GABANNA

A Real French Kiss

Dolce and I have been in denial about being college graduates for a while, so when a $500 trip to Miami was discovered we immediately booked it with two of our friends, Amber and Melanie.

We stayed in a pretty poppin place where everyone was around our age and down to party.
The first few nights we were there we met a lovely assortment of people to hang out with;
unfortunately for us their vacation ended and they headed back to reality while we stayed to
party.

One night we got ready to go out and were debating where we should go when we stepped out of the elevator and right into England.

“Where are you birds headed tonight?"

The four of us stared at the three hot British guys as Melanie shouted, “You sound like you’re from London!” (if you don’t know “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” shame on you!)

As we all died laughing the boys simply stared at us and told us that they were going to a bar called Clevelander if we wanted to join them. Um, duh! Who was going to say no to hot guys with accents? Definitely not us. The guys grabbed their beers as we started our adventure down to the bar.

On the walk we were introduced to Damien, Pat, and the Lorax who were all visiting from
London and were vacationing in Miami and the Keys for two weeks. We started off walking
and talking while they tried teaching us English phrases to say and making fun of our New York accents. As the walk went on, everyone began pairing off. Now remember, there were three guys and four girls. Unfortunately for myself, I was left bouncing between the pairs.

Finally we arrived at the Clevelander. It was the perfect place: outdoor bar, pool, LMFAO
blasting from the speakers and a ridiculous amount of people. We were in heaven. Our group headed straight for the bar and the boys bought us a round of beers. As I reached for my camera to start the photo shoot with our new friends, Pat took out his phone and asked someone to take a picture for us. The guy he asked clearly had no idea what he was doing, since all of our heads were chopped off in the picture.

“Let me handle this,” I said. I turned to a group of guys right next to us and tapped one guy on the shoulder. He turned around, and stared at me.

“Can you take a picture of us please?” I asked sweetly.

“Yes, yes of course!” he said in a French accent. Yup, apparently we were touring Europe that night. He grabbed the camera out of my hand and thankfully managed not to chop off our heads.

“Now, you take one for me?” I took his camera as his friends all piled together. Now, when
you pose for a picture, you’re not supposed to move. Well apparently the French like to jump and push each other when they’re being photographed, so everything I took came out blurry. Frenchie began teasing me that I didn’t know how to take a picture and I yelled at them for all moving. Apparently he thought my bitchiness was charming, because he immediately told me he liked me and bought me another beer. Hey, I wasn’t complaining.

So while Dolce, the British and everyone else went off to the dance floor I stayed and tried to have a conversation with Frenchie. You should all know that I don’t speak a word of French, and he didn’t really speak English. Our conversation consisted mainly of us saying “what?” and trying to mime what we were saying so the other would understand. After a while Dolce came over and dragged me to the dance floor.

“Do you need to be saved?”

“I don’t know yet.” He was nice, but extremely clingy, which was proved as he magically
appeared behind me and started dancing with me. And by dancing I mean wrapping his arms around me like a python and not letting go. After a few minutes of this I decided I did NOT want to dance with this kid anymore and tried talking to him again. I still wasn’t able to understand him, and turned to the British guys for help.

“What is he saying?” I asked Damien.

“You know the British hate the French, don’t you?” he said with a look of disgust.

“Ohhhhh…so you’re not going to help me translate?” He laughed and turned back to Dolce as I sighed and tried to think of an escape plan when those python arms grabbed me and tried to make me “drop it low.”

“Nope! Don’t do that dude!” I turned around to yell at him and found myself an inch from his
face.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked. Well if I couldn’t understand him, maybe we should just make
out…right? French people have to be good kissers. They have a kiss named after them for crying out loud!

Boy was I wrong. Apparently in France they kiss by using their tongues. JUST their tongues. It was bad. Like realllllyyyyyy bad.

I immediately started signaling for help as he continued to try to play tonsil hockey. Luckily
Dolce saw my frantic waves behind his back and grabbed me.

“Bathroom!” she yelled as she dragged me away.

“Jesus this kid’s the worst. Help me get away from him!”

“I got you.” She left and when I arrived back on the dance floor I saw her trying to explain
something to him while he looked upset. I started talking to Melanie and Amber when those
damn arms grabbed me and pulled me into a corner.

“You have a boyfriend?” he asked me.

“Ummm…yeah! Oh yeah I do I really love him I’m sorry.” I rambled on explaining how I got
mad at him before I left for Miami and that the kiss meant nothing, yada yada yada. Frenchie clearly didn’t understand and professed his love for me.

“Jesus,” I muttered as his friends came over and started speaking rapid French as I snuck away.

Melanie grabbed me and threw me at some guy, telling me that his name was Larry. She told me that he was also from England (though not friends with our group of Brits), he was a doctor and I should talk to him. I turned and saw Frenchie headed my way and told the British guy that he needed to be my boyfriend.

Before he had a chance to question me I turned toward Frenchie and told him “this is my
boyfriend we’re in love kbyeeeee” and dragged my new bf onto the dance floor.

Poor Frenchie. Should have learned how to kiss the American way and not be so clingy.

Moral of the Story:
-Have a secret code with friends so they know when to help you.

-Don’t kiss French people. They will shove their tongues down your throat and do nothing else

-Don’t kiss French guys with big arms. They will use them to kidnap you and not let go.

-Just stay away from the French. They’re only good for their fries.

DOLCE

British Invasion

Sick of the song "We Found Love" by Rihanna? Me too. That was, until I fell in love in a hopeless place. Here's my story.

After getting a job in the real world, I was putting in a ton of hours and was in desperate need of a vacation. My girlfriends and I were still in denial that we graduated college and booked a trip to Miami for spring break week. Yes, spring break! Where we can drink non-stop, get messy at a foam party, and chant FRESHMAN! FRESHMAN! We all packed our bags and flew down south. What we thought was going to be a never-ending frat party in sunny Florida turned out to be a Euro-trip.

I'm in Miami Bitch.
Spring Break week in Miami was the same week as the "Music Conference." AKA there were a bunch of famous European DJ's playing "trance" music at the clubs, and all of Europe came. Us four girls took advantage of this opportunity and met guys from: Spain, France, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, and my personal favorite, England.

The third night into our trip I convinced Gabanna and the others to walk down Ocean Drive to find something other than a club. After 2 hours of getting ready and jumping on the beds to Sak Noel's "What the Eff" song, we took the elevator down to the lobby. As we were leaving the hotel 3 Brit's came up to us asking where we were going, and if they could tag along. The one guy came up to me and his dimples had me instantly, shotty!

Meet Damien. He was 23, A "copper" aka cop from London, drop-dead gorgeous, and his accent made me think of 10 different things I wanted to do to him.

As we walked to Ocean Drive, Damien and I trailed behind trying to mock each others accents. "You sound like you're from London!" Wasn't as funny to them as we thought it was. Besides him never having mac & cheese before, he was pretty normal and quite awesome. When we got to the bar I noticed my friend Amber was talking to Damien's friend.

"Amber, I love how we shottied the Brit's! What's your guys name?"
Drunk Amber smiled and said "This is Lorax!"
The Brit chimed in at this point "My name is Lawrence, not Lorax! Who the hell is named Lorax?"
"Sorry bro, your name is "The Lorax" now." ...and it stuck.

The entire night was full of tequila shots, dancing, and chanting "The Lorax" with the Brit's.  Gabanna got caught up with a French guy that apparently didn't know how to French kiss. (Dude, it's like your duty to know how to do that! "French" is in the name). I got a little too tipsy to dance in heels so Damien and I snuck off to the beach for a late night swim. His friend Pat followed behind with some Irish girl he met. Damien and I ran up to the lifeguard stand, stripped down to our "skivvies" as the British say (aka underwear), and ran into the water. Coolest. Thing. Ever.

It was like a scene out of twilight except for the whole creepy vampire/getting knocked up part. After realizing we were in shark-infested waters, we got out and and ran back to the lifeguard stand. He couldn't help but smile, tell me how beautiful I was, and kiss me. All I kept thinking was, "why the hell does he have to live in London. Eff my life."

We grabbed our things and decided to find Pat. Noises were coming from the other lifeguard stand and Damien ran over to interrupt.

"Pat, Dolce and I are going back...oh my god, I'm so sorry!"

Yea, it wasn't Pat. Turned out it was two random people getting it on, on the beach. Yeaaaa buddy.

If that wasn't enough, after we made it back to the hotel, we heard giggling coming from the guys room. Lorax was in there with Amber and due to "bro code" we sat around by the pool to wait. Damien began to tell me about his job, how he supports his mom, spoils his niece, and has a huge passion for travel...like I didn't fall for him enough in the past few hours. Geez dude, I'm moving to London.

Bed Time.

We finally made it to bed around 5 am, and he let me be the little spoon. I woke up the next morning in his boxer shorts and t-shirt to find Amber missing.

"Lorax! Where is Amber?"
"What? Why the hell are you calling me Lorax?"
"Do you remember anything from last night?"
"Nope, I blacked out." he replied. No wonder why Amber snuck out.

Thankfully Damien didn't black out, because he wouldn't let go of me. We spent the next couple of nights together but there was no way this spring fling was going to end up like it did for Sandy and Danny Zuko.

"If you want you can keep my skivvies."
I looked down at his boxers and gave him a puzzled look, "No, I'm good. We really don't do that here in America, but thanks."

I really don't need to keep your underwear to remember you by. A picture or a nice kiss will do.

As we said our goodbyes on the last night I ignored his comment, "I'll see you soon." I was not letting myself get carried away with a guy that lives in a different country. (Even though it sounded so cute in his accent.)

So what came out of this fling? A bitter-sweet memory. And a few pictures of us together to show my friends (damn, those dimples).

Moral of the Story:
- Sometimes we need to let loose and put ourselves out there for strangers. It's important to know you can feel something...even if it is just a fling.

- "There's plenty more fish in the sea." (in my case, across the Atlantic). There's a whole world of people out there, you can find a connection with more than one.
- It doesn't matter where you're from. Damien and I grew up in different countries with different backgrounds but we still sparked.

- If a guy asks you to jump in the ocean with him in your skivvies...don't be a girl and freakin' do it!

- Don't hold on to things that can't last. You can hold on to the lovely memory, but that's it.