The downside of my summer was realizing that maybe the joys of being seventeen, even in Paris, were highly exaggerated. I wondered if the summer somehow foreshadowed the rest of my life. Maybe I was doomed to a really lonely existence where the only pleasure came not from human company but from croissants. Maybe someday I would end up thinking Jacques Brel’s lyrics were uplifting.

A few months after my return to California, I received a letter from Noëlle letting me know that she had moved to New Caledonia, where, according to her, the ratio of men to women was five to one. I remembered her kindness in taking me to the Champs-Elysées on Bastille Day to fulfill one of my dreams. Granted, she had mistaken me for a real Californian, someone who perhaps knew Paul Newman or Cher. But in exchange for making one of my dreams come true, I sincerely hoped that she would find Monsieur Merveilleux waiting for her on that little island in the Pacific.

If someone were to make a movie of my summer in Paris, it would not be the touching coming-of-age film I had hoped for, but rather a black-and-white filled with close-ups of furrowed brows and croissant crumbs. There would be no theme song, just the sound of the Métro doors opening and closing and opening and closing. Against this backdrop of teenage angst, there would have to be a symbol, a representation of the confidence that comes with eventual intellectual and spiritual growth. This would, bien sûr, be most effectively depicted by a judicious scattering of topless models in the background.

The Wedding

The Wedding

My marriage started out with a big, fat lie: I told my parents that François’s family was happy about our engagement.

I had to. In the Iranian culture, fathers will consent to a marriage only if the future groom and his family worship the bride. There is no getting around this detail. If there is any problem with the groom’s family, forget it. Engagement off. Moving on to the next suitor.

When I first started dating François, his mother declared that I “would never be allowed to set foot in her house.” This was before she met me.

Before meeting me, François had a longtime French girlfriend. From all accounts, she was an intelligent and capable person. But she was Jewish. Her religion was a problem until François started dating me. Compared to a Muslim, the Jewish girlfriend didn’t seem so bad after all. I once asked François if there was anybody he could have dated that would have bothered his mother more. “Well,” he said, “a black Communist bisexual would have really irked her.”