Originally written on September 21, 2003
So, for a brief period of my life I was homeless on the streets of Paris...
And thus my story began.
I was both tired and anxious when I arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport - tired because of the two enormous suitcases and three oversized carry-ons I'd been lugging. And anxious because, as I was on the NYU group flight, it felt very much like I was departing for Summer Camp.
I called my parents one last time, then struck up a conversation with a girl who had lived on my floor Freshman year. I'd forgotten her name
as Freshman year was eons ago but was glad to get a glimpse of her ticket, since she had somehow remembered mine. Her name was in fact still Claire (not Meghan as I had briefly imagined) and before much could be said between us, we were boarding.
Once on the aircraft I posed and pouted my way down the aisle - nervous and uptight at the notion of being bombarded by so many new faces. During the particularly long queue I began talking to one of the stewardesses and marveled at a roomy little seating area that included the luxury of a privacy curtain.
"Oh la la, what on earth is that!" I cooed. "Oh, well that's our rest area," she pleasantly informed me, giggling at my enthusiasm. "Very, very chic," I replied, "now where is seat 17A?"
It was then with shock and horror that she revealed to me that this sprawling, luxurious compartment in fact contained seat 17A! Now, I had requested a window at the gate (I need a hard surface to rest my head against) but this was just too much.
I was unpacked and sprawled out in no time flat.
And this location proved to be quite the bonus, too. Besides looking like third rate royalty to the sweating, panting students filing by, the seat actually included a recline button that all but turned it into a Queen sized bed.
Granted, I shared my port-a-castle with a rail thin black Frenchman who talked to himself, sat barefoot and constantly popped a colorful variety of pills. But I could tell that between he and I -
I ruled the roost.
We landed at Charles de Galle Airport in Paris, France at around 11 am and after picking up all of my luggage I joined the group of vagabonds and stragglers walking along its vast corridors. Strangely, with each step I already found myself somehow dreading, through exhaustion alone, having to ever meet anyone else new ever again.
But meet them I did. In hoards. First Wendy on the bus and later dozens more. They were both friendly and elitist; hyper-trendy and painfully awkward. It was indeed a well rounded, if slightly lumpy, bunch. And just like that a new semester began.
The first night I went to the Marias with Claire, Julie, Rachel, Caitlin and Matt: five people who at the time I considered to be the creme de la creme. By our third bottle of red wine and after the conversation had gracefully moved from everything to abortion and boyfriends I was certain of one thing and one thing only: we had certainly cemented our status as "The Crowd" in Paris, France.
After wandering and drinking, drinking and wandering I set off to purchase at least my seventy fifth street-side baguette sandwich. And the night ended quite perfectly: a fresh group of friends in a brand new city. It wasn't so terribly different from my first night at NYU - if you just substitute the red wine for pot.
That, I'll remind you was a Wednesday night. By Friday I was homeless.
On our second day in Paris it was time for all of us to move out of our temporary living quarters, a hostel we'd slept in the first night, and into our permanent Housing Assignments. Now I was with everyone else in my excitement and worry over where in the hell we'd be living. But I had certainly made the effort to avoid any problems by meticulously filling out my Housing request form.
However, when the time came to meet our maker I was put in the position of nursing one of the worst headaches of my life - one that I was certain had come about due either to extreme dehydration or drinking too much French water.
Let me tell you that the news I was about to receive in no way made things better. I was informed by a woman whom I had never met that I'd been assigned to live for the semester in a "chambre de bonne," which roughly translates to "maid's quarters" and includes a closet sized room on the eighth floor of a building with no elevator access, no closet, a shower the size of a very small trash can located outside of your room, down the hall and next to a toilet you share with the neighbors.
"Oh, but it's very romantic, has a lovely view" I was told as I gasped at seeing the place. But for the record, the "lovely view" looked out onto what could easily be described as "Industrial Paris" and the only kind of romance I associated with the place was the romantic notion that killing oneself was a bold statement.
So, in an attempt to avoid boring you with all the details, I spent the next 48 hours working my damnedest with a very uncooperative Housing Coordinator (and anyone with an empty room/suggestion of their own) trying to get out of what essentially would have resulted in me making pretty pictures on my wrists with whatever sharp object came into my possession.
The thing is, I was very accommodating on my Housing Request form, saying I'd live with pets, children, females and even offering to pay top dollar so long as (and this was written in Bold ink) I was placed with
other people, namely other students.
You have to understand that I am one of only a very few students here who has literally never spoken a word of French aside from "Voulez vous quche avec moi, c'est coi." And to place little ol' me by myself, all but mute in this great big city seems not only thoughtless and cruel, but downright dangerous as well.
I ended up having to spend that first displaced night with Claire and Julie, who along with a third roommate had been set up in a great place. I spent the night at their apartment after having dinner with them because the metros all close at midnight in France but it was well after 1:00 before any of us realized this. The temporary housing where we'd all slept our first night in the city also had an enforced lock-down curfew that kept it shut till morning, so a cab wouldn't have done much good either.
It was then decided mutually that the only reasonable option for me staying in Paris involved moving in with Claire, Julie and their third roommate! There was a huge living room doing no one any good, we'd all save money on rent in the long run, and since this third roommate hadn't even come home that night we all figured she'd be no problem to convince. How wrong we were...
And here's the short hand: this girl said absolutely NO to a fourth roommate, be it me or anybody else. So I had no choice but to go about trying to solve this problem on my own.
This led to me spending my third night in Paris literally wandering the streets of a neighborhood I'd never entered before in my life. Lost, begging for help from hotel front desk attendants, desperately trying to use pay phones whose instructions I could not understand and at which normal French coins were worthless without pre-paid phone cards, wanting only to use the closed metros, wanting only to return to the hostel whose curfew had once again begun and wanting only to get out of the rain that had soaked my clothes to the skin: not speaking a word of French all the while.
Miraculously, I found my way back to Claire and Julie's for the second night in a row. But by the time I had arrived I felt so entirely stripped of hope and cut off from the world I'd known that I literally, for the first time in my life, was living without hope and without a Home.
I am telling you that was my darkest day. All of my previous sadness about acceptance and loneliness faded into the distance and I was left questioning my very worth in this world. Why was I here? How did I get to this place? What would I ever mean to anyone else?
I was really afraid.
After shouting up to the girls' apartment with no reply I somehow found my way to another fellow student's living quarters. Once inside I remained scared and confused while watching him merrily unpack his suitcases to the sound of music played from a laptop. It was sitting there late, late at night that my brain finally allowed my heart to feel anger - ugly anger - the kind that possibly only comes when you've felt displaced and forgotten for too long.
He and I ended up sleeping head to toe on his twin sized futon that night. This was after he had first recommended I sleep on the floor.
In the end I found my way somewhere safe that dark, wet evening. So perhaps I never was "homeless" in the technical sense. But I had been truly afraid and alone, with no way to call my family or my friends and with absolutely no way to get dry.
The next morning came with a jolt. And when I arrived on campus was amazed to find out that the third girl living with Claire and Julie had decided to move out after all. She had found another group of girlfriends and they had a spot where they wanted her to live. She and three other girls now share two rooms somewhere that I have never been. And now, after all of this, I am home.
I live in a huge three bedroom apartment at 26 Rue Milton in the 9th Arrondissement of Paris, just below Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur and five minutes from the Moulin Rouge. The apartment has a gorgeous living room (which I no longer need to sleep in), an amazing kitchen, private garden, working old-fashioned elevator and a balcony/terrace that wraps around the entire apartment and truly does include a "lovely view."
I'm really happy here now. Finally after nearly three weeks I'm starting to feel settled. I don't spend too much time with my two roommates despite how appreciative I am to live with them. Lately I've been going out with other friends from NYU Abroad just drinking and dancing and meeting the locals.
As for Paris, well it's not New York, but is quite lovely. There's such a dichotomy here between the old and new: Streets that appear to have come straight out of the 1800s stand next to the extremely modern Centres Georges Pompidou; hot water tubs in the kitchen only allow for one warm shower every few hours but look out onto some of the most forward minded and explicitly sexual ad campaigns I have ever seen.
It really is quite a remarkable place to live. I'm reminding myself everyday to appreciate it now and not three months from today when I board the plane for New York.
Ernest Hemingway once said, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." So far Paris has proven to be angry and challenging and sad, but rich with the ingredients of life. I'm learning.
