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Sept. 24, 1999 |
Since my arrival yesterday I've been inordinately clumsy. I keep tripping, spilling coffee, knocking over chairs. My ballerina hostess, a stunning girl with long, plaited hair, high cheekbones and lips painted every day with an impeccable smear of red gloss, is very tolerant if not terminally cheerful. "New York City is my dream!" she exclaims, when she hears that I'd moved there from Montana's big sky country. She insists we go to Shakespeare and Company to search out a magazine that has published one of my stories. Later we return to her farmhouse, and I pull up my quilt and recall the steady, chugging train of events that provoked me to cross the Atlantic onto foreign soil, decidedly away from the dream of New York. There was an emotionally vacant lover to come home to every night, obsessed with scratching out designs on paper for architect Richard Meier. But it wasn't really home, it was a two-room flat in the East Village located above a dicey Mexican restaurant. I squeezed in with two humans, a cat and a host of bean-fed roaches, which we took turns setting aflame on the gas stove. My glamorous writing career was supported by a stint as a cocktail waitress, serving Wall Street tycoons whose drunken blatherings I simply could not stomach anymore. No, the ballerina didn't know how one night everything ground to a halt during the peak of a Thursday night shift when a barrage of drink orders flew from my mind and my manager, noticing my catatonic expression, pulled me aside. "Sorry, I'm a little low on energy," I'd mumbled, downplaying the full extent of my sleep deprivation. "Follow me," he had said. And we went downstairs into the bathroom where he proceeded to cut the lines. I joined him, crouching over the counter, snorting the snow-blow, quickening to the clean pulse of life that shot through, sickening and wonderful. I made $300 in tips that night, then threw up in the cab on the way home, fortunately, just as my manager was unzipping his pants. The next day I sold my car for $1500 and bought a one-way ticket to Paris. "Yes," I say to the ballerina in the cafe, "New York's very glamorous." In the early morning I stroll across frosted patches of field dotted with giant hay tootsie rolls and take in the pastoral setting that inspired Van Gogh. Back in the farmhouse, over flaky croissants and Nutella, I let my hostess convince me to take a ballet lesson with her back in Paris. We drive to the city and are warming up in the studio -- which for me consists of vigorously flexing and pointing my toes -- when the instructor barks something at me in French. I assume she's noticed by now that I can't bend my leg around my neck. But when I don't respond she snaps at me again, hitting her walking stick into the ground for emphasis. All I can think to say in protest is, "I'm American." It does the trick. The instructor looks at me in mock sympathy and repeats to the class "Ah, an Amarikeen," while they giggle. I politely excuse myself and end up sulking in the cafe downstairs, chain-smoking with the rest of the ballerinas who've ordered nicotine for lunch. I decide it's time to leave Paris. | ||
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