Three friends, both alike in lack of dignity, had descended upon Paris at the same time after several years spent apart. Erin had gone off to London where she had managed not only to secure one of the last jobs in publishing, but also to convince them that her English reading and comprehension skills were as British as they were American. Maeve had gone to Dublin to capitalize on her Irish heritage and study at Trinity while on her endless post-graduate journey. And finally, Dakota had stayed in their native Los Angeles where she parlayed her art history degree into a job as the Assistant Director of Exhibitions at LACMA.

It was Dakota who had the hardest time securing enough days off for the trip, what with working for an American establishment and all. Not difficult just because of how little time she was allotted for a proper vacation (if she used all two weeks now for Paris, she wouldn’t have any time later during “real” holidays like Christmas), but because of all the prep work and planning it took to ensure there would be “coverage” for her while she was gone. As she dealt with these things in great annoyance, Erin and Maeve found it a cinch to coordinate their travel for the third week in November, not examining too closely the fact that it would be right after the U.S. election. Something that Dakota had been forced to think more frequently about than Erin or Maeve, who remained remote enough to avoid the constant barrage of political punditry being rammed down the American people’s throats.

As for Dakota, these incessant hate- and fear-mongering headlines were as much a part of her desperate need to flee the scene as a desire to see her long-time friends. Friends that she was both excited and nervous about encountering after so many years had passed. After all, they seemed to be living such glamorously bohemian lives compared to her (even if she did work at a museum). Worse still, she was afraid they would look at her appraisingly while secretly thinking that she had aged. That she had “let herself go.” Of course, she knew that if that’s what they really thought, it’s not as though they would say as much to her face. Which, in a way, almost made it worse.

To offset some of the potential for her looking shittier than she actually did, Dakota opted to fly into Paris five days ahead of her friends so that she could adjust to the time difference and recover from the lengthy plane ride, topping out at roughly eleven hours from LAX to CDG. Yes, her friends certainly had an advantage over her when it came to location. As for why they had all agreed upon Paris as a meeting point, well, they had long joked with each other that if they could never “land a man” to go there with in a romantic capacity, then they would go with each other. And now, here they were, all in their mid-thirties and not anywhere close to being in something like a “solid” relationship. Such were the times.

And, in keeping with that sentiment, a new world order was imminent thanks to the results of the election that had been imbued with so much fanfare. A changing of the guard (or rather, a foolish reversion to the guard that had already proven himself to be totally psychotic and inept) that had half of the U.S. threatening to leave. It was possible that half of that half would make good on their threat (Eva Longoria included). And was perhaps already starting to. That was the distinct impression Dakota got as she orbited various milieus throughout Paris in the days before Erin and Maeve’s arrival. So many Americans—everywhere, all the time. It seemed there were few pockets of the city where one could go to avoid the taint of English infecting one’s ear.

Eventually, Dakota decided to just stay in her hotel room and watch French TV as a means to soak up the “local color.” When Erin and Maeve arrived, she hoped they might know of a place to go that wasn’t so saturated with Yanks. Then again, the glut, Dakota postulated, was likely due to the news of who had won the election. Some might have asked, “But so soon afterward?” And Dakota would have replied, “Fuck yeah, there’s no time to waste because there’s gonna be a goddamn line out the proverbial ‘door’ of Europe to get in after this douche is inaugurated.”

Still, it was all just speculation—hearsay. Maybe she was being paranoid. Fearful that, if a slew of Americans suddenly found a way to abscond to Europe, then what was the point of her trying to do the same? She did have her own plans to, long before the election results. Had hoped to use Erin and Maeve as potential entrées into the continent—even if they both lived in England, which treated itself as a continent unto itself (hell, so did Ireland). She supposed she was even prepared to move to England at this point, which was really saying something. But, like those who still had some of their brain intact, she was willing to do whatever it took to leave the U.S. Or so she had thought before this visit to Europe and seeing how infiltrated it was already avec les américains.

And now here were two more in front of her, as she sat across from Erin and Maeve on their first night in the city. After wandering the streets of the fifth arrondissement for about twenty minutes in the blistering cold, Maeve was the one who put her foot down about choosing “any old brasserie at this point.” She didn’t have the patience, the wherewithal to keep scouring—especially because it all seemed the same to her. Yet another strike against Paris, Dakota couldn’t help but think. The strike being that everyplace looked the same, albeit in a different, more elegant way than everything looked the same in the U.S.

Even so, the restaurant they had entered, called La Méthode, was pleasant and cozy enough, particularly after being amid the bitter cold for so long. In truth, almost any restaurant would have felt like an oasis upon initial entry. However, as the trio got situated and started to catch up with one another—at first being the only patrons seated in the back of the restaurant—more and more people started to trickle in. And the one thing they all seemed to have in common was speaking English. Not sophisticated “Queen’s English,” mind you, but crude, grating American English. The sound bites of their blathering kept trickling into Dakota’s ear despite her best efforts to focus solely on her conversation with Erin and Maeve. So as Maeve would be discussing, say, how she had found herself lusting after one of her professors and therefore wanted to drop the class, Dakota would be distracted by such innocuous soundbites as, “Well, you know, it takes two hours and sixteen minutes to get to London from here” or “I don’t wanna try any fwah grass…” Meaning, of course, foie gras.

The voices filling the room were so unsettling to her that she couldn’t avoid the temptation to turn her head, first left and then right, to observe both sides of the room and see who the fuck these people were. To her dismay, they lived up to all the stereotypes she was expecting. The couple directly next to them most shamefully of all. Two toady blobs in amorphous t-shirts (despite the winter weather) who were speaking at a shouting decibel, as though they couldn’t hear themselves. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe all they could hear inside their “minds” was the repeated mantra, “Feed, feed, feed.” A cacophonous verbal din that drowned out all other external sounds. But it appeared as though none of this was bothering Erin or Maeve, who each continued taking turns telling animated stories about their lives on that particular island called the United Kingdom. Maybe they weren’t as bothered because they knew they wouldn’t ever be at risk of being surrounded by so much of this ilk in Britain. After all, British citizenship was pretty much the impossible “get” these days (right up there with Vatican City and the United States itself). So the only Americans you encountered were on their way out, not, let’s say, perennially occupying spaces. No, not just occupying—inundating, submerging, sinking.

Dakota couldn’t deny that the presence of too many Americans in any one place outside their own country invariably ruined that place by effectively “turning” it American. Because it was true, too many Americans in a foreign country became like a virus, leaving trails of McDonald’ses, KFCs and Krispy Kremes (these were all the go-tos now in Paris) in its wake. After-effects of a virus that couldn’t be undone…sort of like those who suffered from long Covid losing their sense of smell for good. Dakota tried to order another glass of wine in French, but the waiter spoke back to her in English, refusing to “receive” her attempt at proving she wasn’t just another one of them. But maybe she was. After all, why else would they gravitate toward a restaurant so filled with Americans? Like attracting like, and all that.

When the meal came to an end and the three plotted their next move (going to a bar nearby that promised the offer of karaoke), it was Maeve who scooted out of the banquette first, standing up, apparently, too indelicately and therefore knocking over several glasses of water and wine at the table situated so closely next to them. The one with the two blobs wearing amorphous t-shirts. The woman in the permutation was immediately outraged, calling them “rude,” “graceless” and “ill-bred.” It was more than Dakota could have ever anticipated—mainly because she didn’t expect this woman to have such a wide vocabulary range in addition to such a wide body. For all intents and purposes, she was the equivalent of Emma Gerber (the fat student in Mean Girls) telling Regina George, “Watch where you’re going, fat ass!” It was an unabashed instance of the pot calling the kettle black. For this woman would have been just as prone—nay, even more so—to knocking over some glasses at their table if she had been the one to get up first. But no, irony was at its finest that night at La Méthode, where the three most “civilized” Americans in the place were deemed uncouth by the most embarrassing varietal of the nationality.

When the dust had settled—or rather, the water—and enough profuse apologies were delivered to both the blobs and the waiter who had to clean up the mess, the trio reemerged into the cold night air. Dakota looked from Maeve to Erin and burst out laughing. They soon joined in, with Maeve shrugging, “I guess you can’t take me nowhere. I’m too Irish now.”

Dakota replied, “Ha! I’ll take Irish civility over Erin’s British kind any day of the week.”

Erin readjusted her scarf as she said, “Well, clearly, there’s still nothing more affronting to people than Americans. Even to other Americans.”

Dakota removed a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket and lit one. “Yeah, but the fact that they had the audacity to be offended by us. For fuck’s sake.”

Maeve patted Dakota on the shoulder as a means of small comfort. “Such is the way of the world now, Dakota. Up is down, right is wrong and nothing at all has any logic or sense to it. We might as well be in Wonderland—but without all the pretty colors to make it seem like a slightly better acid trip.”

Dakota exhaled a plume of smoke and nodded. “Yeah. So I guess I might as well stay in the U.S. ‘cause this whole fuckin’ planet is a shitshow. Overrun by Americans in every nook and cranny.”

Erin applauded, “Well said, maestra. And on that note, let us go to karaoke where I will sing ‘American Pie.’”

Dakota rolled her eyes. “Fine. And I’ll sing ‘I’m Afraid of Americans.’”

Maeve concluded with more than a tinge of sarcasm, “Sounds like we’re going to be quite a hit at this bar.”

“I dare say as big of a hit as a certain Oompa Loompa was in this year’s election,” Dakota laughed.

And with that, the three Americans linked arms and stalked off into the night like the witches in Hocus Pocus, joined elsewhere in the city by so many other Americans converging on the place to escape from their homeland, however temporarily.