Paname & Me

Rave by the Seine: or, follow the music, who knows what will happen

Stephanie felt a strange sense of belonging as she passed through the backstreets of Paris.

“Hurry up!” She called out, breath escaping through the gaps in her mouth as she ran around the quick bends and turns of the streets. The sun had set long ago, but the hot air lingered on her body as a reminder of the gloriously sunny afternoon just gone.

The year was 2009, and September in Paris was far hotter than any heatwave Stephanie had ever experienced in England.

“Wait for me!” Her friend Bex replied, waving her bangle-adorned wrist as she caught up.

Stephanie found something liberating about not wearing a coat past a certain hour in the summer, her body gliding weightlessly through the air, like an old lamb freshly sheared of its winter coat.

She felt like she had been reborn in this city with nothing, and no one, to hold her back.

At the grand age of 21, Stephanie hadn’t seen much of the world, spending most of her life in a sheltered village in Gloucestershire, only recently moving to Bristol for university.

She had arrived a few days before her friend Bex from uni, both in the French capital for a year in a language exchange.

Eager to be reunited with Bex on French soil, Stephanie had only dreamt that this day would come. Technically now it was here, it formed part of her degree. But really, Stephanie wanted to embrace it as an opportunity to explore a new city and see it all for what it was worth: the good, the bad and the ugly… or as the French would say: le top, le bof et le flop.

Traipsing through the surrounding roads in the 5ème arrondissement, she passed by dark green, ceramic drinking fountains and battered vespas that sat uniformly on cobbled backstreets.

It looked like something from a postcard.

A nice postcard, of ‘old Paris’, that cost just a few cents more than the tourist-trap Eiffel Tower ones; one that Stephanie would send home to her parents this weekend to show them where she was staying in the 5ème.

She felt the towering grandeur of the Panthéon, looking over her like a guardian of the city, as she edged closer towards the cluster of distant bar lights.

The surrounding flora smelt humid, tinged with the familiar smell of cigarette smoke, perhaps too early in the night for Stephanie to pull out her own.

Paris was, after all, a city where nearly everyone had a cigarette in hand, be it for breakfast, after lunch or during post-work drinks.

The odd lunchtime when Stephanie would hide behind the sheds at school, perfecting the art of rolling cigarettes with the so-called ‘cool girls’, was starting to serve a purpose after all…even if it meant rolling other people’s cigarettes in the Parisian fumoirs.

She much preferred to smoke Vogues.

“Did you hear that?” Bex turned to her friend as a faint police siren echoed in the background. Strangely, the noise didn’t put Stephanie on edge. She found that it had grown to be something of a comforting, urban white noise. It was hard to explain. But as she studied the peaceful scenery, it made her feel safe in her surroundings.

She could see that every street had a different story to tell; different characteristics; a different personality.

The Haussmann-style apartment windows were like a bundle of vintage analogue televisions, each tuned into a different channel in the front of a shop window, and each telling a different story.

She could make out a couple amid a fiery, passionate argument if she looked close enough. Next door, a young woman on the phone to her lover, cradling her baby and pouring a glass of red wine. Then, struck with a wave of upbeat, dance music, Stephanie glimpsed the flashing colourful beams escaping through the blinds of a house party, young Parisians chatting and bending over the adjoining balconies.

“So many different worlds,” Stephanie muttered to Bex, goggling at the fleeting snapshots into people’s lives, only to find that Bex was no longer gazing at the apartment windows, but boldly following the signposted directions towards Place de la Contrescarpe.

A countryside girl, Stephanie was used to wearing oversized jumpers, frayed jeans, and riding boots. Tonight, however, she wore a different apparel.

She felt like she was slowly acclimatising to the Parisian scene in her sheer, white blouse which blew in the gentle evening’s breeze, blue tailored jeans, and wedge sandals.

With glaringly white skin, raven-black hair and strong bone structure, she had this look about her, despite her countryside origins.

Her dark locks swished behind her as she rushed to catch up with Bex, who had since stopped in her tracks, the swelling noise of people surrounding her.

“Is it always this packed?” Bex responded, stepping back to take in the quaint, off-beat ambience of bars, crammed with students and locals.

Bex was tall and slim; dressed in a white crop top and mauve cigarette trousers as she looked on at the bustling terraces. With her wavy, blonde hair and blue eyes, she had only the slightest Valleys accent when she spoke, her soft tone calming even the most chaotic of situations.

“I’ve been here once before,” she said, “a girl from the foyer, my student residence, showed me this area. But it wasn’t this busy...” Stephanie motioned to the bars, still slightly out of breath having just caught up with her friend. She felt a wave of trepidation, or was it excitement, rise and fall in the pit of her stomach. Where would they start?

“What’s it all been like so far?” Bex asked as she eyed up the Parisians, who were chatting passionately over glasses of wine.

“What, Paris?” Stephanie replied.

“Forgive me, are we stood in the middle of the BU Students Union?” Bex joked, shaking her head at Stephanie. “Of course Paris!”

Stephanie let out a light chuckle as her hair bounced off her shoulders.

“I’m still getting used to it all, Bex. Don’t get me wrong—it’s amazing, magical… but very different from back home.” She said, allowing a tone of melancholy to settle on her final words. She didn’t know if homesickness was the right for it…perhaps ‘unfamiliarity’. The fear of the unknown.

Stephanie studied Liberal Arts in Bristol and particularly loved poetry. Before being accepted onto the study exchange with the Sorbonne, she had to meet a certain grade average and worked tirelessly to do so.

When an enrolment letter came through her letter box one day, she found out that her year at the Sorbonne would not change her overall grade average at Bristol. She couldn’t quite believe it. All she had to do was pass the year, without the stressful academic expectations that she was used to and get to have fun in a foreign city while she was at it.

And yet she felt drawn to Paris for another reason. A stronger reason.

Stephanie’s grandmother, a French student at the Sorbonne during the sixties, passed away in her twenties. She never had the opportunity to get to know her grandmother but felt that now would be the best opportunity she would ever have to reconnect with her story and uncover the mystery of her past—a past that was so often swept under the carpet.

She also had a soft spot for French accents, and more conveniently, French guys.

“Which one?” Stephanie asked, scanning the area as she caught sight of a good-looking waiter in the distance, consumed by his brown eyes, and his soft smile.

Bar, I meant a bar, she thought to herself, blinking away from their eye contact in a fluster. Stephanie quickly reverted her eyes to what seemed to be a pub amid a sea of French bistrot-cafés.

Contrescarpe, for short, was a quasi-pedestrianised roundabout in a sheltered area of the Quartier Latin, lined with a trail of its signature adjoining bars.

It was usually bustling with students and affordable drinks, a great night out for any young person in Paris.

Stephanie looked at Bex as they both agreed to step into the small pub. They were instantly greeted with the smell of stale cigarette smoke and Belgium beer as soon as they entered.

The pub was full of French men in their late twenties and early thirties, sharing a pint after what looked like a day’s work or meeting up to watch the evening’s sports showing.

“Just a small one, yeah?” Stephanie called out, her fingers parted to mimic a half pint size.

Bex nodded as Stephanie sat down in a window seat, watching her friend nervously approach the bar. She casually listened in as Bex requested two of the most expensive pints after a language blunder, while also confusing demi-pinte and pinte.

“I’m sorry Steph, my bad.” Bex mouthed to her friend across the room. Shaking her head, she turned round to watch the barman swipe her card for both premium pints. She finally picked them up and delivered them to the table.

“Pas de problème, merci very much!” Stephanie replied as her friend passed her a freshly poured pint, watching the amber bubbles rise to the brim of the glass.

Bex nimbly grabbed her drink and swigged it back in large, consecutive gulps as her cheeks developed a rosier hue. Stephanie started to laugh.

“I must admit there is something about beer. It gives you confidence.” Stephanie watched Bex amusedly, before glancing out the window at the Parisian couples sitting on the pub’s terrace. She thought how long and slender the women looked, as they mimed stories to their partners with a glass of wine in hand. “Wine…it makes me feel elegant, sophisticated.”

“What about cocktails?” Bex leaned in, a light whiff of beer emanating from her breath.

“Like embarrassing myself in a nightclub.” Stephanie retorted as her friend chuckled into her nearly empty glass, raising a finger to the passing server to order another. Stephanie pulled a face.

“Err shall we go elsewhere, or at least let me order this round?” She joked, fearing how expensive Bex’s next order would be.

“I don’t know, I feel my French getting better with the more I drink,” Bex admitted as Stephanie suddenly caught sight of her eyes, whose pupils had now grown to the size of marbles.

“No, I’m not on drugs!” Bex joked. “You know my pupils get all dilated when I’ve been drinking,” she said, concealing her embarrassment with her contagious laugh.

“Yes I know! How many years have we been friends?” Stephanie teased, thinking about how the novelty of her friend’s eyes never got old.

“Three, give or take.” She grinned, looking around her at her boring counterparts as Stephanie got the hint that it was time to go.

Happy hour was a relatively new phenomenon to Stephanie, in what seemed to be the longest ‘hour’ known to man. Reduced prices for drinks à la carte saw a rainbow of orange drinks, pink, lagoon blue, lime green, and just about any cocktail found in a European holiday resort come her way.

She scanned the dynamic ring of bars as the glowing lights seeped into one another.

“Have you eaten?” Bex asked as she became captivated by a specials blackboard outside a bar called La Petite.

Stephanie peered over, before letting her eyes wander to two approaching policiers.

The two men were dressed in full police uniform, their walkie-talkies crackling and buzzing as they strolled past.

One man had his hands resting inside his police vest as he spoke with his colleague, the other wearing a navy side cap, fiddling with a set of keys.

They seemed to be discussing a crime case with snippets of ‘criminal’, ‘arrest’ and ‘witnesses’ thrown around in conversation, but Stephanie couldn’t make out the details of their French.

They suddenly stopped talking as they noticed Stephanie listening in.

She tried to look away, but she couldn’t.

She was captivated by the two men, who stared at her for a moment in silence with a disapproving, but steady gaze.

She froze.

But just as she felt the colour start to drain from her cheeks, they started talking again and turned a corner.

She let out an exhale as if she had been holding her breath, which she had.

She didn’t know what it was, whether she was intrigued by the first police authorities that she had seen in France, or nervous at their particularly domineering demeanour—but she couldn’t help but watch.

“The sirens. From earlier, remember? There must have been a crime in the area.” Bex added, noticing how she had been watching them walk by.

“Huh? Oh, I hope they get to the bottom of it…” She trailed off.

Paris, the city of secrets.

*

A portion of fries soon arrived at the table and Stephanie was suddenly brought back to her famished state. Lifting a fry to her mouth, she saw they had no water on the table.

“I’ll get a carafe.” Stephanie chirped, looking around to try and catch someone’s attention when a tall, slim man with thick chestnut hair and a sweet, trusting smile approached them.

It was the waiter she saw earlier.

He emanated a special type of warmth, looking put together but casual in his denim jeans and shirt, in contrast to the pretentious, slicked-back waiters that Stephanie had seen around the city. Lighting a cigarette, he blew out the smoke as he approached the table.

“Can I help you ladies?” The young waiter said with a heavy French accent. He balanced his attentiveness with the nonchalance of the Parisian laissez-faire attitude.

Stephanie looked up with bold eyes, opening her mouth, with no words escaping. Say something!

“English?” He continued with a smile, to which she nodded eagerly. Great, he must think I’m a mute.

“Bex is Welsh, but yes, we’re both British! I’m Stephanie.” Stephanie finally added with a touch of innocent precision.

The waiter looked at Stephanie as if he recognised her. His gaze drifted to her white smile.

“Stéphanie.” He repeated back in his French accent, pondering for a moment and enjoying the sound of her name as it left his mouth. “Are you exchange students?” He asked with a mellow voice, once more Stephanie nodded, as her long, dark hair cascaded over her shoulder. “Living locally?”

“I’m living here in the 5ème, and Bex in the 13ème.” Stephanie replied, forgetting about the fries in front of her, half of which Bex had already finished.

“It’s strange because I know we’ve never met, but I feel like we have?” He admitted as Stephanie’s cheeks reddened softly. The waiter realised what he had said aloud. “Sorry, that just came out—one moment.”

Holding her eye contact for a moment longer, he turned around and disappeared into the bar, before re-emerging with two purple shots.

“On the house.” He announced, placing a receipt with a number scribbled across it into Stephanie’s hand. The waiter leaned in closer, whispering as Bex occupied herself with the exotically coloured shot: “If you want to come back one evening, you text me, I can save you a table, si tu veux ?”

The smell of fresh mint and cigarette smoke lingered in front of her for a moment as Stephanie breathed in his cologne.

She glanced at the paper in her hand while the waiter made a ’how much longer are you staying?’ gesture to a group of underage college teenagers, before retreating inside one last time.

She picked up the shot glass and recognised the sweet aroma at once.

“Parma Violet, no wonder it’s free!” Stephanie joked, shrugging as she necked back the mysterious purple liquid in time with Bex.

“I’m not complaining!” said Bex, patting the purple residue from her lips with the back of her hand.

“Knowing—” Stephanie paused to read the name on the paper, “—Pierre might be useful, you know. A waiter in Contrescarpe. It will be nice to get to know the local area.” She remarked with an innocent air to hide her increasingly flustered glow.

“Sure, getting to know the local area,” Bex winked at Stephanie.

Stephanie felt the tiny square of receipt paper in her hands and smiled to herself.

Who was he?

*

Stumbling down a sloping path towards the Seine, Stephanie watched as couples leant into each other, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, as they strolled past.

She thought about how romantic they looked, and how deep down, she wanted to find this kind of love in Paris. A kind of spontaneous, natural love. A kind of love that just felt right.

“Well, he was certainly cute!” Teased Bex.

“He was…” Stephanie trailed off, her mind in a thousand places at once.

“Are we heading the right way?” Bex suddenly looked around frantically, her head dizzy from the drinks. An unsuspecting Parisian with his hands in his pockets walked past the girls.

“Not sure. Let me check: Monsieur, où se trouve la Seine, s’il vous plait ?” Stephanie said as she spun around to ask where the river Seine was to the innocent passer-by.

The man pointed towards the bank over his shoulder in the direction the girls were already walking.

“There.” He replied in English, somewhat bluntly, and continued walking.

“Stop…” Bex heaved in between delirious outbreaks of laughter once the man had walked away, “we must look like massive tourists,” She added, gasping for air.

In the distance, Stephanie could just about make out the pounding rhythm of techno-dance music.

“What is that noise?” Bex turned to Stephanie as she listened in with a glazed, foreign curiosity.

Stephanie flashed a mischievous grin and suddenly bolted towards the river.

At the water’s edge, Stephanie stood consumed by the heavy beat of the techno party. There were countless young people, waving their arms in the air, dancing with each other, throwing themselves into the music; into the party and losing all sense of inhibition.

The girls had never seen quite a sight. They had finally found a party, even if it was in a public open-air quai.

In the middle of the crowd was a large, retro speaker pumping out music as people took turns dancing on it, like a stage.

It was dark outside, but faces were animated by the light emanating from the streetlamps, the reflection of the moon on the Seine, and the ruby glow of cigarettes.

“What is this, 1996?” Joked Bex as she watched the group dancing with their eyes closed, bouncing back and forth. The exposed bodies were glistening with beads of sweat and bronzed by the recent summer’s rays.

“It’s like they’re consumed by the beat,” she said, “almost hypnotised.” Stephanie was studying the dancing bodies, when out of the crowd emerged a geeky, young-looking boy.

He had curly hair and tanned skin which looked even darker against his white t-shirt and acid-wash jeans.

Wearing novelty glasses, Stephanie could just about make out the lens-less frames as he got closer, lenses which he must have popped out himself. Spotting the girls, he spoke English instinctively, presumably deeming them British enough, if their tipsy demeanour and strong accents were not telling enough.

“Where are you from?” Questioned the boy with an international accent, not quite French, but executed with shortened syllables and a faint ‘r’ held in the back of his throat.

The answer was obvious, but he looked like he wanted to spark conversation.

“Who is the DJ?” Stephanie responded with another question.

“No idea. Try that guy over there. You don’t like the music?” He said while gesturing towards a fellow raver. The boy sounded almost American but French in his questioning, naturally morphing a statement into a question with a raised intonation.

“It’s not that we don’t like it. We just don’t listen to much techno in the U.K… Anymore at least.” Stephanie cringed, did the study abroad department fail to mention the music over here?

“You’re Brits, huh?” He smirked.

“Yes. And you must be French?” Bex replied.

“Ouais, but I am from Guadeloupe. It’s in the Caribbean Sea,” he shared, proudly.

“Nice to meet you. Now tell me, he must be the DJ?” Stephanie turned to point towards a young, topless blond man standing on a vintage speaker and thrusting his pelvis back and forth to the beat of the pounding music.

He wore stripy, rainbow-coloured lycra shorts, reminiscent of Joseph’s multicolour colours and ironically danced with his hands outstretched, palm-to-palm like Moses parting the red sea. She thought how it looked like a biblical retelling…on acid.

“Who, him?” The boy turned round to get a view of the man. “Oh no, that’s my brother!” He laughed as he pulled out papers from his pocket to roll a cigarette.

“Of course it is.” Stephanie shook her head, amused at their new companion as she quietly judged his rolling technique.

“So, how are you finding Paris?” The boy continued, pronouncing ’Paris’ as ’Par-ie’.

“I love it. I’ve been here a few days and my friend, Bex, has just arrived.” Stephanie shouted over the loud, vibrations of the techno music.

“Oh yeah? And how are you finding the left side of the Seine?” He lowered his lens-less glasses to look at Stephanie.

“Sorry? I don’t know what you mean.” Stephanie replied, lowering her sunglasses to mimic his gesture.

“You know, the right side of the Seine?” He replied, turning back to Bex.

“The left or the right side of the Seine?” Bex asked, confused.

“No, the left side is the right side.” He confirmed.

“Is this guy on drugs?” Bex muttered under her breath, quiet enough so he wouldn’t hear. Stephanie had been warned about these types of people—they fell into ’le flop’ side of Paris.

“Let me start again: the left side of the Seine, where we are right now, it’s usually the safer side, so we say it’s the right side.” The boy re-phrased for clarification.

“I see. And you’re trying to say that the right side, as in over there,” Stephanie pointed across the river, “is the wrong side.”

“Exactement.”

“Why’s that?”

“Oh, because of the people on the streets, the strangers, or however you call them in English.”

“How would one identify one of these strangers?” Bex asked jokingly, with a subtle interest in what he had to say.

“Well… someone a bit dishevelled, strange in their demeanour, a stranger look in their eye, usually spotting you way before you spot them.” He joked dramatically.

“Someone like you?” She retorted.

“Haha—very funny…No, they’re not as bad as me.” He winked, taking a sip from his can of beer. The girls looked at each other, impressed by how this Frenchman seemed to keep up with their banter.

“Why are you telling us all this anyway?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe I just want to practise my English.”

“Well I can assure you that you are very good at English!” Stephanie blurted out. She knew that if they had to have the same conversation entirely in French, they would struggle.

He looked up and smiled proudly. “Merci… You know, it’s funny because when you were speaking earlier, I thought you sounded pretty French.”

Stephanie paused, waiting for a punchline.

“No, really. Do you have French family?” He added. Was he being serious?

“Really? That’s funny…I mean my grandmother was French,” Stephanie replied, somewhat taken aback by his observation.

He raised his eyebrow curiously. “Was?”

“She passed before I ever—” she stopped talking as the boy’s voice faded into the music, his brother pulling him into the crowd.

It felt strange to talk about her grandmother in her city.

Paris.

The place where she grew up. The place where she died. She knew there was unfinished business in this city, she could feel it.

*

Stephanie looked out over the crowd and saw that the boy had long disappeared into the sea of bodies.

The bludgeoning techno beat continued to pour out of the stereos as the girls drank bootleg, vodka-infused concoctions from plastic bottles, in true rave fashion, until eventually, they called it a night.

As Stephanie went to take Bex’s hand to go back out to the street, someone grabbed her wrist.

She quickly turned around.

It was him.

Gripping down hard, the boy from Guadeloupe leaned in, and with crazed eyes, he whispered:

“I’d be careful if I were you.”