Happy?
I’m generally happy. At least in that part of my life. I love her, and I love our kids. I’ve been lucky in that way.
It’s good you recognize it.
I guess.
Why is your heart black?
I’m old.
You’re 45.
They’ve been long years.
By choice.
Most of the time, yes. But not always.
That heart of yours, it sang, but I also know it hurt, it always hurt.
One thing feeds the other thing.
Singing and screaming.
It’s a fine line between them.
Tell me what hurt you the most, Jay.
No.
Tell me.
No.
Why?
I don’t know who you are.
Yes you do.
I don’t.
Have there been that many of us?
There were enough.
Where am I among them in your memories?
I don’t know.
You do.
Nope.
You will.
Maybe.
I want your heart to sing again, Jay.
So do I.
Off-key, but loud and with joy.
So do I.
My Favorite Spots in Paris After Living Here For Two Months
* * *
Le Polly Maggoo, rue du Petit Pont. A shitty bar filled with derelict drunks they keep absinthe behind the counter. There are chessboards on some of the tables and Turkish bathrooms, which means there is just a big hole in the floor. I have never seen a napkin there, or toilet paper, and the drinks are strong and cheap and they don’t care if you yell or fall down. They ask that fights take place on the sidewalk outside, and the bar always empties when a fight begins, and everyone goes outside and watches and cheers, and the combatants often hug and have a drink when they’re done. Most of the customers are Turks and Algerians who like to get drunk, but can’t do it in their own neighborhoods, and old Americans who came here for some reason but don’t remember what it was and now spend all their time getting drunk. The girls aren’t particularly beautiful, but they aren’t there looking for husbands, and after ten drinks, it doesn’t really matter what they look like.
The Film Room at the Musée Picasso, rue de Thorigny. Sit on a bench and watch movies of Picasso making paintings. I’m young and naïve enough to still believe I’m going to be great at something. I’m old and wise enough to know I’ll never be as great at anything as Picasso was at making art.
The Grave of Alexandre Dumas. Panthéon. Motherfucker wrote Count of Monte Cristo. Much respect.
Cactus Charly, rue de Ponthieu. They claim to have the best cheeseburgers in Europe. I’ve had three. Each was worse than the last, and in a life filled with eating cheeseburgers, I’ve never had one as bad as the Cactus Charly Burger, a mass of meat and cheese and chili and bacon and BBQ sauce that should be called the Abomination Burger. But they serve gigantic drinks for cheap and five-franc shots of Southern Comfort at Happy Hour and there are often drunk American and English girls willing to fuck in the bathroom.
Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries. I always thought Monet and the Water Lilies were boring as fuck. And most of them are. I’ve seen them in museums in America and they always remind me of stale farts. But one day I was wandering around and ended up in the two large oval rooms that hold eight large paintings Monet made right before he died. He said the goal was to make something that would make people forget the outside world existed. And he did. They are fucking magnificent. Breathtaking. Serene. A vision of the real world somehow made more beautiful, more overwhelming. But what sucks is other people in the room. For some reason they always want to talk, want to make sure everyone within a hundred yards knows how much they love the Water Lilies. They need to learn to shut the fuck up and look and feel and disappear. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. And let themselves disappear.
Texas Star, place Edmond-Michelet. A dumb American bar with a Texas flag flying out front. Every human from Texas who’s in Paris seems to be there. Discovered it coming out of le Centre Pompidou. They serve Lone Star beer and make edible tacos, which don’t really exist anywhere else in France, at least as far as I know. I met, drank with, and threw up on a former US president’s niece one evening. We were doing shots of tequila, and I was doing two for every one she did. She could drink like a fish, I got sick, puked all over the table, in our drinks, on her lap. We made out a couple hours later, and I woke up on her floor the next morning without my pants on. She was not there and I never saw her again, but whenever I want to listen to people talk about guns and oil and football and how cool they think it is to wear cowboy boots, which I absolutely believe it is not, I go to the Texas Star.
Maison de Gyros, rue de la Huchette. A street lined with Greek restaurants. Some fancy, some less so, some shitty fast-food gyro joints. All of them have those spinning spits of piled lamb chunks in the window. Maison D is around the corner from Le Polly Maggoo, where I often get blindingly drunk. It’s open late. It’s cheap as fuck. I found it one night when I was stumbling around, drunk off my ass, I bought their specialty, a third of a baguette filled with lettuce and tomato, a huge stack of incredibly fragrant gyro meat, red sauce and white sauce, and topped with French fries. It’s a massive, delicious, and incredibly unhealthy meal. I have a Maison D (which is what I call both the sandwich and the restaurant) fairly often, though I rarely remember it. I have also woken up with full and partial Maison D sandwiches in my pockets, in my bed, all over my floor, and in and on any number of random apartments and park benches.
Pigalle. Sex. Sex sex sex sex. I like sex. Actually I love sex. Whether it’s sweet and tender, or hard, fast, and dirty, or both or somewhere in between, I’m down with it. I want it every minute of every day. Be nice if it came with love, that crazy crazy love, but it rarely does. So I take it however it comes. There’s sex in Pigalle. Sex shops, strip joints, adult shows (folks fucking each other), burlesque shows, hookers, hustlers, swingers, random people walking around looking to fuck. Some want money for it, some have money and are willing to pay for it, some just want it. Boulevard de Clichy is lined with shop after joint after show palace after theater after peep show after discreet door leading to some magnificent perversion. I wander Pigalle drunk, sober, half-drunk, during the day, the night, in the morning, whenever I want to cum, and want to feel some shame after it happens. I don’t hide from my shame. It comes with my life. Sometimes I yearn for it, look for it, need it, have to fucking have it. The intense blinding joy of an exploding orgasm, the can’t look in the fucking mirror because I’m a dirtbag piece of shit shame that follows. So be it. I know where to go to get it. And go I do.
Le Jardin du Luxembourg, multiple entrances, 6th arrondissement. A huge fancy palace, surrounded by mammoth fancy gardens. The most luxurious wide stretches of grass in the world. Old marble sculptures of dead Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses scattered around. A couple kiddie playgrounds (which I avoid), some fountains, bunch of benches, some quiet areas of shade where old dudes read books and drown in their memories and their regrets. I often go to the park to sleep when I’m hungover, to read when I’m not, to lie in the grass and drink wine and daydream about some stupid future filled with madness and fame and controversy. Lots of couples and families have picnics in le Jardin. I watch them. Imagine what they are thinking about, if they are as happy and content as they seem. I respect them. Their choices are different than mine. But we are all living our dream in some way.
Le Bar Dix, rue de l’Odéon. A shitty old bar in the basement of a shitty old building. It’s small, maybe twenty feet wide and forty feet long. Walls are stone and the ceiling, also stone, is arched, some shitty old paintings hanging around. It’s dark, the music is loud, and they only play French music, so I don’t know what they’re singing about, though I do know it’s not about being a respectable citizen or paying your taxes. Around the edges of the room are
padded benches, there are table and chairs in front of the benches. Everything is sticky. Not sure with what and don’t want to know. But the tables and chairs and benches and walls and glasses and bottles and pitchers are all sticky. The only drink I have ever had in Bar Dix is sangria in a pitcher. It’s strong and cheap and tastes good, but also hurts a little. Kind of like French Mad Dog, or French Thunderbird. I sit alone with my journal and write and drink and look at the girls, who are also often alone, usually dressed in black, with sad eyes, also writing in journals and drinking alone. Heaven it is not.
The Grave of Victor Hugo. Panthéon. Motherfucker wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Miserables, both of which are abysmal musicals but amazing books. Much respect.
Berthillon, rue Saint-Louis en l’Île. In France they call ice cream shops glaciers. It’s a beautiful word. Glacier. There’s an elegance to it, like so many French words. Glacier. I like ice cream, and I like glaciers. This glacier makes the best ice cream in Europe or so they say. And it’s on a small fancy little island tucked behind Notre-Dame de Paris. Ice cream tastes good and feels good going down your throat, nice and cold and sweet. And it reminds me of being a little kid, when life was simple and everything was big and important and incredible, when I had a sense of awe and wonder. So I eat it often, because it feels good, and it makes me think of simpler, happier days. Glacier.
Shakespeare and Company, rue de la Bûcherie. There have been two. The first one, the one where Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and James Joyce hung out, got shut down by the Nazis in 1941. The Nazis loved killing Jews, but they didn’t like cool bookstores. The second, the one where I go, was opened in 1951 by an American serviceman named George Whitman who kicked some bookstore-hating Nazi ass in WW2. It’s had Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Anaïs Nin and James Baldwin and Sartre and Lawrence Durrell. The store itself is a charming little shitbox. Right on the water across from Notre-Dame. A little stone square out front. Bright-green exterior with ramshackle sign. Inside is filled with books, beautiful books in English that I can read. Shelves overflowing with them, tables covered with stacks of them, a maze of words with little nooks and hidden recesses also filled with them. There is very little crap, no cheesy thrillers or steamy romances. It’s just great books, classics, or newer shit that comes with a serious reputation. It’s a literature store more than a bookstore. Anyone there is interested in reading, in words, in the history of them, the future. Upstairs there are living quarters, and most of the people who work there, live there. They take in wanderers, misfits, let them sleep for a night or two, or a month or two. There are always pretty girls in the store, or in the little plaza outside it. I spend more money here than anywhere else in Paris. It’s the best little weird beautiful crazy bookstore in the world.
Stolly’s, rue Cloche Percé. Tiny shitbox bar. In the Marais. Tables and chairs out front. Serves English beer, French beer, all sorts of liquor. Mix of people, unlike most other joints in Paris, which tend to be entirely French, or entirely American, or entirely something else. I almost always sit outside, regardless of the weather, watch people walk by, read, write, think, and dream. Other customers tend to be interesting people, writers or artists, academics. A joint where smart people get drunk.
La Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. A church. At the top of Montmartre, the highest point in Paris. I’m not usually a big fan of churches, but this church. I dig it. Stairs up are endless, feels like I’m climbing Everest. I stop at least three times for cigarette breaks. Once up, the view is spectacular. There are sections of grass where you can sit and stare or have a smoke or drink. Directly out front there is a stone plaza with a viewing deck. There are tourists with cameras, young couples meeting, true believers going to worship, sometimes there are Africans selling souvenirs, sometime the police chase them away. I usually go up with a bottle of cheap red wine and a pack of smokes, walk to the edge, look out over the city, the most beautiful, most civilized city on earth. The view is magnificent. It calms me, silences me, tells me stories, takes the thoughts out of my mind, or focuses the ones that are there. I sit and stare and write in my notebooks, sometimes read, drink, smoke. I often see an old man there. He’s probably eighty, well-dressed, usually in a black suit and shirt and tie, white hair perfectly combed, face heavily lined. He’s always in the same place, at the edge of the plaza, just off the center, staring out over the city. He looks sad, alone, sighs deeply, sometimes looks down and stares at the stones. I wonder what’s in his mind, his heart, his memories. Wonder what he lost and when and how much it took from him, how much damage it did to his soul. I wonder what kind of pain he feels, what kind of joy he once felt, whether his life was what he wanted it to be, whether it was worth it. Who he loved and whose hearts he broke, and who and what broke his heart. I wonder if he could go back, would he change it, wonder what mistakes he made and whether they matter anymore. I never talk to him, or acknowledge him, or disturb him. He’s nearing the end. I hope he goes peacefully. I hope when my time comes, I do as well.
Le Refuge des Fondus, rue des Trois Frères. Fondue is cool. You get a vat of boiling cheese and dip stuff in it. Or a vat of boiling oil and a plate of raw steak and you cook it as you please. All this place serves is fondue. Simple and delightful and delicious. Fondue and wine, which comes in baby bottles, so you feel kind of stupid and kind of wonderful when you drink it. It’s a tiny place. Music is loud. Customers are rowdy. I went once, alone. I ate both kinds of fondue and got drunk as fuck. Thought about my ex-girlfriend, who is somewhere in America. We went to school together. I always thought love at first sight was some silly bullshit until I saw her. And I fell in love. Deep and hard and immediately. I didn’t talk to her for a year. Just stared at her when I saw her. And looked away when she glanced at me. It hurt me to look at her. Made my heart beat faster, made it feel like it was going to explode. Made my hands shake. If she had tried to talk to me I wouldn’t have been able to talk. She didn’t seem real. And I didn’t feel real when I saw her. When we met, amongst a group of people at a bar, I ignored her. Not because I was trying to pull some bullshit, but because I was scared of her. We saw each other again, and again, and eventually I could talk to her, tell her silly stories, make her laugh, make her blush, and she fell in love with me, and life wasn’t real for a while. But it always returns. The cold brutal reality of existence. And so I ate fondue alone. And thought of her. And watched the other couples on dates in Le Refuge. And hoped they didn’t end up like we ended up. That the smiles stayed on their faces. And I got fucking drunk. And I left and bought three more bottles of wine at the first shop I found. And I woke up on a sidewalk late the next morning.
The Gates of Hell, Musée Rodin, rue de Varenne. Rodin was the greatest sculptor in the world. The only one in history on the level with Michelangelo. The museum is his old house, where he worked, where he drank and raged and fucked, and where he made the most beautiful things on earth. It’s a huge French mansion, with huge grounds, and giant gardens. The house is filled with drawings and sculpture, as are the grounds: The Kiss, Balzac, The Thinker, The Three Shades, The Burghers of Calais, The Secret, and the most magnificent of them all, The Gates of Hell. The apartment where Louis and I live is about ten minutes away. I come here most days. At some point I’m drawn and I come. Walk through the front garden to a path that leads to The Gates. As you move along green hedges, The Gates looms in front of you, twenty feet tall, fifteen wide, 180 figures swirling around and on two massive doors, doors that lead to a hellfire of eternal damnation. It’s made of bronze, weathered from being outdoors for eighty years, set on a stepped pedestal against a giant stone wall. Conceptually based on the beginning of Dante’s Inferno, it’s Rodin’s vision of beauty and love and terror and eternity, men and women screaming, reaching, kissing, begging, crying, dying, being tortured, tortured by love and pain, regret and sorrow, the prospect of burning in Hell forever. Every time I see it, it moves me, scares me, thrills me, humbles me, makes me feel small, insp
ires me. I can’t imagine the mind that envisioned it, the hand that made it, the mad horrible wonderful state Rodin was in while he did it, the labor involved, the intensity of focus, the virtuosity with which each figure and each element of it was made. There are two simple wooden benches in front of The Gates. Each large enough for two people, three if you don’t mind being crowded. They are usually both empty. People stare at The Gates, but not for long. They are disturbing, unsettling, menacing, and there are many other sculptures at Musée Rodin that are more user-friendly, more pleasing to both the eye and the soul. I love The Gates. For whatever reason, they calm me, settle me, hold me. I always sit on one of the benches. I read, write in my notebook, stare at the sky, take naps, talk to myself, talk to God, even though I don’t believe in God. The Gates of Hell, though, I believe in them. On the rare occasions someone sits next to me, or on whichever bench I am not on, I don’t acknowledge them or speak to them. I keep reading or writing or doing whatever I’m doing. This is my spot. The Gates of Hell. One of the few places in my life where I have ever found any peace. I don’t know what that means, that The Gates of Hell bring me peace, and I don’t care. I’ll take what I can, wherever it may come.
La Closerie des Lilas, boulevard du Montparnasse. Fancy restaurant. Or it’s fancy to me. On a corner. Covered with vines so you can’t see inside. It is said Hemingway wrote most of The Sun Also Rises on a stool at the bar. Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Modigliani, Breton, Sartre, André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Man Ray, Ezra Pound, and Henry Miller, my beloved Henry Miller, all hung out here. The entrance has a green vined arch, a menu under glass next to it. I’ve never been inside. Never walked under the arch, sat at the bar, had a drink. I don’t deserve to step inside. Maybe someday, but not now. For now I will stand outside and imagine a future where I can sit among the echoes of my heroes, where I will have earned my rightful place. For now I will read the menu and peer through the arch and dream.