Public Service Announcement : My Breasts are Deaf and Dumb

Walking home from work today, I noticed a long paint-spattered mirror that I thought would look nice in my future apartment. This particular mirror was under the arm of a man. He noticed that I noticed, so he decided to strike up a conversation:

“Are you Japanese?” … “I’m a painter.” … “You have a beautiful smile; I’d like to paint you sometime and give you the portrait.” [nude? I wondered, as his eyes looked me up and down]… “Are you Chinese?”

As I continued walking without answering, he finally gave up, “Guess you must not like compliments, although I could make many about you.”

That made me smile, which was the crack into which he leapt to continue the conversation. While he was interrogating me on the art museums I’ve been to in Paris, he would not stop staring at my breasts. I felt like he was asking them, “Have you been to many art museums in Paris? Did you go to that Japanese exhibit at the Grand Palais?” This was an exhibition of erotic ukiyo-e prints, which was most likely the site of many a pick-up or the scene of many an Asian-fetish-motivated seduction.

As my breasts are mute, I answered for them: “Yeah, I did…”

He passed his eyes over my lips as I spoke, but then he asked the area under my neck: “What about the Musée Guimet?”

“Yeah, that too, but my interest is in contemporary art, not in Asian art,” thinking of the most recent exhibit I had seen, Africa Remix at the Centre Pompidou. I turned around, he wished me a good day, I wished him the same back, and we each continued on on way.

The key thing I have learned is that conversations in France are as easy to let go of as to pick up. So I no longer feel weird when men talk to my breasts, as I will never see them again after a turn around the next corner.