To Europe and Beyond #11: Gay Paris but er, less of the gay - Paris, France

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Well, so far I hadn't encountered any of the preconceived notions of France that I had expected to and I was a little disappointed.

Where the hell were the onion salesmen on rusty bikes with the kind of toughened leather saddle that makes you walk like John Wayne? Where were the mime artists looking befuddled as they come across invisible walls? Where were the elegant, aristocratic, high heeled, sultry Parisian ladies, clad in clingy silk dresses, warbling erotically charged French fuck-lullabies as they send smoke rings spiralling into the air from cigarettes ensconced in gold, diamond encrusted holders?

Where the hell was any sign of France other than the language, fields of grapes and signs for Stella Artois? Beats the hell out of me but I was sure that I would find them in Paris.

Yeah right (I chuckle now in hindsight), I would find them and a whole host of other shit that I hadn't bargained for, but hell, what's new when you're travelling with me?

You see, that's the essence of travel joy, the new and unexpected experiences that jump out at you and take a big mouthful of arse in their slavering jaws. What would be the point of removing yourself from everything that keeps you sane if you were not going to be the recipient of epiphany after epiphany on social, physical and spiritual fronts?

None, none at all but I just wish that my epiphanies didn't have to be so damned painful.

However, once more I digress so I'll get onto the more pressing matters of actually telling you about my experiences as a tourist in Paris before I relate to you the perils of getting into a fist fight with a pimp in a darkened back alley as you try to defend a whore who he's currently beating the shit out of.

Anyway, I found that when I entered the city of Paris I was entering it once again suffused with that sense of naivet� you get when you've been out of the big city vibe for as long as I had.

I was free, free as the proverbial bird and I had more money at my disposal that I knew what to do with and no one could tell me what to do. I was an adult roaming large and wild, and Paris, for the next few days, was my target.

I would walk and I would discover, I would stride through back streets and I would walk by the Seine, I would do Paris to death, no stone would be left unturned in my appetite to see the bitch butt-naked. But first, reverting to my Northern trope, I would go and get royally pissed. Upon reflection, it was one of my more disastrous decisions.

I located a pleasant hotel in the delightfully named 'rue du Dragon', informed the owners that I would be staying for three nights at the very least, paid them up front, selected a fine shirt and a handsome pair of slacks from my travelling wardrobe, showered lavishly, made myself smell like a fop (by way of a slight accident with my aftershave) and emerged onto the streets with the kind of smile that says "Right, let's fucking have it. It's crazy time!"

Now, in my past I was known for being a bit of a reveller, I was always the first to arrive at a party and I would be the one at 5 am suggesting that the few determined piss-artists remaining joined me in the opening of the 14 year old cherry brandy that had been festering at the back of the cupboard since grandpa brought it back with him from Yugoslavia, which is, in essence, my way of saying that I was a bit of an animal in my youth.

But now that my instincts have been tempered by one hangover, one toke and one trip too many and I generally know when to restrain myself, there were still certain times when the desire to get absolutely twatted overran my sensibilities and I would go at it hammer and tongs until the sun came up or I went blind (whichever came first) and hang the consequences.

And that moment, as I sprang onto the sidewalk, bathed in early evening sunshine was one of those times.
I knew that food would be a good idea to kick things off before maybe taking a jaunt down to the banks of the Seine for a spell in the coffee shops to drinking with arty types like myself before finally getting some info on a decent and stylish club in which to boogie until I could funk no longer.

I wandered around for a bit, taking in the din of a capital city as it puts it's party clothes on, feeling the excitement building, feeling the anticipation of a generation of 'mad for it' Parisians as they prepared to load up on wine and beer before necking a couple of pills and going crazy to a backdrop of strobe lights and people dressed as stilt walking sunflowers (although that might be a hallucination particular only to myself). I got on and off the metro system (surprised that, even though it was written in a different language from my mother tongue, it was easier to navigate than the London Tube system) until I eventually came across a group of stylish early-twenty-something's (all so ridiculously beautiful they made you want to cry or have years of corrective surgery). I decided to follow them to see where they were off to and one brief jaunt later I was in what is known as the 'Left Bank' area of Paris.

I left my unwitting guides and popped into a caf� on the Boulevard St Michel where I ordered a coffee and a sandwich so large that I didn't know if I should eat it or conceal it about my person in fear of it being misconstrued by the gendarmerie as a very offensive weapon. Again, upon reflection, I should have opted for the latter option as, though it perfectly satiated my hunger, it would have certainly come in useful to pan ten shades of shit out of the guy who I would later have a very ugly altercation with.

Ah, how sweet hindsight can be. I can just see it now, he pulls a flick knife out and grins wolfishly in a way which says "I'm going to cut out your liver, monsieur" but then I grin back and reach over my shoulder to produce a sharpened loaf more dangerous and more awe inspiring than Excalibur itself and then I laugh as he flees into the night, wanting no part of my 'baguette justice'.

Ah, we can but dream, but I'll get to my chipped teeth, cracked nose, burst lips and many bruises and abrasions later. First I want to tell you that the 'Quartier Latin' of Paris is not to be missed, not if you want a good time anyway.

I suppose the best way to describe it would be to inform you that it is a little like Camden Town in London or The Village in New York. If you have not been to or have no knowledge of either then let me just tell you that it is perhaps the most perfectly bohemian place in creation, well, certainly the most intriguingly decadent place I had visited at that point in my life.

It reeks of good times and political rebellion and feels like the social conscience of the Parisian 'Generation X'. It is the essence of the cultured underclass and it is where the cool people go, where you find buskers standing side by side with girls who look and dress like supermodels and film-stars, where street performers dance and orate next to spiky haired, furiously pierced punks and where you find both the 'up and comings' and the 'burnt outs'.

It is art and it is social commentary, poetry and prose, the kind of place where Sartre used to get legless. But for now it was where I found myself and how glad I was to be there.

Now this was life, this was giving the V-sign to moral correctitude, this was the essence of freedom, this was joy and serenity in the guise of bustling streets and side streets jam-packed with people who didn't quite fit in with the formulaic ideas of political, spiritual and ethical normality.

Now, I realise I may have painted it a very bright colour here and may be trumping it up to be something it isn't but, as I have intimated before, I had been dead for many years and I was only beginning to come back to life so to me, at that point, it was the very centre of the universe.

I was beginning to live in the 'now' again, beginning to once more feel the passion of the moment and learning to finally let myself go again so, readily casting off any notion of sensibility, I threw myself willingly into the bohemian currents and decided to see where the tides took me.

And they took me from bar to bar in a crawl which could best be described as 'epic'.

I drank many beers in a succession of joints so damn cool you could have wept at the feeling of spiritual liberation emanating from them, and pretty soon I was drunker than I had been in years.

I danced and flirted (often with men but we'll not go there right now), laughed and pirouetted, sang with complete strangers, cavorted with a series of gorgeous women, kissed more people in one single evening that I had in the rest of my life, bought drinks for transsexual Brazilian break-dancers (I'm just going on how he/she looked here as I was scared to actually talk to them for too long) and generally had the time of my life.

It was one of those moments in life where all the elements are synchronised and all the planets align and you feel like the centre of the universe. Nothing existed other than what I could see and feel and I felt immortal, locked in the glory of existence, suffused with the vitality of life itself and certain that God himself (or Pan, Buddha, Mohammed, take your pick) was looking at me saying "oh yeah, now that's what it's all about."

I can recall few times in life where I have been as happy as I was at the end of that glorious evening, drinking Remy Martin in Les Deux Magots with a pretty Australian girl named Victoria, spilling out all our thoughts in slobberingly drunk sentences. I wasn't sure how we'd hooked up but she'd somehow been with me for the last few legs of the bar crawl and she was good company. Neither of us were trying anything because neither of us wanted anything from each other than the joy of the moments spent yakking on about this and that, dancing together until our feet steamed and singing until we grew hoarse and dizzy from lack of oxygen.

Eventually we parted and I, realising that one more sniff of alcohol would see my liver explode, decided that it was time to head back to my hotel.

I had not the foggiest idea how to get back there so I threw myself in the way of a taxi and clambered aboard (ignoring a flurry of French curses from the driver) claiming that I "needed to get back to Dragon St as soon as possible as I was expecting a phone call from Gorbachev."

Fatefully I decided to slump out of the taxi a few hundred yards away from my hotel, ostensibly to make sure that if I was going to puke then it would be on the streets and not in the lobby, and this was when the night took a decided turn for the worse.

About twenty yards away I could see a man and woman involved in a fairly heated argument, not the kind one really wants to get involved as time and experience have shown me that if you try to interject then both man and woman invariably turn on you and all you receive for your troubles is a Dr Marten boot on one side of your head and a stiletto heel in your groin.

This one however, seemed a little different as it wasn't so much a 'give as good as you get' argument it was more along the lines of 'I'm the man and if you don't shut up then I'm going to hit you' and I must admit that it troubled me.

He was a fairly large looking chap and she was about half his size and obviously very agitated and very afraid. She kept cowering and flinching from his advances and I began to wonder if it wasn't something a little more than the typical boyfriend-girlfriend type spat.

My spider senses were beginning to tingle (I've always had a good sense when danger is around the corner, shame that I've never had the sense to take any notice of it) and, sobering up rapidly, I leant casually against a wall and made a pretence of calmly and disinterestedly smoking a cigarette.

He grew ever more threatening and eventually he made a grab for her arm and in an instant they had disappeared into a darkened alley and that was enough for me.

Suddenly stone cold sober I lodged the cigarette between my teeth and crept along the pavement until I was at the mouth of the side-street, you know, just in case a rapid interjection was actually going to be required. You see, one thing that I have always been brought up with (a virtue bestowed upon me by both of my parents) is the knowledge that only a coward would hit a woman and that the fairer sex should always be defended.

Judging by the terrified tone of the girl's occasional replies, juxtaposed against the overbearing growls and shouts of the man I just knew that something bad was about to occur and I came to realise, with a weary sigh, that action on my behalf was probably going to be necessary.

I didn't know why they were arguing and, to be honest, I didn't really care, there was just no way that I could stand by and allow a woman to take a beating at the hands of a much larger man. I didn't know what I was going to do (fuck, do I ever?), but I was going to have to do something.

I didn't care that I was in a foreign country and on foreign turf, some virtues are universal and some things are spoken in a planet-wide language. Violence towards women was one of them. Taking a last long drag on my ciggie, I stepped into the alley just in time to see the man raise his arm and bring the back of his hand down across the girl's face.

She span to the floor and the man aimed a kick at her.

"Ok, you fucker, that's about enough," I thought, and in an instant I bundled into him and knocked him from his feet. I didn't care if he was husband, fianc�e or boyfriend, there was no way I was going to stand by and watch shit like this go down, no way at all. I had been brought up too well for that.

I stood in-between him and the stricken girl, guarding her but not really having a fucking clue what to do next.

He rose to his feet and I immediately wished that I was back at home in my bed with a hot cup of cocoa and a good book or, to be honest, anywhere but here.

He was a lot bigger than he had looked from a distance (curse my drunken eyes and their brandy-fuelled inability to judge sizes) and he seemed to stand up in stages, each one of them making him seem larger by the second.

At a guess I would say that he was about 6'2" and a good 200 lbs but at this point it wasn't really his size that was worrying me, no sir, it was the fact that he had come up from his crouch with a cruel looking flick-knife in one of his meaty paws.

"Nice going, genius. Fucking wonderful," the words rolled around my head. "Come to Paris, have a great time then have your heart hacked out in a back alley. Perfect, absolutely perfect."

Briefly, I wondered how my parents would take the awful news of my brutal demise and just how many people would turn up at my funeral when a fist cracked against the bridge of my nose. Ow, now that really fucking hurt.

Where was the posturing and the chest-puffing and pointless threats that usually accompany a fight between men? Where was all the 'I'm going to kick your teeth in' threats and the witty 'I'd like to see you try' replies.

This was different. Maybe they don't fight like that in France, maybe they just get straight down to business. Bloody foreign pragmatists, why couldn't they just talk this over in a nice civil manner? Why couldn't we go and have a nice cup of tea and shoot the shit until we came to a sensible, painless compromise?

I held up my hands in a manner which said "Ok, please don't break any more of my bones and I'll go away," but he ignored this and swung another punch towards my head, only this time I had just about enough presence of mind to dodge out of the way.

Now, I am not and have never been soft in any way. I've had my fair share of fights and won a good number of them but I must admit to not really fancying any of this guy. He was, as my father would put it, 'a big un' and he was obviously fairly handy with his monkey clubbers (again that's Northern speak for fists). Again my father's words came to my mind, reminding me that 'a good big un will always beat a good little un'.

It was at this point that the nature of the fight changed, suddenly becoming much more serious as, with a grunt, he lunged at my stomach with the knife.

"Ok," I thought, "now that really is just about enough."

As I said earlier I have been in a fair number of fights and I did quite a bit of boxing when I was younger and one thing I was always commended on was the fact that I never ever lost my temper when I was involved in any kind of brawl.

I hated fighting now but hell, this guy wasn't just going to give me a good slapping, he was actually trying to put an end to my life and something inside me clicked into motion, something which freed my limbs from their fear and filled me with a new rush of adrenalin.

If that was the way he wanted it, then that was the way the fucker was going to have it. I could throw my cultured side out of the window for long enough to get down and dirty and give this twat a piece of his own medicine.

I'd dealt with people like him before but I was also very wary of the blade in his hands. All it would take was one mistake and this would all be over pretty quickly and I must admit that I didn't really envision my life coming to an end in a Parisian back alley so I knew that I'd have to be very careful.
A split second after he lunged I knew that he had over balanced so I lashed out with my foot and managed to boot the knife out of his hands.

Right, that was the major worry out of the way, he'd never have the time to bend down and pick it up (well, not if he didn't want a size ten Nike sneaker lodged tightly up his arse anyway). Now all I had to work out was how not to get bludgeoned to death by his boulder sized fists.

The girl behind me was whimpering and, as she hadn't attacked me with a shoe or a bottle yet, then I figured I was in the morally correct area.

Bolstered by this thought I slammed my fist against the side of his face and, somewhat troublingly, it seemed to have little effect other than to make him straighten up and catch me a beauty of a shot flush in the mouth.

I felt something grind and little stars of white pain flashed in front of my eyes, making the dark alley look a lot like a close up picture of the Milky Way.

Blinking furiously to clear my vision I threw out a quick fist and felt it connect with something quite malleable (his nose I guess) and was very, very happy to notice that it seemed to stun him for a few seconds.

This was my chance, I had him on the ropes now so I took a step and drew back my fist again, ready to really twat him this time, only to find myself tumbling to the ground as I tripped over a refuse sack.
The world spun in a dizzying arc and then I felt something hard hammer off the side of my head, just above my left eye and I just knew that a big cut had opened up there.

My focus returned just in time for me to avoid taking another boot to the face and I managed to grab hold of his foot and, as I somehow rose to my knees, I managed to twist him from his feet.

Again a fist lashed out and caught me on the bridge of the nose once more but I managed to follow this up with a few shots of my own.

Speed had always been one of my greatest boxing assets so I decided to opt for that approach, hit him with a real flurry of punches and hope that disoriented him enough for me to get a real haymaker off at his 'Desperate Dan' sized chin.

I took another heavy blow against my nose and I began to wonder how many more shots I could take before my lights went forever out.

I covered up and decided that it really was high time that I put a bit more thought into this one. Brawling wasn't working and I could tell from the way he threw his punches that he had never been taught how to fight properly so I opted for plan B.

My faculties seemed to be returning and I no longer felt any trace of my earlier boozing session. I must admit that I was actually beginning to enjoy this all. This really was the cutting edge of existence, this was living life to the full, life on the edge, life how I used to live it when I ran with the animals.

Let's see what you are made of now, now that the bad-boy was back for a little while.

He threw another punch at me but, now that I was in pugilist mode, it seemed as though it would take about a week for it to reach me. I sidestepped it easily and hit him about four or five times before he could cover his face and I drove him desperately backwards.

You didn't bank on that one did you, bully boy? Thought you'd beat up on a woman for a while then give this little guy a whipping did you? Well wake up boy, welcome to planet Ian.

I was shaken from my little ego boost by the fact that the knife was suddenly back in his hand and making a very determined effort to separate my head from it's accustomed position atop my shoulders. I must admit that this near miss scared the living piss out of me and it made me assert the fact that, if I wanted to live through the night, then I was going to have to put this guy away pretty quickly.

He moved forward again and was just about to lunge again when I saw my chance. My foot snaked out and caught him squarely between the legs and bent him double. That seemed to take the starch out of his collar somewhat so I moved low and came up with a knee flush against his face.

Yet even that didn't put him down, he just sort of straightened and started swaying around groggily. So it was then that I resorted to that most Northern of weapons, that form of attack that is never performed better than by a Northern man in a very bad mood; the head butt.

I pounced forward and brought my forehead squarely down against his nose with a sickening crack and he fell like a great oak tree from a legendary woodcutter's axe blow.

I sank to my knees, my brain feeling like jelly. I might have stopped him but, Christ, what the hell had I done to my own skull? It felt like a watermelon, the kind of watermelon that has just been crushed under the wheels of a truck.

I could hear the sweet sound of birdcall and suddenly I could remember a picture I once drew in infant school of a puppy in a Christmas stocking. At the particular moment in time I really, really wanted to be with my Mother, she would make the bad things go away.

I figured that I was just about to slip into unconsciousness when I felt an insistent tug on my arm and heard a sweet Parisian voice whisper to me in French. Well, she might have been shouting but my head was far too fuzzy to be working on full volume, either that or, more worryingly and more probably, my ears were filled with blood.

Mumbling something about being English I staggered to my feet with the help of my recently liberated damsel and, making the definite decision to just let people get beaten up or stabbed in the future, we made our way to the alley entrance.

I was certainly unsteady on my feet (whether it was from the ocean of alcohol I had consumed or from the blood clot that I was sure was forming around my frontal cortex, I could not tell) and the fact that this girl suddenly pushed me up against the wall and kissed me soundly did not help in the slightest. It seemed to last for hours and the wooziness in my skull threatened to envelop me but then she pulled away and, before I had chance to ask her just what the hell she thought she was doing, I noticed the backs of two of Paris's finest law enforcement officers disappearing into the distance.

"Fuck me," I thought, "this can not be happening." It was like a scene from a Polanski film or like something from the sequel to La Haine.

Over the course of the next few minutes I was lead down a series of alleyways and eventually we entered what must have been this girl's flat. It wasn't what you would call opulent but hell, at least it didn't contain a mammoth French brute who wanted to operate on me without my consent.

Once the language barrier had been broached (she could actually speak English quite well) she set about the task of cleaning me up which, in all truth, took quite some time.

I had a fairly good notion that my nose was cracked (deduced by the simple fact that I almost passed out when she touched it) and I had a very nasty cut just at the side of my eye. A lump the size of an apple was burgeoning nicely on my forehead, a couple of teeth felt loose and my lips were cut to ribbons and I just knew that they would hurt a damned sight more when the adrenaline wore off.

I looked worryingly at the pile of blood soaked towels and collection of tissues that was growing at my feet but I felt somewhat reassured by the fact that she was treating my wounds with tenderness and she also kept shooting shy little smiles in my direction.

Aside from the pain I must admit that I actually felt quite good. I seemed to have done something right for once. I'd certainly saved this girl a beating and, though it had been at a cost, I felt like my trouble had been worthwhile.

Once I was adequately cleaned up (I'll give you one word of advice though guys, never look into a mirror just after you've been in a punch-up, you really won't like the results) we got to talking and I found out that this girl was called Monique and that the chap whom I had just leathered was actually her pimp.

She had come from Marseille after a big fight with her parents in an attempt to find fortune as a model on the catwalks of Paris and it was a mystery to me why she had not been snapped up by some agency as she was, upon close inspection, remarkably beautiful.

She was twenty years old and she had been in Paris for the past two years, working as a waitress in a restaurant but then this guy (known as Jean) had offered her some work in the 'glamour industry' which, in his eyes, meant that she had to fuck lots of men for his monetary benefit and, if she was lucky, she might get a few francs and avoid any diseases in return for relinquishing her dignity.

She'd been used a couple of times as a sort of companion to businessmen (the trophy mistress) but when it had come down to actually sleeping with a man for money for the first time she had refused to go through with it which had brought about the argument we earlier witnessed.

Well, at least I'd stepped in before she'd either been hammered into a coma or forced to sleep with an overweight, garlic-breath pervert but I was worried about the fact that Jean would definitely come looking for her.

No self respecting pimp (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) would let such an incident go without recompense and it was certain that the pair of us were in a pretty messed up situation. This wasn't what these travels were supposed to be about. I was a wanderer, a man with the open road beneath his feet involved in a voyage of self discovery. I was a sightseer, a roamer, and certainly not a moral conquistador hell bent on wiping out the scum of the earth with my righteous fists and ethical forehead.

Why me? Why on earth do I get myself in these situations? How can one man so consistently get himself into so much trouble?

Now, my mother would tell you that it was because I was a good man, one that couldn't stand by and watch as people were trodden on and to a certain extent she is right. Throw into the mix my own opinion that I am an idiot who can't keep his mouth shut and can't keep his nose out of places it doesn't belong and I think you'd be pretty near the truth of the matter.

But what could I do? Could I really have just ignored what was going to happen?

Fair enough I was in a different country but, as I said earlier, some things are spoken in universal languages and the ability to help others in need should always be one of these things.

I stepped up because it was called for, it was as simple as that. No one else was there to help and my participation had never really been in question, it just wasn't something that I would have been comfortable with ignoring, no matter where I was, no matter who it involved.

Still, none of this changed the fact that there was a pimp on the streets of Paris who would be looking for me and this poor girl as soon as he came around and, as he had tried to stab me before, I figured that he would quite willingly try it again.

But what now? Should I just slink off back to my hotel and put this girl in the hands of fate? Should I just turn my back on her? What more could I do now that I had probably made everything so much worse for her?

I apologised profusely but she would have none of it, saying that I had done a very good thing for her and that she was glad he had received a beating. Fair enough but I was only in Paris for a few days and I certainly couldn't take this girl with me. I'd go and leave her and, at some point within the next few days, Jean would come back and maybe give her a beating which she wouldn't recover from or at best give her the kind of thrashing one only sees in horror films.

As it transpired, my course of action was dictated by a thumping at the front door.

It was a pimp's knock, the knock of a man who meant business and the look on Monique's face (and the way she clung fearfully to my knee) told me that my participation in these events was far from over.

I edged to the door and peeped through the spy hole and my fears were confirmed. It was Jean and he looked really pissed off, though I was pleased to note that he looked in far worse shape than me.

I turned and nodded to Monique and she began looking desperately around the room for something to defend herself with, eventually coming out of the kitchen area holding a pair of scissors.

"Uh-huh," I thought, "no way, you might use weapons in France, sweetheart, but in the North-East we do things the old fashioned way."

Fuck it. I'd beaten him once and I could do it again so, without really thinking I flung open the door and swung quite possibly the greatest right hook ever thrown since Mike Tyson began to lose the plot. For a brief second Jean looked confused, then terrified, then there was a split second of comprehension before my fist cracked off the side of his jaw and sent him sprawling backwards down a small flight of stairs.

Before I knew it I was on top of him and I had hold of him by his collars, surprised (and more than a little proud) to notice that I had apparently knocked him quite senseless.

Shaking him roughly I began to growl at him in threatening tones, insinuating, in no uncertain terms, that he had better wake up and then fuck right off as best and as quickly as he knew how to. He began to blink rapidly and then he began to struggle but I moved up and put my knee down across his throat.

"Do you understand English?" I began, raising my hand as though to hit him. "Do you understand what I am saying?"

He nodded, well, tried to nod briefly but I knew what he meant.

"That girl in there," I pointed back towards the door, "is my cousin and if I so much as hear about you coming anywhere near her in the next thousand years then I will come looking for you. Do you understand?"
Again he nodded.

"I swear it. If you so much as look at her, if I so much as hear about you thinking about her then I will come looking for you and I will find you." Fuck me, that sounded good, that sounded really good. Shame I was about four seconds away from shitting myself in pure terror.

"I mean it," I growled finally, releasing the pressure on his throat and hauling him upright. "Now fuck off!"

I span him around and pushed him towards the exit, pleased to notice that he didn't look back. I'd half expected him to spin suddenly and fling a knife at my chest but he didn't, he just hit the street and hit the street running.

"Jesus, now fancy that," I thought, "I guess I can be pretty scary when I want to be."

Would he be back? Probably, but I had done all that I could.

I'd probably made it a shitload worse for this poor girl in the future but at least I had alleviated the suffering in the now. Hell, judging by the look on Jean's face, he'd still be running in fear of the 'crazy, drunken Englishman' when his feet eventually touched upon dry land in the eastern seaboard of America.

I returned to Monique's room with my arms held up in front of me as though to say "look, I know he'll probably cut your throat in the next week or so but what could I do?"

To my surprise, rather than slap me or shout at me in that kind of way particular to beautiful, Continental women (all arm waving and impetuous pouting) she just made a beeline for me and threw her arms around my waist, burrowing her head into my chest.

It suddenly dawned on me then that I was probably the only man who had shown her any kind of compassion in a number of years and a great flood of sadness welled up inside me. If my tear ducts hadn't been swollen shut I would have wept but instead I gently extricated myself from her vice-like grip, shut and bolted the door and led her into the bedroom where we lay down on her bed (the tears actually did come when I saw the numerous teddy bears and stuffed animals that adorned her pillow) and fell asleep in mere moments.

I slept like a baby, albeit a baby who made it's living as a prize fighter in a travelling circus, and awoke early in the morning with a face that felt like a badly bruised pumpkin and a head whose interior resembled Coventry just after the German's had finished bombing it in WWII.

My knuckles were cut and swollen and crusted with blood and the mirror confirmed that I did indeed look not too dissimilar to John Merrick (the Elephant Man). My nose was twice its normal size, my nostrils were apparently making a determined effort to spread round to my ears and there were far too many little cuts to count.

At some point during the night Monique must have put a plaster over the cut above my eye (either that or I'm practising my nursing skills in my sleep again) and as I rose (no, lumbered) out of the bed, she came into the bedroom, dressed in an overly large shirt, carrying a tray of croissants and cups of tea.
Suddenly I was very aware just how hungry I was (I was also peculiarly aware of just how naked I was) so the croissants and tea came as a relief to my somewhat unstable system.

We ate and talked and I felt much better. She was a bright kid and had done fairly well for herself at school but had jacked it all in (much to the annoyance of her parents) to chance her arm in Paris and from there, things had taken a downward spiral. She'd ended up doing a couple of topless shoots for various mags and had then gotten herself into her present situation, broke and desperate, but had been too stubborn to go back to her parents and admit that she had screwed up.

Instead she survived as best she could but I was adamant that she didn't go too far into the details and I stopped her just after she told me that she didn't mind 'blowing' men for money but she refused to go as far as having intercourse with them.

Now, I am no prude (Christ, I've got up to some stuff behind closed doors that would make a porn star's hair stand on end) but there just seemed something so very wrong, something entirely anathema to everything I hold true and dear, with sitting there, listening to this perfect little princess tell me about how she sucked cock for a living.

I suppose it was kind of ruining my illusions.

This was the kind of world of grimy reality, of bleak necessity that I had been so desperate to get away from and here I was, cut to ribbons, plunged headlong into the world I had sought to leave far behind me.
This was supposed to be about art and nature, beauty and serenity, enlightenment and enjoyment, philosophy and spirituality, but instead of achieving epiphany I had managed to devolve in the other direction.

From the lofty heights of the previous nights ethereal bohemianism I had sunk into the depths of depravity and physical need.

Rodin, Van Gogh, Descartes, Sartre and Plato all took a backseat to the urban hymn of the dark side of the moon.

Feeling low, I asked her what she would do now and, in an instant, my mood rose once again to soar in the skies of hope.

"I can not stay in Parees now," she began in her lilting, almost musical accent, "I weel probably go back to live weeth my parents, back home."

Jesus Christ Ian, for once in your life you've actually managed not to irrevocably fuck a situation up beyond all redemption. You've actually managed to put your big foot into a place where it didn't really belong and make something shine. Just for once your actions have actually had a positive outcome. If I hadn't ached like a ninety year old man in intensive care after being trampled by the world's last remaining woolly mammoth I would have jumped up and down in excitement and joy. Instead, (and probably a better option anyway) I laid my head on her shoulder and sighed happily.

She put her arm around me and, with a gentle 'thank you, Eeyan' she lightly kissed the top of my head on the only spot where a bruise or a lump wasn't actually flourishing and there we stayed for a while, both of us perhaps thinking of how this chance meeting would shape our futures.

For her, it would hopefully be the start of something better. Sure, her dreams of being a supermodel might have been damaged but at least she wouldn't be going na�vely into any more perilous situations. It would also hopefully be the end of allowing herself and her looks to be taken advantage of. She was beautiful and intelligent and she had an open air of confidence about her which intimated that she would be OK from now on.

For my part, well, I had realised that this trip of mine was very much more about coming to terms with reality than magically transforming my life into a fantastical fairytale. The world was out there, the real world of life and death and balance and it was most certainly not just a world of art and literature and scenery and sightseeing.

It was all there, in true, impartial neutrality, knowing no right or wrong, just being life as it is not as how you perceive it or want it to be and I would just have to learn how to come to terms with it. I was a good person and I had a lot to offer this world, I realised that then and by God, I was going to go out there and have myself a big slice of it.

If I wanted to cry then I would cry and not stop to wonder why. If I wanted to love then I would learn to love and not question its appearance or motives. I would be truthful and faithful to myself and to others from that moment on, my actions would be governed only by my passions and my morals and my virtues, not by social predestination.

The world could take me as it found me, if it didn't like me then that was it's loss, not mine. I had wasted years and the years had wasted me but no longer would I worry and fret now that I knew I had it in me to be strong and good.

I cried again then yet they were not tears of sadness, nor were they tears of happiness, they were quite simply an expression that I was learning to come to terms with my emotions and with the soul that lived and breathed within my body.

Perhaps I was going to learn more on this trip than even I had accounted for. Perhaps it was more about what I could learn about myself than what I could learn about the world. Perhaps all of the questions I had to ask were questions of introspection and perhaps all the answers were lodged somewhere inside the crazy system of pipes, arteries, veins, incongruencies, ambiguities, inconsistencies, opinions and attitudes that made up the life of Ian James Elliott. Perhaps.

But hey, enough of this frippery, let's say our goodbyes to pimp-fights and pretty (though ultimately dangerous) Parisian damsels and get our arses back on track.

Let us now do the France that we read about in the books and see what we can really make of it. Let's do the Louvre and the Tower, the Arc and the various other galleries and boutiques, museums and sights that make up this continental delight.

To the streets, good men, to the Louvre and don't spare the fucking horses. In fact, give them an extra whip, just for Jean.

Goodbye Monique, get your shit together and have happy times. My blood and lumps, skinned knuckles and split skin have paid for your passage into the rest of your life so get out there and enjoy it while you can.

Life is at best perilous, fate is inexorable, existence is a journey and a rather peculiar one at that. The best thing that you can hope for is that you make yourself and others smile and that you don't tread on too many gouty toes on your way through.


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