Playing Bridge in Paris

Paris is really so gay… Gay Parie. Wee (Oui) Wee (Oui).
We love it.
I wandered the streets so much and for so long that I became ill the following day. It was too much for my bag of bones to handle uncomfortable shoes, cigarette smoke and spending six hours walking the streets and not talking to anyone. I don’t speak French except to say “Wee, wee.” And it is not when I have to go to the bathroom. It is when I am walking and shopping and singing it to myself, “Wee, wee, gay Parie…”

So, it seems maybe I went a little crazy in Paris.

My favorite moment occurred just about an hour after I arrived from New York traveling overnight but with very little sleep. Bleary eyed, I was told, “don’t go to sleep!” as this makes jet lag even worse. You have to suffer through day one to become whatever it is you are trying to become - french, Italian, Spanish, etc.
I mustered up the strength to walk from the way hip and cool Hotel Costes on Rue Saint Honore to the park across the street (Jardin des Tuileries.) The park is named Orange, or something like that, and it is the remnants of a royal garden where there are fountains and sculptures of all sorts and also a lovely museum filled with circular wall-sized Monet paintings of water lilies (Musee National de l’Orangerie.)

I was left on my own while my date took a wee wee break and so I stared into the canvas of colors. I became hypnotized by blue green. So many textures and colors sucked me into that lake of lilies that before I knew it, before my man came back up the stairs, I was meditating so deep I was actually, maybe, a little, asleep.
I abruptly traveled back from within the paining when I heard my name called softly and I wondered, as my eyes looked up and all around, “where am I and how did I get here?” I shook off my wet feet and the lily leaves and blinked my eyes several times until I remembered, “oh, I’m in Paris. Oui! Oui!”

Sleeping after arriving in Europe is like the forbidden treasure that I love… I still remember my first afternoon sleep in Italy after arriving on a different trip in July. Nobody, I mean nobody, could stop me. It was the most beautiful feeling of falling softly cushioned by down feathers forever. Ahhhh, I will remember that feeling as long as I am able to dream about the wonderfulness of sleep, which I found myself doing at that moment with Monet.
And a moment it was, but exquisite.

So I kept trucking along denying my body’s urge to be horizontal versus vertical. It became easier once I found myself alone on the streets and in sight of the Seine River and the bridges I had been dreaming about. I was told, and remembered slightly (though I didn’t care last time I was in Paris), that this is a city of romance. Last time I was here I was in love with my parents and sometimes, but not often, my sister. I was 11-years-old and we were all traveling together for four months in our brand new fresh-from-the-factory-in-Germany VW camper van. Now, I am Paris with my lover, and I’m looking for bridges and I see one just a stones throw from the Rodin statue of two lovers embraced in front of the Orange Museum where the water lilies live.

My man has departed to do business, a common practice.
I wander the streets alone, a common practice for me.

It is rush hour and people are staring at me, the streets are clogged with all sorts of modes of transport – bikes, miniature cars, vans, motos, and then there are people everywhere, but more importantly, there are boats. I direct my attention to this mass of water beneath me and to the horizon which consists of bridges and barges below and a gleaming path of sunlight on the water that lifts my gaze straight up to the Eiffel Tower.

Clouds are gathering as the sun sets.

This is a view that takes me back beyond being eleven to a time when I was a woman, but here before (in a dream perhaps), waiting and wondering.

Where is my romance?

I am on the bridge, at rush hour, a man stops to tell me it is dangerous to be sitting there on the side of the bridge like that. I imagine he is trying to save my life when really he is just trying to maybe teach me French… in bed… later. I ignore him, even though he is well dressed and not completely ugly. I need no distraction from voices here as I attempt to absorb the scene in front of me. I am in love with this scene. It is offering me, even without the romance, all that I dreamed of Paris.


Later this same day, without any sleep still, we go to the most decadent fancy shmancy restaurant I’ve ever seen. It is three floors up and offers us: Notre Dame aglow by moonlight, raindrops falling on one of the 37 bridges over the River Seine with colorful boats shimmering past, a sky line of buildings older than anything I’ve seen in my young country, church spires, lights moving red and yellow and the sky of dark gray clouds with white accents over the vowels. Inside, everything is like lacquer -shiny or velvet - and on our table is a wine list which is thicker than any phone book anywhere…


This is romantic… even with liver and duck, eventually there is chocolate.
The food is nothing next to the wine;
the wine is nothing next to my man…
And so this is how it is...
in Paris.