NEEDLING

TYPICAL FRIDAY MORNING

6h42

I arrive at the hotel, have coffee and croissant with Kamel, the night clerk, and Clementine, the maid. A little later, Malika, the second maid, shows up.

7h28

“Yesterday,” a client starts with me after I tell him good morning and help him move a table in the breakfast room so that his group of four can sit at the same table, “I gave you a list of three complaints and nothing was done about it. What do I have to do to get this taken care of?”
This takes me off guard because : 1) I was in a good mood; 2) we are after all in a two star hotel, not a four star, and they’re not paying enough to expect slaves and servants; and 3) the tone he took with me was degrading, the voice one takes when one speaks to a badly behaved dog. He is the client, though, and I couldn’t tell him to go fuck himself so I made some lame excuse. However, these are clients that can expect absolutely nothing from me from now on. I usually go out of my way to help people out. As he stepped out and handed me his key, he said in the same tone, “I still have the same problems that need taking care off.” “Oui, monsieur,” I said and smiled while thinking, “go fuck yourself.”

The three complaints : 1) Leaking sink; 2) No klenex in the room; 3) TV remote control not working. 1b) I will leave a note for Kamel that under no circumstance should he move the client to a different room; 2b) Even if we find a box of klenex, the client should be told we no longer have any; 3b) I probably will, but I might not put new batteries in the remote control, depends on whether I find my good humour back again. I might go up to his room and spit on his toothbrush, if the notion becomes attractive enough.

Snotty Client comes back in, he forgot something. As he steps back out of the hotel, from the elevator to the door he says, “Merci, Monsieur…” as he gives me his key back, “Bonne journée, Monsieur…” as he steps towards the door, “Au revoir, Monsieur…” as he steps outside. I ignore him completely, never answering him with the usual polite answers, or even bothering looking at him to at least acknowledge him. Childish, I know, but it makes me feel better.

I’ve worked in plenty of service-industry jobs, and I’ve never understood why some people are just simply snotty or down right rude and mean to the people who serve them food, drinks, rooms, cut their hair, shave them, shine their shoes, et cetera… sure, maybe you do earn more in one day than some of us do in one month or even one year, but we control what you eat, what you drink, where you sleep, and so much more… shouldn’t you at least be polite to us? I’ve worked in plenty of kitchens, and I know what happens to the food of certain asshole clients. There’s almost always a smile on our faces, that’s true… however artificial… but…

9h58

Two clients still eating breakfast. I told Malika she should go up to the rooms, that I would take care of the late birds. Everybody paid no problem. One client, a regular, we’ll call him Monsieur Bidet, who usually complains about everything, was actually nice… and even joked a little this morning.
“Good morning, sir, did you sleep alright?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Did you have anything to drink, sir, from the minibar?”
“…”
“Such as mineral water, coke, whisky, beer, or whatever?”
“I had some tap water, we don’t have to pay for that, do we?” He said half jokingly.
“Not today, sir, but the next time I’m afraid we’ll have to charge for the tap water, sir.” We both laughed
This Monsieur Bidet is usually god awful. Yesterday, we forgot to bring up his breakfast at the requested time of 7h30. He called me at 7h40 to remind me we had forgot to bring his coffee up and croissant. I expected to get chewed out as soon as he came down. Nothing. All smiles. I was pleasantly surprised. This morning, I tell Clementine about it as we’re having our before-the-clients-come-down coffee.
“Monsieur Bidet was so nice yesterday, what happened? Did he chew you out when you brought his breakfast fifteen minutes late?”
“No, not at all. I was all nervous, figuring on getting yelled at as usual. I even took a breather in front of his door getting ready for whatever was coming. And nothing, he was real polite, and thanked me for breakfast, and everything.”
“Wow… what got over him, I wonder. He didn’t say anything?”
“Nothing. When I walked in, he was getting out of the shower with just a little towel around his waist... so he didn’t say anything, he just said thanks.”
“You just walked in?”
“Well, I knocked first, then I walked in when he said to. And there he was smiling with a little towel around his waist just getting out of the shower.”
“That’s why he’s been in a good mood. Clementine, you got the poor chap all excited, we should send his wife a note.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Believe me, it doesn’t take much.”

ONE HOUR AWAY FROM THE END OF MY 12 HOUR SHIFT

It’s snowing outside. Nothing happened out of the usual today. The usual. The hotel was 3/4 full last night and smoth running this morning. No fights with either client or maid. A couple rented a room for the afternoon. They were in a real hurry. Or at least he was. I only had one room left with one large bed so I gave him the full tariff. He wasn’t happy about that so he said he’d go look some other place. I said OK. Not ten minutes later they were back. “Looks like we gotta take it if we want something clean and descent.” “No problem.” And that was that. Nothing exciting. They left two or three hours afterwards. Everybody paid this morning, nobody tried to rip off the contents of the minibar – a good change – the maids weren’t back-talking-stabbing each other. Not even one single little nag. No complaints from clients except one leaking sink in the same room as a dead battery in the television channel flipper. That room also missed klenex. Old clients who are used to having klenex in the room. But we don’t carry klenexes in the rooms anymore. They have a tendency to walk off daily. The bathtub plug is stuck in another room, the same party as the other complaint, and the only way to get it up is with a knife, the client said. It’s not practical, he added, can you do something about it? Sure, I said, I’ll give it a shot. But the boss was supposed to be here before 16h00 and he hasn’t shown up yet to count the cash, check last night occupancies, and fix the small everyday problems. AND, most importantly, to make the breakfast and other stuff – jam, butter, tea, soft drinks, orange juice, milk, etc… – order… very important… which means there won’t be anything left for the weekend and that it’ll be my fault. I called him twice on it at the other hotel. Got the boss the first time and he said he’d be around before the 16h00 daily deadline for orders, not to worry about it. Second time I called, at 15h30, I got his brother and almost got my head chewed off. No longer my problem, then… forget it. Work, it’s so exciting.

SIMPLE EVENING

Re-reading the entry I wrote today. Geez! Sometimes I express myself worse than a three year old. Can anybody out there teach me some grammar? Gotta do something about that. Not tonight, though. Just got back from the movies. First time in more than two weeks since I've gone to the cinema! Was starting to feel withdrawal pains. Think I'm gonna watch part of the flick I went through last night and finished this morning. Funny Bones with Jerry Lewis. I like having a DVD player on my computer, even if I haven't really entirely paid for it yet. Accompaniment food: the leftovers from last night's diner at Claire's. She gave me the leftovers so I could take home. She prepared some good simple stuff. White cabbage paned with a chopped apple seasoned with curry & garlic and mixed in at the last minute with oven-cooked "lardon" (very similar to bacon but thicker and chopped in cubes.) Knob Creek slightly sprinkled with cold water, and we're on for a good simple evening.

PROCRASTINATION OR COWARDNESS ?

Couldn’t get out of bed this morning. I was finally able to step out of my sheets around the very late hour of ten thirty (I’m usually out and running – metaphorically speaking, I hate running physically – by six or latest seven !) Rough morning though, broke a glass last night while falling asleep watching a movie on my new computer, the one I can’t pay for, the one for which I should call my banker but haven’t done so though today was the day I should have called him. You must know the saying : If you can’t take it, don’t dish it. Well, in the same logic : If you can’t face your banker, don’t overdraft. I’m at work now, so I’ll call him a little later this afternoon after the maid has gone home, and if my boss doesn’t stick around all afternoon as he sometime does. The movie was a very good one, and matter fact I finished watching it this morning instead of calling my banker. And for your information, I’d drank the content of the glass BEFORE breaking it.

SHAVING

One of the multiple reasons I’d like to quit this particular job – though it’s a good job in the sense that I get along with my employer and my colleagues and I’ll certainly carry my bargain of the contract to it’s final date, June 8th of this year, no problem – but if I were to elucidate some of the reasons that I might have of WHY I’d like to quit this job, shaving would be one of them.

Shaving is one of those necessary evils I do not look forward to every morning. I’m one of those people who has to shave at least once a day if I’m to sport a non-prickly face. And my face being very white while my beard being very dark, it’s the least amount of body aesthetics I have to go into daily to be presentable within the service industry of which the hotel business is part of. I keep my hair short enough I don’t have to do anything with it except shampoo it two or three times a week. I hate wax, creams, colouring, deodorants, aftershaves, perfumes, greases… ANYTHING which smells any kind of non-natural odour or which has a icky feel to it anywhere close to my body, face definitely included. When I don’t hold a job, an important part of the last three or five years, I don’t shave on a regular basis. And that’s just fine by me.

Though not everything about shaving is negative.

Up until the end of the summer 95, I sported a full beard. One that I was quite proud of. It was thick, dark and, at least I thought so back then, manly. An important part of the very essence of masculinity, I believed strongly rightly or not (it doesn’t matter.) Towards the end of the summer, I shaved most of it off, keeping only a goatee and sideburns, that I still wear to this day. The reasons that I didn’t shave all of it off was: 1) It was already hard enough to shave off what I did shave off; 2) Shaving the whole face would mean twice the work of keeping it shaved off daily; 3) As I’ve said before, I’m lazy (laziness is not necessarily a negative trait, I want to make that clear, through laziness, if one is intelligent enough, one can learn efficiency, but this has nothing to do with what I want to talk about at this time.)

There was this elderly lady, we’ll call her Rose, I had met that summer, who, along with her husband whom we’ll call Boom, left a lasting impression on me.

Every once in a while we’re lucky enough to meet folks of their kind with such large hearts and so full of goodness, when you meet them you just want to be in the same room as them all the time. Those kind of people are often older, funny, full of life, young at heart, forgiving, non-judgemental, and did I say it already, funny. I’ve had the chance of meeting several of these older folks in my short life, but right now we’ll stick to Rose and Boom.

“Francois,” Rose said to me, holding the few sheets of poetry & stories & dialogue I had given her so as to get her opinion, while looking at me like only an elderly woman can look at a silly young man, a silly young man should I ad who hadn’t understood diddly squat about life, and she said to me, while I was expecting some sort of criticism on my work et cetera… “Francois, why do you hide behind that beard of yours? What do you have to hide from?” I started to stroke my three inch beard nervously as she continued, “Why do you hide underneath that hat of yours? What’s that hat going to protect you from?” At the time I wore a black felt hat with large rims, a hat I put on as soon as I got out of bed, a hat I sometimes slept with. “Francois, why do you hide inside that grey coat of yours? What’s there to hide from?” At the time, I wore a long grey raincoat whether it rained or not. “And those sunglasses, why do you always wear those sunglasses, hiding like that behind those sunglasses, don’t you think we don’t want to see your eyes or something?” She said all this to me with a calm voice, with her Brooklyn accent, kindly. She said those words to me with kindness. “You have lots of reasons not to hide, Francois, your writing isn’t always so good, but who cares? It could be much better if you didn’t hide so much. What? You think by hiding from the world behind that beard and those sunglasses, underneath that hat and inside that coat, what? You think you’re going to observe the world any better? No. If you didn’t hide so much, maybe you’d be happier, and if you were happier, maybe your writing, if your writing needs to be there at all, then it might become better, more natural… and maybe there’s no need to write at all. Who knows & who cares. That’s not the point.” And she handed my poems back to me.

Those weren’t her exact words, it’s been a while, but they were something along those lines.

A few days later I shaved off my beard and stopped wearing my hat, though it would be a little while before I got rid of the grey raincoat, and I stopped wearing my sunglasses when there was no need to wear sunglasses.

Often when I shave, I think about Rose and her husband Boom. That’s the reason why shaving isn’t necessarily a bad thing. BUT EVERY SINGLE DAY!

BACK AT WORK

Bought a brand new computer while I was in Austin. I don’t have the money to pay for it and there was a letter waiting for me from my banker before I got back. As I walked in, there it was underneath my door next to the 2003 tax declaration form and some junk mail. Away for a week and that’s all the mail I receive. Not even a coherent message on my phone. Just some guy saying “hello… hello… anybody there… hello…” and not even a voice I recognized.

After spending more than fourteen hours in and out of planes and airports, I didn’t feel like opening this envelope to read a letter knowing perfectly well what was written on it… more or less. So Saturday morning I went to work and didn’t open it till later, after I had completed my twelve hour shift, gone back home, taken my boots off, and uncorked the wine bottle.

The good news is my “conseiller” has changed. I wore the last one out. A couple summers ago when the bank was pulling some bad stuff on me, and that I’d exploded a few times accusing them of every money-lending crime in the book, each time I’d walk in the bank looking like a mad-man about to pull a gun, I could see the cashiers crunching up trying to hide in between their shoulders blades all looking at me real worried like : who’s he gonna fall on this time… pray it’s not me. And my dear “conseiller,” who’s desk was up front so I could always tell whether he was in or not, the minute he noticed me he’d bury his head in his papers and computer equipment sweating worse than me... All the sudden looking real busy-like though a few seconds before he’d been daydreaming about god knows what an underpaid two year bank clerk daydreams about, probably about his next fifty cent pay raise.

The last time I went in there a month or so ago, I noticed they put one of those little cubicle dividers up… whatever they’re called, the ones they have in all large office space… and you can’t see my ex-conseiller’s desk anymore. Though I doubt it, I’d like to think I had something to do with that.

So… I have a new fellow, a freshman, a rookie… hopefully right out of school and still idealistic and all. Which brings me to an important question: Why does one become a banker? Is there some sort of false idealistic dream-world one might get lost in, that might make one believe one might make the world a better place by becoming a banker? What could bring some beautiful little baby to grow up, love, dream, play in the sandboxes, have a first kiss then another and a few more… a regular man or a regular woman that’s been brought up in more or less normal conditions… how does that pimpled teenager make it to the university to actually take classes and go through to earning a degree TO BECOME A BANKER !!! Something is wrong with our world when some innocent little baby actually grows up and becomes a banker on purpose… (That’s unfair of me. How does one become a hotel clerk? Does one become anything on purpose? Even a feast for maggots? I guess that’s why some want to create – create something, anything, a book, a statue, a company, a family, a mess, a war, whatever – because by doing so we trick ourselves into thinking we’ve done something on purpose, that we’ve decided on something and gone through with it on our own, through some sentient perversity… delusion…)

What I’m really worried about is this: at thirty two years of age, I still got to go and cry my sob stories to get out of a jam. At twenty, it’s alright. You can get away with it. Play the little boy who’s lost and scared of this big bad world. The innocent gullible face works wonders in your late teens, early twenties, but once the thirties have definitely hit home, it’s a whole other story.

Was writing in my long-hand journal the other day and this is what I wrote:

ROOM NUMBER 53

Missed two rooms today, and both times it was because there was another person in here with me. Room number 53. A regular. He checked in already and he keeps going up and down with the elevator, in and out of his room. He’s waiting for his girlfriend, so he sticks around shooting the shit. Room number 53 is a man in his early thirties, skinny, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket. Looks like he’s worked most his life. Started out in his teens, he told me later, working with the city’s trash clean-up crew, he explained at lengths, and was quickly moved up. He works some other place now. He’s got a team of folks under his responsibility he says to me with pride.

At one point, these two kids are standing outside the glass door looking in checking out the place when one of the two steps in. The other waits outside with the luggage. Never a good sign. That means: 1) they’re not sure about the place; 2) whether or not they can afford our prices; 3) they’re thinking probably not. If the hotel is empty or somewhat empty, whenever a couple of clean looking students walk in, the back-packing type or the here in Paris on their first interview type, when they inevitably ask the inevitable question about room prices, you can give them a little rebate on the spot.

“How much for a room?”
“Two people?” You ask even if you already know the answer.
“Yes…” by this time they’ve seen our price chart and they’ve started making faces.
“A room for two people is ‘so much’, but hey, you two look like good folks, I’ll give you a little deal and I’ll even throw in breakfast, whadda you say?” This takes them off guard right away and you can work with them from there. It works most of the time.

But here’s the rib. You got another customer in the reception area and that guy you didn’t give a discount to, well… there’s not much you can do except give the two kids the regular price and hope they won’t go away like you’re certain they will.

The kid is reticent, so I offer him breakfast thinking for a second there might be a chance, even with room number 53 leaning against the counter. This kid, he’s considering it, but I already know the answer, and what’s worse… I can’t do a thing about it. Back outside, he argues with his buddy, looks at me through the glass door and, before he waves and shakes his head ‘sorry but no’ I know, they’re going to go look somewhere else.

Now, this guy in here, he observes the whole exchange without a comment till after they leave.

He’s bored and a bit nervous, I think. When he talks, he’s jittery. He knows that what he’s saying doesn’t mean a thing neither to him nor to me, but it’s too much for him this waiting, and he’s got to talk, and when he talks he insists on each detail as if that was going to change something.

He steps in and out of the hotel. Once to bum a light for his last cigarette, once to buy a paper bag full of candies from the street vendor, another time for hamburgers. None of it makes the time go any faster, and in the end, he spends most his time leaning against the counter telling me his life story.

The kids were the second room I missed for the exact same reason.

Room number 53 hasn’t seen his girlfriend in over a month. Usually, they both get here at about the same time mid-afternoonish. This time, he got here it was barely after lunch, and he didn’t have nothing else better to do than to hang about the lobby. It’s alright a little bit, makes the time go by faster, but all afternoon gets a little difficult. At least, he’s not the bad sort, and what he says is interesting some of the time, relatively speaking. When you’re sitting behind the same computer for twelve hours straight, your perspective change a bit.

He’s glad he doesn’t live in Paris anymore.

“Don’t get me wrong, there’s no place like Paris. Paris is Paris, it’s the only Paris around, no place like it anywhere else in the world, can’t replace Paris with no other city I know of. Know what I mean?”

He takes a break to chew on his toothpick for a second and look out the glass doors. The Paris conversation came after the hamburger outing. There’s nothing else to do but to nod my head in agreement and wait till he gets going again, or till he goes back up to his room. This is a one way conversation. He could care less about my views on Paris. Typical customer-who-likes-to-talk attitude. I’m behind the counter, or the barman is behind the bar, or the waitress is politely waiting on you, and there’s nowhere you can go, even if you don’t want to listen to what the customer says. If the customer stays polite, stays away from such topics as bedroom topics – I’ve had those as well and I instantly shut them off, I don’t want to know what you do in your room, I’m here to rent you a room and take your money, that’s all – if you don’t have fifteen other customers waiting, then there’s not much you can do. Like I said, I don’t necessarily mind it. Depends.

“Still, once you taste the quiet streets, the calm of living outside the city, then you just can’t come back. Know what I mean?”

This is when the kid with his buddy waiting for him outside came in. Room number 53 doesn’t move an inch from the counter. He concentrates on his toothpick and the chewing of it. I faintly hopped he would take that as a cue to go have a smoke outside, or go back up to his room, that maybe he could see I had to work. Nope. Not an inch. No way to open negotiations with this kid.

The kids steps out of doors and waves no to me.

“Quand même, avec le p’tit déj… mais bon, p’t’ête y zont pas l’argent, quoi… ” (Even with breakfast included… well, maybe they simply don’t got the cash, you know…)

He stresses the word “breakfast,” and continues his monologue on something or other. I shut him out and think this kid, he would have taken the room had I gone down two Euros, five tops. This kid, he was tired of carrying that suit case from one hotel to the next, I could see that. Even if the prices were still a little higher than what they had figured on, they would have stayed with a little insisting and a free breakfast.

Room number 53 takes me out of my reveries and asks me if perchance I don’t have a cigarette… he smoked his last one. No cigarette, sorry.

…

When he first walked into the hotel he told right off he didn’t know me.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” I said.
“How you doing. Who are you? I don’t recognize you. You see, I’m a regular.”
“I’m new, don’t know everybody yet. I only been here a couple of month.”
“That’s why I didn’t recognize you. I’m Mr. so and so.”
“Nice to meet you, sir, I’m Francois. Do you have a preferred room?”
“Number 45.”

That didn’t sound right to me. I looked at the key rack and it was just as I had feared. We don’t have a room number 45.

“We don’t have a room by that number.”
“Oh yeah… uhm… must be room number 54, then… I must’a inversed the numbers.”
“Okay.” Sound reasonable enough, I let my guards down a little. Not entirely, you never know in this business what kind of tricks people are going to try and pull on you.

I give him the appropriate key-card after he pays for the room. He jumps in the elevator like he’s in a real hurry to get to his room and two minutes later he’s back downstairs handing me the key-card.

“That’s not the room,” he says. “Must be room number 53.”
“No problem.” I hand the key-card to number 53.

He feels a need to explain.
“Normally, we get a room with a shower, not a bath…” That being the principal difference between 54 & 53.
“Don’t worry about it, it’s all good.”

He’s not satisfied.
“Once, we got room number 54 with the bath and all. Me, personally, I don’t care, you know what I mean? I don’t mind a bath, a shower, hey… you know, it’s the same to me. But my girlfriend, she got sick in room number 54 once, and then she couldn’t regulate the hot water or something in the bath, you know, and she burned herself in there with the hot water being so hot and all. If she comes up to the room and she sees it’s number 54, she’s not gonna bother sticking around, and then what? You know what I mean? She’s the boss, what she says goes.”

He was all exited.

Afterwards, after he had tried staying in his room watching television, he came back down to chat, the afternoon was simply going too slowly for Room number 53. He leaned against the counter and started going all about the bathtub and how he has to have a shower or else, and he’s not the boss when it comes to deciding about bathtubs and showers.

“It’s been a month since I’ve seen my girlfriend,” he announces as if this explained everything including the universe.
“Everything needs to be just right, know what I mean? I don’t need no bad memories to be brought for no good reasons. You know? Only good memories, that’s what I need right now.” He leaned a little further into the counter and stared out the glass door thinking about what he’d just said.

“Only good memories, you know what I mean? Only good memories,” he repeated one last time.

And apparently, good memories are a plenty in room number 53.

THE RUNNING AWAY TEMPTATION

Difficult week so far. Been getting ready for my trip to Texas. Lift-off from Charles de Gaule on Saturday morning.

So many things to take care of, to decide upon. Mostly dealing with money and its distribution. The problem with this tiresome never-ending process, this touch-and-go science – because when one doesn’t have any money its distribution becomes a science, sometimes a painful one, sometimes a cruel one, and always a creative one – is that one is often enticed, or at least minutely tempted, to run away. An act, a cowardly one no doubt, in which I’ve never found lasting relief, but in which I have sometimes found temporary repose and the false sense that I am headed off on a new journey.

To pay or not to pay the rent, that is the eternal question, the one question which seems to always pop up on a regular basis around the same period every month, whatever country one might find himself in – except of course when one is couch-hopping, another troublesome inexact science reserved for those young at heart with little material possessions if any, preferably none, and a general lack of social ambition.

And so, as every month, I procrastinated and acted as if I didn’t have rent to pay, as if I didn’t have bills on my desk, as if I didn’t have in-existent money in my bank to worry about, as if I didn’t already owe money to just about every single one of my family members, some friends (who don't talk to me anymore), and certain ex-employers. Today is TOO LATE, today will always be too late, forever. When today becomes tomorrow and we will all be dead, it will still be too late for me to be forgiven my debts. So why pay? So why not pay? So why not get a decent job and pay yesterday? So why not? So why not?

I used to be a such responsible young man. What happened? Already a third of the month has flown by, and I’ve only today sent off my rent to my landlord (one month out of two months I owe him… I sent two checks however. One for this month and one for the following month. The first one for one month’s rent and the second for two months’ rent to prove my willingness to take care of what I owe. Honorable?)

I am one of the most honest persons I know, one of the most reliable... just don't lend me any money if you want to ever see it again... but that has nothing to do with reliability and honesty. Money is meaningless. Why do people put such intense value on it? It's much easier to live with oneself, whenever one is poorer than a doorknob and can't seem to get a job for which one thinks he's intellectually, emotionally, and temperamentally designed and/ or qualified for, if one just lives whimsically with the little money one has and with everybody else's money that might cross one's fingers. Especially the government's money. That's the kind of money one calls Free Money.

I'm lost. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah... I just paid part of my rent and my bills and on Saturday I'm flying off to Texas for a few days... and I was thinking : why the hell should I come back to France? Why can't I accidentally forget to get back on the plane? This would by default annul all my debts in Europe... right? This would force me to start all over again, to be a newborn once more, a thirty two year old new born. I'll be thirty three soon enough, the magical reborn age. The age where we die and rise again on the third day... (I'm not gonna go any further with this... for fear of... [choose] ...)

I haven't lived in Texas since 1995... arrh... I left that place for a reason, I just can't remember what exactly. It’s like cottage cheese. I don’t like cottage cheese, but every few years or so, I have to eat some to remind me WHY I don’t like cottage cheese.

I owe over five hundred dollars in parking tickets in Los Angeles... that's nowhere close to Austin, though… the temptation to run away, to fake ourselves into believing the grass is greener on the other side of the ocean… or on the other side of wherever you want… on the other side of my brains, next door to the outhouse of my soul…

(And I started this Blog to talk about my work... 42 hours a week... I've hardly said a word about it yet.)

BOX OF BOOKS

A couple weeks back, Joan sent me a box filed to the rim with books, one sweatshirt, one postcard, and three photographs. Me saying this, writing it down, means absolutely nothing. Could be a large box, a medium box, or a small box. Could be pocket sized paperbacks stacked in a large supermarket-type box, the kind they deliver hundreds of morning cereal in, the kind you can usually grab next to the dumpsters, or it could be a shoe box for baby shoes crammed with one or two large-print hardbacks. Clarification : there’s approximately fifteen books of varying size paperbacks, mostly the kind too large to fit into your blue-jeans but small enough to carry around comfortably, one bright red sweatshirt I’ve worn almost daily since I received the package, and three color photographs taken in Hawaii, the kind you take while on a vacation.

TROUT FISHING

I’m currently reading “The Sun Also Rises,” a personal favorite, a book Joan knows I like a lot. It made me laugh to see that book, because sometime Joan takes herself for Brett, one of the principal characters in the book, and we’ve laughed about this in the past.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read this book. This is minimum the fourth time I’ve read it, and I’d forgotten the trout fishing scene. I’ve never gone trout fishing. The last time I went fishing I still lived in West Texas, I was around 13 years old and caught absolutely nothing. We lived in a motel back then, the one my parents owned, and a friend of a friend of one of the maids had taken me fishing. Or maybe it was the maid’s boyfriend, or her uncle. It was the same maid who gave us white squash from her garden when she had any, and who did all our sowing whenever we needed something patched up. At the time, I hated the hole in front of my boxers, the one to simplify the pissing procedures, so every time my mother bought me new boxers, she had them sowed up before giving them to me. I spent most of that day swimming. I didn’t have any patience to stare at the line all that time.

I haven’t gone fishing since then, but reading that scene made me want to go fishing somewhere. Trout are a recurring theme in my life these days, so I should seriously think about going trout fishing.

First of all there was that time I was in Amsterdam last year and I was completely stoned. I went to the market and bought some fish. I went back up to my friend’s place, who had lent me her apartment while she was away for a few days, and cleaned the two fish. I had no clue that I had just purchased trout. The name was in Dutch and I wasn’t interested in what kind of fish I was buying. I remember them looking shiny and pink. That’s what I liked about them. I placed the two fish in the oven after cleaning them, letting them cook simply. No spices, no oil, no butter. Nothing. Just plain fish with the heads, the scales, the bones… everything that comes with natural healthy fish, other than the guts of course. I let them cook while I had a couple of beers – beers are real cheap in Amsterdam – and I smoked another joint on my friend’s balcony, not that I needed to smoke another joint, but what’s one to do when one is waiting for lunch to cook and it’s a beautiful day outside and you’re in Amsterdam? It takes less than ten minutes for them to cook if the oven is hot. That was so good. The best damn fish I’d eaten in a long time. It helps that I love fish, almost any kind of fish.

Second of all, I read “Trout fishing in America” by Richard Brautigan a few months ago after coming back from Portland, Maine, and that book made me want to go trout fishing too.

And there’s been a few other incidents involving trout. Mostly the eating of trout at diner with or without friends.

There was this one time. I was alone at home and I had gone to the Salon du Vin just a few days before and had bought two bottles of excellent sweet white wine including one bottle of Coteau de Layon, a small wine from the Angers region, south of the Loire river. I knew about this wine because I’d picked grapes in that region a few years ago, and I had kept wonderful memories of this wine so I bought a bottle. Expensive… but hell, every once in a while. I was keeping it for a special occasion. Then, that fateful day, I had gone to the market and bought some nice trout, and upon coming home, preparing the fish, cooking it, and cleaning the meat off the bones, I realized I didn’t have anything to drink with it. I uncorked the Coteau de Layon, even though it’s an aperitif or a desert wine, I went on a limb trusting my instincts, and poured myself a glass. Man oh man… that was one fine meal.

I should go trout fishing.

THE LAST TEN MOVIES I'VE SEEN AT THE CINEMA

Movies in the order of the most recent viewing:

Turning Gate by Sang-soo Hong
I enjoyed this tale about a selfish man in search of the love he'll never find. Not bad.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Ana (real women have curves) by Patricia Cardoso
Simple sentimental comedy about being a young adult looking for independence and finding resistance instead of help from a difficult family. Okay.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Le Retour by Andrei Zviaguintsev
This film doesn't even bother trying to give all the answers. Life is tough as hell. Excellent film. Skip school for this one.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

L'Esquive by Abdellatif Kechiche
This film gave me a headache. All the characters do is scream at each other the whole time. To avoid, unless you want to see a pseudo-socio-drama about being a teenager in an HLM complex (French projects or government housing) right outside of Paris.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Jellyfish by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
I like this kindda of stuff. Fables. We're not sure why it works but it does. Definitely.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

The Station Agent by Thomas McCarthy
Manages to stay away from pathos and easy stereotypes. If you feel excluded... a little too American, though. Whatever that means.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Les Amateur by Martin Valente
Another French HLM movie. A comedy this time. Stumbles on every stereotype and blows up every cliché. Stay away.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Kill Bill : Volume 1 by Quentin Tarantino
What I like about Tarantino, is that he's one of the few American filmmakers who hasn't forgotten that movies don't have to follow any given rules. But does it have to be so violent?
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Après Vous... by Pierre Salvadori
I've liked this director ever since I saw "Les Apprentis," a cynical and dark comedy about a couple of pathetic individuals. "Après Vous..." however is just another passable comedy about a not so distinguishable looser. Entertaining.
IMDB
ALLOCINE

Qui a tué Bambi? by Gilles Marchand
After I got out of this film, I felt sick inside and I had nightmares the whole night. Good stuff!
IMDB
ALLOCINE

SOME OF THE THINGS I’VE LEARNED SO FAR:

1 ) When intoxicated one should stay as far away from the World Wide Web as possible. Any writing done under any precarious state should be done safely without being connected, then put away to be looked at and reworked the next day. Just like email connections is a big NONO under certain mental conditions. (I had already figured this out as far as telephone calls are concerned – not to make them - and letters – to be reread before being sent off - I must be stupid. The problem is I like to listen to the radio on the internet WHILE writing. I should purchase a good old fashion FM transmitter but then I wouldn’t receive my favorite Hoboken, NJ, station - WFMU - when outside of the NYC area, which is 99.99 ad infinitum % of the time.)

2 ) Don’t ever quote anybody - if you use their name or a likeness of their name - without showing them the quote before publishing said quote even if you thought said quote wasn’t going to be interpreted as a quote but as an overall interpretation and condensation of a conversation. To simplify, I won't even use initials, I'm gonna start inventing names for people, and if the same people reappear in several blog entries, I will change their names and even their physical descriptions - though I rarely bother with physical descriptions - and this way I can make these "characters" based or not, loosely or not, on real people, say and do whatever needs to be said and done for the purposes of the blog entry.

3 ) What you think to be a good thing may be interpreted as a bad thing by others. Otherwise said, there is a great possibility that you view the world in a substantially different manner than others do.

4 ) The open-journal medium can be an explosively dangerous medium, and one cannot say everything that goes through one’s head. What am I going to do? Because I prefer to talk about people rather than about events and places. I should have started this undercover, so to say, under a different pseudonym, and without advertising myself shamelessly, pathetically, and drunkenly... But then… I wouldn’t be myself… arrh… the intricacies of life… and what’s the use of writing if others don’t read what you write… and what's the use of writing if we limit ourselves, if we don't say everything that needs to be said... ?

5 ) What is important to me is to be honest emotionally. The truth is all-together another matter, if one considers the truth to be ONLY what happens or what has happened. What I believe is: there is no real TRUTH, because we all interpret what happens or what has happened in our own particular manner. Which is why I'm not even gonna BOTHER with the "truth" because true truth doesn't exist.

6 ) What I see, what I experience, what I imagine, what happens outside of my head as well as inside of my head, what I say out loud and what I keep to myself, what I think while writing after the fact, what I've fantasized about, what I've dreamt about, what has happened interpreted by others and/ or by myself... is all fair game.

7 ) I AM NOT A JOURNALIST.

NO WORK LAST NIGHT

Rough night last night. Met up with M. for a couple of beers. S. and J. joined us and we ended up at some party around St. Sulpice. J. was smart and grabbed the last metro. The rest of us stuck it out. Coming home, S. made a big scene, and refused to stay in the taxi and M. paid him off on Ile de la Cite after trying to talk sense to S. for fifteen minutes. We kept walking. I left them around Rivoli when M. and S. were getting into a second taxi. I told them I'd walk it. By the time I made it to Republic twenty minutes later, there they were... stumbling around the metro exit.

"I thought you'd taken the taxi," I said to M.
"Long story."
"You're walking the rest of the way?"
"Yep."
"This way is fastest," I pointed up the feaubourg.

M. lives a few blocks from where I live.

"NO! I wantta go that way!" S. said, pointing the opposite direction.
"It's faster the way I'm going," I said.
"No." S. repeated.
"Alright, then, see ya'll later."
"See you later, man," M. said.

This morning I have a big headache.

BUYING MYSELF MORNING CHOICES

The last days of the winter sales are definitely here. I just got my paycheck. The first paycheck for a full month's worth of work I've received in a few years. I'm no millionaire, not even close. The total amount of my paycheck barely ads up to twice the amount of the welfare package. Which makes me either: 1) A moron, I could find undeclared half-time employment and make the same amount; 2) A good citizen who wants to EARN his living, not just live off the system; 3) An unlucky fool incapable of finding a descent job either declared or not.

Since I need new shoes, I naturally headed to rue de Rivoli where I know there's a few places where one can purchase shoes. I entered several stores. Last season's stocks are getting packed off in boxes. All that's left is leaving. What didn't sell, not even at ridiculously low prices. All the shoe-store employees are running around trying to set up the new lines in the windows and pack as little of the old ones back to the factories. Customers aren't really buying anymore so they have to pack more than they'd rather pack.

I was trying on different pairs of shoes in this one store as I was watching this one triangular faced skinny employee standing right next to where I was asking him a question. He acted as if I wasn't in the store trying on several pairs of shoes. He was ignoring me completely. He was busy packing boxes, running in and out of the storage area, taking shoes from the shelves, putting different shoes on the shelves, that kind of stuff. I was asking him something important about shoe size and its relevance to my feet. At the same time I was wondering what happens to all these unwanted shoes. Where do they all go? Are they burnt, used as energy, as combustibles? Can unwanted but unused shoes be used as fuel? Are they sent to poor countries or communities, places where they can't afford to buy new shoes? Are they stacked in some warehouse, locked in controlled environment, to be brought back in twenty years as the latest NEW style? Are they buried in large holes with dead corpses to confuse future generations of archeologists? Can you use them to fortify house walls made of cow-dung, grass and car tires?

The left foot was fine, but the right foot was too tight. I wear 43 and 1/2 I think because the 43's were too small and the 44's were too big. Sometimes the 43's were good for my left foot and the 44's were good for my right foot. But they wouldn't hear of it. They have to sell two 43's or two 44's, not one of each.

In another shop, the store attendant, a woman this time, just looked at me and said matter of factly: "The right foot is always a little bigger than the left foot." As if this was a perfectly known fact and that I was a complete moron for not being aware of it. Then she went back to another less demanding customer. Everybody in the world has a bigger right foot? That's incredible. That could make for a good study. Are there exceptions where some people have a bigger left foot?

By the time I had tried on, walked around with, and gruntingly taken back off half a dozen or so pairs of shoes in each store, I called it quits. I had given up on the idea of buying new shoes. I dropped in on K. She owns a fashion store in the neighborhood where she sells her own line of clothing. R. is working, she says, at his new job. H., their son, is doing fine. Late afternoon and she was barely opening the store! She was sleepwalking. We talked briefly and decided we should do a diner soon. There was something about shrimps stuffed in something or other, but I can't remember what.

I headed off and stuck to window-shopping. Not wanting to take off my old shoes in front of yet another pimpled snotty employee. Though I did get a small pleasure in showing off my dirty stinky socks. I walked slowly towards Bastille, figuring on walking home since it was such a spring-like day when suddenly, an advertisement spoke to me: Buy two pairs, get the third one for 1 Euro.

I walked in. The store attendants treated me kindly and right away I knew they were different. They had the right mix of leaving me alone and asking me how things were going. I stayed in there for ages trying on most the shoes in sizes 43 and 44 which were still on sale. I ended up buying two pairs of shoes size 44 and one pair size 43.

At one point I looked at the young woman who was attending to my shoe buying needs and asked her after I had made my first choice, the one size 43 pair, "I'd love to have these," talking about a model they only had in 43's, "but they're too small."

"What size are they?"
"43's."
"The ones you just picked are 43's?"
"Yes, I know, that's what I'm saying..."
"Then..." she started on an argumentative tone... and quickly cut herself off.

She gave me a large beautiful smile and said, "that's really strange," without a single hint of irony. She walked away to straighten out some shoe boxes and disappeared in the employee-only shelter. I really appreciated the fact that she wasn't sarcastic with me. Those 43's WERE smaller than the ones I had just picked. I know I'm not crazy. After that she came every ten minutes or so to give me a nice smile and ask me if everything was ok. I made sure to always put the shoes back in the boxes, and the boxes back where I had found them.

All this to say that now I own three pairs of shoes, that I paid a low price - a little less than what one pair of shoes would have cost me normally - and that I don't think I've ever owned three new pairs of shoes at the same time in my entire life!

At 9h00 this morning, after having been out of bed since 7h00, I couldn't decide which pair to put on. There they were at the foot of my bed lined up with the old ones that I haven't thrown away yet. So I have FOUR pairs to choose from. That's a hell of a way to start the day. Used to, I didn't have to think about it. I woke up, took a shit, brushed my teeth, drank my coffee/ chicoree, checked my emails while eating my toast, and as I walked out the door, without thinking about it and hardly looking down at my feet, I inserted my left foot then my right foot into the ONLY pair of shoes available.

How life changes when one has a job. I now have a choice. I can now be a hotel slave in four different styles of shoe-wear.

SLAP ME SILLY

I met up with C. around her place at that café she likes. I was having a crème before she arrived, and working, making notes on something or other. When she arrived, she scared the living S... out of me by tapping my shoulder while I was totally concentrated on something or other. We get all the "How you doing?" "What's been happening?" "How's F.?” (her boyfriend) "You're not too tired?" "I been sick since last week..." blablabla... out of the way, when I finally get it off my chest.

(Conversation recorded is inaccurate. It is a very ROUGH rendition of a conversation which took more than one hour in French, put down in a few untalented and difficult lines. Not to be taken literally as in : on a word to word basis. Basically, the words are mine, not anybody else’s, and should not be interpreted as quotes or anything journalistic or truthful like that.)

"Whadda you think about my blog?"
"I don't like it," she says going straight to business.
"Wh-what... whadda you mean you don't like it?"
"Rubbish."
"Rubbish?"
"That's what I said."
"Whadda you mean?" My ego was turning bright red.
"What!" She says, "did you expect me to tell you how great you are?"
"No... I mean..." Feeling stupid. I always expect people to tell me how great I am.
"This way we could just get the subject done and over with real quick. We wouldn't have to talk about it. I should’a told you how much I loved it this way we’d be talking about something useful by now, and you wouldn't be mad at me."
"No... I mean, come on, is it that bad?"
"You write like an American talking about Paris for the first time. I don't think you missed a single cliché. One or two can be forgiven. But every single word? Give me a break."
"It-it's... it's like that! I mean, what the hell do you want me to say?"
"Not that." Then she started to get detailed about it. "Prostitutes, train stations, undercover cops, what are you writing? A journal or a ‘Polar?" (Polar = French Noir fiction which I happen to enjoy reading.)
"But that's how it is, what am I suppose to write about?"
"That."
"That?"
"Yeah... write about that. But without being so freaking cliché!!!"
I was turning red because, 1) I knew she was right; 2) I didn't want to admit it; 3) admitting it would mean having to write differently; 4) writing AND thinking equals WORK; 5) I'm a lazy bum.
Still trying to defend myself, I said, "but didn't you like it when I described the little garden in the hospital?"
"Sure, that was fine, but then you had to mention you-know-who."
"You-know-who? But I like you-know-who. Is it my fault you don't like you-know-who? What!!! So what the hell do I talk about, I can't say a damn thing without it being a cliché. For god's sake, Paris IS a cliché, Paris is the capital of clichés, Paris LIVES for clichés. How can I talk about Paris then?"
"Not like that."
"And I did grow up in West Texas, you know, so I am, in a way, an American in Paris." I am French of Breton extract and grew up in West Texas.
"You've told me the same thing about this writer writing about New Orleans. I liked it because I was learning something, so I showed it to you and you hated it, you said it was just ONE BIG CLICHE."
"What writer?"
"You know, the one I was showing you."
"I don't remember, he must have been bad."
"Write about the train station, the prostitutes, the canal Saint-Martin if you want, but not like that."
"How? Then..."
"That's up to you. But don't do it like you're trying to sell Paris to American readers. Do it like you live here, like this is your city, like this is what you're living with everyday and you're not just here for a couple of months writing a travel article for some slick magazine."

We left it at that and went to a different café and had a couple more drinks. Then we went to her place and finished off a bottle of red before she had to head off.

EARLY MORNING WALK

The walk to the hotel is a good one around 6h15 in the AM. Early morning before the Parisians start their never-ending traffic war between pedestrians and automobilists. The cafés are barely open, the chairs haven’t been taken off the tables, the old fellows are already leaning against the counter sipping their demis, bluecollars and whitecollars alike are having their p’tit cafés and croissants next to the barflies… I like this hour… everything is quiet, the street lamps are still burning, the pigeons are asleep...

At this hour the gates to the hospital Saint-Louis are usually locked and I have to follow the road directly to the canal Saint-Martin. Inside the new hospital, there is a much older one, inside which there is a small square garden. It is a simple garden with old oak trees and four dirt path meeting in a center cicular lawn decorated with flowers. On a sunny day when the light is just right, it’s as if you were in the middle of another age far away from Paris right before the revolution when Robespierre and his pals were still idealistic students remaking the world around a mug of beer rather than around a guillotine. I climb the pedestrian bridge, the one where the canal takes a turn towards Stalingrad, and on top of the bridge is my private little spot, my quiet get away from it all. That’s where I take a breather.

It’s a peaceful moment. This morning, I looked at the quai thinking about the movie "Hotel du Nord.” Though the neighborhood has gone through drastic changes since they shot it, I try to imagine it otherwise, as it might have been once...

In recent years, old buildings have been torn down to be replaced by modern structures of glass and concrete… a multitudes of condos and apartments... a building development company’s wet dream (the canal is considered one of the more ‘romantic’ sections of Paris... not for long…) Small stores and dives have been forced to throw in the towel and give way to hip overpriced trinket stores or hip pricey cafés. Artists squats have been emptied by the C.R.S. (Army police.) There used to be a good one on Rue de la Grange aux Belles.

But at 6h30 in the morning, I can still imagine the voyous, the ouvriers, the artists, the marginals, dancing at a make-do guinguette and drinking table wine and Pernod on the quai. I can still imagine the accordion player doing his business!

Isn’t it silly to be nostalgic for a time and place you’ve never known? One that probably never existed except through the revisionist eyes of movies and books?