Gay France Part 1

Well, we did it! And then I did it!

We flew into Paris and landed at 7 a.m., also known as 2 a.m. inside our bodies. We took a couple trains and ended up at an address a total stranger on craigslist had emailed to me, saying that it was her home and we could live there for a month in exchange for 800 euro, which she has yet to ask me for a single penny of. She said she would leave a key in a flowerpot for us and that there were clean sheets on the bed. This all seemed crazy to me, but it was hundreds of euros cheaper than renting a place through an agency, so we went for it.

It was surreal to arrive at a big old green door on a bustling street in Paris that I had seen only on google street view. At first the door code didn’t work and we were like “HOLY SHIT, the actual worst case scenario is actually happening–how amazing is that?” But then we got it to work and we were inside! Lifting up a flowerpot and seeing a key underneath it that was left for me by someone I still haven’t met–this was an odd feeling. So anyway, now we are ensconced in her home and it is perfect. It is in Belleville, which is a still-working-class super diverse neighborhood with tourists and old people and Algerian ladies selling amazing swaths of cloth and fancy boutiques and Halaal markets and people going absolutely crazy on Vespas and whole pigs roasting on the sidewalks and pigeons eating corn right off the cob, which is gross looking.

We took a nap for four hours that felt like getting hit by a ton of cement driven inside of a giant truck going 1,000 miles per hour. Best nap ever. Then we went exploring and got kind of emo about how bad our French is. Then we came home and talked about how it’s pointless to be emo about how bad our French is. Then we went out and met my friend Paul who is randomly here right now. We bought bread and hummus and olives and wine and went and sat down by the canal and ate and drank and Paul’s brother came and we made lists of things we hate that everyone else loves. This was a really nice first night in Paris. It got the job done. Plus thanks to Paul we now know about that crazy canal scene where everyone is just hanging out partying and borrowing each others’ corkscrews and applauding whenever someone jumps in the water.

So anyway. The next day we got up early and went to meet my colleague Marcie, who was going to walk me through the process of getting my card at the BnF and then show me how to access all the stuff I need to look at. I got all dressed up, I got all nervous, I got all my documents in order. We walked down to fancy town where the library is. I met Marcie–so great to see a friend you haven’t seen in ages, but in a totally random distant epic foreign city–and we went inside, where I was told I of course needed my passport, which I did not have. ULTRA ANTI CLIMAX. I was so embarrassed. What an idiot.

Marcie was gracious, as usual, and so instead of actually doing what I came here to do, we spent the day looking at famous graveyards and that place where Amelie does something in “Amelie.” I saw my friend Hector’s grave, which was a weird feeling. His dust inside of there! His actual dust and cells. I would like a bit of his dust in a jeweled locket to wear around my neck.

We came home and went grocery shopping and made pasta and hung out in our weird kitchen with the huge windows opened onto the courtyard, the only sounds the flapping of pigeon wings as they leapt from rooftop to rooftop. Super peaceful. Then Gary installed a firewall protection thingy on my computer so we could watch Hulu.

Wine, flapping pigeons, a place to wash my feet, Hulu: The four things I need to be happy at night.

The next day (yesterday) we did our first epic day of being tourists. We walked from our house down into fancy town, across the Seine, and straight to Notre Dame. Gary validated my tendency to fetishize history by exclaiming “I DIDN’T EXPECT IT TO BE SO BIG!!!!!!” It is indeed big. To think of those medieval cathedrals makes me a little bit sick. Generations of people supported themselves by building it! You could grow up with your father working on Notre Dame, and then when you got old enough you could go to work on it, and then you’d get older, you’d have children, your father would die, you’d get too old to work anymore, but by then your son would be working on it. When these things finally got finished, the actual Pope himself would often come to bless them in a crazy opening ceremony. The people of the town are like “Finally we get our cathedral!!! I remember my great-grandmother talking about when they finally finished the basement 100 years ago” or whatever.

The line to get inside was miles long, and how stupid would you feel waiting in it? I don’t know. Maybe I feel stupider for not seeing the inside of Notre Dame. But whatever, we bailed. As we were bailing (like one block from the cathedral), two young men stopped and asked us if we spoke English. We said yes. They asked us where “Notre Dame University” was. We said Indiana, the Great United States of America. They said “but we heard it was around here.” We couldn’t tell if they were doing a joke or not, but the question was so stupid that it had to be taken seriously, for fear of wounding someone really deeply. So we explained what a cathedral was and what “notre dame” means, etc. They said they were from Canada. I don’t know. Gary thinks they were doing a joke. If so, I salute them, because that is a very funny joke.

It was fun to be around tourists of all possible nationalities. It makes me feel like less of a dumbass American. I heard so many children complain about being tired and bored in so many different languages. “Maman, je suis FATIGUÉEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

We went to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore and nerded out there for awhile. Then Notre Dame’s bells started chiming up a storm! Damn those are some loud-ass bells! The old man tried to record them but failed because he had the mic plugged into the wrong hole in his minidisc player or something.

Then we went to the Louvre and walked around and saw all the soldiers with machine guns who protect the Louvre. This is actually not very romantic: NOTE TO PARIS! We saw the Palais Royal, where Gerard de Nerval used to walk his pet lobster, Thibault, on a blue silk ribbon, and where a young Napoleon Bonaparte lost his virginity to a whore. People seem to actually live in the Palais Royal, like in apartments. I can not imagine anything so surreal. I think the French tend to have a different idea of certain aspects of their heritage than we do in these united states. Everything over here is so old that it’s like, whatever. How could they fetishize and worship every old building they’ve got, when EVERY building is old? So why not just stick a Monoprix in it. In America we’re so excited if something is older than like 70, not to mention we love buildings where our founding fathers ever did anything. Imagine renting out Monticello or turning Mt. Vernon into high-class condos! But the Palais Royal is like hundreds of years old, and it used to be rented out to bordellos and gambling houses in the 18th century anyway, so whatever.

I look and look in vain for commemoration of the 1789 revolutionary guys but they are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps because after founding the first European democracy they ended up killing almost everyone living inside of France? I don’t know, but it seems weird. Again, contrasting it with America…their equivalents to Washington and Jefferson (Desmoulins, Danton, Marat) are nowhere that I have yet seen. There’s a statue of Mirabeau in the Pantheon, which I think is funny because he’s the only one of those guys who was actually a mild monarchist and was born into nobility. Marat was interred in the Pantheon but after the Terror he was disinterred and hastily stuck somewhere else. Everyone else died in the Terror and was thus buried in a mass grave, so of course they don’t have their bodies, but still!!! Why does Mirabeau get a statue in the Pantheon? I need to talk to a French person.

Speaking of the Pantheon (and French persons), I got to see JJ Rousseau’s coffin! The revolutionaries of whom I was just speaking went and dug him up and brought him to the Pantheon ten years after he died, and they built a huge fancy wooden tomb for him into which they carved many high-falutin’ quotations and praised him as the father of democracy. This was the first real chill of my trip: standing next to JJ Rousseau. Like 2 feet from his actual DNA! Plus the presentation in the Pantheon is very dramatic–you go down into these cold echoing crypts and in these pockets lit by lamps that evoke torchlight you see these monolithic tombs. Voltaire’s is across from JJ’s. I don’t have the same feelings for Voltaire that I have for JJ though, so I didn’t get that good old historical chill down my spine.

Then we walked a lot more, and got food, and I don’t remember. We went to some good gardens that we want to re-visit when we are less tired. I bought my dad a postcard of Victor Hugo. Oh yeah–Hugo’s coffin is in the Pantheon too. I love these crazy open-air places where you can look at coffins!

Then we came home and ate pasta and drank wine and were exhausted. I did not sleep though, because I was too nervous for Gay France Part 2: THE LIBRARY!!!!

Coming soon