NEEDLING

Back home. Got back last night after close to 20 hours of being awake, of waiting for buses, riding them, running across streets, waiting in lines, opening bags, closing them, reopening them, reclosing them, waiting at the airport bar having a pint—my favorite part of the whole traveling b.s.—waiting in lines a few more time, showing your passport yet a few more time, answering questions, staring at some pretty passenger seating across from you, going to the restroom for the umpteenth time, and finally boarding the tube of metal which will if you’re lucky take you back home.

Fell asleep while listening to some music on my computer on the plane, when I wrote the last entry. Woke up with no batteries left. It’s the here and now, don’t know what to do with myself. Gotta be back at work all ready this afternoon, not even a day to chill out, take a long bath, something … you know, to recuperate, or something like that. Nope. One big faBang! Slap my face! Do a back flip on my nose!

It’s 6h30 AM and I’m wide awake. Normal. This is my preferred morning time. Been up over one hour. Took Brutus out for a walk. He doesn’t leave me one second. He’s like, you bastard, you were going to leave me forever! He was at a good place. Brian and Tracie dog-sited him all week. He got to play with his girlfriend Kali the whole time. I guess he’s glad I’m back. We went for a long walk this morning, before the sun came up, the best time, really. Now he’s asleep on his bed right behind me.

Paris! The last night there, having a couple of drinks with some friends … first we went to go see our friend Antoine who’s working in an underground bar for teenagers. He hates it there, but we had to say hi to him. An old basement, probably several hundreds years old, made of low arched brick ceilings and brick walls. The place packed with kids no older than 18, possibly 19. Everybody smoking. A gas oven. Not a single bottle of descent booze on the bar. Antoine gave us a good price on our drinks. When the place got too packed, we moved on to an Irish pub down the street. A few more drinks, some chips, and a few more laughs, I went up to the bar to pay, gave the girl forty Euros. She gave me change back on thirty Euros. I insisted, and she gave me another ten. Paris! Unfortunately, that’s often the norm. There’s a point where you don’t know anymore when a person made a legitimate mistake, or if they tried to jip you. Was at the boulangerie yesterday morning before going up to Rick and Kyungmee’s. I wanted to buy some croissants, some pain au raison, and a baguette. I told the boulangère what I wanted, went to the counter and waited. She bagged it, put the order in front of me, entered some numbers in her register and told me the price … I looked at her a second, she didn’t flinch. The price was a little high, I thought, but then I didn’t want to deal with it … 6h30 in the morning, my last morning in Paris, I didn’t want to get into a fight with anybody … so I paid, stepped out of the store, walked over to Rick & Kyungmee’s place, called them to ask them if I could come up, and ran up their five flights of stairs. Kyungmee opened the two paper bags.

“My god, François, why did you get so much!”

The boulangère had slipped in an extra four pain au chocolat! Oh well … turned out we chowed down, and when I left, there was only one croissant and one pain au chocolat left … though we hadn’t even touched the baguette.

The other day, I think the cavist gave me the wrong change back on three bottles of wine, but it had all been confused. I was talking to him in French, to Rick in English, and he wasn’t able to run my credit card through for some reason, and I’d also started telling him I worked in a cave in Texas … blablabla … when I stepped out of the store, I counted my change, and it didn’t seem right, but the whole scene had been too confusing to go back in and demand a recount.

That’s okay. At the duty-free shop in the airport, I bought a 15 euro bottle of cheap whisky. I gave the girl a twenty, and she gave me back fifteen. I looked at it a split second, then pocketed it without giving it another thought, something I would never do around here.