"Let's do it!" she replied. "Get your wonderful self over here. I can't wait!" So I booked our plane tickets and hotel.
She met me at the airport. She looked... well, puffy. A couple of years of school had not been kind to my formerly trim and toned gym buddy. She had not told me anything about this before I left, but on the train back to the apartment, she told me how she just met some guy, and how they immediately connected on so many levels. (Meaning: the guy's a player and is telling her what she wants to hear.) But I kept my mouth shut; after all, I didn't want to spoil our trip.
Now, usually a long plane ride involving ups and downs through many different levels of pressure will cause some bloating. In this case, I had a connecting flight, so it was twice as bad. But I couldn't really blow off any steam right in front of my lady friend. The apartment was a small studio -- I couldn't risk stinking it up.
We still had most of the day left, so we decided to check out the gardens at Versailles. We walked, and walked, and walked some more. The bloating only got worse as time went by. Things started to get unusually moist and lubricated down there. I hoped and prayed it was only sweat, and that the gargoyle had not escaped. When I was able to stop and check: no problems.
You might ask, "Why not seek some relief in one of the public bathrooms?" It's because I knew that an impending explosion of this size was going to require quite a lot of cleanup, possibly exceeding the limitations of paper and requiring a shower.
We made it back to the apartment. I lay down on the bed while she got ready for her new guy to pick her up. By this time, my stomach was churning. If I changed position from lying on my back to lying on my side, the entire contents of my bowels would squirm and gurgle in response. Her guy finally showed up to meet her and I could only manage to smile weakly and wave hello. The moment they were out the door, I headed to the bathroom. There was one BIG explosion, a couple of smaller ones, and that was it. Shower. Relief. Sleep.
The toilet: nothing remarkable about it. Except, there was a small trail of merde leading down the inside of the bowl. It wasn't anything I could have been responsible for, since my explosion was of the gas and liquid kind. As a result of this trail, it had "bowl breath" to the extreme. And this being a French bathroom, of course there was no ventilator fan. It seems the French are used to smelling shit. You smell it at the airport as soon as you land, it gets worse in the subways, and it never quite goes away, no matter where you are.
The next night, she asked if I wanted to hang out with her guy. Let's call him Dennis. "Sure," I said. "No problem." The plan was to meet up for drinks.
We met in the agreed upon location. I introduced myself and shook his hand. Dennis is Russian. Not one of those tall, blond Russians you see in war movies; he was one of those short, toad-like Russians who is the villain in a James Bond movie. After introducing himself, my nemesis proceeded to give Julie several long kisses. These makeout sessions kept going over dinner, on the subway, everywhere. I didn't fly to Paris to see this! I excused myself and left early.
The next couple of days, I didn't see much of Julie. I explored Paris on my own, and she came back to the apartment only to change clothes and take a dump. How do I know this? Because the Maginot Line kept getting bigger and thicker after every visit! Imagine a turd kicking and screaming its way down the bowl, leaving half of himself behind -- that's what was happening. Even though the bowl breath also got exponentially worse, I wasn't about to try and clean that stuff up. I closed the lid, closed the bathroom door, closed the door to the vestibule leading to the bathroom, and tried to escape the smell and get some sleep.
I'm not sure if she had a steady diet of foie gras and escargot that caused this or what, but I'm absolutely sure I was not contributing to the problem. I don't really understand how anyone could poop at that angle! Later in the trip I even got to try out one of those German shelf toilets. Nothing stuck to the bowl at all -- a clean getaway every time.
The night before our scheduled flight to the coast, she called and said something had come up. She couldn't go on the trip with me; it seems Dennis could not believe that she can have male friends that are just friends, and would not allow her to go. Then she tried to act like it was my fault for not being nicer to Dennis, so that she could invite him to go along, too! She did agree to pay for her unused plane ticket, at least.
The next morning, I packed up all my things, left the keys on the counter, and left to catch my flight to the beach. I suppose I could have returned to the apartment after the beach trip, but a free place to stay was not worth dealing with her or that toilet ever again. On the plane, I chuckled to myself, knowing that without me around, she'll have no way to hide her toilet troubles from him. And when I thought about his small, toad-like balls slapping against her sticky, shitty asshole, I was glad to get as far away from there as possible.