La Rentrée: The Great French “Return”… But of Who?

As most people who call Paris home, the beginning of September is a very crucial time of the year: la Rentée. But what exact kind of “Return” will it be for La Tigresse? Never a boring moment in Paris!

The Great Return. French people love it, though I’m not really sure why, they have to go back to work after their marathon holiday, shouldn’t they be depressed? I guess instead they are, refreshed… Back to school, back to work…  and apparently when the lost lovers try their “return” too! Out of sight, out of mind? Stuck without phone transmission on a desert island? Coming out of a deep amnesia? After a bleak summer (well, besides the the terribly flirtatious Passionate Porter from my last post), they all seem to be “returning” in one way, shape, or virtual form. 

La Rentrée started a bit early, around my birthday when the Blogger Boy sent me a rather nice email for my birthday. I took it as an apology of sorts for “vanishing” for weeks. Alas, that hope was soon dashed when he once again .. disappeared right after. He really can’t be busy every night of the week, could he? And if he actually is, why can’t he invite me to one of these potentially fabulous events? Why bother event to have sent the nice email?? Humpf!

Then when Naughty (partner in crime from my book whom some of you know of) was visiting end of August, I got these messages from Jacques, a character from the end of my book. I’d run into him at an event early summer and I wasn’t surprised to hear back again from him. He’d become really paranoid and keen on conspiracy theories! Yikes! No returning for him! Luckily I had Naughty to provide a convenient excuse to thwart his dinner invitations.

Trying to shrug off the oddities he’d developed, I received this mystery text message from an email address. Why send an email to my cell phone?? Very strange indeed. “Bonsoir how are you? Back to Paris for me. Are you out?” Note it was sent at 11 pm… I replied a very funny c’est qui? Who is it? As there was no name. I didn’t get a reply. I was too curious so I copied the email into the facebook search and easily found the sendee colprit. From the hour it had been sent, I should have figured it was a very famous “returnee,” none other than the Film Guy. I wish he wasn’t such a cynic and only looking for a late evening “friend,” he’s actually quite cute and interesting. I can give him credit for his honesty, unlike most guys, that doesn’t mean I’m going to give into him.

Almost ready to thrown my phone away to reduce the level of no-good returning it was delivering, I got yet another message, this time from Maurizio, my former neighbor wannabe Casanova (more on him here). I do have to say, his text messages can very extremely entertaining and Naughty and I decided to have fun with him by replying with this great new photo in the message at the top of the post: Maurizio: I did my shopping and you’re my favorite product. I’m going to “eat you up.” Kisses. I’m laughing just reading the message again. Okay, I probably stoked the fire by replying with me in the shopping cart, but I couldn’t resist. Now of course, the way too flirty messages are coming back… yikes! 

If that weren’t the cherry on the gateau! Then last Thursday I grabbed a drink with Sassy and a good guy friend, someone I’d always been quite fond of. After a few drinks he goes and says that he had tried to flirt with me back when we met! Well, he obviously didn’t try hard enough… and now with his wife and two kids, it’s wayyyyy too late. Why couldn’t he have RETURNED many rentrée ago?

Saying au revoir in front of the métro, I headed slightly melancholically up the Montmartre hill, reflecting on the “what could have been” I get a “heyyyyy thereeee!” I swung around to find …. Mr Mali! Oh man, I’ll never be able to go anywhere in the hood anymore. I did have to laugh. “Sit down for a minute!” he attempted. All I wanted to do is get home to my sad lonely bed. I’d sent him a friendly text message back in June saying look don’t wait for little ol’ moi. I thought he’d gotten the picture as he had left me alone, save one call attempt a few weeks ago.

“I know what your problem is,” he announces.

“Oh really, what’s that?”

“You think I’m too young!” Well, from someone who constantly lies about her age and is stuck in her twenties, this was quite comical. “How old do you think I am.”

Now it was my time to humor him, “24?” I offered up.

“Nooooo…. I’m 34! See not too young at all!” That didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to go out with a 24 or 34 year old hair-braider.

What’s going on with this return? Were they all coming back? And this wasn’t even all of them, more tried returning! Most recently, The Young Doctor I’d “met” (we never did meet in person) on Bonjour/Bonjour sent me an email through the app. I hadn’t used it since the experiment back at the end of last year, to see the message I had to log back into the site, and my curiosity won, I reloaded the app to find a message of: “Lily!” That’s all. I wonder how many other girls he tried to “return” to with absurdly short and inefficient messages that night?

To “rentrer” the verb means many different things in French, it also means to make a “comeback,” which it appears was what some of these garcons were trying to do. But “return” also has a few different meanings in English. The one I’d like to use for all these guys is Return to Sender! At least we got some giggles for free before returning the goods… or the bads 😉

Note: Photo credits for the fabulous spontaneous photo of me in the supermarket trolley go to Abigail of Set in Paris Movie Tours! We made our own little movie of a night!