Popination Collaboration
A series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: a guest post from Paris.
AUTHORS’ NOTE (yes that is plural): Back in our early days of dating, my partner and I co-authored a blog called Parallel Bars. It was called this because of its origins: I had texted him a long text one afternoon on one of the days we weren’t together (we were still living apart at that time), except instead of being me and just telling him where I was, etc., I framed it like a piece of fiction: ‘the woman sat at the bar, her short skirt making her thighs stick to the wooden bar stool…’ that kind of thing. I described myself there as a fictional character, in other words. Call it Creative Nonfiction, or what you will. To my delight, he responded in kind, with a ‘fictional’ description of him, as he happened to be sitting at his favorite cigar bar at that time.
Later, we created a blog together, called Parallel Bars, which consisted of both of our writings, under pen names, in much this same vein: since we still lived mostly apart, we both posted little essays both describing the bars where we were at, but also they turned into …well let’s just say the ‘unhinged personal essay’ thing I’m doing right now (and indeed even my memoir itself) is inspired by this early foray into co-Popinating. It’s still out there online, though we won’t be adding to it ever again. It’s a trip, for me, to go on that journey, into our early rough days, up until the dread of the pandemic as its ending. But it’s a cool historical personal document all the same.
Anywho, I wanted to share one of his posts from that project: his pen name was Seamus, and out of the many he wrote that are so so so well written, we picked this one for a guest post today, as the Olympics is going on right now in Paris and we thought, why not take a trip to a Paris Bar of Yore?
A Tear For Paris
A Bars of Yore selection, by Seamus, Parallel Bars June 2017.
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Scene: a small, cheap room in a Paris hotel, near the Sorbonne. A tiny alley called the Rue something-or-other, improbably housing the hotel, a cafe, and a Lilliputian art cinema. Early evening, hot. The tiny TV is showing British soap operas dubbed in French. I’m restless, bored, sweaty. I’ve been drinking warm Carlsberg all afternoon. I’m 27 years old. I’m alone. I wouldn’t mind finding a woman, but I’m a big, too-obvious American and that’s off the table. But I’d settle for a proper whiskey.
More: there’s a low, subsonic hum outside. My room looks out on an air shaft – I can see nothing. But something’s happening out there. I pull on a clean V-neck tee, pocket a pack of Dunhills, and head for the rickety elevator that smells of stale smoke and in which I can imagine Anaïs Nin banging Henry Miller.
And then a surprise. The little street outside has come alive. It is the summer solstice, and unbeknownst to me the Fête De La Musique is underway. Everyone in Paris is out, everyone is tipsy and on every corner there’s some sort of pulled-together band.
My idea had been to cross the Seine and wander up through the Marais, which I’d found congenial on previous evenings. I did so, taking little sips of sight and sound along the way. The bands were everywhere, but most seemed to have been introduced to the idea of a band, if not music itself, only within the last few hours. Still it was all lively and fun and, by Parisian standards, friendly. It was warm. I was comfortable.
Eventually I found myself moving with a crowd and followed, easing into the mob. The river opened up in a wide square – probably Place de la Republique though at this remove I can’t be sure. On the other side of the opening was a proper festival stage with, refreshingly, a proper band playing. They sounded decent, and I thought to head toward them. Doing so, however, meant crossing the square, which was packed. I waded in and began sort of drifting through the mass of people, thinking to find some opening or at least a flow of movement that would take in the right direction. It was slow going, however. There were really too many people even for a fairly large space such as that, and I began to get a slightly uncomfortable feeling, not unlike the sense you get when you swim out a bit further than you’d planned and suddenly mark your distance to the beach.
I had already started to think twice about the whole adventure when there was a sudden opening in the crowd, a spreading out like oil dropped into water. A line of young women to my right were backing up in unison. My eyes went to a very beautiful young black girl who was doing a strange sort of dancing movement, waving her hands, eyes closed, an awkward smile on her face.
And now how to describe the sensation? Like I was splashed in the face with something wet but not wet, anti-water, closing my throat in an instant, an invisible lash across my eyes. A sensation dominating the senses, commanding instant, total attention, wiping out every other concern. So: tear gas. But why? And by whom? I would never know. Like every other soul nearby, all I knew or cared about was getting away. I pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth, covered one eye and burrowed into the crowd at my back. I pushed and rolled back toward the south side of the square. The invisible cloud passed away and blinking, coughing, I jostled through until I couldn’t anymore. And then I really couldn’t.
The crowd around me had coalesced somehow, and I was in the center of a sea of people. I looked around – A proud member of the American race, I was a head taller than the people around me. About 20 yards away was a kind of kiosk – maybe a shelter for a bus stop or something, and there were two gendarmes up on top of it. They were busy with something and I realized they were pulling an inert young woman, a rag doll, up out of the crowd. This, I realized, was probably not good.
The crowd moved and I had to move with it, but there was nowhere for my feet to go. I struggled to stay upright and realized everyone else was doing the same. I was caught. The faces around me were pale and wide-eyed. There was a lot of shouting; there were screams.
Okay, this is bad, but you must not panic. That’s the first thing. Relax your shoulders. Breathing deeply through your nose would be best but the gas nixed that. Still, slow your breathing. Look around. There’s a building about 50 yards to your left. Focus on getting there. There’s an inch of room on your left side. Put your shoulder in. Feel for a place to put your foot. When the crowd shifts, try to use the motion. A step, good. Small increments. Breathe slowly. Ignore the panic around you. They’re French. They can’t help it.
By tiny shifts I worked my way left. The crowd was moving me forward and I used each surge to wedge a little further through. Finally, astonishingly, an opening: push through. I broke free and into a meter-wide channel between the wall and the crowd, pushed forward to a corner, darted through a gap, and I was out.
Free of the press, my eyes still streaming, adrenaline flushed through me and I got the fuck out of dodge in a walk-run, swinging my arms and clapping my hands a few times to discharge the adrenaline. And the strangest thing – a hundred meters away it was back to the party. Everything was fine, and everyone. I found a beer at some kind of festival stand and lit a Dunhill and let the shakes dissipate.
Evening began to fall, and I was neither dead nor maimed. I wandered, soaking in the people and the noise and the endless bad music. Another beer somewhere, a baguette and cheese, but the whiskey remained a problem. Every bar was thronged, with a line out the door. Eventually, tired and a little footsore, I turned back toward the left bank.
And at last, trudging back to the very alley of my hotel, a miracle. The little cinema had a small bar, and though it was crowded it wasn’t madly crowded. I shouldered in like an American, and asked for a double White Label in broad American English. The bartender actually smiled and gave me a long pour.