Paris Pt. 3

I wrote two follow ups to those strange Paris essays that I wrote when I got back to the States.  Here is the third chunk:

The Paris Cure

You go home after Paris, feeling exhausted, like someone has kept you up at a party far past your bedtime, but your mind is still trying to process all that you've seen.  In any case, you drag yourself home, falling out of bed in your room above the discotheque that never seems to close, and you get in the car and you take the connection to Amsterdam and stumble through the Amsterdam airport that is really like a city, but all you can think about is Paris.

You think about Paris as you hand your ticket to the attendant, and you think about Paris as you find your seat and you think about Paris like you're some sort of character in a romantic tragedy, and you've just remembered that childhood sweetheart that you swore you'd go back to someday.  And you remember Paris like that childhood sweetheart but before you can do anything, the plane takes off and all you can do is read the Dutch airline magazine about some new line of men's watches.

You think about Paris for about a week after you get back from France, before falling blindly back into normalcy and nearly forgetting your love.  It's like you've gone through a very effective, very painless stint in rehab.

And you speak French in class, and you read that book you picked up from that store in France, and you try your very best to remember that annoying discotheque and that mother and her two sons on the train and how beautiful some people look with smoke swirling out of their mouths like little deadly ghosts.

But it's no use, and you've been cured; cured of your sickness, cured of your addiction, and cured of your love.  And you should feel a huge hole in your chest, but you don't.  It's like it never happened.

Later.

TTFN

M.K. Wissler