School started a few days later. The classes, like the Bastille Day parade, were a huge disappointment. All my teachers were in their early twenties and none seemed very interested in teaching. Perhaps they resented being stuck in Paris during the summer, a season when the French normally evacuate the capital. One teacher spent the whole time flirting with the men in class while completely ignoring the women. Another made us translate the lyrics of the works of Jacques Brel, a famous performer whose songs would have been appropriate for Suicide: The Musical. We spent hours plodding through the songs, while our teacher sat with a far-off look in her eyes. My English versions did not do them justice, but then again, the teacher had a certain hands-off style of teaching, a style that translated into her sitting in the corner recalling, perhaps, a summer spent elsewhere. She helped us only reluctantly, as when none of our dictionaries had the word putain, slang for “prostitute.” With apologies to Monsieur Brel, the song “Jef”:

No Jef, you’re not alone
Stop crying like that in front of everyone
Because a fake blonde dumped you yet again
No Jef, you’re not alone
But I’m ashamed to see you cry shamelessly in front of everybody
Because a three-quarter whore popped out of your life

Then we moved on to “Fernand,” a funerary march.

To think that Fernand is dead
To think that Fernand has died
To think that I’m the only one behind
To think that he’s the only one in front
Him in his last beer
Me in my fog
Him in his hearse
Me in my desert

By the end of that song, we were able to conjugate the verb “to die” in every tense.

Had I made some friends during my melancholic French lessons, I would have at least been a few degrees happier than Jef or Fernand. Unfortunately, the students in my classes were quite a bit older than I was and most were newly arrived immigrants struggling to learn French. These were not people hoping to find Gertrude Stein’s favorite haunt; they were hoping to find a job. The few interesting people I did meet were leaving in three days to go somewhere else. No one, except for the people selling key chains under the Eiffel Tower, actually stayed in Paris during the summer.

The upside of my lonely two months was that I became completely fluent in French. Having loads of free time, I also managed to see just about every museum in the city. Whatever culture I lacked after having spent six years in Southern California, I more than made up for.