Road to Elsewhere, Excerpt #3: The Not-So-Great Escape

Wherein our hero battles self-loathing, self-pity, arrogance, and the passive voice on the streets of Paris

I REMEMBER MY SHIPWRECKED STATE when the airport bus dumped me on the street, with Paris roaring around me. I was terrified, bereft, and wanted nothing more than to escape anyone’s notice that I was alone on an unfamiliar continent. 

I had just one solicitous Frenchman to escape: a taxi driver. “Vous allez ou, monsieur?” he asked, doing calisthenics with his eyebrows. 

Where are you going, indeed? A hostile question for a 21-year old.

I’d been practicing on the bus for just such a threat. “Cent-un Boulevard Raspail,” I croaked, and shuffled off  in that direction. His accurate warning—“C’est loin, monsieur”—faded as I took my first steps onto the streets of Paris and into the rest of my life. 

What was I doing there? Twenty-one-year old me had no answer, really. 

I was enrolled in a language school, and I was carrying an extremely heavy typewriter to facilitate, um, writing things. I’m not sure I’d even read any Hemingway to that point, so my only moveable feasts had been dirty-water dogs …