I know what you are thinking. It’s been a month since I’ve written you and now suddenly I send you three posts in one day. There is an explanation. There always is isn’t there?
First, I have been working like mad. I moved from Paris to London to take up my new job with the London Design Festival. After almost fifteen years in Paris and a decent career I decided to drop it all for London. Well the truth is it wasn’t for London, it was more for the possibilities that London represents. So anyway I’ve been working hard trying to get my life going in a new city. No easy task. With age come habits and expectations, what’s that saying about dogs and tricks? I’m learning new tricks, trying to anyway.
Tricks, yeah that’s what is happening now. I’m realizing how some of my better tricks have worked out and also uncomfortably how others have been a complete disaster. You may be wondering what I mean by tricks right? Well tricks are those little things you do in the moment or over time that go right and wrong. At work you play politricks, with people its trickery with friends it shouldn’t be about tricks but it sometimes is and with family its plain tricky.
Tricks makes me think about the Beastie Boys as in “tricky all the time”. Tricks also seems like a word from the seventies for those people that spend naughty evenings with hookers. Right now, in a strange way, I can relate to the ephemeral way those tricks and escapades end up. I imagine the moment can’t be that bad because there a millions of people who turn tricks regularly but the after taste must be pretty horrible. So in a very humbled manner I confess the five sure fire tricks to end up alone in Paris.
Travel without a visa
This one may seem obvious. In fact it is incredibly obvious but in grand, “the rules applies to other people” fashion I tried it and ended up here. I went to London without arranging all the necessary paperwork first. Sure my work could’ve done that for me but in the end it was my responsibility. Can you imagine the anger, embarrassment and humiliation of being forced to hand over all of your physical forms of identity to the relevant authorities begging and hoping they understand your case? I can and hope you never will have to.
I’m now stuck in Paris like a prisoner because the UK Consulate now has my passport and all proof that I do indeed exist. It is a worrying feeling to be in a foreign country without ID, wandering the streets, sitting in cafes and just being without proof of my existence. I feel like a prisoner.
Dress like a prisoner
When I booked my appointment with the Consulate from London I honestly thought it would only take a day. Last year at about this same I requested a visa. It took the same Embassy only two hours to process and stamp my passport. I left the same day with a pretty entry clearance visa for the UK. This year they announced with some satisfaction, I would say, that it would take at least ten days. It is now day ten. In a slight panic because all I had was the clothes I was wearing and a backpack, I left the Consulate immediately to buy a wardrobe that I could wear for at least ten days while spending as little money as possible. I mean really! The last thing I need to be doing now is shopping for a new wardrobe.
I believe we are constantly communicating a message through everything we do. Through the clothes we wear, the gadgets we possess, the friends we have and the looks on our faces. The thing is we are often unaware that we are communicating. Looking back now I know what I was thinking when I bought my most recent wardrobe. I was thinking prisoner. I bought prisoner shoes, shirts and slacks. I found comfort the first few days in expressing my unfortunate predicament in this manner. Now though, sitting in a café alone, I realize I really do look like an escaped prisoner, dressed in black, grey and white stripes. Maybe I should shave.
Don’t return telephone calls
It’s a little late to realize how much this trick has backfired but I only share it with the hope that you learn something from this experience. I am notoriously bad about keeping in touch with people. It’s not because I don’t want to it’s just something that moves around deep down inside of me. When I hear the phone ringing my first thought is what do I have to say that could possibly interest someone else? Worse, I then think what could someone else possibly have to say that would interest me? That’s before I even pick up the phone to see who is calling. I know some of you will think that is incredibly arrogant, which it probably is, but I don’t mean for it to be that way. I mean really with all the entertainment options out there why would someone be calling to talk to me?
Another error worth mentioning on this phone trick theme is the cell phone monthly plan. My choice of cell phone plan stems from the above hesitations. Which means I usually sign up for the cheapest one possible, I’m so used to no one calling now, that I only use a cell phone as a prop when I’m alone in cafes. When someone is staring at me for too long I will pull out my phone and pretend to get a call or just play a video game with the hope the staring person will think I’m texting spastically. I get the occasional text message but that’s it. My cell phone monthly plan this time around only covers about 300 sq m of London. It doesn’t work here in France. A real bummer on the first day that I lost my identity and it is becoming even worse as each hour passes.
Even if I did have a working phone it all really boils down the title of this section. Since I don’t return phone calls and haven’t in the past fifteen years it’s a little late to start calling people now. What do you say after all these years? Can I honestly just say that I’m returning their call from 1998? How humiliating would that be? When I was younger I guess it was ok but now well into my 34th year this type of behavior is just unacceptable in the world of adults and professionals. To ease the pain and ridicule of having zero friends I call myself and leave messages on my landline from my cell phone and vice versa. “Hey you,” I say, “I’m just sitting alone in a café thinking about you.”
Facebook
Thank god for Facebook. Well kind of, no actually, I have mixed feelings about this whole social networking thing. I mean its nice to see how new friends and old friends are doing. In a way for someone like me, a computer geek, a loner and extremely timid it is the best thing that could’ve ever happened. I mean I can stay in touch with people and follow their lives with as little investment as possible and I can lead my life in the anonymity and solitude I earned.
These past few days I have wandered the cyberspace corridors of people that I’ve known in past lives. Yeah those people that I didn’t call back in 1991 but it’s never too later to admit your errors right? It’s never too late to start over right? So I spent the better part of my stay searching and aggressively “requesting friends”. I know you might be thinking that is the behavior of a college drunk but what can I say? What are the rules on requesting friendship of friends of friends? What are the rules on contacting people from high school that probably barely remember you? I have done this before. It was during the Friendster trend. I had one girl warn me to not contact all of her friends because it would be unfair. I did as she asked but I remember thinking what exactly was unfair about it. Was it just a nice way to say you are my retard friend but please don’t talk to the others?
So far I’m on about 30% friend acceptance rate on Facebook. One in three people have accepted my cyber friendship request. I have mixed feelings about it all really. I mean they do accept my request but then what next? I mean I only have access to a small picture of them and they only have access to a small thumbnail of me. If I have ten new friends, please don’t do the 1/3 calculation on the number of people I have asked, what does that mean in real life terms. It means that I’m still sitting alone in a café checking and scanning Facebook.
Sit alone in a café laughing and smiling at a computer screen while dressed as a prisoner
Isn’t there a business game of the same title? Isn’t that the prisoner’s dilemma? I’m sitting at an airy café deep in the fifteenth Arrondissment of Paris. It’s a nice place. The staff is friendly, the French customers give numerous extravagant kisses when they first see each other and the food is decent. The free wifi connection is surprisingly powerful and most importantly they don’t mind if I sit here all day.
My dilemma is exactly the one just described. I do speak French I could, in theory, talk to some of these people. I could chat and entertain them with my surprising stories. They could entertain me with their comments and similar stories. We could talk politics. We could debate religion and life on Mars. They could insult the US and I could insult France. I would buy them a drink and they would buy me one. We would laugh, shake our fingers in disagreement and ask others to join the merry fray.
But in the end we would part ways. Possibly exchange telephone numbers. I would give them mine and they would give me theirs. I would walk home smiling at the friendly people I had just met. I would surely blog about the magical, ephemeral experience it was. They would tell their friends of the night we had. I would think about calling them again. The phone would eventually ring one day as I would be strapping on my prisoner shoes. I would jump to answer and then immediately think…
No wonder I am alone.