Carl Nilsson-Polias

The following pithy anecdote will be assisted by a preface for those of you not closely associated with the dynamics of my family. There is a running joke that my father, John, with whom I am travelling, is in fact a closeted gay man. You see, he fits the stereotype a little too well: he has his hair cropped fairly short, he has been known to use hair product, he owns Clinique toiletry products, he dresses sharply, he is neat, he goes to the gym and is fit, he’s taken Latin dance classes, and, instead of buying a sports car in his middle years, he bought albums by George Michael and Janet Jackson. Right.

So, anyway, we are out looking for a restaurant last night in the Marais district. We want to get some traditional French cuisine (think snails) and we end up spotting a place called the Eglantine. It has escargot from Bourgogne on the menu as well as some lovely-sounding dishes involving duck. We’re sold on the place and go in. We’ve been sitting at our little table for “deux”, which is stuck right in the back corner, for maybe ten minutes when John leans over his glass of Pinot Noir to say, “Have you noticed there are only men in here?”. I scanned across the room and, lo and behold, the old fruit was right, apart from the two waitresses, every person at every table was male. Hmmm, a tad odd, n’est-ce pas? “Do you think … ?” Now, if the all-male clientele wasn’t enough, I noticed that many of the tables for two were made up of men of the same age wearing similar clothes (say, both tank tops or both checked shirts) and, the final giveaway, they often had matching hairstyles and facial hair (think Rob Croser and David Roach). Of course, the knowledge that we were in a gay haunt pleased us immensely because we knew that the food would not only be good but would also not go straight to our hips. Indeed, the snails were sublime (cooked in their buttery sauce of garlic and parsley) and the duck was also sumptuous. As we left, we noticed the tiny rainbow sticker on the door and the gay street mags (“em@le”) lined up on one of the counters, and wondered at what the chances were that two men travelling together would, out of all the French restaurants in Paris, end up at that one. Later that night, we passed by a place playing music by Donna Summers and John decided to join in. I reminded him that he was a ‘breeder’ but that wasn’t going to stop him. I got my revenge today when I started loudly quoting La Cage Aux Folles in my best camp French voice (“Coucou, me voila!”), John almost threw me in the Seine.

Number two in our “Great Jogs Through Paris” series was a run down the Seine, past the Musée d’Orsay, the National Assembly and other big impressive neoclassical buildings until we got to the Tour Eiffel. It was great to see more of the city in the dawn light. On the way back, as we crossed a street in front of some cars, a young Parisian man with a harem of girls in his auto, leaned out his window and called after me, “Nice arse” (in French). Well, that just made my day.

John almost took a photo of our hotel room’s TV this morning. I asked him why the hell he wanted to have a photo of a TV. He turned and, with a straight face, said “It’s Realia.” And people wonder where I get my bullshit from … It’s in the genes, honeys, it’s in the genes. Needless to say, I laughed my arse off and then proceeded to beat him sadistically about the face and neck.

Saw an advertisement today for a healing cream. In the ad, an adulterous pair have wild and passionate sex. To avoid being caught out by their partners, they use the healing cream on the scratches they gave each other. The ruse works, the cuckolds are duped. Only in France.