Addendum: A Comparison

I didn’t think this deserved a separate blog post, but as I sit outside the Cinematheque Francais, locked out, due to the apparent inability of one cashier to sell me a different kind of ticket. (“Monsieur Americain.” they snickered at me before a previous film), it seemed like the right time to expound on a comparison that came to my head, drunkenly wandering this city.

New York is like my mother, though I know it may not be to many. It’s my home, the place I know best, where I come from and where I sometimes need to escape from.

And if New York is my mother, then Paris is my douchebag friend.

Hear me out! I have a reason for this. These words chosen carefully and if that carefulness came at an intoxicated time, let me elucidate them in a time of lucidity.

See, Paris is frequently late, snobby about shit and making fun of you (and everyone else it seems like). It’s more fashionable, better looking, it is *constantly* reminding you how much more sex it is having than you. It likes shitty European house music and “the best of” American Jews (Dylan, Cohen, Woody Allen) and sometimes it just totally fucking bails on you.

So why do you keep it around?

Well you don’t always hang out with Paris. Sometimes you try ditching it and talking to your New York friends on G-Chat or playing video games, just to piss it off.

But at the same time, let’s be honest, Paris is fucking interesting. It’s really, really cool. And for every time the Karaoke at the Pub St. Michel won’t start (with its pitiful list of songs) because they don’t know or care where the DJ is, there’s the cinema you discover doing dual Cronenberg-Scorsese retrospectives, the video-game district you didn’t know existed, the conversation about Clint Eastwood’s “The Rookie” you have with an Abu Dhabi TA who you never meet again. Even on the shitty nights, Paris can sometimes turn around and make you feel like it really does care about you, like you’re special because you’re chilling with it. Like you got your own cool rapport.

I’m still pissed off that the Karaoke didn’t work. The alternate joint I went to our of frustration with waiting closed as I got there and said they didn’t know when they’d be open (really?). And it’s annoying to be sitting on the damp bench across the street from the closed bistro across the street from the Cinematheque.

It’s New Year’s Eve and if I was in New York City, I would be near people who care about me, with places to go and be warm and taken care of, I’d have a plan. And I’d be sure to check in with my mom.

But sometimes, you don’t stay at home, because you want an adventure, because you want something new in your life. Because you want to see what can happen.

So you call up your douchebag friend Paris. It knows a few parties it’s heard about vaguely, though who really knows, man. Maybe we can try to find some chicks from Latin America and get ‘em dancing. Or talking about how depressed you are or whatever you do, Nick.

Yep, Paris, whatever you say.

It’s going to be a new year.

Je dois reflechir/Il faut vivre

I’m sitting in my room right now, perhaps defying the only rule of vacationing, which seems to be: don’t sit in your room.

In my defense, it’s morning and a while ago I ran out of “plans”.

The joy of travelling alone is the independence you find, the discoveries you make.

Last night, walking along Boulevard St. Germain, I tried to find something to do or just to wander, my backpack growing heavy on my neck, my requisite two-Tylenol cocktail for that time of the backpacker’s day, yet to set in.

I had already seen many of the American films there were to see in Paris, as my French was terrible-going-on-passable, good enough to get people less annoyed at me, but not good enough to understand a film like “Le Havre” without subtitles (English or French). The Cinematheque Francaise was playing only weird Clint Eastwood movies, like the one where he has to infiltrate a mountain-climbing trip or the “reverse Harold-and-Maude” movie as Ro-Beardo Malone described it via text from across the sea.

So I wandered, checking my email when I’d find a Starbucks, not using my phone otherwise. I just wanted to find a place to read “From Paris To The Moon”, which I was determined to get through before I left Paris, when I came upon, like a mirage, first an old cinema (Paris is full of them) playing A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy and the very Brasserie described in “From Paris” as “the best restaurant in the world”.

Paris has had a way of doing this to me, offering consolation in walking, guiding you at the right moments. When I was depressed after a night of snoring and a fumbled attempt at female interaction, I found a DDR machine inadvertently by the Bastille, ended up being better than I ever was at DDR and a had a crowd of pre-10 year-old Algerian boys clap at my rendition of techno–fied “Cotton-Eyed Joe”, on which I got a double-A and took a bow after. That’ll beat about anything.

When I walked all the way yesterday to one of the last restaurants I had been planning to go to and I couldn’t eat anything, I discovered a neighborhood I had never found before, found a nice cafe and had a very silly picture taken of me that again, invigorated me.

When I went to go home from the movie (funny and appropriate) and the dinner (excellent), I almost took the Metro before a string drew me out.

“Really?” I asked myself. “You’re going to walk home? In the damp Paris evening?”

“You don’t have to walk home.” I told myself. “You get to. Through beautiful Paris.”

As always, walking, you make discoveries. One night, I found a Magic: The Gathering store (L’Esplace Du Dragon). One night, I met a couple Arizonans and we retired to a bar after a film. Last night, I ran into two hipsters out of Virginia with appropriate facial hair and had a conversation about where we were in our lives.

I also ran into two French guys who wanted a light, though I thought they were asking directions. (Sidenote: Though I am not out of the woods yet, so to speak, I’m a New Yorker and have a decent sense for danger.)

“I am sorry, I thought I had a lighter, but I forgot I left it passed airport security.” I told them.

“It’s fine, you are American?” One said,

“New Yorker.” I replied.

“You like Paris? You like the French girls?” He asked.

“Yes, but it is difficult. You are all too good-looking.”

“Oui, c’est vrai.” He replied and they went off into the night.

Such meetings are valuable, magical even, but ephemeral.

When I came back to the hostel, 5 euro 90 bottle of wine in hand, a Beaujolais Nouveaux (which I remembered from my pops was fruity and good for drinking on a lark), I sat in the lobby of the hostel as I often do waiting for someone to drink with, but there was no one. The bottle stayed closed. And eventually, I went to sleep. Even for all the good things, on a sour note, though it could have been just coming down from the coffee and the wine at dinner.

I wondered when I got to Paris whether I was addicted to people, my friends, the people I see. I’ve called myself “an interdependent mess” and Rob told me he liked this phrase to describe me. I’ve been more independent here in Paris, but just as I knew in film school, whatever else I am or become, I’m a storyteller and I’m not happy if I don’t have someone to share stories with.

My raison d’etre.

If you will.

While I’ve been gone, I’ve gotten messages from my friends, people checking in, telling me they miss me, wanting to share stories too. Telling me I was “missed” at the Magnet holiday party, which is an ego-inflation I don’t need, but which reminds me, as lame as it is to say, that the connections I have in my life are important. That I love people and am loved in return.

My father said, upon giving me advice, the day I was having girl problems and roommate issues, that it was better to leave reflection alone. Your subconscious will work on that while you’re there. Just try to have fun. My depressive friend over G-Chat told me “Wallow when you get home.” I found that appropriate.

The only “friend” I’ve made here really (Brad was at a different hostel and had that same mentality of impermanence) is Hossein, the kid who loves Clint Eastwood movies who I saw “The Rookie” and “Heartbreak Ridge” with, a film nerd who is glad to have someone else to talk to, even haltingly, in English.

Before I left for Paris, I was talking with my improv group about “an agreement about how to play”. People were a bit shaken by this, they didn’t know if we should plan to much in advance, this is improv after all. But it’s good to have an agreement on how to play, a frame on the wall, a knowledge of what this is.

That’s what New York is, a way of knowing each other, a culture, a sense of dependent permanence, in the best possible way. As much as Paris tries to allow me in and console me on my silly American follies and as much as I find it extremely beautiful, I miss the people who care to miss me.

It’s a nice frame on the wall of my life.

So what to do? A good question. I still have a cheap eats place to try (which I’ve liked better than the fancy places I’ve been, just who I am). I need to get my sister another gift and I know where. And then who knows?

Honkytonk Man at the Cinematheque? Another walk around Cluny?

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see and see what comes to me, whether Paris consoles me, whether I discover something new, or whether I just get to remember when I get home that at worst, they’ll be someone to share that bottle with.

***

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my comfort-food spot in Paris.

Coming in close second to this is the other place I’ve been twice, L’As Du Fallafel, a very silly place in the Jewish quarter that is plastered with signs all over it saying that it is endorsed by Lenny Kravitz of all people. The food there is insanely large portions and cheap and portable. Near perfect.

Also great were normal Thai and Indian take out places, though the Indian was a bit expensive.

However, the winner was certainly apparent.

Le Relais Gascon, right on La Rue des Abbesses, makes fucking huge salads. It’s what they have.

It’s a south-western French restaurant and this is there fomula for a salad:

A lot of good lettuce, some tomatoes, some meat and protein (egg, pork, chicken, what have you) and a metric-shit-ton of duck-fat fried-potatoes on top.

Oh yeah, some balsamic vinaigrette too.

It’s delicious.

It’s so delicious I got on the phone, yelled at my dad about how pissed I was about my snoring roommate and wondered if I should just get the incredibly expensive train to Amsterdam just to decompress from Paris, went there and was fine.

I called back my dad and apologized.

The service doesn’t care, the menu looks like a tourist trap and even has some English on it (a faux-pas). But there it is. Delicious. And relatively inexpensive for the size at 12 euros.

I could not finish one.

The old me could not finish one.

Frank or Simon from back home with their epic appetites probably could.

We’ll see if we can get them to come, next time.

***

LE RELAIS GASCON

Salade Du Chef (sans oeuf)- 12 euro (tar. inclusif)

6, Rue des Abbesses

12 to Abbesses, 4 to Pigalle

Joyeux Noel

Lots and nothing to do in Paris at Christmas, by yourself for the holidays.

In some ways, the time has brought reflection, like I talked about in my last post.

As I mentioned, I don’t have the internet on my phone (despite continued efforts) and I also don’t listen to music or podcasts walking around. Instead, I tend to observe, letting my mind wander from arrondisement to arrondisement, trying to take the metro as little as possible, despite my “Navigo” pass (a catchier term for “MetroCard”).

I just try to look, try to place and understand what I’m seeing around me, what I  am taking in. Paris is a starkly beautiful city, the boulevards large (and sometimes unfortunately commercials) and the streets narrow and good for walking. Everything is wonderfully uneven and cobbled in the best way, like the parts of Greenwich Village I admire back home, the parts where you can tell that little thought was put in on a macro-scale, because people were just trying to find ways to exist in these quarters, built up over and over.

The result is streets with stairs, streets with hills, streets too narrow for three people and great doors leading into wide-open plazas off narrow streets with narrower buildings within.

I lost my copy of “From Paris to the Moon” about two-thirds of the way into it at a Starbucks by Cluny, the neighborhood I most prefer.

It was appropriate, since I had been neglecting the book for a couple of days in favor of my Nintendo 3DS and a free copy of an old Zelda game I had gotten to download.

No need to shame me, blog-readers, I assure you I felt enough shame sitting in a Starbucks, staring at my new-fangled Game Boy in the middle of a city yet to be explored. But I was properly chastised and anyway, losing the book finally made me find the English-language bookstore “Shakespeare and Co.”, where I should have gone anyway.

In Cluny, I discovered tons of comic-book and video game stores, a whole street lined with Manga-shops and even a Forbidden Planet-type store with American superhero serials, up-to-date for the weeklies! I was impressed not so much by the titles (as I had my brief flirtation and separation with comics in mid-college) as I was by the idea that there was a community of people in Paris who would want these comic books as well as the Manga and the little video games shops that I found in proximity.

When I discovered a cinema showing reduced-fare matinees of American films on the same block as a Warhammer store I knew I was in the right place.

But with who?

Being in France by myself makes me appreciate the embarrassment of people I have to hang out with back home. It is so much that I need to see someone I know well every day or I feel cold and alone, unpopular, unloved; it’s an addiction and one that I fuel with community and good friends, so in that way, as addictions go, it’s not bad.

But walking around here by myself has led to discoveries, some freedom to go down strange streets, that lack of self-awareness one has around others, that need to present a persona.

In other words, I’ve been detoxing my outer self while I’m here, the person I am with his hyper-kinetic energy, strange attitude and neck-break strange lifestyle.

And of course, as one reflects on new surroundings, one reflects on themselves. Who am I? What path should my life take? What is my life really like back home? These are all important things to think about and in truth I have no answers, but I know I am enjoying not being in them, not taking calls, not worrying for a moment.

Or, at least, letting the thoughts of back home be in lieu of that music I’m not listening to as I explore Paris.

And I’m not totally alone.

Pictured above is my current roommate, a Brit named Brad, a good-looking fellow, 20 out of acting school, only knowing he doesn’t want to do acting. We’re friendly out of the sort of strange arrangement that we don’t seem to particularly annoy each other and that I am very grateful that he doesn’t mind all the times that my water bottle has fallen from my top bunk on to his bed.

Sometimes, I’ll hang out with him or I won’t but he’s a relatively genial (to say neutral presence) whose mind works in ways that mine doesn’t.

“The problem with hostels,” He told me as we walked down Blvd. St. Germain. “Is that there isn’t enough time to seal the deal, enough time to get to know them.”

“I mean what do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean sex.” He replied. “There was this Malaysian girl at breakfast…”

“You told me about the Malaysian girl.” I replied. He had.

“Well, yes, but there was this Japanese girl.”

“Alright.” I said.

“And she was gorgeous I mean she had like a nice face and a perfect ass (pronounce: ah-ss) and she told me she was leaving the next day.”

“Yeah, well I mean it’ll be alright, I’m sure you’ll find someone here. But my friend Ilya says the girls in a hostel don’t come to a Paris hostel to find hostel guys, they come to find French dudes.”

“Makes sense. In college–”

I’ll cut it off there.

Which is not to say I hadn’t had my share of tries while I was there so I didn’t seem so fixed on it happening as I had on my trip to Israel (Birthright) or in college. I guess I’m just a sucker for a girl wanting to talk to me and reading it the wrong way (which about approximates my normal life) and this led me to a Special Ed. teacher from Los Angeles, trying to “figure out what’s next”, who told me she was gay 3 days and about 3-4 bought drinks into it.

“Yah, I definitely thought she was flirting with you.” Brad told me in the lobby. “But it turned out she was a proper lesbian, in the bar she was talking about all the girls she liked and stuff.”

“Glad we solved that one.” I replied.

Then there was the Chinese-Canadian nerd-girl teaching Psych to “Level A” students in London, carrying a copy of Hemmingway’s “A Moveable Feast”  who kept pouring me wine out of her bottle into a hostel mug (“It was only 3 euro!” she kept on exclaiming) who wanted to do lots of things with me but

a. Had a long-distance boyfriend (Upstate New York) who she had met on the online-role-playing game Ragnarok Online.

and

b. Turned out to be annoying as fuck as the three of us walked together through the city as she kept stopping for pictures and being really excited about stupid things.

All-in-all, a pretty typical failure on my part leading to my going to see the subtitled Tree Of Life alone tonight, back in Cluny.

Living the life of an American hostel-dweller in Paris.

Contemplative, romantic and strangely bro-ish.

***

It bears to mention here that I did not get passed in my UCB class.

I had come to some peace earlier about it, about my skill and love of improv and comedy, about the community I was in, that I knew it wouldn’t kill me or wound me so terribly if I didn’t pass.

But still “fuck you”.

I got a nice email from my old teacher, a performer I respect in charge of delivering the news and I appreciated that he was sympathetic, that he told me he knew how much it meant to me, that he was willing to talk. He’s a dry guy, not known for his warmth, so I appreciated even that, even if the news was bad.

I, of course, took my old teacher up on his offer and, of course, wrote too much.

I go back to New York on the second and start another class, another attempt at passing on the third, the next day.

The teacher this time is a performer I really admire, Neil Casey, so I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to worry about passing and just learn.

But if I made a big mistake in my last comedy class at UCB, it was not seeing it as a class. I took the class to pass and go to the upper-level courses. Unlike the first-time I took the class, where I felt I was learning a lot, this time I just thought most of the kids were fucking awful, I was better than them and I already knew everything these people could help me with, now bring on the advanced classes.

But of course, they don’t call it a test, they call it a “class”, even if it is a test as well and that’s a difficult thing to remember.

So I just want to take this time to say, to myself and the improv people at large.

On one hand, fuck you, I had people see my shows whose opinions I trust, I know myself, I was if not the best performer in that class with the most experience, than the second and I should have passed that class.

On the other hand, thank you. Because as much as fuck you, as my teacher, the great Armando Diaz, over at my comedy place The Magnet says (as I’m sure many others have as well), there is more to be learned from success than failure. Or as Dave Pasquesi (of TJ+Dave) said in his Q+A at the Magnet, this is not something you’re supposed to be good at.

If I went into any class thinking I was only there to prove myself and pass the teacher’s test and I had nothing to learn, then I would learn nothing and that, more than anything, would be a great shame.

But if I go into that same class and try and do things I am not sure of and fail and make myself vulnerable, if I allow myself to be “not good”, I also allow myself to be open to becoming “better”, just like a muscle has to tear to rebuild and become stronger.

So, as I walk around Paris, thoughts of profundity come to me as do thoughts of shame. I try to remember the profound thoughts, try to unpack some of the shameful ones and others file away for when I return to my therapist.

I guess what I am saying is I just hope all of this helps me to get laid.

Yeah.

***

As one might expect, when left to structure my days for myself, I often turn to where I want to eat and then leave everything else to chance.

In this way, my friends have not been so helpful (my boss never sent me the email he told me giving me recommendations, though I guess he still has a week), my mother has been, as usual, right about mostly everything and my hostel has proved no use at all just giving me a coupon for some place they’re shilling for.

Instead, I’ve been looking up the France section of the Chowhound message boards and Paris By Mouth, an English-language French-dining blog, both of which have taken me by interesting places.

I am hampered by the fact that when people talk about French dining, they talk about 70 bucks (50 euro or so) an entree. I, on the other hand, was very happy with the Fried Chevre McWrap I got from the Louvre’s McDonald’s outpost.

Also, if I can take a second to mention, McDonald’s in France is fucking awesome. Their McCafe section has glorious cheap cappucinos served in porcelain and GOD DAMN MACARONS. MACARONS! It blew my mind.

But, looking for some place to sit down and eat I heard the words “Very Cheap” associated with a restaurant called Chartier and saw it was on the street that led down from my hostel to the Seine and so there I was, walking back up from Cluny one evening going into one of the many interior courtyards of Paris to a restaurant full-booked at 6:30.

When I raised my finger (“Un seule” I said) I was taken to a table with a French woman probably in her early 60s, a French man in his 70s and later an Australian, of whom there are endless amounts everywhere (including a girl who recognized me from the show. “they watch BEA in aus?” My pops texted me. Reply: “guesso”).

The French woman, Christianne, spoke very little English and I, of course, only speak enough French to make the French feel acknowledged that I tried to speak their language for which they allow themselves to speak English to me. But between us (relying mostly on my French!) we managed to have a nice conversation. One of her snails she got as a pre-theatre treat was alive and when she told the kitchen they brought her another one and decided, seeing my American-ness, to offer it to me.

“Stop.” George said, in French. “The Americans and The French, they do not eat the snails. They will not.”

To be honest I was dubious. I hadn’t tried one in recent memory, only maybe when I was very young. But there she was, instructing me how, fetching the snail for me when I could not get it with the pronged instrument from its shell, showing me how to dip it in the butter and garlic from which it came and how to sop it up with the baguette.

She was very pleased when I managed and I very much enjoyed it, though it was tres riche and not for everyday consumption.

Just the mutual feeling of getting through language and cultural barriers made us feel all happy. She tried to ask me about another food and called up one of her three children (one of whom lives in Toronto as a pilot for Air Canada) to ask the word, which was frog, which I explained to their shock was a “mauvais mot pour les gens francais”. They then went on to have a discussion about the diminishing primacy of French as a language and eventually, my Poulet Roti Frites arrived, over the check which was written directly on my paper tablecloth.

It was cooked in lots of butter and not so great (frozen fries, obviously) but the snail was pretty good and as always, I was amused by how much the waiters seemed to disdain me as much as they seemed to read George’s mind, whose name was probably not George (“L’Americain, il peut m’appeller George.”) and who ended up admitted being a regular there.

I bowed to Christianne and thanked her again so much.

In the unknowing of eating and being alone somewhere, you can find yourself in something of a wonderful time.

Also, I hope I haven’t gained 10 pounds. I was 80 kilos with my clothes on a scale at a department store where I took off my shoes while everyone was shopping the day before christmas.

What?

***

RESTAURANT CHARTIER

Poulet Roti Frites (et un escargot)- 8.70 Euros

7 Rue De Faubourg Montmartre

Metro 8 ou 9 a Station Richelieu-Drouot

The Trip To France

Looking at this picture, I enjoy that there are children behind me who seem just in that mix of confusion, wonder and odd displacement that I seem to be exhibiting here.

After all, this is Paris, the top of Le Tour D’Eiffel and here we both are, seeing and being in said experience.

On the plane ride over, I got my first taste of France (Air France) when trying to talk to the people around me in my improved but still woefully-lacking French led to mostly semi-annoyed looks and people replying to me in similarly broken but still comparatively superior English. It’s not their fault or mine I suppose, as we both think to work out languages. It’s just what the author says in the book I am reading, From Paris to the Moon: The French harbor residual anger that English has so overtaken their language in universality, proven corporeally by that they themselves know it better than les autres know French.

“Pardonnez-moi, Madame.” I said to the ticket-lady at Le Tour, “Ext-ce que je peux acheter un ticker pour le tour?”

“Yah, how old are you?” She replied.

“24.” I said dejected and then, as I would several times that evening: “Sorry for my French.”

The French would have different responses to this in Paris.

Sometimes if they were trying to be nice or I was buying something from them, they would reply.

“Mais non! Vous etes fort! Vous parlez tres bien!”

Other times they would just say knowingly (sometimes without my even opening my mouth!):

“Vous parlais anglais?”

This woman just replied:

“Just think of it as a chance to practice your French.”

I had arrived in Paris on a near whim, planned several months earlier, just because I thought I needed something. What I didn’t know but something it seemed.

Sitting in the courtyard of the hostel, people would give me their reasons, some good, some just as random as mine.

Many Koreans and Chinese people, on vacations, or taking a trip with their significant other or friends. A special-ed teacher from L.A. on holiday. A boyfriend and girlfriend from Australia traveling here and then to Brussels.

When I asked another Australian girl at the provided continental breakfast whether she knew my previously met Australians, she said:

“No, we travel in droves.”

My room consisted of four bunk beds, standard hostel I guessed, since I hadn’t really stayed in one. My roommates were two large, affable college students from Tennessee, a study-abroader and her friend who had come to visit who were headed for the rest of Europe as adventure buddies and a Londoner named Brad who was keen on debating the Republican candidate field with me (“Ron Paul has devoted followers who know when and where to be.”) and who, upon graduating from acting school, knew only “that I didn’t want to act”.

The flight was relatively stress-free despite a crying baby and a woman next to me who thought she could use her seat-back compartment as a foot rest (a good preview for the French) as I got to watch “Cedar Rapids” (a middling-good airplane-ish comedy) and “The Help” (a middling-good airplane drama). I also discovered that Air France boozes you up which is a great idea flying (dinner was accompanied by both red wine and a glass of champagne and coffee came, inexplicably to me, with cognac at the bottom) but a really poor idea when you have a rest-of-the-day to attend to.

This was especially true when I realized that my international roaming charges were 20 dollars per megabyte and that the GEVEY sim I had purchased for France didn’t seem to work with any of the prepaid SIM cards I got and that unlike New York, there was no one in Paris who understood this. I only understood this 3 prepaid SIM cards later.

I headed back to my hostel in time for check-in exhausted and exasperated, walking up-hill thinking what I would do without internet how annoying it all was how I literally had already spent hours at these shops and STILL nothing worked, how I’d gotten coffees at Starbucks, even more overpriced than America, just to pee and check my email how I’d been walking and wandering and felt lost and everyone’s directions were wrong.

And then I took a nap.

And woke up.

And looked up some things online to do.

And instead of taking the metro, I just started walking.

I walked the stairs at nearby Montmartre and managed to evade the hucksters who spotted me as American as soon as I got there, trying to put my finger into some colorful string.

I found stands selling Churros and Hot Wine (Vin Chaud) and these glow in the dark rainbow whirligigs that everyone seemed to have.

Instead of taking one metro station, I took the next one.

And I went to a wonderful restaurant I found on Chowhound, L’Alcove, where I was the only one present, chatting with the owner who was very proud of his rave reviews in Le Figaro et Le Fooding. I got some Couscous Poulet which was reasonable and delicious. and much more than I could eat as I sat reading From Paris To The Moon. I  read about Adam Gopnik trying divine Haricots Verts and asked the proprietor if I could have some as a side.

“Des Haricots?” He replied. “No you don’t need them! There are legumes in the couscous.”

I didn’t really understand but said fine and as I said it was delicious.

***

And then I just walked and kept on walking.

My phone didn’t have internet service, but somehow it still had GPS and along with an incomplete cached map of Paris I had left over from when I had looked up the restaurant on my phone, it was enough to tell me vaguely where I was and what was around me.

I walked from the restaurant just up and down streets and side streets, main drags. I went to the mall and train station at Montparnasse. I passed the “Indiana Club” which looked hopping but strangely named and Johnny’s English Bar, which actually wasn’t too expensive, but no one seemed to speak English.

I just kept on walking seeing what there was to see, passing closed boutiques and (sadly) people who kept seeming more attractive than me. Just like Israel, the last time I went on vacation, it was a shame to know the natives were all so good-looking.

I decided to walk to the Seine, several miles from the restaurant and when I made it there, I said “I made it to the Seine”. Then I decided to walk by the Musee D’Orsay just to see that and I made it and I said “I walked to the Musee D’Orsay.” and then I decided to walk to Le Tour D’Eiffel and there I was as well.

And as I walked my mind worked in the back, mulling and streaming, observing the night.

What if instead of lamenting the lack of internet, I took it as a a gift? What if instead of trying to write my life, like I thought going into to trying to find a SIM card, and feeling so frustrated if didn’t go according to a script in my head, I just explored and stayed in the moment and tried to follow what inspired me?

This concept of “being there”, “being in the moment” is drawn from improv, acting. But it’s true, here you are, here I am. And there are so many wonderful things to see. I noticed the streaming of the Seine, the posh apartment buildings, the cigar smoke streaming in the night from the person walking in front of me.

When walking through les Arrondisements, I just turned when I saw a light that looked interesting, somewhere that looked like it had something happening, something that felt like it was there for me.

I went down a street of cloth merchants at one point. I passed and entered a popular chain of supermarches called “Monoprix” which seemed somewhere between a Whole Foods and a Macy’s, only smaller. I felt the breeze and the strangely warming night.

I was there. I was here. I am.

I went 7 hours without the internet, a crazy amount of time for me, but there I was again.

And, though I wished I had someone to kiss atop Le Tour D’Eiffel, I settled for knowing I had made it here, this far.

That I was present in the moment.

Moi.

The only thing to comment on, really, were the McDonalds which seemed invariably like the coolest places around, filled with hip 16-24 year-olds (moi inclusif) and advertising the shown “Bagel Burgers” as their star item, with one listed as “A Victim Of Its Own Success”. The place was full and bustling, your order was taken by electronic screen and the prices were roughly even with New York, converted from Euros.

In From Paris to The Moon, Gopnik describes these McDonalds (10 years ago, when the book was written) as threatening the classic French Bistro and why not.

I think you might be able to get a beer with your meal.

I guess that’ll be on the list to see.

***

L’ALCOVE

Couscous poulet- 11.90 Euros (about 16 dollars)

46 Rue Didot (near Rue D’Alesia)

Metro 13 au gare Plaisance.

Addendum: “My Internship at [redacted]“

One last thing I have been thinking about is this:

When a bad thing happens to me, there are things I can do in order of easiness.

Surprisingly, the easiest thing to do is not repression, as my neuroticism would just guide me towards any attempt at repressed memories, things kept “unremembered”. It’s also an active choice, to choose not to remember something.

The easiest choice then is victimhood, I chose this one for a while with this incident, just saying that I didn’t do anything wrong, how crazy was that guy, everyone comfort and feel sorry for me.

It requires no further self-examination on my part, I can live with the memories and go on, though it’s not a “powerful” choice and so it’s one that stymies you in life later, one that leads you to be a less “real” person.

The next easiest is then the previous discussed repression, an active choice made never to think about something again, to gloss over it. Again, this has the benefit of averting pain, but many studies and fictions have been made on the subject of repressed memories and you’ve probably seen how those end up, just like victimhood, coloring your life through your subconscious.

After is what I still do, often, aversion: knowing those thoughts are in your mind but trying not to think about them. This is difficult, in some ways the worst of all worlds, because you don’t have the comfort of denial afforded by the first two, but you’re still not really dealing with the problem. This gives these things power of my life and subconscious too, see: panic attacks, irrational hatreds, etc.

After that there’s what I’m trying to do: accept responsibility. Try to assess the situation and learn what you can. Attempt to disarm the bomb of shame or weakness, anger or sadness. Explode it and then look at the parts. This is, of course, very difficult, not only to risk exposure to emotionally-damaging memories when the present is difficult enough already, but to even find those moments, to know them, when you could have buried them or glossed over them somewhere along the way. Not to mention, you have to find a way to find distance, which in this last case, took me two years to find. It’s difficult, but healthier than these choices in that it makes the subconscious conscious and disarms these moments’ ability to control your life.

But there’s one things I didn’t mention, a last step to all of this, present even in the first option but gone from the rest and difficult too, indeed.

That is: accepting the good in those moments, recognizing the positive in the negative. Recognizing what you can take from even those awful moments in one’s life.

I was often fake and annoying and made many bad decisions in my time at the show.

But I also was ambitious in my want to learn. I heard everyone’s stories, I made sure I knew what everyone did. I was tenacious in pursuit of my art, applying to festivals every day, mailing DVDs, going on festival message boards. I was holding a writing group every week or every other, writing sketches and shorts and pages from screenplays. I loved the people in my life dearly and showed loyalty to my friends.

When that stupid woman told me that they’d taken the vote and decided they didn’t like me, she asked me if I’d learned anything and I answered without snark: “Yes.”

By the time that internship ended, I knew so much more than 99% of the population about how things worked at a good, well-respected weekly TV show. I knew what the different producers did, the writers did, how the shows were structured, the chain of command.

I fucked up a lot and boy was I dumb about a lot of things.

But I’ll be damned if I didn’t try my hardest, in my own insane way, to get the most out of my internship.

And to some degree, I succeeded.

I guess that’s the last step.

Forgiving yourself, for it all.

That’s it.

-Nick

My Internship at [redacted]

I leave for Paris in 5 days.

The trip is supposed to give some perspective, a palette-cleanser, a way of looking at my life from a distance and maybe of attempting to figure it out. Trying to figure out how I’m not just going to mooch off my parents, find some calling or vocation, do something, anything, commit.

Clarity, I guess, is what I’m looking for.

That, and a good croissant.

But even leaving behind New York City, which I haven’t left for more than a day in 2 years, there are those things that are difficult to leave behind. Traumas, bad memories, the moments that flash before my eyes and make me feel dizzy or nauseous or even just aversive, shifting from thought to thought.

These “traumas” as I call them can be big or small. They’re not “repressed memories” in my understanding of the term because I can remember them. They’re “averted memories” memories I see and then choose to avoid because I don’t know how to or fear to unpack them. They can be great or small, ranging from the time I defended the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima at age 14 in front of a camp meeting of liberal New Englanders (relatively trifling) to the incident in which a classmate died in Georgia that I was involved in.

They represent moments of shame for me, a difficult emotion to process, moments where a schism occurred between the Nicholas of a currently formed identity and the Nicholas realizing the incapability of his identity to function in the face of an event. Moments I could not at the time properly understand, only understand somewhere underneath that I couldn’t understand them. These are the moments when an insane person sticks to their logic, insists on their sanity. Our minds are made to protect themselves after all.

These are the moments that flash before my eyes when my mind wander sometimes, associatively, loaded like IEDs, derailing my thought and sending me reeling. In middle school they were so bad, they manifested as migraines and my parents brought me to a neurologist who, noticing no physiological reason, suggested therapy. I remember 13-year-old Nick hoping for a medical reason, just so there could be a cure.

My panic attacks have lessened over time and I no longer get those dwelling migraines. But these are the moments which in college caused me to say “I hate my life” and which now cause me to say “Eva”. Both are ways of distancing myself from those thoughts, either through separating myself from my own actions (The “Nick” who is capable of hating another “Nick”) or by reaching for the safety blanket of love or affection that I used to take as a form of absolution: my ex.

When I look now at myself and my loneliness, some of it is certainly a desire for connection, for a relationship, for that spot in the bed, a hug, a kiss. But some of it is also a want for that absolution again, a way to ignore those aversive moments, to push past them.

I thought about that this week, as I thought about going away to France.

I decided I wanted to unpack them, to look back on them. To try to disarm them as best I could.

I decided to face some of my demons, deconstruct them and see what I could find. At least by discussing them, I could maybe repair that schism, with enough distance, I could understand moments that had only shamed me before.

With perspective, or clarity, some freedom.

I told my therapist my theory and she agreed.

“Do you have any particular one you want to start with?” She asked.

“Well,” I replied. “I’ve got one on the top of my mind.”

***

About the title:

I worked at a popular TV show as an intern for one semester. When I was there, a person I respected saw that a former intern had been interviewed by a local newspaper about her experience and they at the show were very upset. I think things did not get too out of hand, but why give people reason for anger?

The people who know me know where I worked. The people who don’t can assume, or does it even matter?

That was my life then.

It was.

***

You’ll forget, I was just graduated from film school at the height of the “recession” in late-2009 and despite our propensity for maintaining the illusion of mental homeostasis, I was a very different person back then.

I had wrapped work on my thesis film, but hadn’t yet gotten rejected from every film festival to which I applied (literally). I had been hooked up with this internship by the only connection I had through family (a friend of a friend). I had been not stridently insane or dirty in my interview and had thus gotten the job.

One thing was just that I was desperate. I had no idea who I was or what my life would be. College had ended only less than 6 months prior. Already, I was amazed at my ability not to get production assistant jobs, not to have a production company myself, not to have anything lined up.

School and the internships I did during it were the only paradigms I knew. In these places, my persona was relatively flamboyant as a front for insecurity. My motto was “accept me or fuck you” and I made my films in school about myself, had big opinions, always asked questions. I was a socially-clueless semi-douche, which could work in film school.

At the show though, people didn’t know what to make of me. I would carry around DVDs of my thesis, ask people to watch my film, ask for notes, ask for their story of how they got into the TV game. I searched for some sort of mentor, someone who would adopt me. I was “a barn” as the Magic players I hung out with would say, short for “barnacle”, someone who attaches themselves to someone big and strong and sucks on their underbelly for nourishment.

It would be easy to say that I was desperate and flailing, but it was more than that. I didn’t know who I was or what I could do with my life. I didn’t have much in common with the other interns, mostly current college students and what’s more they didn’t seem to like me. So, lacking social ties, I made a persona I wasn’t even fully aware of.

“Why are you doing this schtick?” One writer asked me at one point.

“This is me. This is what I’m like.” I told him.

“No it isn’t, but that’s fine.” He said.

I was playing a heightened version of myself, calling everyone Mr. and Ms., acting like I was in a movie or a sitcom or a comedy bit. It seems insane looking back on it, but one defense of the unliked is to become unlikeable. A shell by which to defend others from piercing your real self.

So there I was, with no friends, working every day, out of my mind, really. One day, I asked to watch a rehearsal when someone else asked me not to and the assistant production coordinator cornered me and asked me if I was after her and I was so taken aback .The truth was, in that character I played, there was no room for anything but my manufactured, isolated self.

And the way this came to a head was with a producer. I asked to show him my movie, as I did so many others and he said yes, but blew it off for a while. One day, I stopped by his office and asked him why he hadn’t gotten a chance to watch it yet and he went off. He told me I was a bad intern and that I should stop kissing up and just shut the fuck up and do what I was told and nothing else. I asked him if he was joking and he said no and we never talked about it again.

The only person I told was the security guard who was one of the few to realize I was fucking out-of-my-mind but at least not inherently spiteful. He told me a. to stay away from the guy and b. that it wasn’t all my fault, that producers are stressed, that I was here to learn.

I took his advice and just avoided the producer.

But things kept declining at my job. It’s hard to go somewhere where you have no friends, even fake friends, every day. It’s hard when you don’t know who you are, when you’re stuck in this insane pattern to realize your own insanity.

Things culminated at the holiday party. I was standing by myself, getting drunk off free booze in the big, rented club, sad because I had no one to talk to. The other interns were never friends of mine and even the few staff members who tolerated me were busy chatting each other up and who was I to intercede.

I went outside, teary into the cold to write a drunk, pathetic Facebook message about how sad I was when the star of the show came in out of a car and high fived me. Me! I walked in the club and followed him around as everyone gathered. As I marveled, I thought to myself one thing: I must take this man’s coat to the coat check.

It made sense to that half-drunk Nick, looking back. As my therapist pointed out, the star was the only one who’d acknowledged me that whole night, who had been kind to me. I waited and waited and finally asked and he said “No, but thank you.” but then I hung around on the periphery since seeing him talk to people was the only thing that seemed interesting to me in that club. I didn’t see the producer who I’d had the run-in with on my periphery until he turned to me and said “Get out of here”.

I was paralyzed. I didn’t know what he meant. Get away from him? Leave the star alone? Leave the club?

I just stood there and then pretended not to hear him. It was a loud club. Who cared?

But he kept repeating it. Until I walked away.

I walked backed over to the intern tables, shook up. I looked for a sympathetic ear, someone, but people hadn’t talked to me, really, before. Why now? I went in the middle of a conversation and said:

“Wow guys, you guys won’t believe this, the weirdest thing just happened to me…”

And then six feet away behind the couch was the producer who made eye contact and then just repeated “Get out of here”.

“Get out of here. Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

Louder and louder. The whole party stopped, everyone turned. I didn’t know what to say.

Finally:

“Alright, if you’re going to curse out an unpaid intern in front of the holiday party, go ahead, I’ll leave!”

And left I did, in tears, knowing even what shitty thing I had was gone.

The next day, I came in hung over. I felt like it was the day of my execution.

Everyone looked at me and knew, everyone wondered.

Somewhere in the back of my mind lingered that desperate notion. I knew now as I knew then, whatever I did deserve, I didn’t deserve that.

No one deserved that.

Everyone had seen.

But everyone was quiet.

Eventually, I was summoned up to the Executive Producers office who told me something very close to, textually:

“We all took a vote and decided we don’t like you. So we’re sorry for the producer’s profanity, but we’re not going to give you a recommendation.”

And then: “But you’ve learned something from this, right?”

To my credit, I was professional. I remember at that point in my life as now always marveling when friends could be professional, when they could leave their emotions out of certain parts of their lives. I never could and maybe never will.

I had one more day left, or maybe two. I went upstairs to do an errand and the secretary took a look at me and called my boss to get a different intern sent.

Even the PAs, my bosses, thought that was unfair. Why call me in if they were going to do that?

Thank god for that one writer, who took me out on a fake mail run, and tried to give me some perspective, tried to explain to me the frustrations and difficulty of even a successful TV show, the way people value mediocrity because mediocrity does not offend. I wasn’t ready to hear everything he had to say, I was too defensive, too broken.

But just that someone cared enough to talk to me, meant so much. I cried and cried and cried when I got home.

The last day, I left early, when people were saying their goodbyes. It was too much for me to hear, people saying they’d stay in touch, they’d miss each other, they liked each other. I didn’t want to make anyone consider whether to say that to me.

I didn’t want them to lie.

I left a note for one of the production assistants who didn’t even like me, who didn’t even dig me or want to be my friend: he just was able to operate on a non-bullshit professional level. He just treated everyone the same.

When I left early without other notice, I left a note, a little index card on his desk and it said:

“You always treated me fairly. I appreciated that. Thank you, Nick.”

I got calls, voicemails from the show later that day.

The second thing they told me when they got in touch was that I shouldn’t have left without notice.

The first was that they were worried I’d “tried to hurt myself”.

The audition/interview for the reality show I appear on was a month after the show.

I told this story there, with less perspective, just like showing a wound. I must have seemed crazy and desperate and sad.

Of course, I was.

And they put me on air.

***

I got teary unpacking this today as I left my session as I knew I was going to write about it.

There’s still that desire in me, that anger, that hurt.

It’s still hard for me to think about.

When I talk to people about faults I see in others, I admit they are faults I see in some incarnation of myself: self-involvement, knowing self-sabotage/incompetence, being “fake” to others, being a sycophant.

Looking at some of these: I exhibited near all of  them on my time working on the show.

Previously, in previous incarnations of this story, it was too difficult to examine my culpability in it, my lack of insight. I was desperate for so lung, I needed to cling to my idea of self-”right”-ness.

Because if whatever I was doing wasn’t right, I no longer had a teacher to guide me, a lesson plan. I would lay victim to my own doubts including one of the biggest “aversive thoughts” I have: that I don’t make movies anymore or at least, for now.

Going out of the show, I used it on my resume. I found the couple wonderful people who tolerated me or cared for me. The writer who took me on the run remained a friend. My ex and I broke up, eventually. The tragedy in Georgia actually came right before this story.

I reiterate that I didn’t deserve what happened to me, that no one does.

But in order to move from victim to actor, one must get perspective on their own actions, be able to learn.

In other words, in order to change, one must know what they’re changing from.

It’s been two years now. I still see people sometimes. A concert in the summer. Improv or Sketch shows. It’s a small world I live in, even in New York City.

I don’t know if I’ll still avert myself from those people, from the thoughts, from owning who I was and whoever I am now.

Maybe I need some more perspective.

Maybe a trip would help.

“I’ll use it as my profile picture.” I told Ro-Beardo Malone.

“Actually, I was hoping it would be the first picture on the next Feitelogram.” He replied with his half-cocked beard-smile, a tactic he frequently employed to try to inflame my inability to tell the difference between dry-sarcasm and his occasional earnestness. (e.g.: “Not enough films about the Kennedy assassination” accompanied by half-cocked beard-grin.)

It was 10:55, the hour of the always-breathless lead-up to The Chris Gethard Show, where my role as “The Man Behind The Plant” put me to some degree off-camera, getting ready to retweet people saying things like “Give me some jews 2fuk my boyfriend dumpt me” as well as home-brew images or cartoons having to do with the show. People frequently ask me, in bars or first dates, how I manage seeing my comedy friends with my friends from film school and the lucky thing is that the show is like a nexus of all of them.

Here, in one corner, is comedy-man Keith Haskel getting dressed up in a banana suit while his girlfriend helps him zip up. Over there is once-villain-man Andrew Parrish, warming up the audience and rushing around getting ready to punch Chris for an on-show bit, there getting in to an Evil Knieval costume is Ro-Beardo Malone, jimmying around trying to figure out whether his crotch muscles have healed enough that he can break loose and dance his fullest.

That night, a woman tried to book Rob to play a vuvuzela at her next bar mitzvah or event. That night, a woman called in with notes passed to the host with underlines to accentuate her increasing drunkenness. That night, a waltzing-seniors holiday special took over our studio so we were crammed in to a smaller one. I look forward to the show every week.

This week in improv class, I finished my last session of a 401, the class I was stressed out about enough last time around to write regularly about on this blog. Though I spent most of the class fairly confident, I lost that confidence in my last session and felt like crap going out for obligatory drinks with everyone after the show. That night, I started replaying a Mega Man RPG for the Nintendo DS.

In the haze after college that I am still in, I look for meaning all around me, for structure. When I didn’t feel good about my last 401 class, it made me feel down for two days.

I went in to my therapist asking why and she told me that in the absence of a significant other, my relationship with comedy and performance is the primary one in my life.

To that end, I went on two (unsuccessful) dates this weekend but things are looking, well, as they are.

In truth, I have to remind myself that there’s no control. To my friend’s perturbment, everything is like improv.

You can state your idea, your wants, your desires, but you have no control over where the scene or your life goes. Only where you choose to venture, preferably boldly, and the discoveries you make yourself open to with other people.

Tonight I go back to The Chris Gethard Show.

It’s a dating special.

I’ll be there again,

The man behind the plant.

***

My friend Jon Bander outed me yesterday.

The truth: I had been writing self-strokingly about the weight I had lost and telling people as much when they gave me a nice compliment or conspicuously in conversation (“Good show tonight.” “Yeah it was. I lost 50 lbs.”) but to outpour on social media was something else.

I had someone post on my wall that I was an “inspiration” my friends rag on me and people hold me up as some sort of symbol.

Meanwhile, on the other side, my parents were concerned I had lost too much weight (hovering somewhere around 175) and were wondering if there son was going to waste away. Their plans to have me see a doctor before I left were only foiled by a. A New York practitioners inherent lack of availability and b. them realizing I had been given a clean bill of health by that doctor about a month ago.

In the middle somewhere there was me, still self-conscious, still grabbing my belly at any passing moment, still wondering if I’d gain it back, if I’d added a pound. If now that I’d been “exposed” whether I’d just be another casualty, gaining back all the weight I had lost.

Friends told me it took them 5 years to get it back, others nodded knowingly as if it wouldn’t even do me any good to know.

The phase I’m in of “my new lifestyle” seems the scariest, the one without a plan where I try to find my own boundaries, set my own rules, figure out what works for me, what I’m allowed to do.

In Yoga (which I still think jokes and references to are stupid), my teacher talks about posture, as we stretch a belt across our backs to sit tall. When we arrive at our computers, we hunch over. When we sit on the mats we align our spine.

As I look in the mirror before the TCGS dating game tonight and put on a nicer shirt, now I wonder about my posture and how to fix that, how to get my body right.

Where is the happy medium between these things? My parents concern, my neuroses and the possible benefits of eliminating the things hampering me in my life.

What is the goal I’m trying to achieve (as Bander asked me as a necessary pre-requisite before instructing me on the diet I took to get to this weight)?

If it’s romance, as my friend Jason Chan has said, being skinny or even attractive (don’t think I’m there) doesn’t seem a large part of the equation.

If it’s happiness or self-contentment, isn’t that a state of mind rather than a physical pose? Haven’t I said before I was “happier” at my previous weight?

These are questions without too many answers as the holidays or my nearness to my Paris vacation grow closer.

Well, maybe I’ll figure it out in old gay Paris.

***

Or maybe my parents are concerned about me because they saw me split a cupcake into thirds.

My parents (seen above in soft-focus, head-cut-off form) were enlisted on a Sunday morning after a post-Faicco’s expedition to help me try out my latest point of exploration: Molly’s Cupcakes over in the West Village.

The place seems to have some reality-cred which I didn’t know too much about (not being an avid watcher of “Top Chef”-type shows) but I am fan of your down-home-style cupcake joint and the capacious milieu and swing-like chair seemed to draw me in.

Even though Mom pointed out their award-winning cupcake, a Peach Cobbler-blend with a real-peach slice on top, I was not interested. Such things struck me as being unnecessary, cupcake-wise, when for me the bread-and-butter of a cupcake should be simplicity.

I do like Pichet Ong’s cupcake inventions at Spot, to clarify, which often included Yuzu and berries and stuff, but even there, simplicity is maintained with the relatively small size and modest-icing of a cupcake being paramount. For me the monster-truck style-cakes of Crumbs are anathema and the Baked-by-Melissa tinies, while great, definitely suffer due to portion size on their value quotient.

So, I got the alpha-cake, vanilla base, chocolate-buttercream icing.

And I gotta say, it was pretty good.

The icing was refreshingly (unexpectedly) dark as opposed to milk chocolate and the base was also deceivingly lemony, a fact we interrogated the owner about to no avail.

What seemed simple ended up nuanced but markedly enjoyable, by no means a “perfect” cupcake (I think Blue Ribbon gets the closest to that), but certainly an excellent one.

My parents still looked perturbed though when I only ate my third of the cupcake.

“Too sweet for me.” My dad, the wuss, said eating about a third of his third before retiring. Mom and I tried to say something but well, you can bring a horse to water…

At least I ate half my huge Faicco’s sandwich in front of them.

At least they know I eat.

***

MOLLY’S CUPCAKES

Vanilla Cupcake w/Dark Chocolate Buttercream- $2.50

Bleecker St. bet. 6th Ave and Carmine St.

1 to Christopher St. ACEBDFM to West 4th St.