The first words I heard when I came out from the Pigalle metro station in Paris were, “Voulez-vous du shit?”
Did I want some shit? I suppose the man asked, holding what indeed did look like a nice, brick-shaped piece of shit in his hand.
No, no gracias. Tranquilo, porfa.
Non… merci.. monsieur? was the sole thing I could muster as I brought a rolling bag in tow and a Speedo swim bag bursting to the seams on my back. My reply was hesitant, but I definitely did not want shit. At least not in the english sense of the word.
It was my second time in the capital. A year before that, my parents had planned a trip for all four of us in honor of my sister who was celebrating her 15 primaveras, her 15 springs.
“Que fiesta de quinceañera ni que madres,” mi madre probably said. No way, why would anyone spend such amounts of money in a single night? No señor, we’ll take you somewhere, just like my abuela, Peche or Pechita as they called her, had done for us.
I loved traveling with my family, partly because my mother’s batteries were simply inexhaustible; she wouldn’t stop until she had walked every damn square foot of the city she had spent her savings on for us to see. The rest of us just followed her lead.
That spring trip, we stayed in a hostel on Tour de l’Auvergne, in the 9eme. Four small beds, a common bathroom, boom, done, vámonos, a caminar. We weren’t there to see the hotel, my mom kindly reminded us.
That summer of 2015, as dios would have it, I was assigned a homestay with madame Claudine on Rue des Martyrs right around the corner from that very same hostel we had stayed in 2014.
Ni planeado nos hubiera salido así. Even if this had been planned, it wouldn’t have panned out this way.
Claudine is a hell of a woman, a goddamn force of life. I need to devote a story solely to her and the thought of seeing her and her daughters, Nelly and Elise, at their home brings me immense joy. We’ve scheduled dinner for Saturday and I’ve already promised a bottle of tequila, none of that desperados filth some people drink in the viejo continente.
Ironically, I picked up most of my French slang hanging around with groups of frenchies in Buenos Aires. It got to such a point that I had to consciously stop myself from calling older persons “mec” and add the “ne… pas” around verbs and also not respond in the affirmative with a “bahhhhh, ouais” (pronounced “bahhhhh, wheeey”) but in a more formal tone.
I’m hoping this comes in handy when I conduct interviews this coming weekend as the public sector strikes continue throughout the city. The culture of protest in France reminds me of that in both Mexico and Argentina where strikes can last a number of weeks and where workers (paid criminally low wages in Latin America) are part of a culture that fosters public shows of dissent that is successful in bringing el gobierno to the bargaining table. In the U.S., the people running the show get to shut down the government first before the workers do.
Así las cosas, pero no por siempre. How things are, but not forever.
I can’t wait to walk down Boulevard Barbès again and seeing kids play le foot on the cement courts again. Y el kebab a las 4 a.m.? The great grandfather of the tacos al pastor? ni mencionar. J’arrive.