Tags
Ali, Au Bon Coin, Aya, Île de la Grande Jatte, Café Laurent, Camille, Eugène, food porn, Jack, L'Open Café, La Méditerranée, Le Bouquet des Archives, Le Petit Poucet, Les Mots a la Bouche, Lisa, Marais, meals, Neuilly sur Seine, Open Café, Zhizhong
I’m used to a one-year gap between visits, but a lot more can change over four years, especially during a pandemic. During my first week I was pleased to be able to catch up with several Parisian friends. Fortunately, none had been seriously affected by Covid, and most have done remarkably well.
One of the most delightful new friends I made in 2019 I have called for blogging purposes Eugène. We met on Thursday evening — for the first time in four years — for an apéro at Café Laurent, a stylish bar in the 6ᵉ. After catching up, we moved on to dinner at La Méditerranée, one of his favorite restaurants, that we had enjoyed in 2019.
Four years ago, Eugène was just finishing a political science degree at the Sorbonne. After a hush-hush job that took him to Chile for a year, he found his way to an excellent position with L’Assemblée nationale, the French Parliament. He has also found a highly compatible life partner, and is already making plans for two children, a girl and a boy. If the timing works out I hope to get an insider’s tour of the Parliament later in my stay and possibly also of the Senate.
On Friday had lunch with Jack, a landscape (now interior) architect who I had also met for the first time in 2019. He had been passing through Paris on his way to an internship in Japan, which proved to be a big success despite the fact that he spoke no Japanese and his employers spoke barely any English. I initially tried to book a table for us at Desvouges, where we had eaten four years ago, but it had changed owner and name. Fortunately, another favorite in the same neighborhood, Au Bon Coin is still thriving.
Jack had found his way back to Paris because he had become enamored with the French lifestyle. He lives with a congenial partner, a retired university professor almost exactly my age, who I hope to meet later this week. With characteristic courage, Jack initially took a job at a French-speaking office, despite his limited French, but was recruited by an English-speaking office that he expects to be a better fit.
Friday evening I headed over to the 15ème for a cozy dinner with Lisa and Aya at the home of Lisa’s former partner — and intimate friend — Ali, who I had last seen at the end of my previous visit. Ali had been diagnosed with a serious medical condition in 2016, so it was a special pleasure to see him enjoying life and hard at work on his next book about the political history of Iran. I tried to give him a scare by asking ChatGPT to write an essay on the subject of his next book. While initially impressed by how quickly the essay rolled out, when Ali reviewed it in detail he was relieved to see that it was mostly wrong. Aya pointed out that our conversation didn’t interest her because we were “three adults and a child” so she was excused to watch something more engaging on TV while the rest of us engaged with weighty world and personal issues.
On Saturday morning I took the métro out to the western Parisian suburb Neuilly sur Seine to meet Zhizhong, a friend since his student days in Cambridge. He took a research job near Paris after getting his PhD in biology at Harvard, but quickly realized that he couldn’t afford his dream of having a family in the city on an academic salary. He moved to a high-powered venture capital firm, which improved his finances but also consumed his time. Zhizhong, like Lisa, ultimately decided to become a single parent despite not yet having found a partner. Since surrogacy isn’t legal in France, he found an egg donor and a surrogate in France, and just over a year ago brought home his delightful daughter Camille. Happily, his firm transitioned him to a role which enables him to gracefully balance work and life, and promoted him to partnership.
We took a stroll around their leafy neighborhood, a block or so from the Bois de Boulougne, then further onto and around the Île de la Grande Jatte, made famous by Seurat’s painting, where we had a delicious lunch at Le Petit Poucet.
While it was lovely to see my friends more or less thriving, four years and Covid had taken a toll on some of the places I also loved. I had been aware before my visit that L’Open Café had closed in 2022, but I still find this rather incredible, since it always seemed busy, and was in my eyes the hub of the gay Marais. A beer on its terrace had every year been my first way to reconnect with that side of my Paris experience. But, hélas, never again.
The gay bookstore Les Mots à la Bouche still exists, but had to move out of the Marais. I was pleased to learn from the manager that it is doing well in the new location.
I haven’t explored the Paris gay scene yet this year, but it’s dispiriting that two such landmarks are gone.