Paris ...ah, paris.

After our conversation today,
I got to reminiscing about Paris. Sigh. Paris. You know it always feels better when you do that. Take that pause after you say Paris....sigh, and ring those vibrations through your tongue once more.
Paris is my favorite cliche. The city of romances, not necessarily always with another person but definitely involving matters of the heart. I fell in love with the city, the idea behind the city, the architecture, the sexy silhouette of those romantic bridges at night, walking pass the most amazing buildings ever made. The cafes in the evenings and the intense energy. One of my favorite memories must have been witnessing a couple miss the "universally known" green man crossing simply because they were kissing. Walking into restaurants is exactly how you would see it in the movies. Couples holding hands across the table or french men cupping their lady's faces in their hands, staring into each other's eyes. To me, it's as if the Eiffel Tower radiates out some kind of love energy and the whole city is bewitched.
I was only 19 when I lived in Paris. My first day there, after a ridiculously long flight from Singapore, I was picked up and taken straight to my agency Ford. It was 8am Paris time and I was exhausted, looking like a wet rat. Which believe me, became a regular 'look' in my stay there due to Paris's crazy weather. YSL saw me after a frightful rainstorm and I wet most of the foyer. Probably explained why I didn't get the job.
Anyway... the moment I got into the Ford office, my booker told me to leave my luggage at the agency, go downstairs to the bookstore and buy a city guide map book, handed me 2 A4 prints with 'instructions" and literally showed me the door. A bit thrown off, but partially excited, I made my way to the bookstore. Along the way, one of my first sights of Paris, was a half-naked man covered in lesions, throwing up along the side of the road.
Rather shaken and filled with fright, I find the bookstore, grab my map and head back out.
Ok let me just tell you that Parisians can be rather ...well.... curt. If you speak to them in English, they'd probably ignore you or give you the wrong directions, seriously. French is a BEAUTIFUL language but I believe, you should speak it well or not speak it at all.
Ok ok long story short, I basically went on the rest of my day... lost in the city. I had 12 castings to go to. But i think I only managed 5. And even those, I had to cheat and take a taxi to because I just couldn't bare to go down through the Metro and not see any of the city. There was so much adrenalin pumping through me and this was just the first day.
After getting back to the agency about 8pm, I picked up my luggage and got sent home to the model's apartments. It was a little building of about 5 floors on Rue Parmentier and with little self contained dorm-like rooms, about 6 on each floor. 2 girls to a room, which had a little kitchen and bathroom and 2 twin beds. The corridors became our living room and we hardly ever closed our room doors since all the girls , fortunately, got along. We got along so well, we were known as our director's favorites. Now I'm kind of getting a little ahead of myself here and as far as stories about Paris goes...I have too many to break down now. But at that point, I was new, settling into a place completely unknown to me. Nothing was in English, so for the first few nights, I would read the only thing that was in a language I understand, and the hard copy I had. The bible. Honest.
It was initially more a form of meditation, my reading. My need to associated myself with something familiar to me, the written word. So before I started exploring the city, my nights would be with the bible, going through historic verses and pondering on life.
Well, over time I learned the ropes. One of them was if a few girls had the same castings, they would book a car and split it 4 or 5 ways.. so we would make all our castings and not burn a hole in our pockets. Of course, there's the good old reliable way which models all around the world still use. The Metro, a.k.a The Subway. Every model can tell you a story about the Paris Metro. Shit just goes down. I know a model who got slapped in the train just for looking at some looney French guy. I almost got mugged by this guy who asked me for a cigarette and after I gave him mine, he grabbed me and pulled me down the stairs. Luckily, Alex Wek, who was my 'neighbor' and who I planned to meet there saw him and came running toward us yelling, scaring the guy off.
So anyway, living in Paris is financially challenging to any struggling model. My daily breakfast would be banana and yogurt, lunch was a chocolate croissant and dinner was pretty much bananas and yogurt too unless one of the girls decided to cook pasta and invite everyone for some. Most nights we had red wine since it was so cheap and the only way to indulge ourselves if we weren't all going out for some 'company' dinner. My favorite restaurant in Paris was Leon's because my memories of it was so simply. I would go in about 3 times a week for lunch, by myself, order a big pot of mussels and a glass of champagne and tuck in. No conversation, no distractions, my personal time out. Then I would stick my hands deep into my coat pockets, inhale the cold air deeply and walk the Champs-Elysées to just absorb the vibes of Paris.
The day I went to Notre Dame, it was so overwhelming, I cried. The afternoon I was standing on top of the Eiffel tower, I was speechless but grinning ear to ear. The evening I went to the Louvre, Alek and I played frisbee out front in the park. Paris became joyous. It was somewhere in between those experiences that I fell in love.
No doubt I had my dark nights, where I would be home-sick and spent nights crying at the bottom of the stairs where the public phone was. But the city whispered kindly to me and before long, I was having fun-filled dinners with friends, partying at clubs and having lots of in-house slumber parties. I was once even hit on by Marcus Schenkenberg at a party but we were both too pickled to even talk by then. Another area us girls grew to love to hang out at was Saint-Sébastien. Known as the gay district of Paris, it had the quaintest little bars and a crowd that celebrated a whole bunch of tall pretty ladies as oppose to jumping them. Us, models would sit in a tiny bar all night, drinking cocktail after cocktails, spilling our guts about every subject imaginable like sex (the universal language, next to music), gut wrenching experiences, and hilarious work stories.
The days I had free, I would sit under a tree and watch the world walk by.
There are so many memories I have of Paris. They are all so vivid to me... each story more detailed than the next. I look forward to sharing them all one day with you. But for now, all I can imagine is the next time I am there. To be able to soak Paris in all over again, once more.
Paris,..... ah, Paris.