Saturday, February 28, 2009

Day 184: Je M'en Fou, Je Suis En Paris

Paris, Day 13. The past week here in Paris has been all about people. Parties and lunches and meeting people at the airport. Playing all those ROLES you play when there are other humans involved: new girl, English girl, straight girl, helpful friend, third wheel, martyr, and frequently in my case, nosy and invasive writer.

This week, I’ve taken very few photos. I’ve skipped whole days my journal. I’ve lost sleep. The dishes have piled up and the low table where I’ve spread out all my drawings and ideas has gathered a whisper of dust.

My little Parisian life has gotten away from me.

My first week here, I came to the surprising conclusion that I was here, not to work on my book project necessarily, but to work on myself.

I did my writerly due diligence, of course, by taking notes and snapping pictures – all fodder for my second draft – but it didn’t FEEL like diligence. It felt like play. Evenings, rather than hit the town, I’d be huddled over sketchbooks with Crayola markers listening to Roberta Flack.

I filled pages with multicoloured scribbles and swirls. Plotting out my ideal life. Daydreaming about where I wanted to go and what I want to learn, see, do, experience. I spent hours in states of wide-open possibility and childlike imagination without worrying about what club I was going to hit or what Girl-Writer-In-Paris outfit I was going to wear.

My life stopped being about me being “an artist” or being “in Paris” and became simply about BEING.

I found Dana’s copy of The Vein of Gold – a book about digging down into yourself as a creative being. Finding out who you are and inhabiting your own authentic creative self. It felt like God himself had put that book under my nose, so I opened it up and stepped inside.

And then the phone started ringing. Dates and rendez-vous pulled me this way and that. I rushed out the door in the mornings and staggered home late at night. I got caught in the tractor beam of interpersonal drama and gossip. I stopped seeing the beauty in the city and only saw the shit and spit and grit. I wondered why I came and wished I could go home.

My calendar might be full, but I am emptied out.

And so today, after six days of lifting my skirt for every wayward friend-in-need, I am reclaiming my Paris experience. I’m doffing my Canadian politeness and people-pleasing availability and I’m turning the ringer off the phone.

My journal is open. My camera battery is full. The Crayola markers are beckoning and so are the spring tulips, glaring gargoyles and secret places I’ve yet to discover.

I’m not a chic party girl. I’m not the queer family’s second-cousin twice-removed. I’m not a map-toting tourist or a hard-nosed journalist. I’m someone who spends an afternoon arranging Sharon fruit for photographs. Who’d cross the street to fill her nose with the green smell of a flower shop.

Who could stare at a boat, any boat, for hours on end. Who presses her nose against patisserie windows and for whom the rainbow rolls of leather, fabric and yarn are more interesting than the clothing for which they’re intended.

My Paris is not cloud-scraping steeples or echoing cathedrals. It's not stylish, cultured people who all look fabulous and bored every moment of the day. Nor is it gilded frames around the masterworks of Western history.

It’s the faded dust-smell and polka-dot shuffle of bead bins and button cards. It's capturing mid-afternoon daylight not by F-stop but by feel. It's the tangy thrill of indecision over lemon tart or raspberry. The crush of the Wednesday market. Sudden silence down a tiny stone-walled street. An old lady in a fur hat. A new cheese. A quiet night.

This is my Paris. And I'm taking it back.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Day 183: Fraying at the Fringes

Paris, Day 12. Yesterday was supposed to be Weird Anal Sex Workshop Day, but it has been postponed – I'll admit to some relief on that one – so Ms. Burlesque and I went to lunch instead.

Having only seen her once before, I had no idea what to expect. She arrived sans makeup, sans false eyelashes and practically in her pajamas. But that didn't mean she wasn't in character. We walked into the cafe and she immediately gushed a hello to the owner Marion, curtsied and spun and generally flitted about the establishment for ten minutes while I found a table and sat down.

When the human hummingbird finally came to rest, she told me she was SUPER excited. "About what?" I asked. "I'm FINALLY getting an apartment!" she squealed. I congratulated her and we ordered.

I've been dying of curiosity about the corner of the gay community she inhabits and couldn't wait to learn how it all works.

"So," I began, "how do you identify?"
"Well, I used to say I was bisexual," she said, "but since I discovered the word queer, I go with that."
"What does queer mean?"
"It's auto-defined."
"So it's different for everybody."
"Yeah!"
Great.

She told me if I wanted to get more savvy in the queer lexique, I should check out a new social networking site that just launched in Paris called French Queer Fries(?!). The registration page features an entrance exam worth of questions and checkboxes all about who you are, what you're into and the various shades of grey of your relationship status.

The "Me, Myself and I" section featured no less than FORTY different options including Queer, Trans (and all its variations), Butch, Fem, Futch(?), Grrrrl, Cyborg, Bear, Dandy, Genderqueer(?) and a whole schwack of letters including FtM, MtF, FtX/FtU and MtX/MtU. And at the end of this headspinning list was, of course, OTHER.

"It's very complicated to be the kind of gay I am which is attracted to masculine entities who are not biologically masculine," Ms. Burlesque said between bites of quiche.

Uh. YEAH.

"But I'm just SO excited," she continued. Oh? I said, looking up from my notes. "To pick up the key to my apartment on Sunday!" Oh, right. "Hey! Will you come help paint it?" Um, sure, I mumbled. "GREAT!"

Every word this woman said seemed to be punctuated with an exclamation mark. And that snippet of conversation – I'm so excited! About what? My apartment! – would be repeated approximately ONE HUNDRED TIMES during our time together.

Whenever there was a gap in conversation in which someone would possibly take a breath or swallow their food or, I don't know, just BE SILENT for one second, the mythical golden apartment would re-emerge as a shining (and extremely repetitive) mirage.

It was conversational Groundhog Day.

By the end of my time with Ms. Burlesque, I could no longer muster ONE MORE IOTA of feigned interest about that damned apartment or anything else for that matter. The corners of my mouth REFUSED to budge in the direction of a smile. They were just too tired.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Day 182: Making Paris A Mix-Tape

Paris, Day 11. Have been thinking a lot about love these days. The strange Parisian laissez-faire approach to romance. The day-to-day grind of a relationship, a job, a life. The fact that being in Paris a second time feels like falling in love the second time: less intense, less consuming, less passionate.

Yesterday, I met a fellow Canadian at the airport. She's here to live a Parisian dream and she's filled with that OH MY GOD I'M IN PARIS excitement. The excitement that appears to have exited Stage Left in me.

While I waited for her to come through customs, I witnessed the single sexiest airport reunion of all time. He came through the sliding doors and enveloped his lover in an embrace. They held each other FOREVER and then kissed unashamedly passionately for ten minutes right in front of all of us waiting.

These people basically made love right there in Terminal 2B.

Eventually, they started walking toward their car or whatever, but then they stopped for another make-out break a few feet down the way. They were so into each other, nothing else mattered. Not even leaving the airport.

It was so awesome. So lovely and awesome and I WANT THAT.

Currently, my lover Paris and I are in a bit of a rut. We've settled into a pretty hum-drum routine where all I seem to notice is the dog shit, diseased pigeons and creeps selling contraband.

Don't get me wrong: I love her despite all her flaws. But we're deep in the Sweatpants Stage and, let's face it...I'm looking at other cities.

(I was on this porn site called Facebook where someone had posted all these nude photos of Barcelona. I was all over it and felt guilty afterward.)

But when I met up with Justine From Canada and she spent most of the Metro ride SWOONING over Paris and how this town is basically a menu of deliciousness and how she feels sexy and extraordinary just by BEING HERE...well. I was forced to confront my own apathy.

I got home and called Boyfriend. "I need to fall back in love with Paris," I said. "This trip has been all about gritty weirdness and counter-culture. I need to re-ignite the romance. I need to remember why I fell in love with this place. I need candlelight and flowers and..."

"You need to make Paris a mix-tape," he said.

YES, I said. I DO. Passion de Paris Make-Out Mix 2009? Here. I. Come.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Day 181: The English Girl In The Corner

Paris, Day 10. Last night I ended up at a reprisal of the Belleville Bash somewhere in the boonies of Le Marais. A similar cast of characters was assembled, but the vibe was altogether different. Partly because I wasn't on a freight train to Boozetown.

Maybe that would have been smarter.

As it was, I sat in complete silence for more than four hours while everyone spoke French (and nothing but the French) all around me. You become invisible when you don't speak the language. It's interesting. And then it's frustrating. And then it's boring as all hell.

At one point Michelle explained to everyone that I was writing a memoir of all my experiences. "When she doesn't know what people are saying," she explained in French, "she will guess or make it up."

"Ah," said the crowd. Who promptly went back to ignoring me.

So I gouged my eyes out of my effing SKULL while I slowly contracted lung cancer from these French CHIMNEY creatures and their goddamn Marlboro obsession. I spent a full hour wondering how I could unobtrusively exit the scene when I had no clue where I was and how to get to the nearest Metro station.

Which is when someone said (in French): 'We should probably speak English for awhile.' Then, the group of them spend the next TWENTY MINUTES debating (IN FRENCH) what they/we should talk about.

The final decision?

TRUTH OR DARE.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

Number 1: Truth or dare is for fifteen year olds or Madonna circa 1991.

Number 2: After four hours of feeling like a piece of the wallpaper, a simple CONVERSATION would have sufficed.

Number 3: I would have to be very, very drunk in order to play Truth or Dare at the age of thirty-mumble with a whole schwack of lesbians on the hunt for fresh meat.

(Don't flatter yourself Jones.)

(True. Strike that.)

Anyhoo. The fact of the matter is NO ONE was drunk enough to play this game (except for the hostess who was sloshed off her gourd) but no one had any better ideas. And I, quite frankly, was not in the mood to be the Canadian killjoy who said: HOW 'BOUT WE CUT THE CRAP AND GO HOME?

So most of us just avoided Dare like the plague and stuck to Truth. Which as a writer/undercover spy, I can actually USE. Only, the first question posed to me was in the So Obvious It Hurts category: Have you ever slept with a woman?

NO. Next?

Esmeralda to Dalia: "If you could sleep with anyone here, who would it be?"
Dalia: "Melanie."
Me: "I'm flattered, but I'd be a lousy lay."
Dalia: "Ah, but I would appear to be a master."

Someone asked Gilles what his favourite aspect of sex was. He said, "Le premier fois." (The first time.)

And that's when things got deep.

What do you love most in a woman?
"Sa fragilite." Their fragility.

What turns you on?
"Feeling totally confident with someone...which is very rare for me."

And then people stopped translating, so I sat there for another forty-five minutes dreading being forced to say "Dare" and thinking about jumping out the window or going to the bathroom and never coming back or quickly Googling "do-it-yourself home teleportation," but then it was my turn again.

"Okay, Melanie Jones, truth or dare?"

Both, actually. The TRUTH is I have stage 4 carci-fucking-noma and I DARE you to stop me from high-tailing it to the subway.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Day 180: Urbain...Suburbain

Paris, Day 9. After my cuh-razy night in Belleville, I spent this afternoon on more familiar ground: chatting with a couple of hard-working parents from the suburbs. (Granted, I had to run the gauntlet of Pigalle strip joints to get there...)

I had lunch at Rouge Passion, a wine bar owned by a university friend of Drea's husband, Sebastien and his wife Anne. I sat at the bar and told Sebastien to bring me anything he thought I should try. "Ah," he said. "I like it."

I tucked into my charcuterie as another of their friends sat down beside me. Fathi (pronounced Fati, short for Fathima) and I started with small talk, but quickly got into more important matters. Like why everyone frowns on the Metro. And the fact that her father is Algerian.

I learned about the great influx of the early 60s after Algeria won their independence from colonial France. Fathi's dad felt more French than Algerian, having been raised entirely in French language and culture. But when he arrived in Paris he, along with most other immigrants, was shuttled into a poor suburb and treated like a second-class citizen. Suddenly, he was more Algerian than French. "He was judged by the colour of his skin, not what was in his heart."

Fathima and her brother, though, feel Parisian despite their olive skin and dark eyes. "My father, he protected us," she says. And she feels none of the struggle to belong that her father felt. Now she's the mother of two boys and a girl, living in the suburbs with her husband.

Sebastien and Anne live near her and they all deal with problems that sound all-too familiar. "If you have children, you can't live in Paris. It's too expensive. So you live out in the suburbs and take the Metro. It's very stressful. Everyone is tired."

Sebastien and Anne's restaurant is open six days a week and I can see the toll it's taking on them. It's the same stress I hear about every day with Drea and Gilles: How do we make enough money? How do we get enough time? How can we be good parents...let alone sane people?

They have dreams of traveling, opening a restaurant in Hawaii, maybe. Meanwhile, they struggle with the trials of any couple working and living together: "You have problems at home, you take them to work. You have problems at work, you take them home," Sebastien says.

I sip a red from Cotes du Ventoux and think about how I have one foot in both worlds. Sure, I live in the suburbs, but I am enviably free. I'm able to take off to Paris on a moment's notice. I don't have to lose sleep over whether my kid will resent me working so much or so hard. I may be broke, but there's only one mouth to feed.

I come here feeling like my life is small in Calgary and that Parisians are living the dream. Today, it feels like the opposite is true. But as I keep learning every day that I'm here: it's not one thing or another, it's both. We all have dreams, we all have struggles, and all of us are just...living.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Day 179: Le Hang Over

Paris, Day 8. In France, everything is tiny. Little apartments. Little restaurant tables. Little cars. And teeny tiny wine glasses. As a woman of low alcohol tolerance, I have a system for my wine drinking in North America. It goes: One, Two, DONE. But that doesn't work here. Because the little wine glasses only fit about three sips to begin with and I can't count higher than ten.

So it's quite possible I had a hundred glasses of wine last night at Maud's open house.

"How many people are coming tonight?" I asked Maud when I arrived.

"Maybe ten, maybe fifteen," she said. "I put it out like a bottle in the sea."

Maud has a delicious way of speaking. Her accent is very thick and most of what she says is in metaphor.

She also sells secrets. Elegantly writing something she's never told anyone on a piece of paper, tying it with gold thread and selling it to a stranger. She says she might write a novel, just of secrets. "It's perfume from my life," she says.

I pull out my notebook and write down what she says. "You are a spy," she tells me. I don't contradict her.

When the others start arriving, the English stops completely. For an hour, I sit in silence letting the language and the cigarette smoke wash over me. I drink. And watch the people in the room.

Across from me sits Mélanie, an actress I met last time I was in Paris. Then, she had just broken up with a boyfriend and said she'd like to try a woman next. Now it appears she got her wish. She shares a seat with her lover, a stunning, older woman with a dragon tattoo winding down her arm. Mélanie is dressed like she just walked off the set of Flashdance.

Beside me is Esmeralda, the woman who spoke only John Wayne lines to me last time.

"Esmeralda is a bit of a dandy," a girl named Michelle would tell me later. "She has a persona...it's quite powerful. You should dance with her. Then you'll see."

Esmeralda is seldom seen without Gilles, a brooding straight man, who works for a poker magazine and travels to casinos all over the world. He sits in the corner, saying little for most of the night. He is the first to leave.

After he goes, the lights go off and the music gets louder. Mélanie and her girlfriend begin kissing passionately and then get up to leave. Someone bring out a riding crop and an S&M paddle and suddenly everyone is getting spanked.

I'm already drunk off the bad champagne and red wine when Michelle pours me a glass of thick, sweet white. The too-sweet wine mixes suddenly with five hours swimming through the blue haze of ten chain-smoking Parisians in a 200-square-foot apartment and sends me careening me over the edge. I say my goodbyes and stagger out into the piss-scented air of the street.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Day 178: Operation Squidlet

Paris, Day 7. After being stared at by dead squid eyes for half an hour of food styling and photography yesterday, my appetite was nowhere to be found. But today, I couldn't avoid the lil' squidies. I mean, I BOUGHT the damn things, now I have to eat them.

Enter Google. Wherein I found a web page entitled How To Prepare Squid. I give you my illustrated version. (VEGETARIANS BEWARE.)

HOW TO PREPARE SQUID
By Melanie 'Squidlicious' Jones



STEP 1:
Rip the little buggers' heads off.
Pull out their (surprisingly silvery) guts and
the clear plastic-looking spine thing.
Place in Bowl Of Gore.

STEP 2:
Sever Sideshow Bob tentacles from googly eyes.
Encounter frightening spiny thing.
Consider aborting mission.

STEP 3:
Make squid water balloons by rinsing out the body pouch.
Dab rinsed squid bits with toilet paper because you have no paper towel.
Chop body pouch into cute little rings.
Avoid looking at Bowl Of Gore.

STEP 4:
Prepare back-up meal.
Select something that doesn't involve eyeballs.

STEP 5:
Gather silver bullet cooking ingredients that
could make fermented monkey brains taste good.

STEP 6:
Melt butter, sautee garlic, begin to pray.

STEP 7:
Moment of truth.
Put squid bits in frying pan.

STEP 8:
Deploy secret weapon.

STEP 9:
Put pink curly squidlets onto contrasting IKEA dishware.
Enjoy!

STEP 10:
Decide that the amount of horror involved in preparing this meal
was in no way proportional to the amount of enjoyment you got out of it.
Decide to become a vegetarian.
Pray those eyes don't haunt your dreams.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Brave Food World

When I went to the market Wednesday, I came away disappointed in myself. There were vegetables and fruits I've never seen before, sea creatures I couldn't imagine eating and exotic foods that called out to me with their spicy smells. The place BEGGED a person to get experimental and I walked away, not with hairy root vegetables, ink-oozing cuttlefish or Middle Eastern delights, but with boring ol' oranges and tomatoes.

Fail.

So this afternoon, I went back with one rule and one rule only: IF IT FRIGHTENS YOU...BUY IT.

I brazenly elbowed my way to the front of the mob at the baker, the fish monger and the olive vendor. I pointed and palpated. I pretended I knew what I was doing. I came, I bought, I conquered. (But I STILL couldn't get up the nerve for the hairy things. What are those anyway?)

I hauled my prizes home and promptly staged a photo shoot that will have me doing dishes for the rest of the day. No matter. It was worth it. I give you my poor-man's version of food porn:

I am certainly not the first person to artfully photograph Sharon fruit. Nor will I be the last. The guy at the stand wouldn't let me buy just one or two. He pointed behind himself, shrugged apologetically and said, "Boss." I am now the proud owner of a CASE of these suckers.



The only bakery in the market is run by a cute Middle Eastern couple. These two treats looked so appealing with the dark swirl of fig and the teardrop shape, I could barely wait to eat them. The fig swirl one is glazed with rosewater.





And I didn't stop there. I got this flat, square date bar thing, which is actually nothing special and this delicious crepe-style unit stuffed with peppers, onions and spices. Greasy as all hell, but freaking delicious.





These are just turnips. They aren't scary, but I coveted the little white and purple ones when I was here last April, and totally chickened out on buying them. So I figured today was the day. Besides they're cute.





It's not that olives or roasted red peppers are frightening, it's that the olive stall is. There are dozens of kinds of olives, sauces, dips and colourful spices. It's the kind of place where you feel you need to have your shit together. You don't. You just have to point.




I'd never seen a melon like this and I wanted one. It's from Brazil and was very heavy to take home on the Metro. It's also not really that sweet. But it's juicy. Meh.







The ballsiest purchase: lil' wiggly squidlets. With eyeballs. Staring at me accusingly. The fish stand is by far the most gory place in the market with massive turbot, scary eels and giant squid covered in black ooze. I'll save those for next week.

Day 177: Les Puces in Pictures

Paris, Day 6. I spent this morning at the city's most famous and most massive flea market, Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, known to most simply as Les Puces (The Fleas).

To get there, go to the end of Metro line 4, Porte de Clignacourt, and wade through stall after stall of young African men hawking cheesy sweatshirts, shiny denim and pirated rap CDs. Beyond all the crap is the buried treasure: miles and miles of delicious (and ridiculously overpriced) antiques.

Once again, I was yelled at for taking pictures, but I was nimble and unrepentant.

















Friday, February 20, 2009

The Paris Plan Emergeth

Supposedly I'm here to work on a book.

I've slowly started reading through the first draft of my manuscript, taking nips of brandy to steady myself as I go. I'm about two-thirds of the way through now and am convinced this colossal piece of crap is what led to Thursday's crisis of faith.

C'est la vie as we Parisians say. I could always toss myself in the Seine.

Regardless, a plan is forming itself around me:

Louise gets back next week and we'll begin work on her one-woman show. I've also decided to attend her workshop on anal lovin' – assuming it's not terribly hands-on – because as I learned from yesterday's hammam experience, there's nothing to fear but a room full of breasts.

You can quote me on that.

My other friend Maud has invited me to her home on Sunday for an aperitif with friends, which means a gloriously exhausting evening drowning in French language and French cigarette smoke. The last time I hung out with Maud, one of her friends shouted John Wayne lines into my face at varying intervals throughout the evening. It was the only English she knew. Or perhaps she believes all North Americans are cowboys. One of the two.

The Harmonica Federation dudes reconvene next Saturday and I'll be there with support hose on. This was one of the highlights of my last trip here. I arrived with images of an incense-filled, bohemian literary cafe dripping with turtleneck-wearing poets. It was more like an old folks home on bingo night. Two words: boxed wine.

Also on Saturday, I'll begin to explore the racial/immigrant experience of Paris from the perspective of a local. Dana once remarked that Paris is an Arab country and she's not wrong. You might think Parisians are all willowy model-types, but the hijabs (headscarves) and taqiyahs (skullcaps) outnumber the high heels and skinny jeans by far.

And other than that, my list of activities includes hanging out at La Fourmi, finding a way to surreptitiously observe the contraband cigarette trade at Barbes-Rochechouart and hitting the sex museum (ahem...Musee de l'Erotisme, excusez-moi) on boulevard de Clichy.

So I'm covering old ground, venturing into new territory and hoping to receive divine guidance about whether I should toss this book under the Metro and start from scratch.

Day 176: Who's Your Hammama?

Paris, Day 5. I spent the past four hours surrounded by breasts. I'm talkin' boobies, man, EVERYWHERE. Naked ladies in Paris.

This sounds waaaaaay sexier than it was.

Inspired by friend Shea, I went to a hammam, a Middle Eastern bath house/spa type deal that I'd never heard of until she told me. She chickened out on going to one when she was in Paris and I don't blame her. Hanging out naked with a bunch of strangers is not exactly an average afternoon.

At the front desk, the lady took my money and rattled off the LONGEST set of instructions for taking a bath I've ever heard. I stared at her, took the giant pile of paraphernalia she thrust upon me and stripped down to my skivvies.

Most hammam goers wear bikini bottoms, but as if I brought a BIKINI to PARIS in FEBRUARY. I had to settle for Hanes Her Way. Suck it. I'm from Canada.

I put on my robe and walked fearfully down a curved staircase. Through a glass door, I could see dozens of topless woman lounging around on a marble platform. I didn't recall the front desk lady saying anything about a marble platform, so I ran back upstairs and asked her to repeat everything.

I ventured back downstairs, avoiding eye contact (and eye-to-other-people's-boobs contact) as much as possible. I put my stuff in a cubby and handed my number to a lady dressed like she was just about to do an Aquacize class. Then I took my little tub of weird-looking green jelly into the shower room.

In the corner of the shower room, a mud wrestling match was in progress.

A woman in a pink bikini slathered grey slop all over the line-up of women waiting. She grabbed handfuls of the stuff out of a plastic bucket, smearing it on their heads, legs, arms and bellies, chattering joyfully all the while. I looked at my little tub and couldn't imagine it would turn into mud by just adding water, but I took it over anyway. "Non," said Pink Bikini.

I learned I had to smear my jelly on myself and opened the lid. It STANK. This stuff reeked of something from a fetid swamp mixed with something from someone's butt. I gamely slimed it all over my body, trying not to gag.

Then I went into the actual hammam, a.k.a. the steam room. Naked ladies were splayed all over the place, their shapes barely visible through the thick steam. I sat awkwardly. Then laid down awkwardly. One of the hot-ass drips from the ceiling dripped into my eye and the stank soap got in it. I booked it out of the steam room.

I hit the sauna next, where a 50-something woman was lying on a lower bench. I climbed to a higher bench and...sat awkwardly. I couldn't lean back because the wood walls were effing MOLTEN. The 50-something kept lifting her legs up and lowering them down. I couldn't tell if she was minimizing contact with the fiery wood, exercising or just showing me her ass.

The heat was making my face throb, so I thought I'd chill on the marble platform thing. I sat down to discover it, too, was heated. No wonder the ladies had been basking on it like so many sealions. Topless sealions.

Okay, let's deal with this.

You know how in the movies (both X-rated and otherwise) all women look pretty much exactly the same from the neck down? It's like you get to Hollywood and they issue you your pair of regulation breasts, regulation legs and a regulation ass.

REAL LIFE ISN'T LIKE THAT.

When you get a crowd of naked female bodies in the same place you suddenly and unavoidably realize everyone is completely different. Big boobs, little boobs. Saggy boobs, perky boobs. All nipple, no boob. Boobs that seem emptied out. Boobs so full they overflow into back fat. There are so many combinations of body parts that you actually start to forget WHY one thing is supposed to be more attractive than another.

They're just...BODIES.

And they all seemed to be headed towards the Aquacize lady. I followed them. I watched as everyone's number got called except for mine and then I realized I probably screwed up somewhere along the line.

I sheepishly asked Pink Bikini about my number. "Oh," she said, raising her eyebrow. "Vous." She led me past a curtain and toward a sketchy-looking bed. "Couchez-vous." It took me a second to translate that in my head, but it was too long for Pink Bikini.

"English?" she asked almost incredulous. "Yes," I said. "Sorry."

"LIE DOWN," she yelled, as though English also meant deaf.

I obeyed, lying down on my stomach as she proceeded to flay me with a blue scrub mitt. "TURN," she yelled. I did. Then she flayed me some more.

This part of the hammam is called gommage, which to my mind translates as "gumming." This sounds very pervy and is not at all an accurate description of what was happening to me. I now believe it is more akin to gomme as in eraser.

Because clumped all over my body were the gross grey eraser bits of my exfoliated flesh.

"STAND," demanded Pink Bikini. I stood. She sprayed me down and I watched the majority of my epidermis float away along the tile floor. Then she handed me back my skin-covered flaying mitt and said, "GO TO THE POOL."

I did. It was freezing. But it also felt amazing and I got out of there feeling like a million dollars. I headed for my massage.

The massage ladies gathered at the front of the waiting room and chatted like sisters, giggling and patting each others' legs. One of them scanned the sign-up sheet with all our numbers, while us patrons sat up expectantly, wondering which would be "ours."

I have to admit, it reminded me of a brothel. The one looking at the numbers was the Madam and the rest of the girls waited around to get their 'assignment.' It didn't help they were all Russian.

I got the Madam, who led me to a room shared with two other people. I got on the table and she rubbed my back and chatted to her friends. It was the most half-assed massage of my life. But even a half-assed massage is better than no massage and I eavesdropped as she gossiped about the other girls' massage techniques. I tried to imagine the brothel equivalent, but didn't have time. "C'est tout," the Madam said abruptly.

Oh. Okay. Was it good for vous?

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Day 175: The God in Small Things

Paris, Day 4. So, I was just writing my friend an email about how weird it felt not having existential crises every five minutes and apparently that was like hand-painting a giant target on my back because BOOM I woke up this morning after three hours of sleep feeling like a cannon had blown a hole right through my faith in things.

I've been asking the kinds of questions that a person shouldn't be asking. The kinds of questions that have no answers, that can make the swirling rabbit hole of oblivion shriek open in front of you, that are all too common when surrounded by unfathomable amounts of history. Questions like: Who am I?

Questions of that ilk are for when you're teenager and lost, expecting some kind of pithy response to come down from the sky. Something like, "YOU ARE A POET LAUREATE WHO WEARS RED SHOES." As though a person can be summed up in a sentence. As though God has enough spare time to call you up and tell you that.

But for whatever reason, that was the question rattling around in my brain and hauling me from sleep at 3 am. WHO AM I? It's the kind of thing that can ruin your day, so the only sensible reaction is a very long walk.

When you are being tortured by epic questions, however, the last thing you need is epic architecture. Marble-crusted palaces or gratuitously gold-plated statues are really not going to help when you're already feeling small and slightly messed up. If anything Paris can alienate the shit out of you on a day like today.

So my strategy instead was to find little things that made me happy. And also water. Water calms me when not much else will. ("YOU ARE A PERSON WHO LIKES WATER.") I went to the Seine and on my way there, I started collecting these small things. Fresh peas. The kind you have to shell yourself. The funny round trees lining Jardin des Tuileries. The gentleman sleeping outside in the chair, head thrown back, mouth wide open.

The boats moored to the side of the river: one named Andrea. The little bathtub rowboat dangling off the side of the Zephyr, half full with water. The old woman limping along the top of the Jean Bart, wearing pale blue leggings, silver shoes and a mint green dress. Barges: Anna, Mutualiste, Mexicale, Mustang and Aubepine.

Her pink coat and matching pink nose. His white teeth and brown skin. Two teenage girls with identical frizzy hair, identical sunglasses and identical scowls. Seeing the Samaritaine department store sign just as I was beginning to feel stupid for giving the Kenyan guy money to "help out in Darfur."

The old man on the bicycle: grey trenchcoat streaming behind him. The Asian man with the long, black cape. A shop called Aux Paradis des Oiseaux (Paradise of the Birds) with tall bird cages, tiny bird houses and two open-mouthed alligators made of bronze.

Graffiti: Othershit, Hello My Name is Real.

Smells: macaroni near the Grand Palais, the lady's perfume by Jardin des Tuileries, the man with the moustache's cigar, the fresh green smell of the flower stores on rue Aube.


The cute old couple opening their stand near Pont Neuf. The garden stores along Quai de la Megisserie. The beautiful couple kissing near the Chatelet Metro.

The man walking through Notre Dame hand-in-hand with his young son, looking UTTERLY unimpressed. 'This is it?!' his face seemed to say. Sitting in the cathedral, looking up and feeling closer to something. The way the ceiling curves. A fresh crepe so hot I could barely eat it. The drunks fighting the park. The pigeons fighting in the park...or maybe mating, I wasn't sure which. Coming home. Talking to you.