IN MAY OF 1996 I FLEW
FROM LOS ANGELES TO PARIS, to get settled in the city before I enrolled
in the fall semester of the École des Beaux-Arts. I was twenty-eight
years old; I had a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from UCLA and ten thousand
dollars in traveler's checks. I'd spent one summer in Paris before, when
I was eighteen. I'd been out of school for five years, "finding myself"--thinking
I might be an artist--but that search had turned up nothing. In Paris,
at least, I had the idea that I could see what others had done, and what
I might do. I was scared shitless.
My plane landed at Orly at
quarter of six on a cold Tuesday morning. I had a long wait for my luggage,
since I'd brought enough in theory to live for a year, and I had a hard
and embarrassing discussion with a cab driver when I finally got out of
the airport. I'd expected to feel great, but the jet lag--maybe--kept
me from being happy as the taxi drove through suburbs and grimy fog. I
had to keep reminding myself that a lot of other artists had come to this
city. All of them must have had a first day, and that day had to have
been lonesome.
I kept waiting for the city
to turn into something beautiful, but I had a fair wait. After about forty
minutes, we came in sight of the river, and yes, everything was as great
as everyone said. I gave the driver the address of the Hôtel du Danube
on the rue Jacob, on the Left Bank. It was too expensive for me but I'd
allowed myself a week there, since it was close to the École, the
Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest
church in Paris. I think I would have to say that everything in me at
that time pointed in one direction, to find out what it meant to be a
fine artist, to put my life on the line for art, to combine everything
I'd learned and everything I felt and then distill that into paintings.
It hadn't happened in LA--"the art scene" in LA was crap-but if it were
going to happen anywhere, it would happen here. In two years I'd be thirty,
and then the whole thing would be ridiculous.
The cab pulled up to the Hôtel
du Danube at ten in the morning, and right away I saw I'd made a mistake.
The lobby was dark and glossy and touristy, and a clerk my age gave me
a chickenshit stare. I asked for their smallest room and I got it-a dark
little cubicle toward the back with a single bed, a shorted-out television,
an armoire set at an angle on the sloping floor, and wallpaper that went
on all the way across the ceiling-brown cabbage roses on a tan background.
The one small window looked out on a roof made of corrugated tin.
I felt lousy, but, again,
I put that down to jet lag.
After I washed my hands and
face I went out for a walk. I knew a run would make me feel better, but
I thought I should know where I was running before I suited up and started.
I walked along the rue Jacob
to the rue des Saints-Pères and turned up toward the Seine. The sun
was out by now. Things looked the way I expected, but not the way I expected.
The river was amazing. I could look across it to the Louvre and that was
amazing too, more than I could register, more than I could take in. That
so many people, so long ago, had been so dedicated to beauty! I thought
of LA, weeds sprouting from the sidewalks and retaining walls bulging
with dirt from the last earthquake and all the stucco bungalows on the
sides of all the hills and how they faded into that beige background of
dead ryegrass. I thought of Salvadorean women on Western Avenue with little
kids in strollers and more kids strapped to their backs. Everything I
remembered seemed monochromatic and sad.
I came back from the river,
walking in the direction of the hotel. I thought I should see Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
and the famous cafés on the boulevard Saint-Germain. I was getting
hungry. Take it a step at a time, I thought. A thousand people, a thousand
thousand people have done what you're doing. They got through it. So you
can get through it. Half the people around me were French, but most of
the other half were American-hunched together on sidewalks, poring over
guidebooks and maps. The French pushed past them. The shops had windows
filled with high-class tourist junk-etchings cut out of books and framed,
tarnished jewelry you could pick up in LA in thrift shops for ten bucks.
And stuff only a moron might want-life-sized stuffed leather pigs.
Saint-Germain-des-Prés
was great. Old, old, a mass going on at the far end, groups of Parisians
and tourists wandering around in the dark. It calmed me down. I was facing
a depressing fact, the fact that I didn't want to go into a place by myself
for lunch. I had to remind myself that I was an American, well educated,
able-bodied, with enough money to last a while. Picasso had done it (not
that he was American). Hemingway could do it. (But thinking of myself
at the Ritz Bar in a trench coat might have made me laugh, if I could
laugh.)
I came out of the church into
the cobblestone yard and looked over to my left, at the café where
Sartre and de Beauvoir had eaten lunch every day, if you could believe
the guidebooks. I walked off on a diagonal to my right, toward a café
that to my knowledge had no reputation at all. I sat down, ordered a Croque
Monsieur, a salade des tomates, and a glass of red wine. Not quite what
I expected, because there was a red-faced Irishman stuffing down a pair
of fried eggs right next to me, telling a story about the computer company
he worked for and how he'd just come in from Hong Kong the night before
and how he'd be damned if he'd take the company house out in the banlieues,
he'd live in the city or nowhere. On my other side, an American woman
in a tight suit explained to someone who looked a lot like her mom that
the French were terrific pill poppers, and that she, the daughter, was
terribly disappointed that her mother had let herself go, because how
could she introduce her to Franois, when she was looking like that?
Everyone I saw had someone
to talk to; everyone had a friend. Everyone had somewhere to go. Everyone
had a plan.
I paid my check and walked
back to the hotel.
My room faced away from the
sun and smelled of mildew and smoke. I pulled off my clothes, got under
the covers, and slept.
When I woke up, it was the
next morning. I ordered coffee and croissants and the maid brought them
up. I sat in bed and ate and began to feel terrible. I got ready for the
voices that would be rolling by soon, and sure enough, here they came:
my dad, the redneck Texan carpenter who'd taken off when I was fifteen.
"You're gonna be a what? An artist? Gimme a break, Bob!" My mom, sitting
alone in her apartment down on Virgil: "That's fine for now, when you're
still young, but pretty soon life is going to catch up with you. You can't
go on living for yourself and expect to get away with it." Living for
myself. Man, she was convinced of it.
My old professors: "Hampton,
pretty good. No, a B1 is a good grade, especially at UCLA. No, I'm not
going to change it. No, I can't tell you what's 'wrong' with the painting!
It's just not A work. I know A work when I see it, and I don't see it
here. No, I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you how to get a B,
but no one can tell you how to get an A. If I could, we'd all be out on
a yacht spending our millions."
Or, "You'd make a fine teacher,
Hampton."
Or, "Disney needs animators.
You work very rapidly and you're good with detail." Or, "Did you ever
think of special effects? You've got a real craftsman's eye. We're living
in the special-effects capital of the world, remember."
But that wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted to knock them out. I wanted to knock their socks off. I wanted
to change their lives through my art.
Yeah, well.
I got up and took a shower
and headed on out to see the Musée d'Orsay.
The day was cold and cloudy
and getting inside the museum was a relief: it was warm in there, it was
beautiful. The art was something. Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, his
Olympia. How'd he get that light? Renoir's Dancing at the Moulin de la
Galette. How'd he get that great light?
I went through the museum,
feeling worse and worse. The Renoirs--and Renoir wasn't even my favorite
painter, for God's sake--made my stomach tie up. I stood for a long time
in front of Danse à la ville and Danse à la campagne, and remembered
what one asshole professor had said to me about what I could do to get
an A. "You must be born again, Mr. Hampton! You must be born again!"
What if I couldn't be born
again? The two pairs of Renoir's dancers--in the city, in the country--showed
me a million things in terms of light and technique and even social commentary,
but something else in them made me feel like crying like a kid. Some people,
somewhere, had been as happy as that.
It didn't matter, because
no one in this century painted like that anymore. I tried to remember,
back in LA, Tony Berlant using nuts and bolts and metal in all his pieces,
doing it for years now. Had Berlant been born again? Born again to what?
I got out of there after a
couple of hours and went into a place for lunch, big chunks of veal in
a red-orange sauce. I paid too much for it. I went back to the hotel,
waited for an hour, went out to a café, and started talking to a
good-looking American guy who worked for a French computer firm. Everyone
did, he said. Work in computers.
"This is the best café
in Paris, absolutely the best. Do you play squash? I make it a point to
play three nights a week. Keep in shape. Have to. Going to the École?
I have a friend who went there. Best education in France. Absolutely the
best. Ever been married? Neither have I. That's the reason I stay over
here. They can't get to me here. Not that there aren't plenty of women.
Plenty of women! How long have you been here? A day! I've been here twelve
years, off and on. Ex-pat for life, I imagine. Are you free for dinner?
Like Greek food? I know an excellent place, right in this neighborhood.
Best place in France. Here's Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre! Over here! Bob,
here, will be going to the École. I told him it's the best..."
"Where are you from?" The
Frenchman wore a bright red crew-neck sweater and a look like he had a
sewer right under his chin.
"California. Los Angeles."
"And you come here? That is
bizarre. Everyone in France wants to go to Los Angeles. It is our Mecca.
We all want to go there."
"More wine, don't you think?"
The American guy seemed pretty happy about things. "Greek food tonight?"
The next morning I woke up
with a hangover and a feeling of doom. This is it, man! You're here, this
is it! Cut the crap, do what you're supposed to.
I crossed the river and headed
toward the Louvre. I knew it was banal or bourgeois, but all I really
wanted to see was The Raft of the Medusa. Then I'd head out to the École,
sign up early if I could, get a newspaper, look for a decent room or maybe
even an apartment.
Down in the museum's basement
I started to sweat. I checked my jacket and backpack and headed up into
wings of art, and more art. Too much of it! Renaissance stuff and pre-Renaissance
stuff, and Saint Stephens and Saint Sebastians, and miles of virgins and
angels. I recognized everything I'd ever studied and saw a thousand things
I'd never seen before. I thought of all the men who'd had something like
the same dream I had, to knock their socks off! To be born again! Would
I ever get hung in a museum? Forget it, I couldn't even get a single show.
I didn't even know what to paint.
I heard myself panting for
breath. I'd just go see The Raft and then head over to the École.
I spent another couple of hours looking for the damn thing, if only to
know for sure that other people sometimes felt like they were drowning,
slipping off, losing it altogether. But The Raft of the Medusa was undergoing
restoration "due to humidity." It stood behind a tall plywood partition.
Just a few desperate arms poking up beyond the plywood. Help! We're drowning
over here!
The École des Beaux-Arts
had very ornate and wonderful gates. They were closed tight and chained
with a padlock. I didn't know why they were closed, but it wasn't going
to matter. I pushed my face against the cold metal bars and looked in
at the gray, rainy courtyard. Who had I been kidding? I went back to the
hotel, dressed for a run, and headed west along the south side of the
Seine, passing churches and buildings and more buildings. Not my home.
Not my city. I got to the Tour Eiffel and turned to cross a bridge across
the Seine. Was this the Trocadéro?-dozens of black guys my age were
selling umbrellas to nobody, shivering in the cold.
I ran back to the Hôtel
du Danube, and went thudding through the lobby. I sat for a long time
on the edge of the bed, then showered, took a nap, got up again at six,
and went to the café where I'd met the American guy.
He'd just come from his psychoanalyst.
"I tell him my troubles in French, it's good for both of us. Do you want
to have dinner? What about Czech food? Something Italian?" "Do you mind
if I ask . . . how old are you?"
"Forty-two, why?"
We ate Italian, "the best
in France." I'd had better on the Santa Monica Promenade. We didn't get
out of the restaurant until after midnight, and walked over to the ėle
de la Cité for ice cream. The city's lights twinkled in the freezing
drizzle. We ordered double cones, pistachio and chocolate, and started
back another way, and there, on a bridge that separated one part of the
island from the other, I checked out maybe a couple of hundred students,
most of them American. They sat right out in the rain, huddled up in duffle
coats, smoking dope, having a great time. None of them looked up. They
were all at least ten years younger than I was. I'd waited way too long.
Who did I think I was kidding?
So that was that. I flew back
to LA. I'd enroll at the Otis Art Institute in September, brush up on
design for a semester or two, get work in advertising, drafting, maybe
special effects. Maybe get an MFA, finally, and teach. Figure out something
to do for the summer. I'd think of something. On the plane back, I asked
myself how I felt. My gone Texan dad gave me the answers: like a sick
flea on a pig's butt. Lower than a toad. Wronger than a three-dollar bill.
Excerpted from The Handyman © Copyright 2009 by Carolyn See. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine. All rights reserved.
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