The Weekly Screed (#797)

A philosophic interlude at Le Fumoir
by David Benjamin

“Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains.”
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

PARIS — Something about this joint gets me to over-thinking. Maybe it’s the art on the walls. My favorite is a painting of two gauzy and anorexic art-deco women lunching with an adult male rhinoceros — both girls, of course, blithely oblivious to the monster’s rhinocity.

Partly, it’s the wait staff. They’re equally divided between male and female,  governed by a dress code firmly restricted to black and white. But the waitresses arrest the eye. Invariably brunette and suggestive of Asia, each wears a scoop-neck, skin-tight, long-waisted white leotard top that caresses her every curve and presents a torso, in profile, that would have plunged Rodin into his sketchbook.

They tempt me with the heresy that, perhaps, for a certain period of youth — fast-declining after 30 years — one’s physical self really does outweigh, as the engine of social life and general esteem, the “content of one’s character.” You have a lifetime to be wise and good, but barely a moment to be beautiful.

Naturally, I resist this sort of decline-of-Rome philosophy. But here at Le Fumoir, one of the smartest, trendiest, hippest saloons in all of Paris — where Hotlips and I are at least a decade older than the next most ancient patron — beauteous youth is a prevailing ethos. And, for all their glint, hurrah and effervescence, Jesus! They all seem to be working so hard. I think of Sisyphus.

When I was their age — these brazen young sophisticates in perfect clothes with hair that cost, what?, a hundred euros, or twice that much? — I would’ve been afraid to venture through the doors. I was too rustic, too rumpled, too reserved. I was D’Artagnan without the chutzpah. Even if I understood French (but they all speak English! This is Paris!), I would have been bewildered and intimidated by the intensity of the unspoken rivalry here, the showing off, the forced hilarity, the rubbernecking, the comparing, interjecting, interrupting and the cordial but jugular one-upping.

Now, I’m way too old for this scene. I’m invisible to them. A non-betting observer at a genteel cockfight, I wouldn’t, couldn’t compete. I enjoy the tableau, its noise and colors, the Christmas lights, the friendly ferocity of tipsy hipsters, the flash of spurs and the sylphlike waitresses shimmering from able to bar and back again.

But I’m on the outside of this, looking in — cool in my uncoolness. I think, ah, life is easy when you don’t give a shit anymore.

Okay, a cynical reverie — shattered suddenly by a clash of voices, feminine both. They’re arguing, or maybe just sharing a common grievance. It’s all French and fast, and I’m glad I catch only the odd English cognate — “weekend,” “fou!,” “futbol”. “Football?” They must be talking about men. But with such conviction that I’m a little envious, even at the futile circularity of the conversation. Camus said, “… the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth…”

Pointless though their dialog probably is, I feel, in my chill dismissal of all this agita, intimations of my own mortality. It would be nice to have such glimmer in my eye, bounce in my step, lead in my pencil. Nice if I could clench an unblemished fist and pound the table, toppling my glass and spilling, in my pique over the iniquity of the other gender, five dollars of cote du rhone village.

But I also think, my God, what a crap shoot it was (I remember) to be that young and so absolutely promising. How easy for one mishap, misstep, misjudgment to queer it all. So many small things can trigger a spiral that can’t be unwound — a dead parent, a family battle, a failed test, a forgotten interview after a drunken night, a crazy girlfriend or a violent, vindictive boyfriend, a sudden decision to join the army, or not to join the army, a bar fight, an insidious addiction, an auto-immune disease, the wrong turn up a dark road, a few ill-chosen words to a thug, or to a cop, an intemperate sentence written and sent that can’t be brought back. A flash of impulse that limns a lifetime.

Youth seems impregnable here, but — watching it crow its defiance and strut its hour — I ponder how easy to cut it short, or how tragic to prolong it beyond its time, with paint and chemistry, with denial and delusion. I think of Norma Desmond.

Le Fumoir is two minutes from the Seine. With a view of the Louvre, it’s situated scenically beside the ancient church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, first built in the 7th century, rebuilt for good 800 years later. The delicately Gothic steeple is bathed in a flattering electric glow unimaginable by the long-dead workmen who stacked its stones in God’s direction. All these sublime structures of Paris limestone are older than anyone in this saloon — or the saloon itself — will ever be. I’ve gone from vaguely envying my fellow drinkers here, their vitality and noise, their insouciance and promise, to feeling their fleetingness and pathos. I see in them my own disappointments and in the still unfulfilled hungers that stretch all the way back to childhood. I see in them my dogged struggle to yet prevail in this dubious career of scrawling words on paper (or, more pathetically, projecting them into the cybervoid) while hoping to Christ that someone — anyone — will pause a moment to read me, read me please…

… just as I, a moment ago, re-read Camus.

Life, I revise myself, is over when you don’t give a shit anymore.