The Exchange Student

Back in 1992, I was an exchange student in Guanjuato, Mexico. It was a great experience, but I doubt the Ballesteros family, (the family that hosted me), so much as remembers my name. Let's just say that I really didn't make much of a splash: never had sex with anyone in their house nor in their country. I showed up promptly for siesta and was even polite to their door-to-door bible teacher. He came by to visit with the family every Thursday with a guitar in hand. I believe he "invited" me to have a look or basically test drive the New Testament. I told him that I still had not taken the shrink wrap off of my Old Testament, but that never deters the New Testy folks. It seems to be a standing invitation that I know I'll always have....and I'm thankful.

But, today, I am choosing to write about an exchange student that my family hosted during one of the most pivotal summers in the history of my family - The Summer of 1987. His name was Christophe and he hailed from Beaune, France. Like most things in my family, the decision to get an exchange student was brash and sudden. In fact, I didn't even know about him until I came back from my summer program at Wellesley College. Apparently, my parents got a hankering for an exchange student while both of their children were off enriching themselves. As I mentioned before, I was participating in a college program for kids in high school and Augie was off in Mexico, living aboard the S.S. Kiki.*
*For those of you who haven't read The Family Gun, go ahead - this way you'll understand about the Kiki and the role she played in our lives.

So, Augie was off in Cancun, getting deflowered and tanned. He came home with an earring - need I say more? A little farther up the Gulf Coast, a group of exchange students showed up in New Orleans, and arrangements were made for them to stay with families from my school, Isidore Newman. I don't know what happened with Christophe's arrangement, but my parents received a phone call about a homeless French boy, and the rest is history.
I got back from Wellesley to find this Christophe character completely integrated into the household. Lots had changed while I was away. He had Zulie (also known as my mom) wearing heavy metal t-shirts. In fact, she was wearing an Iron Maiden one when I arrived home. Cokes lined the shelves of our fridge, a beverage banned a decade earlier in our house. Our VCR was getting plenty of use because we now had a membership at the brand new Blockbuster on Veterans Blvd. Christophe was hooked on horror movies, and his habit had my parents making daily stops there. The three of them actually watched the Freddy Kruger movie together. It was a summer full of horror movies, caffeine and heavy metal. On the other side of the coin, my summers typically were filled with summer reading, rations on TV and subtle encouragement to lose weight.

My parents were getting the biggest kick out of this kid; so much that they began pimping him out to everyone with a daughter or anyone who had ever been a daughter. It had come to their attention that Christophe had arrived in New Orleans a virgin. I don't know if they made a conscious decision to send him back to his homeland with "experience," but it's safe to call them "the enablers." He dated a plethora of neighbors, teenage friends of mine and Augie's, as well as some of my mom's horniest single ne'er-do-well friends.
One was our interior designer, Cindy. She was pretty long in the tooth, but willing to show him the way...I guess. I specifically remember Zulie picking up condoms for his dates with Cindy at the drugstore. Then there was this friend, Susan C., a drinking buddy of Zulie's from her days as a return-student at U.N.O. Susan was one of the first "fag-hags" I had ever met. It made sense, since she managed a hair salon called Busta's. She was pretty much fried from alcohol, bleach and a lifetime in Metairie, LA. This might give some of you the willies, but she also diddled Augie at some point in history. I think my mom orchestrated that one, too.

Christophe's summer in the Crescent City, which began innocently enough, became a non-stop sex fest. At one point, my dad was supervising a swim date that Christophe had with this chick, Rachel Ogg. She was ogg-ling Christophe at the airport on the day she was picking up her family's exchange student. My folks made sure to get her number. It's like they had a plan or something! The date was at the next-door-neighbor's pool. They were never home and we had free reign of the pool at all times. So the story goes: Dad was lying on a lounger, reading a business weekly. Zulie was off in her car somewhere. He happened to glance at the kids in the pool, who were huddled together in a corner bobbing rhythmically. You know what I'm saying. Dad clumsily ran next door in a panic, looking for Zulie, anyone. I don't know what he expected - for them to play Marco Polo? He was out of luck. She split. So, he called up one of their friends, Adam, an alcoholic who married into New Orleans drugstore royalty. Adam couldn't do a lot from his mansion on St.Charles Avenue. So, I guess it hit Dad that being responsible for someone else's son in a foreign country might, just might, entail some limits.

They had turned Christophe into a porn-star in less than eight weeks! I was pretty grossed out by him at the time. He sort of tried hitting on me right when I got back from Wellesley, but I gave him the cold shoulder. I didn't like French guys. They smelled musky and wore really bad jeans with white canvas Keds. He laid some line on me about my green eyes which are, in fact, blue. It's no wonder that I remained a virgin for several more years. It was a good thing, because I really did not need to be included in the line-up with Cindy, Susan C., and Ogg.

Things cooled down considerably once Christophe left. Not surprisingly, he wrote us letters begging to return. They were written in felt-tip ink on what looked like tracing paper. Unfortunately for Christophe, there had been shifts in our family situation which prevented his return. You know how you can never really go back, right? I went back to Guanajuato to see the Ballesteros about a year after the exchange program. The parents had divorced, and there were a couple of new toilets in the house. Interestingly, the summer after Christophe's visit, my parents divorced after 18 years of marriage. No hypothesis here...just noting a coincidence or phenomenon.