Chapter Thirteen
We will always have Paris.
I wonder how often that's been said.
When I was in Europe I never lived in Paris.
My first visit, on a school break, I stayed in a mildly expensive small hotel near the Place de la Concorde and the Madeleine church. After settling in I realized right away I was spending way too much money and would have to be careful with what I had left.
I was 17. And the City of light awaited me. I dined at the famous Lido. I had a table right by the show floor and fell in love with the girl who danced nude to DeBussy’s Clair de Lune.
Her dance was sensual without being lewd. She was bathed in blues and light greens and it was apparent she was classically trained in dance. There was no bump and grind, no overt innuendo. She was delicate and graceful and seemed...vulnerably approachable. My seventeen year old mind was captivated.
It’s been one my favorite tunes ever since.
I had my picture taken by the wandering photographer. Years later, that photo was used in an advertisement when I emceed for a club in the late 60's. Coincidentally enough, the name of the club was The Parisian Strip, a Dallas strip club!
After the Lido I went to Place Pigalle, the raunchier section of Paris and checked out the Moulin Rouge. I ended up in a little dive/clip joint where the waitresses rubbed my crotch through my pants and implored they were so thirsty they needed to drink lots and lots more champagne.
And the next day I suffered from my first massive hangover. I realized I'd spent most of my money and knew I'd have to find a less expensive hotel if I was going to stay in Paris any longer than one night.
Lesson: It is the customer who drinks the champagne, not the scantily clad masseuses of the night.
I moved to the Hotel Gay Lussac on the Boulevard Gay Lussac on the Left Bank, a few blocks around the corner from the Pantheon.
One night on the way back from a film, my cab driver slowed down at the intersection of a small cobble stoned road and told me the Crusaders had marched out of Paris down it on their way to the Holy wars.
I’d bet many of the stones there today are the very same they trod back in the Middle Ages.
I arrived back at the hotel the same time as a young woman who was also staying there.
As we were going inside we started to chat. She was an American teacher on her way to study in Russia and scheduled to leave the next day. We traded stories about nothing at all for what seemed like a long time.
We had ended up sitting on the stairs leading to our rooms and were trying not to disturb the other tenants when she asked me if I'd ever had real French Onion soup. I said I loved it but I'd never eaten any while in the country. She told me of a tradition in Paris she'd always wanted to observe: to eat onion soup in Les Halles.
Les Halles (pronounced Lay Ahll) was where Paris distributed its food. It was the central market. It was where, nightly, butchers and greengrocers, fishmongers and farmers unloaded and loaded their products to feed the city for another day.
Irma La Douce, the Shirley McClaine/Jack Lemmon movie was set in Les Halles. She was one of the hookers who plied their trade there. He was a love struck gendarme.
The area is sprinkled with quaint little cafes that cater to the night crowd. Tables are shoved together to make long banks and people from everywhere come to eat and drink and be merry after enjoying the clubs and bars and theatres; all while Paris slept.
Across from us were a woman dripping in diamonds and furs and her escort bedecked in gold watch and rings and wearing a tuxedo sitting next to a butcher covered in blood from carrying a virtual herd of beef to the racks. Students and thieves, hookers and merchants, clerks and clergy all came to Les Halles for the French Onion Soup! There were no class demarcations here. Everyone was equal. Vive La Republique!
We sipped our wine and dunked our baguettes, made all wonders of snuffling and slurping sounds while staring into each other's eyes and, every so often, feeding each other our freshly dunked morsel soaked in the soup of the gods.
Afterwards we strolled casually across the Pont Neuf back to our little hotel. Midway across the bridge we stopped to enjoy the quiet of the night and to prolong our return.
We never kissed.
Her name was Julie.
We were just in love. In Paris.
Lesson: See Paris through Parisian eyes.
It was demonstrated to me that Paris was indeed the city of love on another occasion.
Six years later I was hitching from Geneva to London and had stopped in Paris for the night. I didn't have enough money for a hotel, only enough for the ferry ride across the channel, so I opted to sleep under one of the bridges along the Seine. I believe it was the Pont d’Austerlitz.
It was a mildly cool night, not cold. There was a line of maybe 20 to 30 individuals already staking out their spots, like a hospital ward without beds. There were fellow travelers and people of all ages there.
There were the clochards, and two ancient women who must have been over a hundred at least. There were couples and singles, too.
When I first arrived I met a pair of students who shared their hashish with me. I was, sadly, unaffected by the smoke. They knew it was my first time because they said it usually didn’t “work” on the initial try.
I thanked them and made my way to the end of the line, still under the protection of the bridge overhead. I had a small suitcase to use as a pillow and little else. When hitching you don’t want to carry a lot of weight.
Next to me was a young Australian man with a million freckles and flaming red hair and a long full beard who was on a mission to ride his bicycle around the world.
He was on his 4th bike. Two others had been stolen and a third had just given out under the strain.
He’d started at the bottom of South America and ridden the length of it to California and then the breadth of the States to New York. He boarded a ship to England which he traversed ending up in Dover and then across the channel to France and Paris and then to peddle on to points East.
After a few moments he politely said he was tired and needed his sleep, bade me good night and pulled a blanket over his head. I wished him safe journey and turned over and went to sleep myself.
At about 3 am I was awakened by a boot to the midsection. It wasn't so much a kick as it was a less than gentle nudge.
"Votre papiers, s'il vous plais! Your papers please", came the French and English command. I struggled awake to see three gendarmes standing over me. I handed them my passport which they studied before handing it back and telling me, in French and again in English, that I could remain here for the rest of the night but I would have to find another place to sleep tomorrow. I agreed, said thank you and lay back down again.
I was facing in the direction of the final tenants of the line. About 10 feet away was a pile of blankets rhythmically rising and falling in such a way that it was unmistakable what was occurring beneath them: a nocturnal ritual as old as mankind itself.
My American-bred paranoia instantly triggered my “Oh-shit! Are-they-in-trouble-now!" instinct. But, instead of calling for the paddy wagon to arrest them, our three gendarmes, Paris' finest, merely stood in a semi circle at their feet and waited; patiently, politely and quietly, for them to finish. They even allowed time for them to catch their breaths before the "Papers Please" request.
A little bobbing up and down of the blankets and finally a single hand emerged offering up two passports. One of the three officers took them, looked through them and placed them back in the disembodied hand which disappeared beneath the covers. The couple was given the one night stay speech and the constables went on their way.
Lesson: Always cover your ass.
By nightfall the next day I'd made it to Calais just in time to miss the last ferry to England. I didn't have enough money to pay for a hotel room and the crossing so I opted to sleep outdoors. I walked along the beach contemplating it as a possible place to sleep. It was dirty and littered with trash.
I found a large pile of bark strips lying on the sand and thought I could make a nice little hut out of it.
I set about building a rudimentary shelter by sticking the bark on its edges in the sand to form walls and then overlaid a roof in case it rained.
My first wilderness home! I felt very Robinson Crusoe-esque.
Satisfied with my handiwork I crawled inside and set about sleeping the night away, never mind it wasn't dark yet. I was tired and was almost asleep by the time I lay my head down.
I wasn't there more than 5 minutes when I began hearing odd little noises. It wasn't the waves on the shore, either. I listened intently but I couldn't pin point what they were or where they were coming from so I tried to go back to sleep.
More noises. But now their sound was more like scurrying. Tickedy tickedy tick tick tick: quick little sounds.
I peeked through an opening in my bark walls and saw rats the size of puppies scurrying around on the pile of bark I'd borrowed my building from, not 10 feet away!
I came straight up through my roof! I wasn't about to share my tenement with any pets that night. I took what money I had and got a motel room. I figured I'd figure something out in the morning after a good, safe, ungnawed night's sleep.
The next morning, clean and refreshed, I went to the docks to try to panhandle enough money to get across the Channel. After an hour or so of no luck, I became bolder. I got on the ferry! And off it sailed.
I had a job in Soho at the Windmill Strip Club and I was ready to go back to work.
I wandered about the decks striking up conversations here and there and found a young man about my age. We chatted about cities we liked on the Continent and before long we were getting along famously. He lived in London, too.
I waited till the purser started coming around checking for tickets before I told him about my night with the rats on the beach and how I'd spent my crossing money on the hotel and could he see his way clear to loan me enough to pay the fare; and that, if he did, I would certainly pay him back upon arriving in London.
He was a kindred spirit. He loved to hitchhike around seeing the sights and sympathized with my situation. He loaned me enough to cross the water. He told me he was George Rothschild -yes, those Rothschilds- and that I could leave the money in his name at the American Express in London.
I thanked him for his generosity and, later, we parted ways at Dover. He said he was sorry but he had friends meeting him there to take him to their country estate for a visit so I hitched a ride with a young couple driving through to London.
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