le Pitstop en Paris

     For me, this trip has always been about Greece.  Paris is not a destination; it is just a beginning. But who can complain when Edith Piaf is the opening act. My boyfriend Alex and I would start on the grand boulevards of Paris and end on the beaches of Mykonos. From high culture to the beginnings of culture.

Alex's job is to arrange everything and pay for almost everything. My job is to carry as much of our luggage as I can and pay for as little as I can. This is fair for reasons that go back 30 years, have little to do with Alex, and make no sense to anyone but me.  Luckily, Alex is amazingly generous and doesn't need or even want to hear my retarded reasoning. He has been to Paris several times already but never stayed at a gay Bed & Breakfast, and thought it would give our trip a personal touch and bring us closer to the Parisian way of life. He found one in a perfect central location right across the street from The Monument of Saint-Jacques near the gay le Marias section of town. True, it is owned by a gay man named Fredrick and true, it does have a bed in the spare bedroom of the 2 -bedroom apartment that he lives in and true, Fredrick did offer to make us breakfast if we really wanted him to, but as a Gay Bed & Breakfast, it fell short of Alex's lofty hopes. After giving us the keys and tour of the apartment that only took 30 seconds, he went into his room and promptly removed his pants and spent the next 2 days in 2 different colored Ralph Lauren high-collared polo-shirts and bikini white underwear.

   "I can't believe he's dressing like that. He's more inappropriate than you," Alex whispered to me.

   "I know, isn't it great," I said, taking off my shirt and pants so I could walk around in my underwear too. "I didn't know Bed & Breakfasts were like this."

    "This isn't a Bed & Breakfast, it's a locker room."

“If Fredrick was a swarthy French serviceman in his underwear you wouldn't mind so much.”

“ For that I'd pay double what Fredrick's charging,” Alex said with a devilish grin that showed the less hoity-toity and more debaucherous side of him.

     We were so exhausted from the 12 hour flight that we slept from 1:00 PM to seven at night, missing the entire afternoon. We felt guilty for not forcing ourselves to stay up and see more of Paris since we were only staying for 2 nights before the flight to Athens, so we promised ourselves that we would stay up late and at least go out at night. But we ended up getting drunk  at a great meal where I was served my first peeled tomato, came home and had great sex for 4 1/2 minutes, and passed out again and slept until almost 2:00 in the afternoon. Fredrick had been barricading himself in his small office whenever he wanted to smoke which was whenever he was awake, so he missed the one time Alex and I had actually left the apartment.

“ This is the first time that I had guests who never left the apartment. It's like Ann Frank in the attic.”

When we calculated that we had basically only spent 8 hours awake in Paris so far, we were even more embarrassed of ourselves. Our plane to Greece was leaving at 7:00 the next morning which meant we had to be at the airport by 5:30, which meant we had to leave by 4:45, which meant we had to get up by 4:00 at the latest. We decided there was only one thing to do-- forget about going to bed at night and take a vampire's tour of Paris by moonlight. To celebrate our plan we went back to sleep for a few more hours.

We had a very late lunch at six o'clock then began our walk without any intention. The last time Alex was in Paris was eight years ago so he wasn't sure where we were heading, which was perfect. As we wandered from block to block, we passed so many cafes and pastry shops that we started comparing the number of them to the number of fire hydrants. I can confidently say that there are more places to buy sweets in Paris than there are fire hydrants. This means that French firefighters would stand a much better chance if fires could be extinguished with pralines & crème rather than water. Just by chance, we stumbled across world-famous landmarks and historical monuments, plus a few old churches which we had no desire to go into, nor could we have without bursting into flames. There was one church, however, that looked so sinister it was almost appealing. “ They must have done wonderful things to Jews and gays in this one,” Alex joked. “Not a lot of laughter coming out of there.” We sat on one of the many benches forming a rectangle under trees with the thickest and lowest canopy of leaves I have ever seen. By the entrance to the church was a huge row of high, lush antique roses in gorgeous colors with thousands of tooth-sized thorns that made them as sinister as the church as they stood guard in front of. We followed the roses to the end then walked along the side of the building past one of its massive flying buttress. The side wall kept on going further and further back, forming different chambers of what was turning into a huge, block-long church. When we reached the back of it that opened onto a stone square, Alex and I turned around and realized that what we had thought was the front entrance of a neighborhood church was actually the backyard of none other than Notre Dame itself. We eventually came up on The River Seine and continued as it split in two along more residential areas, and crossed over to make our way all the way back to the gay district. It was almost 1:30 in the morning and the streets were getting more and more empty, especially since it was a Tuesday. All the walking had made us starving so we both scarfed down lamb with special sauce from The Kebab Stand, the only thing still serving food.

Then we were ready for our fête complet, the pièce d' résistance. Alex and I made a promise to each other that we would end our trip to Paris with a walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower, no matter how far it was as long as we could get back by cab in time to leave for the airport at 4:45. To Alex's credit, he had not used his iPhone's GPS app. to cheat once during the entire night, but for this Parisian pedestrian pilgrimage we needed help from the twinkling satellites above. He typed in 'Eiffel Tower' and moved his phone from side-to-side like a divining rod. “ It's 5.2 kilometers from here. And wait a second....by walking it should take under 2 hours. That gives us enough time. Follow me.”

By this time the streets were deserted. As we trekked along and saw no one else walking past us in either direction, we started to realize how special our journey was. To our amazement, we seemed to be the only two people in Paris who were out on the streets besides the homeless who were always out on the streets. It felt like Paris belonged to us alone. There wasn't even a lot of cars passing by; only the occasional cab who would stop and ask if we needed a ride. It was so desolate that we should have been more scared.

“ Alex, it's dangerous out here. There's no one to help us if we need it.”

Alex's ears pricked up when he heard the word 'dangerous' and he made another one of his devilish grins. “ I might get mugged and raped. Well, hopefully not mugged, just raped.”

“ I can't believe you're not more frightened.”

Alex pointed out the the only frightening thing about our walk was my loud farting from the lamb.

“ I can't help it. It's has to be from that stupid special sauce.”

“ You're making sure that I'll be the only one getting raped.”

“ Then I'll keep farting. It's the only weapon I have right now.”

Still there was no one to be spotted as we walked along The River Seine for the second time that night, passed The Parliament, The National Assembly, the Museum of Modern Art, The hugely obscene Petite Palace, the old Louvre and the new Louvre. In the 5.2 kilometers, we saw a grand total of one couple on a street bench, a group of five drunk teenagers yelling French at us, and an older man with his dogs. As the GPS told us we were getting closer, we searched the sky for the lights of the tower until we realized that four poultry dots of red light floating in a square shape in the sky was the only lights left on to show one of the most iconic structure in the world. As we got only a few blocks from it the streets got smaller and the echo of our footsteps got louder. When we entered the park where it stands, all we could still see was the four red lights way above us and four white lights that illuminated only a tiny bit of each corner under the base.

The City of Lights...Off

“There must be a light switch somewhere,” I joked.

“ Wait,” Alex pointed his iPhone at it. “There must be an app to turn it on.”

We both laughed at how ridiculous the lighting was as every picture Alex tried to take of it kept coming out black. But then we both realized something at the same time. How often do any tourists dare to walk all the way to The Eiffel Tower at 3:30 in the morning and see it in all it's glorious blackness. What a brilliant way to see “The City Of Lights”.