HER OWN HIGHWAY CODE

When it comes to driving, there’s only one rule the Parisienne follows: may the best driver win.

Sometimes she’ll cut off a male driver, for the sake of gender equality, to prove that she, too, has balls.

Behind the wheel she becomes fluent in sign language and occasionally gives the finger to show her frustration.

She never wastes time looking for an actual parking spot. Instead, she leaves her car wherever she wants and acts like there’s valet parking, but feels persecuted whenever she gets a ticket.

Whenever she gets pulled over, the Parisienne starts to cry, before even handing over her license and registration.

Most of the time, the officer lets her go and is willing to overlook her misdemeanor. He is the only kind of man on whom her tears seem to work.

When the officer is a woman, tears are pointless. So the Parisienne resorts to shouting and ends up with a handful of points on her license. She curses her misfortune in having been caught by a woman, but feels no remorse for driving in the bus lane.

She likes taking crafty detours and side roads to avoid traffic jams. Often she wastes more time than she saves, but it’s her way of feeling like she’s mastered the city.

Cyclists drive her crazy. Not only do they make her feel guilty about polluting the planet, but also for not going to the gym more often and working on her thighs.

She’s already had sex in a tiny car, so she knows that you always hit your knee on the hand brake in the heat of the moment. But that won’t stop her from doing it again.

When she’s running late, she does her makeup in the car. A rearview mirror is still a mirror.

She sometimes sings along to oldies at the top of her lungs, songs she wouldn’t be caught dead singing along to beyond the secret confines of her car.

The dashboard is an extension of her handbag—a notorious mess strewn with anything and everything: a crime novel, an old pay stub, a pack of gum, a phone charger, a wilted rose. As an ensemble, they are part diary and part psychedelic art, on view for the world to admire.

The Parisienne doesn’t stop driving when her gas light goes on. Instead she prefers to play her own form of Russian roulette: Will she make it, or won’t she?

KISS AND PLAY

When it comes to kissing, the Parisienne does it the same way she does everything else: with cinematic flair. Preferably, all kissing should take place in the middle of the street. The city is after all her stage and she treats each kiss like a once-in-a-lifetime performance. She wants to be unforgettable—both to the man clinging to her lips and to the people passing by. Like any good actress, she immerses herself completely in the role and almost expects a round of applause when the curtain falls at the end of her scene. Breathless, of course.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 809