Since arriving in Dublin, things have been hectic... but I promised a few people that I would share this tale... and so I decided to pull out all the stops and jump on the blog train. Daithi (Irish) and Marzy (Portuguese) are nicknames for two of my very favorite boys on the planet and for the last two months, we have been sharing a tiny apartment littered with bunk beds and living like like three overgrown orphans. In fact... they have just walked in the door from work and I have just passed on a phrase to Marz that I knew would delight him... Tom Holdsworth once said (in about 1992) that washing his 1986 Buick Century (or similar) was pointless, a lot "like polishing a turd." Marz just learned the word "turd" yesterday and he couldn't get enough of it. Wouldn't it be great, if you could hear the word 'turd' for the first time at 25? What a discovery! Anyhow... We met in Brussels, Daithi in my Masters Program two Octobers ago and Marzipaws in an act of Serendipity the March before last. Since then, Daiter and I walked the Camino del Norte and then went further on to visit The Paw in his natural habitat. This past April we were sent from Brussels to Dublin, the boys to do work on a European Parliament Election Campaign and me to work on a research project for a think tank focusing on progressive economic and political policy. It sounds pretty cerebral, but we get home so wrecked that we end up talking teaching Marzy new terms for fart types (dutch oven, dirty taco, covered wagon) and watching Friends re-runs on E4. In Ireland, I am convinced you can watch Friends on at least one channel around the clock. Nah, seriously, it's been great, and this is perhaps our last Hurrah, before this old prodigal daughter giddys back to Michigan after a long time away, cat beasts in tow and bar card in hand, ... and before the boys head back to Brussels, Daithi to develop his upcoming box office smash documentary and Marzy to find a nice, soothing data entry job to calm his nerves after the stress of being tormented by cheeky youths making fun of his accent and stealing his umbrellas while he pounds the pavement to spread the good word of jobs and justice. So, for the next few weeks, we are having all the fun we can muster... but as you will discover, our Dublin adventure did not have the most auspicious of beginnings.... and with that.... cue the harps and we'll go back in time... to Saturday, April 4, 2009.
I squeezed myself and my bags through the front door of my apartment onto Rue St. Quentin amid blue light of pre-dawn. The taxi driver looked at me without smiling and his face darkened considerably as he surveyed my bags. "Today," I spluttered to him apologetically in French after he grunted and heaved my things into the trunk of his car and we headed toward Botanique Tunnel. “We, me and my friends, we take the bus to Paris. And after Paris we take the Train to Cherbourg. And then, At Last! We will Take One Big Boat to Ireland!" Okay, in reality, I said something akin to this... I have to admit I have just employed a bit of 'literary device' to push the story along to the more interesting bits. What I probably actually managed to say was "I go to Paris. She is one beautiful woman in the Springtime, heh? Dublin is after a big boat." Whatever it was, it wasn't great. I know this, because there was a long pause while he stared at me in the rear view mirror, as though I were some strange and unwelcome apparition, like a one-legged pigeon eating a Chicken McNugget out of a dumpster. I shut my mouth for the rest of the trip to Gare du Nord, letting my mind wander. I have seen that McNugget thing, by the way, and I have to say, there is something truly sick about a pigeon eating another bird, I mean we're not talking about a birds of prey doing what they were designed for, just your run-of-the-mill Columba livia making a lifestyle choice to mindlessly cannibalize. But I have a bit of thing about pigeons.
We were all hungry when arrived in Paris, but it was completely irritating trying to push our bags through the streets, so before we got absolutely mean with hunger, we decided that it was best to stick close to the station. Quick, A Hamburger Restaurant, would be just fine. And so there I was, in Paris, the City of Lights! of Romance! Daithi and I were bullying our way up a flight of stairs when I turned to Marzy, (who was standing at the back of a queue twenty people deep and moving at a pace that made a mockery of the name, Quick, A Hamburger Restaurant)... I turned to Marzy and I shouted “Two Long Chicken Combos!”
One of my prouder moments.
We forced our way into the seating area, which was teeming with so many over-heated, unwashed and confused people and so much luggage it looked like the opening sequence from Lost, well... apart from the jumbo jet engulfed in flames and that kid shouting about his dog. We managed to ensconce ourselves at a dirty table floating in a pool of what we hoped was some sort of Coke product, and waited for about a half hour before Marzy arrived with a tray heaped with cold fries and three Long Chickens. Even given my low expectations, it was an impressively disappointing chicken sandwich. Between mouthfuls, Daithi and I tried to work out which combination of tables would have to leave before we could begin battling our own way out of the wreckage when I caught Marzy entertaining himself by packing his straw with a gelatinous glob of 'cheese food' and ketchup that had squirted out from my sandwich. He looked at me and smiled as he squeezed the straw and a tube of white cheese ejaculated onto the plastic tray. It was closest I have ever come to Breaking All of the Teeth in His Face.
I probably would have been heartbroken by this waste of a day in Paris had I not just been there. A friend from Colorado and his new-to-me boyfriend had been passing through, and so I had zipped out from Brussels to meet them. We spent the weekend sampling crepes, sipping rosé, traipsing along the Seine and through the Louvre, etc., loveliness, etc. We also spent one rather memorable night hiding from a pesky and persistent hotel night auditor. As it happens, French hotels are pretty strict about their guests sneaking grown women into rooms for the express purpose of letting them sleep on the floor. We were followed up the stairs and at one point, I was actually crouched around a corner, having only jiiist managed to duck out of sight while the night man shouted at Jack (I've quite cleverly disguised his name to protect whatever honor the poor man has left to him), "I KNOW YOU AVE A WOMAN IN YOUR RHUUMM. WHERE EEZ ZAT WOOMAN!!?" Around midnight, he returned and beat mercilessly on our door while Jack whispered frantically to us, "Be Quiet, just Be QUIET!!" while I tried unsuccessfully to squeeze myself under the bed. Around two in the morning, the phone rang about 15 times whilst my heart beat against my chest in cold, acid panic. I wondered how hard it would be to tie sheets together and lower myself out the window from the fourth floor. French farce is only funny when it happens to fictional characters... like Inspector Clousseau... or Sarkozy, it's really stressful to be find yourself living in one. It was fine in the end, but I didn't get all that much sleep. Whenever I am with Jack, something like this happens. About three years ago (and for the record, over my protests) he insisted on driving to the Boulder jail to bail out my boyfriend, who had been arrested for a DUI, only to also get himself a DUI and staying in the same cell (er... let's call him) Stan had been keeping warm. All the more impressive on Jack 's part as he had never been seen driving. But I digress. (Thinking it was clever, I wrote that into an undergrad term paper once, and the professor wrote in the margin, "Why, YES!!! you do! But Really...you shouldn't!").
So where was I? Ah, yes... Long Chickens. Let's leave Quick behind and pretend we were well-fed and didn't go to Starbucks and spend 15 euro on froofy coffee drinks just so we could be near the station. We were all caffeinated and giddy and more than ready to get goin' on the next leg of our journey... anxious to stretch out in our seats and watch the French countryside whiz past our window as we sped toward our Boat. The spectacular lurch as we cast out to sea! Cloaked in the cool night air! Reclining seats and portholes!! The stuff of dreams, really. We made our way to St. Lazare, Platform 19 and humped our bags toward the far end of the platform, where a bouncy Labrador seemingly playfully weaved in and out around us. The dog ignored Marzy and I, despite our best efforts to engage him. "You look just like Maxx!" (childhood dog) I crooned in a sing song voice as I tried to pat him. We must have looked like fucking idiots. Tim (whose name we discovered after reading the police report) only had a nose for Daithi. Two men in street clothes, heretofore invisible, flashed badges as they approached. Tim was a Mother Fucking Narc.
The Po asked if Daithi preferred to proceed in French or English. Proceed... that's a word that doesn't generally bode well. Court proceedings, divorce proceedings, "do you wish to proceed with the vasectomy...?" Not usually an indicator that fun is just around the corner. Daithi politely responded that proceeding in French was fine; he later admitted he thought this might impress them. Eyeballing him suspiciously, they went back and forth about the language issue for what seemed to me an eternity. Eventually, they were pulling open the bags which Dait was carrying (most of which happened to be mine). They opened my jewelry box and put plastic gloves on as they tore open the bag where I had packed my underwear. A few elderly ladies watched with undisguised interest as the policemen pulled out my kacks one by humiliating one. They sifted through pink and lace cotton briefs dotted with bluebirds and whimsical Popsicle trees as though this were sort of thing they always found in the bags of scruffy Irishmen. Tim nipped repeatedly at Daithi's jeans pocket, prompting D, albeit a titch reluctantly, to pull a little coffee filter parcel out of his jeans pocket. I was shocked. Stupidly, I really was. I didn't realize he actually had any stuff on him... I had been thinking it was just seeds or remnants or something like that. He had weed and he was Busted. And then... the train pulled away from the platform. And then... in that moment, I realized that our plans were officially... Foiled.
The two officers escorted Daithi to the Back Room with his backpack and two of my bags, and Marzy and I raced to the ticket counter to see if there were any way at all to get to the Ferry on time. The lady behind the counter changed our tickets to the next available train, which put us (rather unhelpfully) in Cherbourg ten minutes after the ferry sealed its doors. Marzy worried and I smoked, and we shouted out an ideas like we were on a game show, determined to find a way to "Make... that... BOOOOAAAT!" It could be a good show. Bear with me. A host to describe a worst case scenario and a team of three friends to figure out how to get to the boat before it sets sail or they are left behind to suffer some sort of horrible fate. Consumed by smallpox, eaten by savages, or you know, whatever. Every week there could be a fresh scenario... different time periods... costumes... role playing. Eh, maybe not. We were convinced that there HAD to be a way to Catch that Ferry. Daithi texted us that he’d been released so we raced back to the platform to meet him. He looked pale and stricken and said he didn't want to talk about it... yet. That it wasn't funny...or even okay... yet. Whatever trauma he had endured, he held himself together admirably while we put three heads together to try to reconfigure the itinerary. Daithi said right away, with prescient resignation, that we would just have to book flights out of Paris for the following day. That we should just stay in Paris and Give Up. But Marzy and I, blindly ambitious and foolishly optimistic, were more of the "where there's a will, there's a way!" mindset. But then again, we hadn't just been publicly fingered by three strangers in a back room of a train station. Just kidding. Sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
When we called Irish Ferries, they told us No. No they would not hold the boat, and NO there was no boat to Dublin tomorrow, or even Monday, not until Tuesday. (We all needed to report for our first day of work on the Monday so time was an issue). And No, there were no busses to Cherbourg. Daithi found a taxi driver who said he could drive us to Cherbourg for about 150 euro... it seemed like a go....But parsimonious soul that I am- and I particularly hate late fees and wasted transportation tickets- I insisted we try to get our train tickets refunded while I raced to an ATM and pulled out the cab fare. I found Marzy looking worried and chatting animatedly (in his beautiful French) with the driver, who had by now plugged the distance into his GPS and re-quoted us 350 euro and said that No, he would not get us there in time. I suggested that we maybe could use our train tickets and cab it from Caen, which was where we were scheduled to change trains. He said... eh, that's only 30 minutes away and 150 euro…Tops. I took off like a shot to the ticket counter, where D was trying to explain our predicament and get some kind of refund. "Daithi! I cried, Arret!! Stop! We're going to Caen!!" It was all very cinematic. We tore back to Platform 19 and hopped on to a very full train. By now rightly weary and unimpressed by the taxi driver's ability to estimate time and travel distance, we began sending urgent text messages to all friends with Internet connections.
I can only Imagine what they must have been thinking back in Brussels as they received the message: "DISASTER HAS STRUCK. PLEASE GOOGLE MAP TIME AND DISTANCE FROM CAEN TO CHERBOURG!!" My housemate, Henner was the first to reply "1:40 mins. What's going ON?" Fuck, An Hour and Forty??? Fuck, Fuck, FUCK!! After a few more phone calls, begging Irish Ferries to hold the doors open, we 1) began to sound like raving lunatics and b) acknowledged that our ferry dream was...er, dead in the water. And we were on our way to.... Caen? One more place we needed to figure out how the hell to leave. We checked into the first hotel we saw, and took a rickety elevator to the third floor and pushed our way into a tiny room. We looked out our window which overlooked a dumpster and old tram tracks. We checked out the view, only to see two mewling cats straining against each other while another tomcat watched from a short distance. For her part, she looked bored... she was trying to walk away away mid-coitus and he was determined to hold on, so it looked a bit like a piggy back ride, but we knew it wasn't and that made the whole thing a little bit funny, but mostly unsettling. Honestly, even in retrospect, I don't think this day could have possibly been any uglier.
We left to find an Internet cafe where we could plan our turn-around trip to Paris. After a little price shopping, we decided that Ryan Air would probably be cheapest. It cost 20 euro to check an extra bag… and I began mentally repacking my bags trying to make each weigh less than 15 kilograms. It seemed impossible, but to be fair, I didn't have any idea what 15 kilograms felt like either. I figured my bags were at least 80 or 90 kilograms, considering the sheer burden the duffel bags had been as we'd been lugging them around France all day. We bought our tickets and Daithi and I entered our passport details for the 24 hour online check-in. Mario, who had scurried back and forth from the hotel twice to find A4 printer paper wasn't in a hurry to make the trek again to fetch his passport, so he entered in his National Identification Card details. A minuscule dot of light glimmered at the end of the Caen-shaped tunnel.
As we were about three hundred feet from the train station, and as it was after dark, the street had become a little more lively, in like, a super-depressing and moderately threatening kind of way. We passed flabby prostitutes who laughed raucously at drunks who stumbled out of cafes with bleary unseeing eyes. In fairness, we ourselves probably hadn't stood out or anything. After casing a few pizza joints and kebab shops, we settled on a 'Pepto-Bismol' pink Chinese Restaurant. We were famished and when a little squidgy dumpling of a woman threw down three glasses of something pink and fizzy as well as a basket full of prawn flavored packing peanuts, I thought I had died and gone to H-E-A-V-E-N. As the first round of snacks showed up and a bottle of wine was opened, we stopped stuffing our faces long enough to realize it was the first time we had relaxed all day. We hadn't even had a chance to get into what had happened to Daithi in Paris. And so... the following sequence is a faithful approximation of that conversation.
"Okay, so they basically tore apart my bags, looking at everything. Especially your bag, Chrissie. They were sure there was something in your bag. I think they said, 'it smells like shit.'"
"Oh, that was the bag I borrowed from you." I thought that sounded ungrateful, so I added kindly, "I don't think it smelled like shit, just a titch moldy, like a basement."
"Anyhow. They weren’t so happy with me. Especially when they figured out I lied to them.... twice. Once to say that I didn't have anything on me. Second to say I didn't have anything ELSE on me. When they found the mushrooms, they went shithouse on my ass." Daithi does a pretty great American accent and he likes to use it.
"I bet! You brought the Mushrooms!?!" We had bought those for my birthday weekend in November, the last weekend it was legal to buy them in Amsterdam. We had spent an entire afternoon walking the same two mile radius, eyes as wide as saucers and laughing at absolutely everything from the doll shop we saw in the morning to the lost guy (also clearly tripping) who actually went inside the doll shop when we passed by later that afternoon... but the funniest stuff of all, was the mere sight and sound of the Dutch language. We sat inside a cafe desperately trying not to collapse into hysterics when we spotted a poster out the window printed with something like "Oogley Moogly Dook. Loosy Lampjes!!!" It was some sort of public service announcement about the importance of using bike lights at night. I made D promise not to laugh or to make me laugh at the native language. It made us both seem like a couple of Leading Assholes. But the poster presented an insurmountable challenge.
As he listened, mantled with a mournful air, Marzy poked suspiciously at a round crispy food. Marzy would never have attempted to mule drugs across the border. He's a very good boy. But he was far too kind to rub that in Dai's face... and he had really low blood sugar. So he kept it light, asking casually. "So...what's in these guys, do you think?"
"If I had to guess Marz, I'd put my money on some kind of meat." I, unlike Marz, was enjoying myself immensely. "So what did you say exactly when they pulled out the mushrooms?"
Marzy sighed happily. "These ones are nice. Yous two should try these." He looked a bit braver as he stabbed another meat parcel.
"I said.... I found them in the woods?"
I snorted. " ....you didn't. Ha! What did they say?"
"Un beau fôret, non?"
I just laughed.
"But it wasn't funny."
"But it kind of is." I protested.
Marzy's deer-like eyes were wide with sympathy. I felt just the tinesiest little bit contrite.
"So then what happened??" Marz prompted.
At this point, Daithi looked stricken, as though he were experiencing the humiliation again before our very eyes. There was a long pause as he took a long pull from his glass and sighed heavily.
"Oh.... Oh, no, Daithi!! They made you get naked didn't they!? Oh my GOD!! They fucking strip searched you, didn’t they?? OH NO! Oh, Daithi!!"
"They sure Fucking did, Chrissy. And there was nowhere private, so I just huddled in this corner while two men stared at me while I got undressed in stages. They made me do it kind of one body region at a time. So, first it was, take of your shirt. And then I put that back on, and then my pants.... and then my kacks... and then..." His face said it all.
"They inspected your ass, didn't they!" I accused gleefully.
Daithi bestowed a withering look. "Has this happened to you before?" he asked suspiciously.
"Nah, I've just seen loads of Law and Order."
"What's that? Nevermind. Whatever. So I pulled off my shorts, and they told me to turn around, put my head down between my legs, and Tirez mes Fesses. Tirez mes Fucking Fesses. And yeah, at least they Vous-ed me. Very formal. Very polite when they were inspecting my Butthole."
I had never heard this word... " Fesses? So Fesses is what exactly?"
Marzy crunched on the lettuce garnish from the appetizer plate and looked up. "Your butt cheeks. Well, just cheeks really."
"So...they just told you to Pull your Cheeks?"
"Yeah, Tirez. It's also what they use to say like, Draw the Drapes or whatever."
"Wait... they asked you to Draw your Ass Curtains?"
"The best part was actually when they made me take off my socks. I was wearing two pair, and I have been wearing them for about four days or so, so they were wet, but also kind of crispy. And the Police Officer just raised an eyebrow and said, What is this?" "My socks," I said. He picked them up and pulled them apart, and they made a sound just like cello tape. Crrrickkkkkk."
"They must have been delighted to have had the privilege of undressing you."
Daithi shrugged indifferently, "Eh, fuck'em. I bet they've seen Absolutely Everything."
"Including, most recently, your Brown Eye."
"Well, that and my balls. I had to lift on leg at a time while they Checked... for what, I have NO idea."
"It occurs to me right now, that maybe people tape things to their... Areas." Marzy supplied.
"Sounds logical." I agreed.
"It was awful. Absolutely fucking Awful, guys. And they have the right to do this to me every time I come or go from France for the next five years. La patrie will never be the same for me. Uh. France. What have you done?"
Marzy looked apologetic. "Oh Daithi, I'm so sorry....but actually....they can do it whenever you are coming or going Anywhere in the Schengen Region."
Daithi rolled his eyes. "Guh-reat. That's Great."
"It kind of sounds like the premise of one of those gay pornos I fell asleep to at Ricardo's house a few weeks ago... "I need to check for any drugs that may be taped to your balls, Irish. Bamchickabohmbowwm!" The waitress returned with our dinner and as she set down my Chicken and Broccoli, I sighed contentedly. "That, Dait, was a Great Story. Almost worth having to hear about it sitting in a Chinese Restaurant in Caen. I," throwing my arms open, and prophesizing grandly, "I will write this down, I will write this down and people... will know of this event."
"You betchyer ass you will." He snapped. "And it better be fuckin' funny."
After we finished our dinner, the waitress bustled over to the table with three little sake glasses. Daithi and I grinned and Marzy almost choked when he peered down into the glass to see a painted Asian girl exposing bare breasts and wide open labia upward under the rippling rice wine. An ugly, ugly day. But it was all starting to seem funnier after a bit of food and drink. And after all, tomorrow was a new day. And we were eager to get back to the room and make this day end as soon as possible.
We barely spoke on the way back to the room and as the elevator door opened to our floor, two giggling and mostly naked pasty bodies in dingy cotton underwear stood in front of us, giggling. " Avez vous un cigarette??" the girl squealed merrily as we sidled past them.
I rolled my eyes. "Ew. Seriously, what is Next? What WAS that?"
Marzy shook his head, "What did it look like, Chrissie? They were about to Do It in the lift... Oh my Goodness. This day... this day."
I didn't bother to change my clothes or shower. I just wriggled into the duvet on the top bunk and that's about all I remember. The alarm jolted me awake at 6 a.m. We quietly brushed out teeth and pulled on our socks and shoes in the dim, snapping bursts of flourescent light.
"I hope they don't make me take off my shoes at the airport," I mused aloud, "I think I'm just going to wear yesterday's socks. I really don’t feel like digging through this bag."
""Yeah, Chrissy? Well I hope they don't make me take off all of my clothes and pull apart my ass curtains and look at my Hole."
As we walked to the train station, it seemed oddly dark inside. A shivering man in a hoody hopped from one foot to another and stared at us under heavy lids, looking mildly curious as we tried to rattle the locked gate and yank on the big glass doors. The train station was quite clearly closed. We eventually found a tiny sign that told us that on Sundays, the station didn't open 8:30, an hour after our train was scheduled to depart. If that is, we had actually read the train schedule right. Which, of course… we hadn't. I was too dejected to even bother worrying whether we were now going to miss our flight, too. But it seemed like a pretty distinct possibility. We walked back to the hotel and dragged our way to our room. Marzy (somehow) was in the lead and lingered in the doorway for what seemed like an eternity. After about a minute Daithi shoved him into the room. "Jesus Marzy! What the hell are you doing… just Standing There in the doorway?!" He practically spat this out in somewhat disproportionate irritation. "I was just loooking for the goddamn lightsweetch!" Marzy moaned back pathetically. I was behind both of them, smiling what must have looked like a wicked and probably creepy grin. I was actually delighted that Daithi had given him a good solid push. If he hadn't, I might have shoved them both through the door. Marzy is one of my very favorite people... but he is a very, very slow man, who likes to do things in his own time. And I am a smidge impatient at times, but don't like to look like it. Dai called me on this Ages ago. That I like to look easy-going, but I am actually not easygoing in my secret heart... I like things the way I like them and when I want them but try to keep other people from noticing. I keep hoping if I ignore this personality trait, it might go away. It hasn't and generally comes out... and that moment marked a real close call.
Eventually we managed to get into our room (some faster than others) and sat around for about forty minutes and then made our way back to the station. It felt like we just Kept doing the same Goddamn thing over and over again. And like it would never end. Like this was my version of Dante's Inferno...but this time, all went without a hitch, we made our train... and I spent more than half of the trip back to Paris shifting my crap from one bag to another, worrying over the weight allowances while Marz and Daidy played with the Photo Booth feature of my iBook. I could hear their peels of laughter while I played jenga with my stuff. We arrived back at St. Lazare and then made our way via Metro to Concord to catch the Ryan Air shuttle to Beauvais Airport. This whole business took about four and a half hours. The whole airport thing was the part I was worried about. It was pretty common knowledge around Brussels that I had failed to get registered with the commune, which made me an illegal resident in the Schengen area. Somehow, I had gotten very, very lucky going through immigration quite a few times. Par example, after Christmas, I was asked, "Were you on the Chicago flight?" "Yes." "And do you have a connecting flight?" "Um, not today!?!" I had smiled brightly as he nodded and stamped my passport. I wasn't feeling so lucky on this trip.
But before I could experience that horrific moment, there were a few other hoops to ho. Turns out, the way it works is this, Ryan Air has a 15 kilo weight limit per person, regardless of how Many bags you check (at 20 euro a pop). And you can't buy another seat to allow another 15 kilos of baggage. What you CAN do, they happily inform you, is spend 15 euro per kilo for anything in excess of your allotted 15 kilos. 245 euro later, which could ALSO have been avoided, if Ryan Air were to let you have a carry on and a personal item, like every other airline out there. Bastards. Everyone wonders "how DOES Ryan Air make any money when the flights are so cheap??" I'll tell you how. By being Enormous Dicks. By charging you to piss. To drink water. To buckle your seat belt. To use the oxygen masks. As long as you don't need to bring a change of clothes or any personal hygiene products, your person can fly for practically free. But it's the little things that getcha.
In the end, I once again made it through immigration, without so much a glance. And Daithi managed to make it through customs unmolested...so we were both pretty delighted. But Marzy failed to appear...it turned out he was sent back to the check-in counter... his National Identity number wasn't valid for Non-Schengen travel and he needed to re-check-in with his passport. It took him ages to get through. We felt a little guilty afterward, that we had stood at the bar drinking 10 euro pints, thinking that he was just being slow. As soon as we found seats, I pulled down the complimentary tray table and planted my face down on it and didn't look up until we were in Ireland. An hour and twenty minutes later, there we were... in Dublin. An hour and twenty minutes! Just a quick flight and we could have always been there in a goddamn hour and twenty minutes. On the 747 bus, we faced each other in silence then stared out the windows, letting relief overcome exhaustion for the thirty odd minute trip into the city.
As we 'slipped' our way through the Northside streets, I looked away from the window and sighed, "So they did end up taking the weed, right? Because I could totally go for just a bit of a joint right now... couldn't you, Diddles?"
Daithi didn't even look at me. “Fuck you, Chrissy. Fuck. You.”
But then we laughed. Because they did take it. And because we would have liked it. And because, after what seemed like an eternity, we had finally got to where we were going.
And that felt fine.
***
I squeezed myself and my bags through the front door of my apartment onto Rue St. Quentin amid blue light of pre-dawn. The taxi driver looked at me without smiling and his face darkened considerably as he surveyed my bags. "Today," I spluttered to him apologetically in French after he grunted and heaved my things into the trunk of his car and we headed toward Botanique Tunnel. “We, me and my friends, we take the bus to Paris. And after Paris we take the Train to Cherbourg. And then, At Last! We will Take One Big Boat to Ireland!" Okay, in reality, I said something akin to this... I have to admit I have just employed a bit of 'literary device' to push the story along to the more interesting bits. What I probably actually managed to say was "I go to Paris. She is one beautiful woman in the Springtime, heh? Dublin is after a big boat." Whatever it was, it wasn't great. I know this, because there was a long pause while he stared at me in the rear view mirror, as though I were some strange and unwelcome apparition, like a one-legged pigeon eating a Chicken McNugget out of a dumpster. I shut my mouth for the rest of the trip to Gare du Nord, letting my mind wander. I have seen that McNugget thing, by the way, and I have to say, there is something truly sick about a pigeon eating another bird, I mean we're not talking about a birds of prey doing what they were designed for, just your run-of-the-mill Columba livia making a lifestyle choice to mindlessly cannibalize. But I have a bit of thing about pigeons.
We were all hungry when arrived in Paris, but it was completely irritating trying to push our bags through the streets, so before we got absolutely mean with hunger, we decided that it was best to stick close to the station. Quick, A Hamburger Restaurant, would be just fine. And so there I was, in Paris, the City of Lights! of Romance! Daithi and I were bullying our way up a flight of stairs when I turned to Marzy, (who was standing at the back of a queue twenty people deep and moving at a pace that made a mockery of the name, Quick, A Hamburger Restaurant)... I turned to Marzy and I shouted “Two Long Chicken Combos!”
One of my prouder moments.
We forced our way into the seating area, which was teeming with so many over-heated, unwashed and confused people and so much luggage it looked like the opening sequence from Lost, well... apart from the jumbo jet engulfed in flames and that kid shouting about his dog. We managed to ensconce ourselves at a dirty table floating in a pool of what we hoped was some sort of Coke product, and waited for about a half hour before Marzy arrived with a tray heaped with cold fries and three Long Chickens. Even given my low expectations, it was an impressively disappointing chicken sandwich. Between mouthfuls, Daithi and I tried to work out which combination of tables would have to leave before we could begin battling our own way out of the wreckage when I caught Marzy entertaining himself by packing his straw with a gelatinous glob of 'cheese food' and ketchup that had squirted out from my sandwich. He looked at me and smiled as he squeezed the straw and a tube of white cheese ejaculated onto the plastic tray. It was closest I have ever come to Breaking All of the Teeth in His Face.
I probably would have been heartbroken by this waste of a day in Paris had I not just been there. A friend from Colorado and his new-to-me boyfriend had been passing through, and so I had zipped out from Brussels to meet them. We spent the weekend sampling crepes, sipping rosé, traipsing along the Seine and through the Louvre, etc., loveliness, etc. We also spent one rather memorable night hiding from a pesky and persistent hotel night auditor. As it happens, French hotels are pretty strict about their guests sneaking grown women into rooms for the express purpose of letting them sleep on the floor. We were followed up the stairs and at one point, I was actually crouched around a corner, having only jiiist managed to duck out of sight while the night man shouted at Jack (I've quite cleverly disguised his name to protect whatever honor the poor man has left to him), "I KNOW YOU AVE A WOMAN IN YOUR RHUUMM. WHERE EEZ ZAT WOOMAN!!?" Around midnight, he returned and beat mercilessly on our door while Jack whispered frantically to us, "Be Quiet, just Be QUIET!!" while I tried unsuccessfully to squeeze myself under the bed. Around two in the morning, the phone rang about 15 times whilst my heart beat against my chest in cold, acid panic. I wondered how hard it would be to tie sheets together and lower myself out the window from the fourth floor. French farce is only funny when it happens to fictional characters... like Inspector Clousseau... or Sarkozy, it's really stressful to be find yourself living in one. It was fine in the end, but I didn't get all that much sleep. Whenever I am with Jack, something like this happens. About three years ago (and for the record, over my protests) he insisted on driving to the Boulder jail to bail out my boyfriend, who had been arrested for a DUI, only to also get himself a DUI and staying in the same cell (er... let's call him) Stan had been keeping warm. All the more impressive on Jack 's part as he had never been seen driving. But I digress. (Thinking it was clever, I wrote that into an undergrad term paper once, and the professor wrote in the margin, "Why, YES!!! you do! But Really...you shouldn't!").
So where was I? Ah, yes... Long Chickens. Let's leave Quick behind and pretend we were well-fed and didn't go to Starbucks and spend 15 euro on froofy coffee drinks just so we could be near the station. We were all caffeinated and giddy and more than ready to get goin' on the next leg of our journey... anxious to stretch out in our seats and watch the French countryside whiz past our window as we sped toward our Boat. The spectacular lurch as we cast out to sea! Cloaked in the cool night air! Reclining seats and portholes!! The stuff of dreams, really. We made our way to St. Lazare, Platform 19 and humped our bags toward the far end of the platform, where a bouncy Labrador seemingly playfully weaved in and out around us. The dog ignored Marzy and I, despite our best efforts to engage him. "You look just like Maxx!" (childhood dog) I crooned in a sing song voice as I tried to pat him. We must have looked like fucking idiots. Tim (whose name we discovered after reading the police report) only had a nose for Daithi. Two men in street clothes, heretofore invisible, flashed badges as they approached. Tim was a Mother Fucking Narc.
The Po asked if Daithi preferred to proceed in French or English. Proceed... that's a word that doesn't generally bode well. Court proceedings, divorce proceedings, "do you wish to proceed with the vasectomy...?" Not usually an indicator that fun is just around the corner. Daithi politely responded that proceeding in French was fine; he later admitted he thought this might impress them. Eyeballing him suspiciously, they went back and forth about the language issue for what seemed to me an eternity. Eventually, they were pulling open the bags which Dait was carrying (most of which happened to be mine). They opened my jewelry box and put plastic gloves on as they tore open the bag where I had packed my underwear. A few elderly ladies watched with undisguised interest as the policemen pulled out my kacks one by humiliating one. They sifted through pink and lace cotton briefs dotted with bluebirds and whimsical Popsicle trees as though this were sort of thing they always found in the bags of scruffy Irishmen. Tim nipped repeatedly at Daithi's jeans pocket, prompting D, albeit a titch reluctantly, to pull a little coffee filter parcel out of his jeans pocket. I was shocked. Stupidly, I really was. I didn't realize he actually had any stuff on him... I had been thinking it was just seeds or remnants or something like that. He had weed and he was Busted. And then... the train pulled away from the platform. And then... in that moment, I realized that our plans were officially... Foiled.
The two officers escorted Daithi to the Back Room with his backpack and two of my bags, and Marzy and I raced to the ticket counter to see if there were any way at all to get to the Ferry on time. The lady behind the counter changed our tickets to the next available train, which put us (rather unhelpfully) in Cherbourg ten minutes after the ferry sealed its doors. Marzy worried and I smoked, and we shouted out an ideas like we were on a game show, determined to find a way to "Make... that... BOOOOAAAT!" It could be a good show. Bear with me. A host to describe a worst case scenario and a team of three friends to figure out how to get to the boat before it sets sail or they are left behind to suffer some sort of horrible fate. Consumed by smallpox, eaten by savages, or you know, whatever. Every week there could be a fresh scenario... different time periods... costumes... role playing. Eh, maybe not. We were convinced that there HAD to be a way to Catch that Ferry. Daithi texted us that he’d been released so we raced back to the platform to meet him. He looked pale and stricken and said he didn't want to talk about it... yet. That it wasn't funny...or even okay... yet. Whatever trauma he had endured, he held himself together admirably while we put three heads together to try to reconfigure the itinerary. Daithi said right away, with prescient resignation, that we would just have to book flights out of Paris for the following day. That we should just stay in Paris and Give Up. But Marzy and I, blindly ambitious and foolishly optimistic, were more of the "where there's a will, there's a way!" mindset. But then again, we hadn't just been publicly fingered by three strangers in a back room of a train station. Just kidding. Sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
When we called Irish Ferries, they told us No. No they would not hold the boat, and NO there was no boat to Dublin tomorrow, or even Monday, not until Tuesday. (We all needed to report for our first day of work on the Monday so time was an issue). And No, there were no busses to Cherbourg. Daithi found a taxi driver who said he could drive us to Cherbourg for about 150 euro... it seemed like a go....But parsimonious soul that I am- and I particularly hate late fees and wasted transportation tickets- I insisted we try to get our train tickets refunded while I raced to an ATM and pulled out the cab fare. I found Marzy looking worried and chatting animatedly (in his beautiful French) with the driver, who had by now plugged the distance into his GPS and re-quoted us 350 euro and said that No, he would not get us there in time. I suggested that we maybe could use our train tickets and cab it from Caen, which was where we were scheduled to change trains. He said... eh, that's only 30 minutes away and 150 euro…Tops. I took off like a shot to the ticket counter, where D was trying to explain our predicament and get some kind of refund. "Daithi! I cried, Arret!! Stop! We're going to Caen!!" It was all very cinematic. We tore back to Platform 19 and hopped on to a very full train. By now rightly weary and unimpressed by the taxi driver's ability to estimate time and travel distance, we began sending urgent text messages to all friends with Internet connections.
I can only Imagine what they must have been thinking back in Brussels as they received the message: "DISASTER HAS STRUCK. PLEASE GOOGLE MAP TIME AND DISTANCE FROM CAEN TO CHERBOURG!!" My housemate, Henner was the first to reply "1:40 mins. What's going ON?" Fuck, An Hour and Forty??? Fuck, Fuck, FUCK!! After a few more phone calls, begging Irish Ferries to hold the doors open, we 1) began to sound like raving lunatics and b) acknowledged that our ferry dream was...er, dead in the water. And we were on our way to.... Caen? One more place we needed to figure out how the hell to leave. We checked into the first hotel we saw, and took a rickety elevator to the third floor and pushed our way into a tiny room. We looked out our window which overlooked a dumpster and old tram tracks. We checked out the view, only to see two mewling cats straining against each other while another tomcat watched from a short distance. For her part, she looked bored... she was trying to walk away away mid-coitus and he was determined to hold on, so it looked a bit like a piggy back ride, but we knew it wasn't and that made the whole thing a little bit funny, but mostly unsettling. Honestly, even in retrospect, I don't think this day could have possibly been any uglier.
We left to find an Internet cafe where we could plan our turn-around trip to Paris. After a little price shopping, we decided that Ryan Air would probably be cheapest. It cost 20 euro to check an extra bag… and I began mentally repacking my bags trying to make each weigh less than 15 kilograms. It seemed impossible, but to be fair, I didn't have any idea what 15 kilograms felt like either. I figured my bags were at least 80 or 90 kilograms, considering the sheer burden the duffel bags had been as we'd been lugging them around France all day. We bought our tickets and Daithi and I entered our passport details for the 24 hour online check-in. Mario, who had scurried back and forth from the hotel twice to find A4 printer paper wasn't in a hurry to make the trek again to fetch his passport, so he entered in his National Identification Card details. A minuscule dot of light glimmered at the end of the Caen-shaped tunnel.
As we were about three hundred feet from the train station, and as it was after dark, the street had become a little more lively, in like, a super-depressing and moderately threatening kind of way. We passed flabby prostitutes who laughed raucously at drunks who stumbled out of cafes with bleary unseeing eyes. In fairness, we ourselves probably hadn't stood out or anything. After casing a few pizza joints and kebab shops, we settled on a 'Pepto-Bismol' pink Chinese Restaurant. We were famished and when a little squidgy dumpling of a woman threw down three glasses of something pink and fizzy as well as a basket full of prawn flavored packing peanuts, I thought I had died and gone to H-E-A-V-E-N. As the first round of snacks showed up and a bottle of wine was opened, we stopped stuffing our faces long enough to realize it was the first time we had relaxed all day. We hadn't even had a chance to get into what had happened to Daithi in Paris. And so... the following sequence is a faithful approximation of that conversation.
"Okay, so they basically tore apart my bags, looking at everything. Especially your bag, Chrissie. They were sure there was something in your bag. I think they said, 'it smells like shit.'"
"Oh, that was the bag I borrowed from you." I thought that sounded ungrateful, so I added kindly, "I don't think it smelled like shit, just a titch moldy, like a basement."
"Anyhow. They weren’t so happy with me. Especially when they figured out I lied to them.... twice. Once to say that I didn't have anything on me. Second to say I didn't have anything ELSE on me. When they found the mushrooms, they went shithouse on my ass." Daithi does a pretty great American accent and he likes to use it.
"I bet! You brought the Mushrooms!?!" We had bought those for my birthday weekend in November, the last weekend it was legal to buy them in Amsterdam. We had spent an entire afternoon walking the same two mile radius, eyes as wide as saucers and laughing at absolutely everything from the doll shop we saw in the morning to the lost guy (also clearly tripping) who actually went inside the doll shop when we passed by later that afternoon... but the funniest stuff of all, was the mere sight and sound of the Dutch language. We sat inside a cafe desperately trying not to collapse into hysterics when we spotted a poster out the window printed with something like "Oogley Moogly Dook. Loosy Lampjes!!!" It was some sort of public service announcement about the importance of using bike lights at night. I made D promise not to laugh or to make me laugh at the native language. It made us both seem like a couple of Leading Assholes. But the poster presented an insurmountable challenge.
As he listened, mantled with a mournful air, Marzy poked suspiciously at a round crispy food. Marzy would never have attempted to mule drugs across the border. He's a very good boy. But he was far too kind to rub that in Dai's face... and he had really low blood sugar. So he kept it light, asking casually. "So...what's in these guys, do you think?"
"If I had to guess Marz, I'd put my money on some kind of meat." I, unlike Marz, was enjoying myself immensely. "So what did you say exactly when they pulled out the mushrooms?"
Marzy sighed happily. "These ones are nice. Yous two should try these." He looked a bit braver as he stabbed another meat parcel.
"I said.... I found them in the woods?"
I snorted. " ....you didn't. Ha! What did they say?"
"Un beau fôret, non?"
I just laughed.
"But it wasn't funny."
"But it kind of is." I protested.
Marzy's deer-like eyes were wide with sympathy. I felt just the tinesiest little bit contrite.
"So then what happened??" Marz prompted.
At this point, Daithi looked stricken, as though he were experiencing the humiliation again before our very eyes. There was a long pause as he took a long pull from his glass and sighed heavily.
"Oh.... Oh, no, Daithi!! They made you get naked didn't they!? Oh my GOD!! They fucking strip searched you, didn’t they?? OH NO! Oh, Daithi!!"
"They sure Fucking did, Chrissy. And there was nowhere private, so I just huddled in this corner while two men stared at me while I got undressed in stages. They made me do it kind of one body region at a time. So, first it was, take of your shirt. And then I put that back on, and then my pants.... and then my kacks... and then..." His face said it all.
"They inspected your ass, didn't they!" I accused gleefully.
Daithi bestowed a withering look. "Has this happened to you before?" he asked suspiciously.
"Nah, I've just seen loads of Law and Order."
"What's that? Nevermind. Whatever. So I pulled off my shorts, and they told me to turn around, put my head down between my legs, and Tirez mes Fesses. Tirez mes Fucking Fesses. And yeah, at least they Vous-ed me. Very formal. Very polite when they were inspecting my Butthole."
I had never heard this word... " Fesses? So Fesses is what exactly?"
Marzy crunched on the lettuce garnish from the appetizer plate and looked up. "Your butt cheeks. Well, just cheeks really."
"So...they just told you to Pull your Cheeks?"
"Yeah, Tirez. It's also what they use to say like, Draw the Drapes or whatever."
"Wait... they asked you to Draw your Ass Curtains?"
"The best part was actually when they made me take off my socks. I was wearing two pair, and I have been wearing them for about four days or so, so they were wet, but also kind of crispy. And the Police Officer just raised an eyebrow and said, What is this?" "My socks," I said. He picked them up and pulled them apart, and they made a sound just like cello tape. Crrrickkkkkk."
"They must have been delighted to have had the privilege of undressing you."
Daithi shrugged indifferently, "Eh, fuck'em. I bet they've seen Absolutely Everything."
"Including, most recently, your Brown Eye."
"Well, that and my balls. I had to lift on leg at a time while they Checked... for what, I have NO idea."
"It occurs to me right now, that maybe people tape things to their... Areas." Marzy supplied.
"Sounds logical." I agreed.
"It was awful. Absolutely fucking Awful, guys. And they have the right to do this to me every time I come or go from France for the next five years. La patrie will never be the same for me. Uh. France. What have you done?"
Marzy looked apologetic. "Oh Daithi, I'm so sorry....but actually....they can do it whenever you are coming or going Anywhere in the Schengen Region."
Daithi rolled his eyes. "Guh-reat. That's Great."
"It kind of sounds like the premise of one of those gay pornos I fell asleep to at Ricardo's house a few weeks ago... "I need to check for any drugs that may be taped to your balls, Irish. Bamchickabohmbowwm!" The waitress returned with our dinner and as she set down my Chicken and Broccoli, I sighed contentedly. "That, Dait, was a Great Story. Almost worth having to hear about it sitting in a Chinese Restaurant in Caen. I," throwing my arms open, and prophesizing grandly, "I will write this down, I will write this down and people... will know of this event."
"You betchyer ass you will." He snapped. "And it better be fuckin' funny."
After we finished our dinner, the waitress bustled over to the table with three little sake glasses. Daithi and I grinned and Marzy almost choked when he peered down into the glass to see a painted Asian girl exposing bare breasts and wide open labia upward under the rippling rice wine. An ugly, ugly day. But it was all starting to seem funnier after a bit of food and drink. And after all, tomorrow was a new day. And we were eager to get back to the room and make this day end as soon as possible.
We barely spoke on the way back to the room and as the elevator door opened to our floor, two giggling and mostly naked pasty bodies in dingy cotton underwear stood in front of us, giggling. " Avez vous un cigarette??" the girl squealed merrily as we sidled past them.
I rolled my eyes. "Ew. Seriously, what is Next? What WAS that?"
Marzy shook his head, "What did it look like, Chrissie? They were about to Do It in the lift... Oh my Goodness. This day... this day."
I didn't bother to change my clothes or shower. I just wriggled into the duvet on the top bunk and that's about all I remember. The alarm jolted me awake at 6 a.m. We quietly brushed out teeth and pulled on our socks and shoes in the dim, snapping bursts of flourescent light.
"I hope they don't make me take off my shoes at the airport," I mused aloud, "I think I'm just going to wear yesterday's socks. I really don’t feel like digging through this bag."
""Yeah, Chrissy? Well I hope they don't make me take off all of my clothes and pull apart my ass curtains and look at my Hole."
As we walked to the train station, it seemed oddly dark inside. A shivering man in a hoody hopped from one foot to another and stared at us under heavy lids, looking mildly curious as we tried to rattle the locked gate and yank on the big glass doors. The train station was quite clearly closed. We eventually found a tiny sign that told us that on Sundays, the station didn't open 8:30, an hour after our train was scheduled to depart. If that is, we had actually read the train schedule right. Which, of course… we hadn't. I was too dejected to even bother worrying whether we were now going to miss our flight, too. But it seemed like a pretty distinct possibility. We walked back to the hotel and dragged our way to our room. Marzy (somehow) was in the lead and lingered in the doorway for what seemed like an eternity. After about a minute Daithi shoved him into the room. "Jesus Marzy! What the hell are you doing… just Standing There in the doorway?!" He practically spat this out in somewhat disproportionate irritation. "I was just loooking for the goddamn lightsweetch!" Marzy moaned back pathetically. I was behind both of them, smiling what must have looked like a wicked and probably creepy grin. I was actually delighted that Daithi had given him a good solid push. If he hadn't, I might have shoved them both through the door. Marzy is one of my very favorite people... but he is a very, very slow man, who likes to do things in his own time. And I am a smidge impatient at times, but don't like to look like it. Dai called me on this Ages ago. That I like to look easy-going, but I am actually not easygoing in my secret heart... I like things the way I like them and when I want them but try to keep other people from noticing. I keep hoping if I ignore this personality trait, it might go away. It hasn't and generally comes out... and that moment marked a real close call.
Eventually we managed to get into our room (some faster than others) and sat around for about forty minutes and then made our way back to the station. It felt like we just Kept doing the same Goddamn thing over and over again. And like it would never end. Like this was my version of Dante's Inferno...but this time, all went without a hitch, we made our train... and I spent more than half of the trip back to Paris shifting my crap from one bag to another, worrying over the weight allowances while Marz and Daidy played with the Photo Booth feature of my iBook. I could hear their peels of laughter while I played jenga with my stuff. We arrived back at St. Lazare and then made our way via Metro to Concord to catch the Ryan Air shuttle to Beauvais Airport. This whole business took about four and a half hours. The whole airport thing was the part I was worried about. It was pretty common knowledge around Brussels that I had failed to get registered with the commune, which made me an illegal resident in the Schengen area. Somehow, I had gotten very, very lucky going through immigration quite a few times. Par example, after Christmas, I was asked, "Were you on the Chicago flight?" "Yes." "And do you have a connecting flight?" "Um, not today!?!" I had smiled brightly as he nodded and stamped my passport. I wasn't feeling so lucky on this trip.
But before I could experience that horrific moment, there were a few other hoops to ho. Turns out, the way it works is this, Ryan Air has a 15 kilo weight limit per person, regardless of how Many bags you check (at 20 euro a pop). And you can't buy another seat to allow another 15 kilos of baggage. What you CAN do, they happily inform you, is spend 15 euro per kilo for anything in excess of your allotted 15 kilos. 245 euro later, which could ALSO have been avoided, if Ryan Air were to let you have a carry on and a personal item, like every other airline out there. Bastards. Everyone wonders "how DOES Ryan Air make any money when the flights are so cheap??" I'll tell you how. By being Enormous Dicks. By charging you to piss. To drink water. To buckle your seat belt. To use the oxygen masks. As long as you don't need to bring a change of clothes or any personal hygiene products, your person can fly for practically free. But it's the little things that getcha.
In the end, I once again made it through immigration, without so much a glance. And Daithi managed to make it through customs unmolested...so we were both pretty delighted. But Marzy failed to appear...it turned out he was sent back to the check-in counter... his National Identity number wasn't valid for Non-Schengen travel and he needed to re-check-in with his passport. It took him ages to get through. We felt a little guilty afterward, that we had stood at the bar drinking 10 euro pints, thinking that he was just being slow. As soon as we found seats, I pulled down the complimentary tray table and planted my face down on it and didn't look up until we were in Ireland. An hour and twenty minutes later, there we were... in Dublin. An hour and twenty minutes! Just a quick flight and we could have always been there in a goddamn hour and twenty minutes. On the 747 bus, we faced each other in silence then stared out the windows, letting relief overcome exhaustion for the thirty odd minute trip into the city.
As we 'slipped' our way through the Northside streets, I looked away from the window and sighed, "So they did end up taking the weed, right? Because I could totally go for just a bit of a joint right now... couldn't you, Diddles?"
Daithi didn't even look at me. “Fuck you, Chrissy. Fuck. You.”
But then we laughed. Because they did take it. And because we would have liked it. And because, after what seemed like an eternity, we had finally got to where we were going.
And that felt fine.
So where is your next story.....little one? Answer me darling =), kiss kiss
ReplyDelete