BY POPULAR DEMAND
I have a confession to make: I haven't written a blog post on this site for nearly two months (which you'll probably be able to tell by taking a glance at the side bar—last post: December 18). I've been very flattered to receive questions—and some downright demands—about my next posting both online and IRL (a frightening acronym if ever there was one, but that's for another blog...), but I have another confession: I just haven't felt like writing in a while.
As many of you who have a smartphone, tablet, computer, radio, television or eyes and ears are probably aware, the satirical Parisian newspaper "Charlie Hebdo" was the subject of a terrorist attack on January 7th. While the event was not directly connected to anything in the city save a decades-old grudge against a paper that prints things in very poor taste—which incited a heinous act in even poorer taste, resulting in the deaths of many—it brought Paris to a standstill. Growing up post-9/11, I'm no stranger to living in a country that's constantly on the lookout for potential terrorists, but experiencing the fear and fervor in France was new to me. New and very scary.
Joshua and I happened to be out on a television project (I'll announce it soon, though some of you already know—and the secrecy seems ridiculous) that very week, Wednesday through Sunday of the attack on the paper, the subsequent shooting of the policewoman, the hostage situation and killings at the Jewish deli and ensuing manhunts. We were being driven by van all over the city to various neighborhoods, both ones in which we've lived and ones we've only ever seen on foot, which was both a reassuring and damning experience. It was reassuring because, while reports of pandemonium and further terror threats splashed across headlines all over the world, we were seeing firsthand many of the places tourists were being told "not to go under any circumstances" due to riots, demonstrations, violence and the like. The reality was infinitely weirder than the headlines made the atmosphere out to be. While there was indeed a very large march in the Place de la République (which throughout history has played host to almost weekly demonstrations, though none have topped this one for the sheer number of participants), the rest of the city was back to business as usual in a matter of hours. Yes, police presence had been stepped up and menacing "Vigipirate" (the French version of the terror alert system) signs had been posted at all schools, monuments and government buildings, but otherwise, people were still going to work, flooding the metros, walking their dogs, eating food. Almost nothing had changed...only everything had changed.
What Joshua so astutely observed while we were trying to make sense of our altered milieu is that what had been affected was not the actual safety of the majority of Parisians—17 people dying (gruesome though it was) out of a population of 2.2 million puts the percentage of carnage in acute perspective—but rather the sense of perceived safety that we all take for granted every single day. Sure, I occasionally think about the fact that the metro I'm riding might be carrying a bomb—terror acts aren't usually announced until they're, y'know, detonated—but otherwise, I take for granted that, due to sheer mathematics, the likelihood is that I won't be affected in my day-to-day life. What the terror attacks did was raise the tension in the city to such a palpable level that it felt like everyone was expecting bombs to rain down from the sky at any moment, blanketing the city in chaos and carnage like never before. The reality was that three sick individuals decided to take their hatred and anger out in a violent manner and were subsequently pursued and killed. End of story. Or is it?
The problem with sensationalism is that the 24-hour news cycles need fodder, and when something frightening and terrible happens, they milk that fodder for all it's worth until all that's really being recycled is fear, not facts. That same week, thousands of people were killed in the Nigerian city of Baga by Boko Haram, considered the group's deadliest attack to date. But here in France, at least, all that we kept getting blared from the news outlets was "Je Suis Charlie" (and, if you had a good eye, "Je Suis Ahmed," a phrase proclaiming solidarity with the slain Muslim police officer who tried to stop the terrorists—an overlooked figure when you consider the widespread backlash that occurred for Muslims across the country, since the media can't seem to differentiate a few bad seeds from an entire religion).
The upshot of all of this information—it seems to be flooding out of me now that I put fingers to keyboard—is that the idea of writing this blog for the past couple of months has seemed frivolous at best, fraudulent at worst. Who am I to discuss the hijinks and hilarity of living as an American in Paris when I've never felt more like a foreigner in my life? I'm not French. I felt no loyalty to the slain cartoonists—though I certainly don't think they should have been killed—but I also think a march of 4 million people to decry a relatively minor event in the grand scheme of world politics is a little silly. World leaders who have refused to share the same conference room in the past were suddenly holding signs proclaiming "Je Suis Charlie" side-by-side as they marched down the street with millions of fellow outraged citizens. Again, I think the killings were despicable, but I think the fact that the conversation about what makes angry, marginalized people so desperate that they would commit such an act—France is notoriously terrible to its immigrants, especially if those immigrants happen to be poor—is even more troubling. Je ne suis pas Charlie. Je ne suis pas Ahmed. Je suis triste (sad).
We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming of humorous tales from beneath the Tour Eiffel tomorrow, but for now, thank you for taking the time to read this and for being so eager to read my musings. Sometimes being an American in Paris is not all it's cracked up to be, and it would have seemed disingenuous to continue writing about my usual comings and goings as though nothing had happened. Sometimes life intervenes.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
I was shopping yesterday—not an uncommon occurrence, I'll admit—at one of the larger indoor shopping centers in Paris. It's as close to an American mall as you can get within the city limits, and I was craving some recreational retail.
In the very first store I entered, H&M, I was approached by a man who asked me for a cigarette. In my 28 years here on Earth, this is not one of the worst pick-up lines I've heard, but it's certainly one of the most frequent, especially here in Paris. I politely said no and moved away to continue perusing the clothes.
Undeterred, the man followed me around the store, commenting on the sweater I was holding.
"C'est jolie, non?" he said. He didn't even attempt a smile, he just felt the sweater's sleeve and stared at me. He was too close. I was done with this game.
"Laisse-moi," I said curtly, gesturing for him to leave me alone. I hurried off to another area of the store, pretending to be absorbed in the racks of fast fashion rushing past, my heart pounding in my ears. I could sense that he was in pursuit, so I made a quick dash out of the store into the open space just outside to see if I could shake him.
Not two minutes later, as I was coming around a corner, convinced I had successfully dodged him, he appeared, smiling, in my path.
"We meet again," he said in French, holding out his hand in a gesture of guiltless surprise.
I ignored him and brushed past, making a beeline to another store where he might feel more out of place and therefore give up the ruse. A makeup store. Perfect. I darted into Marionnaud and immediately took great interest in a set of hand lotions, keenly aware all the while that the man had also entered the store and was pretending to examine merchandise not ten feet from me while keeping his eye on my whereabouts.
At this point, I didn't know what to do. I had politely declined his advance, removed myself from his proximity, told him in no uncertain terms that I did not wish to be around him, and now found myself not only pursued, but blatantly so. My brain was on fire, so I quickly Googled how to say "This man has been following me" and "Leave me alone" in French (just in case I'd gotten it wrong the first time—though Google confirmed that, even under pressure, my language skills had held strong). Unsure of where to turn, I spent an inordinately long time examining every piece of makeup in the store, convinced that if I couldn't outrun him, I could at least outlast him. Even creepy people must find the chase boring eventually, if the prey isn't running.
After twenty minutes of studied perusal, keeping one eye on the makeup and one on the door, I assessed that the coast was clear and moved toward the exit to continue my day of (now shattered) relaxation. But just as I was about to pass the final kiosk of "last-minute gift sets for all the ladies in your life," I saw him walk past the window, peering into the store to find me. Once he had continued past the window and out of view, I darted out of the store in the opposite direction, hurried down two escalators and into another store, where I wedged myself all the way in the back to make sure that I blended into the crowd.
The rest of my shopping trip passed uneventfully in theory, but in reality—with the rushing blood in my ears and the thrumming in my chest—I was shaken the rest of the afternoon. This certainly isn't the first time something like this has happened to me—I've been chased onto metros, propositioned in grocery stores and, even at the tender age of seven, trapped in a children's bookstore aisle with a man who was fondling his genitals through his sweatpants, staring at me the whole time—and it's by no means the worst thing that has happened to a female at the hands of a creepy man, but it's enough. It's all enough. And it needs to stop.
The biggest problem is not that there are predatory people in the world—men and women—who don't take no for an answer. The biggest problem is that we've been trained as a society to give the prey no out. I couldn't fight—though punching the guy in the face sounded great, it most likely wasn't going to defuse the pressure, nor would it have been entirely appropriate, considering he only spoke to me twice—but I also couldn't fly. I tried to dart, feint, dash and run, but nothing worked. Not even confronting him face-to-face and telling him to get lost made him back away and think better of his actions. So what's a person trying to keep the peace but also keep her sanity to do?
I contemplated telling one of the many security guards who were stationed in each store, but when faced with the language barrier and what was sure to be my muddled mind, I wasn't sure I could adequately explain what was happening without sounding like a silly tourist, or worse, a racist white woman scared because a black guy talked to her. (Yes, I think about these things.) What I wouldn't have been able to express in my frazzled French could possibly have gotten me laughed at, even chastised, maybe helped, but I didn't want to take the risk at the time. Getting panicky will do that.
But what gets me the most is this: I have lots of friends who carry pepper spray—one even carries a small keychain shaped like a lance—lots of us have taken self-defense classes, we practice in our heads what we would say or do in the event of feeling threatened, we've even discussed our stories of violation so that we feel less alone and less like we somehow brought these idiotic incidents upon ourselves. We're all so prepared to fight the enemy—who could be anywhere at any time—that it becomes a way of looking at the world. Our fight or flight reflexes are constantly on alert: where would we run? who would we call? could we punch hard enough? would our screams be heard? The issue of safety inequality has certainly gotten plenty of media attention through the years (#yesallwomen; rallies to advocate; speeches to ignite or shame; "girls shouldn't be taught how to avoid rape, boys should be taught not to rape"; the list goes on), but despite all this speechifying, all this babbling, all these facts and figures and findings, this is still an everyday occurrence. And it's frustrating as hell.
So when is enough enough?
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playing nice
I like to think of myself as an optimistic person. (Ironically, some of the least optimistic people I know consider themselves optimists, just like some of the least fashionable "trendy" people I see are "obsessed" with the resurgence of flatform footwear. But I digress.)
I've tried to adopt an attitude of positivity throughout most of my life, though that makes it sound like a conscious effort. The truth is, optimism is my coping mechanism, and has been since I was a child. Growing up with a very sick parent and, therefore, growing up very fast puts an emphasis on action more than reaction—every piece of bad news must be met with an action plan, "how we're going to handle this," rather than the admission of feelings of overwhelming sadness and defeat that nip at your heels every moment of every day. So you excel in school, you excel at activities, you try to be as nice as possible to everyone who crosses your path—even people who don't deserve it.
But while I've been busy trying to cause as little disturbance in the world as possible, it seems that other people have made it their life mission to more than fill the void. Put simply: why is everyone so rude?
Parisians get a bad rap for being rude, cold, snooty, you name it, but honestly—before living in the neighborhood I do now—I really didn't see it. Sure, there were anomalies, but for the most part, everyone I came across in 2010 was cordial and polite. This time around...not so much.
As a native Californian, I recognize that I'm accustomed to a certain amount of aggressive friendliness that others even in my own country find alarming (ever try to hug a Midwesterner?). I realized coming to Paris that the culture would be different, the customs new, and I tried to adapt and adopt as best I could. In every shop, I would dutifully greet the staff upon entrance ("Bonjour!") and exit ("Au revoir," "Bonne journée") and in between they pretty much left me to my own devices. I think it took our grocery store clerk—the one who saw us every day for six months straight and who was always very professional, if a little cold—almost our entire time living in Paris the last time to finally crack a smile of recognition. (Cue celebratory whooping on the way home.)
But this time, my experience of Parisians has been entirely different. Perhaps it's due to our change of location: in 2010, we lived in a very diverse area that was populated with families, lots of different ethnicities and tons of different tongues; now, we live in the most touristy arrondissement in the city, two blocks from the Eiffel Tower. Shopkeepers are quick with English (often it's stronger than their French) and very dismissive—I had a butcher tell me that he has to "fight" the tourists' English when they come. (This was after mistaking me for a Brit and, when I corrected him and insisted on speaking French, profusely apologizing.)
I understand the general frustration with tourists—as you'll know, if you've read other rants on this blog—considering I get nearly beheaded or shoved into traffic every day of the week when someone decides they need to take their umpteenth picture in the middle of the sidewalk where I happen to already be standing or that their backpack couldn't possibly be as large as it is as they turn quickly in a crowd. But what's gotten to me lately is the lack of courtesy that's shown to anyone, regardless of where they're from.
Case in point number 1: the grocery store, or pretty much any retail establishment where there are narrow aisles or displays to maneuver around. In America, if I was wandering down a grocery store aisle and came upon someone in my path, I would excuse myself quietly and gently slip by after they'd given way. Here, there are no cursory "Excusez-moi"s (or even more insistent "Pardon"s), there's just the sudden presence of another human body pushing against you to pass by. No acknowledgement of one's existence, just a shove, an elbow to the ribs, and it's done. An older woman banged my basket with hers while I was inspecting the vegetables and it wasn't until I looked up to see if she was going to acknowledge the fact that she'd nearly knocked the basket out of my hands in her mad dash to the zucchini that she said, very clearly and loudly, "Excusez-moi, madame."
I felt chastised, as though not only had I been in her way, I was now making a big deal about nothing.
Case in point number 2: At a recent theater performance, the show was sold out but Joshua had a ticket (he was attending for a class), so I put my name on the wait list. I was number two and was told by the box office attendant that I'd likely get in, I just had to wait until curtain (3pm) to find out if there were any available seats. Standard practice. So I stood by and waited while the audience streamed past me and curtain ticked closer and closer. When the time came, I waited in line to get back to the same box office attendant, who told me, "No, no, the performance starts at 10 after, you'll have to wait." So wait I did, a little confused, but figuring I just hadn't understood her French the first time. Ten minutes later, the stream had stopped and I inquired again if there were any tickets to be had. Again, she told me to what roughly translates as "hold my horses." So I went down to the theater space with Joshua so he could find a seat—aware all the while that it might cost me my place if I weren't standing right there when she called my name—and suddenly saw all the other people who'd been behind me on the list traipsing up to the door, tickets in hand. I rushed back upstairs, hoping I hadn't shot myself in the foot, and politely asked if there was still one more seat left (knowing full well Joshua's professor had just turned in three unclaimed tickets). I was brushed off again while the attendant consulted the list (where my name had been conspicuously crossed out) and conducted a lengthy conversation with the man behind her until she finally deigned to allow me to pay her 30 Euro for the privilege of running back downstairs a sweaty bundle of nerves to take the last seat.
These illustrations may seem trivial. They may even seem petty or normal to someone who was raised in a big city and considers these interactions just part of daily life sharing very little space with very many people. But the accumulation of incidents like these every day—compounded by daily news stories in which people are cruel to other people merely because they can be and stories in my own circle that "So-and-So is being rude to So-and-So because she's too nice, or too quiet, or too [insert mindless adjective here]"—make me question the sanity of our society. Yes, you cut in front of me in traffic, but in the grand scheme of things, do you really think you're getting anywhere that much faster? Yes, you shoved me out of line in the grocery store—only to have a new line open up and be behind me after all—but does your food taste better because of it? Yes, you made that person feel small and left out, but does that really make you feel big, or just momentarily inflated?
If we really examine what makes life truly livable, can't we see that it's the times we feel heard, seen, loved, trusted, respected, valued, that make us feel alive?
Can't we all just play nice?
happy anniversary
Three years ago today, I married my best friend.
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| "I do"...what exactly? |
Yes, that sounds romantic, and yes, he is. But I don't really think I understood just what marriage meant when we exchanged vows in my dad's backyard that afternoon. I'm still trying to figure it out, but these last three years have certainly been an invaluable learning experience.
I write about weddings every two weeks for a blog in Sacramento Magazine (check them out here), and I think I first found them so fun because they were cathartic. As anyone who's every gotten married will tell you, the day that's supposed to be "the happiest" of your life is often anything but. Stress, weird family tensions, more stress—did I mention stress?—will leave you exhausted at the end of the day, desperate to eat the two tacos you've been holding on a plate for three hours while everyone who witnessed the event comes to tell you how lovely it was. (True story. By the end of the night, my brain was so fried it basically just chanted: So. Hungry. Just. Want. Tacos.)
Since then, I've had the chance to chow down on many more tacos (though not recently, since Paris seems to excel in crappy Mexican food) and almost all of these meals—Parisian tacos or otherwise—take place while staring across the table at my husband.
How many meals we've shared together by this point, I can't even tell you (though I guess I could do the rough calculation, if this were a statistical blog—thank God it's not), but the crucial point is this: no matter what kind of day I'm having, no matter how tired, how hungry, how sad, how anxious, how anything I've been, I always look forward to sitting face-to-face with Joshua across the table.
It's not just because he makes me laugh (which he does so often that I sometimes wonder if people on the outside know how ridiculously silly he is), not just because he makes me think (I grew up hating politics, and it's only since being with Joshua that I realize I hate the pundits who talk about politics, not the actual practice of human-on-human interaction), not just because he has a damn cute face—I look forward to continuing this weird, wonderful, wild and pock-marked journey that is our relationship every moment we can.
My parents had a nearly 30-year marriage that wouldn't have ended were it not for my mom's death in 2007. Joshua's parents have been married for 41 years and counting. Growing up, I always pictured myself having a long, perfect marriage like those that I observed. That is, before I realized that the word "perfect" is exactly the problem. Marriage isn't perfect, people aren't perfect, perfect isn't even perfect (the word is starting to look alien, I've typed it so many times).
Marrying your best friend isn't a process of perfection unfolding before you each day like some sort of fantastical yellow brick road on which you traipse with ruby slippers. It's bumpy, and dangerous, and there are unexpected potholes and you might turn an ankle—or even break one—every now and then. But if you're lucky, the person you naively said "I do" to however long ago will be there to grab your arm before you fall or stand by while you gather your pieces once you've shattered on the ground.
During the past five years (two of dating, three of marriage), I've had the privilege of having Joshua there to grab my arm, help me gather my pieces, make me guffaw till cookie comes out of my nose, bolster me, turn to me, challenge me, question me, comfort me, lean on me—and above all, love me. All of me. That means more than I could have possibly known three years ago when I donned a white dress and stared into his face, wondering what the hell we were doing.
Truth is, I still don't know. But I'm sure looking forward to our next meal.
Happy birthday
I was sitting down to write a blog about something delightfully Parisian when the date hit me: July 27.
My mom would have been 64 today.
My mom, Jane Goldman (that's her on the right, during her first trip to Paris with my dad in 1983), died on January 10, 2007 after a nine-year battle with breast cancer. People usually say "battle" for anything to do with cancer, but for my mom, that word quite accurately describes her experience. She was cursed with a particularly virulent form of genetic breast cancer that her aunt had been fighting since her late 50s. When my mom was diagnosed in 1998—three days before my 12th birthday—we had no idea what lay in store: a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstructive surgery, more chemotherapy, brain surgery, another mastectomy, more chemo and radiation, more brain surgery...you get the picture.
For one year, between 1998 and 1999, she was pronounced "in remission"—a frighteningly misleading term that makes it sound like, "You're out of the woods!" when it in fact means, "You can be cautiously optimistic until we find that the forest has grown more trees."
During that brief respite, when my mom's hair had grown back in its lustrous silver shade but much straighter than before—I inherited her (previous) unruly, voluminous curls—we took a family trip to Paris, the first time I'd ever set foot in the city. It was on the eve of the millennium, so the Eiffel Tower was partially obscured by a giant countdown clock and festooned with twinkling lights that still dance a dazzling show on the hour to this day.
I had been studying French in school, so I couldn't wait to finally test my language skills in the wild, as it were. I think my parents were more excited to take the opportunity to celebrate my mom's potential recovery that (realistically) might never come again. They were right.
When I moved to Paris the first time at the age of 24—four years after my mom had died, just a few months prior to my 21st birthday and subsequent graduation from college—I realized how much my impressions of the city had been informed by that first trip. In revisiting monuments and museums with Joshua (my then-boyfriend, now-husband), I couldn't help thinking how much I wanted to call my mom and reminisce about the times we'd seen those places together for the first time. I also missed my shopping buddy—my mom never met a store (or sale) she didn't like, a trait that I've proudly inherited.
Now that I'm living here a second time, four years on, I'm still discovering parts of the city that I hadn't yet explored at age 13, or even 24. I'd love to be able to call my mom and rave about these new experiences and discoveries—I even catch myself eagerly awaiting her overseas visit so we can hit the shops and walk and talk. But most of all, I wish I could see her smile as we traipse down the city streets—like in all those pictures from 1999, when she thought maybe, just maybe, she was out of the woods. I can picture her grinning from ear to ear below the Eiffel Tower or smooching at the camera in front of the lip-shaped fountain at the Centre George Pompidou (that's Josh and me, above, at that same fountain in 2010).
But even as I write this, missing her on her birthday, I know that she's somewhere—still smiling.
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