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My First Time in Paris

The first time I saw Paris was some 30 years ago. Yes, I'm dating myself, but at this point, I believe I've reached a point at which age is irrelevant. Too soon old, too late wise, the saying goes. Today, I feel myself poised in the balance of that equation, neither too old, nor too wise, certainly not yet wise enough to have figured out what the heck I was thinking back then, or if I had been thinking at all.

So anyway, my first time in Paris. It was November, or maybe early December. I was in my mid-twenties, a graduate student living in England, where I was studying sixteenth century English literature at Oxford, at least nominally, on a semester abroad that included a research assistantship and tutorials with a distinguished senior professor from my university back in the States. I say nominally because, although I did read lots of poetry and drama that autumn, my attention was diffuse. I attended lectures by eminent scholars and spent hours each day in the Bodleian Library, reading the plays and sonnets of Elizabethan poets and writing mediocre essays about them but I placed much more focus on activities after library hours at The Turf Tavern, a nearby pub. Yes, that's the place where Bill Clinton hung out during his Rhodes Scholar year but I never saw him there.

There were a good half-dozen other students from my Midwestern university also studying at Oxford that autumn and one of them had plans to meet friends in Paris the week after our joint Thanksgiving dinner with our American professor and his family. Needless to say, I had very little money as I was living on a stipend of less than $400 a month at a time when the pound was going for something around $2.45. For me, this translated into an ungodly percentage of my income to be spending on beer at 90p per pint.

An Oxford travel agent found me a cheap weekend-in-Paris package deal that included train fare, the Channel crossing, two nights in a cheap hotel near the Gare du Nord (or was it the Gare de l'Est), and a voucher for a welcoming drink at a typical Parisian wine bar. I would meet my undergraduate friend and her friends at a predetermined rendezvous on the Saturday night. In retrospect, it's miraculous that we managed such things in the days before instant digital communication.

I made it by train from Oxford to London and then, with moments to spare, crossed town by cab to Victoria Station in time to catch my train to the coast. I survived the Hovercraft crossing—my first experience at sea—with only a hint of mal de mer, precursor of worse seasickness to come on future ocean voyages.

Later on in Paris, a short walk from the station brought me to my hotel; if I remember correctly, it was called La Nouvelle France or La Nouvelle Paris. I never found out what earned it the label nouvelle, but that doesn't matter, definitely not at this point, as the place is no longer in business under that name, if at all.

Another walk through the Marais took me to La Tartine on the rue du Rivoli and the red wines whose names were chalked on the menu board there, St. Julien, St. Émilion, Pomerol, a glass of which the propriétaire served with slices of cheese and crusty bread in exchange for my British tourist voucher.

On my own for the evening, I walked for hours until well after dark, not yet ready to risk the métro. Somehow, I managed to make it back to the hotel that evening, even though I had wandered pretty far. I think I even managed to find Pigalle and the animated neon of Le Moulin Rouge.

The next morning, I set out on my mission: to see the Louvre and as many other cultural icons as could be managed in one full day. I believe I did take the métro then, to save time, and soon found myself walking under gray autumn skies along the broad expanse of the Tuileries.

Now, at this point, I have to interrupt my narrative to try to imagine how I appeared, how I was costumed in my late 70s poor student style, on that walk along the Seine. My ordinary uniform that fall season was comprised almost entirely of fashion finds from Oxfam and a consignment shop near my digs in North Oxford.

I was tall, still am as a matter of fact, but somehow, my legs seemed longer then. I could never find jeans long enough for me but by some miracle had found a pair in Luxembourg that fit like blue denim skin, except for wide, flared bell bottoms. (F.U. brand the jeans were and I still have them just in case I decide to reduce enough to get them zipped again.) For warmth, I had purchased a navy Guernsey fisherman's sweater that I wore with the jeans and over that I wore a secondhand brown mouton fur evening jacket, topped by a wide, woven wool fringed scarf in a warm persimmon color, both courtesy Oxfam.

My other outfit swapped the jeans and sweater for a deep red velveteen and Liberty wool print pinafore dress from the Oxford couture shop Annabelinda, via the consignment shop. My footwear at the time was a well-worn pair of thick-soled, high leather boots in saddle tan, which coordinated perfectly with any and all of my other limited wardrobe choices.

So picture a young woman, obviously not French, obviously nearsighted, with long, unruly, never styled hair, walking along the Tuilieries with great strides of her heavy leather boots. I return to the narrative. Please forgive the switch from past to present to past tense, as this is, for me, a moment frozen in time.

From the corner of my myopic eye, I catch a glimpse of a tall man hurrying to match his stride with mine: a mop of dark curly hair, tweed jacket over jeans, and the obligatory scarf tossed casually over his shoulder. Not French, but French speaking, probably North African from Tunisia or even Morocco. He begins at first to speak to me in German. I shake my head, not having yet refined my instincts to know the appropriate reflex reaction with which a well-bred young woman in Paris should respond to such an approach. English? Ahh, americaine! And with that, he grasps my hand and begins to walk with me toward the Jeu de Paume.

I cannot say for sure how long we walked and conversed, nor what propositions he made to my continued protests of "Non, merci." As we walked, he continued to grasp my hand, and as he registered my confusion and my inability to either dismiss or accept his company, he raised my hand in his and with the other very gently, almost imperceptibly, took my skin between his thumb and forefinger, testing its resilience.

Dear reader, should you fear to read further, be assured that nothing more untoward happened between me and the tall, dark stranger. Perplexed and shocked, I withdrew my hand and bolted away, putting between us the nearby reflecting pond where children and their grownups were sailing model boats.

I might add that it took some two decades before I developed anything approaching a full understanding of that gentle pinch. How could I have known at the time how much it implied, in the stranger's eyes, about my status and potential value as a single woman abroad, alone in a foreign city?

Clearly, I had a lot to learn. I did, in fact, stumble upon numerous lessons during that single short weekend in Paris, and the encounter on the Tuileries was just one of these.

I continued my tour of the icons of Paris: bookstalls along the Seine, the glorious arches of Sainte Chapelle, Notre Dame's rose window, fire-eaters and sword swallowers and jugglers performing outside the Centre Pompidou. I even swallowed my fear of heights to climb the stairs of the Tour Eiffel.

Later, I found my friend and joined her and her group in a pizzeria, where we sat in a windowed room on the premier étage overlooking a busy street filled with tourists and restaurants. After the meal we parted, they going off to do whatever it was that groups of American undergraduates in Paris did in those days.

I set off again on foot. It was dark, and growing darker as I walked.

I still don't know where I ended up. I thought I was headed north to my hotel, but somehow I missed it by a long shot. The boulevards of Paris, angled widely rather than parallel, can lead unsuspecting walkers off on tangents far from their intended paths. So I was lost without realizing I was lost.

The only tourist now in a drab, working class neighborhood, I must have paused to check my bearings. I can't recall the young Spaniard's approach, at least not with any precision. We conversed, I happy to use the Spanish I had learned in Cuban-American kitchens, the language that had been fighting all that day for primacy with my high school French. He was about my age, small boned and at least a head shorter, which must have made him seem a safe companion. We talked, and he told me about his home in Spain and about his job building cars for Renault. He even pulled out his pay stub as proof that he was who he said he was. Or perhaps, I guess now, as proof he had money.

Why didn't that seem peculiar to me then? Well, why did curiosity kill the cat? Would I like a glass of wine? He lived nearby, he said, and would like to show me his apartment.

Again, gentle reader, fear not to read further. Yes, I did follow the young man to his flat and I sat on his sofa practicing my Spanish. That is, until one of his sentences included in close succession the phrases una muchacha, a girl, and en la cama, in the bed. He gestured toward the bedroom. "Necessito una muchacha en la cama."

Not this girl in that bed, I thought. "No. Yo me voy. I'm leaving." "Por favor," he pleaded. "Tu eres muy bonita. You are very beautiful."

"No. Yo me voy. Yo me voy," I repeated as I rushed to the door, fumbled with the latch, and lacking familiarity with light switches on timers began a fast, perilous descent down four winding, pitch-dark flights. Evidently, I was not followed, but I did not look back to find out for sure.

Emerging onto the street, still terror-stricken, I hailed a taxi, only to realize in my panic that I had forgotten the address of my hotel, recalling only its name. Taking pity on the young américaine, my driver radioed his dispatcher for directions, and I was safely back in my hotel room within 15 minutes.

The next afternoon, still in pursuit of whatever sights I could see before I had to be on my train back to England that evening, I stopped at a corner café on one of the grands boulevards in the Quartier Latin. As I sat studying my maps and notes, a young woman seated nearby struck up a conversation.

"You're American, aren't you?" she asked, without really needing a reply. She introduced herself as a resident of Paris for five—or possibly more—years, a former beauty queen now approaching 30 who had taken a job as a nanny with a French family after completing the responsibilities of her year's reign as Miss One-of-the-Endless-Great-Plains-States—Iowa, perhaps, or Nebraska.

I told her about my experience the previous morning in the Tuilieries. I was far too ashamed to reveal my poor judgment in the later incident with the lad from Spain.

"Oh, yes," she concurred. "It can be difficult to get rid of men like that. The best defense is to avoid any sort of eye contact or response when one of them approaches you."

"I always wear a wedding band," she added. "I'm not sure how much effect that has on the really persistent ones, but it does add to my self-confidence and my air of respectability, if that's the right word. But most importantly, I've learned to avert my eyes and to show little or no facial expression when I am out on my own in Paris."

Before she rose to return to her charges for the rest of the afternoon, she invited me to join her later in the same café. "I come here a lot by myself and sometimes to meet friends. I'll be back this evening."

I thanked her for the invitation but had to decline, as I would soon be meeting my own still-very-American friend. We exchanged smiles and good-byes. As she left the café and went on her way, doubling back on the pavement along the café's terrace windows so that she approached me face-on, I watched as she transformed herself to meet the public eye, posture rigid and face no longer softly smiling, but suddenly aged and mask-like, strangely set and old for someone still so young.



Lanora Schoeny Mueller writes from suburban Chicago, where she is no longer ashamed to admit that her youthful brain sometimes functioned almost as well as cotton batting. She blogs variously about travel, writing, photography, new media and anything else that comes to mind at WritingTravel.com and Lanora Mueller Photography.


© 2008 Lanora S. Mueller.