My Newest, Shortest, Tightest Article of Clothing

As I looked around, I noticed something was different.

Huh. Well, I better go get a bathing cap and goggles from that weird vending machine up near the changing rooms, because everyone else is wearing them. Yeah. Oh well....

I walked back up the stairs to the changing rooms, wondering on the way why there was a little foot pool in front of the stairs. Odd.

Wait, 4 euros for the cap? Ok...and 2 euros for the goggles? Alright, Paris municipal pool, whatever you want. I'll play your game...

I brought the cap and the goggles back down to the pool level and sat near my belongings, which had mercifully remained where I left them. I donned the silly white cap, snapped my fancy new goggles into place, and prepared to enter the pool, to which I had just bought a blissfully cheap membership in order to finally resume the fitness regimen I put on hold two weeks ago to recover from sickness.

"Non, c'est interdit monsieur. Vous devez porter un des maillots de bains que nous vendons là!" said the man wearing a tight Speedo as he gestured to my bathing suit and then to the vending machines from whence came the goggles and the bathing cap.

Ok, so I can't wear my normal bathing suit to swim in the city pool, apparently. Sure.

I looked around at all of the men in the area and realized that I had ignored an important detail when observing the locals to figure out the public pool etiquette; in order to swim, I needed to wear a bathing suit tight enough to forever prevent blood from again gracing my testicles. It also needed to be short enough so that everyone would clearly see that yes, I too have pale upper thighs, and yes, like you, they get paler as they approach my pelvis.

I walked back up to the bizarre vending machine with a small sense of foreboding. I really like my bathing suit. It's a nice fit and it's a little shorter than most so that I show just enough thigh without being gratuitous. I've been told it makes me look like a "hot dad." It works. I certainly wasn't expecting to buy another bathing suit, let alone from a vending machine that only sells tight things.

Ok, what do we have here? There's the standard Speedo cut, which on me would just show way too much body hair which will only look darker and thicker when I get wet, so I'll go for the boxer cut. Huh, that actually doesn't look too bad. Alright I'll take the medium that should fit fine. "38/40?" What's that mean? My waist is 30 inches but that's probably not inches this is France. Ok whatever. 8 euros? Fine.

The little box containing my sleek new French bathing suit fell down into the receiving area, and I reached in and liberated it. I looked the thing over. On the part of the box that has the size information is a picture of a man wearing the bathing suit. He's standing to one side a bit, his knees awkwardly close together and his body facing slightly away from the camera. It seems as though during the photo shoot, the follow conversation took place:

PHOTOGRAPHER: Hey, Jean, can you like, try to look sexy a bit?
JEAN: Yeah I'm trying Georges, thank you.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Try harder, you look constipated.
JEAN: This bathing suit is fucking tight! Ok? Why don't you put it on and see how sexy you feel?
PHOTOGRAPHER: You're a MODEL!!! This is your job!
JEAN: That doesn't mean I don't get shrinkage when I wear--
PHOTOGRAPHER: Whatever I'm just going to keep taking pictures. Stop grimacing. Ok now lower your head a bit. Twist your body slightly to the side.
JEAN: Really?
PHOTOGRAPHER: I know what I'm doing. Now let your arms hang loosely by your sides. Not quite that loosely.
JEAN: Ok what if I bend my elbows really slightly?
PHOTOGRAPHER: Yeah that's great! Now raise your shoulders just a bit, so you look like you're saying "don't mess with me." Perfect.
JEAN (squinting slightly): I'm still kind of uncomf--
PHOTOGRAPHER: Don't care we're using this shot.

I found a changing room and put the thing on. Somehow, I managed to choose a bathing suit that, despite being a boxer cut, actually becomes the tightest speedo you've ever worn immediately after you put it on. All I could do was laugh because I had no idea if I'd bought the wrong size or if this is just what's normal to wear when swimming here, either option being chuckle-worthy. Americans and our comfort. And so I made the journey back down to the pool, receiving no unusual attention. I almost expected the guy from before to come over to me and say "No, sir, you cannot wear a bathing suit that small, you must buy another from the vending machine that sells tight things upstairs." But alas, this is France, where bodies are accepted as bodies. We've all got one, ain't nothing wrong with showcasing the form. I only hope that the suit becomes bigger as I eat less nutella and start exercising regularly again. Or if I ever need a tourniquet, I got it. And actually, it was a pretty nice swim. I may wear this thing every time I swim back in the states.

I still can't figure out why they had those little puddles in front of the stairs, though. It was weird.

New American Friends

"Avery, check this out. I've got it mounted on the wall so I'll always know where it is!" Ken gestured grandly towards his special, personally-installed wall-mounted corkscrew, a thing of true beauty for such a wine lover and an item of pure necessity for a home that hosts many gatherings for the wine loving friends of Ken and his wife Bonnie, two incredibly generous people who delight in sharing their home with friends, with friends of friends, with children of friends, and with friends of children of friends.

I met Ken and Bonnie through Julia Gibas, a friend from Pitzer, who was staying in their home immediately outside Paris for a few days before returning to her semester in Morocco. Julia's family is close with either Bonnie or Ken's uncle, I believe, and Julia and her mother had stayed with Bonnie and Ken several years ago.

As soon as we arrived Ken and Bonnie made me feel right at home, and it helped that Bonnie is from New York City and Ken from northern California. As it turns out, Ken went to Harvard and graduated about 4 years after my dad! Then Ken and Bonnie lived in Waltham for about 10 years before moving to Paris about 20 years ago.

"At my high school reunion recently, I won the 'farthest traveled' award. They gave me a bottle of Bordeaux wine. I said 'thanks, but you can keep this! I don't need it!'"

Ken's a joker. Ken also loves to give people food. And oh man, was there a lot of it.

The evening started when some friends of Bonnie and Ken's arrived. I confess, I don't know how to spell the man's name, (I think it's spelled 'Dijitte'), and I can't remember his wife's name but they were very interesting people. They're both artists; Dijitte works a lot in various media, and some of his beautiful paintings hang in the very living room in which we enjoyed phenomenal salami with sundried tomatoes, hearts of palm, and kalamata olives. A young sculptor from Ireland, Orlaith, was staying with Ken and Bonnie, too, and bonded with the man over their work. (She's having an exhibition tomorrow which I'm going to!) Dijitte's wife turned out to be the only French person at our little French party. She was very delightful and does work throwing pottery; a beautiful vase in the kitchen was her creation.

I was impressed to see when we moved to the dining room that we were moving to a second dining room, which had a second kitchen. The house is essentially two homes connected, one of which Ken and Bonnie usually rent out, or at least several rooms of it. Either way, they've got two kitchens, which excited me. As advertised to me by Julia, this was to be a wine and cheese party. And damn, was it a wine and cheese party. You know when you enter a room with a wall-mounted corkscrew what you're getting into. And so of course there was lots of wine. I played it pretty safe as I'd been sick the week before, and regardless, I'm cautious. But for anyone who so desired, the glass was never empty.

But what was for dinner? An endless feast of cheeses: camembert, roquefort, brie, gouda, cantal, chevre, and a sheep's milk cheese I believe. What else? A duck paté and a paté de campagne, which were two of the most transcendently delicious things I've ever tasted. As soon as I tried the duck paté all went silent in my mind and time slowed such that had an agent of the matrix tried to shoot me, I would've watched the bullet approach, slowly stepped aside, and resumed my position, a glass of wine in one hand and a fist full of duck paté in the other. I was in heaven. And all of this was accompanied by a variety of delicious breads.

The meal lasted several hours, conversations mostly taking place in English but dipping in and out of French intermittently. The cheese and paté feast was followed by salad and then an "American cheesecake" which Orlaith made using no American products; the normal Philadelphia cream cheese, seemingly impossible to find here, had been replaced by a combination of cottage cheese, fromage blanc, creme fraiche, and two other french cheeses. The standard graham cracker crust saw its french reincarnation in the form of crushed digestive biscuits, which I guess aren't entirely french, but hey, they were tasty either way. So what we had was a very tasty cheesecake that was not entirely American in that it relied on and succeeded through international cooperation.

The evening tapered out as people left, but not before Ken and I bonded over his stories of making theatre with friends in college and Dijitte told me about some of the best meals he's had at multiple-Michelin starred restaurants. I realized as we were talking that he was living my travel dreams: don't stay anywhere terribly fancy, don't splurge on foreign clothes or wares, but eat the best damn food in the world, every trip.

As I left, Ken let me know that if I got lost I could come back and I'd have a place to stay. "Don't worry about it. If you can't find the metro, head on back here and we'll watch Band of Brothers until 4 in the morning." I hope at some point I get to accept that offer!

Been a Little While

Why haven't I written anything in almost two weeks? Am I done with this whole thing? Is nothing interesting here anymore?

I was REAL sick for a little while and then still felt like crap or was too tired even after I wasn't sick anymore, so for about 10 days I just didn't feel up to it. Oh well. Not that I felt like crap for 10 days straight, but intermittently, and so I got lazy. But here I am.

Soo what am I up to?

Well I'm mostly spending up to 7 or 8 hours a day walking around looking at things, taking pictures, and eating. This does not get old at all. I'm serious. This city is filled with amazing things to marvel at for hours, which I do. However last Tuesday I went to a protest that was pretty exciting. Many people probably heard about the massive transportation strike that day which will apparently be a more common occurrence this fall, and just makes taking the metro a less pleasant and less efficient experience.

I got off the very very crowded metro at La République to find myself surrounded by many thousands of people, tons of vendors, great big balloons, news crews, and vans with amplifiers projecting anti-Sarkozy slogans and pro-worker messages. Many people came to watch the whole thing happen too and just stood on the sidewalk, but I wanted a closer view, so I stood in front of the head of one of the parades and took photographs right as the walking and chanting began. People here will passionately, passionately defend their right to retire at 60, let me tell you. There were groups from all sorts of different organizations, including the socialist and essentially communist parties as well as the nouveau parti anticapitaliste (new anti-capitalist party) which I'm told join forces for these big protests. The diversity in terms of age was pretty impressive; not surprisingly, there were many middle-aged people ardently defending their right to retire at 60, but there were many young people too and really, people from all over the whole spectrum carrying big banners in front of cars and vans with big speakers on their roofs and huge balloons naming their organization trailing behind.

I found it interesting how forcefully people were defending their legal retirement age considering that in America our retirement age is 65, but of course this is my perspective and not theirs and they don't give a shit when America wants to retire. Apparently one justification the government puts forth for its proposed new retirement age of 62 is that people are living longer today and can thus be expected to work longer and still enjoy more healthy years after a later retirement. The thing is, the people who would be most directly affected by this change are the factory workers, the farmers, the dock workers, the people who do hard manual labor, and their life expectancy has not gone up nearly as much as the government-cited study predicts for the average citizen, so for these people a raised retirement age would just mean less post-retirement life, plain and simple.

I walked along with one of the groups for a while and then found a man dressed not totally noncommittally as a clown, sporting a red nose and suspenders with slightly goofy pants. I noticed a sign he was holding which read "[symbol that means 'fuck'] La Peau Lisse!" which translated as written to "Fuck Smooth Skin" however, if read aloud, one would more likely hear it this way, "[Fuck] La Police!" or "Fuck The Police!" This clown was quite the instigator, and had no problem standing across the street from armed police with a sign essentially telling them what they should do with their afternoons instead of monitoring this protest. Of course, I took photos.

Unfortunately I started to feel very tired and not so healthy shortly after this and thus stopped following the protest, which ended at the Place de la Bastille. For me it ended at a piano shop where I sat and played for a half hour until I felt well enough to find something to eat.

I'll write more posts soon about some great times I had the last few days. They won't all be about food, although great food and great times often follow one another.

The Wine Is Shit, But This Bottle Is Great!

"2 euro?? 2 euro??"

Who is this strange little guy asking us if we want to buy a mostly empty bottle of wine for 2 euros?

As it turns out, this strange little guy was Clemente, a Spanish guy about my age studying Spanish at the Sorbonne. Pitzer folks Becky, Amy, and Ximena and I were hanging out at the Eiffel Tower a few nights ago, doing as Parisians do--eating bread with cheese and some wine at the Champs de Mars, or Marsfield, as I like to call it--when we heard the sound of beating hand drums from down the field. We got up and walked towards the drums when Clemente approached us in his shuffling gait, carrying a bottle of wine about 80 percent of which had been consumed, thrusting it towards us and asking "2 euro? 2 euro?" We were intrigued.

"Wait, you're trying to sell this?"
"Yes."
"You want us to buy this for 2 euros?"
"Yes."
"You're very funny."
"Thank you. Do you want to buy it?"
"No, not really, I think we're just fine, thank you."
"Want to hear a secret?"
"Yeah, sure."
"I bought the whole bottle for 1 euro 95. Ha HA!!!"

Needless to say, Clemente had won our hearts. We asked him where he was from and he told us that he was from the great country of Spain but that his mother was French which is partly why he was in the second rate country of France living in the partly decent city of Paris studying Spanish, the best language. We wanted to speak with him in French because hey, we're in Paris, but Clemente mostly wouldn't have it.

"I don't like French. It's so cold. It makes me shiver when I hear it or speak it."
"Well that's too bad we really want to talk with you in French, I mean English comes pretty easily to us."
"Yeah, English isn't much better than French, but that's ok."

Luckily for us Ximena speaks Spanish, which Clemente appreciated, but regardless, most of the conversation was in English. Clemente was really fond of the word "motherfucker." He loved it. He loved that most people around us at that moment had no idea what it meant, or so he insisted, and he had a great time shouting to people "Hey, motherfucker!!!" to which they would reply "hey!" He said that since people here don't really know what it means, they have only a vague idea, it's like a greeting. I'm not sure if he's right, but watching him yell "motherfucker!!!" was hilarious.

When we told him our names, he got a big kick out of mine.

"Your name is Avery? Like 'Avery day man I walk down the street?'"

Clemente just loved talking to people and messing with them. He introduced us to his group of friends, a bunch of people mostly our age sitting in a circle together playing drums and a guitar and singing. Ximena and Becky and Amy spoke to them a lot longer than I did because Clemente dragged me off pretty quickly.

"You see those girls, Avery day?"
"Yeah Clemente?"
"We're going to talk to them. I'm going to sell this bottle of wine."

And so we walked over to two girls sitting on the ground, me, Clemente, and one of his other friends, and Clemente started by asking what was his refrain for the night.

"2 euro?"

Which pretty much got exactly the same response from the Parisian girls as it did from us Americans. But Clemente wasn't really interested in selling the bottle; he just wanted to find a funny way of starting conversations with people.

"You see this guy I'm with?" he asked after a few minutes of talking with them about himself and about what they do in Paris.

"Yeah."
"He is American. He speaks no French."
"I do speak French!"
"You're American?"
"Yes I'm American."
"I assumed you were Spanish you look Spanish!"
"I'm not Spanish, I'm Jewish."

Clemente fell to the ground laughing.

"Avery day!! You can be both Spanish and Jewish! 'I'm Jewish.' You're funny!!"

I think what I was trying to communicate was that Jewish kind of is an ethnicity because many Jews really come from Poland or Russia which is where my Jewish family comes from, although now that I think about it those aren't the only places where Jews come from and there are Sephardic Jews, I guess, so you can't really place them in any one region, so it was silly. This amused Clemente terribly for a little while, and then we left, him stumbling and giggling and asking other people if they wanted his bottle of wine for 2 euros, me following in awe of his playful charm.

When we got back to the circle, Clemente let us in on another little secret.

"You see this bottle of wine?"
"Yeah."
"I'll tell you something about it."
"Yes?"
"It was worth much more than I bought it for."
"Really?"
"Oh yes."
"Why is that?"
"The wine is shit, but this bottle is great!"

And then Clemente suggested, partly joking but maybe not, that the bottle itself was worth buying for 2 euros. Even though he bought it for 1 euro 95. The guy was a true jester.

At that point we had to go and catch the metro before it stopped running.

So far, Paris has been filled with fun, sort of touristy but nonetheless beautiful adventures. On Saturday I hung out with good old pal Luke Pyenson and some of his friends from Tufts, who are awesome, at the Champs de Mars, also eating baguettes with amazing cheeses and patés and melon, then walking the Champs Élysées, enjoying tasty maccarons, taking in the Jardin des Tuileries, and just loving the sites. Suffice it to say I've eaten mouthwatering treasures and seen beautiful things with great, fun people over these last five days. I've enjoyed maccarons, falafel, éclairs, crêpes, escargot, transcendent gelato, and other tasty delights while marveling at this place's enduring beauty.

I should've written about these experiences as they happened, but now I've been forced to summarize, which is unfortunate, so I think from here on I'm just going to write posts when I have specific stories to share, because summary is not terribly interesting. Also, when it comes to the whole this place is so beautiful thing, I think I'll save that until I gain a more informed perspective on Paris and its people and its different neighborhoods and history, because right now I don't really know what I'm talking about too much and I'd rather save that discussion for when I do.

Ok, great. I'll write again soon I'm sure!