The Day is Cold and Damp

- Paris: Dec 8 - 16 -

Phase 1: Dec 8 and 9

I want to make these entries a little more detailed, for a few reasons, all of which I will eventually get to. The first obvious reason, as seen in the header, is that I’ve spent more time in Paris than any of the other stops I’ve made in the last month and a half. I will proceed.

I had a plan for getting to Paris.

First stop: Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookstore that also houses young writers for their stay in Paris. I was going to check if they had any room, and what the requirements for staying were. The backup plan was to go to a hostel, the address of which I had taken down in Lyon. I knew there would also be a CS event in Paris that evening, so I made that my order of operations: Shakespeare and Co., hostel (if no S&C), quiz night (the CS event). This was thrown off a little when there was no room on any trains to Paris before 6 in the evening. This would mean I’d arrive there at 8, and not have time to do my full plan. Being the sensible young lad I am, I chose to go to the hostel that night, and check out Shakespeare and Co. the next day.

And the modified plan worked well. I checked into the hostel, paying for two nights, and went to the quiz.

Okay, so everyone I’ve met through CouchSurfing so far have been pretty cool people. My hosts, certainly. But before I arrived in Paris, I received a message from someone here who said my profile was interesting, and she’d like to host me. After exchanging a few messages, working out the details, I got a strange vibe – I found it a little odd, though not outright inappropriate, that she asked me to help her buy her groceries and carry them upstairs with her. Just seemed strange. Then at the last minute she said she would only host me for one night, which is fair enough, but it did leave me with no place for the rest of my stay there, and very short time to find one. So with all that, I just said I’d stay in a hostel, since I didn’t want to be going to a new host every day with my heavy bag. And that was that.

Well, this person was at the quiz as well, and the weirdness continued. I don’t think she’s a bad person or anything, but she just really had the ability to push my buttons. I ordered food – a plate of nachos and fries – when I arrived at the pub, and I hadn’t eaten all day, so I was quite looking forward to them. “Maybe we can share them,” Vibes said. “I’m really hungry, so I think I’ll probably want to have it for myself. Sorry.” I diplomatically concluded. “Well, it’s a big plate. We should share.” Call my judgment into question, will you? “I haven’t eaten all day, and I really do eat a lot, so I’d rather just have it for myself.” I say again. “If you’d like, you can have a couple; that’s no problem, but I really am hungry.” See, I bargained. “Well, the cheese on the nachos is very heavy. You will probably be full very fast.” Damn it! I hate having to repeatedly make the same argument. I know I can eat these nachos. There’s no issue there. This was starting to annoy me. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’m telling you now, I’ll most likely eat it all myself, so don’t count on sharing, but I will happily share if I can’t eat it.” Quite reasonable of me, I thought. That was basically the end of that little struggle. She pulled up a seat beside me for the quiz, so she would be on the same team (teams were made based on the table you were sitting at). She ordered a platter of food that was on special. She offered everyone bit of her food, which included chicken wings and calamari, but everyone else at the table was vegetarian. One of us said, “Thanks, but we’re all vegetarian.” “Oh, so am I ,” said Vibes. “But you’re eating calamari,” said another person at the table. “Yeah, I eat seafood.” Okay, fine. I know people who do this – say they’re vegetarian and eat seafood and—chicken now too. She’s eating the chicken. Okay, she’s allowed to define vegetarian as she sees fit, no problem.

A question comes up on the quiz: “What does the word [and I’m paraspelling here] ‘hippomonstrosequippmentphobia’ mean?” Ah, we can crack this, I think, using our knowledge of Latin. “A fear of big noses,” says Vibes, “Big noses like on a hippo.”

I try to diplomatically dissuade her from this suggestion: “Fear names are usually in Latin, and ‘rhino’ means ‘nose’ in Latin, so I don’t think that’s it.”

“Put it anyway.”

Okay, the illogical approach. Here’s where my tyranny in game-playing turns me into somewhat of a monster (but a monster of the most reasonable kind): “But there’s no reason to think it’s about big noses.”

“Hippos have big noses. Maybe it’s a fear of big noses like a hippo.” She makes a gesture with her hands to indicate big noses. She starts with her hand somewhat open, close to her face, then pulls it away and closes her fingers slowly, forming an imaginary cone extending from her nose. Okay, she’s confused hippos and rhinos.

“But hippos aren’t really known for their noses.” I try an alternate strategy: “Does anyone know what ‘hippo’ means in Latin? What’s a hippodrome again – that might help.” We deduce that hippo means horse, so I cleverly think we’ve broken through the first part of the riddle. While this is going on, several other questions have come, and we’ve answered them, but I keep coming back to this one when there’s time. We had written, tentatively, “fear of being trampled by horses” as our answer. When the quiz is over, and we’re to hand in our form, Vibes takes the sheet to write in an answer she says she knows. When she hands it back, she had written in that answer, but also had crossed off our horse answer in place of her “big noses” answer. “Did you put ‘big noses’ on the sheet?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“Yeah, I think it’s good.”

“I’m telling you,” I say, “I don’t think that’s right. There’s no reason to think it is.” I look around at this point, and see that a few people at the table are watching this. Not wanting to look like I’m taking this too seriously, I concede and hand in the form as is.

The answer, by the way, was “a fear of big words.” Stupid.

Vibes then tells me about a restaurant she’s going to the next day, and that I should come to. Another girl, who I did enjoy talking to, also expresses interest in going, so I say sure, I’ll come. Vibes scribbles something on a paper and hands it to me. “I don’t know the name or address of the place, but here is a map.” I look at the paper. It’s scribbles. I can’t make out anything. I don’t know what information I’m supposed to take from this.

“I can’t promise I’ll be there based on this,” I say, “but I’ll try my best.”

“What’s the problem? That map is good.”

I look at the map again. Nope, not good. “I don’t know if I can find it based on this.”

She goes and talks to a few friends and comes back with the address. Fine, I can work with that. I agree to meet at 6:30 the next evening. “If anything changes, I have your number, so I’ll call you,” Vibes adds.

Whatever. I’ll do this, then that’ll be that. It’s one night, it’ll pass, no biggie.

Upon leaving the bar, I start walking to the metro station I came from.

“There’s one closer this way,” Vibes says, encouraging me to come with her. At this point, even if it were better for me to go that way, I would probably opt for the other metro, just to avoid her company. I don’t like having thoughts like this, but I really wasn’t enjoying our conversations, if they can be called that. I wondered if she was having the same experience, but she didn’t seem to be, based on the fact that she was continually setting us up to keep talking. Anyway, the fact is, I’m going to the other, slightly further metro station because it’s in the same direction as I’m going.

“I’m going to the other one, because it’s in the same direction I’m going.”

She looks at me with sympathetic confusion, and there’s a touch of scorn and mockery in there too. “Okay, but this one’s closer. It’ll be faster.”

Stop questioning my judgment! I’m a 24-year-old human being! I’ve obviously made it this far! Obviously things seem to work when I do them this way! I’m not going to agree with you!

“I think I’ll just go this way. I think it’s faster for me.”

“Okay.” Again, she doesn’t seem to agree, but she leaves. Phew.

I go back to my hostel and sleep.

I meet my hostel-mates the next morning. A young Australian couple, very friendly; I’m happy for them. I checked out some of Paris, and when 6:30 rolled around, I made my way to the restaurant to meet. Oh, I also couldn’t help myself, and I bought Rivers Cuomo’s Alone 2 album to upload to my iPod. Nice.

I get the restaurant early by about 10 minutes and wait, while listening to the album. It’s cold and wet, but I wait, because that’s what I do – that’s what I’m good at: waiting. I go through the album maybe twice. It’s now 7:30. No text messages, nothing. If I get sick because of her... I search for a wireless hotspot so I can check my email and see if she ever sent me her phone number. I find one, do the search, and eventually find the number. I send her a message: “I’m waiting at the restaurant. Are you coming?” The reply: “In car. You?” Me: “I’ve been waiting here since 6:30”. No answer. The other girl, by the way, didn’t show up, but she never committed, so no biggie. Anyway, it’s me, Vibes and a friend of hers, who – nothing against him- didn’t speak English. So it was quite unfortunate that I was either talking to Vibes, which I’ve already established I don’t enjoy, or waiting as they spoke French. I tried to make a little joke in French to ease the silence when Vibes would get up for any time, but it wasn’t well-received. My French must be worse than I thought. Then the buffet: I skip the items that look like they have meat in them and eat. Round two, everything has meat, so I return empty-plated. Then: “Try this, I don’t think there’s meat.” She’s talking about a pizza which really looks like it has chicken on it.

“That looks like chicken.” I say.

“No, I don’t think so.”

God damn it. I’m the one who sets my criteria for whether or not I eat something!

“Yeah, look, it’s chicken,” I say, poking at the stringy flesh with my fork to show its texture.

“Well, it’s not a lot.”

“I don’t eat any.” I say, perhaps now a little visibly annoyed, adding for good measure, “Go ahead, you can have it.”

She makes a similar argument about one of the pasta dishes, which clearly also has little bits of chicken in it. Again, I turn it down and make the case that I am the kind of vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat.

On the topic of vegetarianism, she goes into how hard it is for her not to eat meat. “When you go to business meetings, you just have to eat meat. So it’s hard.”

I make the argument that, yes, there can be all kinds of pressures, and that it’s ultimately the individual’s choice. She doesn’t seem convinced. No matter. The rest of the evening goes relatively smoothly, without much more unpleasantness, and I exit after paying. Phew.

I go back to the hostel and vent about this story to the Australian couple, pretty much the same as I vent about it here. I don’t like speaking ill of people, so for the record, this entry is more about capturing my thoughts and feelings during these events than it is about me wanting to talk about a terrible person; I don’t think this was a terrible person, just the kind of person who knew exactly what to say to annoy me in conversation. Perhaps this entry says more about me than it does about her. I acknowledge this, but still don’t wish to spend any additional time with her.

And that was the second night in Paris.

Oh! Also somewhere in there, I visited Shakespeare and Co. to see if they had room. Spoke with Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of George Whitman (I won’t nickname them, since they’re notable and researchable figures; Nicknaming would be an empty gesture), who told me that they would have room the following night. Success! I planned the next week at the bookstore, which would unfortunately cut into Barcelona time, but, man, would it be worth it!