A la Recherche du Pain Perdu
Or: Never on Sunday
On the last day of our week in Paris, I ate pain perdu for breakfast. I ordered it not because I had a craving for French toast, but simply because I liked the name. I understood enough of the language to know I was ordering griddled bread “lost” in a puddle of egg and milk, but my American brain couldn’t help but see the French word for bread in purely English terms: “pain perdu” in my mind translated to “lost pain”.
Which was precisely what I had come to that city to lose.
One month earlier, my friend Thrasso mentioned he was spending a week in Paris after attending a conference in Germany and he suggested I join him there. I immediately thought of all the reasons I shouldn't go: I was broke, it was madly impulsive, and I'd made a really stupid promise to myself that I wouldn't go back to Paris unless I was in love.
And I doubted I would be in love again for a very long time.
It had been three-quarters of a year since the person I was convinced I’d spend forever with turned out not to be. A someone who one week talked of setting up house and growing old together and the next left for someone younger, wealthier, more attractive, and geographically remote.
I like to think of that time as my semi-hysterical pregnancy. I no longer crumbled to the floor in fits of convulsive sobbing, but after nine months, I'd managed to carry an alarming amount of pain, confusion, and anger to full term. I needed it out of my body and left on a rock somewhere to die of exposure. Montmartre, I thought, seemed as good a rock as any.
I then began to think of all the reasons I should go: I was broke, it was madly impulsive, I was turning forty, and had a phantom pain baby inside that was eating me alive. The invitation to Paris felt like lifeline, but one totally beyond my grasp. I’d send off an email to Thrasso later to politely and regretfully decline.
And then, in a rare stroke of brilliant timing on his part, my father called. I mentioned Thrasso's offer with an clearly audible shrug. He casually asked when my friend was going to be there. It was a short conversation— he seemed to want to get off the phone. Thirty minutes later, however, he called back.
"Happy early birthday, kid."
He knew I'd had a shitty year and had a deep understanding of midlife crises. In the space of half an hour, he'd cashed in airline miles and made my reservation for me. And then he added, "I love you," and signed off.
Thrasso was shocked when I told him I was coming, but not more so than I.
I was overwhelmed by what my father had just done for me. Later that afternoon, I shared the news with co-workers, joking that I had the plane tickets, but no place to stay and no money to spend while I was there. Small details.
The next morning at work, my friend Lillith asked if I still needed a place to stay. Her friend Julie was planning to sublet her apartment in The Marais for a few months, but the people who were to take it backed out at the last minute and now she was scrambling to get people to stay there for any length of time. Even a week's rent would help out. I emailed Julie as soon as I got home. She asked me if $200 for the week was fair. I told her it wasn't, but that I’d pay her $250 instead. Within 24 hours of Thrasso's email, I had airfare and lodging secured.
Word spread at the restaurant about my sudden trip. A regular guest handed me a red envelope with a couple hundred euros in it "she wasn't using". My mother sent a small check. I picked up extra shifts. One of my readers I’d confided in sent a bit of cash in the mail taped to a note with instructions that read: “Take a fucking cab from the airport.” Within two weeks, I had everything I needed. Within four, I was in Paris.
When we met at our little student apartment, Thrasso handed me a book by Edmund White, entitled The Flaneur. I devoured it and we both embraced the concept of flânerie-- spending our days together strolling the streets of the city with no goal more pressing than seeking the random pleasures of whatever lay before us on our walks. We lived on a steady diet of tartines, beer, and Berthillon ice cream. I did my best to simply live in the moment. In Paris. With my friend. I was living so much in the moment, I nearly forgot I was supposed to interview some food blogger named David Lebovitz, but that’s a story for another time.
Every so often on our wandering, my mind would travel back 10 months and 5,560 miles to San Francisco and I’d start to wonder what I did wrong and what life would have been like if I were richer, handsomer, more exciting, and my boyfriend hadn't left me. If I had been able to bring him to Paris instead. But then I'd look across a café table and see Thrasso scribbling in his journal, or he'd make an odd observation that required no response and I would immediately return. Like a human yoyo, I’d periodically—and metaphorically— fling myself down onto the pavement, but by a thin piece of string, find myself snapped back into the capable hands of my travel companion. And so it would continue until our last day-- the day I ordered pain perdu.
We reserved our final day in Paris for doing all the touristy things we swore we weren't going to let sully the rest of our week. We found an outdoor café table in Place Beaubourg, ordered our respective breakfasts, and devised our attack plan.
When my pain perdu was eventually placed in front of me, I was faced with two slabs of what looked like brioche pock-marked with currants and mounted with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but I picked up my fork, took a bite of the pain, and swallowed it. There was nothing especially sweet about it, but then I thought, there rarely is with p-a-i-n, whether it's of the French or English variety. I pushed it aside, concentrating on the day's itinerary and my rather disappointing café noisette instead.
By the time I had returned my attention to my breakfast, what was once very cold French ice cream had melted into an impromptu crème anglaise, which gave the brioche the impression of being not only lost, but drowning. I took another bite. The bread was sodden, making it softer and sweeter. I found the soggy mess on my plate satisfying, but I didn't give it much thought.
We had sightseeing to do.
We made a surgical strike on the Louvre, attacking only the Nike of Samothrace where I lost my personal battle to ignore thoughts of Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face as Thrasso struggled to take pictures of the winged, armless statue with as few Japanese school girls in the frame as possible.
Making our escape from the museum, we found ourselves in the Jardin des Tuilleries, wandering among the hedges and statuary. Thrasso noticed the figure of Medea and made a casual reference to a scene in the 1960 film Never on Sunday in which Melina Mercouri plays Ilia, a prostitute from the port town of Piraeus, who has the charming inability to see anything unpleasant in Classical Greek tragedy. I confessed that I knew the story of Medea, the demigoddess who avenges herself on her husband Jason after he abandons her for another woman by sending the new wife a poisoned gown and murdering her own children, but didn’t know the scene in which Mercouri's character retells Medea's tale in her own, upbeat way to a humorless American philosopher.
Scandalized, Thrasso decided this was something I needed to understand sooner than later and so began to re-enact the scene as only a Canadian theater director of Greek heritage could. He took on the role of the happy-go-lucky whore and, as he began, I could feel a light sprinkling of rain on my face.
"The play is about what a woman suffers for a man," he began, mimicking her throaty two pack-a-day voice as he moved slowly in front of the statue.
"Once upon a time, there was a princess from faaaaar away. Her name is Medea…" he rasped."Medea was very sweet, but sometimes she had a bad temper…Anyhow she goes to Greece to marry this man. He is a prince, his name is Jason…She is good to him. She gives him two beauuuuutiful children…But he, right away with a blond princess in Athens…you know what.”
It began to rain a bit harder and we were getting soaked through, but Thrasso was so wrapped up in his performance, he didn't seem to care and therefore neither did I. "Everything she does for Jason. Even she gives presents to the blonde! But everybody says bad things about her… There are 12 rich ladies in beautiful dresses, but they say bad things about her too…And Medea cries. I tell you she breaks your heart…"
He pulled off his scarf for better gesticulation. "She's afraid. She takes the children and she hides them," he says, wide-eyed in pretend fear and crouching in front of the statue,"But in the end, Jason sees how much Medea loves him and they get a wonderful chariot and she gets the children…"
And then he suddenly leapt up, flinging his scarf into the wind for the final line, "…and they all go to the seashore!"
I clapped because I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't his interpretation alone (although that was pretty fantastic), but for something else as well. Between the start of his brief performance and the finish, my life shifted and I knew it. It was one of the most intense, surreal, cinematic moments I have ever experienced. As Thrasso moved and emoted around the statue, I couldn't help but think of all the people who helped get me to Paris in the first place. People who enabled me to be here in this particular park at this exact moment in time to have this specific man show me that life is simply a matter of perspective by means of channeling a fictional Greek prostitute.
At that moment, I felt as though I had never loved anyone as much as I did this guy who had just performed a private one-man show and somehow brought me back to life in the process. But I also understood it was precisely that-- a moment. It would soon pass but it didn't matter because I had also never felt more loved. Not specifically by him, but by everyone in my life who really mattered. By all of those people who had gotten me to Paris. And that those who didn't matter were not nearly as important as I once thought they were.
So I just stood up and kept applauding—dumbfounded, grateful, and soaking wet. The stale slab of human brioche I'd felt like not five minutes earlier had finally softened— penetrated by a sweetness that had probably always surrounded me. I just failed to notice it because I’d been too stupid— or frightened— to let go of my misery.
But there in that well-manicured garden, I did manage to let go and my pain, one might say, was truly and finally perdu.
Yes, tears making it hard to see right now. There are many wonderful writers to follow on this new thingy, Substack, and I can't follow nor support every one, but this is one of the most perfect essays I've ever read, and I want to be sure I never, ever miss another one. Upgrading, my beautiful, complicated, and wise young man.
This is gorgeous in every way, Michael 🥲