7.30.2002
Yesterday I stepped off a bus at the same moment that Helen of Troy onto a bus. I must have looked ridiculous, standing there, my index finger holding the "Open Door" button, debating whether or not to get back onto a bus I just exited.
But I didn't get back on, and I regretted it the rest of the night. I imagined my identical twin, my arch-nemesis in every respect, exchanging glances with Helen, maybe over crepes. The fantastic ham ones that hint at some sweet ingredient. My twin knows exactly where to find them, and naturally Helen is impressed at how worldly he is. I hate that guy.
These were the things I was thinking about while I sat waiting for another bus. After a few minutes, a beautiful woman came and sat down on the bench next to me. I didn't think she was that beautiful, having just seen Helen of Troy, who was so beautiful that men fought a war over her. The woman at the bus stop may have been beautiful, but she affected me only in the same respect that one responds to being pinched after having been assaulted with a hammer.
But other men thought she was beautiful. I could tell, because a group of them shattered our comfortable silence with an onslaught of yelling and hooting, capped by the loud slapping of their open palms against the glass. It was a horrible noise, loud and alarming, and it made me immediately upset. She looked shaken at first, but her features settled pretty quickly, as if the event were part of her daily routine.
"Pardon," I asked, "parlez-vous Anglais?" "A little," she told me, quantifying her knowledge with two pinched fingers while mispronouncing "little." But I decided that she knew enough English, and I began a continuous three-minute lecture on the alarming cultural discrepancies between France and America. I told her that I hate the way men act here, they way they yell and hoot. And I told her that I hate the way the women have to act in response, and that in America, men and women can make eye contact without a loud and graphic debacle ensuing! Women in France are made to believe that it is they who cause French men to act the way they do, and it's demeaning to women! Eye contact is everything! I told her, yelling with enthusiasm. I was yelling, but dammit I was making my point and it felt good to get it out.
I was surprised in the end with how excited I had become in my address, and I had to calm myself to hear her response. But to my surprise, she didn't respond. She just sat there, looking at me, full of fear. She hadn't understood a word I'd said, and had instead interpreted my fervent display as me yelling at her angrily. She looked more afraid of me than she had of the group of men who had only minutes earlier screamed at her to perform perverse acts. She hadn't understood a single word of what I'd said, and she looked almost ready to cry.
My writing program ended a couple of days ago, so the past few nights have been spent celebrating (drinking). The other night at an Australian bar, one of the other guys from the program pulled me aside. "Look man, there's just something I wanted to tell you. You, man, are living proof that first impressions can be wrong. Totally wrong, ya know? Because you're awesome. Awesome! But I couldn't stand you when I met you." This was the first guy from the program that I met. We were actually on the same plane. Our only conversation on the trip lasted maybe ten minutes, and he really did all the talking. But I was perfectly polite the whole time, half-charming, even, and don't think so much as a single eyebrow strayed from perfect social decency. "I'm telling you man. Remember that cute girl I was sitting next to? After you returned to your seat, I totally turned to her and told her, 'Shit, I gotta be in a class with this guy.'" First of all, that girl was not cute, and secondly, what the fuck? How did I create a bad enough impression with this guy in the course of two minutes of inane small talk to warrant him addressing a not-so-cute stranger about the situation? "You're awesome though, dude. I'm serious, awesome. But that first day, I was totally thinking to myself, 'God I hope this guy's not my roommate.'" He seriously went on and on like that, toggling back and forth between unnecessarily strong compliments about my writing and the most cutting account of his initial impressions of me. I don't think anything he wrote the entire month was as descriptive as his portrayal of his loathing of me. And I don't understand at all.
(Just as an interesting ironic sidenote: During the cab ride from the airport, I silently recited every prayer from every religion I could remember, begging that he wouldn't be my roommate. And I do mean every prayer. Wine was blessed.)
7.19.2002
I just wrote a post for an hour and a half, and then Blogger deleted the whole thing. I'm going to walk upstairs and pay six dollars for the time I spent writing it, and then I'm going to cry.
7.16.2002
Before you speak to anyone in Paris, you have to say "Bonjour." It's considered rude if you don't. Many experiences involve five or six bonjours. For instance, when you walk into a bakery, upon stepping through the door, you should always chime bonjour! as if you're alerting everyone in the store of your arrival. Their doors don't have infrared-triggered door chimes, you do it yourself, and the proprietors will always echo it back at you. You say it to the people in front of you in line if they make eye contact. Luckily, no one makes eye contact, so you're saved a breath there. When it's your turn in line, the woman behind the counter will tell you that she's ready for you with a bonjour, which, of course, you have to repeat back to her, lest you be considered rude. And when you're transaction is complete, you finish with either bonjour, or some modified version of the word, like bonjour'ne. From an American perspective, it's a ridiculous process, but it really creates a warm atmosphere, and demonstrates the way the rest of the world ackowledges humanity, while American industry encourages all its parts, human or otherwise, to serve, as efficiently as possible, as cogs.
So, in summary, a translation!
Bonjour bon·jour (bone-zhur) n. 1. "Hey everyone! I'm here!" 2. "Yes, yes. We all see you. Now keep your cool, champ." 3. "Hey look at us, we're buying bread!" 4. "What do you want, you American asshole?" 5. "Hey look at me, I'm worldly!" 6. "I've given you what you want, please leave my establishment."
I stole pretty much this entire post from a far-better piece by Danielle, which I'll post if she allows me. She slapped me half an hour ago and my left eye is swelled a little. She's one of those girls who knows so much martial arts that she's no fun to play around with, because she kills me every time. It's not like she means to hurt me, but it's not like dobermans intend to eat children, they're just bred to do so (this analogy is great, because all the vicious creatures involved are german in origin). I'm bigger than she is, but if I do so much as poke her in the side, she'll inadvertantly bruise me for days. It's kinda funny, actually. She and I go back and forth, I'm never exactly sure where we stand, but at the end of the day, regardless of how happy I am, I'm battered and bruised. It's quite funny, actually.
7.13.2002 (An hour ago, waiting for my friends to leave a department store)
I sat in an empty square across from the Moulin Rouge for what could have been two hours. Instead of sitting on a bench, I sat right down in the middle of the square, cross-legged, like I was meditating but without all the humming. Just sitting there was fantastic. Hordes of people passed, many very weary of course, no one understanding what I was doing. I think a lot of people assumed I was begging. I said bonjour to anyone who made eye contact, I gave a little girl a high-five. One woman gave me twenty euro-cents and said what was probably a prayer for me, I think because I smiled at her dog. You have to picture me sitting there, in my Structure sweater and jeans, being handed coins and prayed upon simply for sitting cross-legged. Absurd, really.
One man yelled at me for begging, and I had to explain to him in broken French that I wasn't begging, that I was just sitting there and watching people pass. He didn't believe me, so he sat on a nearby bench and watched me for twenty minutes. When he was satisfied that I wasn't begging, he came over, gave me a hand-shake, a warm bonjour, and a euro. Absurd!
After forty minutes of sitting that way, my left leg becoming numb from the lack of circulation, a drunk Arab man with a beer and only two front teeth came and sat down with me. He sat three feet in front of me, mirrored my position, which again, looked like meditation, and smiled with all the teeth he had. "Bonjour!" I told him warmly, which he repeated in his own toothless way. He then explained in pantomime that he was deaf, and I was wonderfully relieve. No conversation for us! We sat there in our meditative positions for five minutes before we spoke again. He was upset with me, that I was doing such a poor job begging. He explained to me, again, all in pantomime, that I was doing it all wrong. He reached out his hand for mine, to show me what I was doing wrong. When I gave him my right hand, he found a gold coin in it, the one the aforementioned dog-woman had given me a while earlier. I hadn't left it out in front of me because that really wasn't what I was doing. He took the coin, and put it in front of himself, and explained that I needed to keep my arm outstretched with my palm open, or no one would give me anything. I didn't do what he asked, and he looked confused. I put my hands together and used them to support my chin, which he misinterpreted as prayer, becoming upset at both me and god (or, the sky).
"No!" I told him, I wasn't praying, and I wasn't begging. I was just sitting. The idea was foreign to him. But when he understood, he laughed for what could have been another hour. He loved it! He was so pleased he gave my coin back. And after a few more minutes, the two of us still in our meditative positions, a third man joined us, and a few minutes later a fourth. Four of us, seated there, across from the Moulin Rouge, in our own private meditation. Two of them were drunk, and one of the drunks may have been crazy, but we were all smiling, dammit, and it was more than I ever could have hoped for just by sitting down in the middle of a public square.
1. Women in Paris are absolutely beautiful. Everywhere you go, beautiful women. But they don't make eye contact. They just don't. It's absolutely devastating, because with the language barrier, eye contact is all I have. Parisian men are the usual european assholes, they shout loud and awful things at my female friends as we walk down the street. Women here work on the assumption that if they make eye contact, even just a friendly smile in passing, some aggressive display will ensue. And I can't really blame them, the men here are like that. But it really gets me down.
2. Yesterday Danielle and I practiced our pickpocketing on our various unsuspecting friends. It's much harder than you'd think, especially because she and I giggle so much. All day long I love Danielle, and at the end of every day she leaves me for her long-term Parisian boyfriend. Sigh. She's a terrible amount of fun, and spending my days with her makes my nights lonely by contrast.
3. My French is coming along well. I figure I should have a near-applicable understanding of the language by the end of the month, at which point I will leave the country and go find an all-together new language to elude my understanding.
4. Note to self: MC Solaar, Cinquierre As
5. I think my favorite time of day in Paris is the early night, a little before six, when every person you pass on the street has a long loaf of bread under their arm. I love that. I eat at least a loaf of bread (une baguette) and two chococale croissants (pain au chocolat) every day, generally by lunch. Oh, and the fruit. It's incredibly fresh, and far more wonderful than anything you'd find in the states. I walked around the streets today eating grapes and smiling. I love the food here. My stomach is in a state of perpetual pain, but I couldn't be happier.
I am sitting in the Cafe Lorenze, and I am terrified that the waiter will come back. Even for a frenchman, he seems to speak especially quickly.
1. "Everyone in France will know you're American just by looking at you." My favorite of the lies I was told and believed before coming to Paris. 2. "It's the shoes. They can tell you're American by looking at your shoes, because we wear different shoes than them." My shoes are French. 3. "Whatever man, it's cool, everyone in Paris speaks English anyway." Honestly people, what Paris were you in?
So, needless to say, few seem to realize I'm American just by looking at me. Which, at this early point in my learning of the French language, has been consistently problematic. When I ask for basic directions, for instance, strangers jabber on at me for literally minutes. They give me what I can only assume are the most intricate details, details that almost never involve pointing, and during which I can only pretend to understand while silently praying that their speech is not finished by any sort of question besides: 1. What is your name? 2. What time is it? and, the one I've been begging for but have to receive, 3. Do you speak English?
I'd say I'm learning French fairly quickly, and I've been working hard at it, at least for the last day-and-a-half. I really enjoy the immersion technique to learning a language. I probably know enough nouns to get me through the day. But I don't know any verbs, which has turned out to be problematic. Mostly because I can't verbalize a single coherent thought that I didn't learn from a phrasebook. Tonight I had a fifteen minute conversation with a man while we walked together down the sidewalk. He was apparently quite sure that I understood him, a falsity no doubt reinforced by my repetition of "Oui," one of the few words I know with few follow-up questions. I believe "we" talked about soccer, and possibly about children. Children or something else small, it could have been elves or dogs. Tomorrow is my first class in learning the French language, but that didn't really help me today.
By the third time the song had finished it was obvious the accordion player had brought the sheet music for only one song. Perhaps he thought it would be a short gathering. The wind had picked up, and the grapes were rolling off the table into the gravel below. The French have such nice gravel, all half-polished stones and opal. Later that night, lost in the slums of Paris, I would reach into my pocket and pull out a stone of gravel I had pocketed earlier. I would cast it into the street, knowing it had been the cause of my disorientation.
On my first flight, I sat next to a man so fantastically large that he required two seats. Uncomfortably, one of them was mine. With his gelatinous elbow nestled in my side, I fell asleep and dreampt passionately of whaling.
