Chasing Sunset

“What is it about Americans and la pipe?” asked my Parisian friend Anne* in between puffs of Marlboro. La pipe is French slang for “fellatio.”

Anne, who was born and raised in Paris, went on to ask why it is that so many young Americans don’t consider oral sex to be “real” sex. “It’s like a stop gap measure on the way to intercourse,” she observed, “and people in America don’t think it’s intimate the way we do in France. But it’s so intimate! Parce que c’est” -– and here she switched from French to English so she could use an utterly apt turn of English phrase –- “in your face!

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