manger à paris
don't count the times i say beautiful
an iced almond latte and a thick slice of banana bread.
an amber beer, an orangina, two orders of fries, ketchup and mayo on the way.
steak au poivre.
olive foccacia.
the best pain aux raisin i’ve ever had.
a baguette, to be ripped and stuffed with prosciutto, goat cheese, green olive tapenade, truffle potato chips, and then followed with a pistachio creme pastry.
a nearly bioluminescent croissant and the corner of a chocolate babka.
mint and chamomile tea in pots, chocolate mousse and creme brûlée, two glasses of house white accidentally handed to us.
cucumber with chile oil and peanuts, five cerignola olives, a white, and an extremely murky orange.
I can’t stop thinking about the American couple standing outside of a restaurant with their suitcases, in their airplane clothes.
She signals to him that the wait will be at least 45 minutes for a table. He furrows his brow, his hunger pangs from 10 hours of greasy air travel loud in his body, shaking his head at her: that is obviously too long; we’re not waiting. She slinks back to him, her late dinner plan - a restaurant she’d heard about from her coworker, seen a tik tok about, but didn’t anticipate a wait for - dissolved. He’s standing there with his hands in his pockets, slumped over the handle of his carry-on, stewing in silence, lips pursed and looking nowhere in particular. She’s on Google Maps, frantically searching nearby restaurants open NOW, not out of any hunger of her own at this point, but out of wanting him to exhale.
My best friend and I, breathing in the secondhand anxiety and hilarious doom of the moment, far too familiar with that kind of hunger, that deafening silence, that pit in your stomach, that stupid fight that will result in the Uber, look at each other, cover our mouths, and stifle a big laugh.
We couldn’t stop watching them. Ok, so it might be true that no one in the world is in love with either of us right now … but … BUT… at least we’re not them, oh my fucking god.
–
The special things about traveling to a beautiful place with a lifelong friend perhaps don’t involve Paris. Of course it’s not just Paris, but it’s a series of open days ahead of you with nothing planned except time to look at beautiful things and beautiful people, and spend the hours chattering about how all of it makes you feel. Time to build up and break down the contents of your own worlds back home based on what you see in front of you, out loud to each other.
It’s a concentrated period of time fulfilling all of your needs together, to the point that you soon cannot speak outside of ‘we’ terms. Should we get out of bed. Will more caffeine mess us up at this point. How are our feet. The relief that it is to feel that, sometimes, as an adult! After being so deeply in our own heads and our own bodies all day, every day. It’s taking a little bit of the load off, and I think it should be prescribed as medicine.
The magic is not Paris, but it’s dragging your fingertips over fabrics you’re imagining on your body (because they will surely transform your entire personality) and looking at your friend practically demanding her to justify the purchase for you. Your friend, however, didn’t have to be asked, she’s already broken down why you will wear the thing, and need the thing, and why it’s made exactly for you. Because she is holding something on a hanger herself, and she too is waiting.
It’s about getting back and lying next to each other on the ground with our feet hovering in the air because we heard that was good for us somewhere, ankles swollen and soles pulsing from the half city that has been chaotically traversed in just a few hours. Allowing for a few moments of silence while we charge and check our phones.
Perhaps it’s not about craving Paris, but rather needing to walk in step on a tiny, narrow street, and go through involuntary body convulsions together when we walk past the same man in a good coat and dark denim. Us feeling utterly invisible on the street, despite being in our own favorite coats and denim we thought we looked good in, grabbing each other’s limbs with enough urgency that you’d think we’ve never seen a beautiful human being before. Cackling and being loud and having not an ounce of cool and not really caring.
Neither of you pretend that you are above the vanity of a trip to a beautiful place with your lifelong friend. You both know that as 27 year old women raised on the internet with worms for brains, by purchasing these plane tickets you both actually entered a mutual and contractual agreement to only exit the country once you have provided the other with at least 25 chic, hot, perfect photos where you don’t feel like yourselves. You know, the ones you’ll show your teenage daughter who will post them on whatever version of Instagram will dominate in 2045. Recognizing that only the best kinds of friendships don’t hide or try to mask any of those silly, twisted cravings — cravings that you’ll both go on to theorize and moralize and try to break down and understand for the rest of the night.
It’s all for the familiarity of lying next to each other in big t shirts in bed at night, physical boundaries discarded long long ago, looking at all of them together, catching up on a day well spent. Laughing over the insanity that is genuinely feeling like you’re the only people to have ever traveled to this country before in the history of time, that’s how a place like this lives within you. How delight lives within you.
It cannot be overstated, however….. that Paris helps. It makes it extra special. It’s a place where the beautiful things are extra shimmery and velvet. Where the food is laced and layered with salty butter. Where the doors are ornate and heavy and smooth to the touch. Where the people wear clothing like they’re advertising it for purchase. Time and sex and purpose and again that butter oozing from all of their tiny tiny tiny pores.
-
Maybe this Paris digest is one of my love letters to my single self, one that I’ll look back on hopefully with such a tender heart and love for. One of my love letters to being a single woman surrounded by other single women, and the absolute, fucking deranged hilarity that that can sometimes represent.
I don’t know, female friendship is magic because of that. The self-doubt and constant justification we crave from each other. The absolute narcissism and attention seeking we exhibit, but in a harmless and mostly just self-sabotaging way. Acting and thinking in total disarray, and your friend just saying…“yeah, absolutely.”
I don’t mean to speak in “tweet,” but it all just feels so palpable and strong and powerful to me. Two friends switching out the contents of their bags before dinner, asking which shoes look better, as if it matters at all. And then proceeding to walk closely together down the street, remarking at nice things around them, but only in between pauses of the weightiest, most emotionally rich, observant, and penetrative kinds of conversations. Ordering the house wine, and agreeing when you want to head in the direction of home.
Lesson learned in October: we all need to be continuing to get out into the big wide wonderful world with our fricken pals….before it all feels too hard, and it feels like there isn’t the time, and everyone seemingly has to ask their spouses before making one single hour’s dinner plan. Preferably even after that, too. I want to do so much of it until I literally cannot any longer. Good day!
This was so beautiful! Made me miss Paris so much 😭
I don’t understand how this essay isn’t famous?? I adore it