Well, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago about my time in Paris and thought I'd share. I used a lot of friends' names and some real experiences, but a lot of it is fictionalized. It was fun to read it at one of our soirees! Enjoy!
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I went to sleep with too much Cote du Rhone in my system and
now I have a hangover and when I got out of bed I wanted some water but was too
afraid to drink the tap water even though my friend Megan said that it was okay.
My shoes pinch just a little too much when I walk up the stupid hill to school
and I’m sweating like I used to on the playground when the other kids never did
and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad
day.
When I got to school my friends were sitting outside Café
Universel and they all had their café au lait. When I tried to get one I had to
get it to go and it spilled and burned my hand on the way to class, and then I
put it down and forgot it was there so I had to drink it cold.
In workshop, Amanda wrote a piece that made me cry and Rita
made me root for a 12 year old boy that doesn’t exist, but in my workshop I
wrote an ending that didn’t make any sense and no one believed it so I’ll have
to rewrite it.
At lunch Andrew ordered oysters and forced me to eat one
because he said if I didn’t then I wasn’t living the Hemingway life in Paris
and the waiter didn’t understand me when I said “Un. Verre. De. L’oh.” So he
brought me a glass of lemonade and I hate lemonade. In the restaurant, I didn’t
get to sit outside or even sit by the window and that made me angry because I
could smell the fish that they were cooking in the kitchen and it made me have
to vomit. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very
bad day.
We went to the Louvre in the afternoon and I got shushed for
talking too loudly and a tourist pushed me into the glass covering the Mona
Lisa and a docent gave me a dirty look. The door we came through was locked when
we wanted to leave so we had to walk all the way around just to go out a door
that was miles away from where we wanted to be. The others wanted to stop for a
glass of wine, and the waiter spilled some all over my yellow dress and a glass
broke and cut me in the finger and it stung and stung. I told everyone it was a
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. No one even answered.
Then we went to a store on Boulvard Saint Michel and
Angelique picked out a pretty black dress and Amanda picked out a lovely blue
one; Megan found a nice pink one and Chelsea got a pretty green dress, but I
only found an ugly brown one and it didn’t even fit me.
I went to print my non-fiction story and the printer man
said that he was out of paper and that I’d have to come back tomorrow. But my story
was due tomorrow and I didn’t want to go somewhere else to pay for copies so
the story was going to be late and I knew how professors hate that.
When I got home my mom called and reminded me of the bills
that were piling up on my desk at home and wondered why I was in Paris at all.
I said I was on adventure, but she asked why I didn’t sound excited like I
should be on an adventure. I told her it was only because it was a terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad day. She said some days are like that, even in
Paris.
Then I bought a gyro across the street and I heard a group
gathering at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. I hated crowds but thought I would
wander over anyway. When I got there, there was a reading by Charles Simic who said
he used to live on the streets. I thought of my charming little apartment in
the 5th Arrondisement and the gyro in my hand and the wine in my
belly and my new friends up the road at Paris American Academy. I turned around to look at the Notre
Dame and as I was eating the last of my dinner, I remembered how lucky I am. So maybe it wasn’t such a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Love it, JBT!
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