I am 20 years old in Paris

I usually am a good judge of character, and rarely am I fooled by people. When I went to Paris to study art, I embarked on a life changing adventure. I was 20, and ready to rumble. There was a time when I was afraid of everyone; I was shy and retiring. I hated high school. Couldn't get out of it fast enough. I had a lot of false friends who were superficial and vapid. I wanted adventure and a change.

Arriving in Paris, I knew a couple of old friends who lived outside of Paris, my parent's age, and they were kind and generous. But in Paris, I was distinctly alone. On my first day, I went to register at art school and a girl was in line before me and she pointed at a sticker of a road sign showing two bumps, and titled "don't be ashamed of your tits", in French. She giggled and told me she was from the island of Reunion where she went to the beach topless and asked me if I wanted to go see a film that afternoon. The 'new' me said yes, with pleasure. And so began an adventure where I was open to anything and everyone. 

I met a gentleman in the Louvre who was looking at a painting of Corot, The Bridge at Narni, which we both mutually admired. So began a friendship with a 90 year old painter who had seen the Eiffel Tower built and had known Degas. Another time I began talking to an American artist who was drawing in the Louvre. He told me he was sleeping in the parks and so I invited him to stay at my place for a week. That was Roman, who was my best man at my wedding.

The first day of school I sat in the Metro car, looking at my pocket dictionary and a young woman sat down in front of me and smiled. We started a conversation about what is the word for sock in French. By the time she left, she had invited me to the see a Jean Renoir film at the Cinémathèque française on rue d'Ulm, to meet her and her friends at the Paris Mosque that evening for mint tea.  And suddenly I had a whole family of friends in one shot. Many I still see and visit. 

When I attended my first drawing class a young red headed woman came up to me and asked me if I was American. I said yes and she invited me to come home with her to meet her family. Beatrice.

So I may be wrong about people but I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. It usually works out.

This is Roman and I in Park Slope Brooklyn when we were young, he is the one who looks like Fabio...

Paris is the strongest known drug known to mankind...

When I arrived in Paris, as a fresh, innocent, virginal American, who spoke school French  all my preconceived ideas went out the window. It was a choice I had made 5 years before, in July 1966, the week that my family spent in Paris, before we returned to the states. That week changed my life; I met George Whitman at Shakespeare and company, I went to eat at a student's restaurant with my art teachers, and as much as possible I drew and painted Paris. Then on July 14th, we went to a dance at Place de La Contrascarpe - dancing with French women who didn't care that I was a kid. They were real women. You smile. So I couldn't wait to get back to French woman. Romantic or just horny? 

First I had to get there. After a year of art school, on my own with an American girl friend, I had worked enough and sold enough art to afford the cheap airline ticket. Just as I was about to board the airplane, my dad gave me a word of advice. He said, "Son, always wear a condom." You know that is the best advice a father can give to a son! This came from a man who picked up venereal diseases in Italy. Venereal comes from Venus, the goddess of love. My farther was a warrior, and a lover. The American Air France employee politely pointed out the call numbers of the 747 that ended in VD, she smiled and winked at me, knowingly... Air France, or Air Chance, as some call it, was my introduction to France; overcrowded, smelly and people pushing without worrying about what that might mean. The food was good, and the wine put me to sleep.

On the Air France flight (stop over in Montreal from Chicago, a foretaste of my future) I was reading, pretentiously, Albert Camus 'l'Etranger'. The stewardesses were French goddesses, who smiled at me, knowing I was a man child, not worth flirting with as I was still a youth of little experience. In the way I acted. I should have just put a sign on my forehead that said, "Stupid", and that would have resumed my state. But hopeful.

Paris, arriving in Orly, and taking a DS 19 with its hydraulic lift suspension. The driver had a dog beside him and he smoked Gitans - maybe I am making this up, to be more Woody Allen, but I do remember it so. Paris in fall is the best time of the year. Fall in Paris; everyone has spent a long summer vacation on the Riviera, so tanned and relaxed, and school hasn't started, and the weather is warm, dry and sunny with flowers blooming courtesy of the city gardeners.

Paris is a feast, according to  Ernest Hemingway. Yes, but one has to be able to afford to eat. A baguette and cheese is a meal fit for a king, and some days, I did like Hemingway and went without to experience that feeling of euphoria on an empty stomach; my blood sugar levels hit rock bottom. My first lodgings were in a student residence that smelled of lemon juice used to clean the floors. Out I went, time difference forgotten, to walk the 'pavées'. Walk I did, following no fixed itinerary, letting the traffic lights dictate my direction. Lost but found.

Perhaps I did remember Ernest Hemingway walk, to the Seine and Vert Gallant park that plows the river with its green prow. Then over to the right bank and the Louvre.  All my walks in Paris are one, just a pedestrian love affair, to see, to hear, to smell and to love. Fishermen on the banks of the river. Parisians in cafés. Lovers everywhere. The air was replant with sex. Henry Miller said the Vespesians reminded him of Paris, urine and shit out pouring from their green metal housings. I prefer to think of love in the air instead, naively. Elegant women walk around the Madeleine church and its coterie of flower shops. The women were beautifully dressed high charging whores - I found out later.

My feet took me to the palace of Manon, the place where we all worship, the American Express bank behind the Opera. I meet my first French woman, the receptionist. She smiles, she is paid to smile, unlike most Parisian shop girls, who begrudge you the the time of day. She smiles at me, and we talk. I make her laugh, not hard, I am laughably naive. Later we become friends; she has an American news reporter boy friend who is outed as a CIA agent. She comes from royal background; one that got away from the guillotine. American Express has Post Restant for letters from home, money changing and most importantly, clean restrooms in the basement. I change money and am fixed to eat and pay room.

My first order of the day is to go to Beaux Arts school to see about registration. I go, I meet Helen who wants to practice her English. She points at a sticker on the wooden wicket, a symbol of bumpy road with inscription that says in French, "N'ayez pas honte de vos seins". She translates for me, I blush, and she invites to me to see the movie 'Bloody Sunday' about English homosexuals. Not your greatest first date movie! She gives me her address and leaves me hanging wanting more. She has told me about herself, in Paris to study art, from the island of Réunion some place in Indian Ocean. I don't know where that is... of course. An exotic French flower, Helene wakens my lust. I sleep like a log that first night in Paris, city of light and love.

Next day I meet the French high school exchange student I took to our graduation dance. She is genius, going into Ecole Polytechnic, as her father works for Matra, and is Vietnamese, and mother is French. Claude is her name and she has boyfriend - she has come in on train to meet me and help me at Beaux Arts school with paper work. Of course, this being France, one of the guardians of the school tells me I should come back when I can speak French! I am rusty. Claude is nice, but has to run. 

No matter, art saves me. Art is like a drug, as I paint and draw around Paris, my heart is filled and my needs are small. Just to capture beauty, to be an artist in Paris is enough, for now. I paint in Jardin de Tuileries at sunset till the wild life comes out, it is known for homosexual parties in the woods. I paint in the construction site in front of Notre Dame cathedral, they are making a parking garage, and have unearthed Roman ruins. The fall nights are clement as I draw the facade and imagine what it must have been like when Paris was Lutecia, a village, then Esmerelda was saved by the Hunchback here near ground zero ( the center of France). I decide to use liquid watercolours and go to buy some at Gilbert Jeune, place St Michel, and I meet her. My first French girl friend. She is shop girl, in art department, and I spill and break one of the bottles of ‘Ecoline’. She laughs at me. God, I love French women, they can laugh at me all they want, as they have human reactions, are human and not stuck up princesses. We talk. I invite her to dinner. She accepts.

We meet for our first date, some place on Montparnass, and she laughs at my school boy french, and says Oh la la, a lot. She is a student in Broadcasting. Her boyfriend is from Madagascar, where the hell is that, I ask myself?, he is a camera man and not in town, and we walk towards her place near Les Halles. Past hookers on St Denis street, into real Paris, the dirty gritty place tourists never see. I spend the night... Nope no juice, just friendship. I want to move to this area of town, and I do, but later. I am getting ahead of my story. She kisses me on the cheeks and I am in love.

University starts and I am thrown out of my lodgings. I first find a cheap run down hotel on rue de la Bucherie (where the French President Mitterand will live years later). The wooden steps are worn down to the point where you can fall through if not careful. I try to find Helen, near Mosqué de Paris, and find myself invited to party next door, as Helen is not home. Smoking stuff, and drinking, and a French guy who insults me by saying, "tu parle comme Francais comme une vache Espagnole". But the woman who is giving the party takes a liking to me and tells me I can leave my suitcase there (her husband who is editor at big newspaper who is gone on business) and I do leave my stuff there. Days go by as I look for place to rent, apply for and am accepted in Beaux Arts school. Every night I sleep in a different place, youth hostels, open dormitories, etc... One night I am going with some women to the hostel and a huge man masturbates in front of us, we run down the street! An Argentinean student tells me American underwear, Fruit of the Loom briefs, turn French women on. Who knew? 

The American center for American artists on Blvd Raspail becomes a refuge. Walled park, cheap place to eat, and swimming pool with showers, and clean WCs. I eventually end up doing the dishes at the restaurant, with Algerian cook. He thinks I am hilarious. 

I meet an American nurse, in her 30s, who is bumming around Europe in a VW beetle. She assaults me, grabbing my privates telling me this is how men have been treating her, so now you know how it feels!  Later, another older woman tries to seduce me by making me smoke pot so I get turned on and not care. I also flee her. Discretion is the better part of valour, says Shakespeare's Falstaf. And I meet Elizabeth who will change my life at Shakespeare and company first, then she works at Mara's barack in the garden of American center, doing sculpture. Elizabeth is studying the Assassins of the old man in the mountain and has been living in a commune in Germany run by the Hungarian architect who designed the Munch Olympic buildings that look like giant tents. 

Elizabeth and I start the Beaux Arts school together, she in sculptor and I in painting. We become friends. I also meet and make other friends. An English girl whose father works for BBC, and has been living in Canada, and looks like my old girl friend, blond with big pink nipples and red lips, blue eyes. 

The first day of Plin's figure drawing class at the Beaux Arts I meet Beatrice. She says, 'mon nom est Beatrice, comme l'amoureuse de Dante.”  What does one say to a beautiful red head who invites you spontaneously to come meet her parents? I don't tell her my middle name is Patrick, and everyone knows me by that name. She is the only woman in the world who calls me Stephen. I have given her that privilege, because she is who she is - a free living bohemian artist. We walk across Paris, from the left to to the right bank and all the way up the Champs Elysee to a huge apartment where I meet her 'pied noir' parents. They treat me as one of the family because Beatrice has accepted me as her brother and I treat her as my sister. 

To be continued….I did get my French Baccalaureat plus a year from the Sarbonne.