Rasmenia

There are certain places around the globe you can go to that just don’t seem real.  Standing before certain buildings, monuments & natural wonders can often be a very surreal experience, feeling less like a day out of real life & a lot more like being on a movie set.

Or, more accurately… in an actual movie.

Whenever I go to Washington D.C., it feels bizarre to me, as though I’ve been inserted into the middle of a news report, or some exciting action flick.  I’ve constantly got my eyes peeled for a bad guy to come tearing through the crowd, pursued by a determined hero with a pistol in his hand.  I periodically check the skies for aliens, who as we all know, only land in major cities with well-known buildings & monuments.

I have yet to see this during a trip to D.C.

As anyone can imagine, Paris is no different.  In fact, for Americans, it’s probably even more surreal.  Seeing something like the Eiffel Tower for the first time is an awesome experience.  I first saw it 12 years ago.  I’ve lived in France for almost 5 years & it still impresses me whenever I see it.  It’s something that I grew up seeing in movies, paintings & photographs of faraway places.

Every time I tuned in to my favorite TV show, there was Paris in the background.

It wasn’t a real place.  It was a character in a movie.  It was a fantasy, a place where fictional characters go to have adventures & fairy-tale romances of mythical proportions.

When I decided that I would be moving to Paris, my destination wasn’t a place of real-life or fictional fantasy.  The truth is, I was too caught up in the whirlwind to really think much about it either way.  So, I packed up my shit & headed for Paris – Montmartre, to be more precise.

You know Montmartre… you’ve seen it before, even if you haven’t ever been to France.

Well… just to name a few.

One thing I can say for a fact is, the Montmartre that I lived in had nothing to do with the Montmartre that I had seen in these movies.  In spite of the fact that I had seen my own front door in Amélie.

Montmartre is my favorite part of Paris. It’s multi-cultural, full of artists & bohemian types & definitely feels more… Parisian.  However, actually being there, living there amidst the day-to-day just doesn’t feel as quaint as movie Montmartre.

"I don't remember seeing so many cars or Americans in Amélie."

One of the first things I noticed after I moved in with Olivier was the blackness.  A layer of blackness on the walls, ceiling & windows.  Black shit every time I blew & picked my nose.  I freaked out.  I cleaned everything from top to bottom: wine bottles, book spines, windows, inside & out… little corners of shelves & baseboards all had to be sterilized & polished.  Once I got the entire place clean & had all of the black shit out of my nose, it was time to start over.

So… what was all of this nasty black crud?  Air pollution.  With the shit floating in the air, combined with the humidity, there would eventually be a residue that would stick to surfaces in our apartment & would of course, wreak havoc on sinuses.  Granted, being from a small town in northern Colorado, I was a bit hypersensitive to chunky black air.

But, at least life in Paris was tranquil, aside from that, right?

Uh… no.

Rush hour was especially fun, when hundreds of motorists would sit bumper to bumper on every street surrounding our apartment, honking their horns nonstop – I guess because if you honk a horn for 10 minutes straight, it can actually cause a traffic light to change colors, or can magically give the person in front of you the ability to drive their car through solid objects, allowing you to finally move.

The bar down the street, while it was a fun place to hang out, insured that we would always have plenty of shouting drunkies roaming about in the street below our bedroom window at 3am.

There were the upstairs neighbors, who enjoyed jumping up & down on the cardboard-thin divider between their apartment & ours, dancing to Bollywood music at midnight, blasting techno at 4am, or throwing parties on a Tuesday night.

Did I mention that behind our apartment were 2 schools?  Yep… a middle school & an elementary school.  Recess was deafening.

Quaint?  Tranquil?  Not exactly.  A movie-like fairy tale?  No fucking way.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much writing done during those 2 & a half years in Montmartre.

Sure, going for a walk around the area was nice from time to time… as long as you manage to avoid the countless herds of tourists.  The well-known stairs of Montmartre do indeed add to the charm & are undeniably picturesque… as long as you’re in good shape & are not in a rush to get somewhere.  Hopefully, you don’t mind being covered in sweat when you arrive, either.

I've found it helps to pack a bag of supplies.

I sometimes have to laugh when someone says to me, “Ooh!  Paris!  You’re so lucky!”  Sure, I am lucky.  I know this.  And there many things that I love about Paris.  But there is always that fucking problem about where the grass is greener.  When someone would say this to me, I would automatically think of driving my car on big, open highways in America, rather than standing around in a hot, dirty métro station.

Better yet is when you get to ride the métro with someone who shouts their hard luck story to everyone on the train, begging for money.  It’s staggering how often this happens.  Occasionally, there is some sort of urine surprise or passenger who seems like a plague victim, which is fun, too.

Many people, when they would say, “Ooh!  Paris!  You’re so lucky!” have images of the Eiffel Tower & shiny boats on the Seine swirling about in their heads.  During my 2 & a half years in Paris, I didn’t wake up & look out the window to a scene from a movie every morning.

Um... unless you're talking about that one where boring people get up & walk to work.

I woke up to real life – just as real & underwhelming as anywhere else.

While looking just as fabulous as anyone else.

Paris is a big city.  Not as far as the amount of land that it sits on, but definitely as far as everything that is inside of it.  There are millions of people all smooshed together.  There isn’t the level of crime compared to a place like New York City, but it’s there, right along with the graffiti, hordes of hobos, street toughs, air & noise pollution.  Most of the movies imported to the U.S. don’t show you that & it’s easy to get deluded.

Of course, in spite of my cynicism & shattered delusions of movie set Paris, I’m still keeping my eyes peeled when I’m in the vicinity of surreal locations with great monuments because you know… when the shit goes down, that’s where it’ll happen.  Aliens & bad guys love big cities with famous monuments.

Since we’ve moved out of Paris to the suburbs, it’s been a relief.  Less noise, less black shit to extract from my nose – unless I’ve spent the day in the city – & my serenity level has been restored to normal.  As you might imagine, French life outside of Paris is just as quaint as you’ve seen on TV & movies.  Yep… every day is pretty much like this:

I used to laugh at germaphobic freaks like me.  I’d see them with their Lysol, alcohol pads & sanitizing gel, talking about “that bug that’s been going around” & I would shake my head & laugh.

Paranoid freaks.

Sitting at my desk, in the office where I worked, I’d watch my coworkers as they passed around a can of Lysol.  “Keep that shit away from me,” I’d tell them.  When someone would offer me an alcohol pad to wipe the germs away from the receiver of my phone, I would reply with a “thanks, but I like my phone dirty”.

Happily swimming in bacteria soup.

I was a drinking, pack-a-day smoker, happily surrounded by millions of dirty microscopic organisms & I enjoyed watching my coworkers sniff, sneeze & hack among the sound of misting Lysol.

Not because I’m that sadistic, but because I never got sick.

Then I moved to Paris.

Once I moved to Paris, I moved about the city the same way as millions of other Parisians: public transportation.  Gone were the days of leaving my apartment & going directly to my car.  My ass was now walking – rain or shine, night & day.  I was taking buses & trains, standing around at bus stops & in the métro stations… surrounded by people.

Gone, too, were the wide open spaces of Small Town, Colorado.  No more room to spread out.  No more personal space of at least one foot.

At first, I didn’t think much of it.  But, over time, as I began to feel more & more like a fucking sardine, something happened.  It started out small: a tiny cough from the back of the bus.  A sniffle from someone passing me on the street.  A sneeze from somewhere in the métro station.

The cacophony of illness grew louder as someone sitting across from me on the train would blast a thick wad of something from inside their face into a tissue.  The person sitting next to me would cough & gargle.  Someone standing up would sniff, wipe their nose with their bare hand, then grab hold of the pole that had 5 other hands wrapped around it.

Occasionally, while walking down the street, I would step over a pile of dog or pigeon shit, or a puddle of piss that had could have come from… well, anything.

The first year I spent in Paris, I was sick several times.  I was coughing on my wedding day.  It seemed as though I just couldn’t get away from it.  I began washing my hands with the frequency of a hardcore OCD case & making extra efforts not to touch anything when I went out in public.

Now… shopping carts terrify me.  The pole in the métro is a horrifying menace.  Every bus, train, ATM machine button & doorknob is a SARS or goddamn swine flu trying to take me out.  The stranger with the sniffles on the street is worse than a creature from a John Carpenter film.

At least HE isn't going to give me a fucking cold.

I’ve started carrying that damn hand sanitizing gel with me just about everywhere, though I really don’t use it all that much since I’ve gotten so good at not touching things.  You would be amazed at what I can accomplish by using only my elbows.

Children hold a special kind of terror.  When we go out & I see the snot on their faces, or their fingers shining with a fresh sheen of drool, I slowly back away, careful to make no sudden movements.

After two years of living in Paris, we moved just outside of the city.  While it’s less crowded for me now & I see fewer members of the snot-spewing public on a daily basis, I still take certain precautions, especially around someone who is suspect.  If I hear a sniff, snuffle or throat clearing, I am on high alert.

I've just gone to DEFCON 2.

So… over time, leaving the spread-out population of northern Colorado & immersing myself in the big city eventually turned me into a bit of a germaphobe.  I somehow went from being carefree & rubbing my filthy, bacteria-encrusted phone against my face to being one of the paranoid freaks ready to toss myself into a fucking Silkwood shower upon returning home from a routine trip to the grocery store.

In short, I have turned into this:

Four years ago, I was in the midst of disassembling my life in Colorado.  This is the only way to build a new one.  There in my apartment, which was rapidly becoming a large empty space, I stared at the packed boxes.  There were more & more of them every day.

There were times when the packing & planning was exhausting.  It was easier to chain smoke in the dark with several pints of Guinness & a blank page while listening to Rufus Wainwright.

Of course, one song that I played over & over again was “Leaving for Paris”.

It seemed so appropriate since that is exactly what I was doing.

It had occurred to me that I might actually be out of my goddamn mind.  Then again, this thought has crossed my mind several times throughout my life & has never really been a point of major concern.

But… packing up my life to move to another country to marry a man who I had only spent a total of 5 weeks with seemed a little wacky.  Even for me.

Then again… it made perfect sense.

I wasn’t scared.  Well… not at first.  I had packed, sold, thrown or given away everything that I owned.  My faithful feline sidekick had already made the flight to Paris & was safe in what would be our new home.  Everything was going smoothly.

Until I saw the airport.

Then it was a struggle not to shit myself.  I mean that literally.  I’m a nervous pooper.

So, I arrived in Montmartre where Olivier & my feline sidekick were waiting for me.  Did we all run off merrily into the Parisian sunset to live happily ever after?

Really?  Do you even have to ask?  What kind of fairy tale land of bullshit do you wake up in every day?  It was fucking hard.

I had been living alone for quite some time before I made this move.  Now, there I was, thousands of miles away from peaceful, spacious Loveland, Colorado.  Instead, I was sitting in an apartment in Montmartre with a man who would soon be my husband.  Four floors up from honking cars, shouting drunks & growling buses… all of them shitting out litter & pollution.

The entire apartment was the almost the size of the living room in my previous apartment.  I didn’t speak the language.  I didn’t know anyone, aside from this guy that I met on the internet & was weeks away from marrying.

Right.  Did I mention that we were planning a wedding, too?

What I really missed was my car.  I never really took to public transportation – especially the métro.

One of these people has accepted public transportation.

Indeed, that first year was a bit rough.  There were learning curves for both of us as we sacrificed our independence & learned to share our toys.  I admit, my curve moves a lot slower & less smoothly than his.

Keep in mind, I moved here because one of us had to move & for practical reasons, it ended up being me.  The decision had nothing to do with any Francophilia or overwhelming desire to flee Colorado, which I love more than anywhere else on Earth.  My longing for home banged a few dents in the curve.

I spent time in French classes.  We both spent time battling noisy, asshole neighbors.  We tried to spend as much time enjoying Paris before leaving it for the suburbs where I now sit & write this.

We were often frustrated, tired & confused, but always happy… as retarded & paradoxical as that sounds.

One afternoon, not long before we moved out of Paris, Olivier called me at home from his office.

“Rufus is playing at the Trianon theater tonight,” he said.  “There are still some tickets on sale if you want to go.”

Wait.  Rufus?  MY Rufus?  He even had to ask?

When Olivier got home from work, I was dressed & ready to go.  The Trianon theater in Montmartre was only a few minutes walk from our apartment, so off we went.

We sat there, happy in the dark of the small theater as Rufus sat at his piano, charming the audience while speaking adorable bits of Frenglish.

The crowds & pollution outside of the theater were forgotten, as were the asshole neighbors, French lessons & the hot, stinking métro.  When the lights went low & blue, Rufus sat down at his piano & began tapping out the first few notes of “Leaving for Paris”.  The upright bass being played behind him kept rhythm & nothing else could be heard.

Tears came to my eyes.  Olivier took my hand & I thought about those boxes in my empty apartment back in Colorado.  I remembered what an insane decision that had been.

I mean, come on… packing up my life to move to another country to marry a man who I had only spent a total of 5 weeks with seemed a little wacky.  Even for me.

Then again… it made perfect sense.

By the time that Rufus had started “Complainte de la Butte“, I was home.

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Technocrati Tags: American, Colorado, expat, France, Paris, moving, Rufus Wainwright, Leaving for Paris no. 2, Complainte de la Butte, French, marriage, concert, Trianon, Montmartre, métro