Chelsea Fagan's Blog

this full-on Eurobro with the jogging suit and Pumas, was at the Durex machine getting as many condoms as he could carry out of there in his oversized pockets.

Pretty sure he cleared out the machine.

It was about 10:30 AM, and it was a Tuesday.

I kind of stood there for a second, marveling, wondering where in the world he could possibly be going, or why he would be paying such a premium for the condoms from the machine when they’re a tenth the price in box form at the grocery store.

Condoms are EVERYWHERE in Paris, you can shop around.

Surely his rendezvous couldn’t have been before lunchtime?

I like to think he was a clown on his way to a kid’s birthday party and had just run out of balloons for the animals.

At least he’s being safe.

Jealousy is a strange concept. It’s an emotion we all live with and must learn to adapt to, but it remains just that—an emotion. While it can occasionally kick-start us into more logical endeavors, like motivation or reasonable aspiration, it is more often than not a handicap, a fog through which we must struggle to see things.

I find, in general, that there are two types of jealousy: the benign kind which encourages us to seek things we may not have even known existed, and the malignant kind which tells us we are simply not good enough and makes us linger on that which is impossible to change.

Paris is a city full of envy. There is always a thinner woman, a more handsome man, a more expensive dress, an apartment with a better view. It is a city that almost runs on aesthetics, and can convince you that it’s not where you go, it’s how good you look getting there. Without this permeating feeling of envy, the cutting looks of judgment from size-0 women in Hermes scarves, a good portion of the population would stop getting out of bed in the morning.

And it is so easy to fall into the trap—to catch your reflection in a shop window and be overwhelmed with the desire to go home and change your outfit. A date can turn into a parade of confirmation that there is always better out there than you, that your partner is wasting their time on a 6 in a city filled with 9.5s.

There have been moments when just living here has made me feel pathetic. I translated a long paper for a friend, and to thank me, he took me out to this incredible little brasserie. He was telling me how it’s one of the oldest running restaurants in the city, how Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemmingway used to close the bar there every other night. The food was splendid, the wine perfect, the ambiance charmingly Parisian. And yet, all I could think as he asked me about my writing was how pitiful I felt with my little articles and the pocket change that writing affords me, how even to say “I’m a writer” felt like an ironic little joke that only I wasn’t in on. There have been real writers here, I was making a mockery of the whole thing.

It wasn’t until days later, recounting the evening to a friend back in the States, that I realized how magnificent the whole thing was. My friend had taken me to a bookstore after the meal and bought me L’Amant by Marguerite Duras, insisting it would change how I felt about French literature. I felt awkward when he said that “every writer needs to know her.” I thought of all the actual writers to whom that might apply, and was overwhelmed with absurd envy at the people who were actually publishing books and getting $500 an article.

Reading the book at a cafe a week later under a warm June sun, it dawned on me how ridiculous it was to have any feeling but supreme appreciation for that evening. The fog of “this isn’t enough” had settled over the dinner, the walk, the bookstore, until I couldn’t see six inches in front of my face. The idea, at 22, of “not being paid enough to be a writer” only revealed its absurdity days later when the self-conscious knot in my stomach untwisted.

Yet even at that very cafe, the shoes I so loved suddenly felt cheap and tacky on my feet when I gazed longingly at this unbelievably put-together woman’s delicate white Louboutins. How suddenly ugly I felt, how thoroughly ungrateful I became for all that I had: my little apartment in the 16th, my lazy summer schedule, my freedom to live and follow my dreams in the country I love—it all meant nothing in looking at this woman who clearly had so much more than I.

And I realized, catching myself mid-covet, how much I let her 700 Euro shoes imply about her. Her shoes cost 14 times as much as mine, so she must be 14 times happier, 14 times more satisfied, 14 times more interesting or worthwhile.

But I knew nothing about her. Perhaps she was battling cancer, in a loveless marriage, or pondering how to quit the job she hated without losing her ability to buy 700 Euro shoes. What I really did not grasp, though, is how little any of that matters. Even if she really were living some idealized, privileged life, that wouldn’t prevent me from having the same.

We tend to think of happiness as a zero-sum game—there is a certain amount to go around, and we must take as much of it for ourselves as possible, lest someone else get it before us. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, most often, being happy for each other makes us happier ourselves. It is a charming, refreshing quality that attracts people in the most genuine way. Supportive, encouraging people exude the kind of happiness that we so desperately need from each other.

I’ll admit it—I need to actively stop myself from being jealous. I need to remind myself of all I have in the moment. But I believe that after a while, I will take that general contentment on as a habit, a second nature. And when I learn to be that person who takes pleasure in the joys of others, my own successes will be that much sweeter as they come.

“Although I never had a special name for this, it is something that I engage in everywhere and all the time. I have even had this with strangers in small, opportune moments. Most people I know engage in this…imagine that. The stupid, uncultured Americans actually have a thought about something other than who should win American Idol.

Yet again, I don’t see how France is different from anywhere else and I deeply resent the idea that the air is somehow rarified there and only there. This is simply your perception and not reality. The more you tell me about Paris the more ordinary it seems”

-My mom, in response to my piece about French discussion.

“Why do you lie to me like this, Chelsea?”

Speaking with a male caller whose girlfriend takes on an alter ego during sex whom she calls “Batman” that demands oral sex from him.

Caller: And she’ll say stuff like, “Batman wants you to go down on me.”

Adam Carolla: Next time she does that, just say, “Oh really? Well, Commissioner Gordon wants you to blow me.”

There are moments when we look at the one we love, but we cannot really see them. We become overwhelmed by everything that composes them: the quiet moments that have passed between us, the cries of ecstasy, the tears that only we saw. It is as though they are less a person and more an amalgam of everything they have done, everything they mean to you. And when you look at them, across a table or while they’re still asleep, there is so very much there to see.
    There is a sense that, after a certain point, every shared glance and whispered conversation consists merely of the few tiny droplets that we can gather from the river of meaning that flows between us. There is so much to say, so much to know, and so little time to do it all in. Words become insufficient; physical appearance becomes secondary. That face, the one that is filled with the laugh lines and dimples you feel you have almost carved yourself, is simply the packaging for everything that exists which you cannot describe.
    And the more that person becomes a construct of your shared life, the more you need to focus on individual things to allow your brain to process the enormous emotional undertaking. To simply look at them and think, “I love this person. They are beautiful.” is both insufficient and impossible. No—you must deconstruct them and pull them into little pieces that you can understand, one at a time.

Their eyes, the way they look at me—that unbearable look that asks of me so many promises I cannot make—they are stunning.

    Their hands, the soft, delicate, warm extremities that can at once make me feel so beautiful, so desired, so safe—they are perfect.

    Their laugh, that honest, loud, infectious bellow that fills the room—never more so than when a joke is just between the two of us, bringing us to tears alone in bed—it is happiness embodied.

    To look at them head-on and try to take in everything that we feel at once would be like looking into an eclipse. It’s simply too much, a foolish endeavor. So we must, then, take little bits and pieces of them as we go and give them each their own quiet moment of appreciation. We must spend a half-hour absent-mindedly stroking their hair. We must marvel at the way they throw their head back in unashamed laughter when something is really funny. We must make love with the lights on, watching every crinkle of their face as it plays out against the movement of our bodies.
    Perhaps we will never define love, because it is far too big a term with far too many moving components to be nailed down to a single word. But if we take things individually—if we let ourselves feel the way their arm snakes behind our backs while walking, the way a palm cups a chin for a kiss, the way lips feel when buried in the crook of a neck, then maybe we can grasp what it is about this person that makes us feel so exquisitely alive.

By watching episodes of TV shows on YouTube with strange subtitles.

France needs Hulu.

Xoxota is a dirty word in Portuguese.

I’ve been asked a lot recently (for some reason, most significantly when I wasn’t online for a few days) if I write fiction and/or poetry. As anyone reading my blog knows, I’ve already subjected you guys to a sprinkling of my tedious poetry, but fiction is actually where my heart lies. Unfortunately, it’s been something of an uphill battle, as long-form fiction is simply not my strong point. Two and a half exceptionally mediocre novels in, I’ve realized that my best bet on keeping people’s attention is in short-story. So, in the interest of letting you in on my writing that doesn’t involve complaining on Thought Catalog, here’s an excerpt from a short-story collection I’m about halfway through right now. This is a little piece from the second story of the collection, please enjoy.

“On a lighter note,” Corinne said, “I looked at the mailing list—you know who’s going to be there?”
“Liz?”
“Yes, but you knew that. Drumroll please…” she rapped her fingers gently on the edge of the table, “…your best friend, Austin Mansfield!”
“What?! Ugh, that self-important fop, he would be going to this. Are you serious?”
“Yep, he’s definitely coming, according to his Courier New-fonted email.”
“Courier New? God, I want to punch him.”
“Tell me about it. But, his girlfriend is coming, too—and she’s a nice girl.”
“It makes me not trust her,” he said, scowling. “Why is she with that guy? She’s pretty, nice, smart, not a sociopath…what’s her name, again?”
“Camille.”
“There you go. Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s because she’s so forgettable.”
“That’s mean, Sam.”
“Hey, I can’t blame her. There isn’t enough room for another human being in that relationship. His bowties alone have, like, ten personalities.”
“Stop it…” Corinne protested through her laughter.
“I’m serious, he’s like Hipster Ken. I bet he stands in front of his mirror every day, ‘Am I going to be Malibu Austin? How about Shabby-Chic Austin? Eurotrash Austin?’”
“You’ve met him once, Sam,” she chuckled.
“Twice. Twice! Once at the Christmas party for your magazine and once at that stupid New York Goes To Paris Art Circle Jerk or whatever that thing was you dragged me to.”
“First of all, ouch. I helped organize that ‘Circle Jerk.’ I resent that. And second of all, I know the crowd wasn’t exactly the most down-to-earth, but Austin wasn’t mean to you or anything.”
“No, he’s just the most affected human being I’ve ever met in my life. Do you know how long I had to listen to him talk about his documentary on Williamsburg while you were off working the guests? Do you know how long??”
“How long?” She asked, rolling her eyes.
“Thirty-five minutes. I was checking my watch. That’s thirty-five minutes of my life I’ll never get back, Cor. He was talking about it like it was Schindler’s List and it was essentially him taping his friends doing coke in each other’s apartments, from what I could piece together. He said he was really inspired by the Nouvelle Vague; I kept waiting for someone to jump out from behind a potted plant with a camera and yell, ‘Just kidding! No one is actually that insufferable!’”
“Maybe the cinematography was good, or something.” She offered lamely.
“He shot it on his iPhone. His iPhone. He wanted it to be ‘real.’” Sam could barely contain his laughter as he imitated Austin’s mellifluous, WASP-y voice.
“Well, either way, he’s going to be there tonight. But I’ll be next to you the whole time, I won’t leave you stranded with him.”
“Just know that if you do, I know where you live.”
“I hope so,” she purred, putting her hand on his thigh under the table. There were some benefits to the side-by-side seating on terraces.
“Not in front of Jacques,” he smiled, kissing her ear.

Corinne always appreciated living in the only city in which such egregious public displays of affection were not only tolerated, but considered rather charming. The seating arrangements alone seemed to beckon lovers to come, imbibe, and be nauseatingly interested in each other for a few hours. They never quite that tripped that invisible line into the inappropriate, but they did have their moments like these. Tourists who, in their hometowns, would scoff at a couple kissing at dinner had occasionally asked to take a picture mid-embrace. Perhaps, amongst the other souvenirs they brought home, Corinne and Sam provided a postcard of what love looks like for someone who thinks it must exist only very far away from them.

The entrées arrived, breaking their dazed embrace with the soft ceramic clink on the table, and they tucked in—glad to be with each other, glad to be themselves.

There are some words that exist in French that we simply do not have in English. The same is true for any two languages. Languages develop, they adapt, they evolve. Nine times out of ten, they can be slipped smoothly into one another, transferring their ideas from between themselves with relative ease.

Outside of that, though, there remain a few ideas that simply do not translate. There are concepts that we don’t use, that don’t mean the same things to one group as they do to the other.

An expression in French that perhaps best typifies this cultural dissonance is the phrase “refaire le monde.” Literally meaning to re-make the world, it is generally applied to the sort of conversation that lasts over many hours—often fueled by wine and cigarettes—in which the participants de-and-re-construct the world around them and shape it, as best they can get it to fit, to their ideals.

Bouncing from politics to philosophy to psychology in a few short quips, the conversations are the kind that make up that beautiful, warm din that fill French dining establishments like a well-loved perfume. People lovingly, passionately argue and concede over their over-full glasses of wine or delicate little cups of espresso. The moments that people give over to these conversations that, objectively, lead nowhere are so typically European, they seem almost a novelty.

I have friends here that actually schedule them, once a month, to be held at a certain hour on a Sunday over a spread of cheeses and a few bottles of wine. At first, I had a hard time grasping the concept of scheduling these idle talks. It seemed so ridiculous to my American sense of productivity to actively set aside time for meandering conversation. But, having now attended three, I can now think of nothing more necessary for the soul.

Not being a religious person, there are few moments that touch that unidentifiable part of me that longs to see meaning in things beyond the literal. We all have it, and though we can choose not to nourish it, there is something so inexplicably satisfying acknowledging its existence, feeding into it with a few precious moments of theoretical conversation. These moments with friends where I can hear their thoughts about things I never would have known otherwise are precious, and confirm for me our shared humanity. Questions far too big to answer often provide the most beautiful, awkward stumblings into honesty and fear. What does all this mean? I don’t know, either.

Perhaps that is what we need the most. Perhaps too many lovers are without those moments, still naked and dewy, tripping and falling into conversation about things you never have time to acknowledge on the way to work. Perhaps too many friendships spend too long skating along the surface of what is convenient without peering into the depths of what is uncomfortably true. Perhaps too many dinners are spent in resigned silence, the idea that one can never run out of things to discuss having never crossed the diners’ minds.

I so adore the idea that the French have given an entire expression to this kind of interaction—now that I know it, it seems so indispensable. I need the idea that a party amongst young friends will not be directed by the bounty of the alcohol but the volley of ideas and opinions. I need the promise of nights spent with the person I love most, not realizing the sun has come up until we’ve decided that man is inherently good but socialist states are, unfortunately, bound to crumble under the weight of the relative minority who abuse it.

There is always another glass of wine, a person you don’t quite know yet, something more to say.

More to follow.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of activity on my two (!) Tumblrs of late. The reason for this is quite simple: my computer pooped the bed two days ago (my network adapter needs to be replaced—I think) and I have been stealing precious morsels of internet since that point, leaving me no time to grace you with my witty thoughts on croissants and the like.

That being said, Thought Catalog has found it in themselves to run two of my pieces while i had my back turned (one a slightly more fleshed-out rant on Bradley Cooper’s French, the other—one of my most popular pieces to date, people like sad things—a love letter to a best friend). I would link them, but fuck if i know how to do that on an iPad and my author page is linked at the top of the blog.

Many good things have been going on over here, yet I feel as though I cannot fully enjoy them, as my days no longer contain those precious moments of scrolling through over-photoshopped pictures of gay couples, GIFs of obese black women, and rage comics about high school kids getting walked in on by their moms.

I miss Tumblr.

Not like all those other disgusting foreigners who speak, act, and write in fluent English—that’s the least they could do.

When is America going to get its national shit together and start speaking languages other than English and yelled English?

Side note—Jodie Foster actually speaks flawless French, guess she’s not fuckable enough for anyone to care.

Saw this quote of hers in a French film magazine the other day, felt blood boil, must share.

“I am very demanding of myself. I am a soldier, at the risk of compromising my freedom.”

Shut up, Natalie Portman. Why don’t you, Sean Penn, and Daniel Day-Lewis go down to the dollar store, get some little plastic trophies, and have an earnest-off for the next few days so we can all take a little break from hearing how hard you work?

Here are some things Natalie Portman is: someone who gets paid to read words off a piece of paper into a camera, someone who gets paid to dress up and be pampered to have her picture taken on a red carpet, someone who gets paid to give self-indulgent interviews to hordes of magazines and television shows, someone who gets paid to wear a certain brand in advertisements, someone who gets paid to smile and stand at the right angle.

Here are some things Natalie Portman isn’t: A soldier.

Even if we weren’t currently entrenched in two land wars that cost us real, human lives every single day, I would still find this quote ludicrously offensive—I would imagine even more so to anyone who actually puts on a uniform, risks their safety, and makes incredibly difficult sacrifices to protect and serve their country. Hearing an actress, an actress, refer to herself in such a dramatic, overblown way is just infuriating. “At the risk of compromising my freedom.” What?

You compromise your freedom by choosing to be paid egregious sums of money to have your head CGI’d onto a real dancer in Darren Aronofsky’s latest movie and you’re a soldier who is risking your freedom?

I know that celebrities are the court jesters of our modern day world, and I know that we are not supposed to take what they say seriously, but I can only imagine how someone who lost a soldier or who is actually sacrificing their freedom must feel when they read something like this. Tell me, Natalie, did you give this quote before or after running to your mani/pedi/massage? Did you compare yourself to soldiers who are away from their families for months or even years at a time before or after you hired the top baby nurse in California and gave an interview/photoshoot with a mothers’ magazine?

I must say, I greatly respect Kim Kardashian or Perez Hilton over Natalie Portman, if I were forced to choose, and it’s for a simple reason: they enjoy and embrace what being a celebrity is, feed into it, and work the system in the appropriately shallow way. They are not trying to cultivate some false sense of tortured artistry by offensively comparing themselves to brave men and women who actually inconvenience and endanger their lives to protect what they believe in.

Let’s start allowing soldiers to take two-week leaves of absence for “exhaustion.” Let’s start allowing them to take months off at a time for press tours where they get to talk about how hard they work. Natalie Portman gets to, and she’s practically a general, so shouldn’t they all be getting the same treatment?

Sitting in a park today, I saw a little red-haired girl alone on the swing set. About five years old, she had the puffy orange locks, the oversized glasses, and the isolated demeanor that made my heart ache with nostalgia.

As I watched her, swinging back and forth slowly, watching her foot drag in the sand, I felt this overwhelming desire to go and say something to her. When she looked, occasionally, towards the other children with an expression as resigned as it was curious—“whatever this is, I am not a part of it”—I saw my own childhood passing before my eyes.

Between skipping a grade, changing schools four times, moving three states away, attending a magnet school so far away from my neighborhood I could never befriend the other students, and being a bespectacled, acne-riddled ginger, school was never my favorite place. Even when I went to my “special” school, something I was convinced would change my sputtering social life forever and for the better, I remained the weird girl.

To other nerds, I was the nerd.

For my entire scholastic life, the social aspect of school was just something to be dealt with. I liked reading, I liked writing, I liked the general act of learning—I hated the classroom.

Without going into too much detail, I was never well-liked. There was something about me that other students just seemed to recoil from (unless they were too busy openly mocking me) and much of my developing years were spent alone, reading under trees and making up stories.

I recently read a diary I kept in the fourth grade and realized that a good portion of it was lies. In my own diary. I had made myself sound as though I was popular, well-liked, beautiful. I can’t remember now if it was on the off-chance my mother would read it (wouldn’t want to worry her) or if I simply wanted to pretend my life was better than it was.

Either way, I was a sad little loner. I used to hang out with the teachers at my magnet school during lunch—I would use words like “proliferate” and they would sneak me an extra brownie. I always felt more comfortable with adults.

Eventually, I managed to make a few real friends. In fact, the first friend I made when I moved to Maryland remains my best friend to this day (hey, thicks!) so I suppose I have taste. I was able to break out of the shell that I spent so many of my formative years in, learn to disregard the people who are bound to be mean, and be who I want to be—and why?

My mother.

Quite simply, my mother did the most important job a mother has to do with love and tenacity—she showed me that it is okay to be me. She encouraged me, defended me, showered me with praise (always honest, and punctuated with loving ribs about how clumsy or easily embarrassed I am) and was generally there for me whenever I needed it.

And in looking at the little girl today, it became all the more clear to me why I want to be relatively young when I have my children. Aside from the facility of conception, elasticity of body, and youthful energy, I want to be able to understand my babies as my mother did me.

Youth is a beautiful, exhilerating thing—but it can also be terrifying. It can sting with the monotony and brutality that come with being stuck in a room, day after day, with 30 people you don’t like. I think, after a while, we forget what it was like to have such limited horizons that we feel like the most minor problems are the end of the world. We grow out of these limitations, we move past them, and we forget them.

To have a child younger means to share youth in a way; to be raising a toddler in your late twenties is to look at the world with the same curious, open energy that is passed back and forth like a brand-new baseball. 

The little girl on the swing’s mother was sitting on the park bench across from me, smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine. Probably about forty, she looked as though every child on that playground or young couple on the grass was the most insufferable thing she had ever been forced to endure. All I could picture was my parents when I was that age: running around fields with me, tackling me in tickle fights, throwing parties and showing me off to their friends.

We lived together, and because of that, no matter how tough things could get with other kids—everything was alright. I knew that two people at home would be there to make me laugh, listen to my stories, and do shadow puppets on the wall until I fell asleep. My parents never made the mistake of the ”trying to be your kid’s best friend” thing, but they were much more than that without even trying. And now that I have my own life, there are no two people that I want more to go out and have a drink with.

Being a parent is such a precious thing, and when I see people just phoning it in (as I did this afternoon), I can’t help but get a little choked up. 

We learn quickly enough that the world can be a cruel, uncaring place. A family is the tiny little port you can build in the storm, a place where, if you make it so, everything is warm and loving and open. You have the option of creating a safe zone for the few most important people in your life—actively building the moments and places that will one day be the stuff of aching nostalgia. Why anyone would want to do such a thing halfway is so far beyond me.

I, for one, can’t wait to have children. I can’t wait to watch this little person who looks like me unfold before my eyes. I can’t wait to kiss boo boos, read books, turn on nightlights, and play dress up.

I only wish I could scoop up every kid that doesn’t go home to that at night and take them with me. I wish I could have read with that girl and made daisy chains. I wish I could have taken her home and played house all afternoon.

But I couldn’t. I simply walked to her mother and said, as I was leaving,

“Your daughter is adorable. What a proud mother you must be.”

They’re not even vision-correcting glasses.

Also, their shoes are ugly.

Here, if you’re in France, support a good glasses charity,

http://www.jimmyfairly.com/

Their glasses are great.