Paris Letters #59

C disappeared, for days and weeks, and left me in that apartment with the windows covered in black dust — her underwear hanging from the divan. Not going anywhere in particular, and without papers or gainful employment, I walked around Paris, entirely without direction. I spent long hours in the Shakespeare and Company bookstores, reading old volumes of Henry Miller that were lying around.

C’s grandmother would sometimes come by the apartment with bread and soup. She gave me relationship advice: “I loved my husband” she said, “but he could not take me to the 7th circle of celestial joy. In the next life I will find a man who can make me sing. C loves you, but the other one: Il peut baiser. (He can really fuck). A young girl needs that. But that can be changed. Courage! Sante!”. Apparently, she had had a lifelong affair with the best friend of her husband. Infidelity, ran in the family it seemed. Having ‘un adventure’, appeared to be a necessary rite of passage in the french collective psyche. 
 
One day Grandma insisted on taking me to a famous masseur, who gave painful messages of the solar plexus. We stood in line for at least an hour with people who came from far and wide to the little provincial town where Terry, as he was called, did his thing. He was a real old fasioned faith healer, and, according to grandma — who was a bit antiquated in her world view—had cured the Archbishop of homosexuality. After the massage, the butcher-like man with the enormous hands, punched me in the stomac and commanded me to ‘be a man’. This was no joke: he had faught in the Algeria war. 
 
Despite her weird attitude to gays and arabs Grandma had a very kind heart—she was entirely uneducated anyway. She was the type of person, who could do nothing but help: the very opposite of her granddaughter, who could do nothing but burn bridges. Each type has its cosmic role, I suppose.

In any case, Grandma couldn’t save me. C wasn’t coming back, so I went to a Buddhist temple in the center of France, and volunteered in the garden.

It was good to work with my hands, but I also learned some other fine arts. There was a German lady who was first real nymphomania I have ever met. She taught me things I had never known, mostly with candle wax. An ex-porn star—I found it incredible how she could separate sex from the intimacy. But that was good enough for me at that moment — it was the beginning of a real cure. The ex porn star buddhist gave me back some of my confidence, assuring me that I was an excellent lover, contrary to what C was always telling me. She was another bodhisattva — giving herself to one in need. And I was one lost pilgrim.