I had befriended the exchange student at my high school, or she had latched on to me. She was from Paris, she was plopped down in the smallest of towns, full of bored teens who spent most of their time under the big tree smoking pot, Or they were running around planning homecomings while keeping their GPA's high and never being asked to any of the dances they worked so hard on. Or, they were wistfully caressing their expanding bellies and going on romantically about the love child they were carrying. Into all of this came a girl from Paris, who had had an Italian lover, who knew what red wine was meant for (not for getting waisted on Saturday nights under the bleachers). She had already graduated in France, at the young age of 16, and her diploma was worth at least two years of a four year college to ours. We were too busy trying to get out of doing any school work (let it be said that one of the hit songs the year I graduated was Alice Cooper's Schools Out).
It was a tradition that the exchange student was to hang out with all the other acceptable students in the school, this being the girls that planned all the events, ran for student offices, had perfect grades and were members of the ASB clubs. Maryse did not fit. She was a leftist, free thinking, french intellectual. She smoked, knew at least two other languages, and was...well...French! She had had sex. I was one of those fringe people. The artist/poet daydreamer who stared off out the window and longed for someone to talk to. Try as I did to have a decent intelligent conversation with any of my classmates always ended in futility; they were either too stoned or too narrow minded. I hated school. I was not a pot smoker, nor did I sleep around, but somehow developed a reputation for doing both, and selling drugs as well. This came about because I used to skip classes and hang out in the bathroom just to get away from the mediocrity of life in a school full of people I had known since kindergarden. I could not imagine marrying one of them, it would be akin to incest. The principal caught me, and because I was reported so often hanging out in the girls lavatory, I must be doing something bad. Some girl (I have forgotten her name or face for that matter) who did do all those things I was accused of told the principal she saw me dealing. I was most likely writing poetry on the bathroom stall. From that point on all I wanted was to get out, to find some other world that existed outside of this small town.
Maryse was the savior I so needed. She decided to be my friend, out of nowhere, one day in class. She wanted to hang out with me. She said it was because she liked the way I dressed, but I found out it was because I was not connected to any of the people that she was supposed to be friends with. And I had a car.
It was the summer of finding the world, for through her I met other students from Spain, England, India, Switzerland, Columbia, and Costa Rica. And they were interesting and knowledgable and worldly. They were light years ahead of anyone I knew back home.
But, then, they all left...they went back home to their prospective countries. I felt my heart explode and the fear that this was all there was, that life had begin and ended too fast. I cried and sulked and was so depressed that my father could not stand it another second and sent me off to Paris to see Maryse.
That is how, in the fall of 1973 I ended up in Paris. I had never traveled anywhere, this was my maiden voyage. It was the end of the DeGaul years, when the French were still extremely jingoistic, demanding you speak french and refusing to try a syllable of english. It was the years of the Algerian influx, and there were lonely, aggressive Algerian men who preyed on naive little Americans like me. I was constantly being accosted, nuzzled, grabbed at and pinched. All of these factors created my first experience with culture shock, and left me exhausted from all the ruddiness and unwanted attention. But, as a virgin traveler in the world, Paris was my first. Just like your first lover, you never forget. The voyage that deflowered me, and left me longing for more. I loved, I hated Paris.
After over 8 trips to the city of light, I find myself missing Paris when I am not there. The last visit was in July, and it rained. I was overwhelmed by the cold, by the fact that I was supposed to be at a conference but didn't feel like attending and that I had brought the wrong shoes for the downpour would burst forth over the city every time I ventured out. But, the highlight of every trip has been visiting my friend. We are old friends with histories, husbands, lovers and children behind us. I am so very glad that she is in my life.
And once again, nearly 40 years to the day, I will be in Paris in the fall, during my 58th birthday. Paris, not the city of romance, monuments, and expensive meals, but the city that took my virginity, and sent me home a worldly girl. It is not a place, but a concept, an idea of writers, poets, bohemia, expats and nostalgia. It can be wet, cold, grey, busy, impersonal, chaotic, smelly, tiring and old. And it can be warm, with a glass of champagne, some really lovely goat cheese and a friend to laugh with. 
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