Shut the F Up, Paris by Rebecca Cardon

I don’t like Paris. That is an unpopular thing to say, but it is my truth. I sit on my balcony and watch the Eiffel Tower light up and dance, which only amplifies the nothing I feel outside of the stark awareness that this city has a beauty I am numb to.

It is easy to hole up and disengage when you live your life as a transient, especially when you’re a person who prefers their own company over the company of strangers. It isn’t that I don’t like people. It’s that I feel drained by small talk. On this particular evening, I felt like venturing to my lobby to have a meal. The lobby of a five-star hotel is a happy place peppered with mostly interesting and adventurous people seeking a temporary respite from reality. The furniture is clean and tidy, and the floors are shiny as dust never has a chance to settle. The lobby is alive, bustling with vivacious staff eager to assist with any need or desire. But there is palpable loneliness in a hotel, and no matter if it’s at capacity, I detach in isolation. A self-imposed sequestering. The solitude I experience is similar to an argument with a loved one, less about being alone and more about the disconnect and imperfection within the relationship. I have learned to find solace within myself, where I am both king and kingdom, master and servant, gardener and flower, a fully sustainable operation. I am on the periphery of people’s lives as I watch them pass through on holiday or for business. They come and go, and I remain. I leave from time to time, but I return, and my paid friends at the concierge are present with warm greetings, “Welcome home, Madame.”

I enter the lobby with my fully charged iPad, headphones, and a take-out carton of low-sodium minestrone soup from Nautura, the closest thing I’ve found to a health food store in this city of butter and fat. I favor this over the much too-salty French onion soup on the menu. I hand it off to Teddy, the Ugandan waiter, as we exchange a familiar smile. He knows how I like it, piping hot, as this is an evening ritual and the next best thing to being able to cook for myself. Adorned in pajamas, slippers, and a long cashmere sweater that drags on the ground, I make my way to the corner table I have claimed. I treat the lobby as my own personal den, and the staff seem to tolerate me.

The hotel is housed in an eighteenth-century mansion, and the décor is full-tilt historical—no stark modernism on display and nothing that could reasonably be called “minimal.” Instead, one finds tapestries, oak beams, luxurious fabric wall coverings, striped period furniture, and even reproduction oil paintings whose subjects have piercing and pervasive stares that seem to follow my every move. If these walls could talk, I think, and picture Henry IV having lavender tea with Racine and Moliere as they discuss theater life and his lofty plans for the Monarchy.

I smile at the image and fixate on a couple intertwined on the couch opposite me, who toast their Veuve Clicquot, her legs draped across his lap. Theirs was a true intimacy that comes only when you have seen each other at your worst. They spoke with a posh English accent and discussed their equal and unequivocal disdain for their nanny, Rose, whose lazy eye creeped them out. “I never know which one to look at,” said the woman. “I avoid eye contact full stop and pretend like I’m reading something when I’m forced to deal with her,” he replies, as they share a laugh. I feign deep interest in an article about the overcrowding of Everest’s summit to not appear as if I am eavesdropping.

It seems preposterous to spend night after night for weeks and months in this lobby while Paris waits outside for me to explore her. Years prior, when I first came to this city, I hit the ground running. There was no arrondissement or museum left unexplored. I was enthusiastic about learning to speak the language, Bonjour’ing to anyone who would look in my direction. The locals balked at my less-than-perfect pronunciation of their cherished tongue, and I was met with comments like “yu ar urting ma earz.” Discouraged and broken from my ineptness, I began to loathe Paris and the Parisians and lost interest in learning to speak French, hindering me from assimilating with their culture. I roamed the streets while the city ranted on around me in gibberish. I would catch the occasional word, but mostly, I felt like I was listening to an underwater concert. I began to regard that city as an agonizingly beautiful model with no conversation skills.

Paris is that puzzling person you sleep with repeatedly, misinterpreting their unavailability for mystery.

I sink my teeth into the warm, buttery croissant that Teddy places in front of me, “fresh from ze oven,” he smiles, then winks.

A soft, billowy center encased in a crisp golden-brown coat, more savory than sweet. I hold my hand under my chin to catch the falling flakes and chew slowly as my eyelids fall shut.

Everything tastes better with closed eyes.

This is enough French for today.