Gay Paree

Every Thursday, I pick up G from school on the Rive Gauche, then walk her over to hip hop class in the Marais on the Rive Droite. I leave her there and walk back to the Rive Gauche to pick P up from her after-school theater class. Then we walk back to the Rive Droite to pick up G and go home to the Rive-in-the-Middle.  There are two bridges each trip across the Seine, so that makes a total of eight bridge crossings. Good thing I love crossing these bridges. It's nice with the shortening days, too, because now we cross in the darkness, with the city lights reflecting in the water. Even G, at age 8, recognizes the romance of the moment, and she often skips along saying, "We're so lucky to be living here!"

Yucky gray skies tonight, but I risk it and leave my umbrella at home when I walk G to hip hop. By the time I leave her there, however, it is raining, so I decide to take her umbrella with me for the remaining five bridge crossings. Her umbrella happens to be a zebra -- not just zebra-striped, but with a face and ears -- that Santa gave her last year.

The Marais is known as an alternative (gentrified, hip) part of the city, and I am stopped or cat-called (zebra-called?) by not one, not two, not three, but four groups of gay men and a middle-aged straight lady. If you are imagining groups of twenty something men in too-tight clothing with very affected mannerisms flambouyantly yelling across roads, "Ooh, child! That umbrella is fabulous!," then you are not too far off: The only difference is that they say it in French. And no, they are not saying it sarcastically.

When I tell each group it's because I forgot my own umbrella and borrowed this from my 8-year old, they exclaim, "You can't have an 8-year old! You look 16!" I know this to be patently false -- I look 20, at least -- but still, I know that when I am being complimented by gay French men in one of the hippest sections of Paris, I must be doing something right. I am, inadvertently, ironic retro-hip, and quite proud. So, if you suddenly see reports that the new fashion in Paris is animal-umbrellas, it all started with me.