The word for the day was marchand: merchant, trader, shopkeeper. Of course, I like marchand de vin the most (wine merchant), but there were a couple of other, er, traders that caught my eye:
marchande d'amour = "seller of love" (prostitute)
marchand de canons = arms dealer
Arms dealer! I need one of those way more than I need a prostitute. Several canons later, and I'd be ready to take on the entire non-free world.I will brandish, play Myles Standish, be outlandish!
This, my friends (and perhaps my enemies), is French that I can use. As soon as I take off the clothes I've been wearing for three days, and maybe take a bain de marchande d'amour (pits n' puss), I will run out into the streets of Paris, still fulminating from the May '68 revolutionary celebrations, and find me my very own, personal, marchand de canons.
Ha! Now that I've got that off my chest...
It reminded me of my girlfriend, whom I will call Rapunzel, who divorced her husband and entered into the minefields of mid-life dating. Soon, she was juggling a few dandies, including an international arms dealer. I wondered what would happen if he found out about Rapunzel's other suitors...would he choose a scatter bomb, or just a simple chlorine IED to rid himself of his competition?
As Rapunzel and I giggled about her personal marchand de canons, over Margaritas and carne asada tacos at some fucking strip mall in Carefree, Arizona (which is, of course, a hot bed of international arms dealers), her cell phone rang. She picked it up, looked down, and her eyes got big. She looked up at me, gestured at the phone and silently mouthed, "It's HIM!"
Somehow, he knew that we were talking about him. Let's say he had gundar. Men know, or they think they know, or at least they always think, because they are so self-absorbed and so worried about their penises, or they worry that the news about their penises might get "out there" or what-the-fuck ever, they always think that we are talking about them. Of course, they have a reason to think this way. You see, because, we girls are always sneaking off, together, to the "powder room." It's a sure-fire conspiracy, you know, to trade tampons and lipstick, not necessarily in that order, but pretty close. What men fail to realize is that, after their tiny initial nickel-plated brass-smelling tin-shallow shininess wears off, after we've heard their death-defying stories for the 34th time, they are pretty much, well, uniformly boring. So, any discussion about any pros and cons of applicator versus applicator-free tampons is much more interesting than any discussion about the men in our lives.
But, I digress.
Here we were, actually lowering ourselves to talk about this guy, and all of a sudden he was calling...from freakin' Dubai. I guess these arms dealer guys have regular trade shows, mostly in Dubai, where they talk about how effectively they can penetrate their enemies, or their friends, or whomever. After all, one can never be too sure, since the difference between enemy (Saddam Hussein in 2003) and friend (Saddam Hussein in 1983) can be a bit unclear. But, back to the trade shows...I imagine they must talk about the length of their barrels, the speed of their bullets, the accuracy of their cross-hairs and the efficacy of their short strokes. Zzzzzz.
Silly Rapunzel said, "What a coincidence! My girlfriend Lisa and I were JUST talking about you!"
I groaned. The inevitable occurred: "Sure, here ya go." She hands me the phone.
"Hello?"
"Well hello, Lisa. Rapunzel says you two were just talking about me?"
"Yes. And she told me that even though your dick is short, it's definitely not fat."
... (crackling silence of underwater phone lines)
"So, do you sell big salty guns? Or wee little ones? Hey...guns and ones...that rhymes!"
... (a couple of distant explosions, but nothing to write home about)
"OK, well, I'll give you back to Rapunzel. Nice talking to ya!"
That isn't how the conversation went. I wish it had. He was a creep. I could tell he just wanted to know what Rapunzel had said about him. He had absolutely no desire to know anything about me.
And, as you know, I have so much to offer. Like a purse full of bullet-shaped, applicator-free, scented or unscented, tampons. Oh, but I guess what I have stops the blood flow. (Lisa slaps forehead.)
