Monsieur tit fell out

 My bike’s been in the repair shop for almost a week. This has meant, amongst other things, that instead of cycling everywhere I go, or taking the bus to university, I’ve been walking the three-ish miles from our house in Salford to the church-type building between the libraries where I have my one weekly seminar. 

My lecturer is one of a dying breed. One of those rare types in universities these days who are actually good at their job and so clever it feels completely intimidating to be in their presence. She is eloquent and poised in her intellect, so much so that she beckons you in to speak and is somehow able to transform all of your vocalised mute points into fascinating interpretations of texts you’re constantly worried everyone else understands far better than you do. All without making you feel like you’ve wasted everyone’s time by daring to believe you should have said anything at all. 

Rather, this is exactly how I feel in her seminars, and yet I keep going back to the class. Every single week. Come rain or shine; she makes you want to impress her, although I don’t think I ever will. What it comes down to, really I suppose, is that one just needs to read more. 

Still, even though she’s providing probably the best value for money I’ve received in this institution this whole year, it would be a very expensive three hours of teaching if I cared to work it out pro-rata - which I don’t. 

On my way, by the point at which I reach the final long strip of road after what has been a journey of very few twists and turns (both literally and metaphorically) and I am sufficiently red and sweaty on account of my chronic tardiness, there is a silver airstream caravan masquerading as a food truck parked outside of All Saint’s Park. He calls himself Monsieur French Taco and he serves, to no one’s surprise, and certainly it would be misleading if he didn’t, french-style tacos. It reminds me vaguely of the airstream my family and I stayed in during a holiday in Tolouse when I was much younger, only because that’s the only other time I can recall ever having seen an airstream in real life.  

Instead of provoking a sense of pleasing nostalgia as I reminisce about my youth in my haste to get to where I need to be as a more adult version of myself, Monsieur French Taco reminds me of the detrimental effects of ageing (even as a 23 year old) by the pink and blue writing on his distorted, mirrored side. It reads: “the reflection doesn’t lie, you’ve looked better”. 

On a good day, this phrase is probably enough to elicit a superfluous chuckle from the obnoxiously self-confident, and a resigned acquiescence from the  self-loathing. Normally, like I say, I’m cycling, and so I regularly pass by the seemingly non-contextual, perhaps a little unnecessary insult quickly, perhaps thinking “yeah, no, that’s fair enough”, if I’m thinking anything at all. 

Today though, as I’m passing by Monsieur French Taco on foot, his hatch not yet open for service, the phrase catches my eye if only for a millisecond before I catch my reflection in the distorted glass, just long enough to notice that my right tit is out, and on full display. I realise, with horror, that as I had been shouldering off my cardigan in an attempt to reclaim some semblance of casual body temperature, I must have accidentally hooked the strap of my top down along with it. I quickly shrug myself back in to conceal what limited modesty I could recover, but not before I think, even more so than usual, “bah oui, si tu gagnes, Monsieur French Taco, si tu gagnes”. 

 Once I’ve reinserted myself back into my vêtements, disengaged from my make believe conversation with the fleetingly anthropomorphised food-truck/french air-stream, and continued on my way, I find myself thinking about how to turn this minor incident into a funny story. At the same time I’m not above self-consciously, perhaps a little solipsistically, praying none of the throngs of students around me saw my mishap. 

As I’m thinking about the things Monsieur French Taco must have seen in his time from his opportune vantage point in the student-dominated Oxford Road corridor, I remember the nude bike ride my friends and I once saw in the park behind him. On a surprising yet welcome sunny day sometime in early summer, the small park had been filled with what I’m sure was a mixture of keen cyclists and equally keen naturists in what looked like some sort of Garden of Eden reenactment if genesis had occurred after the invention of the bicycle. 

Some of the crowd had been standing chatting casually, hardly even noticing that there was a layer missing (by conventional standards), whilst others took a moment to let their cocks breathe in the light of the sun before squishing it up against a bike seat for however many miles they planned on undertaking. 

The thought of their inevitable physical discomfort made me cringe in the same way that I did when I found out that, in the Tour de France up to the 1980s, cyclists used to place a raw piece of steak in their cycling shorts to cushion their private parts against the firmness of the seat. Once they’d reached the finish line they’d retrieve the steak from their nether regions and cook it for some restorative nutrition. A compelling advert for following a vegetarian diet if ever I saw one. 

My only hope is that whatever Monsieur French Taco used in his french delicacies was sourced from slightly further afield.