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Bretigny-sur-Orge, a commune in the southern suburbs some sixteen miles south of the city centre, remaining there until the following May.
I feel sure that not too long after arriving in Bretigny I became afflicted by a certain sense of self-disillusion, although perhaps not yet, at least not consciously, but I was aware of a new darkness spreading itself over my mind, and I didn't like what was happening to me. It was the start of my drinking. At the same time I affected an attitude of strutting self-confidence, not that this was new. Some of the Lycee kids said I was like Aldo la Classe a comic character created by the actor Aldo Maccione. I got on fantastically well with the kids, but their unbridled affection made me feel humble; I didn't feel up to it. It was not like me to be so mortified by myself. There seems little doubt to me today that that my conscience was starting to become seared by '83 and so scream out in protest and pain

I recently attempted to encapsulate the totality of my Parisian experience with "My Paris Begins" featured below, and its cast of characters includes a slim pretty white girl who wasn't what she seemed, her smouldering black beau, a madman or derelict who took exception to my appearance, and my close friends Marie, Jane, Judy, Igor, Andrea, David, Dom, Astrid, Sandra, Rory...and Anna-Justine.

My Paris Begins

...my paris begins with those early days as a conscious flneur i recall the couple seated opposite me on the metro when i was still innocent of its labyrinthine complexity slim pretty white girl clad head to toe in denim smiling wistfully while her muscular black beau stared through me with fathomless orbs and one of them spoke almost in a whisper "qu'est-ce-que t'en pense" and it dawned on me yes the slender young parisienne with the distant desirous eyes was no less male than me dismal movies in the forum des halles and beyond being screamed at in pigalle and then howled at again by some kind of madman or derelict who told me to go to the bois de boulogne to meet what he saw as my destiny menaced by a sinister skinhead for trying on marie's wide-brimmed hat and then making my way alone to my room in the insanely driving rain getting soused in les halles with jane who'd just seen dillon in rusty james and was walking in a daze jane again with judy at the cave de la huchette jazz cellar the cafe de flore with igor who asked for a menu for me and then disappeared back to bretigny cash squandered on a gold tootbrush two tone shoes from close by to the place d'italie portrait sketched at the place de tertre paperback books by symbolist poets such as villiers de l'isle adam but second hand volumes by trakl and ernest deleve and a leather jacket from the marche de puces of the porte de clignancourt wandering the city alone or with andrea or igor or david or dom or astrid and sandra i still miss losing rory's address scrawled on a page of musset's confessions d'un enfant du siecle walking the length and breadth of the rue st denis what a city as anna-justine once breathlessly wrote me...

Learn more about this author, Carl Halling.
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