How to Be Single by Liz Tuccillo Page B

also tipsy off of this new discovery: sometimes it’s okay not to try so hard.
    Back in France
    The scene was fantastic. As I stepped out of my cab, I saw glamorous, well-dressed men and women getting out of taxis or rushing down the street toward the Palais Garnier. I walked up the stairs of the opera house and turned around to look out at the scene. Paris. How clichéd to be impressed. But I was. It’s an unbelievable gift to be able to travel. It just is. That there are these gigantic steel machines that manage to lift us into the sky—that seems an impossible achievement in itself. But then to have the time and the finances to take advantage of it. How thrilling. How thrilling to be somewhere different—where every sight and smell seems strange and exotic. Paris, where I’d been so many times before, was still a foreign city to me. The cafés, the bread, the cheese, the men with their ruddy faces and gray mustaches—and the smell. It smells old and earthy. European. I love it.
    We were seeing the opera Lohengrin , the story of a princess who dreams about a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue, and when he appears, all she has to do is never ask him who he is or where he’s come from. Of course, eventually she can’t take it, and she asks him, thus losing him forever. Just like a woman.
    As I gazed over the whole mise-en-scène I heard a woman’s voice call out to me loudly. “Allorah, Julie. Hallo! Hallo!” Audrey and Joanne, all dressed up, were walking up the stairs toward me. Steve had gotten us all tickets together.
    Audrey smiled and asked, “How did you enjoy our talk the other night? Was it helpful?”
    â€œYes, very helpful,” I said, as we entered the opera house. “I was surprised how well French women handle rejection.”
    â€œYes, I was thinking about this,” Joanne said, as we walked through the lobby.
    â€œI do believe it has something to do with our upbringing. I think in the States, perhaps, it is considered very bad to fail, to be bad at something. Parents never want to tell their child that they aren’t fantastic, they never want to see their child lose. But here,” Joanne pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders, “if we are bad at something, our parents tell us we’re bad at something; if we fail, we fail. There is no shame about it.”
    We gave our tickets to the ushers and walked in. Could it be true that if our mothers and our teachers hadn’t coddled us so much in our childhood we would be better able to handle rejection?
    I was too busy chatting with Audrey and Joanne to really pay attention to where I was. But then the place hit me full on. We were now in the audience of the Palais Garnier, one of the two theaters that house the Opéra National de Paris. It was opulence to the highest degree. Balcony upon balcony, red velvet seating and gold leaf everywhere you looked. The stage was concealed by a red velvet curtain, and over it all there was a chandelier that, according to the program’s notes, weighed ten tons. We sat in our seats and I looked around.
    As if I hadn’t already seen enough beauty, grandeur, and Parisian charm for one evening, Thomas entered the row behind us with the tiniest, most elegant woman I had ever seen. She had long, blond, straight-as-a-sunbeam hair that fell just below her shoulders. She was wearing a powder blue dress one might describe as a “confection”; it poufed out at her waist and made her look as if she should be on top of a jewelry box. I could swear I smelled a waft of her tasteful perfume from where I sat. Thomas smiled and waved. He pointed me out to his wife; I saw him leaning over to her and whispering in her ear. She smiled and waved graciously to me. I suddenly felt like Andre the Giant and wished I had dressed better.
    The orchestra began to play and Steve stood up out of the orchestra pit. He bowed to the audience and they