paris, valentine's day weekend (2010) & steam (2010)

paris, valentine's day weekend

i pulled away from a

really short guy

"je dois partir"

'por quoi?' he asked

and i think he understood

i pulled away from the guy who

was singing at the bar

"your words are pretty but they're empty

you speak a language you're sure

only you understand

and you don't try to understand

anyone else"

and then he pushed me away

maybe he hated what i was

rambling about

i pulled away from

tall, dark, and handsome

"i don't speak french," i said

"anglais, anglais, oui anglais"

'hablas español?'  "si'

'quieres bailar?'  "ok"

'mis padres son de españa

'no bailes así, te estás pisando los pies a mí.'

"toy emborrachada"

'no me importa -- sígueme.

mejor.  a los pies les voy a enseñar a hablar.' 

"ok"

i pulled away from a yuppie

i said something he didn't understand

'i wish i knew more english,' he said

i said i'm the one who's in paris

he gave me his business card

'call me tomorrow,' he said

the next day i found it in my bed

i threw it all away

steam

I chose a medium-gapped pace to get to the Tube.  Not fast enough to be conspicuous, but not slow enough to drag mud behind me.  They hurled comments across the sidewalk, where are you going pretty lady, can I show you the way home.  Groups of them huddled in the corners of the doorways, clouds of silver smoke seeping from them like a scalding pot bleeds scalding steam.

Soho lit my way, the neon script of clubs and the cloudy lightbulbs behind restaurant signs, the pavement dark brown and smelly with rain, the dull crack of my heels stomping on it the echo rang bang-bang, ricocheting from one side of the street to the other.  I took care to walk with a modest confidence.  The mist plastered thinning anorexic hairs to my scalp; I pushed my two bare, rake-like legs for miles, I could not stop until I got there, I could not ask anyone for anything unless I was laying like a rat between the gutter and the asphalt.

Can't I help you on your way home.  Sexy lady.  You know where the Tube is?  Come here, baby.  I hate Soho.  Where's the Red Line? Get out of my way--you have acid breath.

My friends had ditched me at a sticky club called Moonlighting; they were all bleary-face pregame drunk and I was not.  I had no passport and therefore no entry, and who knew someone could risk his own safety with a driver's license.  I was in a foreign country, my mother's mother's mother country, England, the land of the not so proper not so biscuit-eating Brits. There was now someone following me, close behind me, asking if he could help; I half-turned around and he looked sweet enough so I asked him where I could find the Tube.  He pointed left then front then right and I got there in about five minutes.  On the train was someone with a gritty beard, half-dead, embalmed with grease in a tan canvas coat.  I looked at him and he was looking back at me with glassy blue eyes like chips of ice.  I got home and cried under a cold shower and went to bed.