Saturday, June 22, 2013

First Nights in Paris

It was a night like this a few years ago when I first learned what a woman wants. It bore similarities with my current situation: I was with another friend and we were in Paris. Smiling and walking around, sometimes randomly talking to a stranger, or a stranger talking to us. We would demand what they had said, as many guys would sometimes blurt out something in French, something that with my little French I wouldn't always catch.

Finally, my friend got tired of laughing and playing around. At the end of the night, that's when she said: "these guys are just boys. I don't want any boys. I want a man." I was nineteen, not super experienced, so I asked  what she meant. She told me you could tell when it was a boy or a man. That a boy would take a walk with you, sit on a bench (like we had just sat with a couple French guys earlier in the night, talking, flirting). "Boys don't want compromise, they just want to have a fun time. Men will invite you to sit down and talk, have a drink. They'll take the time to get to know you."  I knew what she was saying was something more than that, but I learned from her to set my expectations high, because boys sometimes never grow up. From that time on I also asked this question in my head when I met a guy: is this a boy or is this a man? And secretly, though I was young, I wanted a man and not a boy.

Here I am in Paris again, knowing that I'm not looking for a man anymore because I already have one. I'm grateful because I know I'm so blessed to have found him, so lucky that he noticed me. I think about this as I remember what I learned in Paris a few years ago, how to distinguish a man from a boy. I think about this as I miss my man.

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