What I saw was this: Across the room, her body draped across his, bed sheets wrapped around legs. Her face smiling, defiant. His sheepish, triumphant. I wasn’t shocked or embarrassed, this was my summer on the Left Bank after all. Naked bodies lolling in old apartments was why I crossed the Atlantic. These things happened in Paris; were supposed to happen in Paris.
Paul was never a ladies’ man; no, far from it. In America he was reserved, usually lurking in the back of a room – an introvert. He moved slowly, hands buried deep in the front pockets of baggy jeans, and spoke softly, sparingly. We knew he was smart – reading cooler books (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Confederacy of Dunces) and listening to more experimental music (King Crimson, Return to Forever) than the rest of us – but nobody else did, especially the female contingent at our old high school. He just didn’t fit and seemed OK with that.
But here he was animated, confident, energetic, his pale face reddened and alive. He found flare in Paris; height and purpose, confidence, and surety – savoir faire. They got dressed, I put my duffel bag down and we smoked some pot – the well worn pipe (appropriately) perched on the bookshelf between Hugo and Henry Miller – then made our way into the buzz of the 5th arrondissement and a local Algerian restaurant. Heapings of couscous and red wine served on wooden tables in the warm evening light. Funny stories about high school days in suburban California, her family in Philadelphia; buzzy laughter as the night wore on.
I was French for a fortnight, walking on cobblestones and finding bookshops and bistros everywhere I turned. Bread, cheese, espresso during the day; couscous and red wine at night. Hemingway walked here, intoxicated from the absinthe and atmosphere; Sartre too, deep in conversation with Simone, working out the ‘being and nothingness’ of existence – the ability to choose how we live, but the human stubbornness to deny the choice. Fitzgerald, Joyce and Miller all found their muse in these streets. I saw them here. I felt them here.
Then I thought about Georgetown and my campus dorm. I missed my desk and black coffee pot. I thought about Paul and all the years that had passed from Walnut Creek to Paris. And I couldn’t believe all of these things exist at the same time, across the massive arc of time, and on the same earth.
– by MJB