Your life can change in a flash.
OFF TO A ROMANTIC DINNER AT LE PRE CATELAN, A SWANKY restaurant nestled in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, we settled into the roomy back seat of a luxurious Mercedes taxi. Trees in the dense woods took on shadowy forms as darkness descended early on this cool October evening. As traffic slowed down, we began to notice striking figures strategically positioned under certain trees, posing for passing motorists. We gazed in amazement as gorgeous women with long flowing hair sensuously opened skimpy kimonos to reveal curvaceous bodies clad only in minuscule G-strings.
“They must be freezing!” I said, while my husband gazed raptly at this cornucopia of delights, here a redhead, there a brunette, opening and closing their short kimonos with tantalizing slowness. With a photographer’s zeal, he grabbed his trusty Nikon to record the scene. The brief flash lit up the crisp night air. Once past the site, we wondered if we had seen a mirage, but our thoughts quickly turned to the three-star dinner that awaited us.
Moments later we heard a horrendous clattering on the sidewalk, rapidly approaching. In fact, it was the sound of six pairs of high heels in hot pursuit of our taxi. Traffic was only inching along, so we were almost stopped when the back door was yanked open by the fastest runner, who screamed in our faces, “La photo! Nous demandons la photo!” Our shock at the forceful demand was overshadowed by the realization that this was no Folies showgirl! Instead, we were confronted with a heavily made-up male face—bright red lipstick, eye-shadow and rouge thickly applied to jowly rough skin. This apparition screamed French obscenities in a deep, angry voice, while banging on the taxi with a huge, hairy fist. The sheer kimono barely covered the male transsexual’s voluptuous breasts so recently bared.
Momentarily stunned, I shrank into the deep recesses of the seat while my husband argued valiantly in broken French. By this time they had all arrived. Any attempt at feminine allure was cast aside. No more preening for the voyeurs. Now they were guys and they were mad, swaggering, yelling, and threatening. The makeup and peek-a-boo outfits notwithstanding, we knew they were serious.
Somehow my husband managed to wrest the car door away and slam it hard, imploring the taxi driver to “Go quickly!” All he got in reply was a blank stare until he repeated in French, “Allez, vite, vite!” A quick getaway was impossible, given the situation, but the car pulled away and had picked up a little speed when we heard outraged squealing and loud protestations that someone’s hand was caught in the door. I had visions of our taxi “dragging a drag queen” through the Bois de Boulogne. Would our insurance cover the lawsuit?
The French law is very clear and strict about impromptu street encounters. Regardless of fault, in the case of a dispute, the person who touches the other first is wrong.
—William Wharton,
Houseboat on the Seine
We had no choice but to stop, realizing too late that they were faking the hand-caught-in-the-door routine. Now they were really mad. Brawny fists pounded on the taxi while the driver held his head, lamenting “mon taxi, mon taxi,” and the car came dangerously close to rolling over with us in it.
Why didn’t we simply hand over the film? It was one of the last shots on a roll of 36 which we had taken over the course of a week. My husband had won a free trip to Paris for six people, and we shared his prize with my sister and her family. It was a rare opportunity for us to spend a week in Paris together, and that film had captured many magical moments.
However, strongly outnumbered, we had few options left. With great reluctance, my husband opened the camera and surrendered the film to the menacing horde, who snatched it up and scrutinized it under the street lamp, muttering to themselves. As the taxi carried us slowly away, we trembled with residual fear and the beginnings of relief. During dinner, fortified with good French wine, we heatedly discussed what we should have done, could have done, and would do next time.
Parisian friends to whom we related this incident nodded knowingly to hear of the parading transsexuals but threw their hands up in horror when we mentioned taking “la photo.” How gauche! After all, as one Parisian reminded me with a shrug, “this is Paris.”
Cori Kenicer is a travel and golf writer who lives near San Francisco. She has teed it up in the King of Morocco’s golf tournament, wielded her putter in Aruba, and shared the greens with the wild elk in Banff. This is her first published work that has nothing whatsoever to do with golf.
I found Henri Beyle, for one, he who was known, among some three hundred other names, as Stendhal. Protean Henri introduced the word “tourist” into the French language. This was fitting, as he lived his early 18th century life at a distance, as a sort of tourist, an original romantic, a prototypical modern man. In him, as in his English contemporary William Blake, the period’s insistence upon rationality—upon thinking making the man—took its fuller dimension: a preference for the self-created universe, for the world within. “How many precautions,” wrote miserable Henri, whom I knew as I knew myself, “how many precautions are necessary to keep oneself from lying.”
—Jim Paul, What’s Called Love: A Real Romance