Paris, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

"You know, Paris is tough," Christian said in English. "I would not want to live here if I could choose a different history."

He said Paris was probably the worst European city after London. "London is the worst. Weather is shitty. You cannot walk around. People are closed off, and they hate Jews. None of this will change." But Paris was too expensive, he said, too conservative, too self-protective. "Paris had, like, the nineteenth century. But look, we are all very lucky at this table - we're white, you see? Paris is the most hard on immigrants. And immigrants are really important, I think, to the life of the city."

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At a nearby Metro station, a man played accordion on the crowded platform, but we couldn't hear him because we all wore headphones. People waiting stood four ranks deep. The cars were packed. When a train arrived, filled to capacity, desperate commuters would throw themselves at the fleshy spots, and either they fell back stunned or they stuck for a moment and used the closing doors to pinch their asses and squeeze them in.Finally I got a spot. Everyone was pressed together, but no one spoke. At night, Paris swayed home in silence, all of us leaning on one another. At worst, people got hooked on each other's earbud cables, and they'd apologize while they helped one another unwind.---The day we met, Sebastien showed me how his iPod rang an alarm whenever his girlfriend had her period, so he'd know when not to initiate a fuck.---Marrakech was a tourist city just like Paris -- snake charmers in lieu of accordion players, but still the same, if not more purely about its business. Mercantile, abrasive, and more welcoming. Please, come into my stall, sit, have some tea, now buy something.If cities like Paris and Marrakech had realized tourism was their most profitable enterprise, why should they resist? Why not play up the image, act the part the visitors wanted, cater to their whims and pocket the cash?---Then five American women came out of the station to wait for the train. They were winded from hiking, but had no trouble speaking at a volume that in France was reserved for emergencies.How immense Americans made themselves when abroad, how bullying when we roamed. Some teenage French boys appeared. They overheard the women and started addressing them in English, with attempted Southern accents....I started laughing to myself. Maybe it was all the wine I'd drunk, or it was the Americans' ankle socks and their forward-facing backpacks, but I couldn't stop.One of the teenagers caught my eye and winked, taking me for a co-conspirator.On the day we'd decided to leave Paris, I became French.