After I retired from performing life in 2005, when I met my now-husband (for you idiots that think he’s part of that past – he is not!), I had a collection of short stories I’d been working on for a few years. They were awful. They were funny to me and my friends, and really, I wrote them for my friends more than anyone, but it wasn’t a solid look at my life. They were snapshots of some of the wildest, weirdest and most recent moments, but there weren’t near enough of them to warrant an entire book. Nonetheless, I shopped that collection out to every publishing house I could find. I was universally rejected, except for one gentleman who saw potential. I wore those rejections like a badge of honor, though. One woman even responded with something along the lines of, “You are what is wrong with the world.” I imagine Charles Bukowski had similar hate mail throughout his life.
It was fun to share those stories with friends. Julie Strain, may she rest in peace, loved one of my stories so much she brought it up every time we talked. I had a story about getting high in a home in Malibu and running around like a forest squirrel, darting from room to room, perching myself on furniture. She would cackle and talk about feeling the same way when her and a famous 80’s actor would hang out and get high. I loved her. She was so much fun and full of light. When I found out she was not doing well, it crushed me. After Doug and I got married, she invited us over and took pictures of us so that our Vegas photos weren’t the only “wedding” photos we had. She was colorful and outrageous. I met her on the set of Judge Julie. She was a six-foot-one, raven-haired beauty. As she walked past me down the hall, we locked eyes. My eyes were wide with wonder as I heard myself say, “I love your hair.” I didn’t know who she was, but I knew I was in the presence of someone magical. She smiled. We chatted about meeting at her house off Coldwater Canyon. Turns out she was an Aquarius, like me, and born in the Year of the Tiger, like me. We got along famously.
Others that enjoyed my stories were Mandy Lion (I had a story just about him entitled Mandy Lion). I had a friend that encouraged me to give a copy of my collection to a writer. We met at a restaurant off Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood and I handed this stranger my manuscript. I thought nothing of it.
One of the stories is An American [Actress] in Paris. I wrote this in 2004 when I went to Paris alone. It was an intimate and necessary trip because I had been once before with someone who ruined it for me. I wanted an experience that didn’t require rushing around and pleasing someone else. I went, I enjoyed my trip. and I wrote about it.
A few years later as I was watching Paris, Je T’aime (Paris, I Love You) – a collection of short stories about Paris – one of the stories caught me. It’s a story about a lone woman with limited French who is visiting Paris by herself. She’s having a good time, but at some point she finds herself in sync with the city in a way that she realizes is how Paris is supposed to be experienced. I’m not saying that anyone stole my story, because they are definitely not identical, and I’m not even saying that the story was inspired by my story, though it could have been. There are strong similarities in the overall experience and naiveté of the characters. If you’ve seen the movie and the segment starring Margo Martindale (one of my favorite actors) in the segment entitled 14e Arrondissement (District 14), you can decide for yourself.
The following short story has only been edited to remove inappropriate euphemisms, sensitive information, the occasional typo, and lots of grammatically incorrect sentence structure. And to complain about “aging” at thirty-one? The audacity!
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An American [Actress] in Paris
Why would a soon-to-be middle-aged [actress] leave the country of her upbringing and heritage and brave the cold vast skies in order to land in a country not of her upbringing and heritage? Mid-life crisis? Heartbreak and despair? A spiritual connection transcending space and time? ….Boredom….? Yep.
A lifetime of daydreaming, ten years of wanderlust and one week of sitting alone in my apartment staring at water stains on my bedroom ceiling had nearly put me over the edge. What had I really done in the way of fulfilling my dreams? I thought, ‘Here I am, a single [actress]. My son and ex-husband live thousands of miles away in a cultural time warp in Alabama, my best friend is an [actress] who thinks she can heal entire cities by renting out her [lady parts], and I have managed to fall in love with and get hurt repeatedly by a guy who thinks that sociopathology and schizophrenia are the same thing. There are one of two things I can do: find the tallest building in Los Angeles and fling myself from it, or go away for awhile. It was a tough decision to make, and then it wasn’t a tough decision to make.
I had been to Paris four years prior, but I went with a gawky redneck who expected American breakfasts every morning at 6 am, complained incessantly about the tiny rooms and the tiny beds and the lack of air conditioning. It’s like being at the opera with a large person standing right in front of you blocking the entire show. You know it’s beautiful, but you can’t see it. The sounds are marvelous, but you can’t feel it. And there’s nothing you can do about it! You are forced to sit through the entire show anyway, and the only thing on your mind is the goddamned person blocking the view! I wanted to choke him with a piece of bacon from his freakin’ American breakfast and dump his still body into the Seine.
Thrill of thrills, I got my first French experience just getting on the plane.
Airports make me weary. It’s the big waiting game. It is so predictable that I manage every time to go into rote airport behavior. It’s that , ‘I. AM. NOT. HUMAN. I. AM. A. MACHINE.’ mode. Glazed over eyes, stiff physical responses. Because it really is all about the waiting. Waiting to get to the airport. Waiting to check in your luggage. Waiting to get through security. Waiting to get on the plane. Waiting to get off the plane. Waiting to get the luggage back!
Well…..this, of course, was very different because I wasn’t traveling to just any city. I was traveling to the most wonderful city on planet Earth. Nothing could take away my inward smile. Not even Frenchy Sea Foam.
Frenchy Sea Foam is a tall man and he looks like every other French person. Brooding, bored and….dressed….in a…sea foam suit….? Okay. So he doesn’t dress like every other French person.
Frenchy Sea Foam couldn’t find his seat on the plane. Not at all a terrible thing unless I happen to be the person standing just behind you waiting to get to my seat. But because I was going to Paris, it didn’t bother me.
It did bother everyone standing behind me waiting to get to their seats. I have heard elders say that patience comes with age. I ain’t feelin’ it. From me or anyone else. The only thing that comes with age, so far, is lack of patience and Botox injections. And quite frankly, I’m sure the only reason old people are patient is because they have no choice. They may be snailing through the grocery store aisles or snailing down the roadways in their automobiles the size of cargo boats, but I am sure they would be plowing through people if they knew their bones wouldn’t break in the process. And though they can’t talk that loud or fast, I am absolutely positive that in their minds they are screaming, ‘I hate this….I hate YOU ALL! DIE! DIE! DIE!’
If I’m not mistaken, the words may be spelled differently and the pronunciation of letters and numbers may be different, but written letters and numbers are still the same in English and in French. 18, is still 18. ABC, is still ABC. And it doesn’t take a two-hour conversation in the middle of the airplane aisle to figure it out.
I waited….and waited. I waited and then waited some more, but because of the other very impatient people that were urging me to move, I did. I barged right through Frenchy Sea Foam, nearly toppling him down into his seat or someone else’s (not that he would have known the difference), and went about finding my seat. He yelled in my ear, “Un moment! Un moment! Un moment!” Not only did he yell in my ear, but he deliberately stuck his foot in the aisle so my carry-on couldn’t roll past.
When I travel, I look like a college student. No make-up, hair pulled back, frumpy. But I am not a college student. I am a divorced thirty-one-year-old psycho blonde with only the thinnest air of calm to mask the seething and aging impatience that brews just under the surface of my naive expression. I am a walking, talking time bomb most of the time, ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Meditation would help if it didn’t drive me crazy.
Well, I didn’t know how to say in French, ‘Look, Sea Foam! You had your goddamned moment! Move!’ So, instead I yelled right back in his face, “Pardon! Pardon! Pardon!” I hope I put little black-stained snags in his sea foam trousers wrestling my carry-on free. I then yelled, with equal disdain into his face, ‘Merci!’ The language barrier may be alive and well, but fortunately for me, anger translates. My first argument. Oh joy!
I don’t want to argue. I want to get along, because I know that I am a lucky, lucky girl. Lucky, except in love. Luck placed me right into the cab of a romantic. The living Pepe Le Pew.
He spoke no English. I speak very little French. I understood a few questions. He understood my answers. ‘Here for work?’ ‘No, vacation.’ ‘Here to meet your fiancé?’ ‘No, I’m here alone.’ What was I thinking?
Cute, blonde, alone. Not French. Old, squat, seedy-looking. Very French. He smiled at me through the rearview mirror. I smiled back at him. He leered at me through the rearview mirror. My eyes got all shifty. ‘Oh shit!’ I thought. ‘He is going to hit on me!’ Romance bubbles in the most unexpected places.
This grimy little man put forth the effort. Once again, proof that the language barrier cannot fully halt communication, he began to sing to me. He began to serenade me.
It sounded…..Arabian…or something. His eyes gazed at me longingly. I did my best to look pleased and amused at the same time. He continued to sing. I bobbed my head up and down in time. He reached his hand around the back of the seat. I stared at it wondering if he was going to magically produce a bouquet of flowers. He reached out his hand to me. I looked up the number for emergency in my travel guide. He stole glances at my legs. I found the number for emergency in my travel guide.
It was a long drive. He sang the entire trip and finally got hold of my hand at some point. In universal, ‘I want to do you in the worst way’ language, he stroked the palm of my hand. (It was a very small car.) But it gets better. At the crescendo of serenading, a falsetto aria to beat all others, stroking the palm of my hand….he farted. It was a long and loud fart, and at first, I thought maybe a motorist’s sickly bike had tooted by or something. I swear, Pepe didn’t miss a beat. He kept staring and ended his bravado as if nothing had happened. I would have let it slide, but the nose does not lie. My patience had worn thin. Pepe Le Pew had farted/serenaded me. Singing, stroking, farting Pepe. Stinky, stinky, Pepe! ‘No, Pepe! Nooooo!‘
In the universal ‘this is the grossest thing ever’ language of face-scrunching, I rolled down the window and yelled, “Je suis fatigué! C’est après d’ici?!” (“I’m tired! It is near here?!”)
Frenchy Sea Foam and Pepe Le Pew would not deter my happiness. Never! I was in Parisian Paradise. The capital of fashion. Paris, Mother-Freakin’ France! No one was going to take away my revelry. No one!
I chain-smoked as the beautiful African lady cleaned my new home. Some slob had left all manner of food crumbs everywhere. I helped her not get the sliding closet mirror back on it’s tract. Too heavy. Too broken. Who cares! I just wanted to chain-smoke in private. I smoke enough to gag a factory worker. I could tell she didn’t like it. But I did tip her five euro for my deposit of early lung cancer contamination. That pleased her. Then I slept. I slept all day in Paris!
In the little enclave that was my apartment-style hotel room in Motte-Piquet, I had a kitchen, a living room, and access to a grocery store less than a block away. Mornings were spent sampling chocolate-filled bread and fruit pastries at the Patisserier seven feet from the entrance of the hotel. The bathroom….was not the best place to really do much of anything, let alone bathe. A closet would have felt superior next to it. Tiny doesn’t even describe it. And I do believe it is this ‘tiny’ detail (or lack thereof), that might explain why the French get such a bad rap when it comes to personal hygiene. Investing in a large bathroom and actually spending time in it might not be such a bad thing. Is this why perfume is so damned popular here?
Despite the Houdini contorting I had to do in the shower just to get partially groomed, wine filled my glass, and appreciation filled my heart. I felt at peace for the first time in years. I felt alone for the first time in years. I felt like the person I was meant to be. When I’d been the child prodigy and not a nuisance. Before anger wrecked the family home. Before idiocy ripped away any chance at self-betterment. Before ‘The Cloud’. And though dark clouds lined the French sky, the clouds in my own heart had lifted. I wept at it’s beauty. I was home.
On the second day, I took a walk. I kind of knew where I was, but I had maps, so who cares, right? As soon as I saw her, I followed her like a beacon. She towered over everything. I crossed the Champs de Mars to reach her, a green garden covering several blocks with places for children to play, places for lovers to sit, and places for dog’s to shit. (I had to keep looking down lest I step in doo doo.) And when I reached her, I gazed at her the way a child stares at a big red balloon. My eyes sang. I took a mental picture and stayed there, savoring her for several moments. I gave a quiet and internal nod to the art of classically beholding something wonderful, and then I took out my modern machinery in order to steal a piece of her soul. I pulled out my Canon Digital Rebel.
I had never seen this perspective of the Eiffel Tower before. Right at her base, looking up. Her massive legs would fill up the bottom of my frame and then show her tapering up so elegantly into the sky. It was so intimate. Like being a teeny tiny person stealing a look up a lady’s dress. It felt sexual and sweet and I wanted to own that memory of her for myself.
I took out my big awkward camera, attached the big awkward lens, and turned it on. But it did not come on, because there was no goddamned battery in it! My face flushed. I looked up at The Lady. She laughed back at me. ‘Ha! In typical male fashion you show up to molest me without working equipment! You absurd girl!’ I felt pretty inadequate at that moment, but I laughed at myself. I laughed with her.
I went about taking care of all manner of things. I went to the American Embassy and got information on the procedures for moving to France. I got listings for American groups that gather there for moral support. I met a Greek fan there. That sounds wrong…. I met a Greek man there who recognized me from my movies. Cute, too. I had considered the prospect of romance before ever leaving for Paris, but this was not my idea of pursuing romance. They always ask too many questions. They always look like their eyelids are taped back onto their foreheads. They always look psychotic.
I went to the Galleries de LaFayette in the Opera District to find a battery for my camera. The annoying woman didn’t know anything about cameras and yet she was in charge of the entire camera department. Then again, I wasn’t really prepared to go into a lengthy thing, in French, about camera batteries.
I spent the first few days, bright as a penny. An eager and timid American girl, looking everyone straight in the eye in youthful expectation. I’ve been around, so it’s been years since I’ve had this expression on my face. And I was scared. I embraced it because it heightened my awareness, but it was like I wanted something. Recognition? For what? For trying to speak a foreign language? For being there? For being brave enough to be there alone? It was as if I expected them to acknowledge my determined effort and immediately sing my praises. Not everyone maybe, but someone?
I got my week pass for the Metro and headed out with the wind in my sails. It felt so good, and I felt so alive, because I didn’t know what would happen. And I continued to seek some kind of recognition in the people’s faces. Some hint of kindness. But I found nothing. Just cold indifference. The only real emotional moment happened with a lady behind the glass at one of the Metro stations. I went through the gate with my pass, lost my glove somewhere within fifteen feet or so, went back through the gate, didn’t find my glove, and then couldn’t get back through the gate again. It was bad enough that I couldn’t figure out how my glove had magically vanished in a time span of twenty seconds, but as with the woman at the camera store, I wasn’t prepared to go into a lengthy conversation about missing gloves and not getting back through the gate. Exasperated, I was forced to half-mime, half tell her in broken French, that I couldn’t get back through the gate. She understood! She let me through and smiled at me with compassion. Though, I did wonder later if she was sweetly amused, or if she was entertaining thoughts in her head of how the dumb little American girl was going to look trying to find her lost passport, trying to get back on the plane.
Something happened on that third day. Just before walking outside, I didn’t feel so eager anymore. I felt tired. A bit done in. I didn’t even want to step outside, but I made a mental effort to slow down. A very deliberate attempt to take my time. I gave into my feelings, and that’s just what I needed. That’s when I discovered an inner Paris. That’s when I felt her heartbeat.
You can come to her and appreciate her history by looking at the structures. You can practice her customs by sitting at the cafés drinking espressos and cappuccinos. But her heartbeat is infused in the damp air and the looks on the people’s faces. That’s where her feelings lie. It’s slow and subtle, and it finds you, not the other way around. This requires submission, which is perfect. All great love affairs require grand submission.
I rode the Metro, but I stopped just looking at the faces. I looked into them. And I felt them. And I found a recognition there, better than praise.
You never really know a city until you have been in her belly. Roamed her intestines and encountered what it is that makes her tick. Maybe that’s why Los Angeles is considered so fake. So surface. She has no intestines to roam through. She is all bright and airy like a virgin maiden. New York has guts. Manhattan is more like a man to me, that way. All erect spires. Intimidating. Paris is a lady. Cultured, fragile, but lasting. And Dainty. Her building’s don’t stab into the air. They swoon into it. All feminine curves, relaxed and teasing. Her subways are her womb.
I walked through her tunnels and encountered the commuters, the laughing, oblivious tourists with their animated conversations in every different language. The beggars and the wanderers. The young boys who hop from train to train all day long, playing their musical instruments for a few euro. In New York, they play saxophones and clarinets. In Paris it’s accordions and violins. There were people who chose to ride the subway, but more than them were the people who had no choice but to ride the subway. And I stopped trying to find anything, and I found everything. My glances were averted for the first few days, but they were met on the third, and those looks told me volumes. ‘I am lonely.’ ‘I am hungry.’ ‘I am close to madness.’ ‘I’m meeting my lover.’ Mine said, ‘I understand.’ And don’t we all just want to be understood? Connecting through an invisible bond, I rode the heartbeat. This prepared me for my trip to The Louvre.
History. Large. Incredible. I felt so small, and I wept within myself where there were no eyes to judge me. It was….awesome. The building….the art…. The Louvre is one of the most beautiful Paris museums. It was heartbreaking. It shattered me into a million pieces and then put me back together again in the form of painted lines, finely sculpted parapets and fingered inlays of once soft clay. Raw, passionate, soul-shaking. It was quiet redemption for my worn soul. From the mind of a simple woman witnessing the only language that I consider truly universal, art….if I had died at that moment, the only thing that could have been more fulfilling, would have been to see my son’s smiling face, for he is my art. My one great personal and perfect creation.
The Mona Lisa stole my breath away. I’d never paid much mind to her picture before. But she did. She stole it right from my chest. She held her pose and smiled at the hordes that crowded around her. I stared at her for a long time. Where did that smile come from? What did she know? Had she known Paris? Italy? Had she met Pepe?
My legs ached from walking and my eyes were tired from staring, but I bore it all with a smile. Some people find salvation standing at the cliffs of The Grand Canyon. Some from skydiving. Any endeavor that screams silently of how small we are. I found mine in an ancient space laced with the efforts of thousands of hands long since dead. You can’t find a church and sanctuary better than that.
I got my battery and took pictures of the Arc de Triumphe. I paid eight euros to ascend to the top and captured a city shrouded in wet fog. I deflected the parasites vying for my camera through friendly offerings to ‘take a picture for me’. I went back to The Louvre, snapping away at porcelain-skinned lovers and Miss Mona. I did it all, except for one thing.
I only had the last day to see her again. And it was raining, but I wanted that damn picture. So I walked back to the Eiffel Tower and waited on a bench. I waited for two hours, knowing the rain would let up, eventually. I sat as patient and as quiet as the tower, herself. I learned in that time that the only way to get a pesky salesperson to go away is to ignore them completely. No conversation whatsoever. I admired her steel beauty and watched the throngs of tourists waiting in line to ride the elevators. And then the rain stopped. And I took it. I slipped my hand right up her skirt, and this time, my equipment worked.
I climbed aboard the plane bound for Los Angeles, and for once, I wasn’t looking forward to going home. Because I knew I was leaving my home. Her age, beauty, subways, food and people affected me so deeply that I can only think of getting back as soon as possible, for no better reason than I feel safe nestled in her bosom.
I went to a little restaurant in Motte-Piquet, just before leaving. And as I ate my fine fourchette du boucher with bordelaise sauce, and sipped from my glass of Chateau Carcanieux, I wrote this ode to my love.
I love Paris the way I love New York. Nothing affects her. Her Eiffel Tower goes unnoticed, much like the Statue of Liberty, except to the wide, virgin eyes of strangers. But there is a lazy quality to her that New York lacks. She is alive and breathing, full of bustling life, but her pulse is slower. Her air, the same, but it is sweeter. She goes down like a fine wine. Smooth, subtle, delicious. And if you’re one of the few who can wink at her with a bit of knowing, and a bit of indifference, if you’re lucky, she will wink back at you.
Ma ville, mon coeur, mon amour, je t’aime….. Je t’aime.
(My city, my heart, my love, I love you….. I love you.)
I’ll end this with the nicest rejection letter I received:
Your memoir is definitely original and has a sense of humor, but your style of writing could be more refined and the main character more developed.
Charlotte, how right you were. Thank you!
