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.