A Thousand Memories: Paris

Dreaming of Sandrine, my thoughts float around Paris, and one of my Thousand Memories:

Zoe and I take the train from Liege to Paris. It is 1991. Four hours from Brussels, across eastern Normandy and into the flatlands of northern France. We’d heard you could stay for free at The Shakespeare Bookshop on the Rive Gauche as long as you did some shelf-stacking. All it took was an interview with the American running the shop. We made our way there and explained that we’d like to stay. The American turned out to be in his seventies, skinny, noisy and an appetite which involved two roasted chickens each evening. His name was George Whitman.

In the evening, after everyone has left, we roll out our sleeping bags and try to sleep amidst all the books. It is too cold and the floor is too hard for us to sleep. I drink whisky and shiver. Nearby, a few feet of Derrida make me feel excited to be alive and in one of Europe's intellectual centres.

Early on the Sunday morning, I’m woken by the sound of someone rattling on the door window. It’s a South American looking guy – maybe Argentinian? I struggle bleary eyed with the latches and open up the shop.

He explains that he’s come all the way from Brazil to visit the bookshop. The Shakespeare Bookshop has a history – Ginsberg, Kerouac, Bukowski, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, James Baldwin and Richard Wright have all been visitors, while Sylvie Beach was the proprietor. Each square foot has some trace of literary presence and the dust of a past thought. I run upstairs to wake George..

Later that day, Ted Joans, a minor beat-poet comes to perform upstairs. We all sit huddled around as he waxes out his best known works. George works greedily at his chicken carcass in the corner. As Joans speaks in his baritone drawl, a pearl-coloured bead of snot slowly oozes out of his nostril. He leaves it be: a study in gravity. Towards the end, Joans mentions his profound admiration for Margaret Thatcher. At this point, I lose all faith in the solidity of his being. I can only think of the snot.

The following day, we are wandering round Pigalle, the porn and prostitution district. I walk upstairs at a peep-show joint. I am instantly offered a job as a performing stud. The speed at which employment has been suggested is somewhat shocking.

Every time I've been to Paris, I've witnessed public masturbation: on the Metro, dans la rue, by the pissoirs etc. I guess that’s Paris for you. Sexy and graceful and just a little seedy all at once.