Paris - Revisited - pt. 3

Saturday, June 3, 2006. The last day of my 20s. How many people get to say they spent such a monumental (pun!) day in Paris? Well, besides Parisians of course. And other people who live there. The first thing I did upon wakening was check the weather forecast. The sun from the day before was predicted to hold, and to my great delight, CNN's international weather woman announced a veritable heatwave from the day before. Gone were the rain and temperatures below 60, replaced by clear blue skies and temperatures close to 90.

Showered, dressed and baked, I packed Niblet in the backpack and headed toward the metro. Destination, Eiffel Tower. The stop directly serving the Eiffel Tower was closed, necessitating an early disembarkment. This provided the opportunity to approach one of Paris' most famous monuments from a slight distance, building the anticipation until finally I crossed the street and stood at the Trocadero, looking down a large staircase strewn with tourists taking pictures.

I bought a Nutella crepe from a street vendor and stood on the terrace with the Tower in a straight line in front of me until there was nothing left but the Nutella I quickly licked off my fingers. After snapping a few pictures, I descended the steps and approached the Tower, the sense of excitement mixed with anticipation and a bit of fear mounting the closer I came.

You can see the Eiffel Tower from various vantage points across Paris. Sometimes, you just see it poking up at the sky off in the distance. Though it towers above everything around it, you really don't get a sense of the enormity until you are standing right in front of it, almost underneath, and have to drop your head all the way back to look up and see the top. Only the skeleton of a building with a few decks as you ascend, the sun shines down through the lattice of metal, reminding you how naked the structure is.

You can go up from any of the four pillars, by elevator to the first and second levels, or on foot via staircases. It costs extra to go all the way to the top, accessible only by a second set of elevators on the 2eme etage, or second floor. I chose the pillar with the shortest line. It wasn't until I was just about to purchase my ticket that I realized the elevator to the 1st floor from that corner was broken. I figured, what the hell? I've climbed the stairs to the top of the Statue of Liberty before (sure, I was 13, but so what?). Besides, I wasn't going to start over in one of the lines 4 times the length of the one I was almost next in.

I ordered one ticket in French. She asked if I wanted to go to the top. I said "oui" and she charged me the 12-26 year old price of entry. I didn't tell her I was 29.

I mounted the stairs and about 2 flights up, the sense of excitement/anticipation/fear started to overwhelm me. I'm prone to panic attacks on occasion, brought on usually by crowded public transportation, long, high bridges, and heights. Low-grade panic set in, and it lasted the remainder of my Eiffel experience. I wasn't going to let it stop me: just because something freaks me out, doesn't mean I won't do it.

Now, I don't freak out just going up any old tall structure. And I have no problem with skyscrapers and looking at views from the safety of the building's enclosure. The Eiffel Tower, obviously, isn't enclosed. Sure, there's a metal fence. But tell that to the phobic part of my brain. I kept getting stuck behind slow-moving families, which wasn't helping. Eventually I'd manage to pass them, but it prolonged my discomfort.

I reached the 1st floor and made my way to the edge. I didn't take Niblet out because I kept picturing the scene in National Lampoon's European Vacation when Clark throws Rusty's beret off the Eiffel Tower and some woman's poodle leaps from her arms after it like it's a frisbee. Yes, off the Eiffel Tower.

Luckily poodles are light and so the wind catches it and the poodle ends up in the pool. Still, I didn't want to chance it with Niblet.

The hike to the 2nd floor was similar. Inexplicably, the lines to the elevators to the top wrap around the outside of the 2nd floor. You might think they'd have roped off the queue some other way. Instead, you can't exactly get to the edge to peer over from the 2nd floor unless you are in line.

The line to buy my ticket took less than 20 minutes. The line to the top was 30 or more. My patience was thin (panic attack, remember?) and I wanted to kill the bitch behind me who kept needlessly elbowing and jostling me. I hate that about lines in general. Invading my personal space really isn't going to get ya there any faster.

The top of the Eiffel Tower is divided into two floors. The first, where you exit the elevators, is enclosed by windows. Up a staircase, you reach as high as they'll let you go, surrounded by wind, protected by a mesh fence. No death by Eiffel Tower incidents, merci beaucoup. (No, really, thank you! It's windy up there!)

The crap part is that you have to wait in line again, to get back down to the 2nd floor. So, one tour around the top and I went back down and got in line. Not before stopping to buy myself a shot glass from the souvenir shop at the top. What better way to commemorate conquering a fear than obliterating the memory with booze? If only I'd brought the booze ...

The journey down from the 2nd floor was quick, and as a reward when I was on land once more, I bought myself an ice cream cone. Soft serve choco-vanilla swirl on a cone. MMMMMMMMM. I licked 'til I relaxed, and was very proud of myself. No, the height fear didn't go away. But I did it anyway, and the panic attack never got out of control and it went away quickly once I was on the ground again. Maybe that fear of heights will never completely leave me, but it is nice to know that I'm not so phobic as to let it stop me.

Paris - Revisited - pt. 2

When I returned to my hotel from D'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou, I made two phone calls. The first to Sebastien, the ex-boyfriend of a former co-worker of Kiki's who had agreed to be my gay tour-guide for a day. We made arrangements to meet at 2 pm the following afternoon. The second call was to Jim, to make dinner arrangements for later that night. He gave me directions for the metro and told me the street address. He said "86 Tombe Issoire" which I misheard as " 86 Dombasle", both streets off of Rue de Alesia in the southwest of Paris. I took a shower, then mapped out my route. It seemed a little odd that he'd put me on a metro line that entailed such a long walk, but what the fuck. I was in Paris.

Now, to be accurate, I didn't mishear "Dombasle" ... I wrote down "Dombassu" or something similar. "Dombasle" was the closest thing to what I'd written that I could find intersecting Rue de Alesia. Otherwise known as "when deductive reasoning fails".

An hour after getting off the Metro*, I arrived at Rue Dombasle. Only there was no 86.

Fuck.

It took a few blocks before I found a Tobac** so I could buy myself a phone card. Payphones in Paris don't take coins: you need a re-fillable phone card. This is assuming, of course, you don't have a cell phone.

I called Jim.

Not only was I on the wrong street, I was in the wrong arrondisment! Sigh. My sense of direction is great! My aural comprehension of the French language? Not so much.

Luckily I was across the street from a stop for the bus line that would take me from the 15th to the 14th, and to Jim's corner. He told me how to pay once I was on the bus, and said he'd see me soon.

15 minutes later, I stood outside the gate at 86 Tombe Issoire, in the 14th. I punched the code into the security pad and entered a long, narrow courtyard. Jim was walking toward me. He looked just like his picture on the website, but older, in a dapper hat and a 3/4 length overcoat. He told me we'd be meeting a couple, friends of his, and there was a possibility of journalist and the french girl he'd picked up the night before. Except for the french girl, all were Americans.

We walked to a tiny chinese restaurant 2 or 3 blocks from Jim's atelier, and were greeted warmly by the married proprietors. This was obviously a regular haunt of Jim's: he was on a first name basis with the owners, and throughout our meal they bent over backwards to ensure we were content.

Paul and Mary arrived shortly after us. A couple in their 50s, I suppose, who currently live half of each year in Paris, and the other half in Portland, Oregon. Paul is in the Peace Corps, and does AIDS work in Africa. Mary used to own a catering business when she and Paul were based in DC, where she lived full time while Paul travelled with the Peace Corps. They've known Jim for 30 years. I didn't get the story of their meeting.

Chinese food is chinese food everywhere in the western world, even if the menu is in French. We were going to order dishes for the table to share, and I decided I would just go along with everyone's choices. Jim ordered soup to start, so did Mary, and so did I. I had no idea *what* kind of soup it would be, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be Hot and Sour soup, a favorite of mine (often used as a comfort food at the tail end of any flu or severe cold I contract). A chicken dish was ordered, along with some pot stickers, a beef dish and a pork dish. Still feeling starved for vegetables, I suggested a veggie dish. Mary and I split a bottle of white wine.

Just after the pot stickers arrived, so did Jeff. Without the french girl, whom Jim had suspected would be frightened of coming to dinner with 4 english-speaking Americans and one ex-pat. I'm not sure how Jeff communicated with this girl: his french is practically non-existent. I suspect there was a lot of gesticulating going on.

To picture Jeff, imagine Anthony Hopkins at the end of Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal calls Clarice during her graduation ceremony, from some non-descript tropical location, a little sunburnt, wearing a crumpled white linen suit with a fedora. Jeff looked like he'd just stepped out of that scene. In one of his incarnations as a mainstream journalist, Jeff had met Jim 20 years earlier, tasked with writing an article on Jim's Sunday Dinners for an Austin newspaper. These days, Jeff has changed his last name and is running a talent agency out of Shreveport, Louisiana.

Jeff wanted in on the wine, so we ordered another bottle.He sat next to me, and spent the rest of the evening talking mainly to me, or Jim. He seemed wholly uninterested in Paul or Mary. Throughout dinner, I kept feeling like this cute, thin french girl with short dark hair sitting at the table behind Jim and Paul was looking at me. Or trying to not be caught looking at me, more like. But I wasn't sure because whenever I noticed her apart from this, it seemed like she was having a really intense conversation with her boyfriend. Heavy relationship stuff kind of intense, so I chalked it up to my imagination.

I thought the overall dinner conversation was interesting. I was asked about school, my goals, talked about my blog, my orientation, the fledgling porn company that occasionally shoots in my living room. We talked about Paul's work in Africa, about the perception of American arrogance as right-wing fundamentalism pushes its abstinence-only christian morality on populations that can ill afford such a head-in-the-sand approach to the AIDS pandemic.

We talked about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Jeff opined that, having seen first hand what is left of New Orleans, Shreveport was on its way to becoming the cultural center of Louisiana. New Orleans, he suggested, even in recovery, would not be the same. Much of the local flavor went with folk who relocated to Texas and elsewhere throughout the US, who will not have the financial ability to move back, or capability of affording the housing that will replace their homes. The areas destroyed and left vacant, once low income and poor, will gentrify and the city's cultural, economic and class diversity, from which that flavor derived, will be forever lost.

At the end of dinner, it was decided Paul and Mary would walk Jeff and I to the Metro stop, the Metro being on the way to their apartment, and Jeff's hotel being one Metro stop after mine. I excused myself to the rest room. When I emerged, my entire party was waiting right out side, putting on their coats. The cute french girl was waiting in line for the bathroom.

Or so I thought.

It turns out, she'd just been talking to Mary about me. She wanted to know if I was an actress. Apparently, she was really taken with my voice. She had told Mary that she was very sensitive to sounds, and my voice sounded very even and metered and lyrical, like it had been trained. When Mary told me this, the girl turned crimson and rushed into the bathroom.

I think that may be one of the best compliments I've ever had. Certainly one of the most unique.

We said our goodbyes to Jim, and headed for the Metro. Instead of continuing on to his stop, Jeff asked me if I wanted to get a drink, and got off at my stop. We walked into the closest cafe and ordered 2 glasses of red wine. This is when I learned that Jeff had been the managing editor of Hustler for a time, right around the infamous shooting, when Althea took over for Larry. Before that, Jeff and some friends had, in the 60s, started an underground, subversive magazine in New York, called The Rat. Among other literary noteables, The Rat was fond of publishing works by William Burroughs.

My one on one conversation with Jeff over drinks was decidedly more personal than the conversation at dinner. I won't bore you with it all (although much of it was quite titilating), but it was nice to have a conversation with a stranger who has spent his life learning people, of coaxing truths from them, and listening to his assessment of me. He's been with 100s of women spanning decades, and yet he found me attractive and interesting enough to proposition. And was gracious and treated me no different when I politely declined.

We made arrangements to meet for a drink before Jim's dinner on Sunday, and he walked me back to my hotel.





*I walked for an hour. Or so. There was a brief stop at Starbucks. Just to see. 5 euros for a tall caramel macchiato. That's close to $6.50. for the SMALL one!

** A tobac is a store that sells various tobacco products. Tobacs also sell metro passes, tickets, and phone cards.