An American in Paris

Don't tell anyone, but I'm sitting in a Starbucks. In Paris. I just needed some familiarity is all, and if I have to eat another thing with ham just randomly stuck in it, I'm going to lose it. Who knew they ate so much ham here? And ham is really not at all like bacon. Abby left this morning after escorting me here. Go ahead and laugh, but I find transitions excruciatingly difficult. She helped me find a psychiatrist, how to call 911 in French (15, in case you ever have the need for un pompier), a phone plan, etc. Now I'm alone on a marvelous sunny day, the bells of all the chapels in Paris ringing over the city.

I'm ok.
I miss you.

When I was here in 2009, my friend Vicki-Marie gave me a private professional tour. An historian by trade, she also commented on anything else that came to mind - including the historical evolution of shopping in Paris. The boulevards boast these wide sidewalks - so wide that you could park a car lengthwise and still have room for a crowd to pass. I told her she should really offer a shopping tour, and now she does, and it's quite successful!

But I've noticed this disturbing trend: everything's American. T shirts all in English, plaid shorts you can pick up for $20 at Old Navy - you can't tell who's French anymore, we're all just a mass of shapeless, colorful cotton. Except for the French nationalists. They wear those typical horizontally-striped shirts and berets, seriously, as a statement of their French identity. It would be great but for the nationalism part. And thank God for lesbians. They look the same everywhere. Though sometimes they are just German women, who knows who they sleep with.


Soon I will go strolling across town to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur in Montmartre - my favorite place in all of Paris. But not before I've hung out some more in this Starbucks. I'm so American I can't stand it, at least for now. I wonder whether I will fall over the culture line and come home too French to handle the U.S., searching always for a good baguette and towns where everything shuts down on Sunday.