresses himself with English words, idioms, metaphors, and sayings not to be found in anyone’s frame of reference save his own, and a person can really get confused.

I say, throw those politicians out with the bathtub!

This is in a restaurant, at dinner with two guys we barely know. They have no idea what he just said or how to react. I try to explain that what Pierre means is some misunderstood combination of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and throwing the bums out of office. They laugh politely while I laugh out loud. I’m used to this. Our German friend, Heinrich, recently announced that as a people, we are natural born ass eaters. Don’t ask.

Ideus Interruptus

That’s Latin for would you let me finish?

Sitting around at a dinner table with French people is like being in a boxing match, or driving in Italy. You have to move fast if you plan to get anywhere. And if you expect mercy at the hand of your opponent in the ring, or driver in the next lane, you are a fool. You will either be dead or driving around that traffic circle for the rest of your