Fall Paris: Elena

She turns over.  "What's my name officer?"

How does she do that?  How does she break through with such crassness?  Such green eye and freckles and French theatrics.  They are, the lot of them, non but fair-eyed fairies, committed to their art with such aloof passion and tenacity.  There's a certain beautiful complex to them that stretches beyond physical attraction.  She says things in French-English like, "I think the beard is manly... it looks sexy... but it tickles my face," and she giggles with high French inflections when I run it down the hourglass length of her.  A definitive of that form with big red hair.  But more a reddish light brown to be honest.  With city-living disparity.  Maybe that's the wrong word.  Maybe it's humble comfort.  Humble comfort and somewhat nonchalant.  "I'm never going to see you again, but I'm just, em, curious if you want me to shave," she says.

"What's that, your legs?"

"Everything."  So French and so straight into my eyes.

"Well, let's see..." and I test her left leg running my beard down the outside and my hand down the inside.  She squirms in a tickled French belle, a young mademoiselle frenzy of accented pleasure.  "No, that's just fine," I say.

It's a little prickle but it's soft and sparse, and they tickle back, and she pulls me in.  "You can't tell Erin," she says.  "I think she really likes you."

"So?"

"So I'm pretty sure she likes you!" she's adamant.  "And I work with her at the admin building."

"Really? When?"

"In two days," she says.

"Oh..." and I look at her neck, "Those are definitely still going to be there."

"What?"  So lightly said.  She speaks the softest a girl can without whispering and it's adorable.  "Oh, no!"  She sounds like a princess laughing, one hand finger-raking her neck ever so daintily, the other holding my hip.  Her body moves like she's dancing to the beat of the sheets.  To the tone of her sweet, sweet, so petite moans.

She kisses like French girls ought to kiss.  "You don't like her though? Erin? Personally, I don't care.  I barely even know her really, just from work... But she's cool.  And she's pretty, non?"

"Yes.  Yes, she is," I say, and I'm tired so I reach half-heartedly.  "I like her as a friend? She is cool, I'm just not attracted to her?"

"You're not attracted to her?"

"Not particularly.  And well, I'm never going to see you again you say, so I feel like I can tell you this.  I'm actually head or heels for her friend."

Her ears prick inquisitive, "Oh, really?"  Eyes spark green curiosity.  "Who is she? Which one? I think I know-"

"It's Rachel."

"The tall blonde one that always works the bar at the vernissage a Combes?"

"Yes, please."  I'm wasted, but she's wasted too and we both don't care.  "She's everything I could ever think I wanted.  She's my type, I suppose."

"Was she there tonight?"

Sigh, "No."

She turns somber.  Dramatic French somber and oh, so airy.  "So you're not attracted to me?  You like her friend..."

"Oh, but I am.  Are you not attracted to me?" I ask.

She laughs, "Of course I am."  And she brings her hands down my chest to grab my hips.  "You're so sexy."

"Ha! It's just the Louis Vuitton chonies.  Let's not lose those okay?"

"I wanted to kiss you when I first saw you in Erin's room," she says serious, doe-eyeing me.

"I did too."  And that's the truth.

"But you like her friend, the tall pretty one."

"Doesn't mean I don't think you're pretty too, and didn't think you were seductive-adorable when you were laying on her bed."

She smiles small, trying not to crack a big one. "I'm not sure I believe you," she says.

"I'm in your bed, aren't I?" And I kiss the baby-soft tinkerbell-light skin on her collar and breast.

She pushes her hips to flip me and takes me, and I pull myself up to meet her.  A French belle that rides with a back arch, and both ways and her hair crashes like the tides on her biting lower lip in the moonlight.

"I'm never going to see you again, am I?"

"Mais non, but I'm glad you came.  You're wild and... and you're crazy and I like it."  She runs her fingers through my hair, and it pulls my head back.  "And I like what you do with your fingers," she says.

"And I like how necessary a scarf's going to be to your wardrobe the next couple days," I say smiling, and I kiss her neck once more for good measure.

She breathes deep at the sensation and whispers in my ear, "This is France.  I always wear a scarf."

[stop]


Birthday Weekend

It's Lili's birthday this weekend.  "Oh! I can't wait!"

School's been tough this week, or so I'm assuming.  She seemed a little more stressed out than usual.  Another paper she waited forever to start, but I think we've all been guilty of that at some time or another.  She's excited though, and with good reason.  She's going to London for the weekend.  "Well, you deserve it," I say. "Did you finish that paper?"

She's dampered a bit.  "Almost. I'll work on it over there," she says.  To which I tut or chort or whatever you call a smug quick laugh that says, "Yeah right, sure you will."  She looks up from her packing.  "What."

"Sure you will."

"I will." She gives the clothes in the bag a particularly hard smack to push them down before she's back to folding again.  "And I don't want you to have anyone over here while I'm gone, ya hear me?"

"Loud and clear. Quick question."

"What."

I keep a straight face.  "If I have sex in your bed, should I wash the sheets after? Should I even bother? I'm not very messy."

"Ew! No! I mean - wait.  No! If you have sex in my bed I will kill you!" She gets up and throws a pillow from the couch at me.  "I'm serious!"  She says it because I'm laughing and air humping by her bed, and she's laughing too.

I stop and consider it for a second before I shrug. "Eh. That's okay, I guess. I'm already dead inside."

There's a pause, not a long one.  "I know you are."  She stops laughing, but she's grinning still and throws another pillow for the hell of it.  "And what's this (in reference to the music playing)? Beach House? Change it. I need  something happy."  Then she looks around quick like she's lost something.  "And I need a cigarette."

"Happy, huh?"

"Yes. But none of that techno dancy shit."

"Easy tiger. I've got something for you."  I don't really, and I panic and I put on Bo Diddley.  She seems to like it, I think, because she doesn't say anything and lights her No. 27 by the window.

"So what are you going to do out there anyway?" I ask.  Half of me's interested.  The other half's sensed a sudden sadness in her and wants that to change.  Sometimes a question's all it takes, and today's no different.  Girls are a little tricky though.  You have to know what to ask.

"Oh! I have it all planned out."

"Of course you do."

"Yeah. I do." She's snarky again. "You ready?"

"Let's have it."

"Okay. So. My train leaves Gare du Nord at 11:45 which means I need to leave here around 11:00 or so. And oh! You're making me breakfast 'cause it's my birthday."

"Roger that," I say with a salute.  "I hope you like eggs and toast. And let me get a drag."

She passes it.  "I love it. Wait. Where was I... Oh yes, so the train under the Channel's whatever, like three hours, then I'm in London! Then I'm going straight to my favorite bar - you'd love it. It's tucked away under this bridge by the Thames. It's called [that bar] and there I'll have a super nice meal and a glass of wine, and then after that have a few beers prob'ly because they have great beers too."

[stop]


Linsanity Wails

"What's it called again?"

"It's a stag party," she tells me. "You've never been to a stag party?"

"Well, I don't know. What the hell's a stag party?"

Lindsay looks at me the way that she does, with a roll of her eyes, like I'm some kind of idiot.  But really, I think, she's trying to word it out.  "You know... a stag party. All the boys play poker dressed up with suspenders or whatever, and all the girls serve drinks with red lipstick and old flappers like the '40s."

"I don't have suspenders."

"You don't need suspenders. Just wear one of those button downs. The nice one. C'mon, it'll be fun! And I need some fun right now. Let's go!"

"I do enjoy a good hand of poker... Okay, let me finish this wine and we'll go," I say, and then in faux seriousness, "This better not be lame."

She sucks her lips in with a pause. "Uhm... I can't promise that. Just come on. There's cheap drinks, and if it sucks we'll leave."

My kryptonite.  I tip my glass empty and pull a scarf around. "Where is it?"

"At the AUP bar." (there's a name for it)

We get there and it's mostly the same.  There's no extravagant decor, no streamers from the rafters or anything like that.  The stage is cleared and clean and alone and some six tables in front of the bar are squished into two long ones, and at one table, the one less central an more hugging the wall, there's some six patrons, five guys and one girl, set down and playing cards on the laid down green table cloth  The pot of chips in the center's small.  It's early.  With a smile and a wave, Lindsay leaves my side and is off talking to some friend so me, I take a lean on the bar facing out with a look of absent mind that says, "Lord, I hope the bartender don't come up to me."  He doesn't.  He's busy with the girls in excited garb and flashy eyes, supposedly cocktail waiting, but everyone's served up.  It's early, and I'm probably the only one in the room that nobody knows.  Save for Lindsay, of course.  Stuck in a room, well, a windowless bar, not big, but comfortably easy to move about.  At least at the moment.

I'm a stranger.  I'm Albert Camus to two handfuls of American grad students trapped in a self-imposed period piece of poor production.  But that's not it.  Theme parties are about novelty and a change of pace, an escape from the present dreary reality.  Party on, grads.  Salut to you, I'll have a drink soon.  For now, I watch with a moving eye trying not to make eye contact.

Americans in Paris are a peculiar breed.

Especially when they're graduate students.  To make mastery of a subject in a foreign land.  I imagine asking them, "Why Paris?"  As I see their chest or bosom fill with pride, "Why not London where the language suits you? Why not Barcelona where the weather's well? Why not Berlin where the price is fair and nobody cares? Why not here or there... Why Paris?"

Ah, there's the intellectual.  Sue-sue-pseudio.  "I want to learn in the greatest city in the world! The art, the culture, the city itself, l'histoire, it all calls to me!" Hand over heart or at horn-rimmed glasses.

There's the book-wise brute with money-drive and success, expensive clothes, and hotel suites on the horizon.  "I like French girls." Which means ore bluntly, "I like girls with an eye for a nice coat, with class. Anyone will do really. Probably not even a French girl, but one from the States more (all the talk in French would be a chore) and this city will be my charm.  That's what they like, right? Charm..." Maybe not so blunt, but you get the idea, dear reader.

The romantic simply says, "I love this city." And that's that.  C'est la Ville d'Amour, the City of Love, and it comes in all shades and colors (the love, that is; the city's mostly off-white with grey-blue roofs).

They're all present, mingling.  And amidst the haze of thought, there's Lindsay.  Sweet fragile Lindsay.  She's in good spirits here, dressed more like the boys than the girls, like me, in long sleeves and pants and buttons down her chest.  Smiles and excitement and that makes me happy.  I come back to reality.

"The drinks are only two, and it's ten to buy in," she says.

"Ten? C'est merde," I say.  It's not that I don't like gambling, I just never have the money for it, and it's almost always a lost cause financially. "Do I have to play?"

"Oh my god, come on. I'll spot you."

"Fine. Are you going to play too?" None of the other girls were (except the one), but they also all had on flappers.  Lindsay's one of the boys more like. "Do you even know how to play?"

"Nope, you're going to teach me, darling," she says hooking my arm and leading me to the far end of the one playing table.  "Well, I've played before actually, I just don't remember, that's all."

"Ha! You know what they say about someone like you?"

"What's that?"

"You're the best person to play cards with. There's always a seat for you, especially if money's involved."

"Shut-up. That's why you're playing first. Try not to lose it all."

A flapper hands me a stack and a beer - Lindsay takes a wine - and I ante up. "Deal me in boys." It's Texas Hold 'em.

[stop]


A Tale of Texas Hold 'em

Turns out most these guys are suckers.  With all the apparent smarts around the table, all the pedigree and degrees, not one of them has the wits for a decent poker run.  Or maybe I've just seen Rounders too many times.  Lindsay loves it and as she watches, watches my chips grow, sees the bluff, sees the bait, I don't know if she's actually fully wrapped herself around the game, but she tells me she gets it and wants in.

"Looks easy enough," she says. "C'mon let me play! Put me in coach!"

"Okay..." I look at her slyly and slide her a stack of chips off my pile.  "But there's no looking."

She just stares at me with a look of incredulity like as to say, "Me? I would never do such a thing!"

I pull my cards extra close now, for the moment, "No cheatin' now! I'm watching' you."

She brushes me off. "Oh, please."  And we get to it.  The drinks keep coming.  I'd started with a beer, but after two of those I switch to wine because well, why not.  It's Paris.  I've been drinking cheap wine like water for about the last month and a half or so and hell, it just feels right.  And if we're drinking-drinking, and tonight we are (Lindsay's putting them down) I'd rather be drunk than full, no pussy-footing about.  It's only leisure drinking for the leisurely, and I don't have the mind for leisure.  For that certain comfortability.  This ain't no little night cap, and after the girls (not Lindsay, of course) put on some quasi-risque show for the boys on stage, I give all my chips to Lindsay with a kiss on the forehead, and make towards the street for a smoke to clear my head and breathe in a crisp breath.  The place is packed now, and I have to shuffle sideways between warmly dressed cohorts to get by, but when I look back Lindsay's all grins and cheer and sly looks around the table, raking in another pot, and I feel good.  I'm glad she's happy and has her mind off things.  Sometimes you need that.  If you're in your head in a bad way you need to get out.  Don't stay somewhere trapped with your thoughts.  Find friends.  Be near them.  Lindsay's a smart girl.  She knows there things, she can handle herself, and she knows when she needs someone.  She's on top of things now, in control.  But sometimes life throws a grenade fastball straight down the chute and the pin's already been pulled for three seconds.

That's neither here nor there though.  Just a bastard's thought of the worst at the best of times.  It's probably just the weary ho-hum of having to face the smoking crowd outside with neither cigarette nor lighter.

There are smokers in this world that always have a pack on them, hell a fresh pack even!  Then there's smokers like me, the bums.  It is what it is.  I will only under the rarest and most desperate situations buy a pack of cigarettes, and if I did, I almost never bring it anywhere because honestly I'm afraid of the consequences, the absence of self-control.  In polite company, even in something less than so, I'll never bring myself to bum more than two cigarettes (maybe three).  I can't bring myself to insist on any more.  But with a pack in hand, who knows.  Oh, and I don't have a problem asking.  Some people do, I don't.  It's nothing.

It takes two tries tonight.  Two "excuses-moi, ehm, uh, vous avez une autre cigarette?"  One "un bliquet, s'il vous plait?" And two "merci beaucoup"s.  There's no pride here.  Just a strong sense of self and a will for what's needed.  And I mix words and charm into an excellent small talk.  Then most girls, and some guys, are only too happy to part with another.  Is that fiend mentality?  I don't know.  Does it matter?  There's always good conversation to be had in front of bars in Paris, especially if everyone's American.  A bit high-brow sure, it's to be expected, and there's a few true Parisians mixed in too so all the more, but hey, that's the fun of it.  Chameleoning.  It's the same talk I've heard before.  "I feel like the French don't take too kind to me here."

As opposed to where? America?  Gee, I wonder...

"Do you speak French to them?"

"No, my French isn't that good."

Then why are you here? I don't say that.  "At least start in French. Sometimes it means all the world to them to see that at least you're trying.  My French is shit too, or pretty close to it, but I'll always say, 'Je sues desolee. Mon francais set tres mauvais' the second stuff completely stops making sense, which is usually about two or three sentences in."

Then pondering and a drag.  It's small groups out here, the talk's thoughtful.  Mais non, more rehearsed.  Lead questions.  Vague interest.  And someone's handed me an American Spirit and another after that.  So I'm set here for a while, they're slow burning.

"How long you been here?"  "What are you studying?"  "What are you writing?"  I play the fiddle.  I guess we all do and entertain each other in the cold before I retire back inside, back to the bar hustle.

Something's wrong.  Lindsay isn't playing cards anymore.  I see her by the bar, jacket in hand, and I shuffle and sidestep towards her.  She looks different, and maybe - well, no it's definitely the wine, but my first thought is she looks like she has to pee, but she's afraid to go for some reason.

When she sees me, there's a rush in the way she comes towards me.  "There you are. We need to go. Now."

"What happened? Do you need to pee?" I ask.

"What? No! He's coming. He's coming here. Now. He texted me. That fucker's coming here right now." The change in meter's a bit hit me off kilter.  I shake my head with a blink.  Sobering moments tend to do that to me, especially on a nicotine buzz.

"Okay, wait... What did he say exactly."

"He's coming here. He texted me."  There's an exasperation in her voice.  An acute rising exasperation.  "He said, 'Where are you,' and asked if I was at the stag party so I said, 'Yes,' and I told him not to come. I begged him. Begged him. I said, 'Please don't come, PLEASE' in caps.' I said, 'I can't see you right now, I just can't. Please don't come,' and then he says, he just says he's coming and that he just needs to talk to me and explain and that he's sorry. Like what? What are you sorry for? Don't come. What do you need to talk about?" Her eyes are darting across, back and forth across my chest.  I don't think she sees me though.  She's somewhere else.  Someplace ugly and bitter with caged bars around it. "Why? Why does he have to do this to me? I can't. I just can't right now. Not now..."  Her head's shaking.  Not like a seize, but back and forth following her eyes.

"Hey. Hey," I say pulling her chin up with the second knuckle of my finger so she looks at me, eyes in eyes. "It's fine. We're going. We're leaving right now. We're going straight home. And hey, we'll get some ice cream on the way, okay?"

She nods and takes a deep breath, still nodding, but then she stops and her eyes flick left over my shoulder, and she sorta goes stiff in her jaw and her whole body's all of a sudden like paralysis, and I see her swallow something thick. "Go. Go now."  And like lightening she's spinning me and pushes at my back. "Keep going. Straight for the door, don't stop."

So I beeline it.  Now the way the building's set up isn't like most bars in the city.  It's not visible from the outside, there's no street front.  But it is like most buildings in Paris with a main lobby at the entrance.  It's a school bar so it's in a school building behind a glass door at the back of the lobby.  I make it through the glass door, and when I do there's the strange sense of a snapshot in my mind - people, a bustling lobby all looking towards a packed bar, the beefy security guard just a bit older than everyone else at his post behind the desk to the left, the two steps to the classroom stairwell landing to the right, people raised up standing on them, people standing in between, people, raised ceilings, fluorescent lights, white walls, and then in the distance that glass door to the street.  It's like a snapshot flash an a recoil whine at the trigger of something missing.  Something's wrong again.

There's no pressure in the small of my back, no pushing, so I turn round to Lindsay, but she's not there.  She's ten paces back inside at the corner where the bar L's off and opens up.  There's the bar to her side, she's pushed right up against it because there's people packed beside and behind her.  Over the close shoulder of a man facing, I can see her head shaking like it had been with her eyes, back and forth, except now her eyes are closed, her arms joined in a funny way from elbow to wrist in front of her in her hands and fingers forming a sort of furled flower, furled like her brow, just below her chin.  And I can in the man see by the tilt of his stupid brown cabbie hat that matched his stupid brown shirt that he's talking to her, to Lindsay right below him in what I can only guess by his manner is a soothing desperate tone.  And then I can see as I look down his hands up by her elbows, if not touching then they're hovering just by.

This is all in one second's course, too fast to process in the mind, but instincts know best.  The heart doesn't think, so in a flash my hand reaches for her flower, the one below her chin, and clamps to one half, and she clamps back and I pull round the man's shoulder that opens up mid-plea.  I lean in as she strides beside me. "Come on, then. Let's go home."

I hear her whisper, "Go."  And we go.

Go through the glass doors into the lobby and there's a snapshot flash again, the same snap, the same shot, because in a sudden her arm goes taught and her hand goes limp in my hand and slips.  he's got her by the other wrist.

We're not in the bar anymore, we're in the lobby.  The light's aren't dimmed, but bright fluorescent.  In the air, the loud music from inside is a muffled breath, like screaming through a pillow, a soft bass backdrop.  What's heard is the echoing like of young student sociability, the timeless chatter of ages.

But that soon turns to a hush as the congregation close slowly goes silent and stares.  There's time to think now, I've lost my rhythm.  Instead of my heart, it's my mind that's racing, racing burnt out tire tracks around the situation.  I don't know what to do.  I'm just standing here, staring with the rest of them, awestruck, because honestly I've felt a more terrible thing.

I don't know what everybody else is looking at, what they see, not knowing the deep rooted foundation below it.  A lover's quarrel?  Typical?  I don't know, and it doesn't matter really.  I saw a sky-high kerosene bonfire burning poor Lindsay down from head to weak knees, shaking back and forth, with a whisper, "No... no... no..."

"Babe. Babe, just listen. Listen to me, let me explain. Look at me. I'm sorry. Let's just talk about this, come on."  I couldn't hear him in the bar, but in the hushed silence I can hear him now, stoking the flames in an almost calming rushed tone.  He isn't yelling, not at all, but there's a subtle force behind the way he's saying things, like he's talking to a child.  "Babe, just come on. Just talk to me, please." Urging.  Maybe it's the other way around.  Like a child talking, commanding a grown man's body, a grown man's degree and salary, and demanding attention as he backs her into the glass beside the bar door.  "Babe stop this, come on." He reaches, pleading for her arm and she moves away, moves back, leaning into the glass now, still shaking her head, looking at the ground.  "Don't do this, babe. I love you. Just talk to me."

I see all this, a foot away watching, waiting for something to happen, for someone to do something.  I see the security guard behind his desk, uneasy, standing and shifting he weight.  I see a girl whisper to a friend behind her hand.  I see the eyes.  I see the vein in his neck, this other Brian, this blasphemer of my namesake.  He's shorter, a little, but sure as hell's got more thickness to him, more muscle than I, me here on my pauper's Parisian diet.  His two friends behind him are the same.  For a second I think to myself sadly, "Man, this trio all like like the kind of guys that don't mind punching other guys in the face. Fuck."

But two seconds more (maybe three or four) and I've had enough.  She's had enough, poor Lindsay, Lord knows she's smoldering in the flames.

I put my hand on the other Brian's shoulder.  He stops immediately, and I feel his shoulder tense as he turns to me.  The only defense I know is to look him dead in the eye, straight, without blinking, and hopefully he don't see the fear, just the crazy.

I say, "Hey buddy, okay, that's enough try for tonight, don't you think? Look at her, she can't talk to you right now.  That's gotta be obvious, right? This isn't the time, man."  Lindsay's latched to my other arm at the elbow.  I break Brian's confused ice gaze to look quick around the lobby.  "This isn't the place either. We're gonna go now."  I look back at him.  He's dumbfounded.  So I turn to the lobby door and start off, Lindsay on the outside of me out of reach.

I don't make it to that glass release before I hear, "Where do you think you're taking her."

Deep breath.  I look around to find his eye.  "I'm taking her home."

I fully expect a hard hit to the head with that, but the blow never comes and finally, we're out the door.

A block down, I look behind me.  They're not following.  We turn the corner and I squeeze her tight under my arm while we walk.  She squeezes back.  I kiss her on the forehead again and tell her, "It's gonna be fine, Linds. It's okay. We're going home now."

She doesn't look at me, "Ice cream?"

All the storefronts are dark, the late night marts too.  Le Carrefour closed hours ago, and all the cafes have long booted their last patrons.

"I think it might be too late for that, dearie." There's a pause.  We walk.  She doesn't take her eyes off the street.

"I think Lili left some in the fridge," she says.

Satori en Paris

He has one shining stone, that one.  Well maybe that's not true.  I hear his other stuff is quite good.  Too bad I don't read much, but maybe someday I'll get to it.  His satori isn't the one I have though.  I guess it's mine alone to have, with some Cotton Jones.

On the toilet.  "Writing a memo," as Mike would say.  Writing with no pencil.  Writing itself in my fuckin' head while I read it.  Satori In Paris.  His last chapter.  The whole truth behind his two weeks.  Of the cognac, of his slurry Parisienne observations, his half-hearted ho-hum reverie, his loss in Brittany, all of it.  

Ah, here it is.  He's in a cab, and it just takes a beer.  Before the flight, the return.  Double-parked on the corner.  The driver's real, and I think Jack sees it.  Impart a little reality oh, Kerouac.  Why, thank you.  Sometimes all it takes is a cab ride.  

It's quaint and subtle like a feeling of that someone brushing by you on the street, and you breathe a real breath because for a second you know for sure you're not dreaming.  A bump of reality.  A jolt.  An unintentioned thought.  Something not sought after specifically, just a slap to know for sure that you're thinking at all.  You are existing.  Satori.  Enlightenment on the toilet.  But it's not my satori.  It was some guy Jack's, and he was in a cab, not on a toilet.

[stop]

No.  For me, satori is a day that hails in Paris, with my head hanging out the small high window.  It's a little more than able to let my arms through too, which is nice because then I just lean on the sill with the spliff by my face.  And it's dark now because I'd slept the day away after vomming late last night.  That's what happens when you don't eat dinner.  You get drunk and too high, then you can't even help it when the girl's straddling you.  Except that it's not the girl you love. It's the other one that wants you.

I woke up on the bathroom floor, face up, with my legs hanging out the open door because this Parisian bathroom's so damned tiny.  Stupid servant's quarters.  So I move to the threefold mattress on the floor at the foot of Lili's bed, clutching a box of Carrefour cereal like a teddy bear because my stomach's churning and growling at my accidental dinner fast and my fully intentional weed and wine binge.  

Weak-bodied.  Too tired to carry any armor anymore.  In my wife-beater, the cold air feels like a fresh inhale to the pores.  The body heals faster than the heart I think, because try as I might, all the food and pasta and endless pints of water, they bring me back sure, but only my body.

The soul's still lying there bare on the bathroom floor.  Still, through the crazy hail that's raining down in little white peas, crashing against the black slate roofing above in all manner of thunderous cacophony, still.  It curls, an exhausted faun, heaving deep breaths.  Wide-eyed and helpless, frozen from the noise.  Still now, with the spliff.  Invalide is splashed in orange-gold from below and the dome's ornaments throw long shadows upward, all the smallest details in sharp relief, in glowing monocolor.  

It peaks over the neighboring roofs.  The only other presence on the twilight skyline is that behemoth at Montparnasse, lit like an LA skyscraper.  Just a tower of white boxes, some dark, some still churning off in the distance.  On the high levels.  And I think of her.  She comes back like some old dream recalled.  It's been a while since I'd thought of her, I suppose.  She's probably in some not too dissimilar building giving some presentation in a smart suit, or jet setting across the country, at cruising altitude.  And if she is, I wonder what she's listening to.  Does she still hear songs and think of me?  Probably not.  I wonder if she has a Montparnasse.  An image she lays eyes on and sees my unfortunate face when her heart's worn and tired.  Maybe not in the office, but on the planes sliding between time zones, from cities in the east to cities in the west, and all the in-betweens.  Maybe she only gets window seats, like I do, and she sees me in the clouds. Then time hits me.  Time passed, like ice water on the shoulders. I sigh.  Some part of me says she's an aisle-seat girl now.  

[stop]

It's the same part of me that cringes with a shiver at the past night's events.  It tells me to expect the most pessimistic.  It's a fear of hope, because optimism only comes crashing down, and it hurts a lot more when you fall from high up with your head in the clouds.  But this wallowing in the low basin mud ain't no fuckin' fairy-tale either.  It's that constant moderate depression, awash in cynicism because I know no one can really hurt me.  Down here in the hazy daze, it's just me.  The Parisian crowds float by like a grey mist.  Waking life becomes all the time I was asleep in high school and college classrooms.  This city's my classroom now.  The lesson plan's written in each step, in circles around the Seventh, just trying to pick a path.  The light to lead me out only fluttered for a second.  She was young and beautiful and nonchalant and didn't always stand up straight, but hey, neither do I.  A stoner's closet, cut from a different cloth than the rest.  Corduroys and soft wool red jackets that wake slowly to the touch.  And she almost did.  Maybe my eyes opened for a moment, but in reality's light I know what's what, or at least I seem so certain of it anyways.

So I close my eyes once again and stay so still, feigning my dreams on the cold hardwood reality.  I just crave her company.  Anyone's really, but especially hers.  Her red wool coat, her vibrating neck pillow.  Her long spliffs with king papers.  Her art class field trips, her same sad movies.  Her witty bored sarcasm, and her squinty side-laugh with a smile.  

[stop]

I've said my piece though.  Squeezed dry all emotions in a text too long for just one breath.  That shitty French smartphone cuts me off halfway and I have to finish in a second.  And after that well, I guess I'll never see her again.  Probably never hear from her.  And so I'm glad to be squeezed dry.  But that wringing out always leaves a vacuum.  The smallest most minute thing, but it flexes back with the slightest shudder. 

The empty hole's there again, and it's a sucker to get used to no matter how many times it happens.  Sigh.  Back to sleep again.  Back to the daydream.  Hide my heart away once more and close my eyes as Adele sings that sad lullaby of my life.  At cruising altitude I choke back the tears into a lump in my throat.  Above the checkered-like old-timey linoleum of pure white, the great Atlantic below.  There's a chop on the water.

C'est fin.

Let's End With An Outro

This is the end.  I leave Lili without much fluted fanfare and with two bags down the stairs and over the turnstiles at Tour-Maubourg one last time.  It seems so familiar now, like leaving home.  I guess I don't like traveling so much as I like to live in different places, and yes there's a difference.  A subtle one that not everyone understands really, because in truth it really isn't for everyone so I won't bother explaining.  I will say this though.  It's a restlessness.  And there's no slaking it.  I don't know if I'll ever come back here.  For what it's worth, I hope I do.  This city's too beautiful to abandon entirely.

I exit at L'Opera.  Back to the beginning, and as I wait for the bus to the airport the rain starts to come down at a drizzle.  I don't have an umbrella (why would I?) so I back up into a shallow alcove of the Opera House with a high ledge that offers some shelter.   It's like the place is sad to see me go.  Or maybe it's the other way around.  I didn't even finish the book, despite my better efforts.  Yeesh, what a cock I am.  I fucking hope I finish this thing.  Eventually.  Or hell, this shit just might drive me crazy.

The bus is twenty minutes late and a long beast of a thing that's caterpillared in the middle.  Even so, the throngish horde waiting barely squeezes in entirely.  I manage to find a seat right near the caterpillared middle, but the aisle is packed with standers.  Standing closest is a older-looking lady with short white hair and a piece of luggage on wheels.  She's got a book in hand, and I wouldn't say she looks fragile.  More soft and sunny by disposition.  Reserved and quiet by the looks of it.  Not flashy, yet somehow American.  So I raise my voice to offer her my seat.

"Oh, no that's quite all right," she says.  She's American all right.  "You look like you've got your hands full there."

"American?"

"Yes."

"Headed back home?"

"That's right."

After six months it's so nice to talk to a stranger in English, and I tell her that and we talk the whole way to the airport.  Her name's Edie and she works for Harper's Publishing in New York, which makes me laugh inside at the odds of such a meeting.  I tell her I've been over here writing.  She's been over here reading.  "And eating, of course," she says.  "I think I love the food the most." Satisfaction floods her face at, no doubt, some dinner memory.  A proper one too I'm guessing, not some shitty chinois.  She's a soft voiced conversationalist, with an intrigue that reminds me of myself, and before I know it we're at Charles de Gaule.  Her terminal's the one before mine, and as she grabs her things to leave I give her a web address to some writing samples for the hell of it.  "Au 'voir, Edie!" I'll never see her again, of that I'm almost certain.  But she warmed me.  Maybe just when I needed it too, and I run through my terminal on an up-beat and get to the gate with ten minutes to spare.  What a ruckus, but that's airports isn't it.  I wolf down a chocolate croissant that I paid much too much for right before boarding.

In my seat I konk out quick, then wake after some hours in the middle of the sky.

I'm in no mood to sleep.  Not now.  And there's a handful of pages left in my old notebook still so I crank them out to the end, c'est fin, and start the new one finally.


12/12 (in the Moleskin)

"In the dark, I'm dreaming
Of a new, white, light."

It's the only way, forward.  Galloping by the thousands of miles.  In my tiny seat by the window, the rows ahead telling me to politely fasten my belt while seated.  So I do.  Safety first kids, remember.  Remember.  Remember the important things.  The ones that stick.  The ones that hold one's sway, because those are teh ones that are trying to tell you something, and it's usually about yourself.  Not always good either.  But then again, not always so sad.  And if you can bear it, all of it, that window fogged with ignorance, comes clear and ever clearer still until there's no reflection and the world outside is just about the brightest damned light, all white with clouds.  She's a beauty from the heavens, Cotton Jones would agree.  That's a happy thought :)

So strange to think that the sun's already set on old Paris as we race it west in this sleek 767.  It's still bright blue over Canada with clear skies and the ground's covered in snow and the water in the inlets and the lakes is all frozen over.  Even the great river's got a scab of ice above it, and it looks so still as it snakes its way to the north, to that soft white horizon muddled in the low winter's haze of the Klondike.  Old Jack London never saw the north like this, or at least I don't think he did.  Not like this.  Nor did that wily French-Canadian Kerouac.  Not with reclining seats and in-flight movies and headphones crooning some slow, jazzy melodrama by my trusty Jones.  The Cotton one.  I wonder if he pulled his hairs out like I do, inspecting them vaguely before tossing them aside to reach for that tea-sized plastic cup of Canada Dry.  No, he was a cognac man, and it seems as though he lived off it on his trip to Paris.  What was it... 10 days?  Ten days to dig up his history.  Ten days to find his Satori on a steady diet of cognac.  Hell, I was there for a month and a half.  And not so much cognac as a steady wine glass in my hand that was never quite empty.  And Lucky Strikes and Lili.  And spliffs and that darling Rachel.  And my Satori?  Hardly.  There's no bulb glowing bright above my head, just another reminder of the one burnt out constant in my chest.  Stepped on and shattered slowly on the cobblestones of the 7eme arrondissement.  I can't even tell for sure if I picked it back up.  I sure as hell hope I didn't leave it there.  

Pull the window shade down.
Play something slow and sad.

Eyes closed.

Naked Lunch

It's funny when you're reading William Burroughs on a low wall, laid down in the sunlight and a man materializes beside you with dark skin and white hair and silver sunglasses on that fade to rouge, with a silver shirt and a bag of peanuts, and he says, "You better stop reading there or you might get you some smarts."

"Well, shoot. I sure hope not."

"You've got the butter brown skin, my man. You can do anything. You can be anything, you mulatto, you Egyptian, you cancer, you capricorn."

"I'm an aquarius actually," I say.

"No matter. You're what the gods have wanted for three thousand years, you are.  You're everything."  He says it with a hand on my chest, and I feel him over my heart.  He's sixty today he tells me.  "How many girls you fuckin' a week?"

"Ha! Not nearly enough."

"I hope it's around ten, man, because you're good for it. I can tell, trust me."  He's not even looking at me, and I have to laugh.  I'm definitely not fucking ten girls a week.  Not even close.  Honestly, I can't think of one person I know that's bedding ten a week.

There's some mystic aura about this man though, and when we part ways (I need to get back to work), I feel a fulfilling sensation within me.  It's strange I think, and altogether wonderful how an eclectic phantom vagabond (I'm not even 100% sure he was real) can bring such warmth and light to a lost anxious depressant like myself.  It's one of life's great secrets, I suppose.  Be nice to strangers.  You never know who they might be.

To my wildest thought, he was some groovy blind bluesy jazz angel, sent from on high with a mission of soulful sunshine.  To the stalwart and close-minded, he was probably just another crazy bum that passed by like the breeze.  Now I'll never forget him.

Savanna

What a knot in the chest, she is.  What a twist of the mind, what a thrust of the hips.  She's salt on a sore that tastes good on the lips.  She's quite light, and she's sweet and discreet between sheets.  What a man wouldn't do for to slake her desire.  Me, why I'd trek through the night and scheme the most schemingful schemes and conspire.

She's a girl plucked among dreams, she is.  In a swirl of red streams, she is, through the breeze like a lone ribbon bow.  Savanna.  With soft envy eyes and sharp hips. Savanna.  Of fair princess skin and thin lips.  Savanna, oh my-my.  My sweet, sweet secret mistress.  Savanna, Savanna.  To be saved by her kiss once more and once over and over another in a mist tryst that she pulls through yearning.  That she brings through most dreaded to uncertain delight.  

It's a lost boy's fancy.
If only there were no others, but lo, lost boys are as hard to score as a shit dime bag anywhere here in the city, where heaven meets sea and sheep-flocked are the angels.  For fuck, her lust wrings the words from my wrist.  In despair, true form.  Because she's not here, not really.  She's only just before me with my eyes closed, all the colors of the rainbow.

Let's Start With An Intro

Four pills down the shoot, boop.  That's it?  Well, I hope it works.  For my sake,  and for every girl out there this had better work.  I tell myself it's medicine, my doctor's simple order, so why shouldn't it.  The only thing I can think of would be the jet-lag.  Or the hour, whatever it is.  Late.  Dead morning in LA, but in New York, here it's only midnight.  And I'm just at the end of an abysmal layover to Paris.  Halfway there.  I'm going to wake up in France, and with a long breath, I close my ringed weary eyes for a moment and listen to the music.  "Now boarding," she says.  It cuts through the tunes, and the assembly slowly rises to its feet to make queue.  The small orange plastic pill bottle is still in my hand.  I look it once over for some reassurance.    It tells to take all at once orally, and I laugh with young adolescence and trash it before she scans my ticket.

Have I got everything?  Yes.  Clothes.  Shirts, pants, socks.  Underwear.  Long underwear too, because fuck it might get a little chilly out there.  So a knit sweater and a scarf as well.  I have a towel and a washcloth, and a toothbrush and paste.  Deodorant.  Razor.  Nice shoes, and a few books.  Scar Tissue, On The Road, The New College French & English Dictionary, and East Of Eden and the rest are packed away in my checked green Samsonite luggage.  The important stuff I keep close to me, in my backpack, which isn't enormous so I had to choose wisely.  My laptop.  My camera.  Extra lenses, the new 35mm and the old borrowed fish-eye that I have to focus manually if I ever want to use it.  My sunglasses.  My passport.  My old Perrington notebook that's written about halfway through, and the black leather-bound Moleskin I just stole from the terminal's airport market (I paid the four dollars for gummy worms, but thirty dollars was too much to ask for paper sheets, even if they did have a good texture and cute rounded corners; the old Perrington had rounded corners and I only paid ten dollars for it I believe, and they look just about the same) .  Finally, the book mother bought for me at my request before I left; another of Kerouac's, his last in fact, and it's got a pair of titles between the covers.  The second, called Pic, didn't really glean my eye at the bookstore.  It was the first title that had piqued my interest and cocked my head to inspect further; Satori In Paris.  "I want this one," I'd told her.  I'm two pages in now, and already done with a chapter.  By the look of things, the chapters are short.  Easy reading.  A little absent-minded too, but the magic is in his rhythm.  No one can deny that.  I read until dinner's served in all it's plastic-wrapped and preserved glory.  The booze isn't free so I take a ginger ale to wash everything down and after it's all done I rest my head on a pillow by the window and try to find sleep in Cat Power's whisper to my ear.

*****

This is nothing special.  I keep telling myself that over and over and over and over again.  It sounds off like a loud pessimistic snooze alarm in my pulsing time-deprived head every minute or so as we slowly taxi towards the terminal at Charles de Gaulle.  This is nothing special.  I say, this is nothing special.  Still, every fiber of muscle, every neuron fires with the thought that it is.  I'm shaking.  No, it's nothing.  Fingers, play something soothing in my ears.  They Adele me.  Just the stress of living, that's all.  Soundtracked. And I know it won't be this way forever, I say.  I guess that's where the magic is.  Everything's more beautiful and breath-takingly prominent when you think to yourself, "I just might never see this again, and I'll certainly never see it like this right now, not ever, no, never again."  Each story between blinks becomes fruit for the soul, each and every one when everything's new.  This holds true only more so if the story's quite beautiful to begin with, and Paris is a beautiful beautiful city.  Believe me, I've been here once before.

I glide through the spaceport terminal.  Really, with this place? It's got a taste of that vintage clean-sleek future with dark stainless metal and big glass.  I feel like Ethan (Handsome) Hawke in Gattaca.  Through customs I glide, to the baggage carousel and onward.  At the currency exchange I give them sixty US dollars and they hand me back forty-six and change in their funny monopoly money that's all different sizes.  Then it's towards the sliding glass doors.  I call Lili from a pay phone, and it's early (7:45 or so by the airport ticker clocks), but she answers anyway, yawning and surprised, and tells me to take the Roissy bus to the Opera.

Quote of the Day: I See Sea Shells

Writer

I remember thinking to myself one day, and then for a year on end that I would love nothing more than to be a writer.  To write books and be witty and charmingly cavalier like a young Hank Moody. There was a girl involved (there always is). So one day I started to write and I wrote and I wrote, sometimes more, sometimes less.  But never too much and it felt free and full and freshly new and exciting, like it was the only life for me.

Only after it was too late did I realize something, and it's still now just slowing dawning, this fact.  No writer ever known was ever known to be happy.  None of the great ones anyways (except maybe Dr. Seuss).  And nothing good or well worth the time was ever written without passion or at least a little tick-tick-tock of craziness. Or an eye twitch, or a death wish.  What the hell's wrong with me.

Every pen has it's muse.  Her face just changes occasionally (along with her name, and it never stays the same for too long).  C'est la vie.  Ma vie en femmes.

Fall Paris: Kerry

She was a jazz singer and she played the piano.  She played with a soft hand and a warm butter voice that I could only just barely hear over the French hustle of a packed Friday night crowd.  She wasn't tall, but she wasn't short either, and her hair was straight and short and looked wild and refined at the same time.  Her slender frame swayed on the bench while she sang, and her head bent at the neck with her eyes closed, and if you'd take the time to lean in and look at her face you'd know, at least in those split moments she was singing somewhere else.  Anywhere.  In a palace maybe.  To a duke after making love all night.  Wherever she wanted to be, she was there when her eyes closed and she was happy.  I could tell from the smile she sang through.

Lindsay had talked her up on the metro over to the Twelfth.  "She's fantastic," she gushed when I pried to know more.  "It's this girl from my writing class."

"Not Olivia?" I jabbed sarcastically.

"No," she jabbed back, "not Olivia.  She's a bit older, this one.  Oh!  She's fantastic!  Like really good."

"I like older.  What's her name?"

"Her name's Kerry.  She's forty."

"Forty?"

"Yes, forty.  Four-tee.  That's right.  Or maybe thirty-eight, but she's still up there.  You would never think it to look at her though.  She looks my age."

"Well, you could be forty," I said squinting.  "You could pass for it anyways."

"Shut-up.  Ass." And she put her fist into my arm with some strength, while her mother looked on covering up a laugh with her hand.

The French Hole or whatever the place is called is one of those cozy abodes with a small frame on the street (just a window and a door).  It's skinny, but the thing reaches deep into the building like a catacomb.  There's the bar, then the old-timey weathered upright with Kerry wailing away.  Past her there's a jumble of closely huddled tables and chairs that we have to slink by in a single file to get to.  It's a packed house tonight.  The only standing space is behind Kerry and her keys in what's little more than a wide Parisian hallway that's shoved precariously between two walls in the 12th. 

Then there's Kerry.  That sweet dandelion of a woman.  She's everything I'd hoped for from Lindsay's words.  Hell, she's even more so. She's wearing a quaint faded white rural dress printed in small blue and red and yellow flowers that are faded too and pulled in close together and everywhere from her knees to her short tight sleeves.  Her hair's straight brown and cut above the shoulders, and her jawline's crisp.  She's cinnamon brown with freckles and red lipstick, and she looks two, maybe three years older than myself.

She's so pretty when she sings because she's somehow always smiling.  It's an immediate entrancement with her, I can't stop looking.  If it's not her face, it's her fingers.  They foxtrot slowly on the keys to a bluesy jazz rhythm.  While we stand waiting, I find myself staring.  Lost.  My look, but not my mind though.  My eyes are dazed and blurred and notice movement without response.  Like a pair of empty observation windows.  That's because everyone's looking inside now at the ballroom, and the whole party seems to come together, and the fingers become dancers on a floor of white-black checkered marble.  And they sing me a whole story.  With pen and paper in hand, I write it all down in my mind's eye.  Something tells me to remember this.  Remember how beautiful this is.  Her voice.  Her neckline.  The faded dress.  The old piano, and this place and this city that I'm in.  The smell of Parisian night.  I should remember all of this, or at the very least not forget it.

It's all in a stare.  I catch myself and tell my eyes to blink and look away so I turn to the three girls.  They're staring too.. "She's real good," I say.  "I think I love her."

Lili clicks her tongue.  "You'll love anything," she says.

"Yeah, who don't you love?" asks Lindsay.  We're not loud so only we hear, and Lindsay's mom just barely, but listen she does.  I can see her lean in.

I say, "Definitely not you two, but Momma Lindsay you're a doll."

"Right answer," she chimes in.  "I hope you like to eat."  And a man alone at a table offers us seats.

[stop]

Kerry is the reason why
most wise men don't have wives
and if they do
they have mistresses too
or at least always a wandering eye.

She may be poor
but she's free
and she sings
oh, she sings
she's what every man is looking for.

She is the timeless beauty
the wiltless flower
that old favorite playlist
on endless repeat for hours
and hour by hour stays true
she is the fruit that does not sour.

[stop]