Paris: Part II

I wake and check my watch: 8PM. Crap! I have to check out of this hotel by 11AM, my sleeping schedule’s off, and I’ve done exactly squat about making a train reservation for Amsterdam. What’s more, I don’t have as much time to go beat up on French fish at the ACF (that’s the Aviation Club, for any newcomers). Or do I?

First stop: train station, to book something. Closed until 6 AM. Godspit! What the hell is going on in this city? Alright, maybe I’ll just play poker for ten hours and hope my freshly battered bankroll holds out all night. On second thought I’d either kill myself or start shitting baguettes if I spent that kind of stretch in that smug stuffy attic. Best to jerk around Notre Dame first and shave off as much inert live poker time gristle as possible.

The pedestrian square before Notre Dame cathedral lays naked and open to chill gusts from every direction, especially those speeding over the nearby Seine. I shiver uncontrollably just trying to get my camera out to snap a few mediocre nighttime shots of the gargoyles and buttresses and whatnot. Time to get the hell out of here.

The ACF staff performs the routine fingerprint scan, plops me in an encouraging 5/5 Euro No Limit game, and hits me up for a 15 Euro meal all at dizzying speed. But I must wait an hour for the sandwich and Orangina. I start out playing fairly tight, feeling out the table and chowing down. But as tends to be the case, I slowly start running over everyone. They don’t like it. Even the dealers don’t like it because with the incredibly high rake, I’ve turned into a very stingy tipper. Then they find out I’m American, and really don’t like it. At some point or another every single person in the game (save a laid back guy next to me) complains about my play or whispers to a neighbor while pointing at me. Ha.

On top of all that, throughout the night a peculiar theme of play emerges that makes me look like a lucky bastard. I often find myself value betting extremely thin only to be way behind versus opponents who are slowplaying huge hands; nevertheless, I hit my two to six outs every single time and take their monies.

But the fun continues. I raise KsTs and get six callers. Flop: 987, two spades. I bet and four people happen to go all in by the time it gets back to me. Of course I get my money in and hit the flush on the turn. Everyone’s drawing dead. The self-appointed leader of the ACF BToye Hate Committee (meaning the guy who let me stack him the most times) explodes in flurries of French moaning and yelling, attracting the whole room’s attention. Even his dearest undersecretary notifies him that I had draws to a straight and flush (Couleur?). I point at my cards, saying, “Yep. Couleur.” And draw a laugh from my new friend next to me.

For my last trick of the night, I kind of limp-trap a guy with A8. He had kept abusing his straddle with terrible overbets, so I just wait for him to put a third of his stack in preflop with queen hi and then force him to sheepishly part with the rest of it. He is baffled when the hands are turned over. From there I lose some small pots, double up a short stack, and move to a table with better players who can actually put me in some tough spots. It’s not quite 6AM, but I’m satisfied with my redeye session and pick up early. I make back about 80% of what I lost yesterday, but considering the lower stakes and how shallow the game played, I’m virtually ecstatic as I count my big weird Euro notes and shuffle back to the train station.

The teller for international reservations chides me for not booking earlier. She explains today’s trip to Amsterdam, which can be managed in three hours with an early and not too expensive reservation, will take me ten hours. I’m on top of the world after my win, so whatever babe. And she was a babe. Pull me slowly along rolling tracts in novel foreign districts, babe. I accept.

Worst fucking decision of my adult life.

I have less than two hours. I rush to the hotel and jam my pack full of every bulky bulging clump of my mobile existence. It fits! I do the fly-by hotel check out because the clerk and I are tight like that. The metro is a grind. I sweat out the seconds at every stop. Sliding somewhere along the rails a warm affinity for this vast grubby underground creeps up on me. Despite all its dubious exudations through filthy drains and between grimy tiles, despite the constant vetting by Parisians being stylish, nosy, stylish again fucking Parisians; I feel at ease in this place and could spend hours in the jog of the trams, intermittently hassled by jaunty street musicians...

Nearly missed my stop. The station is a miserable rat race. I realize I know nothing about trains. When I finally locate mine about a second before it leaves, there are a million people on the thing and a conductor explains to me in poor English that it’s standing room only as he shoves me through the door. So I stand against a window for the initial two hour leg, tightly packed with others in the same predicament, as all the adrenaline of my morning scurrying trickles out of me.

Cue nausea. Cue late arrivals and sprinting across stations. Cue fractured nonsleep even when I fight for a seat. Cue chest lurching. Cue day from hell.

Then waiting for me at the end of the line is Amsterdam, wet and unhappy. In my state, long since food or free from headache, I cannot make any damn sense out of the tram system and all the help desks are closed. I’ll spare the details, but it takes three goddamned hours, a good part in pouring rain, to find my hostel. I even get removed from one of the trams for being “incompetent”. I swear the cord connecting my brain and spine is about to snap any moment when I finally spot my place. I pay the desk man and hop into bed without dressing it in the complementary sheets. I don’t think I have ever slept better.

Paris: Part I

Starting at L'Arc de Triomphe, a sunlit torrent of traffic and amateur Asian photographers, I wind my way down the Champs-Élysées. I have two missions before midday: locate a poker room and then a hotel. I quickly find Cercle Gaillon, one of the only rooms in Paris without a membership fee, only to find a note on the door explaining it will be closed for two weeks. At this moment I realize I'm dying to play some cards. Maybe it's the thirty six hours of travel, or perhaps it's the urge to start the trip off with a solid win and whisk away all short term cost burdens. Regardless, I lower myself to approaching the Aviation Club of France (ACF) where they charge a 100 Euro annual membership fee. I don't go in, but haggle with the doorman over the dress code: “You change, come back later, non?”

Via metro, I drag my pack to Rue Cler, a perfect Parisian sidestreet complete with cartfulls of local vendibles tumbling out of every shopfront. A true French market. I have found France! And it is thick with Fromageries, Pattiseries, and Boulangeries. On the same street I find a three star hotel and book a couple nights.

Looking to kill a few hours before I return to ACF, I visit the Eiffel Tower, overrated and awash with tourists. Luckily I took a WWI-intensive history course at LSU that gave me an appreciation for its historical significance, which I marvel at for a few moments before pushing on to Monmarte. The cemetery sits in the Northern, hilly sector of Paris, where the Moulin Rouge and the rest of the smut district has sprung up around it. The centuries-old tombs lay on several tiers, gradually stepping up to the edge of the urban basin that has filled in over the years. Monmarte puts New Orleans cemeteries to shame. I think it would be something to sneak in at night, like I used to as teenager, but won’t for many obvious reasons.

From there I head straight to ACF, sports-coat and all. The registration process takes awhile and a fingerprint. The place is small and swanky. Eventually I sit in a 5/10Euro game and play about ten hands. I get it all in preflop with AKs vs KJs vs AA, with even more dead money in around the table (the game is wild). I reload, pick up AK a couple more times but have to give up on terrible flops in four way pots. Then I see a flop five ways with 55. A45r, middle set. Some French businessman donks huge into everyone, and I get in all in with him, for barely more than a minimum raise left in my stack. He has A8s, and it comes 6, 7. I haven’t brought enough cash to put another bullet on the table; I haven’t really even come with much more to spend on the trip. Oops.

The metro is closed so I take an overpriced cab. The only thing I notice on the ride home is that there appears to be a rave at the Eiffel Tower. Supposedly this epileptic display at the great phallic monument happens every night. I couldn’t care less with my face blotted against the cab window. I slowly realize the repercussions of tonight’s loss: a tighter spending allowance, reduced threshold for further gambling, and general emotional malaise. In a sense I’ve been relegated to some ethereal Euro trip losers bracket, but not totally eliminated; although I am the one who forced the variance.

Outside my hotel two drunk skinheads chant, “White powwwwer!” and “Sieg heil!” in thick French accents. It’s off-putting and I cross the street, given that I’m dressed preppier than usual and still have a good amount of cash on me. I’ve heard about the National Front, a borderline-racist political party in France, chiefly concerned with keeping out Muslims. I have no interest in these idiots’ party affiliations, but think it very strange for this encounter to take place openly on the streets of Paris.

I dedicate the next day to the Louvre. To see everything in the museum would take multiple visits, and who knows how long it takes to truly appreciate the entirety of the collection. Louvre management allows non-flash photography in every wing of the museum; needless to say, I went a little trigger happy with my camera. I wander around to a soundtrack of Jesu, Seven Fields of Aphelion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and other lo-fi post rock. The collections of sculptures absolutely floors me. After an hour I’ve only made it through seven or eight rooms. That is how this place works, nearly everything ranks as a masterpiece and deserves some reflection. But there is also a slow fading of my capacity for wonder and awe. You can only see so many consecutive great works of art before becoming desensitized. By the time I reach Mona, I’m thinking cool but why is she so famous again? C’mon be in awe, try try to be in awe...ah there we go. And then it was gone again.

Four hours later I step out into the rain of Jardin de Something Important, operating as the Louvre courtyard. Brain circuits fried, I manage to input a croissant before heading to my bed for a nap. When I wake up I’m going to get my money back from those French bastards at the ACF.

Breaching Paris

The guard at the ATL security checkpoint tells me I forgot to sign my passport. Off to a great start. 30ish French woman with a Costello hat circuitously paces around the terminal, approaching several times as if about to offer conversation, then coyly scampers off. Only old Frenchmen seem to travel ATL to Paris, and they are all dignified. Eight hours in a plane isn't as long as it sounds; all French stewardesses are underwear models on their days off; these statements are somehow connected.

Walk a mile through beauty shops in Charles-de-Gualle. AirFrance won't let me fly round trip to Paris, so it's Paris-London-Paris both ways with an annoying little chunnel ride each time. London looks exactly like Lock-Stock, and every dwelling has two brick chimneys. I jerk my way around transit, Paddington to King's Cross, stop at a sushi bar with conveyor belts. The fried tofu starts to kick in as I board the Eurostar, zzz...

I come to with the Asian man next to me waiting to exit the train to tell me I dropped my ipod. I'm the last off the train and feel delirious. Paris, Gare-Nord, metropolitan hub. Rush hour. The Tourist information line is overwhelming. A million Parisians skitter around and in front of me. Stupid travelers take forever to buy metro passes. I am a stupid traveler and buy an all-encompassing overpriced tourist pass including museum discounts, and don't realize this until my last day there.

I have no idea how long I have been awake for now. I stumble and shake as I try to keep up with the locals. That first metro ride is a complete blur. Somehow I manage to make it to street level at the stop directed by my couchsurfing host. I change directions several times, consulting city maps until I find her place. The door has a keypad. I try lots of buttons and the pay phone across the street to no avail. Eventually one of her neighbors lets me in.

Melodie, my host, greets me warmly into her tiny apartment. She has lived in Norway, Mexico, New Mexico, Bulgaria, and has the push pins in her wall to wall maps to prove it. We play guitar and banter. I let it slip that I play poker for a living, which instantly provokes her concern for my moral wellbeing and financial stability. Godammit. I don't know why that information always induces strange reactions from the girls of my generation.

I'm exhausted but she convinces me to go out and meet some other random couchsurfers in the middle of downtown Paris; feeding me French white beer is a substantial part of her plan and works well. We arrive at a happening little square around a 16th? century fountain. The night proves uneventful, as the people we meet are essentially squares, from what I can tell through the language barrier. The Norweigan was particularly disappointing, not being a dragon-slaying black metal guitar god, but a novice tango-dancing Prufrock.

I sleep restlessly on a bare mattress until woken up early by Melodie, who must depart for work. She explains she cannot host me the second night, like we agreed, because I toss and turn in my sleep, which will hinder her from getting rest, and she must leave for Berlin in a day blah blah blah. Excuses quickly fill the confined quarters of her apartment. I react cordially, and thank her for her hospitality. So continues the saga of women ejecting me from their apartments/vehicles/company at odd hours and angles; it is hard not to take a little measure of pride in such a thing. But more on that anon.

I leave in good spirits. It's fucking Paris outside! All day! I begin my time here the only way I know how, with a morning stroll down the Champs-Élysées...