When I was in Paris

I went Paris years ago. We took a long plane flight over The Atlantic and landed in daylight. We were there, like most Americans for duck and a chance to see if Henry Miller was right about anything. Anyhow, we arrived mid-day, though no one had really slept well on the flight, so we were in fact all ugly Americans.

We argued in the train station for a while about which train would take us to our hotel, or maybe we just had trouble finding the ticket counter, or maybe we couldn't find the right denominations to pay at the ticket counter, or maybe everything worked out just fine and we were waiting longer than we'd thought for the train, or maybe the truth is that I don't really remember.

In Rome, the women on the train wore golden hoop earrings, gold shoes, and their hair was exquisitely coiffed. I don't really remember the women in Paris, or the people in Paris. The train ride was a lot like the metro in DC, but all the signs were in French, and the people on the metro were still surly, but they smelled slightly less of urine, and they had a special French kind of surliness, more private than on a DC metro, less insane in some ways, though you knew, deep down that they couldn't wait to talk to  you about Camus.

I think we lugged our stuff to a small hotel near Notre Dame, though it was either hazy outside, or we were so tired that it was hazy, or it was raining because we traveled there in April. After we put our stuff down we wandered down by the Seine where the peddlers sell pictures of Notre Dame to get a good look at Notre Dame, which is impossible if you're as tired as we were. When you're that tired Notre Dame is more an encumbrance to sleep than a marvel of architecture.

We stood outside for a while trying to marvel at the beauty or hold ourselves up on fellow tourists, our arms strung around them as if were drunk. For being tired is akin to being drunk. It was like we were day drinking at Notre Dame.

We wandered back to the hotel so that everyone could sleep and appreciate Paris after a nap. Because Paris through a haze was just as obnoxious as any other city. We all lay down to sleep.

I woke before everyone else. The sky had begun to lose bits of light, a tree outside our window was waving at me with a bag of trash. I crept quietly out the room and slid into the streets of Paris. I took a route that I could never recreate because I didn't know where I was going. I wound up in Saint Germain, ducking in and out of side streets, Old Paris, confusing Paris, dirty Paris, the Paris of dreams.

I turned down a side street and wandered into a small pub where I sat down immediately. Inside the pub was an old Parisian man, hateful as all Parisians, scrubbing the end of the bar and mumbling to himself about the state of the world. The woman who came and asked if I'd like a drink looked like his wife, or maybe his daughter, and I ordered a small glass of red wine. I sat in the pub, watching the old man scrubbing the bar, and the young girl standing at the edge of the bar listening to his rant thinking that I was living an authentic Parisian experience. The sort of thing that you go home and tell people about, or show them pictures of, or maybe just post an album to Facebook with a pithy title. Anyhow, someone would be hearing about this night in Paris.

Of course, all the while I was having a secondary conversation, which was taking place underneath the story I was already telling about the time I wandered away in Paris. This secondary narrative, for aren't we always talking to ourselves in our heads all the time? Well, this secondary narrative was more complicated from the first because after I'd ordered a glass of wine I realized that I'd left my fanny pack money belt back at the hotel, and that I didn't have any money, nor did I speak enough French to explain how I'd be right back. No, what I was doing was calmly drinking a glass of wine and wondering when I'd get the chance to run out.

For a moment, the man stopped grumbling and looked up at his daughter and said something in French, which may have been, did he pay the check, or, give him the check, or, wash these dishes, or how about this weather, or, what a tired and old American. I don't really know. In that moment, when both of their eyes were turned away I sprinted out of the street. I was like Carl Lewis or any sprinter, only much slower. I ran like I was being chased by the fires of hell; I ran like someone was going to kill me if they caught me; I ran like I was playing the world's most intense game of tag.

What's the strangest thing you've ever done in your life? I suppose I've done stranger. I can't really say. But one time when we were all in Paris I ran down the streets of Saint-Germain like I was on fire. The people all around me looked at me like I was strange. One more crazy American running around the streets of Paris. I cannot remember the last time that I felt so alive.