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Andrea Moser is a physician assistant and writes in her spare time. P.L. George's work has been published in foliate oak at the university of arkansas, where he won best short story of the year for "Bullet". His short story "Dinner" can be found at oraculartree.com. It is now being made into an indie film by blackcarmediaworks.com., a collaboration with director Mike Walsh. Some of his fiction can be found on that site, just click literature. Find more at reddirtreview.org.
"We live in Oklahoma City and recently married. We decided to take our honeymoon in Paris, France. Along the way, we thought it would be cool to keep a journal, totally unrevised, about our thoughts on love, the experiences of American writers in France, marriage, and the French culture. We were drunk half the time, in love with each other, and excited about our new lives together. Pat (a.k.a, P.L.) dictated some of this to me, and I did the same. This is how 'Paris Sketchings' was born." AM |
b Paris
Sketchings by Andrea Moser & P. L. George Day 1:
Recovering from the wedding.
Nine hour flight to Paris, crammed cabin, frigid, watched the
soccer movie with Will Farrell. OKAY.
Landed, groggy, jet lagged, mess.
Paris is full of metrosexuals, aristocratic. I’m the ideal American, rugged, individualist, crudeness as
a definition in these eyes, touristy, till they know I can actually
write something. With my
girl naked, chain smoking cigarettes like we’ll never get another. Bliss, the tower lit like a nasa rocket burning, just outside
our balcony.
Should have prepared for French. I go back to Spanish when struggling saying si…they don’t
understand. Two bistros on
our street. The watchers, jacketed connoisseurs of people.
Too high in dress, but not intellectually, I suspect.
Two a.m.- just like home, the city coming to silence.
My girl naked. Me, in my boxers, scribbling, stacked spent butts in the
ashtray. Taking it all in.
Slowing my mind down. Sirens
bang the night, EEAW, EEAW, not like the sirens of home.
I haven’t slept in forever.
Don’t want to miss anything.
Ate toasted baguettes with fromage and tomatoes in bed.
Watched the moon get jealous of the sparkling tower.
Am I here? It seems
a dream, pulled out of my body, someone else living it.
Me on my stomach, Andrea’s hand on the back of my thigh,
she’s the sleeper in this relationship, me the insomniac.
I was reminded, or should I say why I always loved her.
She understands me, will jump everything for me, and I her.
Everyone I think has picked a headstone, wrote the epitaph.
Another hypocrite who wrote Bullet died in suburbia by his own
hand, a pistol, marriage. No,
I’m a new defender of such things, they will see.
The disgruntled lovers who found no one, the truth in all things
the most important- love, friend companion, crying shoulders…to love,
cheers.
Louvre tomorrow, build a memory, still living…good night.
Day 2: As I watch soccer at midnight, those melodramatic actors when
fouled, as if life was ending. Yesterday
walked to the Tour de Eiffel, monstrous, bounced up the street where it
stood, kissing sky, brown and bronzed, videoed in ecstasy, strolled
through, looked up with breathless eyes in grand wondered dizziness,
Walked what seemed eternity through near accidents, lost…me and
Andrea in electric Paris. Found
the Champs, the Arc de Triomphe. All
the stores closed, when they opened, couldn’t afford anything.
Nothing caught me, like Socrates through the Athens markets.
I like the dust, dirt clothes, not metrosexual feminine.
Bought a burger, fries, and Coke Light (no ice) at Quick Burger. Smoked with my girl about life and love.
Annoyed a little, but hell, I’m in Paris.
Walked some more. Disappointed
in the touristy Champs, want the old books and art and expatriates, the
earth. Felt old, it’s all the bread, fat, we underdressed in
Paris, even to take a shit, ragamuffins.
Came home and crashed for four hours, thank God for taxis. Driver annoyed I was a five Euro fare. Slept for four, first, sipped Heineken in the hotel bar.
Across from us, four Irish or German who spoke English well.
The older, I imagined named Dieter, knocked over a stool, we
laughed. My engine kicked,
went to a café night high, fevered.
Me jacketed, watching people run about, ate bruschetta (the salt
cured ham I think a pizza). My
girl, blonde hair in the dirty city wind, flopping like Paris Hilton,
but smart and more intriguing.
Found heaven, Malone’s bar close to the Splendid.
Satellite radio sucks, only it seemed britney spears and hip hop,
got lit, Heineken tap, then strong white Russians, when it was pulsing,
me in the dionysus mood. Andrea
LIT. Got courageous, bought
tequila shots, loosen the Frenchies up.
We tapped frosted glasses to each other, to relations.
I imagine politics in this bar, understanding through liquor,
we’d either kill each other or make love, its’ all how you take your
alcohol, the eternal truth. Talked of writing with one who spoke English, about Jack
Kerouac, he spoke On the Road, we tipped some more back. My girl, sexy, sophistication, hooker heels, stiletto dress,
bliss swirl. Watched the
mademoiselle dump her cleavage toward me in beauty, dirty blonde, nose
pierce, I thought of rose. Andrea,
sober, no children even drunk, no children, me too, spread me sad, no
chained kids, next year Barcelona, the bulls calling….. but I lust new
york.
Cool bartender, whipped hair, barely 22, bought shots on the
house for us, we live tonight. My
girl turns drunk, but with sober words, I understand you.
She doesn’t have to say. I
turn up, higher cliffs of love, and it’s not just the city’s effect.
Went home at twelve after boasting I’m a published writer, holy
bum poet saint. Don’t
remember the walk, Andrea my police made drunken phone calls to Mom and
her sister. To Paris,
salute, drunk as the old bards would salute.
Till tomorrow… sweet hemingway
Day 3: Hung over.
The vodka
is not my friend in the morning. Held
Andrea’s hair over the toilet, my standard position.
Oh, how she used to hold her liquor.
Ate our breakfast for twelve Euros in the dining room of the
Splendid. Booked a trip to Versailles.
Hung over. Tried,
beat, felt all of my forty years. The
tour guide, smart, petite, French, blonde boy hair, waif, pissed at the
traffic, steven, a poet friend would fall for that tongue alone
Versailles took the tour, ornateness in it’s high definitions,
beautiful, monstrous, went to the garden, I thought, all this for one
man, the mad Louis, too much time on his dead mind, while all of Paris
lived in the unwashed gutters. Marie
Antoinette insane, head rightly rolling off a guillotine blade. Hoped
for Claude Monet in Giverny beauty, hope, sleepy village, full now with
the veins and arteries of tourist crap that leeches on once the great
are silenced. Saw the
Japanese garden, water lilies, wondrous, joyous, beyond the company of
words. Thought a quiet heaven had come down and found rest. Claude, that
big mystic, with paradise on his fingers, carved out Shangri la, in an
outpost hermitage…..saw Singer Sergeant paintings in the village, at
the musee de America, the offerings of little ole America, toasting
their French fathers… tired beat ragged, alive, with all my eyes
taking in aesthetics in my humbled mind….. must write, lay it there on
the the page, the destiny, like these star epitaphs that glisten still
on the immortal mounts. Andrea
slept on my shoulder on the ride back to paris and I only thought of the
love definitions, her the first word…I fall in love with her more
everyday in mad paris…..can my eyes contain much more, tomorrow the
louver…Friday the nude wild of the crazy horse, building life and
memories ourvre…good night
Day 4 Started out at the louver, passed napoleons tomb, a man important then,
now just a name. Louvre,
Italian saint goth paintings of mendicants staring to mute sky for
forgiveness and release………a trillion of the same paintings…saw
the mona lisa, ones eyes must fall on those black pools before
expiring…. Cut it early after the French impressionist section was
closed……went pompidou, a cool market place, thug appareled frenchies,
black and white frenchies slipppin sideways, mike jones ballers, just
funny, clichés. I got a
piercing, across from a guiness bar, appropriate for me, an eyebrow
piercing, for paris marks and memories.
Bought steven baudelaires flowers of evil on the street along the
seine…..Ate some pizza with shaved lamb, nasty it was baking in the
glass case probably since last week…walk the streets, taking wind out
of the guts of paris, alive. Walked
to st. germaine, more shops, couldn’t get the review anywhere, the
French language a barrier,, walked in circles and circles, past all the
French demure stone walkers…the women beautiful, uppity, hard for us
gutter blokes, but imagined them as brown porcelain with thin long
noses, really cold and sedate….Ate plateu de formage, overpriced 10e
chased it with a coca cola light, still 33 calories, still no ice…the
piercing tweeking and stings a little, he didn’t use a piercing gun,
just stabbed a scissors into it……My girl nude in bed, after we make
love through our open window, the traffic turning to sleep…Put fall
out boy on the cd player, makes me feel America and young as I push the
lines of 40….. I found out today that a man can overdose on cultured
things, to be so reserved and refined like the French with a sedative
smile. I was born for the wild cliffs, jumping fun of bouncy crazy, we
the uncouth, the bloody Americans….they could learn a thing or two
from us….if I’m into art I must be serious and old with a concrete
brow, no smile…blah blah blah….. maybe it’s the cd. Maybe it’s
identity, I feel myself in the crossheres of myself, set free from the
stench of haughty eyes, the morose, the bloody French
ginsberg looked east, kerouac within and out into America, we
have the answers here…. I’ll
carve out an obscene corner of brilliance, wielded by my own happy
obscene hand…gregs gonna have trouble here, when he honeymoons,,,,
Galileans poets will fit, nicely. If greg hates the people in vox,
he’ll go over suicidal thoughts here, often… the pretentious flourish, the real are pushed
to the seas fortresses…oh well you live and learn, hell it’s
paris…tomorrow the crazy horse, French tits and unshaven armpits,
should be brilliant, till we meet again…..
Day 5 The day
slammed sunny hot, decide to go to houseman, a kind of Sistine chapel
mall at the end of the
champs…all high tail bourgeoisie clothes Dior, Chanel, Louis Vitton
just musing the whole time, that there is nothing in the French mind but
vanity and what label they put on their olive backs…a little irritated
at the quasi mall that went round and round. With mosaic heaven themes
painted on the ceiling…every sale guy and girl dressed impeccably, as
if they spent a thousand years in front of the mirror…Greg would hate
this place. I bitched and
moaned at andrea over the metro tunnel to leave, nothing interesting to
see, however, only the opera house, which we stole to build our
miniscule capitol,,,,,Andrea so distracted by everything her eyes
corralled only in Oklahoma and tejuana once…begged for taxis none,
went to the other side immediately, caught one, onto st, Michele,
more my speed, andreas
indecision of where to eat, again, first sitting at a pizza place, then
her eyes catching the sign across the way, authentic French cuisine, ah
the whims of a women, me not caring, I’ll throw anything down my
throat, cold or hot. We got
away from the pissed Italian waiter who brought our water, across the
cobble stoned street…with the proprietor, and what I perceived a
family member, or spouse running the whole joint, her older,
bleached/black hair, dyed strangely, gorged split, somewhat of a peasant
dress you see in a fellini movie, older maybe on the other side of
fifty, but those tits, still young and vibrant, showcasing….Imagined
her open and hairy unkept, with all her European earth between her
thighs….But my girl, the doe eyed special, innocent, in suffering
vulnerable, I the hero to her in almost everything I am…..encouraging,
bleeding love out of every gesture and emotion and breath….for what
would I do without such loveliness and caring upon my perpetual
suffering that recreates itself every dawn….I’m in the moods of
rilke…. had fondue, with
three cheeses, hadn’t had it in a long time, forgot you dip it with
stale bread… decided on gluttony, had the choclate fondu which we
dipped banana, kiwi, pear, pineapple, apple and something else which I
couldn’t make out…then a crepe thinly stuffed with sausage and
cheese, which was good.. sat next to two german girls, rose cheeked, in that hue, with soft
natural rouge, that rushed back memories of my dutch grandma. Then older
men with strolling violins and accordion, French, but reminded me of
Venice, like organ grinders but missing the monkey…Washed it all down with the 2nd bottle off coca cola light, about to
bust….Traveled the shops, bought a french bracelet, for two euros from
a russian head shop… andrea peeking in all the shops, for what she
could stuff in her suitcase, to turn our apartment into paris… all the
book stands on the cobbled street, jetting out… but the little green
stands along the seine, all self contained, fastened to the cement walls
that run along it, in all their simplicity, as it should be, with old
books by Jules Verne, and hugo and Cervantes and steinbeck and cocetu,
and celine. Old beaten binding as if they survived and thrived and made
it through this bloody age, that couldn’t come up with anything… got
ballsy. Then not, to put the reddirtreview on their shelves language the
ugly barrier, the curse of the babel tower…I imagined I would bang
literature in their ears, sipping absinthe, toasting rimbaud and monet
and how brilliant they were… but I just sat there like some dumb
American, though cultured in my small town, this at the time, a little
above me…came back, watched the five channels, which was german, tell
of the evacuation in Houston, where we were flying into… got ready in
my only sport coat, are they called that now? My girl picking it out at
Burlington, she loving me knowing just what I will go for, just above
the threads of the dress code….Paid the paris tour guide, arab, for
the night, took us to de vez, a loney but nice café bar…. Sat with my
girl in the moon, eating delicately and in a slight struggle.
If you peaked around the corner, the eifel was lit and vibrant,
sparkling in the backdrop of the 9 o'clock black paris sky.. The
millennium was when they lit the strobes on the tower and the Parisians
liked it so much that they kept it…ate sea bass, which was excellent
and salad, and burned custard, which was the best thing I’d had
here….sipped cheap wine, like a old American rail rider, out of
expensive crystal glasses, so white the glistened off her eyes…. Made
our way to the crazy horse, just one wrung below the red dog strip club
back home, French style… pervert show, pervert row, red velvet was
bleeding of the pillowed ceiling, and had two complimentary drinks,
andrea Heinekens me scotch like a shriner at a convention.
Asian tourist, business men, howled, at the first appearances of
pussy, like they’d never seen one….. my girl bangin’ dressed to
the nines, black short skirt, high heels, a little prostitutey, I
thought, they thought…. The show, dancing light beautiful women, red
paint, darkest mascara….couldn’t smoke, paralyzed by the second
scotch, close towards catatonic…. Smoked cigarettes out on the red
carpet with the driver, drunk small Asians, leering, undressing my girl,
barely looking away…imagined Iawo, the dancer, which was written on
the back of her shirt, stealing peeks at me.. but we all think that at
strip clubs but she the only one that stood out with any type of
sparkle, the others concentrating zombie like on their routines, been
there done that looks… but an experience, this is the anthem, try
anything. All the jet lag
and lack of sleep caught up with me in the three glasses of wine…
wanted bed or home… the first three days crammed with the sights, the
lovre, the champs, the arc the tower, Versailles nirvanic giverney, and
then all the sipping of espresso like some aloof frenchie…the
contemplative cafes, the simplicity , of just life. Watching…I think I
could get used to it with a little more time and practice… can’t get
a read on the French women, so stoic, worshiped, by men as soon as the
hit puberty, it’s all about the chase for the men in paris, it’s the
way they dress, what they do for a living, everything like a gq mag,
ripped into reality here… colored shoes everywhere, even the men in
red adidas, and soccer jackets, and trimmed jeans, metro glorious,
don’t want to be them…
Day 6 Andrea nude, comatose, the night, I slept six hours, feel good enough,
the first gray day, the rain has softened the fever of the streets, the
mood wet, subdued, tranquil, holy..
I’ll take it easy today just watch, write and sip coffee…
these days have been mad the wedding, planning, Paris…running… in
the sidewalk of the café,, the shaded clouds float maybe two hundred
feet above, the Orleans balconies dotted with small geraniums and monets
soft blooms…Sit next to Italians one raven haired older steals a menu
from my table to see if she still has it… she does.
Her husband older, beaten eyes, at how he will pay for all this
to keep her happy…. Rainy foggy cold reminders of London or seattle, a
sad Saturday, but not for me. Just going to feel art today, let paris
grab me like a valium smooth, let it rest there for awhile… as I sip
my second café ladoux, I watch the intermittent walkers stroll and gaze
up at all of it, and I wonder if I’ve lost something, my forty years
always on my mind… but hell there’s hope, brad pitt, Johnny depp,
sean cannery, age a connoisseur of experience…our street is dull with
british suburbanites, I imagine from across the pond on holiday, paris
out of the dreary clouds of marriage…I’ve made the vows to her, and
more importantly to myself, that we wont burn out like the rest.. keep a
sense of wonder, the vibrancy. Experience
keeps all things new and sunsplashed and routine and dormancy in white
pickets, a three headed leviathan. I have a girl that comprehends long
suffering, what I have to do, like some small Christ mission.. to
write…. I take the reddirtreview across the way, to a french clerk,
hopefully the owner on rue29 de tourville, who sweeps out front, and
with my jagged French get it in their, this little engine that could is
now in san fran new york, and now paris, the trifecta…And as I walk
back in the thin razor breeze, I’ll see if she’s awake and she will
fall on my graying chest and I will here her breathe, exhale and inhale,
and everything will be good again…Good night, Paris |
