byPaul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2024 Paul Ben-Itzak
PARIS — If he who has had the chance to live in Paris when he is young, as Hemingway once wrote (in between strangling pigeons en cachet under his shirt at the Jardin de Luxembourg — because Hemingway wasn’t just young in Paris, he was young and poor — so he and Hadley wouldn’t starve to death in their hovel on top of the rue Mouffetard), is lucky, he who is old may be out of luck, if my quixotic Christmas Eve search for adult diapers in my size in my old neighborhood is any indication.
When I say “my size,” I don’t mean that I have a zee-zee that would make Henry Miller — who was already long-gone from Lutèce and sicking Chinese kung-fu servants on Charles Bukowski in Big Sur by the time he was old — salivate at the c’s (in Miller’s misogynist parlance) he could emerveillé (astound) with it (although the post-prostate-reduction- op. likelihood that one can no longer ejaculate and make babies would have saved Miller from the shot-gun marriage threat which terminated his “Quiet Days in Clichy” with a bang), I mean medium-scale and maximum absorption (because since the day I began wearing a catheter to side-step the blockage my “tres gros” — as the laboratory analyst put it after sticking his very candid camera up my ass — prostate has imposed on my urinary track, I’ve been leaking). And yet after scouring nearly two dozen pharmacies (not as difficult, mileage-wise, as it sounds; there’s some kind of rule in French cities that says everyone has the right to a pharmacy within a block and a half’s reach) between the boulevard Barbes and the rue Lafayette I-am-here-but-your-diaper-size isn’t, I discovered that not a nary had culottes matching this simple criteria (whereas the one pharmacy in the Dordogne village of 3,000 people I left two weeks ago, a lot of them albeit old, nearly always had them in stock). And only one offered to try to order the closest approximation. (After an incredulous young male clerk with the traditonal five-o’clock shadow at 11 O’Clock in the morning asked, “Do you really need something that matches all those criteria?” “Unless you want me to leave my traces all over Paris.”)
On the other hand, chancing upon one of my regular sanitaires outside the Hospital St.-Louis on my way back from Belleville towards the Canal after picking up the best dim-sum in Paris at Best Tofu for a dejeuner with my electrician pal Pascal on the rue de Fidelité near my old digs on the rue de Paradis and buying a jar of Ajvar (a mix of eggplant and red peppers) from a fetchingly busty and beautiful young saleswoman (functional constraints haven’t quelled desire) at my Balkan source Globus Star — when it comes to knowing where the public toilets are located in Paris, I’m the guy Leonard Cohen was talking about when he said “I’m your man” — I scored another small triumph over my petit fears, discovering I could deftly open the faucet (the one at the bottom of my pouch) and hit the low target, even with water spurting up all around me as the toilet continued its automatic cleaning.
When you are young, a triumph is climbing that mountain; or, in Miller’s case, mounting those c’s and banging as many of them as you can while blithely ignoring the gift that keeps on giving you’re likely contracting in the process because c’est pas grave, you’re immortal.
When you’re old (will I still be able to love you as you might desire when I’m 64? Will I still be alive?), a triumph is surpassing or simply getting along with the limits your body imposes on you and transcending them. Which, when what the French call that “grande” age manifests itself in the form of a blocked prostate necessitating a catheter en attendant a possible operation (on January 6, they will take the catheter out to see if the meds are working and, if I still can’t piss without it, put it back in a few hours later and there will be blood), means continuing your flaneries even when they require traversing a canal and two arrondissements just to find the best cha su bau or strolling down the not-so-quiet boulevard de Clichy with only a flimsy transparent Paris monument decorated I-am-a-tourist-rob-me-now umbrella shielding you from the light drizzle in search of masa for the tortilla press your friend from Cali has left you so you can cook up a batch for your Mexican Bellevillois artist-friend, and tant-pis (too bad) if you can’t keep the catheter straight and it scratches the urethra and fills the tubes with blood. Because c’est pas grave. It’s no big deal.
Small victories.
Published by danceblogger
Contact Paul Ben-Itzak at artsvoyager@gmail.com. Paul Ben-Itzak was educated at San Francisco's Mission High School, the San Francisco Center for Theater Training, and Princeton University, where he studied with Robert Fagles, Joyce Carol Oates, Ellen Chances, and Lucinda Franks. Also at Princeton, he was founding managing editor of the Nassau Weekly and began contributing to the New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, Atlantic City Press, and many others, later writing for the Arts & Liesure section of the Times. As a San Francisco-based correspondent for Reuters, he was one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS crisis, also covering the arts, the tech sector, and the financial markets. In 1998, he co-founded the leading international arts journal The Dance Insider & Arts Voyager (http://www.danceinsider.com ) and, later, Art Investment News (http://www.artinvestmentnews.com). Paul has also worked as a DJ, children's theater teacher and playwright, and made his debut as an actor on the New York stage in 2011, playing Weston in Sam Shepard's "Curse of the Starving Class." To date, Paul has translated the sketches of Boris Vian, reviews of theater performances , French tourism sites, and research proposals and articles from CNRS and other researchers. His editing work includes dissertation level papers.View all posts by danceblogger
