It's as though I haven't stopped moving since sometime last Thursday, bed late, early morning, cat throwing fits when I finally wander in after a day pounding countless pavements.
It took me six months in Paris to see place Trocadero. It'll prolly be another six before I go back.
Waking up three hours after bedtime to go to the prefecture for my Carte de Sejour, I miscalculated the time it would take to rattle my way there and arrived at 7:15, forty five minutes before the "departement des etrangers" opened.
So I wandered into the main police station part instead, on the chance that maybe they'd know if my Visa was ready.
They didn't, and I sat down amidst handcuffed ladies, transvestites, men smelling so strongly of marijuana that the stains on the walls began to run together.
When a prostitute struck up a conversation, strange little monstre thought to ask about the fabled matresses hidden in the bois de Boulogne.
"Is it true that you guys have matresses hidden in the woods for clients that stop along the peripherique?"
"Yeah!" she said "I even have a new pair of sheets on mine!"
Seb was delighted to hear his rumours confirmed when I told him of the conversation later that evening. Fourteen hours later, even.
We talked for nearly all of the forty minutes, "Charmene" (it's her working name) and I, discussing Paris' best sex shops (I was right, Concorde IS an impressive shoppe!), discussing beer, music even...
She tried to explain how she walked in those shoes and laughed happily when I admired her grace in them.
When the policeman wandered over to tell me that the departement was open and that my card wasn't ready yet, I didn't regret my trajet.
I'd had a wonderful morning.
In a police station, not a hair on my neck bristling at the uniformed men milling about.
I've come such a long way these past few years.
And today on the metro, it was the congregation of curly haired blondes. The entire half of our car looked as though we'd spawned a new species, a german girl with bright golden curls down her back, a pale blonde musician with his hair already curling out of the rubber band he'd restraind it by, another woman with the orangey curls of a dye-job done too soon after a perm, but it added to the effect nonetheless.
People were staring, and the four of us looked at each other and laughed the way strangers do when their eyes meet and they share something that will warm them for a while.
Like yesterday at the Lapin Agile, when a group of Kebekois at another table reached over to a japanese couple and offered them one of their beers since the waiter didn't look like he'd be returning anytime soon.
So much wonder in so many facces, even in a city this size.
I have been so fortunate to melt into it over the rush of these crazy days.
...and listening to the mp3s of David's childhood band...
Amidst all this fairydust once again I look at him and realize just how impossible he is.
How talented, how beautiful, magnificent.
The man with the heart of a poet that I'd always dreamed of.
______
The doorbell rang as I was opening Nutscrape to post this and suddenly a rushed afternoon of running out to lunch and disovering the Espace Dali on Montmartres turned into munching on leftover salad, goat cheese, italian peppered bread (man is it ever cool), fruit with Dijon (we tried it to be gross and finally lemon-soaked tangerines are surprisingly good with Dijon, I wonder if I can turn it into a recipe), topped off with apples and honey and my last bottle of wine...
(the last 1996 St-Emillion has been packed for Gavin to take back and drink with Stu in London)
It's going on six-thirty now, and idle leftover lunch turned into a delightful meal (I'm still so shaky on this housekeeping stuff, but it worked out so well that I'm reassured) and five hours of talk.
Talk of travel, the drawbacks of being a native english speaker (which I am not, so our perspectives were interesting), judaism and various strange tangerian religions, Aramaic which I learned enough of in school to read the old testament and a strange african dialect that closely resembles it, Amharic, Doctor Who and Tom Baker and how our childhood imaginations soared with that show and how our "adult" left-brains changed so much of the mysteries for us and yet uncovered so many others...
...who would've thought you could talk about Daleks for a solid hour and be utterly engrossed.
Granted, we're geeks. Healthy, active, curious geeks, but geeks nonetheless. Neither of us drool but I'm not sure anyone notices. ;)
Strange, though, we knew each other in Lyon, attended each other's parties, admired the same comic book artists and lusted after a few of the same women, and yet...
...today we got to know each other, after four years of gallivanting about our lives, talked of extremes and balance and how shy children turn out to be strangely observant adults, talked of our first encounters with self-awareness, drugs, our addiction to the daylight hours.
He's gone off to wander Montmartres some more, and I'm off to buy cat food and pack for the ski trip and try not to fall over into my dinner plate this evening.
This weekend he's taking over my appartment and feeding the cat and somehow it seems all too natural to hand him my extra set of keys and hug him and thank him for suddenly becoming a soul-friend, one I don't need to see often, but one who peers out at the world from the same set of disorders, wacko tendencies, and self-imposed values, and when he ordered me to head out to London for a visit, suddenly London isn't quite the stinky shithole I've been avoiding all this time.
Heh. People. Amazing things.
And David? Your mp3's were playing on loop for all those hours.
Gavin wanted to know if there was a CD available.
Sweet.