Marie-Chiara Tort. For better or for worst, I don't really know if it matters, but I think. She's always close to mind when talk of Paris arises. Her and her sister share the apartment were staying at in the Ninth Arrondissement. The Siene and the center of the city are at a distant walk's distance away so every day we not so reluctantly utilize one of the most important skill-sets we've picked up in our travels; that shadowy art of sliding through metro ticket gates after couples, whole families, businessmen, fiddlers and the such. And then there's the quite intangible ability to accurately navigate across the city on the Underground. It's a talent that comes and goes depending sometimes on Blood Alcohol Content. We're sober professionals by now, impressive in my eyes especially with things like Los Angeles childhoods to consider, connecting meager bus routes from school to get home before dark.
So we all remotely stimulate the senses and the imagination. Exactly. Opera Houses and the likes are sprinkled here and there with gold statuettes and bold french lettering. It's a city that flaunted its lavish architectural beauty. Everything has the feeling of eighteenth century royal etiquette. It probably has something to do with all the museums being old palaces and all the parks, palace gardens; luxurious and decadent in every regard. And then there's the old men playing backgammon and puffing at their tobacco pipes under the patio in the tree groves. And when the patches of summer showers find us, we duck under as well, engaging in heated battles of competition over cards in games of hearts to a hundred. Leaning back in the heavy metal chairs, laying down hard Q's, that spaded Queen, with heaving breasts and pubic hair and a perm splayed across the card-face that suggested an early 90's photoshoot. The cards are from a cliched little novelty shop across from the Moulin Rouge. They sell humping stick-figure key-chains and penis mints and cards with naked girls on them, and they thankfully make our games of hearts infinitely more interesting.
The old men don't seem to mind, or care for that matter. We're high on skunk Barcelona snicklefritz and Lucky Strikes and we speak loud English and laugh a lot. "Les Stupid Americanes."
But at the bars, we're with Marie Chiara and her equally French sister, and they both know exactly how guys like girls' bodies to move, and exactly what kind of clothes those bodies should move in. After all, they were French, and Marie-Chiara just so happened to have a giggly excited obsession with a particular female pornstar, Sasha Grey.
