Les Bains Douches - Paris August 17, 1994 - Journal

Les Bains Douches Paris August

Here's a poem from a 1994 journal Les Bains Douches Paris August 17, 1994

The clock over the stairs
Les Bains-Douches
Always Three to Midnight
The music from the dance floor
From DJ Albert
So what - Miles Davis trumpet ballad___
Upstairs in the dining room
A trio of St. Tropez blondes at a table
Blonde bronzed seeking rich men
Or young boys
I'm neither__
I sit at the bar
Alone
An old junkie friend sits
Whines a tale of need
In broken English
In my good ear___
Me
Wondering what I'm doing here
An easy answer
Candida left me
For an Italian agent
Why am I here?
I think
Maybe she'll come here__
Idiot___
I wait and wait and wait___
The blonde bartende from Toulouse
Corinne
Tres mignon, gives me drinks
Free drinks
Normally 120 new francs
$22 US
Two ice cubes
Corinne makes mine
Doubles
Plein des glacons
Her smile
So sweet
I can read her mind
I wish I could grant her wish
All I have to say is yes___
Better not
No one wants to cure a broken heart
I get up to go
My hotel in le Marais
Rue des Ecouffes
Not far away___
In walks Suzi
The Happiest Girl in Town
A friend
From last year
Swiss
Ex-model
Courtesan a les tres riches
Greyhound thin
Lips sweetest cherries__
Unseen
A mole high on her upper thigh
Her smile
An allure of lust
To any man willing to be a victim___
She sees me
I see her
Suzi kisses my cheeks
Not my lips
I tell her, "You haven't changed."
Her laugh
Mocking
"I hear that all the time. Even from the mirror."
About to ask
Come back to my hotel
In the Marais
Reading my mind
She says, "Je suis lesbian maintenant."
And joins the blonde St. Tropez trio___
It's late
It was late 2 hours ago
Corrine sad to see me go
I leave the Bains-Douches
Under the clock
Always three to midnight
My feet weak from drink
Walking into the night
Singing the old Jaynettes song
"Saddest thing in the whole wide world to see your baby with another girl."
But Suzi was never my girl
Neither was Candida.
Alone
Walking
To a hotel in Le Marais
To sleep alone___
Sleep
No dreams
Thankfully in the morning
A knock in the door
"Entrez."
Not Suzi
Mdme. Gruntuch
The owner of le Hotel Des Ecouffes
She spent the entire Nazi occupation
In the sous-sol
Four years
This morning
Le petit-dejuener
Baguette and cafe
Mdme. Gruntuch
A smile
I am not alone
Pas de tout Seul
Je suis
Avec Madame
Ah, Paris___

A Day Far Removed From Yesterday for sale

That morning a jet roared above the East Village. I opened my eyes. Lots of planes and helicopters flew over Manhattan. None of them ever this low or fast or loud. Thirty seconds later my apartment windows shook with a muffled thud that sounded more a boom than a crash. The children in the alley day-care center screamed in the playground. They was no quiet in any of them and I dressed for breakfast at the Veselka diner on 2nd Avenue. The telephone rang in the living room. It could only be my Thai ex-girlfriend wanting money. Mem didn’t deserve a single baht after leaving me for a young Italian tourist and an angry curse boiling in my head was better left unsaid and I left the apartment without answering the phone. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature was ideal for September. The trees on East 10th Street were tinged by hues of red and yellow. Autumn was less than two weeks away. My bank account had been sapped by six months in Thailand, but I wasn’t too worried about money, since last week Manny, my boss had offered my old job at the diamond exchange. Everything would work out for the best and I walked toward 1st Avenue. At the corner my downstairs neighbor, Jim, ran up and sputtered, “A plane crashed into the Trade Tower!”

“You’re kidding!” “No, you can see the smoke from First Avenue!” Jim pointed to people in the middle of 1st Avenue staring downtown. “In World War II a bomber had slammed into the Empire State Building.” “During a storm. Not on a day like today.”

The clear sky was so blue that New York could have been atop the highest peak of heaven. My neighbor said, “I’m going to the roof.”

“I’ll meet you in a minute.”

We bounded up the stairs two at a time and I ran into my apartment, grabbing my binoculars before climbing another four flights to the roof. The fire door was open and on the roof several neighbors gaped south with good reason. Flames gushed from the shattered northern skyscraper of the World Trade Towers and an apocalyptic plume of smoke trailed east over Wall Street. TV helicopters fluttered around the stricken building and all over Lower Manhattan sirens whined from fire engines, police cars, and EMS vans. The view made no sense.

9/11 took us by surprise and shock the world. Two planes striking skyscrapers in New York.

Amazing and horrifying.

I stood on my roof in the East Village and saw the people jumping. I saw the approach of the second plane and heard the collective groans from the throats of thousands watching the horror.

I will never forget that day and this small book contains the truth and lies about that day.

And the days and years that have followed 9/11

To purchase A DAY FAR REMOVE FROM NORMAL for $12US including shipping, please go to venmo @Peter-Smith-18

The landfill from the World Trade Center excavation 1978.

#17 By Peter Nolan Smith For Sale

In April of 1976 I drove a stolen car from Boston to New York. The Olds 88 wasn’t really stolen, since a Back Bay lawyer paid $300 for the disappearance of gas-guzzler.

Several hours later I abandoned the Detroit clunker by the Christopher Street pier after midnight. I threw the plates into the Hudson and left the keys in the ignition, hoping for joy riders to drive off with the vehicle. On my three previous trips to vanish a car, I went up to the 42nd Street Bus terminal and caught a bus back to Boston. This time was different.

I was in love with an artist from North Carolina. Ro said I looked like a fallen angel on her candle-lit bed. She had to be in love too. I walked to the restaurant at which she worked on Christopher Street. The owner said she had quit.

I rode the subway to Brooklyn Heights and walked to 55 Remsen street. She wasn’t there and her roommate explained that earlier in the day the painter had caught a flight to Paris. She had accepted a grant to study art at the Sorbonne. Ro had not left a forwarding address. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going back to my teaching job at South Boston High School.

From then on I slept at a friend’s apartment on Park Slope. The next day I got a job at Serendipity 3 as a busboy. I moved out of Brooklyn after discovering James Spicer was stealing my tip money. I rented a SRO room on West 10th Street and 5th Avenue. A bed and four walls cost $44/week. I was making about $200 at the restaurant.

After work I took the subway from 60th and Lex to the Astor Place. Usually too wound up to fall asleep I killed a few hours drinking a dive bars before heading back to my miserable room. I wasn’t making any friends fast. One wintry night in 1977 I stumbled home from a derelict bar at the corner of the Bowery and Houston. The icy wind slashed through my thin clothing and I was about to hail a taxi to my SRO tenement on 11th Street, when the thump of a frantic bass emanated from a white stucco building. The accompanying music was rock and roll at its purest and I pushed open the bar’s heavy wooden door.

The leather-jacketed quartet on the stage covered the 45rpm version of The Rivieras’ CALIFORNIA SUN. The audience heave up and down, as if the floor pulsated in time to the 3-chord progression. I stepped forward to join the frenzy.

A huge hand blocked my way.

“$5.” The monstrous bouncer wore a yellow construction hat.

“Who are they?” I handed over the fiver.

“The Ramones. They play punk,” answered the big man.

Everyone in the bar wore leather jackets and the girls had colored hair. CALIFORNIA SUN was replaced by a fast-moving song with a chorus of I WANNA BE SEDATED. I rushed up to the front of the crowd. By the end of the band’s set I was hooked to the music and like that I became a punk.

I have been making small paperback books of the hundreds of short stories I have written over the last forty years. To purchase #17 By Peter Nolan Smith, a tale of tennis featuring Lizzie Mercier-Descloux, Richard Hell, and the master of nobodies the #17 American tennis player in Perpignan 1982, please go venmo @Peter-Smith-18. The cost for a signed copy is $12. As always famous for never.