Paris - Dubai: Flying the A380

My gay friends always say that bigger is better….that’s why I have been wanting, ever since it went into service, to fly the Airbus A380 which is the biggest commercial airliner in service today. My choices are limited, as only a few airlines operate the type already : Singapore (the first to fly the A380), Emirates, Qantas, Air France and more recently Lufthansa.

Air France actually did short hops, for training I imagine, between Charles de Gaulle airport and London Heathrow on certain days and times with their then new A380. But my schedule did not fit their days. So, when I started looking for tickets for a holiday in Asia, Emirates via Dubai came up not only with the right price but also, from Paris to Dubai, a ride on the A380 ! I would finally get to fly on the biggest of them airplanes (joke among gays: what do you do when it’s too big….the answer : You hug it and cry).

The day when I was to ride the biggest of all came. I watched it land from Dubai from the terminal though because of the layout of CDG terminal 2 it pretty much got obsecured after the first few seconds. But I would be in this big bird finally. I got my boarding pass and was impatiently waiting to get on. Unfortunately, Emirates configure their A380 by putting all economy in the main deck and business and first classes in the upper deck…I would have liked to ride on the upper deck, but no matter. Yes, I remember telling my then 20 year old self that I would only fly in business class when I turn 30….how naïve I was (now, over 30 and still flying economy). The big plane sat at the gate with its huge wings…I mean huge. I must say, it does not look as pretty as the Boeing 747…in fact it looks stubby and resembles a Boeing 737 that's all bloated up on growth hormones.

Inside, it feels roomy of course as one would expect of such a huge plane…but economy class is

still economy class... the plane could be big but that does not mean that you get seats with lots of pitch, rather, you have the same space, but you’re with a lot more people (Emirates Y class can accomodate 399 passengers. Add to that close to a hundred business and first class pax). Things are much better (than in other planes) for 1st class pax who now can even take a shower in flight (in my gutter mind, I was thinking that the shower stalls would certainly facilitate joining the Mile High club!). Service in Emirates as usual is quite good, the entertainment system (ICE) is one of if not the best in the air, and the seats are comfortable enough. The flight took off and landed on time. The noise level indeed is amazingly low even at take off (and of course during cruise…which I am not sure I like as you could clearly hear babies crying, people clearing their throat or snoring !).

The mood lighting adds positively to the experience, loved the purple and the pink lighting that are easy on the eye and even put you in a gay (if sleepy) mood. The orange I guess simulates sunrise which would be useful when flying across many time zones.


The Emirates crew, as usual, is a motley collection of people from all over the world, all friendly and professional, speaking no less than 12 languages between them. In Dubai, I had about 4 hours before reboarding an Asia-bound flight…this time a Boeing 777 (300ER, also of Emirates) that I have always loved and appreciated for the nice pitch of their economy class seats (that I heard would soon be adapted to a couple inches less to be in line with the international stardard and the other types operated by Emirates….sigh). In these days of bigger and fatter people, it is amazing to see that airline seat in economy actually are getting smaller!

Paris - LA : Tradition, Sex and Food

One of my best friends lives and has always lived except for when we were in school in Berkeley, in the LA area. Though during these years he seems to be moving further and further south (Orange county, yuck! and now San Diego, much better) and I fully expect him to someday be over the border in Mexico. Not going to surprise me given his taste in men.
A tradition that has developed throughout the years since I left LA is for him to pick me up at LAX whenever I make my yearly visit from wherever I happen to be living. This is not solely for love for me that he does that. As soon as I landed and through immigration/customs, bags would be secured in the trunk and we would head straight to the adult bookstore near the airport that we have known since we were, euh, a lot younger. The storekeeper is a chain smoking old lady who lets you do whatever you want in the cabins as long as you don’t create troubles. The two of us would cruise there and most of the time we would find our brief but nonetheless memorable happiness with nameless strangers. One Xmas eve, my flight had arrived late and so it was late in the evening when we made it to the bookstore which meant the bookstore was closed (it was open til early evening). So my best friend decided to be a gentleman and walked the two blocks to see if the other bookstore in the hood was open. I got out of the car to smoke a cigarette in the parking lot when a pickup truck arrived, parked and a big black man got out. He walked towards me and asked very politely if I knew where he could get a blowjob. Hello? Am I in heaven? With my best Colgate smile I said Right here and we went in his car. By far this was the best welcome to the United States I ever had….don’t you just love this kind of welcome? Felt such enormous love for the US just then.

Another tradition is that we got to do what I have missed the most during my time away from LA. Once, for some reason, I thought about Denny’s a lot. Maybe remembering college days when we used to hang out there at 3 am drinking cups after cups of coffee (refills were free and free flowing then). I used to also wolf down Grand Slam breakfast at any hour of the day it was a miracle that I did not turn out like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. This time, I wanted that Grand Slam breakfast. Now, my best friend is sort of a refined eater (doing sex in the cabins of adult book store not withstanding), so going to Denny’s to him is like going to Queens for Carrie Bradshaw. But he relented and said that he would go and sit and watch me eat my Grand Slam (actually, the new GS is nothing like the old and is probably better left as a memory not to be relived). He chickened out though when we got to the restaurant and I ended up getting a takeout that I wolfed down while speeding down in southerly direction on the 405 freeway. Our next stops to satisfy my longings: Taco Bell for tacos and the gas station shop to get a couple Reese’s Peanut Butter and I was as good as anyone could ever be (If I wasn’t gay, I am sure I would have patted my tummy and belched loudly right there).

One thing that I would still have to do during my yearly LA stop is a visit to a KFC.
Now I know that there are KFCs in France, but going there in Paris is just not the same as in LA. First, I would have to go alone. None of my French friends ever contemplated going for original recipe or crispy chickens of the Colonel’s. Such is the social pressure that I would have to put on a hat, sunglasses and a big scarf to go to a KFC and hide in the most obscured table to consume my meal (Or I would bundle the box in a plastic bag, hide the whole thing in my backpack and eat it at home). Why is it that my French friends look down on KFC? American junk food, of course, that one poo poos. And I guess eating with your fingers just seem so barbaric to them…the French even eat their hamburgers with knife and fork! (For your information, Carrie Bradshaw and a dude she met did eat KFC chickens in one episode of Sex and the City!) (OK so they were stoned).

Paris comfort food: Soul food and cupcakes.

Soul food
When I started to write this entry, I was going to let you in on a well kept not so secret place called Chez Haynes, a restaurant serving soul food that could be found in the 9e arrondissement in Paris and was unofficially a place of reference for black Americans, American artists and singers, or simply Americans feeling homesick for things such as BBQ ribs or friend chicken in honey and corn bread. Unfortunately, this institution of American soul, southern US, American artists etc. closed its doors just over a month ago.

Googling Chez Haynes you could find its long and illustrious history (founded by African American Haynes, apparently with a varied career from wrestler, actor to sociologist! who made good in France….friend of many French artists, actors, politicians whose photos could be seen in the unpretentious restaurant with a small stage that used to feature, for example, visiting jazz singers who would sing accompanied just by a piano). But I think each person could also tell a story associated with Chez Haynes. Mine was marked especially by meeting a personage in one of my favourite films when I was younger: La Cage aux Folles. Personable, still recognizably La Cage, he no doubt contributed to pull people into the restaurant to its ambiance.
Chez Haynes was also the place where you might encounter unexpected rencontres. Hosting an American college friend (blond as blond can be blond) who is crazy about soul food, we decided to go to Chez Haynes. Having come to dessert (Real banana split like we get in the US), I turned to the people in the next table, a group of African American young men to come face to face literally with my ex boyfriend from days long gone by! He was visiting Paris and of course he did not know that I have been living in Paris (OK, the separation was not that amicable). We looked at each other unbelieving what we saw….it was a good, as we say in French, retrouvaille …. Any regrets have been erased by time so there was just joy in finding each other again (though his then boyfriend might not think so!).
Now, helas, Chez Haynes is no more….another Parisian institution that is gone contributing to the longing that many long term residents feel for old Paris.

Cupcakes
Having left the US, I sometimes have cravings for things that I have not thought of for ages amid the varied and delicious French food. To the uncomprehending look of my French friends, I long at times for Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast, Reese’s peanut butter, and Sara Lee’s strawberry cheesecake. Luckily, a new place in Paris has brought “home” cupcakes, a food that I associate with happier insouciant time in my life. The cosy place can be found in rue Rambuteau in le Marais. Here you can find cupcakes, cheesecake and typical American snack food.

And what cupcakes!!! Forget the cupcakes that you ate when you were a child which was just sugar sweet and not very beautiful to look and either chocolate or strawberry. Here you would find beautiful looking cupcakes and all kind of flavours that you probably never imagined before. My favourites include carrotcake cupcakes (great icing), rose (yes, the flavour of the flower…it is sooo good), or violet (again, the flower). The price of course matches the presentation and the taste of these heavenly cupcakes (and the cheesecake too! I love especially the chocolate
cheesecake) and has nothing to do with the price we pay in the corner shop for 4 cupcakes in a plastic container. But here, the French touch (in presentation and in flavour) has been successfully integrated into what can be considered an American product much like the pyramid is now an integral part of the Louvre! (Ok I am going over the top here, but I am on a sugar high here). The cupcakes thus are to be eaten and appreciated much like other delicacies in France…slowly, admiringly, and with a lot of memories (of childhood) and emotions that they may evoke in you! With a cup of espresso, you could almost say that you don’t care that your Paris lover has gone off who knows where again for the afternoon…

Note: The shop where you can get cupcakes, called Berko, is located in Paris' 4th arrodissement (Le Marais), rue Rambuteau, metro Rambuteau. Another store (Berko's) is also now open near metro Blanche (on rue Lepic just above the Moulin Rouge).

Paris: Ne me quitte pas and other songs

“Ne me quitte pas” is the title of a song of Jacques Brel and is now one of the classic when one thinks of Chansons Françaises (French songs). It has since been sung by many others including Nina Simone who sang it in a manner that made the song still recognizably Brel but in her very own style and giving it a totally new dimension. If Brel sang it with visible prosodic emotions (stringing and dragging you along on an emotional ride), Simone sang it with such utter calmness and flatness that only emphasized the emotions in her unique voice and demure and submerges you in it. Either way, both will make you feel spent, pitched and goosebumps all over at the end of their song.
You can see the video of Simone here:
Nina Simone Ne me quitte pas (Video, click here)

Part of the process of becoming Parisian or French involves getting to know these standard repertoire of songs that anyone can sing on cue! There are bars in Paris where certain nights you could sing a long to these standards (Brel, Piaf, Aznavour, Dalida etc.) and this could really be fun if you could overcome the feeling that you’re doing something totally ringard (outdated!). Many of these songs we know too, such as Non je ne regrette rien sung by Piaf or Les feuilles mortes (I know the version sung by Yves Montand). It seems like every singer in France would have to try to tackle these legendary repertoire to prove to the public that they are worthy of their adoration. And singing it prettily is not going to cut it with the French public who asks for real emotions. Mon manage à moi has been sung by Patrick Bruel, L’hymne à l’amour has been sung not only by every French singer today (including a rap and rock version) but also by Josh Groban!

If emotions were asked, it is that these songs usually tell fairly complicated stories (they seem in any case more complicated than English pop songs). This may have to do with many of these songs were sung in cabaret (I guess sort of like Jazz and blues that developed more in clubs etc.). Piaf’s songs (many are written by Prevert), for instance, may be about a young woman who works as a prostitute who dreamt of owning a bar with her boyfriend who had to go to war and never came back and the life that followed…Brel is a raconteur and not just any old raconteur as the words used not only communicate a lot of emotions and images but also touches on all dimensions of emotions (colors, visions, feeling, physical sensations such as sound and smell…you could find them all in his songs). No wonder that the French seems to put on pedestal aged singers that in the US, except for blues and jazz singers, would have been long forgotten. Age gives these singers the maturity that is probably necessary to sing these songs with convictions: it is like comparing new Beaujolais to old wine. New wine may have aroma that pleases, but only old wine can have bouquet that transports you!

Infos :
To listen to jazz, check ou the Duc de Lombards (rue des Lombards and blvd de Sebastopol in Chatelet), also check out the New Morning (their programme is on the net...also the jazz festival in Paris and La Cité de la musique, you can google both). In Pigalle, there are bars with life music and karaoke (tucked amid the sex shops...and beware of touts of these sex shops).

Paris secrets: Morning has broken in my neighborhood outside the ghetto

As I have said elsewhere, I was rather out of sorts in term of my gayness having left my hood in the Marais (Paris 4th arrodissement, known as the gay neighbourhood).
However, having lived in my new neighbourhood for some time now, I have started discovering its secret that is just as exciting if not more. Discovering the layers of gay men who inhabit this beautiful city indeed is a voyage that any new Parisien will have to traverse!

If in the Marais, mornings tend to be dead (we party and stay out late and we think mornings are for the birds), the discovery of early morning sexual escapades in my new neighbourhood had turned me around into a veritable morning person (well ok, still not as cheery as a real morning person, but more willing to wake up just as the sun peeks out than ever before).

I was once in the neighbourhood of Place de Clichy before 9 am (for an appointment there that I could not miss nor reschedule to a more civilized hour). After the appointment, I took a small street to get to the metro station. Walking along, I noticed a man of North African origin standing just outside the entrance to a (his) building. This man was eyeing me as a wolf would be eyeing a roast chicken (or whatever wolf likes to eat in the wild, my experience with wolves are based exclusively on cartoon that I watched as a kid) as I passed by. I stopped and lit a cigarette (an excuse) and noticed him pointedly touch himself in the place where I would like to be touching him! He looked at me intently and opened the building entrance door. I followed him then into the building, and he led me to the basement where he took out his dick and I, being a well brought up kid that I am, got on my knees and went to work.

Another time I was rushing toward the metro station from my house for an early morning conference outside Paris. This man I noticed as we both were crossing the street. The look that he gave me made me stop on the other side and I pretended to look at a window of a store (in fact a drugstore so there is nothing interesting to look at lol). He recrossed the street and asked me for a cigarette. Then, without further ado, he asked me if we could go to my place. Well, I am a professional thus would feel very bad missing the conference I was supposed to attend. So I said we could exchange phone numbers to set up a RDV at a later time. At this point, I must admit that I was that close do just give the conference a miss and take him home. But I stuck it out, a professional that I am, and attended the conference.

The next day, I called him and we met near my house. I learned that he is Egyptian (about 30 years old) and has lived in Paris for 6 years. He came up to my apartment and asked if I could put on a blue film and took off his clothes. We did many interesting things on my little bed on the floor after which I gave him a massage which seemed to have gotten him all hot again.

So, after all this time, I discover the more interesting aspects of my new neighbourhood. Indeed, changes are required (ie. I have to be a morning person), but if it is so worth it, why not? I welcome mornings now and see it not as the moment best spent in bed waiting for the sun to go down again....I look at morning persons differently and have come to recognize the secrets that mornings could hold which are all the more interesting as it is harder to hide in the light than at night. Say hello to the sun and bye bye moon.