December 2008
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David Sedaris finds unexpected inspiration in the City of Light, courtesy of rude waiters and auction houses
I was never a Francophile. Never one of those people who had a doormat that said ‘entré’. Despite spending time in Normandy, every time I returned to New York, I’d forgotten everything I had learnt the time before. That was frustrating. I thought the best way to learn French was to move there. So my boyfriend Hugh and I got an apartment in Paris, my thinking being that when newsstands, headlines and billboards surround you, you learn a lot without even trying. We were going to stay for a year but a year soon turns into two, and two turns into three.
There is something almost embarrassing about being a writer in Paris. People have these assumptions. They will say, ‘Oh, what café do you write in?’ I’ve never written so much as a cheque in a café. I got glasses about eight years ago and I thought, ‘Now I have glasses, I am a new person. I’m going to do things that the old me would never do.’ First on that list was to go to a café by myself. But when I got there and ordered, the waiter barked, ‘Coffee is finished.’ Everyone around me was drinking coffee. So I left and I haven’t been to a café since.
The Paris that I’ve come to love is not the Paris that most people want. I go to the movie theatre to watch American films and then I go to the supermarket. Never the outdoor market because I would have to talk to people. I can say whatever I need to in French, but I will do anything to get out of talking. I live in fear of ‘the look’. The one they give you when you are a foreigner and they can’t understand you. There are only so many times you can say, ‘Excuse me?’ So I mostly end up saying, ‘Oh, OK’, even when I have no idea what that person is saying. I know a guy who’s like a donkey let loose in Paris when he speaks. But he is the one that will get better and learn.
When I first got to Paris I had some ideas about what it would be like. Mainly people on bicycles with baguettes poking out of their baskets. That France does exist, of course. Sometimes they’ll even be wearing a beret. And sometimes I will catch myself walking down the street, carrying a beautiful cloth bag with a baguette and I think, ‘I am that person now.’
I’ve never set foot in the Louvre. It got to a certain point where I still hadn’t been and I thought, ‘I could set some kind of record.’ My thinking is that the Louvre will always be there. I go to the Drouot Auction House. There are 12 rooms, maybe more. There might be 17th-century paintings in one room, boxes of magazines in another and jewellery down the hall. That is where I take people when they come to visit.
There are flea markets all around the city. I’d pick up all sorts of things – ‘Oh wow, a wooden shoe’ – but now I’ve moved up a level. The next stage is the shops that I am afraid to go into: the fancy antique stores. It’s that ‘talking’ problem again. When I first moved to Paris the shopkeepers would say, ‘You’re not French? But you speak so well.’ And I would beam and buy something and then leave and think, ‘I just spent £150 on a compliment.’
Everything is closed on a Sunday in Paris. They say it is to preserve the family. I hate it when things are closed. In my neighbourhood, you can’t even vacuum on a Sunday in case it bothers people. So what do you do? Sometimes I walk. I walk a lot in Paris. I have my routes. I go to the park at Bercy or I go past the Viaduc des Arts, which is lovely.
I have been in Paris for nine years now and the beauty of it can still take my breath away. I’ll cross a bridge a thousand times and can still be stunned. Maybe it’s the time of day, the light or even the weather. I can’t believe that any place is as beautiful as Paris. The people have a reputation for being rude, but I always think it’s a wonder they remain as chirpy as they do. Their entire city is taken over by tourists all the time. And the tourists simply don’t understand the levels of formality here. You can’t just say ‘Bonjour’. You have to say ‘Bonjour, madame’. You have to remind someone that they are a man or a woman. There are lots of places where people will be nice to you for no reason, but that won’t happen in Paris. It’s one of the reasons I live there. When you are complimented all the time, there is nothing to write about, but when somebody barks, ‘Coffee is finished’ at you, that’s at least a paragraph.
David Sedaris’s book When You Are Engulfed in Flames is out now (£11.99, Little, Brown).
British Airways flies to Paris from London Heathrow. Book a flight on ba.com now.
