Bastille Day 1991

The summer of 1990 started off with a crashing bout of mono that left me bed-ridden for weeks. I had been having a complicated year, my first in graduate school. The school part I loved. But the social life part was something I was wrestling with. Having attended four different schools for high school and attended a women’s college, I hadn’t dated much and never for very long. I was briefly involved with a grad school friend, P, but he’d decided he was still hung up on his ex and that didn’t last at all, although, amazingly, the friendship did. While many of my friends came to my aid while I was sick, doing my laundry and shopping, P was there for me more than I could ever have expected. He packed most of my apartment for me and helped me carry it to storage when I could barely stand up. But I was still feeling raw, exhausted and humiliated.

I went home to my parent’s house in Indianapolis to recuperate, but they left after a week for a long-planned trip and I spent a couple of weeks alone there, trying to build up my strength while not saying a word to anyone. On July 5, I got myself to the airport and got on a plane to Newark and then another to Paris. I was nervous and still shaky. I was going to spend a couple of months at the famed conservatory in Fontainebleau.

I started a new journal while sitting in the Indianapolis airport that day in a blank book my friend L had given me. The first entry sums up some of my feelings about the state of things at that moment:

5 July
Today, not yesterday, is my day of independence — independence at last from the illness which has confined me to Camille-like poses on beds and sofas for the last month. It has been a quiet month, much of it spent completely alone and free of most responsiblities. That was as much needed for mental recuperation as physical. It has been a long year.

While I still have some pages left in my last journal, I am anxious to move on, to begin again. A lot of this year has been letting go. A lot of the latter pages of my last journal is hanging on.

I’ve learned many things in my time alone. I learned Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers and Laverne and Shirley seem to be on TV 24 hours a day. I learned how to subsist on liquid food, then relearned the joys of chewing. I learned that even I have limits on the amount of stress I can take. I learned I can survive not being self-sufficient.

Issue of self-sufficiency have been big this year. They have promoted large scale arguments with my parents and with P. More than anything, they have c aused me to beat up on myself a lot. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly think it’s okay to rely on other people.

Letting go…what better way to celebrate than to leave the country? Of course the first sites of celebrating freedom are airports in Indianapolis and Newark — two places which make me want to run back to bed and bury my head under the covers.

Within a few days, though I was happily ensconced in L’Hôtel d’Albe in Fontainebleau, which served as a dormitory for conservatory students.
I’m sharing a room the size of my senior year single at college with two other people….The ceilings are about twice as high, though, and we have a huge French window opening onto the street looking at — guess what? — a gas station! It makes me feel right at home, although this one is much more attractive than the Mobil outside my Chicago apartment.”

I didn’t write much while there — I was soon too wrapped up in work and a boy to spend much time contemplating. But I did describe a day that I remember every year on July 14 in some detail. It was one of those memorable things where you stumble into another world and find you’re welcome.

Items in square brackets are my annotations for this post. Those in regular parentheses are original.

14 July Bastille Day (written on July 18-19)

I’ve been rather delinquent and now there’s too much to write about as usual. The 13th, I studied all day in the gardens [of the Fontainebleau Château]. Not much to write about that. That evening, we all dressed up and went to sing the Marseillaise for the Bastille Day ceremony (even some of the architects) [The Conservatoire housed an architecture program as well as a music program]. What a gory song! Not that our national anthem is much better.

It was the first rain since we’ve been here. No fireworks, but the carnival, which had been set up in front of the gates of OUR château was in full swing anyway (we had been to ride the bumper cars the night before). After the Marseillaise (and wine — Kir — too sweet) and dinner at our usual cafeteria, we scavenged a radio and some music and tried to get people to dance in one of the rooms in the hotel [L'Hôtel d'Albe was what was used as a dormitory. I'm not sure of its status in the off-season. Perhaps it is a real hotel in the winter. The main building had several walk-up floors of spartan rooms with huge windows that could be shuttered and shared bathrooms. In the back, on the opposite side of the garden, was an outbuilding that housed a ping-pong table.]

Soon we all changed and went out to our favorite bar — “Bar du téléphone.” It’s kind of a redneck bar with a great, but eclectic jukebox (Jacque Brel, Cyndi Lauper, The Doors, Jerry Lee Lewis…). It’s decorated with brown and crumbling holly and evergreen branches, evidently stapled to the wall sin December and never removed. The bar’s name is mysterious. There isn’t a telephone in sight. Someone has pointed out that this is not at all unusual. There are no salamanders at La Salamande, nor has Napoleon made an appearance at the Bonaparte (although we did once see someone there who looked frighteningly like Mr. Spock). The Palais certainly doesn’t resemble its name. We then decided that bars and cafés in Fontainebleau are named after things which will never appear at them.

After a drink or two and sampling some of the jukebox selections, we made our way to the town Bastille Day celebration. Held under the covered market because of the rain, the town dance was crowded anyway. The band featured an accordion. I did a fast waltz with R [whom I was just starting to date] before the band went on break and we rturned to the Bar du Téléphone for another round.

We returned to the carnival after a drink and took another few turns on the bumper cars — more vicious competition than the night before — before it began raining again. R and I ran, holding my raincoat over our heads, back to the bar where we found the others who’d deserted the carnival more sensibly at the first sight of rain instead of waiting for the deluge.

On the final trudge home, we encountered a man standing in the door of a café wearing a scuba mask and fins. He flapped one of his feet in a puddle, showering us anew. We arrived home tired and drenched to the skin with gory patriotic songs still buzzing in our heads.

Accounts

I’ve been MIA for a couple of days. Friday was all work and no play, and Harriet was a very dull girl indeed. Today we frittered the morning away on the things we usually do on Saturdays and ended up trekking into the city in search of a decent pizza. We walked around Mr. Spy’s old neighborhood (and therefore, also one of mine, for I spent a great deal of time there), Wicker Park/Bucktown. We showed AJ where Mr. Spy used to live — a coach house visible only in a sliver through a two-foot wide gangway between buildings, the path we used to walk. We stopped to watch dogs frolicking in the park and then cut across the baseball field and headed to Santullo’s pizza for a couple of slices of my beloved New York Style (no offense, but the stuffed pizza has never done it for me, Chicago. You can take the girl out of New York…). We showed AJ how to fold the slice in half to keep the topping from sliding off. See? It’s stuffed after all — you just do the work yourself!

Afterwards Mr. Spy showed me the stealth storefront of Velvet Hour, about which he wrote a story a while back, and to which we plan to go together someday for fancy drinks made with eyedroppers. We stopped in at Myopic and AJ was astounded by the towering bookshelves and by the aisles so narrow that an adult with broad shoulders may be hard pressed to turn around (and one with middle-aged eyes my be hard pressed to get enough distance from the spines to read the titles). We bought nothing, but had fun exploring and went to Dairy Queen to buy AJ ice cream when we were done. Afterwards, we headed to Pagoda Red, to ogle Asian antiques and keep AJ from looking at the pornographic Chinese scrolls on one of the walls.

That was it, really. An easy day, but satisfying too. We miss the city. I think AJ would be a good city kid. If it weren’t for the matter of school we’d be back in a heartbeat. On our way back to the car, we found an open gate and headed up to the unused train tracks. We’d seen people walking by up there and thought there might be a trail. There wasn’t though. And there didn’t seem to be any other entrances and exits. But it was a fabulous view. We walked back down by the dog park to see them from above. And then we were back on the street and in the car and on the highway driving home.

* * * * *

Lass and Claudia’s late entries from childhood diaries have had me scouring for my own. But unfortunately, I can’t seem to locate the early ones. I know that a year or two ago, I pulled a few of them out (and, in fact, I’m pretty sure I ran an entry or two here). I must have put them somewhere else. But until I find them, the best I can do is more grownup diaries, which are not quite as entertaining. Stay tuned for an account of a Bastille Day I spent in France nearly 20 years ago. I was thinking of that day on Tuesday and had no recollection of having written about it until I stumbled on this diary this evening.