Ah, Paris!
I’ve been to Paris. The one in France. I had a great time, there.
My general impression of Paris was that it is a very large, very old, very cosmopolitan city. With a lot of tourists (like me!) roaming the center. And folks there sure do love their pastries. As they should. Their pastries are awesome!
The first time I was there, I was technically not a tourist. I was working.
I was sent to help demo a hardware/software solution at a TV/Video trade show called SATIS. I spent a week and a half with a group of resellers, setting up their rack and the booth on the trade show floor, training a couple of people and then smiling and demo’ing. I had one day in between setup and the show where I got to be a tourist, so I went to the Louvre.
Due to the hotel near the convention center being booked, I got a room a few kilometers away, in Montparnasse. I found out during my stay that Montparnasse is kind of the sex/drugs/rock-n-roll neighborhood. My first clue was a a storefront around the corner from the hotel with a sign simply labeled “Sexe”. There were tourists and working Parisians wandering the sidewalks, but it did seem like there were a few more artistically dressed folks sprinkled in than in other areas I saw. Nevertheless, I never felt unsafe or out of place.
Except once.
I believe it was the evening after I had visited the Louvre, so I was a little tired and my head was still buzzing from the spectacular art and the superlative double-espresso I had picked up from a street-side stand. I didn’t want to try to inflict my stunted French upon an unsuspecting garcon, so I walked a few doors down to a small supermarket.
I thought I’d pick up something I could boil (my room had a tiny kitchenette), some snacks and chocolate. I was really Jonesin’ for chocolate.
It was about as you’d expect; close shelves with a lot of boxes, bags and a little fresh fruit that all had labels in French, many of which I could not translate (I know! It’s like those French have a different word for EVERYTHING). I picked up one of those little basket-things at the front and headed in.
I decided to try for something mild and familiar to me: pasta! I found some dried tortellinis, some crackers, apples… chocolate and a small bottle of wine. I was wandering around, guided by my appetite, when I noticed there was a guy staring at me.
I was already aware that I was dressed like a tourist; not as formally dressed as the locals, in a nylon rain jacket, jeans. I looked American.
I figured this guy was just irritated that an ugly American was invading his favorite store. So, I casually moved on and became engrossed in the cookies.
And there he was again, staring at me from the end of the aisle. This time, I met his gaze. I fired back a casually disinterested look. And moved on again, to the fruit.
At this point, I should describe my assailant. He was about average height, average build. 20-something. Buzz-cut and a nylon flight jacket. The kind that skinheads traditionally wore during that period of the late 90′s. He wasn’t bigger than me. He didn’t look particularly threatening. I just felt like I was a long way from home and I didn’t need to get caught up in any kind of altercation –particularly one that could involve local law-enforcement.
I spent awhile pondering the pears or something, while keeping the corner of my eye on the skinhead. He looked a couple more times, and then decided to take his purchases to one of the the check outs. I gave it a couple more minutes and then took mine to the other check out.
I put my stuff on the little counter and got them totaled up. When I pulled out a credit card, the checker explained to me (slowly) that I needed to spend at least 100 Francs before I could use the card. I decided to go back and grab more cookies, because I was close.
And wouldn’t you know it, just as I turned to go back into the store; there was my skinhead, smiling.
“Oh, he was just saying that you need to spend a hundred Francs…” he lisped.
All of a sudden, he was a completely different stereotype. His gestures became swishy, his accent tinged by S’s. Before I could tell him that I understood the checker, he explained that he was from Vancouver, that he would just buy my groceries and we could have a nice dinner at his place around the corner.
It took me a moment to compose myself, snort a bit of something deeper into my left sinus and decline, mumbling something about how I had a lot of work to do at the hotel this evening… I may also have begun scratching myself and chewing [imaginary] tobacco like a baseball player.
Before I could thank him for his kind offer (to do god-knows-what to me), he was gone. Poof!
I must admit, I was bewildered the rest of that evening, as I chewed my underdone tortellinis and sipped something red. It wasn’t that I had been hit on by a gay man, so much as the intensity of the come-on.
So what, that he was gay? So what, that he thought maybe I was? Whatever. I couldn’t tell that he was gay, so I couldn’t blame him for not being able to detect that I wasn’t. Humans have muddled their mating dances to the point that the whole thing is a crap-shoot for every one of us.
I completely misread this man’s intentions. Instead of displaying some sort of bright plumage or dancing in a convenient clearing, he was hiding in the costume of a completely different tribe. Had it been a simple matter of him performing some kind of display like a randy Bird of Paradise, I could have simply ignored him and he would have understood. It would have been less personal. Less confused. We both could have avoided that awkward close-range exchange.
I do hope he found someone for dinner. And I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings too much. He was probably a very nice guy.
Unless that was all just a ruse, to lure me away so he could clobber me with a tire-iron and steal my cookies. Bastard.
