12-10-06

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None of us forget each other’s birthdays because we were all born on the same day: December 25. Cindy is five years older than me, and I’m seven years older than Dennis. Cindy and I used to kiss him simultaneously, her on his left and me on his right cheek. We smushed him with this immense love that I still feel, but I guess don’t act out. We called it the Flattening Love Experiments. I don’t know who came up with the name. It sounds stupid now.
[More].

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I lived on a small street off of rue de la Roquette. The falafel stands stayed open long past the bars—the men who manned them were constantly paying off debts, and they took breaks in between stuffing fries and slices of shaved lamb into pita bread to hoot at the girls.
“Bonjour Mademoiselles. Tres belle. Tres tres belle.”
“Aw, vous etes toute seule?”
“Bonjour petite chinoise. Bonjour. Hello? Hello.” I flushed the first time they spoke to me. I was walking down the rue de la Roquette on my own and one of the men grabbed my arm and pulled me to him.
“Excusez-moi mademoiselle.” I pulled my arm away and looked at a faraway, nonexistent object. My legs were going so slow.
“Excusez-moi. Petite chinoise, excusez-moi.”
After that, I learned that the whistling, the constant badgering, the way a man would follow you down a dark alley, would walk blocks with you and continue on more blocks even if you did not say anything, even if you did not breathe in his direction. The city was teaching me each day what to expect, the lifelessness and tediousness of learning a country’s customs and realizing that the things you found odd and strange were not strange at all, but just so commonplace that you yourself were the definition and example of triteness just by thinking the things you thought before someone came along and englightened you.
In Paris, I fell in love with a boy who worked the night shift at an English-language bookstore. There was another boy who played the violin and he said things like, “Oh of course, life is madness. But there is,” and then he would play something squeaky and ridiculously sentimental on his guitar, “some love and joy to be found in even the most maddening things.”
“Ha, ha,” I had said the first time I met him. “What other imitations do you do besides this one?”
“That’s not an imitation, you twat.” I ran away as fast as I could and ran the entire length home, slowing down when I thought one of the falafel guys would pull my arm again.
I came back every other night, not wanting to run into the violin guy again, and because I wanted to see my blond haired cashier. He had long fingers and wore thin sweater that zipped up past his chin. His movements were overly animated and one time I came him he was handing out gifts to strangers.
“Oh, hello, would you like a glowstick for the next social gathering you’d be attending?” He had a British accent, and his voice carried it so sweetly. I felt charmed against my will.
“Yes.” He gave me the glowstick and went around the room, giving the remaining trinkets he had in his pockets: a few more glowsticks, some paperclips, someone else’s glasses case, his own broken zipper, a few sticks of gum that had limited edition flavors, more things. He came back to me as I was pretending to read the first chapter of the Tropic of Cancer.
“Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s really brilliant. He’s kind of a perv, isn’t it he though?”
“Yes.” I said, laughing. “I think he might be.” The bookstore was owned by a ninety year old man who had, in his youth, traversed through all of Central American on foot and after World War II, he came to Paris, rolled through the streets in tanks and his own clothes, because he did not have to enlist in the army—he had outsmarted the US government, and went to Paris as a journalist to take down quotes from French youth who were rioting in the streets. He set up a bookstore overlooking the Seine which gave free housing to travelers and poets. There were exactly thirteen beds in the bookstore, and the guy with the violin played his favorite Mozart song every night before bed, which was why the fifth time I saw him he had a mark beneath his eyes (from another guest punching him the in face after he refused to finish the song early.)