La Rentrée, The Great French Return, had another surprise in store for me…
As I mentioned in this previous post, all these former flirts and exs tried to return into my life in the month of September. At the end of that post a certain garcon, that I call the Young Doctor, sent me a message. We’d met last November on the “dating” app Bonjour/Bonjour (full story here). Since he was the only person of moderate interest I’d met during that whole experiment, I kept on chatting with him over text. After a couple of weeks of back and forth messages we finally made a date to meet in person at the end of February… which he “forgot” about on the day of. A little fed up, I decided he wasn’t worth my time of day and I let our conversation die out. Since then, he would occasionally send me a “Hey there!” sms, which remained unanswered.
When he sent me a message via Bonjour/Bonjour at the end of August, I ignored it like I had the previous ones. However, a few weeks later, probably just after I’d published that blog about the Rentrée, he went as far as skipping over the app straight to a text message. A little more effort which slightly piqued my interest. Nevertheless, I was fed up with all the duds from the Rentrée, so much so, I was resolute to avoid les hommes until I arrived in Buenos Aires in December (exciting news about that to follow). Then a few days later, he sent me a whatsapp message! Geez, this guy really wanted to contact me. Maybe I should give the doctor a chance? Here’s what happened next via our “chat” (translated from French and some of the zillion smileys removed):
18/09/2014 17:29:57: Young Doctor: Hi!
18/09/2014 17:30:03: Young Doctor: Sorry, salut! 🙂
18/09/2014 18:23:35: Lily: Salut
Young Doctor, how are you?
18/09/2014 18:26:23: Lily: have you just discovered whatsapp?
18/09/2014 18:26:27: Lily: 😉
18/09/2014 18:26:47: Young Doctor: Oh what a joy
18/09/2014 18:26:59: Young Doctor: and no not at all!
18/09/2014 18:27:57: Lily: Ahhh it’s just the first time you’ve sent me a message here
18/09/2014 18:28:10: Young Doctor: How’s life? I saw our messages and thought to myself that it was a shame that we’d never met!
18/09/2014 18:28:29: Lily: A pity indeed!
I think he must have forgotten the date we were supposed to have… which he’d forgotten. I thought doctor’s were supposed to be smart? That said, it was nice that he seemed to want to meet, at this stage, there was hope…
18/09/2014 18:28:38: Lily: and then time passed by
18/09/2014 18:28:57: Lily: I’ve gone to Asia 18/09/2014
18:29:07: Lily: I don’t know if I’d told you
18/09/2014 18:29:30: Young Doctor: Ah no I didn’t know!
18/09/2014 18:29:34: Young Doctor: It’s crazy!
18/09/2014 18:29:38: Young Doctor: Are you there now?
18/09/2014 18:29:53: Lily: No I’m in Paris
18/09/2014 18:30:06: Young Doctor: So you’ve come back from Asia?
18/09/2014 18:30:17: Young Doctor: Did you go for a few months
18/09/2014 18:30:25: Young Doctor: Sorry, it’s been a long day
18/09/2014 18:30:55: Lily: I “went” rather
I’d made a little grammar mistake in French and the poor doctor possibly might have had a little panic attack that he was wasting his time chatting with a girl in Shanghai… (my Asian travel adventures start with this post and go forward).
18/09/2014 18:31:02: Lily: To China
18/09/2014 18:31:11: Lily: Japan
18/09/2014 18:31:15: Lily: Thailand
18/09/2014 18:31:24: Lily: All wonderful countries!
18/09/2014 18:31:36: Lily: Have you ever been?
18/09/2014 18:31:44: Young Doctor: But I was under the impression that your heart was in Paris 🙂
My heart… yes it was indeed still in Paris…. waiting to be resurrected by a sexy young doctor.
18/09/2014 18:31:52: Young Doctor: Nope, never been!
18/09/2014 18:32:48: Lily: My heart is still in Paris yes… but this winter I’m going to be in the Paris of the South
18/09/2014 18:33:37: Young Doctor: the Paris of the South?
18/09/2014 18:34:38: Lily: Buenos Aires
18/09/2014 18:35:12: Young Doctor: Oh wow!
18/09/2014 18:35:19: Young Doctor: Are you going for long?
18/09/2014 18:36:13: Lily: people saw it looks a lot like Paris 🙂
18/09/2014 18:37:00: Lily: Two months! Then two weeks in Brazil: Rio and Sao Paulo
18/09/2014 18:39:05: Lily: But I’ll be in Paris until into December 18/09/2014 18:42:05: Young Doctor: What a life 🙂
18/09/2014 18:42:18: Young Doctor: that’s all fabulous, bravo!
18/09/2014 18:42:56: Young Doctor: what neighborhood of Paris do you live in again?
18/09/2014 18:44:27: Lily: I live in Montmartre and you ?
18/09/2014 18:49:33: Young Doctor: In the 5th.
18/09/2014 18:59:19: Young Doctor: Where are you right now? 🙂
Was he flirting with me? What was I doing right then and there? Why? And what was with the smiley?? What was I doing right then besides thinking I was about to virtually score a date with a cute doctor? Drinking champagne at Beauty Monop, they were having a sale and enticed cardholders to come spend more money with a 20% discount and bubbly. Which lipstick might the doctor be fond of?
18/09/2014 19:08:54: Young Doctor: I think you’re really cool!
18/09/2014 19:08:56: Young Doctor: I wanted to tell you!
18/09/2014 19:08:58: Young Doctor: 🙂
I’m almost spit out my sip of champagne. I’m really cool? AND he feels compelled to tell me. That was definitely flirting.
18/09/2014 19:14:50: Lily: Ahhh that’s so nice 🙂
18/09/2014 19:16:10: Lily: I hope we can try to meet up sometime soon
Okay, Dr Flirt, if I’m that cool… let’s meet for crying out loud!
18/09/2014 19:16:42: Young Doctor: I’d love that!
18/09/2014 19:16:43: Lily: It would be great to meet … finally!
Maybe the finally was a little too in your face, but still I was getting impatient with all this back and forth over text, I hate games. Plus, seeing as I’d had my nice free glass of champagne, I’d thought I’d pick up a bottle of wine to have a glass at home, it was Thursday and the week was coming to a close. So I ambled down the road to the Cave des Abbesses.
18/09/2014 19:16:51: Young Doctor: yes !
18/09/2014 19:17:02: Young Doctor: The wonderful world of bonjour bonjour…
18/09/2014 19:17:06: Young Doctor: 🙂
18/09/2014 19:19:48: Lily: “Bonjour: in person 😉
Could he really need another hint to asking me out for champagne… coffee? Even a walk in the park? However… I would have never guessed what he would say instead:
18/09/2014 19:20:43: Young Doctor: I think I already told you, but I have a girlfriend (who lives in the US), so it’ll be just as friends!
18/09/2014 19:20:57: Young Doctor: Maybe you didn’t even have any other expectations..!
WHAT??? Ummm no… he’d never told me that! Why the hell was he chatting with me then? This brought be to right in front of the cave and who of all people was sitting out front having a drink?? Maurizio, my flirtation neighbor. And with this very unexpected news, I really did need another drink … as fast as possible. I pulled up a chair as I replied:
18/09/2014 19:21:40: Lily: No, you didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend…
18/09/2014 19:22:05: Lily: but we could certainly see each other as friends
18/09/2014 19:22:47: Young Doctor: Ah sorry about that, I couldn’t remember if I’d told you!
18/09/2014 19:23:04: Young Doctor: I’m going out for a walk
18/09/2014 19:23:20: Lily: Ok! Talk to you soon
18/09/2014 19:23:39: Young Doctor: Ah but I didn’t want to say goodbye!
AGAIN! More flirts!
18/09/2014 19:43:22: Lily: So it won’t be goodbye, it’ll be see you soon
I was left quite dumbfounded and didn’t really know what to say to the doctor. Bonjour/Bonjour was NOT a let’s be friends kind of site, he had to know that. Over dinner the next evening with Dave, a character from my book, I brought this up to him. “He’s definitely looking for some action, he just doesn’t want to feel guilty.” Hmmmpf! Why do I always attract the duds. It wasn’t like I’d gone after him, he’s the one who pestered his way back into my life, or rather my phone. The more I thought about this, the more it bothered me. So when he sent me two other whatsapps over the next day about rainy Normandy and a whole audio tour of the stroll he’d done when he was “sad” to say goodbye to me the other night. This is what I replied:
20/09/2014 18:52:05: Lily: Salut, I’ve been thinking about things since Thursday. It would be better if we didn’t try to be friends. I signed up for bonjour/bonjour to meet potential romantic interests, in fact, I found pretty inefficient and so stopped using it. You seem nice and “cool” yourself but I don’t like the idea of chatting, even in an innocent way, with someone who has a girlfriend. My ex boyfriend chatted with different girls whom he tried to say were friends… then I accidentally came across a not so innocent conversation at all, not such a great thing to see and I haven’t liked chatting ever since. Best of luck and I hope it stops raining in Normandy.
And with that I blocked him from whatsapp. Something my ex said wasn’t possible when I questioned him as to whom those inappropriate messages where from. I googled it. It’s really quite easy to do, no Ph.D. required. The best medicine is sometimes self-prescribed and best served without a doctor’s consultation!
Ahhhhh cheeky, why would you join an ap like that just looking for friends then flirt with women? Yeah I’d have blocked him too.
You bring up an excellent point… what the heck was be doing on the app… and WHY did he go out of his way to contact me, three different ways? Very suspicious! Just like the same ex when I happened to see a dating website message in his email inbox “oh that’s old I signed up for that ages ago” it’s even easier to click unsubscribe!!