Monsieur Mediocre

by John von Sothen

  At thirty-two, there would be no more Foosball tables to shine at, though. If I was going to make French friends, these dinners were my only opportunity. So don’t blow it, I told myself. And while I primped my hair and cuffed my pants, I allowed myself to imagine the prospect of Anaïs’s friends liking me. Maybe we’d become real friends like the ones I had in New York. Perhaps I’d make them laugh in French as I had my pals in Casablanca. We could take long Parisian walks together in Pere Lachaise discussing death and Hegel. Or we’d have private talks in the stacks of a bookstore in the Marais, my new friend confiding to me that he’d made a horrible mistake, that he’d accidentally killed someone and needed my help.

  “I’m not sure where to turn, John,” he’d whimper.

  I’d tell him to calm down (in French), that it was good he’d come to me first.

  “I’m your friend, Jacques,” I’d say. “You can talk to me . . . in French.”

  But to get to this herd of wild buffalo grazing in the sun-dappled field just out of shooting range, there was a tricky river I realized needed to be crossed—the dinner party itself, which, to me, was full of dangerous currents and hard-to-see eddies. These would not be like those dinners in New York, which happened maybe once a year and wrapped at 11:00 p.m. These were intricate affairs, marathons that demanded a keen understanding of table placement geography, guest invitation, and the sophisticated and meticulous dosage of ambience, music, soft drugs, and, of course, good food.

  If I could pull it off, I’d be set, I told myself. Hell, we could even eventually host at our place and make it the convivial carousel of social networking for years to come. But if I tanked, dear God, if I tanked. I’d be back at the American church posting sad announcements in the entryway: Desperately seeking FRENCH FRIEND.

  * * *

  Like any good athlete preparing for his big game, I started by watching film. And there were tons of tape, thanks to a series on French TV called 93, Faubourg St. Honoré, a weekly reality show devoted not to cooking, but to the entire dinner party itself, shot and hosted by Thierry Ardisson. Each week, stars wanting to plug their upcoming film or book or album would arrive at 93 rue du Faubourg St. Honoré (Ardisson’s residence), punching in the code of the building’s front door, buzzing the apartment from the rez de chaussée then arriving at chez Thierry with flowers and lots of bisous to go around.

  The show started in the kitchen while the chef was preparing the meal and where Ardisson, with his husky Parisian accent and the look of an FBI bureau chief, would sit his guests at the prep table, offering them a glass of champagne or a kir while he texted or spoke on the phone with late-arriving guests who were either lost or asking (which I always do) who’d already arrived. Again this was in real time with nothing edited—no fast-forwards, no cut-aways. After fifteen minutes of watching 93, Faubourg St. Honoré, you realize that if you’re not in Louis Malle’s famous My Dinner with Andre, dinners are probably best left unfilmed.

  Ardisson spiced up the show by sometimes inviting stars with checkered pasts. He’d even go so far as to ask some of them over the apéro what it was like to have a twenty-gram-a-week coke habit. I liked this sort of drama, and I let myself imagine those at the table were secretly feuding with each other or didn’t know the other had been invited. Some would spend the night staring ahead, icelike (boring), or actually answer the coke habit question (not boring). Sometimes people would drink more than they should and not be as funny as they thought they were (which I found hilarious). Some might leave early. Some might argue, and 93, Faubourg St. Honoré killed in ratings.

  The more I watched, the more I picked up on the little things Ardisson did: his ability to keep the conversation moving by including reticent guests; the way he kept them in the kitchen at the beginning and talked them through the food; the way he poked fun and massaged egos while simultaneously doling out the confit de canard; and how he was always conscious of who had an empty wine glass. The fact the show was appointment television in France meant something. The institution had weight. There was a right and a wrong way to host a dinner, and Ardisson, for me, was a natural.

  If dinner parties weren’t on TV, how to properly host one was a constant topic in magazines, where titles like Côté Ouest or Elle Décoration would devote entire issues to the subject, pompously describing it as l’art de la table. Sometimes the magazine would take you on a culinary voyage to various parts of France, the table setting being the jumping-off point to promote the latest Baccarat crystal wine glass release or a matching tablecloth and napkin set that promoted the fact it was Made in France. Cutlery could not be overlooked, either. I myself had written one of these kinds of pieces for GQ a long time back, focusing on Perceval, a small knife manufacturer located in the center of France, which had been fabricating knives for hundreds of years and supplying those knives to three-star restaurants around the world, all from the same atelier in Thiers, a small village in the southern middle of France’s nowhere. The standard Perceval knife, the 9:47, was a masterpiece of utility and elegance, and when you held it, something old crept into your wrist. There actually was a perfect weight and sound to a knife when it cuts, a feeling my generation had grown up without knowing. A set of 9:47s could set you back, but was still affordable when compared to the other knives in the higher range Perceval offered, the ones geared toward Russian oligarchs whose handles were made from meteorites. Yes, meteorites. From space.

  But the moment I truly grasped how seriously the French took their dinners was when I found myself on one of those Sunday Bataan death marches to Ikea, which Anaïs and I take biannually. There, while glancing through the Malm dressers and Billy shelves and the Poang closets, I noticed hundreds of people hunkered over computers on high chairs looking as if they were filling out job applications. Anaïs told me they were customers using Ikea’s construction software, conceptualizing the kitchen of their dreams block by block, cabinet by cabinet, weighing in on where the cutlery would go and how the pots and pans would fit into the lower cabinets. It wasn’t bizarre for people to spend hours at these computers, and then return the next day to soldier on with color shades and wood choices and handles that matched. These people were not millionaires by a long shot—just Ikea shoppers prioritizing. And unlike many I know in New York or LA who have SubZero fridges and granite islands and Wolf Stoves just so they can order Chinese takeout each night, these French people actually cooked in the kitchens they were designing.

  Like many of those at Ikea that day, Anaïs knew our kitchen would be the fulcrum of our apartment and social life. But unlike most French, she envisioned it sitting smack dab in the middle of the action, which, in our warehouse cum loft, meant the garage where the trucks were still parked would become our dream kitchen. Anaïs stalked around the space, kicking up dust, walking off paces in a way only French people who know how long a meter is can do. “Cuisine ici,” she pointed to her right. “Cuisine Américaine, bien-sûr,” she winked back. Cuisine Américaine, I’d learn, meant an open kitchen with a central island, a concept that, in 2002, the French hadn’t yet embraced.

  Most of the apartments we visited had kitchens that were five-minute walks from the dining room, a vestige of the Baron Haussmann days where the food was cooked in private and by the help, hence the secret stairwell linking the kitchen to a chambre de bonne upstairs.

  Before hosting chez nous, I’d spent months gaining intel from all our friends’ dinners, and what struck me initially was how much time we had to fill. The apéro or cocktail alone could take an hour, probably as a way to allow for stragglers. Unlike Americans, who, if you tell them dinner is at 8:00, buzz your apartment at 7:59 or 8:01, the French take their time. Some will show up at 8:40, some at 9:00, some even later than that. And it’s not frowned upon. Paris offers a multitude of excuses. Kids need to be tucked in. Finding a parking place can take an hour. Plus there’s a subtle game of payback in play. If people come late to your dinner, you’re allowed to be
late to theirs. It only means more champagne for those who arrived on time, or a chance for your host (like my friend Guillaume) to usher you into the kitchen to show you the duck he (and now you) are going to pluck or the octopus he’s about to extract the ink from.

  But the extravagant meals and decorative tables aside, what made my friends’ dinners shine was how the hosts managed to find that sweet spot between formality and ease; the way they’d take your coat, fetch their angelic children to say hello, all while managing to monitor the soufflé and hand you a glass of champagne. They made multitasking look chic. They were gracious, but not patronizing, and when it was their turn to talk, I’d listen to their French purr like a turbine, then glance around the table in astonishment that no one but me seemed to realize how good the fucking wine was. Sure, there was that occasional tremor of paranoia that surfaced, where I’d sit down at a long table clothed in bounty, looking at all of my fellow guests, whom I’d met probably just twenty minutes ago, and wonder, “What if I just had a breakdown right now? What would they all do?”

  For the most part, though, my chi flowed, and so did these dinners. Plus, I was doing things I’d never done before in the States, like enjoying a five- to ten-minute break from the table midmeal with others. The French call it a trou normand (a Normand hole), a pause one takes between the second and third dish to smoke, catch the score of a game, or drink a shot of Normand Calvados to break the rhythm and get your sea legs back. “Why a Normand hole?” I asked my friend Paul-Henri as he and I belted back shots of Calvados in the kitchen. “Because the Calva is burning that extra hole in your stomach to keep you eating.” He was right. I returned to the table a new man with a lighter stomach, as if just booted in the bathroom, and was ready to rally.

  The trou normand, like many things I was discovering, would never work in the States. There’s just not enough time for such luxuries. Often, when I feel full and need that minipause, there’s someone passing me a dessert or there’s a smiling waitress badgering me while I still have food in my mouth.

  “How’s everything goin’ there? Still working on that?” he or she will ask, me throwing back a big two thumbs-up to confirm that, yes, I was still working here.

  “Why do they say this?” Anaïs asked once as our New Hampshire diner waitress walked away.

  “Say what?” I asked, quickly swallowing what I normally would have finished chewing.

  “If we’re working on it. Why do they use that verb always? Do they think it’s a job?”

  Anaïs had a point. We’d just dropped the kids off at summer camp and were on our own for two weeks, hitting taverns and pubs, lobster rolling our way around New England. “Working” was what we were trying not to do, especially over dinner.

  It’s not the first time Anaïs has opened my eyes to these incidental American expressions I’ve taken for granted, another being “quality time,” a concept that equally gnaws at her.

  “Are we quantifying time now, too? Does certain time have more value I don’t know about? Has it come to that?” she’ll ask me in bullet point questions, always pronouncing QT in bunched-up pieces, KWAL-IT-EE TYME, exaggerating each syllable.

  * * *

  When our apartment was finished, it was this very KWAL-IT-EE TYME that pushed us to hold our pendaison de crémaillère. (Hanging of the crémaillère, which is slang for housewarming party, and is a medieval word used to describe the metal racks that hung over the fire and to which you attached a boiling pot. Back in the day, if you told people you were “hanging your crémaillère,” you were cooking a meal, namely a meal for others. And it was from this expression, I assume, the notion of the dinner party started.)

  Our version had its first-game jitters. I learned I didn’t know how to properly cut cheese (diagonally, not horizontally, and never vertically, meaning from the front of the wedge to the back—except for Brie), and that it’s frowned upon to sit couples next to each other. I also found out you don’t start eating until “Madame est servie” (which means the “madame” of the house has taken her seat and is served), then things move to the left of Madame. “Madame est servie” is one of these old-school traditions that is laughed at but followed religiously. It’s so mainstream, it’s also the French title for the eighties Tony Danza sitcom Who’s the Boss? Who knew?

  But our party wasn’t a failure, either. And in the years to come, as more plates passed and Perceval knives clinked, our confidence grew. Soon Anaïs and I made up a Martin and Lewis or Crosby and Hope dinner party duo, she playing the straight man (always the harder role) and me the clown, stepping on phrases and taking two trou normands just to impress. Our dishes would take on a creative boldness. We broke out my parents’ old wedding plates, and during all these occasions, I found myself not only listening, but participating in French debates on French subjects, to the point where I could trash a French celebrity or learn about a murder nearby and say in slang, “No fucking way! Here?”

  What our dinners may have lacked in the sophisticated choreography of our friends’ affairs, we made up for with American panache. Neil Young would play in the background a lot, or we’d skip the formal table setting and eat off ze island. We’d serve stuff the French usually don’t eat, such as ribs, stuffing, yams—basically cooking Thanksgiving meals each time we hosted. Our guests left giddy, and I was proud. We’d found our social groove, and the more these dinners clicked, the more I felt like a dinner-jacketed Cole Porter, a gadfly of the Parisian bourgeoisie, a cosmopolitan homme de lettres.

  I also like getting hammered.

  And in the process of making all these new French friends, America started fading into the distance, looking rushed and tedious. Having a social life in France didn’t seem daunting anymore. Hell, just look at all the dinners we’re having and all the French friends I was making!

  * * *

  Armed with a confidence I hadn’t felt since Sex-en-Vacances, I blossomed into a modern-day George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, strolling through my neighborhood in the Tenth as if it were Bedford Falls. A day wouldn’t pass without my chatting up the tailor or the pharmacist, anyone who might want to be my new French friend. If you followed me on a walk to the subway, you’d hear me spouting bonjours and ça va’s as if I was handing out campaign flyers.

  “Salut, Jacques! You can keep the bills.” (mailman).

  “Hey, Rémi. Those new Velib bike rentals? Boooo!” (me giving the thumbs down to a bike repairman).

  “Mr. Lallier! Starting early on that vin blanc, are we? Can’t say I blame you!” (old pensioner at the café).

  A trip to the butcher for hamburger meat could turn into a long chat about PSG’s prospects or whether Paris had too many bus lanes, or my divulging a back issue that had flared up, Bibi watching incredulously, wondering how her father had become so intimate with these people.

  “Why do you talk about yourself so much, Dad?” she’d ask as we left the cheese guy, me making it a point to smile and wave to others across the street.

  “Because I can, Bibi,” I’d respond. “Because I can.”

  The problem was that in all this excitement, I failed to realize how full of shit these smiling overtures of mine were. And apparently, those I chatted with didn’t realize how full of merde I was, either. As a result, signals got crossed, and invites I didn’t expect to receive soon began piling up; invites Anaïs looked at as one would a Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes notice dumped in her mailbox.

  “Who have you been talking to now?” she’d ask me, exhausted to hear that the neighbor down the street (whom she’d already IDed as a person to avoid) had asked if we were free next week for dinner.

  “You know you really have a . . . syndrome, I think.”

  Anaïs could have used the word problème, but instead chose syndrome because she needed to convey to me how fucked up this disease of mine was, a disease that forced us to accept yet another random invite from another
rando she didn’t want to know that well, but had to, because her husband couldn’t help himself. She knew excuses could only work for so long, and eventually we’d find ourselves at dinner out of obligation.

  There was the “dîner des artistes” (artist dinner) hosted by a woman (we’ll call her Eloise) who fashioned herself as a poor man’s Peggy Guggenheim, one who only wanted to have artists at her table, so they could discuss art and be eccentric, and treat her like the benefactor she wasn’t. Our respective CVs had apparently convinced her that Anaïs and I fit the bill, and as the dinner painfully limped along, I remember only two things: The guests were insane people. There was a man who was convinced that the iris of our eye is the exact replica of how the big bang explosion looked, and that we carry the big bang with us every day. The guest who wasn’t crazy was an actress. I recognized her because she’d appeared in a Seinfeld episode, which, of course, I mentioned at the table. This was met with silence by everyone, including the actress, who simply glared at me. Sitcoms for this crowd were a second art, I guess.

  * * *

  Ironically, the dinner I most remember during this period was the one hosted by an American, of all people, Jim Haynes. Haynes is somewhat of a local Anglo institution in Paris, up there with Shakespeare and Company and Harry’s Bar, having thrown dinners in his apartment for strangers every week for the past forty years. I’d heard about Jim on occasion, usually from friends visiting, but I never gave him much thought. I just assumed his act was something touristy or worse, scientology-esque.