American Girls in Paris

Tatie Marcia is in Paris for a couple of months. She ran into a darling group of girls on a street corner in the 6th--no, they weren't hookers. They're American college juniors, just arrived for their semester abroad. They didn't even have a favorite café yet, where they could sit and smoke and look French. But they promised Tatie Marcia that as soon as they'd had the chance to do anything interesting, they'll give her their impressions of being an American girl in Paris, so she can write about their adventures.
This is something that interests Tatie Marcia. She was once an American girl in Paris, and now that she thinks about it, that might have changed her life. She even had a petite affaire d'amour, not with a Frenchman, but with a young singer from South America who took her to a nightclub, bought her champagne and covered her eyes when the exotic dancer portraying Salomé did something naughty with the head of John The Baptist. At intermission he borrowed a guitar from the band and performed one of the songs he was known for in South America. That was 40 years ago and Tatie Marcia is still swooning.
Speaking of Americans, yesterday Tatie M saw a girl on her portable phone complaining loudly about French bureaucracy. Why do our fellow Americans talk so loud? On the street, in stores, especially in museums. We all know they are used to wide open spaces, but shouldn't they learn to adapt when they leave them for closer quarters? Even for a few days? They walk far apart and yell at each other over other peoples’ heads. Four or more can literally take over a public space as effectively as throwing a tent over it, hanging their names over the entrance and distributing an agenda. Why don’t they take a hint from the Europeans around them, speaking barely above a whisper, careful not to extend their physicality much beyond the reach of their own shoulders?
Pardon the outburst, my dears. That's something that just gets on Tatie Marcia's nerves.

Bonjour and bienvenue to my blog. Tatie Marcia went to an école des filles-- a girls’ school--long ago when there were such things. Her friends were wild girls who sneaked out after curfew and did terrible things. When they got older and turned to church and prayer and ladies’ luncheons, Tatie Marcia turned to myspace for friends. She finds it much more fun talking to girls—and boys, too—about the adventures of living.
Tatie Marcia descends from Scottish, Irish and English riffraff who immigrated to the United States looking for the good life. When they got to Illinois, they helped the French settlers wipe out whatever scraggly Indians were left, and hunkered down in the fertile lands along the upper Mississippi to propagate a mass of Midwesterners and a gene pool that is 90 proof.
Little Tatie Marcia was born in California, where her Daddy launched his military-industrial career, and her Mommy began corporate-wife training. Two more children were born as the family moved from suburb to suburb across the country and up the ladder of success, to bigger houses, newer cars and country-club memberships.
Tatie Marcia made her debut to society in Atlanta, married her own up-and-coming corporate type and put him through Harvard B-School, but then she moved on, marrying and bankrolling more husbands so they could change careers, start a business, learn broadcasting, buy a truck, whatever. She kept right on working, making money and swigging vodka until one day she chucked everything and left the States for France, where, when she sobered up, she too discovered the good life.
Tatie Marcia lives in Provence with a handsome and talented artist two decades younger than she. Her son is a handsome and talented actor who, despite his ancestral Scots, Micks and Brits, appears to be Jewish like his father. He lives in Hollywood and will be famous any day now.
Soon, Tatie Marcia will be on her way to Paris, where she holes up in a little Left Bank studio to work on her book during the winter months. She’ll use this space for the thoughts and ideas that are the by-product of looking at life through progressive lenses in Gucci frames.
À bientot.

Tatie Marcia's Ecole des Filles