how they blew | must reads

Shakespeare & Co | Paris

The night before departure I drank a bottle of cheap red wine, read pages of Flowers of Evil, A Moveable Feast, Giovanni’s Room. In the morning I woke tongue dry, around the time bars empty out and bodies spill into the streets. Beyond my window view, another Saturday night of excess and forgotten memories burned in a city with rising crime and unemployment. It was far too late or early. Silencing a Dylan ringtone that throbbed temples, I stood with caution in an almost empty room.

How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone…

The electric hum of dead night buzzed in my ears. Flicking a lamp switch, I took on water that made my teeth sting—dressed quickly in a space where I could see my own breath. Once clothed, I placed a passport and wallet in the inner pocket of a worn overcoat. Then I slung a backpack that smelt like damp over a shoulder and made my way to the streets.

An ink black sky hung over me like a magician’s cloak—at night city tricks are everywhere, I thought. The sound of broken glass was followed by screaming. A blood rush like an uptown junkie gave me an injection of speed. I moved through an inner city of off-licences, betting shops and council houses, telling myself that if any men approached from the shadows to stand tall.

Entering the city centre, voices of the could care less bellowed. The sound of people who’ve had too much rose like tidal waves with each step I took forward. A police siren. Soon I would be among excessive individuals found among the working poor or even worse.

Stand tall, I thought.

The city centre smelt like vomit, drink and sex. I weaved through crowds of ill-dressed teens with multiple haircuts showcased on individual scalps: fade, dye, curl. Staggered adults with football tattoos and bloated bellies scanned their surroundings as they exited drink holes. The women on their arms looked angrier than the men. I moved between bodies towards my next destination with clenched fists.

Stood at a bus stop, I could see no other sober people. A show between two men who blamed the other for not going home with two women they had met earlier in a bar entered its final act right in front of me. Things began to spiral beyond insults—a push and a shove, more clenched fists. Then two young women appeared on the scene. They looked pocket money young, wore pink miniskirts and black boob tubes, high heels that blistered toes. Their starry-eyed presence was enough to soften the men’s rising tempers. After a few minutes of flirtation, they fell into a taxi and were driven away.

The bus was late. By the time it arrived, I could not feel my own toes. I stepped onto the bus and bought a ticket from a heavyset man with yellow teeth. Wheels began to turn. Soon I would be on a plane that would fly me to Paris, France, fuelled by a desire to get out of my current situation and into another, one of enlightenment and reason read about in books.

The flight was turbulent and comfortless, reminded me of a recent argument with a long-gone lover who liked to throw objects around as though they were confetti. On arrival, I was relieved to depart the plane and enter Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport—just like everyone else who’d been strapped to a rattling tin can for over an hour. The airport was a shitshow of tubed escalators and PA systems that announced time delays in French as though lottery numbers. No one seemed to have a winning ticket. In this space, time felt both static and invaluable. The airport was busy and unsettling; the smell of coffee and smoke and bread felt nostalgic—it was my first time in the city.

I took a Rough Guide from my backpack and flicked through some pages. All around me sleepless travellers moved towards a smoking area or bathroom or store like they were walking on sand. Everyone shared the disorientated look of the lost in transit—even staff members, who, dressed in red uniforms, stood behind cashiers in stores selling perfume, clothing, chocolate.

Forty hours a week spent in this circus would drive me to madness, I thought.

Each worker had the scrunched-up paper face expression of a child being given a time out for being naughty. Once I had found the page in the guidebook with my accommodation starred in blue ink, I made my way towards arrivals.

As I left, I noticed the immigrant men from Africa and the Middle East. They loitered in the airport like it was heavy rain outside. The men appeared to be neither lost nor found. Their casual presence reminded me of two neighbours idly chatting in the street—minus a dialogue exchange and eye-contact.

Here they like to watch people, I thought.

Once through customs, I made my way towards a metro station and down some stairs to catch a blue line subway train bound for Saint-Michel Notre Dame. The air was dry and chilling. It was February, a white-knuckle wind ripped through the subway tunnel and made my bones ache. Stood alone on a platform dressed in boots, denim jeans, fingerless gloves, jumper, scarf and overcoat—I used my backpack to shoulder the wind. You need a winter jacket, I thought. Blowing into clasped hands the words: fuck the police graffitied onto a wall caught my attention. They were written in the style of rising flames. This only made me feel colder.

Somewhere within the tunnel came noises that can only belong to the insane—or perhaps fish that live at the bottom of the ocean. Two bearded homeless men appeared on the other side of the tracks like a waking nightmare. Their oily rags and bruised skin felt cliché, size intimidating. Go easy on the white bread here, I thought. Anyway, I watched as the men staggered along the platform, sucking from brown bottles like a pair of new-born babies in need of a feed. They had faces that reminded me of roadkill. Once the bottles were empty, they broke them on the asphalt and cackled. I clenched both fists and hummed the tune Milord by Edith Piaf.

The homeless men began to cackle louder and louder. Spying a comrade asleep on a row of metal chairs bolted into the ground, they poked at one another’s ribs and pointed in his direction. At first, I thought they knew him. But things escalate quickly when you’re new in a city and answers can be hard to find. Before I had a chance to blink, they stood over the lifeless man wrapped in a stained sleeping bag. They kicked at his feet, rifled through a plastic bag full of rags. Then one of the men took out his penis and began urinating on the lifeless body.  

   ‘Vive la France!’ he cried.

It was less than an hour before dawn, but sunrise felt years away. More cackling laughter as the homeless man shook off. Then a train appeared through the tunnel. Headlights made me grimace. Once the doors opened, I stepped onto a carriage. Except for a couple of airport workers and an elderly women sat clutching her purse—the space was gracefully empty. The doors closed. We moved sluggishly together; towards a fabled city just like the other strangers had done so the day before, and would again tomorrow.

   La Ville Lumière, I thought.

On the streets of Paris, I walked up a cobbled road, passing a butcher store with hanging meat, quaint cafés with chalkboards and buildings with striking design: pointed arches, stained glass, floral motifs. I took pause to roll a smoke as the sun rose over the river Seine. In that moment, I felt outside of myself. I lit up and inhaled deeply, watched mist rise from the water’s surface where barge boats gently rocked against an embankment. I’m finally here, I thought. Then I caught sight of Notre-Dame de Paris. Its nave flanked by columns of ancient stone, capped by gargoyles watching over the city—blew me away. By the time I had finished smoking the sun had risen, once again.

   It’s true what they say about the skylines here, I thought.

I bought black coffee from a Frenchman at a café with a moustache that reminded me of Salvador Dali. Then I moved away from the water and up a cobbled lane full of bikes and lamplights. I moved towards a hostel chosen because it was cheap, located in an arrondissement that once housed an English language bookstore run by Sylvia Beach, situated on the Left Bank of Paris.

Bring it on, I thought.