Paris is a city which has been so written and rewritten about that to go with my literary instincts would be to slide down the slippery slope toward cliché. On the first day we took the metro to Anvers and walked up the many steps to Montmarte (seen the movie Amelie?) and took a great big long look at the old girl. I’m not going to lie to you – from that vantage point all one sees is a million and seven identical roof tops, which in Paris are delightfully unique to everywhere else but Paris (which must be pronounced henceforth as Pahree). But clichés exist for a reason, they were the most fitting way to describe something and as a result became overused and then tarnished with the horrible appellation, cliché. But fuck it, no one reads this After Grog Blog anyway. So from that vantage point, the top of Montmarte, instantly I thought of the City of Romance, I can remember myself in Paris a couple of years ago kissing and twirling under the Eiffel Tower and on street corners with a girl I was really fond of – and I absolutely demand that everyone tries that at one stage of their life. The second appellation that sprung to mind was the City of Light. Paris is called the City of Light not because it is well lit, although indeed it is, but because it was the seat of the Illumination. The Illumination was a period of radical thought change spearheaded by the philosopher and novelist Voltaire. This was a period of change in the way people perceived themselves in the world, all of a sudden it was possible for people to be equal, rational – perhaps capable of dictating their own future. These thoughts inspired the revolution, the abolishment and subsequent beheading of the monarchy, which in turn lead to the American revolution over the Brits to democracy and the free world, ideas which we today take for granted. Well all of this started in Paris. The old girl has been shaping the world for a bloody long time and continues to do so today. Paris is such an important city that she doesn’t care at all whether or not I exist, reaffirms my feelings of insignificance – she doesn’t want to know my stories, but perhaps you do. So I’ll sling you a couple of tales which dance between tall and true about our little time here in Gay Pahree.
Did You Ever Know That You’re My Hero?
The Paris Metro is an integral part of Parisienne life and an amazing feat of engineering and organization. Every four minutes a train departs every one of the 368 stations and transports some of the daily six million passengers along the 200 kilometres of track shared between its 15 lines. They reckon that every building in Paris is within 500 metres of a metro station. This is amazing. Even better is that you can take any trip on the system and it will cost you no more than one euro sixty, no matter whether you are going from one station to the next or traversing the entire city. So I was standing on this engineering feat with Heroby one day going around to the Parisienne universities trying to drum up business for our party that night (Pisstemberfest). We had just visited Paris City University which, by the way, had a very impressive international student centre, as donated by one Mr Rockerfeller, and we were heading into rendezvous with the team at the Eiffel Tower when the train pulled into a station. After the usual unload upload time the train signalled its intention to depart again with a little beep and the doors prepared themselves for closure. Now as the usually mundane actions were taking place a rather large African woman came bounding up the stairs and across the platform with singular idea in her head to catch this very train. Now as she neared the train she slowed her trotting tempo, in order to facilitate the boarding, and this is where it all went wrong. She coincided her slowing with the painted lines of the platform, which are always a little more slippery than the black tarred part, and went into a slide. Her slide consisted of her feet going out from under her and jamming between the train and the platform as she landed with a hugely ungraceful slapping bum flop. Now this was terrifying as the doors were shutting and the train was preparing itself to depart, with her feet. I, surprisingly to me, was absolutely dumfounded, or dumbstruck, jammed halfway between laughter and mortification, quite simply absolutely paralysed. Toby, on the other hand, began to move like I never knew he was capable of. Part jungle cat, eagle and muscular bear, he dropped his things and glided across the train cabin and to the aid of our sprawled African friend. Summoning strength which is usually reserved for mothers whose children are pinned to suburban driveways by erratic milk vans, he pulled her out of the crevasse, that mawing pit of train and certain stumpifcation. Then, holding her delicately and resembling one of those crocodiles that bites off a wildebeest’s neck and the next carries its fragile young with uncharacteristic tenderness, Toby went from lifting this rather heavy lady out of the crack to placing her gently and safely on the train, reassuring her and then resuming the journey as if he had just performed the most regular act in the world, while I was stunned like a mullet, catching flies like a side show alley clown or a blow up man doll. It was absolutely stunning, amazing, the way he saved not only the ladies legs, but maybe her life and the life of all her relations as I am sure they would be so consumed with grief that they would forget to consume air and there would be a domino effect of grief related deaths, spreading like a virus in a doomsday novel until I am left the last man standing with free run over all the shops and car stores, though I think the stench would become a bit much as the entire population of the world slowly rotted in the gutters…..
N.B: I was forced to write this piece at economic gunpoint. Apparently I didn’t paint Toby’s involvement in the Valencia theft episode in a heroic enough light, i.e. at all.
La Rue Saint Dennis.
There is a book by Henry Miller called “The Tropic of Cancer” which is a semi autobiographical account of the author’s time in Paris. It was banned for most of his life in most countries because of the level of sexual explicitness, basically he wandered around Paris sleeping with hookers, and most of these exploits took place on the Rue Saint Dennis. So after the party, more on that later, we followed our fabulous host, but terrible guide, Raffa up the road looking for a bar that was open, apparently he knew a Pakistani place that was open till the wee hours where we could smash a curry and a few glasses of red. Well he didn’t. So we wandered for a while around the mean streets and wound up on the Rue Saint, which is still an absolute hotspot for prostitution. Now I’m not sure if this was a plan by Raf to cruise by his favourite hookers under the auspices of showing some foreigners around, but having reached the hooker boulevard he declared the restaurant as a myth and deposited himself on the sidewalk. This was two in the morning and we had to wait until five until the subway opened. With the crew there were five additional, one member had managed to attract three frogs and another two Swedes. Now the frog fiddler stole into a conveniently passing taxi with his charges and stole off into the Paris night. Once he did this two of the guys attached themselves to the Swedes and attempted to lead them up a side alley and into Valhalla when our resident jungle boy noticed them and took offence. He was under the mistaken notion that the Rolling Circus was an inseparable organism that it was all in or none in, which is completely erroneous. Basically once the job is done and a party has been thrown the guys are free to do whatever they like with whomever they like. Anyway, the offended party chased them up the street and confronted them, threatening them with real physical violence. This was enough to scare one of the guys into a passing taxi, part real fear part opportunity to get the fuck outta there and hook up with the frog fondler’s team of grenouilles. Now that left one man to deal with the Guatemalan rage, and he was the recipient of an angry spit to the coupon. Of course later that night peace was made and the offender has been sufficiently ripped on ever since, although he insists that he cannot be blamed when so much alcohol was involved. All in all some people were in taxis off to Parisienne apartments with French girls, some were staggering and holding onto lamp poles and two were so out of their minds they thought it wise to fight over girls, all done on the black shine of a wet Rue Saint Dennis under the watchful gaze of the ladies of the night. I’m sure Mr Miller would be proud.
Pisstemberfest.
The rationale for our existence and our voyages across Europe is our ability to put on a banging party in every city we go to. San Sebastian was a shoe in and Valencia was banging, we overcame adversity and wound up having a good one. So we rolled into Paris, pretty low on cash thanks to a run in with the police and a little Spanish semi-bribe, confident in our ability to put on a banging party. Well let me tell you, Paris is an entirely different kettle of fish. Whereas in other cities bars and hostels were receptive to our cause, in Paris they couldn’t care less. We found a venue, which was located, unawares to us, smack bang in the middle of the gay district, and a pretty good deal – happy hour all night. So we set out flyering for it, which on paper was a piece of piss, hit the tourist sights, of which there are a million, and give our publicities to massive packs of American frat boys and German female soccer teams at the base of the Eiffel tower. Well it didn’t turn out like that. For starters, surprisingly, everyone in France’s capital is French (apparently we missed the tourist season by one week), and the French couldn’t care less about our party. Anyway, long story short, what we ended up having was a staff party in Paris. Our projected party numbers of 200 people plus turned out to be about 30 others and us. We got loaded, flirted with fags for drinks, danced and had a good time, despite the fact that financially we were in the direst of straights. A failure, and that is the fifth consecutive time that Paris has defeated me, but I swear that I will one day conquer Paris, or at least have a minor victory. With Jacque Chirac as my witness, this will occur.
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