Paris, Part III

That night, we dined in a typically French restaurant, which is to say the food was very good, and the waiters were hostile bordering on psychotic. We took it all with gusto, though, for the wine too was good, and there was no shortage of it.

When we were done stuffing ourselves with crepes suzettes, we hit a string of more or less generic bars and quickly got very drunk. Thus, the night progressed according to plan, until our quest for new and more depraved dinges led us into a part of town that seemed to have no bars – not even of any kind. The watering hole we came from had closed, so there was no way back. Instead, we pressed on through the night and soon found ourselves on the desolate and dimly lit bank of the Seine, looking up at the foreboding back of the Notre Dame. I briefly felt transported to the setting of a 19^th century gothic novel but was quickly returned to the present when a French youth with a guitar approached us out of nowhere. What exactly his deal was is lost to me now, but he did give us directions to the next bar, and for this I remain thankful.

This bar, which was to be the termination point of our drinking excursion, had a large, brightly lit area with tables outside, and this is where we sat down. It must have been around four a.m. when we arrived, but the place was still very much alive. My mental picture of it as I write this bears a certain resemblance to Van Gogh’s “Café de Nuit.” Of course, I have been known to see the world through a slightly expressionist filter at times of heavy drinking.

We soon got to talking with a small group of American tourists. One of them – a dude in his mid-thirties who’s name may have been Derek or Regis – quickly revealed himself to be a complete cretin, and so, while mindless drivel flowed from his piehole, my attention drifted around the terrace.

For the past hour or so, while Mr. Oz soared to a crescendo of perkiness, I had slowly been circling the drain of alcoholic stupor. From this stupor, I was presently shaken when I saw a vision of beauty; sitting by herself a couple of tables away was a tall, striking blonde with that uniquely French pout. Hers was the melancholy beauty of a scorned lover. If not for the hideous, clownlike boots that connected her – literally and figuratively – to this earth, I’m not sure I would have believed she was real.

There was an untouched drink on the table in front of her, and just then a repulsive dandy from the table behind her walked over, demonstratively picked up the drink and walked straight back. I inferred that he had bought that drink for her, and that she wasn’t having it. I liked her immensely already.

As mentioned earlier, I was on the prowl, but this lady’s ethereal beauty intimidated me to no end. There was no question she was out of my league, but at this point I was happy to settle for a smile and a kind word. I turned to my obstreperously drunk wingman, Mr. Oz, for a conference on the proper approach. We both managed to focus the pitiful vestiges of our intellects on the task at hand and were just discussing the possibility of my buying her a cup of hot chocolate, when she abruptly got up and left. This threw me right back into the vortex of drunken despair and helplessness.

Mr. Oz left me to my lugubrious thoughts and re-engaged in a sardonic conversation with the American delegation. While his scorn for these people was becoming ever more thinly veiled, I suddenly sprang into action. I had no plan, didn’t know what to say, but I knew I had to act while – in Shakespearean terms – my courage was screwed to the sticking place. Unfortunately, my motor skills were just plain screwed, and my walk can best be described as the determined stagger of an unsavory dipsomaniac.

Notwithstanding my various alcohol-related impairments, it only took me seconds to reach the place where the celestial being in the abominable boots had disappeared from my field of vision. Alas, she was nowhere to be seen. She had turned one corner and disappeared like a ninja in the night. Either that, or my sense of time or direction or both had gone to the dogs. At any rate, this defeat spelled the end for yours truly.

I reeled back to the table, where Derek or Regis solemny proclaimed that Europeans smoked too much and that he was leaving to find a real party. With this, he picked up his glass of beer and walked off. A very sinister looking black bouncer, whom we found out was known as Shaft, spotted this attempted glass theft and calmly followed the American down the street. A few minutes later, Shaft returned with the glass, while Regis or Derek, or whatever the hell his name was, wasn’t heard from again.

In awe of his display of coolness, Mr. Oz and I briefly considered asking for Shaft’s autograph but, to our credit, decided that it was silly, that we were silly, and that a cab back to the hotel was the only sane course of action.

At the hotel, one final, unwelcome, adventure awaited us. The front door turned out to be locked, and, in spite of our vigorous knocking, there was no sign of life inside. I was so tired I wanted to lie down in the gutter and cry, but Mr. Oz turned out to have quite a nifty trick up his sleeve. Just like in cheesy movies, he managed to unlock the door with a credit card. Regrettably, however, his quick wit didn’t end there: as an incredibly ill-timed joke, he swiftly let himself in and closed the door in my face. Of course, now he couldn’t get it open again, and what followed was minute upon endless minute of Mr. Oz laughing uncontrollably on one side of the door, while my despair rapidly turned into murderous rage on the other. Finally, the bastard got it open again, and my relief at the prospect of hitting the sack was such that I decided to put off the execution of his death sentence until the following morning.

As it turned out, justice prevailed without my intervention. While I slept soundly until minutes before I had to check out, Mr. Oz was puking his guts out and generally suffering one of the worst hangovers of his life. I didn’t escape unscathed, mind you, but his misery served as pure balm for my body and soul.

Soon we were walking to the metro station and our unceremonious good-bye. I was going back to Copenhagen, and Mr. Oz was staying for another day before proceding with his itinerary. There were no actual hard feelings, of course, just the inevitable fatigue that follows a night like that. As I entered the bowels of the earth at Place Blanche and gave a final wave of the hand, I had a strange feeling in my own bowels, which could be melancholia or just a forerunner of the running shits.