Paris

Paris in the 1980s

I was arrested once. Or rather, I was nearly arrested once. It happened like this.

It was in Paris. And I had just been chased through the bowels of that sainted city by friends, the like of which I have rarely found again. (Friends, I have learned, have as much to do with time and place as they do with flesh and blood.) And so it was with these flesh and blood friends, for in that city of light, we were friends, heady with the freedom that time and space can give you, roaming those ancient scented streets like Ernest and Scott and even like old Bill, though we knew them not nor their miserable feast.

But I digress.

How did it start? Who can say? I know I see myself running with strange breakneck excitement – the envelope’s edge inexplicably beneath the soles of my shoes – on a Métro car under Paris, shuffling and sidling through the Gallic crowd. Looking over my shoulder because there they are! Looking amongst disgruntled Frenchmen for me! I can see them heading towards the car I am in. I burst out laughing and the dour confused Parisians are looking at me like there must be something wrong with this oversized, underfed American. And indeed there may be, for who am I to judge?

But how did I come to be arrested? I seem to remember feeling cornered. I seem to remember running out of the station, up the stairs, across the street that faced the great cathedral, and back down into the station, leaping the turnstile to get back into the game. And then I waited, understanding that the fun was in the pursuit. Understanding that if I completely eluded them, I could wind up in some godforsaken suburb, feeling very proud of my intellectual abilities, and yet all by myself. Insert your favorite metaphor for the friendships of my life here.

And then a stout black woman in some kind of uniform summons me. And she says something to me, very fast in French. Something disapproving, something disappointed. Something disgusted. Something clearly “dis”. But this does not affect me. I am used to being disapproved of now, and for this I am forever indebted to the French.

And frankly, if she’s going to play her part, I’m happy to play my part too. What was she saying? Were those actually words coming out of her mouth? Isn’t this America? Is this still the planet earth? Who am I? Who are you? Who? Who?

What I should have done was create a minor scene and then walked out of that station, walked back up the stairs into the sunlight and disappeared. But I didn’t and you know why? Because I might have run into my friends again, and that would have meant failure, which was unacceptable. And in this way we learn that I am an American after all.

So instead, I concede a tiny level of understanding. And she is saying something about a fine. And then she asks for my passport. Which I hand over to her and effectively hand her the game.

Because in the battle of idiocy and obstinacy, we were fairly evenly matched. Like a pair of Zax, we were fully capable of spending the rest of our lives in that little alcove of the Métro as Paris was built and rebuilt and rebuilt again around us. But when I gave her my passport, I gave her something she could hold for ransom. Or as they say in France – “rançon”. Yeah, I learned that word pretty quickly. And she wanted 50 francs to get it back.

In 1980 50 francs was about ten bucks. But I‘m still thinking that if I play dumb enough she’ll give up. That she’ll think it’s just not worth it. Or that mother Mary herself will magically materialize in this hole in the shadow of the great shrine built in her honor to save me.

Instead my friends show up. Laughing, giggling, exulting that they have caught me. They grab me and start to lead me away. This does not make the little Black French woman any happier. She begins to reach for something menacing in her bag – handcuffs? A walkie-talkie? A truncheon with which to beat me? Or perhaps she is just putting the passport away, never to be seen again by stupid white boys from America who are rich enough to come to her country but not smart enough to play her game. So I beg money off of one of my friends. Money to pay my fine for eluding him all over Paris. Money that will keep me from being hauled off to the bowels of French justice. Money which, I realize only now, over twenty-five years later, I still owe him. Money which he inexplicably gives me.

Money which is, apparently, the price of my friendship.

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