A Man in the Park

It is only fitting that I should begin my description of the travails and tribulations in the Frankish lands with a tale of unrequited love. Homosexual love, to be sure, and unsolicited more than unrequited, to be fair.

After waiting around for an hour and half on Saturday for my friends to wake up to go to Chartres, I decide to take up arms against a sea of waiting around. I struck out for the Chateau Vincennes, which sounds like it should be much farther from Paris than it actually is. On the east side of the city of lights, there is a park comparable in size to New York's Central Park. At its north eastern tip there is a castle that used to be a hunting lodge. This is the Chateau Vincennes. I walk around this castle for a while, there's a nice fort inside, but not much else to see. I decide to head for a lake inside the Bois de Vincennes, where I figure I will do my homework. I sit by the lake thinking about ways to measure the randomness of meaningless infinite strings written in binary, as a massive crow kerfuffles with four pigeons and a duck over peu de pain.

My head throbs from puzzling the onerous opacity of Omega functions. I wander aimlessly towards some exit from the woods lonely dark and deep. I take a wrong turn down a less beaten path, and find myself on a trail that I assume only those worthy enough would even dare to forge. I press on, even after discovering the bloated corpse of Robert Frost left on the wayside. Upon his forehead some more hearty traveler had tattooed the words "Choosing this path - well, it really did make all the difference."

And just then - as I had only just begun to fear that I would have to make camp in the middle of a picturesque woods, in the bitter twenty-two degree Celsius climate - a fifty year old man emerges out of a bog and fen potpourri. Withered age spots mark his balding head; he smells of cracked earth and pumpernickel. He approaches me and asks something in French, of which I only catch the word "walk." I tell him I don't understand his question, and he replies, "You speak English." I say yes. He asks to join me as a go on my way. I agree. After all, one only happens upon a bog-man in a yellow wood once in a lifetime, if one is lucky.

Immediately he asks me my age, in English, and I respond in French, "J'ai vingt-et-un ans." He replies, "Vingt-et-un, vingt-et-un, etre encore vingt-et-un." He then tells me in English, "You know you're beautiful." I turned the words over in my head. Perhaps in France it is an every day occurrence to be approached by a strange older man who provides unsolicited affirmation of one's beauty. Nevertheless, I told myself to remain wary, lest I be taken in by strangers.

He pushes to speak English with me, but I push back at the outset. I have no idea what this bog-man wants from me, but I know what I want out of him: twenty minutes of free French instruction. So i tell him, "Je prefere parler en francais." He yields to me, as he must, and we go about the motions, him asking me questions about myself, and I answering to the best of my abilities. I tell him I come from Chicago. He asks my name. "Louie Farikani" I reply. He asks about my family, I say that we're Italians, each and every one. I ask him, "My great-grand-uncle was very famous, have you heard of Al Capone?" He asks me if it bothers me to be so far away from home. I tell him no, only to be away from my lover. "A boy?" he asks. "No," I say, "a girl." He tells me again that I'm beautiful. I tell him thank you. I ask casually if he knows where the metro is. Sensing his game was lost, he finally releases me from his sylvan domain, and points me towards the metro.

Before getting on the metro, I stop at a cafe, drink 25cl of stella artois, and puzzle over my remembrances of the time just passed.