Everyday Stranger

When in France...

Friday night Mr. Y and I left for Tunbridge Wells, a nice-sized town in Southern England where I had booked a room for the night in a Hotel Du Vin, a hotel built in a 250 year old manor house. There are 6 Hotel Du Vin in all and I am determined to try them all, for only one reason really-the showers are so fantastic they're like sex.

Really.

We got there and went for a walk around the town, talking about life, our pasts, spending time keeping the shoes on the pavement and the hearts in our chests. It wasn't warm and the sun wasn't out, but it didn't really matter since an ambling about the town was all we wanted anyway.

A quick shower in the better-than-sex shower, and we went to dinner. The Bistro in the hotel is rumored to be one of the best in town, and so we decided to be dull and just walk across the courtyard and dine in. The dinner was superb-as was the wine-but I kept feeling like all of the subjects Mr. Y wanted to talk about were from his previous life. I heard a lot about their first house, their old friends, their trip to the Phillippines. I stopped sitting up when his lucious lips produced the word "we", since I began to know that "we" didn't include little old me.

I was most likely being over-sensitive, and even if I wasn't, then perhaps I wasn't being understanding enough. Perhaps he needed to talk, and this was how he did it. Mr. Y doesn't always have an easy time of talking, it's foreign to him even though our relationship is rather based on talk. I can articulate how I feel most of the time, but I know that's perhaps a function of my constant need to understand just what these little nuggets called emotion actually are. Or maybe I was just imagining the whole thing. Sometimes things build themselves in my head, tiny daggers of ineptitude on my behalf, and maybe this was one of those evenings.

We went for a walk in the grounds with our glasses of wine, through the wrapping vineyards of baby grapes and the bracing chill in the air. Mr. Y grabbed my arm suddenly, stopping my walking.

"Look." he whispered, pointing to a nearby tree.

Not seeing at first what he was referring to, I looked around, before seeing it on the ground, quietly lurking. It was a beautiful fox, a male with that explosive red fur and tipped tail, hindquarters speckled with grey. He was laying down on the grass and just regarded us, not warily or with fright, but rather with open surprise.

I dropped down and started making soothing noises, moving across the vineyard towards him. He stood up and stretched, roughly the size of a beagle, and then turned to face me, not at all threatened. He sat down and twisted his head to the side, cocking his ears to the wind and to me and staring at me full on with quizzing yellow eyes.

He let me get within a meter of him before he stood, stretched with no panic, and then relocated himself another meter away from me, but he still faced me with those glowing yellow eyes, his tail wrapped around his body and his ears keenly tipping towards me.

We went back to the room, tipsy and chilled. I wasn't sure if the evening was a success or not, wasn't sure if I was being over-sensitive or not understanding enough. Curling up in the bed, Mr. Y made soothing noises and told me beautiful things about love, his life, and his heart before we fell asleep curled into one large comma in the immense bed.

I slept deeply, dreaming of yellow eyes and red stretching shoulders, before a delicious movement woke me up and my eyes flittered open to the realization that Mr. Y was under the sheet and his lips were on me, licking me and dipping into me and driving me wild with his fabulous oral sex. He drove me to a shuddering and wild orgasm, those yellow eyes on the ceiling and my spine shattered with pleasure. We then proceeded to have a great deal of loving, fucking sex, moving about the bed and taking up a dozen different positions.

It was four in the morning.

We went on for three hours, bunching up the sheets, stuffing pillows in our mouths to stifle the groans, whispering passion and heat to each other. When he came, we lay again in the curled up commas in the bed but were still unable to keep our hands off each other and started in for round two.

Once we had raised ourselves from the love nest, we went and fetched some breakfast and then checked out, as we had a high-speed catamaran to catch to Calais. The ride was fast and I was giggly, very hands-on and tactile with Mr. Y. Seated in the seats behind us were a cheerleading group from Missouri, all open vowels and excalamations "Ohmigod, isn't this so cool?" I took such comfort in them, their soft nervousness and contant picture taking.

Once in Calais, we headed straight for the massive grocery store Carrefours, in order to indulge in the most English of activities in France.

We needed to buy wine.

France has almost no duty on alcohol, compared with England which puts a £2 duty on all bottles of wine. So walking into a grocery shop was like walking into a toy store, the prices were so low. We wound up buying coffee, fabulous French mustard, some coffee, and 84 bottles of beer, 76 bottles of wine and 4 bottles of champagne. Paying a ridiculously low amount for all of this, we got a laugh at the gentleman in front of us-getting out his wallet to pay for his sausages, he also got out his cigarettes and lit up right there, in the store, at the cash register.

France is a country that walks to its own beat. The French seem to be unfazed by almost anything-they don't get embarrassed, they don't get stressed, and when pressed they make a little puffing noise with their mouth. It was obvious to us-Mr. Y being English and me as an American-that we were the complete combo of what the French hate. But I enjoy France a lot, and find the French attitudes refreshing. If they want something, they'll do it. Walking into Carrefours, we passed a woman carrying a black pillow. Nestled on that pillow was one of the biggest rats I have ever seen in my life, a roly-poly grey and white rat about the size of a small housecat. He was obviously a pet, and the woman clearly wanted him to come along shopping, so come along he did.

We then drove to a small village called St. Riquiers, where we stayed in a 17th Century Norman abbey. Our room was in the attic in what was the servant's quarters, so nestled under the eaves we looked out across the courtyard at a magnificent Gothic church. We went to dinner where, giggling, we realized we were useless at French. I studied French for 8 years and used to be fluent, however I realized that when I spoke French I mishmashed it with Swedish. It was a nightmare. Mr. Y, also a former French speaker, did the same thing. Trying to buy gum, he pointed to the gum he wanted. The woman's hand hovered over the wrong one.

"Nej, nej, nej, nej." he said, shaking his head.
The shopkeeped looked confused.
I leaned in, whispering. "Nej is Swedish. I think you mean 'Non.'"
He pointed to the other one. "I'll take that one, thank you." he said in English, throwing in the towel.

Ordering dinner was an adventure. Mr. Y and I were able to translate most of the menu, but we did things in fits and starts. I could remember half of the words I needed, but not the other half. I ordered my meal and then Mr. Y ordered his. The woman thanked us, eyebrows penciled in with great care, and then headed off.

"What'd you order?" asked Mr. Y.
I tucked my napkin on my lap. "I have absolutely no idea. You?"
"Something to do with lamb." he replied, shrugging and pouring wine.

The meals were fantastic, and I am re-making one of them tonight, a crepe Normandie special called Ficelle Picarde (without the ham, of course).

We went back to the hotel and fell asleep almost immediately. The next morning, we had a rushed round of sex, all lubricant jelly and slippery smoking sex, him flipping me onto my stomach and taking me fast and furious from behind, and then we popped downstairs for petit dejeuner (breakfast). It was the typical French breakfast-croissant with Nutella, cheese and ham. A nearby table had a trembling little French dog, about the size of a football, all shivering quarters and eyes bulging out. He looked like he was either going to crap or be beaten, and he whined constantly for food.

We left the hotel and popped into one more grocery store to buy some stinky cheese-no one does stinky cheese like the French, and we were desperate for some. We whipped through the shop and then headed for the catamarran back to England. This time, the boat was almost empty, and so Mr. Y and I bought the Sunday Times, draped it over his lap, and pretended to read it while I gave him a hand job off and on for most of the ride.

Once we got close to Newhaven, we dashed up to the empty deck and stood in the bracing wind, seeing the Seven Sisters. He held me close against the freezing chill, and wrapping one arm around me, the other hand slid easily into my skirt, finding the moistness and riding me to a gentle orgasm against the railing of the ship.

Weh we docked, we moved back to the cars, opening the doors of the Alfa and rewarded with an immediate smell of stinky cheese. We drove home, hands all over each other, and then once we got to the house we hurriedly unpacked our dipping car of its wine, and then hurried upstairs where we played my favorite game.

Tie me up, tie me down.

And we finished off the oozy weekend with a two hour session.

Fuck I am so in love with this man, I just can't keep my hands off of him.

-H.

Posted by Everydaystranger at June 21, 2004 09:02 AM | TrackBack