Out of Place
Just TRY to get a table on a Saturday night in
Paris
Out of
Place
I went to le Marais in the
evening; it's the old Jewish area, and now a gay stomping ground. The men in
France seemed stereotypically gorgeous and typically French, just like all the
ads in Fashions of the Times. Everyone was running around in skin-tight shirts
whose sleeves only come down as far as the beginning of the bicep. I kept
looking around for the cameras; I was sure Jean-Luc Goddard must be doing a
movie somewhere. And everyone seems to
smoke.
I visited Les Mots de la Bouche,
the gay bookstore on Rue de Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie. This street, and
many others, were not on the map. I don't think it was homophobic, but just
really bad cartography. I made a few purchases and literally hunted for dinner.
At one restaurant they just spurned my advances for a table for one. Bastards. I
suppose if it were 1940 and I was from Dusseldorf and 20,000 of my closest
Wehrmacht friends were behind me, they just might have surrendered a
table.
I finally found a wonderful
restaurant on Rue de Tibourg and had a wonderful meal of a baked vegetable cake
in tomato sauce, and a veal fillet in some very unkosher sauce and stuffing,
served with a chestnut flan. It was wonderful. It restored my faith in la
Republique Francaise. They might be downright rude in Paris (everyone in the
country hates Parisians) but you just can't have a bad meal in that
town.
Two vicious vicious queens perched
in the window seat and commented on every man who walked by. I felt like I was
in New York. Turns out they WERE from New York. Hmph. There is no escape. It was
like Planet of the Vicious Queens II: Visite a
Paris.
I did not realize that it was a
gay restaurant until I went to the little hommes room and on a table outside of
it, there were numerous pamphlets and free magazines. One was a photo-novel
showing the "adventures" of Pierre. He's 22 and just figured out he's gay -- a
guy follows him into a train bathroom and does a Lewinsky on him, while his
thought bubble says, "THIS is nice." While it is not porn, it does show
erections and the proper deployment of a condom, and explores the issues facing
men who have recently arrived to their sexualities. It also showed his parents,
exgirlfriend, tricks, friends, and potential
lovers.
It showed real life, and was
government funded. You wouldn't see that in New York, where the mere mention of
a girl having two mommies is verboten.
Vive la Republique -- and hide the children if you cannot deal with real
life.
Posted: Sat
- July 10, 1999 at 02:38 AM