The History of Gin
or
A Fox's Tail
Is Life Existential? You Decide.
by ' Colorado ' Gumi
...I n s p i r e d By T r u e E v e n t s...
Chapter 8
Jules et Gin
Partie Deux
(see Part 1) ...Jules subsequently was raised by his bachelor uncle Robert -- yes, Bob's his uncle -- who lived in Tours. At the time Robert's passion was the life of Charles (the Hammer) Martel, the illegitimate son of Pippin the Middle and his concubine Alpaida, who defeated the Moors at Tours in 732 (that is, Charles defeated them, not the lovely Alpaida).
Jules' paternal grandfather was captured northeast of Paris during the Fall of France and spent the war in Germany as a POW. He stayed in the army after the war and subsequently was killed in Indochina by one of those nasty Viet-Minh bamboo booby traps.
Jules' maternal grandfather was a minor Vichy official who was arrested by the Free French shortly before the end of the war and spent some time in prison for his rather unavoidable collaboration with the Germans. After his release he moved his family, including Yvonne, from their home in Algeria to France when the trouble started. He invested in a winery and spent the rest of his life in relative affluence.
Jules studied at L'Ecole Technique in Tours, graduated from the University of Paris as an Engineer and decided to study law at Cornell. His family was well-to-do, thanks to his mother's inheritance and his father's investments in telecommunications and German industrial corporations, so they could well afford to splurge on his whims. He really just wanted to come to America to play and make useful contacts...
Jules also has some fairly close relations in Quebec, whom he visits occasionally.
Gin met Jules at a Frat party. . .Delta House or something. . .on the 5th of November, 2004. She maintained a casual acquaintance afterwards, mainly just running into him at Starbuck's. . .once with her car, actually.
Although he is not interested in Gin sexually (leaves more for the rest of us), he shares several interests with her, not the least of which is ladies' fashion. They both know some of the same models in the NYC scene.
He also is a cross dresser. Moreover, Jules sees no humor in the "French Castle" scenes of the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Jules took up smoking as a teenager, mainly just to be cool, but stopped soon after his 19th birthday because it affected his endurance in the amateur bicycle racing that had become his obsession shortly before that time. He drinks like a fish.
On coming to America Jules made a point of buying the gaudiest American car he could find. He drives a red Ford 350 Crew-Cab Pickup truck that gets 11 mpg in city and 15 mpg in highway driving. It could have been a Hummer but that tired cliche clashed with the quirkiness central to Jules' character. The point is for his car to be something no one expects a Frenchman ever to want and everyone knows all Frenchmen love hummers.
At Starbuck's all Jules orders is a large, black House-Blend coffee. He feels the coffee at Starbuck's is worse than mediocre (this isn't legendary French snobbery. . .the coffee at Starbuck's really is worse than mediocre) but he goes there anyway because there's always a crowd he can work to his advantage. He often poses as Euro-trash.
Two of Jules' great-grandfathers were killed at Verdun in World War I -- oddly enough. . .by each other -- oddlier still. . .on different days.
Another great-grandfather actually fought on the German side. He was French but got confused in all the excitement and enlisted in the wrong army -- He always had a lousy sense of direction. No one held the treason against him very long. . .he was released from prison in 1925 and by 1932 family, friends and neighbors all had forgiven him. Eventually when the subject arose everyone got a good giggle over his dopey mistake during "The Great War" (World War I). They joked, with prophecy probably unintended, that he'd learned his lesson and wouldn't make that same mistake again. And he didn't at the outbreak of World War II ("The Even Greater War"). But alas he was caught up in a Vichy sweep of "volunteers" for German industry and spent the duration in Munich making Coo Coo clocks, apparently a vital war resource for the Nazis.
Just to round out the history, Jules' fourth great-grandfather was an Irish World War I pilot in the Royal Air Corps who had an affair with, and knocked up, Jules' fourth great-grandmother (she liked this wiggle thing he did right at the end, especially when she wiggled back) although she, a French woman, was married to a quite inattentive Frenchman working at the French Colonial Department. The scandal was know to the family but hushed and never discussed. The cuckold husband, the ersatz great-grandfather, was later discovered in bed with another man by that man's wife, who shot them both dead where they lay using a Colt's .44 40 Peacekeeper revolver. She managed to avoid the guillotine and in fact, was acquitted at her trial. The revolver had been a gift to someone in her family from 'Buffalo Bill' Cody during a performance of his famous Wild West Show on European tour.
The man-killing wife's name was Sophia Helene DeCarlo and she had red hair. Sophia killed the two with just one shot -- preoccupied at the time, they didn't notice she'd entered the room. It was a Tuesday.
Gin figured her dad might suspect the bachelor uncle, Robert, who raised Jules after he lost his parents, also was homosexual. In fact this is not the case. Rather the unfortunate Robert was, and still is, an eunuch thanks to a tragic accident at l'ecole when a classmate, a best friend, accidentally sliced Robert's testicles off with a Napoleonic era sword the friend had brought to school to share with the class -- He shared rather too much of it with Robert. The sword had been carried in the wars by his friend's ancestor, who was an admired officer, named Guy, on Napoleon's staff. Robert's puberty had advanced sufficiently for him to develop and retain some manly traits but he never was the same afterward and didn't marry. To this day no one really knows what happened. Jules' Uncle Robert has no memory of the event and his friend, realizing what he'd done, went quite mad.
In reaction to the accident, which received some press, the French government enacted legislation forbidding the removal of Napoleonic era swords from their scabbards in French public schools and libraries. Scabbardless Napoleonic era swords could not be taken to school at all. The day the story hit the papers it was rainy in Paris, with a hope of clearing skies toward evening.
Although during the French Revolution Jules' ancestors were a mixed bag of Royalist and Republican, in the Napoleonic Wars the ones left were all staunchly pro-Napoleon. . .funny how that works out.
Jules' current paramour... actually for the last 5 months or so... is named Travis Astor. He's a cowboy type from a big-time ranching and wheat farming family in Manhattan who is studying business. . .that is, the kind of finance stuff Broker/Traders do.
Until 5 months ago Travis believed he was straight -- as did we all. And until that time he had a girlfriend. . .a beautiful and engaging young fox with ready smile and flashing brown eyes from New York City; she has a studio apartment near where Seinfeld and Kramer live. However Travis was inept around women; wavering between clueless and Victorian when push came to shove, so to speak, in the relationship (if you get my drift). After Travis was spectacularly dumped (with due cause) by his girlfriend in an Oscar-worthy performance precipitated by a particular moment of relationship incompetence, Jules stumbled across the wreckage somehow and they've been bosom buddies ever since. It's a wonder, though, how a guy who didn't know what to do with a woman in a short skirt does know what to do with a dude in the same outfit. (...but now I'm lost myself -- is Travis made-up or real? I think he's real.)
Jules once admonished Gin for the "ambiguous use of pronouns" in her conversation. She found this criticism unacceptably cheeky. . .especially coming from HER figment. . .and she cooled their acquaintance for a short while to drive home the point.
Anywho, she tested the Jules identity with several school friends to see if the profile held water, which it did in buckets. In fact -- though they never met him -- everyone liked Jules better than any of the real people they knew, which is a sad commentary on her friends but a big tribute to Gin's imagination. Not surprisingly one friend, someone or other's roommate, claimed to know he wasn't a bit gay because she already had slept with him several times and he was hot.
Jules' paternal grandfather was captured northeast of Paris during the Fall of France and spent the war in Germany as a POW. He stayed in the army after the war and subsequently was killed in Indochina by one of those nasty Viet-Minh bamboo booby traps.
Jules' maternal grandfather was a minor Vichy official who was arrested by the Free French shortly before the end of the war and spent some time in prison for his rather unavoidable collaboration with the Germans. After his release he moved his family, including Yvonne, from their home in Algeria to France when the trouble started. He invested in a winery and spent the rest of his life in relative affluence.
Jules studied at L'Ecole Technique in Tours, graduated from the University of Paris as an Engineer and decided to study law at Cornell. His family was well-to-do, thanks to his mother's inheritance and his father's investments in telecommunications and German industrial corporations, so they could well afford to splurge on his whims. He really just wanted to come to America to play and make useful contacts...
Jules also has some fairly close relations in Quebec, whom he visits occasionally.
Gin met Jules at a Frat party. . .Delta House or something. . .on the 5th of November, 2004. She maintained a casual acquaintance afterwards, mainly just running into him at Starbuck's. . .once with her car, actually.
Although he is not interested in Gin sexually (leaves more for the rest of us), he shares several interests with her, not the least of which is ladies' fashion. They both know some of the same models in the NYC scene.
He also is a cross dresser. Moreover, Jules sees no humor in the "French Castle" scenes of the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
Jules took up smoking as a teenager, mainly just to be cool, but stopped soon after his 19th birthday because it affected his endurance in the amateur bicycle racing that had become his obsession shortly before that time. He drinks like a fish.
On coming to America Jules made a point of buying the gaudiest American car he could find. He drives a red Ford 350 Crew-Cab Pickup truck that gets 11 mpg in city and 15 mpg in highway driving. It could have been a Hummer but that tired cliche clashed with the quirkiness central to Jules' character. The point is for his car to be something no one expects a Frenchman ever to want and everyone knows all Frenchmen love hummers.
At Starbuck's all Jules orders is a large, black House-Blend coffee. He feels the coffee at Starbuck's is worse than mediocre (this isn't legendary French snobbery. . .the coffee at Starbuck's really is worse than mediocre) but he goes there anyway because there's always a crowd he can work to his advantage. He often poses as Euro-trash.
Two of Jules' great-grandfathers were killed at Verdun in World War I -- oddly enough. . .by each other -- oddlier still. . .on different days.
Another great-grandfather actually fought on the German side. He was French but got confused in all the excitement and enlisted in the wrong army -- He always had a lousy sense of direction. No one held the treason against him very long. . .he was released from prison in 1925 and by 1932 family, friends and neighbors all had forgiven him. Eventually when the subject arose everyone got a good giggle over his dopey mistake during "The Great War" (World War I). They joked, with prophecy probably unintended, that he'd learned his lesson and wouldn't make that same mistake again. And he didn't at the outbreak of World War II ("The Even Greater War"). But alas he was caught up in a Vichy sweep of "volunteers" for German industry and spent the duration in Munich making Coo Coo clocks, apparently a vital war resource for the Nazis.
Just to round out the history, Jules' fourth great-grandfather was an Irish World War I pilot in the Royal Air Corps who had an affair with, and knocked up, Jules' fourth great-grandmother (she liked this wiggle thing he did right at the end, especially when she wiggled back) although she, a French woman, was married to a quite inattentive Frenchman working at the French Colonial Department. The scandal was know to the family but hushed and never discussed. The cuckold husband, the ersatz great-grandfather, was later discovered in bed with another man by that man's wife, who shot them both dead where they lay using a Colt's .44 40 Peacekeeper revolver. She managed to avoid the guillotine and in fact, was acquitted at her trial. The revolver had been a gift to someone in her family from 'Buffalo Bill' Cody during a performance of his famous Wild West Show on European tour.
The man-killing wife's name was Sophia Helene DeCarlo and she had red hair. Sophia killed the two with just one shot -- preoccupied at the time, they didn't notice she'd entered the room. It was a Tuesday.
Gin figured her dad might suspect the bachelor uncle, Robert, who raised Jules after he lost his parents, also was homosexual. In fact this is not the case. Rather the unfortunate Robert was, and still is, an eunuch thanks to a tragic accident at l'ecole when a classmate, a best friend, accidentally sliced Robert's testicles off with a Napoleonic era sword the friend had brought to school to share with the class -- He shared rather too much of it with Robert. The sword had been carried in the wars by his friend's ancestor, who was an admired officer, named Guy, on Napoleon's staff. Robert's puberty had advanced sufficiently for him to develop and retain some manly traits but he never was the same afterward and didn't marry. To this day no one really knows what happened. Jules' Uncle Robert has no memory of the event and his friend, realizing what he'd done, went quite mad.
In reaction to the accident, which received some press, the French government enacted legislation forbidding the removal of Napoleonic era swords from their scabbards in French public schools and libraries. Scabbardless Napoleonic era swords could not be taken to school at all. The day the story hit the papers it was rainy in Paris, with a hope of clearing skies toward evening.
Although during the French Revolution Jules' ancestors were a mixed bag of Royalist and Republican, in the Napoleonic Wars the ones left were all staunchly pro-Napoleon. . .funny how that works out.
Jules' current paramour... actually for the last 5 months or so... is named Travis Astor. He's a cowboy type from a big-time ranching and wheat farming family in Manhattan who is studying business. . .that is, the kind of finance stuff Broker/Traders do.
Until 5 months ago Travis believed he was straight -- as did we all. And until that time he had a girlfriend. . .a beautiful and engaging young fox with ready smile and flashing brown eyes from New York City; she has a studio apartment near where Seinfeld and Kramer live. However Travis was inept around women; wavering between clueless and Victorian when push came to shove, so to speak, in the relationship (if you get my drift). After Travis was spectacularly dumped (with due cause) by his girlfriend in an Oscar-worthy performance precipitated by a particular moment of relationship incompetence, Jules stumbled across the wreckage somehow and they've been bosom buddies ever since. It's a wonder, though, how a guy who didn't know what to do with a woman in a short skirt does know what to do with a dude in the same outfit. (...but now I'm lost myself -- is Travis made-up or real? I think he's real.)
Jules once admonished Gin for the "ambiguous use of pronouns" in her conversation. She found this criticism unacceptably cheeky. . .especially coming from HER figment. . .and she cooled their acquaintance for a short while to drive home the point.
Anywho, she tested the Jules identity with several school friends to see if the profile held water, which it did in buckets. In fact -- though they never met him -- everyone liked Jules better than any of the real people they knew, which is a sad commentary on her friends but a big tribute to Gin's imagination. Not surprisingly one friend, someone or other's roommate, claimed to know he wasn't a bit gay because she already had slept with him several times and he was hot.
To Be Continued
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