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 I turned left into the Rue de Rodier fingering the change in my pocket, last nights Bordeaux flowed through my veins and kicked me in the head. 50 centimes, half a Euro left, I hadn’t eaten since, well a long time. I joined the queue forming outside the Boulangerie.
Half a Euro. I’d done my first days work in a month two weeks ago tending bar in Paris. The head waiter had shouted like crazy, ‘I’m just going to serve those two gentlemen over there,’ I expressed, ‘Say it in English’ he retorted, in English, ‘those two gentleman’ I repeated, ‘enough of your gangster slang’ he screamed, stuffed 50€ in my pocket and shoved me out the door.
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 My colleague was a bitch. There were no two ways about it. I liked her the very first day I saw her, and hated her a few weeks after. I?'m American. She?'s American. I automatically thought we'?d be the best of friends here in this sometimes God-forsaken city of lights.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
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 I had been married for ten years to my high school sweetheart when the itch to leave my wife started.
It?s not that she wasn?t sexy, smart, or attractive. I just felt the need to be single, free. We were both 35 and had been together since we were 16! We didn?t have kids, so I thought it would be easy. I honestly didn?t think ?Alice? would mind. She hadn?t seemed happy in years and I know the promotion I got which moved us to France made her miserable. She wanted to be back in Texas with all our friends and family. Quite understandable. I felt she would start over, find another husband and have the family she always dreamt of, and that we could even remain friends. Man was I ever wrong.
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 I wanted him. I wanted him and I knew I shouldn?t but damnit, I couldn?t help it. He?s married but I am not. We?d met years ago when we took the same French class at La Sorbonne. I was instantly attracted to him. I'm white, blond hair and blue eyes, and he's a strapping black man from NY. Where I come from back in South Carolina, my daddy would have beat me blind for dating a black man. I had to come all the way to Paris to do it, and now I can't get enough.
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 Earning enough money to live on in Paris can be a huge stress for Americans. That's a stress that can sometimes drive us away, but the problem I ran into when returning to the States was finding a place/niche to slip back into when I returned after all those years. My French experience didn't do me any good...or at least i wasn't in the right place, perhaps for it to do me any good...Americans don't have the best opinion of the French, as you know.
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Love Lives 
