Crazy is as crazy does

As I said in my last post, D's birthday is the 13th of July, mine is the 15th, and we left on the 17th to drive down to Canet for vacation. We went out the weekend before, comme d'hab, to the bar we always go to. Saturday night as I was leaving I met a group of new people who invited me to stay with them and go to a club. Since I didn't know them I skipped out that evening. The next night, the 13th, my town had the big 14 juillet celebrations. There was a pretty cool parade with dancers and music from different countries and the fireworks were actually really good, especially for a town of 30,000 people in redneck Picardie! Of course there were a bunch of hoodlums (read: teenagers) setting off small-scale fireworks in crowded areas but luckily no one was hurt. Anyway, after the fireworks D and I go back to our usual bar where they are having this really neat rock/jazz jam session, where my new buddies from the night before are playing guitar. So one of them, Ben, comes to talk to me after he finishes playing, we chat a little, he buys me a drink, no big deal. The jam session finishes up around 1 AM. When I say goodbye he asks for my number and I tell him that I'm leaving for vacation for two months at the end of the week but we could boire un verre before then if he wanted and he agreed. I will fess up - at this point I was more interested in one of his friends and I gave him my number thinking (not very smartly or fairly) that at least one of them would have my number for when I come back in the fall.

So it's Wednesday night, the day before I leave, we meet up at the same bar for a drink, and we really hit it off, like we got along really, really well. I had been planning on staying for a couple hours and then going back home to get some sleep before getting up super early to leave at 7 AM; I stayed out with him until 3:30 AM! When we finally said goodnight Ben says he'll call me the next day to make sure that D and I got to Canet okay. He did call the next day, and every day since. We have been talking on the phone every night since then, even now that I'm back in the US. At first it was just for about a half an hour, then it got to be more like an hour, and now it's up to about two hours (calls from France to fixed lines in the US are free and unlimited). Every time I talk to him we have more to say to each other. Since I had to come back to Paris to get my flight home he came to meet me for a few hours before my plane left too (my town is only about an hour from CDG so it wasn't super inconvenient for him).

So even though I've only seen him in person a few times, and we've only known each other for like three weeks, I think I found a good one! I know it sounds insane, but I do miss him, and I look forward to his call every day. And even though it's tough being separated, I do kind of like that we are forced to use the phone and internet to keep in contact, that we are going to get to know each other very well before taking the typical crazy French couple leap. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting back at the end of September :)

And it was super lucky that he was the one I gave my number to and not the other guy!