In my early twenties driving double-digit hours alone in the night to get to a new city where I'd cozy up in a small hostel alone, slip out to a bar and sip rum alone until I struck up a conversation with a new face. I moved to DC alone. And for lack of any real support from the thing I moved to New York with, I can say I moved here alone too.
But there was always comfort in the fact I could strike up a conversation when my lips were tired of being silent.
In Paris it was different...
The first few days were amazing, walking around the city, sensory overload, trying to figure it all out alone. I have several friends there, who speak English but resort to French when they aren't directly talking to me, and I would just listen.
There's a man there, mid-forties, a photographer with blonde-white dreds. I've known him for many years although we've only met a couple times. It was the seventh day and we went to have dinner near Moulin Rouge. He says I look better without the septum piercing. I don't hide it. He likes natural, most French people I run into seem to prefer natural. I prefer modified.
I was standing around sipping rum while he shot pictures of a petite dirty blonde actress, younger than I, with a group of friends.
She smiled but I didn't know why. He joked but I couldn't laugh. They laughed and I smiled sheepishly. They told stories and I stared, clutching the sticky glass and sucking on the straw when someone looked at me as though that would save me from having to say that I didn't understand.
And then the bar closed and then he put me in a cab.
The cabdriver was a woman from Senegal. She didn't speak English, but she was sucking loudly on a hard candy, moving it around in her mouth so it knocked into her teeth audibly, her lips parting to smack. And although this is the most irritating thing (I wouldn't be able to stand it in the States), in that moment I prayed that candy was big enough to last the entire ride.
Because I knew that sound; I knew what that noise meant.
So I popped a few Tic-Tacs and started chomping. And it was as if we were talking. And it was comforting.
