i was romanced by a young guy in France (pt 1)

how i turned breadcrumbs into a baguette...

Dieter wants to kiss me. The signs are all there. It’s close to midnight, we’re sitting underneath a blanket of stars, his arm is around me, and did I mention we are in France? Outside of a castle?! It’s also the penultimate evening of our brief time together before I am whisked back to my reality of living solo alongside a cat in my small Vancouver apartment, which at this moment, feels like another lifetime ago. To say the tension is as thick as the delicious French butter I’ve been devouring all week is an understatement. 

There are enough reasons to let him kiss me. Dieter has an endearing German accent (because he is in fact German), arms adorned with many interesting tattoos (my personal Kryptonite) and a cute symmetrical face highlighted by a pair of dark framed glasses (which is weird for me because I don’t usually go for guys in glasses). He’s also 28 and I’m 40, and any 40 year-old woman who denies the fuckable factor of a younger man is a liar. 

So clearly this is the moment in the movie when the heroine (moi) allows herself to be ravished by her young suitor (oh la la). 

But instead I interrupt our cinematically romantic scene with the question: “Tell me more about your living arrangement with the mother of your child.” Because there are enough reasons to not let Dieter kiss me. Or at least this is what I’m telling myself as the past week’s events, along with the evening’s numerous glasses of wine and champagne, somersault through my brain like a roller coaster I should get off from even if it does feel really, really fun.

For starters, I didn’t come to France for a kiss.