11:15 The Marais

For a time I lived in the Marais, the 4th arrondisement, felafels, great bars, out of towners parking so close up to your front door on the sidewalk of these narrow streets with their time-worn glistening paving stones that some Friday nights you having to squeeze across the hood of a Peugeot of some banlieusard, some yuppie from the 92 province. This led to drastic measures: small hammer leaving hairline cracks in the front windshield so that as the car slowly negotiates the bumpy streets the crack begins to evolve and avail itself like a spider web across someone’s anxious face. That is righteous revenge. The kind I never told Sophie about. She did not have a sense of humor like this. You could not explain it to her – “humor, it’s like a virus” – she wasn’t listening.

I was beginning to receive rejection slips from publishers, magazines, editors, that were extraordinarily different from the previous ones: the new ones all included the word “happy”. Did they all go to the same seminar on how to appease angry writers? Both Guy and Frank flattered me by going along with my sense of paranoia because paranoia among friends is like a campfire among hunters. I mean, they said that I was right to believe that in part the rejections had something to do with Happy Ernst. “Happy to have met your acquaintance but ...” “Happily yours ...” “It is not with much happiness that I must inform you ...” “You must remain happy to know you are a ...” Had she written and faxed some editors to insist on my failure as punishment for my rejecting her? Frank thought it was more a plot of the mediocre to maintain control and not ever have to be made aware of their utter mediocrity. Guy however, went even further. There is nothing like paranoia tweaked by wine and the rationality that comes with despair.

“I wouldn’t doubt that she just faxed ALL the editors at ALL the publishing houses...”

“Foreign houses too?”

“Why not. They’re all inter-connected anyway ...”

Sophie and I lived in a great apartment, great except for the fact that it was eventually declared insalubre meaning uninhabitable because the 4th is called the Marais which is a very lovely name for swamp. The moisture killed everything in our place. From post-punk hair to left-over baguettes which would turn into a glob of wet dough overnight. And it wasn’t like our walls were particularly thin but we had a neighbor who had a very ratchety and mechanical dry cough the entire time we lived there. So to save what little sanity we had left, every night when he started coughing – Ughuh-ughuh-ughuh – his pathetic sympathy-begging cough, we’d join in to create a coughing chorus. “A ca-cough-any,” I might have said, I don’t remember. But to get back at me for whatever transgressions, Sophie would convincingly act as if this were not in the least bit funny.

Two beefy Belles from Chevy Chase Maryland [deduced from number of sweatshirts and tee shirts bearing town name] with high greasy foreheads that shined under the hall lights sublet upstairs and came home late at night and would wake you (if you’re a light sleeper like me) with their drawling cackles and incessant play by play, their complaints and hoots about how they’d ditched some guy, echoing through the old escalier (staircase). On each landing you could hear them panting from loss of breath because of the combined climb, breathless chatter and the fact that they were carrying pounds of extra beef in their hip pockets. Sometimes I’d crouch by the crack of our front door – I did not think this strange then and do NOT to this day – and mimic the two Belles – YAKYAKYAK BLABLABLA, South’s go’n rise agin! – as they shuffled past our door.

Late nights I’d instantly get worried arriving home late, a strange bug crawling around in your stomach, the kind of bug you get just before a performance, if I saw the light sliding out from under our door. I’d wipe my face instinctively with one more gob of spit one last time, erasing any evidence of other femmes (even if there had been none) and enter with a certain smile, the smile of a pickpocket, that might disarm Joan Crawford but not Sophie. And there she’d be propped sitting up, pillows against the wall, blankets tucked in tight at the sides, reading a recent Marie Claire, translating an article about various nipple preferences: “Nordic men like Caribbean coffee-colored nipples, the exotic other – my maman now believes cuz you’ve been reading books from her bookshelves that you are planting messages inside of them. I get so tired from thees ...”

And there, taped to my lamp that was precariously duct-taped to an old door serving as my desk was her latest “map” of my brain: “JULIEN’S BRAIN – MAJOR IMAGES & THOUGTHS & WISH & DESIRES & FANTASYS & PLEASURES XXX

“But I’m not!”

“That does not matter. She has now saved the snaps of paper you have planted ...”

“Snips. I have not planted any ... snips!”

 “She is paranoid and you are playing wiz that fact. ‘Ze elite and intellectuals prefer tiny, seeemmetrically-proportioned nipples with small aureoli that point in to one another. Working class mecs prefer big, fat brown nipples with lots of the aureola all around, farmers like pink meaty ones wis ragged edges ...”

I would get back at her later, make her livid (not a good move) by correcting the English in the map’s title – THOUGHts, WISHes, FANTASies. My straight hair had been curled, curled into the shapes of thousands of breasts. My eyes had gained binocular powers and were looking at this bat-like creature she’d drawn with breasts for wings and a hairy pussy for a snout.

 “The ambitious prefer ze Shhallenge of invertEET nipples to make zem rise to ze occasion; writers, orphans, mourning widowers go for real red and distended nipples with much of ze areola all around, that hang from large drooping teats; accountants like very small nipples like a pencil point or somesing ...”

“Serial killers like hairs growing out of the nipple and dermatologists like rebuilt breasts with nipples fashioned from chicken skin...” I added.

The rest of her paysage poitrine revealed a sculpture of square breasts on a pedestal. The title of the piece was “Have you ever touch [I later added an “ed”] square tits?” And out of my mouth float the words, “No, but I did touch all kind[s] of  utter tits!” Pun intended.

“Les machos go after ze brown and large saillant nipples with saucer-sized aureoli; womens like breasts to be full of shape but not drooping with a fair-complexionated pinkish nipple ... and you, you like any of zem or all, anysing that is poot on your plates, even some dried noisettes...”

“Whatever ...” I could not get involved in this. She was baiting me, trying to trap me in a blurt caught somewhere between confession, brag, and denial. I think. Or maybe she just wanted it to all go away, like an electrical storm full of lust; have it be like before when we could lay in bed all day, we playing with her (trop petite – in her mind) tits, she opening a can of pizza dough and wrapping it around her tits to approximate the size that would satisfy me (this was fun but also one entertaining way for her to teach me lessons). Maybe she thought that once we both recognized one truth we could come together around it and live happily ever after.

Or on some nights, she’d play with my balls, stretch the sack half way down to my knees, or hunt for them when they’d retreated from the cold, searching inside my body for their hiding places. We were totally contemptuous and oblivious to all calls to responsibility. And when she came she’d sing Nina Hagen [“Prima Nina in Ekstasy”: “I’m in Ekstasy wanna jump down my balcony…”] and into the shower. For 6 months there was no outside world. But that was then and now is now.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I continued to discover other details of her “map.” A thought cloud emerging from a tit-shaped pimple on my forehead said: “I hesitate between being reincarnated in a tiny wome[a]n’s underwear and a 42-D bra – both would feel so good.” And then I remember I may have said this once or thought of saying or said someone else said it or I said it not meaning it or acting like I did not mean it or was meant to poke fun at my self or it was her inventing something I was totally capable of saying...

By 1990, the Marais was already well along into its Soho (NY) phase, Soho was already far gone into becoming the sad mall of disposable incomes for those who came all the way to Soho to buy the very things they could buy in their own suburban malls for less. Friends of mine who live in Soho end up hiking a mile to get basic groceries at non-criminal prices. Well, that was quickly happening to the Marais. When I went shopping for basic provisions it was like going on the long hunt. That is part of the charm I guess. Every time they added a piece of cutesified decoration to the veneer of your favorite market or bar you could be sure that by tomorrow their prices would reflect the privilege of being able to enjoy this new decorative flourish.

Sophie’s physiological map showed a large penis at my groin with an arrow pointing to it: “Does it really belong to your body or is it an accessoire? Do NOT let me see it! You may never see it again!”

The Marais is an odd melange of old world storefronts that sell spices, Israeli action videos, religious paraphernalia and expensive boutiques where starvation-chic manikins display clothes you have never seen anyone wear except maybe a scarecrow in a duchess’s front yard. The more useless an item the easier it was to buy around here. One can also still find Old World alleys going nowhere, however, where you can peek in and be transported to Balzac’s Paris. But you have to get lucky.

In the lower right-hand corner of her map I saw a hovering pussy with an arrow: “It does look like a butterfly!” And pursuing it was a big stinger-shaped penis: “And a big bee is chasing after it.”

One night when we were still in the Marais I heard something in my sleep, a rustling; I sat up in bed and saw a dark shape moving inside our dark room. I thought it was my dream contemptuously playing tricks on me until I heard it again. I tried to wake Sophie. “You hear that?” Then I saw the man crouched by the side of our bed going through an old cigar box of our things. I said “HEY!” He leaped up and nearly dove through the open alley window onto the red tile roof, slid down, knocking one tile loose. It cracked to the courtyard below just as he slid down the wobbly tin gutter coming loose from the side of the building.

I leaped into my jeans and down the staris and ran out the front door, belt unbuckled, shirtless and shoeless, into the empty quiet street. I gave chase, cornered him by the Felafel Yeshiva on Rue du Rosiers. And there, against a gated storefront, I held the flinching emaciated boy-man at bay. I waved my open Swiss Army knife in his face until Sophie arrived. She began the angry interrogation in her robe and fuzzy slippers. She commanded him to remove his shirt and his pants; which he did. There he stood in his grimy but not-cheap, designer-brand underpants. She reached and picked up a wispy twig that had broken off from one of the street cleaner’s brooms. With it she pointed to his stained underpants. He pleaded for dignity, please not that. His face now a kind of overcast gargoylish grey mixed with brick red. She snarled and I jabbed the knife in the air under his nose. He removed his underpants [sans culottes: this is how you learn vocabulary] and we all 3 of us looked down at his shriveled and soiled penis. She poked around there with the wisp of broom. “Bend over!” Sophie commanded; she wanted to be sure he hadn’t shoved anything of value up his ass.

Pourquoi? Pourquoi?!” I wanted to know why he had done it.

 “J’ai faim.”

“If you’re so fuggin’ hungry then why didn’t you raid our fridge!?” This was of course silly because he didn’t understand me and he was hungry for the money that would allow him to buy his next fix, and if lucky, his next six.

“Don’t hurt me. Please. I am harmeless. Je suis pauvre.” Just to have some sense of justice, I took one of his shoes and hurled it up on a rooftop. But as I handed him back his shirt, a wad of paper fell to the ground. I reached for it as he put his shirt back on. Neatly folded, I saw that it was copies of my latest poems. Suddenly I loved the guy. A lover of literature! I wanted to buy him a drink and compliment his good taste.

“Tu veux lire mes poémes?”

He sensed his opportunity: “Oui, bien sà»r!”

“Tien.” I was so touched that I folded them neatly and lovingly stuffed them back in his shirt pocket.

“We’re poor too, you know!” He shook his head to further ingratiate himself upon my sense of kindness somewhere between false pride and contrite. We eventually let him go. Standing naked, clutching his tee shirt and underpants. But then just as suddenly I began to feel sorry for him and yelled after him slinking off down Rue du Rosiers with one shoe and one sock, to stop so I could give him some Francs for something to eat.

“Je suis desolée.” I handed him the change. He flinched as if I were going to punch him or something.

This pissed Sophie off. “Why do you apologize to heem. You are pathetique.” But when we got back inside we engaged in the kind of rip-your-clothes-off sex where neither of us cared about ourselves or each other. It is called obliteration, which can be of use but it can also be devastating. Needless to say we could not go back to sleep and from then on our relationship was fraught with that odd feeling that at any moment one of us would discover something missing. And for the rest of the life of this relationship you believe that someday you will discover exactly what item this guy took. But every day you discover nothing missing but you cannot help but think of his hands in among your things. She never totally forgave or understood my kindness which she saw as pure naive weakness.

“Omelette!” She declared somewhere between bewildered contempt and bemused pity.

It was 4 AM and I read to Sophie about Marie Antoinette in the Marais and the murder of her dear friend, “the Princesse de Lamballe, was delivered to the masses near the corner of Rue Pavée and Rue Saint Antoine and there torn apart. The individuals running triumphantly and pushing through the mob with limbs over their heads. Her impaled head was stuck on the end of a pike and paraded all through the Marais, the singing mob following along to the Temple Prison where Marie Antoinette was held. There they stuck the pike in the ground, aimed the head at Antoinette’s window and called her out of her sleep until she appeared and saw her friend’s impaled head ...”

We (were we a “we” or a “me and her”?) eventually (3 weeks later) moved to the heart of the 18th, Place Pigalle. But I often found myself wandering at length – like my feet were the ones writing my autobiography – into the 6th, 11th and 20th arrondisements. These were the quartiers of Suki, Winnie, Zizi Mignon, and Sonja.

My jobs, however, remained unglamorous but in a sadistic, not totally uninteresting way. You could describe them at parties and get a laugh. Marginal, migrational, seasonal, off-the-books, in the black, untraceable, no phone, no business card, difficult-to-describe jobs. Jobs that taught Humility 101, 202, 303 and on and on into post-doctoral. After work I was sometimes so exhausted, exhausted beyond sleep, that to unwind I’d just wander the Paris streets of a chosen quartier I had never been to. I would sit on a piece of cardboard on a park bench in a park I had never been to and there I might watch dark raindrops drip into a puddle on the path of yellow mud. And open the screw cap bottle (i.e., extremely cheap soul-rotting wine but the screw cap was easier than a cork when exhausted) and unfold the wad of paper from breast pocket of my leather jacket: “Paul Lafargue, architect of the right to be lazy, the joys and passions of leisure, was also a self-styled ‘pieton de Paris’, pedestrian extraordinaire whom Brassai had captured in a nighttime portrait sitting on a park bench bathed in the illuminated fog of a street lamp. He dragged Brassai around to the furthest edges of Paris, outskirts that had never even been thought of as Paris and there presented Brassai with his artworks, the sites that he had memorized were his artworks.”

I continued to write about culture for Paris Patois, profiling underground characters: an artist who wore paper bags with funny faces painted on them over his head as he wandered the city and asked people to help him cross busy streets; a guy who reenacted famous scandals and murders on-site; a couple who documented their necrophiliac love performances in the famed cemeteries atop the famed tombs of legends. I still have one snapshot of them (they didn’t like the photo taken without permission because, after all, the images were their bread and butter) which showed the blue-tarnished copper figure of a man stretched out across the tomb, lying on his back holding the face of death in his hands. I remember her, Odile, squatting on death’s head, urinating into the open mouth of Jean-Pierre lying on top of the prostrate copper figure. Or there was a writer who refused to use the letter T in his stories because to him it represented the crucifix, oppression.

Or the guy who claimed to distill vodka from dirty sponges, something he had learned during Le Grande Guerre. Or the legacy of the man named Ferdinand Fucker, how he had passed through life with that name. Or interviews with thieves and how they survived and philosophized their activities in minor Genet ways. Or a profile of the son of the connoisseur of loafing, and author of “The right To Be Lazy,” Paul Lafargue, who had advocated for the rights of workers and for the joys and passions of leisure. FYI: the son was a bit of a workaholic, what with all the effort of maintaining the archives and legacy of his father. His father killed himself and his wife Laura, daughter of Karl Marx, before the ravages of old age could steal away “the pleasures of existence.” How the son saw the suicide from his crib. The editors were amazed by these stories. Loved them. Laughed out loud with glee. Waved them around. Said things like “Robert get a load of this. It’s great!” Praised them to all ends of the offices. Had huddles around greater possibilities; my own column, bandying names about like Paris Perverse ... And then, they would promptly edit these snatches of genius down from 2,000 words to under 300. And then watched me for six months as I begged and groveled to get paid.

I passed by the offices often, on my way from writing desk to chantier (house renovation, carpenter and painter’s workplace) or to the open doors of Winnie or Sonja or Zizi Mignon (which Manu tells me means “small genitalia.”) I had to learn from successful people that part of their success may have been due to their perseverance, not going away, following up, making a pain in the ass out of oneself. But then again, for every 1 franc I was begging for, someone else was earning 100. I remember an editor-friend from the legendary East Village Other, telling me not to despair because he remembered how this brash young Jersey gal came by the office everyday to see if they were going to publish her writing. And finally, to shut her up, they published it. Her name was Patti Smith.

I begged (sort of demanded) to be paid, sitting there in reception, my eyes fixing on the editors’ eyes, their eyes fixed any somewhere else. And if there was no pay (no chump change for the beggar’s cup) I’d get Rozie Grier (distant relative, she claimed, of Pam Grier) to let me make photocopies of whatever I needed to make photocopies of, such as entire sections of a would-be novel in triplicate. She also shoved review copies of books  and records into my bag; books I could sell to stores. In this way, I got paid, in this way we meted out small tokens of dignified revenge. Then one day she handed me the latest copy of “that miserable rag” Patois. In a brainstorming effort to appease the Parisian’s accusing the Patois editors of Anglo-centrism, they had relented and had begun to publish French poets, albeit in English “translation.” I use the word translation in quotes here because there, on page 43, were 3 of my poems signed by one “Pierre ‘Joe’ Proudhon” no doubt the pseudonym of the junkie (who had “stolen”, but then also, had been offered to him by me) or was it that fish ‘n’ chirper, Nigel, purported scrivener and father of the Gangster? Was it the collective unconscious decomposing into collective unconscionable? Yes, true authorship had always been a tricky negotiation here at the Patois because most of our writing entailed the rewriting of press releases and the mangling of other people’s quotes.

“What’d the author of these 3 poems look like.” I asked Rozie Grier, the soon-to-be ex-receptionist.

“Skinny as an envelope.”

“Like a junkie?”

“No, really, an envelope – white, skinny, nothing much to’m. Like, honey, he didn’t like wave ‘em around in his grubby fist. I mean, they weren’t much anyhow.”

“What if I were to tell you I wrote them?”

“I’d shrug my shoulders. I’d say you been had. I’d say you can do better. I’d say your out 600 francs.”

“Well, at least the fucker’s enterprising. So, he took my poems, translated them into French and you guys translated them back to English. Sheesh! I hope he dies of an OD with the uh – my – money.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Oh shit, Proudhon! Property is theft! Fuck!”

“And poetry is bread, or at least a slice or 2, or so it seems.”

“Junk.”

“Right. And if naiveté were a crime you’d be sittin’ on death row.” I didn’t argue that I thought it wasn’t naiveté so much as the idea that trust is an investment in the human soul. I knew she wasn’t being harsh so much as instructional.