When I went to Paris alone a few years back, I met a guy at my hostel and had an entire relationship (from the honeymoon phase to the brutal breakup) in the span of 2.5 days. It was one of the weirdest interactions I’ve had in my life. He was one of the most damaged and damaging people I’ve ever encountered, and somewhere out there he is undoubtedly still being a miserable prick to naive women while hiding beneath the guise of a romantic. While wandering around Paris with him, drinking straight from a bottle of wine and eating a baguette of course, I dragged him to this cemetery so I could kiss the tomb of Oscar Wilde. On the way in, I spilled half the bottle when I leaned down to pick something up and a security guard nearly kicked me out, but the guy I was with spoke French and managed to smooth things over. While the guy I was with freaked the fuck out about how cemeteries make him feel suicidal and urged me to leave, I continued deeper into the cemetery until at last I found Oscar. I had my lipstick ready to go in my bag. I slathered it on generously and was searching for the perfect spot when the guy, who had by this point gone silent with displeasure at being in a cemetery, started freaking out on me and told me there was no way he was letting me kiss that stone. “Do you know how many people have kissed it? Do you realize how sick you could get? What if someone had herpes and kissed it? Are you seriously going to do this? That’s disgusting. This is gross.”

I blanched. I was 19, I was naive and not yet sure enough of myself to fire back at this older (and therefore, I thought, wiser) guy. Instead, I pulled out a Sharpie and wrote a message I can’t even remember now. I reasoned that I’d be back in Paris one day, and I’d kiss the tomb then. I have some pretty dreadful stories from those few days with this guy. He was a mindfuck and an awful person. But of all the horrible things he said or did, THIS is the one for which I will never be able to forgive him.

FIN.