Paris

Madonna can"t act her way out of a paper bag. Puppies are cute. Waiting in line is torture. Back hair is unattractive. And Paris is romantic.

These are what we call “undisputed facts” and “foregone conclusions” - “givens,” in popular parlance. Life, for the most part, is difficult and ridden with uncertainty. That all of us, regardless of class or nationality, can agree on these accepted truths binds us together as humans, and makes life that much simpler, and somehow, more bearable.

Yes, Paris is romantic.

But why? What makes it more romantic than, say, Florence? Or - let’s go out on a very far limb here - Tulsa? No one can really answer that question. Romantic is how you choose to define it, frankly. When you’re in love, your surroundings rarely seem to matter. But Paris’ reputation as a romantic destination precedes it. Why ask “why”? Paris is romantic. It simply is.

There’s a juvenile pastime of spicing up the perennially boring and vague fortunes pulled from Chinese cookies by adding “in bed” to the end of their prophecies. For instance, you’ve unfurled one that reads: “Your good nature and positive outlook will earn you many friends,” to which you add: “in bed.” What was once a lame and colorless fortune suddenly elicits table-wide titters and salacious glances.

The same can be said for appending “in Paris” to your most sordid adventure. You got 86ed from some dingy bar, and on the way back to your hotel you got nabbed for public intoxication. You spent a long night in pokey with drug addicts and slathering transvestites crying yourself to sleep. Tell your audience it happened in Little Rock and you’ll come across as a pathetic wreck. Tell your them it all went down in Paris, and you imbue yourself with shades of mysteriously artistic adventurousness. Watch as the eyes of your audience twinkle ethereally. Feel them swoon with wonder and thinly-disguised passion. Whatever happened to you that transpired in Paris increases your interest level by at least 70%. It’s Paris, after all.

I was twenty when I first went there. I was alone, nursing wounds from a failed love affair. I got off the train late at night, stuffed my belongings into the station locker, and wandered about the city. There in the distance shone the Tour Eiffel, glittering like a baubled courtesan. Around me sped lovers on scooters, clutching each other tightly against the chill air. Here along the streets were rows of crowded cafés, gentle music wafting through their doors, seated couples bent earward for invitations to pleasure while beautiful girls primped and giggled in windows.

It sucked.

After a few hours, I grovelled my way back to the station to fetch my bag and bolt for my departing flight from Holland. When I turned the corner, I saw my dented locker door ajar, my bag disemboweled, purloined of my few remaining traveler’s checks and my invaluable train pass. There I was: starving, depressed, shivering, penniless, lovelorn, and sleepless, standing amid chuckling, cuddling, wealthier backpackers ... in Paris. The thought made me smile, and somehow I managed to soldier through the next few weeks.

By the time I returned nine years later, I felt worlds away from that scrawny fool pouting his way through the avenues. I was older and wiser now, and knew that there was more to Paris and life than the monuments so many seek. I suppose it’s my stubborn nature that kept me from following the herd throughout many subsequent visits. In all that time, I’ve never been to the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, or the Arc de Triomphe, and never once ascended the Eiffel Tower. As with any city, the true soul of Paris throbs in its varied neighborhoods.

Like an image in a shattered mirror, the face of Paris is separated into 20 shard-like areas called arrondisements, and the best way to get a good focus on the city’s reflection is by exploring an individual district - and blindly picking a place for your day’s meal. Eating is part and parcel of any Parisian experience, and the sheer number of different restaurants attests to the city’s paradoxical identity. It’s not enough to say you want to eat Spanish food, for example. You have to decide whether you want Catalan, Andalusian, Basque, or Galician cuisine. The many African restaurants (among them Ghanaian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Ethiopian, Egyptian, and Senegalese) are more representative of modern France than any art deco brasserie. And far better than any food I’ve had in these places has been the people-watching.

Unless you’ve got your heart of hearts set on it, there’s really no reason to ruin your day by going to the overcrowded Louvre museum. One very memorable day, discouraged and irritated by the tourists thronging in line for tickets, I retired to a bench and watched the human race file in and out. Here was true art parading before me, and all of it was free. I thought it odd that artists renowned for their insight into humanity should be cooped up in those finely-decorated halls. If Vermeer and Chardin were alive, I like to think they’d prefer sitting outside with me.

Everyone knows Robert Doisneau’s famous photograph of a scarfed beau kissing his girl in front of the Hotel de Ville. People love it for supposedly having captured a very French, particulary Parisian moment when, amid the swirl of humdrum activity, romance wields the upper hand and time seems to stop for fleeting moments of spontaneous young love. What few know is that Doisneau staged the whole thing. And that’s very Parisian, this planned, fake tribute to enduring romance. What’s even more Parisian is that no one really seems to care either way. It’s the spirit of the thing that counts. It’s as if the city is trying to live up to its image from the 19th century “Belle Epoque,” when every aristocratic activity was fuelled by numberless buckets of champagne and infinte starlight. Paris’ current struggles make pursuing that image seem flippant and irresponsibly ridiculous now. But again, in a very Gallic way, no one seems to care.

So really, what is it about Paris that makes it so romantic despite all these discrepancies? It’s another self-evident truth that you can’t have darkness without light, and in Paris, where at first glance all seems awash with love and possibilty, tiny glints of harsh reality shine through, making romance glow that much brighter. In Paris, more than anywhere else in the world, a soaring happiness offset by profound sadness give life a sweeter taste.

One idyllic day in autumn, my wife and I heard about a free violin concert in the Jardins de Luxembourg. In a filligreed gazebo a string quartet played as we lazed at a table under some fluttering chestnut leaves. We’d just married, it was balmy, we were in love, and all was well with the world. Renoir could have painted the scene. When our waiter came up to take our order, I noticed the beads of sweat on his brow and his heavy breathing. His white shirt was about to fall apart from too many starchings, his bow tie was loose and frayed, and the back of his cummerbund was coming undone. At about 65, he was too old to be rushing around like this, and I noticed his hand underneath the heavily-laden tray curled into a sort of claw from years of balancing drinks. Who knows what his story was - I still think about it today - but with youthful selfishness I banished this chink of reality from my mind. His presence threatened to ruin my mood, and with all my energy I concentrated on the beauty of the moment in the garden under those trees. I remember my wife’s black hair shimmering under the dancing sunbeams, yellow rays playing on her red lips. Yet to this day, I’ll never forget that waiter’s arthritic hand. I’ll be there too sometime, but God willing, not for many years to come.

Tourists are drawn to Paris like moths to flame. It is, as they say, “the City of Light.” But behind the Eiffel Towers, the Arcs de Triomphe, the Louvres, and the grand boulevards glutted with preening peacocks is any city’s romantic spirit. It’s in a waiter’s twisted hand; it’s in bickering curb-side couples and hunchbacked widows sweeping excrement from hidden courtyards. It’s in life - and you can’t have the good without the bad.

Shortly after my grandfather died, my grandmother, at the goading of my parents, went to Paris with a group of elderly friends in hopes of lifting her spirits. When she returned weeks later, I remember crowding around her chair to hear her impressions of the journey. The people were rude, the pollution and traffic were terrible, the streets were messy, and everything was expensive.

“But it was beautiful,” she said. “It was Paris.”