Paul Festa's Post-Gay Agenda: Paris Day 14 - separated at birth edition

The City Hall wedding Paul remembers...and the one he doesn't.

Laser HQ in the Marais. I can't quite figure out what these people do. They must be consultants.

The wages of sin aren’t death, they just feel like it. Tonight at 7PM I just couldn’t bear being awake anymore and a tall mug of Lady Grey tea did nothing to alleviate the pain. So I put myself down for a nap and got up five hours later. Like another local party animal, je ne regrette rien—it was a planetary celebration and worth a disruption in my sleep and work schedule. It’s also a potent reminder of how much time and energy I get back when I don’t party.

I only got half my six hours of writing done today but I reached a significant milestone in getting through the last of that onerous box of notes on paper. There are still more notes to absorb on the computer - I just discovered an infestation nested in the second-draft Word comments. But it feels good to be done with that box, and to have started a new document, the outline, which will replace the 4x6 cards I worked from last time. I am addicted to process - when I think of how much pleasure it gives me I feel like the world's biggest geek. But that is not a new feeling.

After three hours' work on the novel, another good contribution to Creation du Monde, and lunch, I struck out in search of pants. The jeans I wore to Paris had an incipient hole in the crotch, and that bike I bought in Montmartre turned it into serious problem with respect to both fashion and drafts. Paris is mostly useless for clothing men in my income bracket, and after a week of running around with too much ventilation I had made peace with the prospect of spending a chunk of my stipend at either the Levi store or American Apparel - bitter ironies both for a California boy. Fortunately, en route to American Apparel I stumbled across this place - Momo Le Moins Cher at 31 Blvd. Magenta - which had hundreds of pairs of Levis in pretty great shape and some really filthy beaded and sequined drag numbers that I could not resist for Beltane. Before walking out of there with four items, I spent a half hour chatting with the proprietor, an African from near Senegal named Bou Bou, and that will have to pass for my French practice for the day.