ROCK CHICK GOES ROGUE: Justin Timberlake didn't bring sexy back. I did.

The third part of my Rock Chick series.

Let me tell you a secret. Justin Timberlake didn’t bring sexy back. I did.

Something came over me in the late summer of 1985. I went a little wild. My parents think I went wild when I left Geneva for Canada and then, almost immediately, for America. But I wasn’t in charge of those trips; my wannabe rockstar boyfriend Blaze made all the decisions. Which according to my funky logic makes him the one who went wild, even if he was already pretty wild to start with. I simply went along with his decisions. And while I resented him for some of the things he did and for some of the ways in which he behaved, over the years I’ve realized that I was more angry at myself for allowing him to behave towards me the way he did. Why had I been such a pushover? Why did it take me so long to decide that enough was enough?

It was when I returned to Geneva without him that I went a little wild. For the first time in my life, at the age of 23, I felt totally free. It was intoxicating, exhilarating, empowering. Where had I been all my life? Who was this flirtatious, sexy seductress? What should she do with all these gorgeous guys falling at her stiletto-clad, size 41 feet?

Excuse me while I deal with a nostalgic attack of eyelash arrythmia!

Now, allow me to back up a little. In the space of a few years, I’d had two polar opposite relationships. My first long-term boyfriend, a Bryan Ferry lookalike whom I met while I was still in high-school and with whom I lived for a while, expected me to do the washing and the ironing and the cooking and the cleaning, while he sat around watching TV. When I left him, I jumped straight into a turbulent relationship with Blaze (not his real name), the lead singer and songwriter of the most popular rock band of the Geneva area at that time. I wrote in more detail about how I pinballed from one extreme to the other in the first part of this series, From Trad Wife to Rock Chick.

While I was with Blaze, his erratic behaviour made me feel terribly insecure. He’d want to be with me, then no longer want to be with me, then he’d write me a love song, be all sweet for about five and a half minutes, and then he’d be a jerk again. I never knew where I stood, never knew when I’d see him, and how he’d behave towards me when I did see him. I did an awful lot of hanging around, waiting for him to call, or show up.

I suppose I was simply going through that “attraction to bad boys” phase that so many young women seem to go through. How can we be such gluttons for punishment? It’s strange, don’t you think? I’ve heard it so many times.

Anyway, I followed Blaze’s dream of becoming a superstar, initially flying with him to Montreal in the depths of the winter where we blew all our money on a flat, only for him to realize within a couple of weeks that Montreal wasn’t “the” place where he’d become famous. So we boarded a Greyhound bus and travelled to Santa-Cruz, California, arriving with twenty dollars between us, and the phone number of a woman called Shandy (not her real name) whom I didn’t know, but that Blaze had apparently met at a club in Geneva (read the account of my initial American adventure in The Adventures of a Rock Chick in America).

By August,1985, Blaze and I literally had no money. We had tourist visas and so couldn’t work legally in America, and the few odd jobs we’d managed to get weren’t exactly raking in the big bucks. And so far, unless we’d been out shopping for Alka-Seltzer when opportunity knocked, there was still no sign of a hotshot record producer in Miami Vice pastels banging on Shandy’s door, eager to deliver a lucrative recording contract to the cocky Swiss musician living with his girlfriend on the tiny mezzanine above the living room.

Something had to give.

Before going to America, I’d temped as a secretary in a law firm for several months and, as weird as it may sound, it had been a fun working environment. Everyone was friendly, and the atmosphere was pretty laid back.

In late August, I flew back to Geneva and stopped by the law firm to see if they might hire me again. They agreed, and I started a few days later. This time I worked for a team of young legal interns, most of whom I’d met before. But there were a couple of new recruits.

Patrick - whom I already knew - a lovely, fun, sporty guy a year or two older than me, took me to meet the newbies. He knocked on a door.

“Come in,” said a male voice.

So, we did. “This is Cedric. Cedric Bossert,” said Patrick, as my heart began doing a series of crazy circus tricks at the sight of this gorgeous young guy with thick, wiry, jet black hair and navy-blue eyes. But it wasn’t his good looks that particularly affected me. It was his quiet, kind, grounded energy. Oblivious, Patrick continued, “Cedric, this is Francesca. She’s going to be working with us. Just so you know; she tends to be late for work, and doesn’t always show up on Mondays because she says she’s sick, but really she’s too tired or in London. Oh, and she likes to leave early most days. But she’s really nice, and her English is perfect, so we put up with her.”

I’m pretty sure Patrick said something along those lines, and all of it was true. Nevertheless, although I wasn’t the most reliable secretary in the firm, I was the only one who was perfectly bilingual, with English mother-tongue, which meant I could correct all the lawyers’ grammatical and spelling mistakes. Back then most letters were still typed on those IBM typewriters with the funny spinny-ball thing, and we had to use that horrible slimy carbon paper that turned our fingers black to make copies. There were a few word-processors available, but they tended to be reserved for typing out multi-paged legal briefs. We still used telex, too!

Anyway, Cedric says his heart also got funky when he saw me, but at the time he was in a long term-relationship and living with his girlfriend. Also, – officially at least - I was still with Blaze. Nevertheless, Cedric and I made plenty of slinky, sideways eye contact at the coffee machine, and somehow his stuff always got typed first, much to Patrick’s frustration, particularly when I overslept one morning and rocked up circa nine-thirty, having promised to come in early to deal with an emergency something-or-other that needed to be typed and filed in court before nine a.m.. Which probably wouldn’t have happened if Cedric had been the one who’d asked me!

My head was all over the place. Sure, I needed to make money to pay my rent, and buy food, and new clothes, etc. But I also suddenly discovered I’d brought sexy back from America! I was stealing hearts all over town.

I literally couldn’t keep up with myself!

(What happened next? I met my husband. Read it here)