Paris Grand Amour

Le grand amour, or the real true love in one’s life , of mine (at least until now. Have no idea how many grand amours one can actually have in life) was intimately linked to Paris. OK, he was not Parisian (but from the province not far from Paris. Anything outside Paris by the way is called the province), but our love blossomed in Paris (as I guess would say all lovers who come to Paris) and many of my memories with him took place in Paris. Like the time we walked late at night on the Pont des Arts: The lampposts simmering in the fog and rain, the river Seine reflecting the lights of the city, and his warm hand holding mine. I thought that if this was not love, I would still die a happy man! Then there was the time we met after a month separation at the Gare du Nord. Among the crowd I spotted him and everyone else ceased to exist and I felt such happiness rose from my stomach to my chest and eventually all over. I looked at his face and could not believe how much I loved him and, as the cliché says, could have sworn that I heard La Vie en Rose playing at the station. ha ha.
I also remeber the night we were at the terrace of the Banana Café when he came out to his best friend and introduced me as his Grand Amour de sa vie (the love of his life)! He was happy as a lark having for the first time ever blurted out his non heterosexuality to his stunned best friend who sat there jaws practically on his lap. And then, of course, there were walks in le Marais and long kisses at a corner table at l’Amnesia café.

We lived on the fifth floor walk up apartment in Goncourt (which explained I guess why i had adorable behind at that time) where in the mornings I used to wake him up with a steaming cup of hot coffee and fresh wet kisses. For the first time in my life, I had no desire to have sex with other men. This must be love, I told myself; that must be love, everyone around me told me. In the cocoon of our apartment, we lived in our own world as if the morning sun was there to whisper Bonjour just for us.

But the real world reared its head and broke us apart from the inside (and not exactly knocking on the door as I anticipated or knocking us apart from the outside). He was soon torn between his family who wanted a heterosexual son and a lover that could look like RuPaul on a bad hair day (or even no hair day!). We would be together in Paris and he would be feeling guiltier by the minute, resenting me by the second and finally running to take the train to his hometown, only to call me not long after he arrived to say he missed me and did not know what in hell he was doing there away from me. He shuttled between Paris and his hometown like a crazy pingpong ball being bounced and pulled by different parts of himself that just never seemed to find its rightful place wherever he was. It was no wonder he cracked: He left Paris (in fact, France), married the first girl that looked presentable, and got fat.

So there we are: A happy family in the province that could be proud of his son, an unhappy man with a presentable wife a long way from France, and a lost person wondering the streets of Paris late at night wondering if the Grand Amour will say Hello out of the blue foggy night.