hen I was at the age of 23
my mother took me aside,
sat me down and gave me

the greatest gift she could have possi-
bly offered at that time in my life.
“For 23 years,” she said, “your
Father and I have fed you, clothed
you, educated you, and to the best of
our abilities we have protected you
from the bumps and bruises of life.
Now we want you to go away, go as
far away as you possibly can. Go and
find out who you are.”

So I moved to Paris.

I left a small town whose
roots were buried deep in the red clay
country of South Georgia. It was a
town of twenty thousand souls who
wore the same clothes, lived in the
same houses, ate the same food and
thought the same thoughts. Sameness
was passed down like a birthright
from one generation to another.
Difference was anathema and most
every elder son aspired to grow up
and become his father: to take over
his Daddy’s car dealership or farm or,

’ at the most ambitious. become a

lawyerjust like Dad. When I told my
friends I was moving to Paris it was
as ifl announced I was going to drop
off the edge of the world.

And it was like dropping
off the edge of one world and into
another. The sights. the sounds. the
smells, the taste — Paris was a strange
and wondrous place, a total assault
on all of my senses and sensibilities.
For the first weeks I’d find myself

standing stark still on a street corner

completely dazed from sensory over-
load. For 20-plus years my life had
been a hermetically sealed affair,
cocooned in an over-familiar protec-
tive shell of a large extended family
and a town where everyone knew my
name and my business. Now I was
alone in a place that couldn’t have
been more unfamiliar, and I was
absolutely enraptured by it.

Although I was supposed to
be studying medicine, I would end-
lessly wander the Paris streets, reach-

amid ezacldfﬂoommwc

into a fromagerie or boulangerie just
to inhale the heady, unfamiliar-but-
totally delightful aromas. And the
people who looked so much like me
were at the same time so exotic —
their language, their clothes, their
smells, all so different. I’d walk the
Champs Elysees purposely rubbing
shoulders, making physical contact
with these wonderful creatures just to
make sure they existed. I wanted to
reach out and hug it all, to absorb it
all so that it would become a perma-
nent part of my being. I wanted to
touch, to taste, to feel, to absorb it all
so it would always be mine.

For the first few weeks I
made it my business to explore as
many streets and alleys of Paris as
humanly possible. Of course, there
was the Eiffel Tower and Invalides
and the Notre Dame but it was the
small side streets of the Marais and
Belleville and Montmartre where
people did their living that constantly
drew me. The open air markets with
their heaping mounds of unfamiliar
vegetables and goggley-eyed ﬁshes,
whole rabbits hanging with their liv-
ers dangling next to unplucked
pheasants and ducks. Paris life was
the corner cafes where I could stand
at the zinc bar and drink espresso and
cognac. hanging a Gauloise from the
corner of my mouth while absorbing
the conversation ofthe ‘blues’ — the
blue-coveralled workmen who were
taking a break from sweeping the
streets or janitoring a neighborhood
building.

And it was on these ram-
bles that I found the men of Paris
who would play such a pivotal role in
my life. It was in the allée behind the
Orangerie that I found Guy, a slim,
elegant gentleman 30 years my senior
and a Baron. Guy gave me entrée to a
Paris that a hayseed from Georgia
would have never experienced on his
own.

Guy gave me a Paris of
early morning rambles through the
Marche aux Puces looking for lost

 

 

PARIS

When Richard SIappey’s mother

told him to go as far away as possible,
he moved to Paris, T
a hayseed among the fleur-de-Iis.

dazzling reds and blue of the stained
glass of St Chapelle. He gave a world
of museums, the art of Gerome and
Duchamp, Houdon, Ingres and
Braques and Picasso.

He gave me dinners of
ortalans and pressed duck in blood
sauce. He gave me aﬂemoon teas at
Fouchon with warm madeleines and

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ing out to run my hand along the
gray limestone of centuries-old build-
ings, or columns, or statues just to
make sure they were real. I’d stand
dazzled under a white and pink
shower of blossoms as the breezes
softly stirred the horse chestnut trees

' of the Tuileries and I ’d would drift

W

Renaissance paintings, hours of
prowling though the bowels of the
Louvre with patient explanation on
the glories of the Ruben tapestries or
the mystery Cyclade sculpture. He
shared his love of the majestic sim-
plicity of Parisian Romanesque archi-
tecture and the exhilaration of the

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Proust. Guy gave me entree to the
salons of artists and actors, of politi-
cians and of the fashionable and the
disreputable. He gave me the Paris of
the leisured and the rich: aﬁemoons
of impassioned sex in a canopied bed
followed by tea on a silver salver
served by the butler; cucumber sand-

wiches and rumpled sheets; the glo-
ries of sex on a priceless 200-year-
old Aubusson or on a Louis Quatorze
chaise.

And then there was Mark
who found me wandering on the
quay of the Seine on a warm summer
evening. He was a lanky philosophy
student with a shock of blond locks
that cascaded uncontrolled, framing
limpid blue eyes. He made it his mis-
sion to “fill the vacuum between the
ears” of an uncouth American. We
spent long evenings with student
friends in heated debate on the worth
of Sartre, Camus, de-Beauvoir and of
the -Mahabharata; staggeringly drunk
evenings in the caves of Boulevard
Saint Michel with bottle after bottle
of raw red wine and Gitanes. The
magic quiet evenings of exploration
of self and of honesty and truth
always ending with a tumble into
bed, abandoning the cerebral for the
physical.

Mark introduced me to the
enchantment of the Cinematique and
the history of world ﬁlm, of sitting in
the dark enthralled by The Rule of the
Game or Riﬂzﬂz‘, Mark’s thigh
pressed into mine. Mark gave me the
excitement and freedom of a mind
unfettered to run though ideas and
ideals, through ﬂights of fancy and
the ridiculous.

And Phillipe gave me
music. The thrill of myfirst opera
was experienced buried high in the
ﬂﬁh tier of the Palais Granier, nestled
under the outstretched arms of gilded
putti as the glories of Puccini waﬁed
up from far below, Phillipe’s ﬁngers .
slowly working their way down my
vertebrae, the soft puff of ‘his breath

in my ear as Mimi softly expired in
Rodolph’s arms. He gave me pianos
and voices in the recital hall of
Chatlet, late night jazz in the smoky
cellars of Montmarte and the boom
of the giant organ that ﬁlled Notre
Dame. These were all gifts of
Phillipe.

Thirty-three years later my
mother is just a shell of her fonner
self. Ravaged by age and multiple
strokes, she lingers in a South
Georgia care facility. We are not sure
if she is really there, as she no longer
speaks. She compliantly holds your
hand, sitting quietly or dozing gen-
teelly, never saying a word. When I
am alone with her I take her hand in
mine and draw close to whisper
memories in her ear. I tell her my sto-
ries of the Amalﬁand Agra, of treks
to Macchu Picchu and Nepal, of the
vast grass expanses of the Masi
Mara, of driﬁing down the Nile lying
on my back in a felucca watching the
millions of stars strewn across the
sable of a Sahara night. But it is
when I reminisce of Paris, the Paris
she gave me, that her brown eyes
become’ big and liquid, she leans
almost eagerly into me and I swear
there is a soft squeeze of excitement
in her grasp as my Paris memories
become a part of her. V

When Richard Slappey isn't traveling
the world, he 3 cooking delectable
delights in a high-rise kitchen above
Burlington.