From: exotica@milton.u.washington.edu (Tsilke Pearlman)
Subject: Stories From A Broad Abroad
Summary: Tsilke does Paris
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 20:14:01 GMT

Paris

Paris was Chez Jojo, the Georges Pompidou Center, The Louvre,
Arrondisments, the Metro, the Seine, careening around the streets
in a lime green VW van at all hours rave music blaring and many
bodies tumbling over me, duck and creme brulee at the Corlimacon,
50 franc Stolichnayas, free beer, eating baguette avec Jambon et
buerre huddled under awnings in the rain in the Marais (a gay
district), music shopping at FNAC in Les Halles, wandering the
Quartier Latin, browsing Gautier, Annie B and too many other
designers for me to remember, fumbling to recall badly memorized
high school French (we did better with German) and finding that as
long as one tried at all people were friendly, Notre Dame during
Sunday Mass after staying up all night Saturday (Jeff-you were
definitely there with us!)-

-Saturday night was shattering-starting at the women's bar Scandalo
run by two luscious Italian women one of whom wouldn't let me
through the door until I put my tits where she could see them
(funny how suddenly I understood French perfectly...). Krys and I
went in, went downstairs to the lounge and found ourselves nearly
stripping to show our tattoos to the waitress and the few women
lounging on real Zebra skin couches. The waitress sent a steady
flow of women down after us to see them as well, including the
owners, and to reciprocate they showed us nearly as much flesh as
we saw in the turkish bathhouse in Berlin (another story), and
refused to let us pay for drinks. "Bellisimo, marveilleux,
fantastique!" exclaims the bleach blond owner, and shows us the
tiny rendition of Winged Victory on her shoulder blade and the tiny
flowers in her hip and, and, and. I feel like the proverbial Texan
with my 2 inch to 10+ inch tattoos, and indeed I am far taller and
bigger boned than most of these women, I feel larger than life.
(Jojo and I are approximately the same size: two nights previously,
when I went to the men's leather bar with them and got my tattoos
admired by the cockring bartender and licked by Jean-Pierre I was
wearing Jojo's leather pants.....and a "Happy Pig is a Tasty Pig t-
shirt).

When Scandalo closes we extract ourselves from the grasp of the
most tenacious of the women (why is it the brave ones are so often
the unappealing ones?) and tumble out into the arms of our boys, 
braving another ride in the lime green van to go to Manhattan, the
(slightly) mixed gay disco/bar/sexroom (the one with the infamous
pinball machines). We are irretrievably giddy (thank you, FWA), and
spend lots of time on the pinball machines (sitting on them, lying
on them, pulling their knobs, pushing their buttons) and discussing
(hysterically) the magazine based on the letter B and the fact that
we're in Paris, FRAAAANCE, while watching the crowd of black
leather and mustachioed men line the sex room, fill its corners,
utilize its horizontal and vertical spaces. Then we dance, the
music perfect for the moment and there's a cute blond who cruises
Krys and I dangerously, then disappears before we can do anything
about it -damn-. Time moves fast and slow and before we know it it
is 6:30 am. We leave the bar and Paris is the set from the Gene
Kelly movie. On the way to the Metro we stop in a cafe and are
served by Willem Defoe as Bobby Peru in "Wild At Heart". He brings
us decanters of pulped orange with bottled water and sugar to mix
it with. We find the metro and take a strip of photos which are not
quite blackmail material. We stop and buy far more pastries than
the five of us could possibly eat, enormous fragrant bags and Jean-
Pierre plagues the shop keeper with a 500 franc note on Sunday
morning at 7am. We fall into bed and don't sleep and then we do,
for a while. That afternoon we walk around Les Halles and everyone
seems to be the archetype of their own personal type: The Perfect
Punk, The Perfect Rebel, The Perfect Nuclear Family. The stained
glass at Notre Dame is breathtaking, as is the darkness broken by
votive candles and the silence broken by the mass in French.
Perfect.