Exactly one year ago, I was in Paris. France. I arrived there mid-December and stayed until mid-January.
I rented a friend's apartment on Rue St. Denis, in the second arrondissement, just south of the Ludovic Arc. All day and night, prostitutes hovered in the building's doorway. It got to the point that whenever I left or returned, they greeted me with "Bonjour, madame," or "Bonsoir, madame." They in their fur coats, push-up bras, rouged lips - and me in my North Face jacket, black NYC watch cap, stretch pants, and running shoes. We got to know each other by face, a glance, and we half-smiled at each other, then looked away.
Christmas Eve, I spent at a friend of a friend of a friend's apartment in the Marais. Our hostess was of South American origin, but tres Parisienne. She works for Emanuel Ungaro, and left the Western Hemisphere far in her past. The food was marvelous, and if anyone insulted me in the oblique way haute Parisiens did, I didn't mind.
Until one of the other guests, a stuffy Swiss fellow, took umbrage at the way I sliced a piece of the brie or Camembert or whatever soft, nondescript cheese was offered, after dinner, after champagne and fois gras, after a stuffed capon with all the trimmings, and after glass after glass of wonderful wine. I allowed it. I gave him the knife, and as acid-sweet as I could muster, implored him in a soft tone, to perforce, cut me a slice. Proper.
And when he patronizingly bent to and completed the task, I thanked him in my most demure tone. Then I pulled him close, and explained, my lips to his ear, "You know," I murmured, ensuring that I had his full attention, "In America, when one cuts the cheese, and thank you so much for this slice, it means that one has farted." And I smiled, then added, "You know, one has passed gas. From one's rectum."
The blood drained from his face. And I kept smiling. And eating.
Note to obsequious French-English-speaking Europeans: do not fuck with a New Yorker.
Now, truth be told, I adore Paris. It took me a while, and more than one visit to allow Paris to infuse itself into my soul. But now? Now I love it. And miss it. In all its seasons, but maybe late fall and winter the most. It's warmer than New York. And the holiday displays that line the grandes boulevards, they're magic.
Pars que, je suis nee en France. C'est vrai.
My family left France when I was maybe one and a half years old. We returned to New York, to Brooklyn. By then, the rest of the family was living there. I remember nothing of my time in France.
My earliest memories were made in Brooklyn. The first is my mother holding me back from a stack of folded laundry because a wasp landed on the top towel, and I tiptoed, straining, trying to see the wasp, only I couldn't.
The second was the criss-cross ladder that she pulled across the house's second-story landing to prevent my brother and me from falling - although I climbed over it, and it hurt - so that I could thump-thump-thump, by my butt, down the stairs, to watch a cocktail party my parents hosted. My father picked me up, and showed me off.
The third was watching a bottle company's window through which a conveyor belt moved bottles, one-by-one, in endless, timed sequence. I was winter-bundled in a carriage stroller on the way back from a concrete, park swing-set. I could have watched forever, if I had the words to tell my mother to stay.
Today, right now, the city is frigid. I will stay here for the holidays, for the mid-winter celebrations.
I am an agnostic. But I like the whiff of tradition. The faint citrus smell of a pine bough, the twinkle of icicle lights hung from windows and balconies twenty stories above the street. The red and green, giant gel-illuminations atop the Empire State Building. Eggnog. Spiked.
Most of all, I look forward to a day of peace. Of quiet. Of staying in my dorky, red-plaid, flannel pajamas all day, curling the cats around me, reading, watching movies on television, dozing. And I'll wonder, would it be better if I had someone with whom I could share the solitude?