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needles needling needlessly with little thread... or much of anything else...

(foolish dribbles to be written at uncertain times, on an irregular basis, from uncertain sections of the ever expending universe, and from whatever dimension I-We-Us-Them might find ourselves/ myself in …)

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

IT'S FINALLY WEDNESDAY

What a week. Thank god this is my three day week.

My sisters woke me up in total panic past three in the morning telling me Mom wasn’t on her scheduled plane landing in Austin. Did I accompany her to the airport? No, I was at work. She left the hotel at ten in the morning for a two o’clock flight. Did she call you? No. When did you see her last? What’s going on? Why wasn’t she on the plane? Dad’s freaking out. He’s waiting for her at the airport.

By this time I was starting to freak out myself. Incredibly enough, I was sleeping. And they had caught me completely off guard. Ok, my sister said, I’ll call you back as soon as I know something. Shit. I was totally awake by this time. Also freaking out imagining my mother hijacked by terrorists, or laying in a hospital bed somewhere after having been aggressed by thieves on the way to the airport via the RER. Then I decided to call my other sister. She told me she’d just called the airline and they had taken off two hours late from Charles de Gaule but that the airline refused to tell her whether or not our mom had been on either plane. Something about top secret information that if given would breach security regulations. (I didn’t quite understand this. If my mom is a terrorist and she’s already on the plane, what difference does it make if I know or not whether she got on the plane?)

I didn’t bother to ask my sister why they hadn’t called the airline to find this information out before calling me and freaking me out. At least things were coming together.

When I hung up, I got the message from my other sister telling me the same thing. I called the airline myself and was told that the plane took off two hours behind schedule and that the passenger I was asking about – my mom – was on both planes. I don’t know what the hell my sister was talking about not being able to get this information and top secret stuff.

I called both sisters back and told them mom was on her way momentarily, that I had been certified by the airline that she had gotten on both planes.

After that I couldn’t go back to sleep. It was fifteen till four in the morning and I had to be up by five thirty.

And work! A pain the last couple of days. However, I don’t feel like bitching about it. My wonderful colleague decided to be on ass on the very day my mother was in town adding on to the lack of sleep and so forth.

My mom and I had lunch after I got off work . We went to the terrace of a semi-touristy café close to place des Abesse. Overpriced skimpy salad and a beer. That’s alright, though. The sun was beautiful and warm. After that we had a real nice afternoon walking all over the capital. I accompanied her back to the hotel fifteen till ten, went home, and was back at work at fifteen till six the next morning.

Finally home. Completely tired. I should be working on my writer’s group commentaries and writing assignment. I’ll do that for a couple of hours before meeting up with some friends for a walk in the park. It’s such a beautiful day, it would be a shame to miss all of it.

Tomorrow I have to go see a couple of movies. That’s my life right now having a couple of beers, sitting on my futon with an orange towel wrapped around my waist after a nice bath.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

FORGOT CHRISTMAS

Re-reading myself, I realize that I’d forgotten all about the overblown public consumer masturbation which is the Christian “religious” holiday, Christmas. Sounds grumpy of me, I know, but I could do without Christmas. And most of the public holidays in France are from the Catholic Christian calendar. Damn, just goes to prove how much I pay attention. As far as I’m concerned, we should all take up the Calendrier Républicain and keep all religious festivities to ourselves and our families. There should be a law that “religious” festivities can only be taken on the street if it means good food for all, whatever your religious affiliations, and parties, galas, costumes, public nakedness, and overt fun-filled evenings without any busting of windows, bombs, denigrations of your neighbors because of their religious affiliations… and so forth. Just good clean – loose definition of 'clean' meaning principally no violence but public drunkenness, gluttony, sex is okay – fun.
BAKED GOODS, RELIGION, AND POLITICS

I have fulfilled my civic duty this morning. I voted. It was a bit anticlimactic, being that this was the first time in my life I’ve ever voted in any kind of official governmental election. I walked into the elementary school where my bureau de vote was located. Number 46. I don’t know if this is the hangover or what’s going on, but now that I’m back home I’ve got like a little tingle going on in my bowels.

The biggest disappointment was coming out of the elementary school and taking a right towards a baker I like, the baker where I buy viennoiseries. I don’t buy anything else there. The bread I get at another baker down the street who makes the best bread in Paris.

These guys however make croissants and cinamon rolls like I’ve never tasted before. I don’t know what they do… there’s like a honey aftertaste going on with the crust… and the inside of the croissant drips with butter yet remains fluffy. They’re also about one and half the size of a normal croissant. You only need one, though sometimes when I’m feeling particularly wild and unhealthy, I get two. Pure goodness. As close as I’ve gotten to God, I think.

And that was to be my prize so to say, my present to myself for having done my civic duty rather than stay in bed. That croissant is what got me out of bed, into my blue jeans and boots, that croissant is what gave me the courage to step up to the voting table and tell the fellow sitting on his fold out chair that I’d never voted before and didn’t really know the procedure. That croissant took me inside the little booth where I folded the bulletin and slid it into the envelope. That croissant took me back outside and led me to the baker in question, where I arrived and stood outside their window to look at all his baked goods before entering, as I always do… half the pleasure being the expectation, the rise of taste buds through anticipation… and, to my utter dumbfound-ness, horrification, there was nothing on the stalls, nothing on his shelves, nothing in the bread baskets… what a dismal sight. Is there a more dismal sight than that of a baker's shelf empty of bread and other baked goodies?

In my mouth I could taste the croissant, I could feel the sweet crust crunch in betwixt my teeth, tongue… my saliva had been building up throughout my mouth getting ready for the rush the whole morning… AND! No croissant! Nothing. Just plain tiny bagel look-a-like dry things. I was horrified.

For a minute I though maybe he’d gone out of business. Then I saw the baker talking to a woman at the counter. I didn’t go in to ask what was going on, my disappointment was too great… then I realized it must be a Jewish holiday or something, the bakery being certified by the Beth Din of Paris. Is it Passover already? I didn’t think it was till next month.

I get confused with all the religious holidays. My neighborhood having religious people of the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Catholic faiths who all run their stores according to their religious laws... I can never get any of it straight. I look forward to the Ramadan every year because the bars and restaurants mostly owned and operated by the local Kabyle population, stay open all night long, and there’s all kinds of great food all over the place being sold. The Chinese New Year is usually a blast as well with the dance of the dragon going in and out of all the Chinese stores. But that’s the extent of my religious holiday knowledge. The Jews like the Catholics keep their celebrating mostly to themselves and their families. They don’t necessarily advertise it all over the streets so unless you’re part of their group and families, which I’m not, then you don’t know what the hell’s going on. And when you go to your baker to buy your viennoiseries and he doesn’t have anything on his shelves, then your whole world is rocked upside down in ways you just don’t understand.

I went to my other baker, got a croissant there. It just didn’t cut it, though, it was all wrong. That’s what I get for doing my civic duty, I guess.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

THE MAN IN THE PICTURE

Alright. Sean’s called me to join him for a cup of java at my morning café joint, the one I used to go to not every day but almost when I had a little extra cash that I could afford a daily crème. I introduced him to Les Folies a couple weeks back. Great little place to spend the afternoon sitting on the terrace zoning out right on the trotoire watching life walk by you, in front of you. Smoke a smoke, have a beer, let it slide. So it’s good because otherwise I would probably have spent my whole day off from the hotel in bed listening to music. I woke up early though… I got to clean my studio… all I could manage this morning was to put WFMU on and slide in a hot bath… forty five minute or more later whenever the water was no longer hot, I went back to my bed. I tried hard not to look at my studio. I kept wondering if there’s a way around cleaning it. Nope. Sunday night I’m picking up my mother at the train station. She’s coming back from Bretagne where she was visiting my grandmother. I got her a room at the hotel for half price… still, just in case she wants to come see my studio. I haven’t done the dishes in a few weeks. Some of the trash is in plastic shopping bags, most of it isn’t, empty bottle litter every corner, specially close to my bed, dirty socks and underwear are spread about … et cetera.

There’s been plenty to talk about. It’s that I haven’t felt like it. The day before yesterday, while I was at the train station watching people wait for trains or wait for people on trains, a journalist and a photographer interviewed me on my views on wine consumption in France, French wines, if I drink them et cetera. The next day I had my picture in the paper with a blurb quote. Something I had supposedly said though it wasn’t close to what I said since we talked for over fifteen minutes and the quote was three sentences long. It basically said what I said but in descent French. Succinctly. Crunching a conversation down. Uhm…

Then either yesterday or the day before, three cops in civilian clothes walked into the hotel. I kind of stared at them for a while before I started understanding what the hell they wanted from me. It took me a few seconds to realize they were cops. They didn’t look anything like cops. They were all three women. That shouldn't have anything to do with it but it did somehow. One of them was even nice looking. The first one, the leader, the one in charge, the only one who talked the whole time, flashed her cop I.D. at me telling me who they were. She had to repeat herself. They were going too fast for me. Obviously they had been running from one hotel to another asking the same questions, and they knew their spill by heart. But I didn’t! She dropped a drawing on the counter in front of my face, one of those reproduction police drawings you see on bad television cop shows. I stood up to look down at the drawing. They asked me if I had ever seen this man.

They were in a real hurry and they all three kept staring at me with big frightful police eyes. They were stressing me out. “I’ve never seen this guy, I said… no… I’m sorry, that face doesn’t look like any face I’ve ever seen… or at least I don’t remember it. Sorry.” I kept apologizing. I wanted so bad to help them out for some reason. I don’t know why. They looked so eager. They looked so sure of themselves. They looked so dedicated. So frightfully aware of themselves. But that face of that man on that drawing didn’t look like anything. It could have been a whole set of persons I’ve seen around the hotel and even rented rooms to... and none of them. That drawing was bad. It looked like a generic man. If I’d shaved my head to a millimeter cut, I could have been the man in the drawing. Maybe I should have made the proposition. “Tell you what, I’ll shave my head to a millimeter, this way I can be the man in the picture, whadda you day?”

Monday, March 22, 2004

HOME IN BED

Underneath my sheets and covers. Forgot the book I’m reading at work. Nothing left to do but to sit here and see if nothing wants to come out of my head. Time to grab the dictionary out of the box where I stored it a few weeks ago.

Skinny kid healthy kid in nice hip clothes, about twenty five years or a couple more came in to the hotel today. First thing he said was.
“Vous parlez Anglais,” with an accent bigger than Trafalgar square and eyes big with the hope I’d say yes. So I said.
“I speak English, yes.”
“Oh, good, you see, I’m looking for my girlfriend,” he went on with a slight British accent. I hadn’t figured him for an American on account of his clothes.
“She told me she was staying in a hotel next to X.”
“Well,” I responded, “you’re not next to X. X is about five ten minutes north of here walking distance. You’re right next to Y.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not far away.”
“You see, I don’t know what hotel she’s staying at. She just told me she was staying in a place in front of X. Her name’s Myers.”
“Sorry, buddy. I don’t have anybody by that name.”
This is when he brings his hand up to the counter and opens it. Stuck to his palm, as if it’d been there a while, is a passport size color photograph of a twenty something blond girl.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said smiling trying not to laugh. But I felt like I was in some bad B movie. This guy was too desperate looking, like his girlfriend, if she was his girlfriend at all, hadn’t given him the correct hotel address on purpose.
“She said the hotel was somewhere between X and M.”
Then I really laughed.
“Look, buddy, if that’s what she said, you’ve got some work ahead of you.”
To make my point, I got off my fat ass, walked around the front desk towards the big map of Paris we have on our wall next to the front door. As I did so, I stepped next to him and got a good whiff of his breath. At least three pints. Small sweat beads building up on top his forehead next to his hairline.
“You see, that’s where we’re at. Y.” I pointed at the map. “X is but a few minutes walking distance.” I pointed again. “But M… that’s over here.” I made a big circle on a good chunk of the map. “It’s a neighborhood, not a specific place like X and Y, which, let me remind you, are here and here.” I pointed with my finger. “That means M covers a large area. I’d say that between X and the edge of M, in a one way direction, if you don’t criss cross around the streets and neighborhoods that is asking in every two bit joint, then you might keep your search down to about two hundred hotels. If you’re lucky. Probably more.”
“....”
He looked defeated. I felt bad for him. But it was comical too, and I felt even
worse for thinking all this funny. Specially the tiny picture of a blond girl. Was this guy stalking this girl and had lost her trail? Did this girl really tell him such vague and ridiculous directions? If she did, was she that scatter brained? Or just plain mean? Or maybe this was a test like: if you can find me on this little bit of information, then you’re my man. If you can’t find me by sun up, it’s over between us.
I felt horrible for this fellow and yet I couldn’t stop laughing. He looked like a lost puppy dog lost in a big bad world looking for his mother who had dropped him off in the middle of the forest to get rid of him. He just couldn’t accept that fact and he had to find her at any cost. I felt horrible for him.
“You got a lot of work in front you.”
“Alright… thanks, man.”
And he left. I hope he can afford to go to some bar and drink the night away. It won’t solve anything… but it'll be better than this.

Sunday, March 21, 2004

GOOD REST

Didn’t sleep a wink last night. When I’m awake I have no energy. When I should sleep, I find no rest. Been here at the hotel since 7AM. Rough. Only one maid, twenty-eight rooms (nine of which were filled with Italians – nothing against Italians but they live on a different time-clock than the rest of us… their own personal time zone… if you don’t believe me, try out the Italian railroad system…) a dozen breakfasts in the rooms, and all of them at the same time…

Last night: lights off at 00h45 after a few beers with some friends. The lights were back on at 4h45 after waking up half a dozen times.

I’ve tried going to bed sober, partly intoxicated, and completely plastered. Doesn’t make a difference. When I’m completely plastered, I blank out for a few hours. The next morning I go into denial lying to myself that what I’ve experiences was actually sleep. When I’m partly intoxicated, the buzz keeps my mind going like a blind rat pumped on adrenalin, and I end up surfing the net trying to calm down or zoning on late night tv. When I’m sober the best I can do is doze off in that halfway sleep where I can hear myself snoring, and all I get from it are dull limbs and heavy internal organs.

Tax sheets for last year are due by the end of the month. They’re somewhere gathering dust and wine stains underneath my futon. I don’t care about the tax fill-out forms, though, and that’s not what I’m loosing sleep over. It’s rare I do anything about them before receiving minimum half a dozen threatening letters from the Trésor Public. And then I usually take my paper work in a loose pile to the Trésor Public office rather than fill out the forms myself, and I give them to some clerk telling him I don’t understand anything and could he please fill out all the little boxes and check marks and numbers and calculations for me. I’ve only been in a tax-paying bracket once in the past seven years, so they can’t charge me late fees or anything.

Twelve hour shift yesterday. Yikes. Eleven weeks and one day till the end of my contract. Will I last till the end? Will I be able to keep smiling at all these people qui me prennent pour un con?

Yesterday, this guy comes in.
“Do you have a room for the afternoon?”
“We don’t rent rooms for the afternoon, sir. However, I’ve got a couple of room I could rent you for the night.”
“Just a few hours.”
“We don’t rent rooms by the hour, sir. The room price is Such&Such, you can stay here one hour, three hours, or for however long you want, as long as you check out by twelve the next day or pay for another night. That’s up to you, but we don’t rent rooms by the hour.”
“Not even a couple of hours? I just need to have a little rest.”
(A little rest, I say to myself, what do you take me for? An innocent moron?)
“Like I said, sir, our price are what they are. There’s plenty of other hotels in the neighborhood, I’m sure you’ll find cheaper prices, but then again, you get what you pay for. It’s up to you.”
“I just want to rest, you know, I’m real tired. I need to rest for a little bit.”
“I understand, sir. A hotel is a great place to rest. Doesn’t change the price of the room.”
“Well… let me… uhm…” he walks away looking out the window, following his gaze, makes a phone call standing on the sidewalk, and disappears for fifteen twenty minutes before coming back.
“Okay, I’ll take it,” he says.
“Cash or credit?” I ask as if I didn’t know.
“Cash.”
He pays. I give him a room key. He sits on the couch by the front desk. Twenty minutes later, a nice looking well dressed late twenties and obviously a call girl, walks in.
“Bonjour, Madame,” I say thinking this guy’s about to experience a good siesta.
The man talks to her in a familiar tone. Acting a little like he’s trying to make me think she’s not what she is.
“Bonjour, frangine, tu vas bien?” He says to her.
I don’t say it, but as they walk past me, him in a hurry to get to the elevator, her giving me a nice smile, I want to say: “Enjoy your nap, sir.”
Less than two hours later, they’re back downstairs, and they both leave never to be seen again that day or night.

Last night after work I had a couple of slow pints before the end of happy hour at the Horseshoe Pub. Never in my life would I walk into such a place. Cheesy, kitche, rude barman and waitresses. Rude, that is, to a person who looks and dresses like I do, and who obviously never steps into those kinds of places. My Irish buddy whom we’ll call Sean insisted though. The pint was cheap and chilled. That's why he insisted, he being as broke as I am. When happy hour was over, we crossed the street to the Family Bar where the pint is cheap all night long. Met up with other friends who are moving back to Quebec in two days. A goodbye beer. Mindy walked in for a pint – she didn’t finish her pint so we shared it between the remaining glasses – before going to her graveyard-shift telephone-calling job. Sorry for her. Tele-survey work all over the USA. Those jobs aren’t just going to India I guess.

Then back home unable to sleep, unable to de-stress, unable to forget this hotel for a few hours of much needed rest. I need a rest. Maybe I should have asked that call-girl for her number. Maybe she can give good rest. I happen to know a hotel where I can get a good deal on a good clean room.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

MARDI FACILE

Back on the same bed at the same computer in front of the same screen listening to the same music. Once again I am drinking cheap blond beer. The only difference from last night is that I am wearing only my boxers, that the sun is out for the first time this year... the hot sun, the sun which promises spring and summer days. The sun of café lounging on terraces, the sun of relaxing time hanging out hours at a time by myself or with some drinking buddy watching all the pretty girls strut their stuff down the sidewalk...

It is 13h36. Insomnia all last night. Wrote some bad poetry. Stuff like:

I want to sleep.
Curdle Cuddle Bundle.
In my sheets buried inside
my two blankets
and my bright red sleeping bag.
Bright Red
like a ridding hood.

Cheap cognac doesn’t help none
maybe…
maybe that’s why
I can’t close my lids
my lids don’t clamp down
no more… no more lids
clamping down.

I wrote more such nonsense last night. Then I left off for work one hour early, wanting to be out of my studio more than not wanting to be at work. No coins to be found anywhere so as to go sit it out within the confines of an early bird café. And at work there was some trouble with a couple of ladies who live in London. They were getting their room paid for and on top of that they wanted all kinds of other services like free drinks, free breakfast, free pain-killers, free this free that… last night’s watchman, a replacement for the regular guy who’s sick, speaks five words of English, and those five words aren’t the same five words of English those two ladies spoke – they not being English in origin. I went to work one hour early to see them off and make sure their suitor paid up properly. I took a shower in room number 18. I took my time underneath all that hot water.

Now I’m home for a quick nap before hitting those beautiful spring streets once more. Got some work to do on my machine…

Sunday, March 07, 2004

THE MORNING AFTER

Dead Tired. Danced till three in the morning. Walked home half way across town, slept two hours, and came to work half an hour late. Walked by the hotel last night around 3h30 in the morning, but all the lights were off and I didn’t want to wake Kamel up so I decided to keep walking home. This morning.
“There was no problem, you should have rang the bell.”
“I didn’t want to bother you. All the lights were off, you were probably asleep.”
“What? And when clients come in at five in the morning or whatever, don’t I have to get up? It’s no problem. You could have slept half an hour longer and this morning, you could have taken a shower AND be on time for work.”
“Yeah… I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Next time, don’t worry about it. If you have to work in the morning and it’s real late at night, just ring the bell, it’s no problem.”
Though thinking about it now… I keep pants, shirt and tie at the hotel, so that’s no problem… but there would have been the problem of socks and boxers – soaked wet from sweat last night – I’m sure they would have smelt great this morning had I kept the same underthings on throughout the day. Maybe it was a good idea that I kept walking all the way home after all.

10 and 1/2 hours to go... and I can go get some sleep !

Saturday, March 06, 2004

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

6h21
I arrive early because my colleague covered for me last week. He comes in at 7 pm and leaves at 7 am everyday seven days a week. Last Wednesday I had an appointment at 9 am with my building’s insurance company’s expert for a water-leak damage to my ceiling which happened four months ago. I arrived at 15 till 10. I told him he could come in at whatever time tonight. We talked about Clementine who left a large hairball on a pillow last week. Not only that, she left it on the pillow of a regular client who comes in two to three times a month and always brings other guests with him.
“Mr. So&So, he didn’t know how to tell me,” Kamel says to me, “it was very awkward, he was really embarrassed for me and for the hotel. But he said something in the morning. He didn’t know how to tell me and you could see it was difficult for him, he just didn’t want to complain. A hairball the size of a baseball. He said he put it on the shelf in the bathroom, and I could go up and check it out if I didn’t believe him.”
“Yeah, she had the guts to tell me it was my fault, that I’m responsible for the hotel, that I’m the receptionist, so it’s my fault, that she’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Clementine, you know… I told Mr. So&So he should have told me right away, I would have put him in different room. He said he couldn’t, he knew it wasn’t my fault personally and he was embarrassed to complain about it to me.”
“It’s what’s her name from the other hotel, she came in to talk to Clementine, and she stayed up there more than two hours When those two get together, you can’t get anything out of Clementine. They talk, and talk, and talk… gossiping little twats… those two together are the worse. So Clementine says to me I shouldn’t have let her in the hotel. I say, whadda you mean, she’s a maid in the other hotel, she belongs to the staff, if she has something to tell you how is it my problem? If you’re here and you’re the maid then you’re responsible for the rooms. ‘But she made the bed, not me, it’s your fault, you shouldn’t have let her upstairs.’ ‘Okay,’ I say to her, ‘lets pretend one second I shouldn’t have let her upstairs even though she’s an employee in this company, you mean to tell me you have absolutely no responsibility?’ ‘Yes, it’s not my fault. It’s yours, you shouldn’t have let her upstairs.’ ‘Fine, it’s my fault she went upstairs, but is it me who gossiped with her for two hours and forgot she had breakfast to serve, rooms to clean, et cetera?’ ‘I didn’t talk to her for two hours.’ ‘What did you do upstairs then?’ ‘She helped me with the rooms.’ ‘And so you let her in the rooms, rooms for which you were responsible?’ ‘It’s your fault Francois, you shouldn’t have let her upstairs.’ ‘Okay, fine Clementine, it’s my fault, you’re a thirty four year old woman and you cannot be held responsible in any way whatsoever for what you do or do not do. I shouldn’t have let your colleague upstairs because when I do, you cannot help yourself, you have to gossip at two hundred miles an hour, and you forget your work, and you’re not responsible… Fine, I’ll keep that in mind’ ‘It’s your fault Francois, not mine…’ she kept repeating…”
So me and Kamel discussed this for a little while. Not very interesting conversation so we switched to a more interesting topic. He was telling me how he drove from Paris to Madrid last year, before taking the boat on the coast back to Algeria. He was telling me how beautiful a country Spain is, and how it was good to drive all that way, then to take the boat after a few days of being a tourist, and to find himself home again with his family after crossing that little bit of the Mediterranean sea.

7h15
The boss does an early morning round before going to another hotel. He checks the room occupancy, and heads back out. He’s doing the reception till 12 in an other hotel because his brother, who usually works mornings in this other hotel, is on vacation for the time being.

8h05
Kamel, who has a meeting with a friend this morning, stuck around till now. He just left after I took a breakfast to the third floor, room # 31, a Russian woman in silk pink pyjamas.

8h35
Today’s maid arrives. It’s going to be a long boring day. There’s only eight rooms this morning, and two of them have already checked out. At least I won’t have to fight with anybody to get the payment for a room or a breakfast or a minibar.

9h15
Two roughs looking fellows come in asking for a room. They smell like whiskey the minute they step in the hotel, they don’t even have to approach the front desk. Their clothes look like they’ve spent half their lives jumping trains and living from one cheap scam to next. I tell them we’re full. I feel bad when I do this, but then it saves me from fighting with them in the morning, or for Kamel to call the cops in the middle of the night because they’re having a fiesta and they’re trying to punch holes in the walls. It’s horrible, but we have to judge a person the minute he steps into the hotel. We don’t have a choice. It’s better not to rent a room than to loose regulars because of a fight, or to get a room destroyed or the hotel burnt down. I still feel bad about it. I always do the silly thing of putting myself in their situation and what that must feel like being rejected from one hotel to the next. I’ve been kicked out of hotels before myself, and it makes you feel like the lowest piece of dog shit. That’s life.

10h09
Phone rings.
“Hotel so&so, bonjour.”
“Hello,” the fellow says in slang-like French (thus obviously a French person), “is this a hotel?”
“Yes, it is. How can I help you, sir.”
“Well… uh… actually, I need to ask you something.”
“I’m listening.”
“Is this an English hotel?”
“An English hotel? What do you mean, sir?”
“Well, I called information, and they gave me your number, and they told me you were an English hotel.”
“Look, sir. I’m not sure what exactly you mean by that. We’re a hotel situated in Paris. Paris, as far as I know, is French, though if need be, we do speak English.”
“No, it’s because I’m looking for somebody at your hotel, and she’s English.”
“What’s the name of the person you’re looking for, sir?”
“Well… uhm… it’s that… uh, I’m not sure, except that she’s English. And… yeah… I got her room number.”
“What’s the room number?”
“104.”
“We don’t have a room 104. What’s the name of the person?”
“I… I don’t have her last name, I only have her first name.”
“Well, what’s her first name, then.”
“… uhm… Aura…” he says very unsure of himself… mumbling…
“We don’t have anybody by that name, anyway, I really need a last name, sir. What’s her last name?”
“Isn’t this an English hotel?”
“Look, sir, I don’t think we can help you.”
“Can’t you forward a call to a room?”
“Of course, we can. But for me to forward your call to one of my clients, I need a name.”
“It’s an English girl.”
“You’ve said that, however, if I don’t have a name, I’m sure you’ll understand that I can’t simply forward your call to every single room until we find the right one… don’t you think?”
“…”
“I don’t think I can help you this morning, sir.”
“Alright, thank you then.”

10h38
Late twenty something or early thirty something Portuguese couple walk in. No baggage. Just one heavy back-pack. Not heavy enough for travelling, unless they’re travelling real light, which is not impossible. They’re clean looking, clean clothes, polite. They look at the price chart.
“You’re looking for a room for one or two nights?”
“One night.”
“The price is so&so for a big bed and shower.”
They hesitate.
“Tell you what, I’ll throw in breakfast. Normally, breakfast is so much, but I’ll offer it to you.”
They discuss this in Portuguese.
“Okay, we’ll take the room,” the fellow says in perfect French with only a slight accent.

10h56
Young, probably not even 18 or 19 man walks in.
He says (sorry, no way to say this in English) “Je cherche ishtag patique.”
“Pardon?”
He repeats himself, “Ishtag patique.”
Figuring on another crazy person though he looks sane enough, I pretend to look at my name / room chart on the computer. “Sorry, nobody by that name.”
He looks at me as if I’m crazy. We both look at each other as if we’re crazy. Then he pulls out a white folder and opens it. He’s looking for an internship, which is called a ‘stage’ in French.
“Tu cherche un stage pratique!”
“Oui.”
“Sorry, man… there’s no internship position here, I’m sorry....” I felt bad, his accent was so rough I hadn’t understood. “Good luck,” I say as he steps out.

11h32
I’m bored. And so are you, if you’re reading this blog right now.

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