Author’s Note: Point Loma is back! He added this note of explanation for his absence: “For all of my fans out there (okay, both of you, and you know who you are you guilty bastards), I must apologize for my extended absence from the Socotra sagas. This is in not entirely sloth on my part, but rather an outcome of my decision to accept full –time employment. After seven years of consultancy and living the dream and nightmares of intermittent contractor good deals, exciting wins and sometimes devastating losses, I am now working my ass off full-time trying to put in a 40-hour work week so I can insure a more solid future for my dependents. The research and writing demands of this decision have sort of precluded doing anything freelance of late. However, after six months of learning and getting comfortable, I feel I have mastered the new normal to the point that I can now rejoin the effort to bring experience and adventures back to the fore.
Now, let’s get to the Halloween story.”
It was Fall of 1987. I was well into my fourth year of a two-year tour at HQ USEUCOM in the J-2. I loved living in Europe on the government’s dime (caveat – I don’t think I would do that now given the current situation). For reasons that I concocted and ascertained from the system cost averse), I was able to stay way beyond my time for several reasons. One of them was that I had a great penthouse apartment – the two top floors of a building in Böblingen, overlooking the picturesque old town of Sindelfingen and the Mercedes Benz factory on one side, and the five-hundred year old Böblinger Wald state forest on the other. It had spectacular views from the two balconies and top deck. There were five of us 1630/Special-Duty, Intelligence Junior Officers at EUCOM, and I had inherited the apartment from Rich (for people who know him – he is a doppelganger for Christopher Walken) back in 1984. The un-written rule we had was that such a great place had to remain in the hands of a single Naval Intelligence officer, and we would choose from the new guys when we were leaving the one who was worthy enough to get such a good deal. Rich got the place from Jim, the first to have the lease, Rich chose me, and after sizing up the candidates, I chose KJ. The other reason that I over-stayed my two-year tour was that I was having an f-ing good time, and change is hard. But paybacks do have a way of rearing their ugly heads – so I chose to stay in Europe.
I had orders to Rota, Spain in March of 1988, and KJ moved in to occupy the second bedroom in late-September 1987. Among other vices such as alcohol and women, KJ and I shared a love for music and literature, as well as vice. We both played the piano and he wrote bad poetry. Like me, KJ was an aficionado of Paris, and he had a former classmate from Georgetown (Jeannie – aka Bowleroni) who invited us to a Halloween party in Paris, which in that year was a Saturday night. We debated about the best way to get there and he offered to drive us over in his Mazda RX-7 (the train would have taken us 12 hours). So, we mounted up early on that Friday morning, fortified by a case of beer, and headed west, an eight-hour drive. We drove up to and through the border of the Sudetenland, and merged onto the AutoRoute to Paris. We listened to, and dissected, a lot of music on the way, slamming in the various CDs that we had for the trip. About 30 minutes outside of Paris, we put in Doors.
And as the sun was setting on an otherwise clear day, LA Woman popped up, just as the sun was setting:
Well, I just got into town about an hour ago
Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
Laid a little girl in her Hollywood bungalow
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light
Or just another lost angel, city of night
City of night, city of night, city of night, woah, c’mon
L.A. woman, L.A. woman
We still had half a case of beer left and a half pack of cigarettes. We were wearing sunglasses.
Hit it.
Note: we erroneously call them “The Doors” when Jim Morrison said that this was wrong. He said the name of the band was simply “Doors” as in doors to reality, or alternatives thereof…
Somehow, we made our way into town and using a tourist map of all things (remember doing this before there was such a thing as Google Maps or even a basic cell phone?) we found her apartment over on the Left Bank near the Palais de Justice. Even more miraculous was that we found an open parking space. After pressing the buzzer at the outer building lobby, Bowleroni met us at the door and led us on the long march down the hall to her studio apartment – yes, we were sleeping on the floor but, we were not there to sleep. We decamped the bags and headed back out into the night to find music and food and drink – okay, in reverse order. At one point, we were in some basement club over by the Moulin Rouge watching a live beat poetry show, and then wound up at the le Blue Note listening to a fantastic jazz saxophonist. Since KJ and I were also both Hemingway fans, we finished up the night at Harry’s New York at “sank roo danoo.”
Harry’s New York, where you can get any mixed drink imaginable.
We returned to Bowleroni’s after negotiating a few Paris Metro stations that I had never seen before, and crashed on the futons that she had procured for our visit. The next morning, we found a nearby boulangerie for breakfast, and enjoyed a fine fare of French coffee, croissants, and Gauloises. After showers, we decamped to the Musee d’Orsay (no lines in 1987) to view the Impressionist Masters (I had a soundtrack of deBussy playing in my mind), and then wandered up to the big flea market at les Puces de Saint-Quen to find some costumes for tonight’s Halloween party. We were aiming at decking ourselves out as the Blues Brothers, and for about 100 francs apiece, we found dark suits, white shirts, dark ties, and hats – to do just that. Upon return, we dumped our booty at Bowleroni’s, and wandered around the Left Bank on a typical grey, slightly foggy day, and drank our way towards the evening event.
Around 1900 or so, we donned our fine costume attire – KJ as Jake and moi as Elwood (since I was taller), and made our way to the big event. After a short Metro and taxi ride across the Seine, we arrived at the correct apartment building somewhere in the northwest of Paris, it looming ominous and dark in the gloom. We ascended to the top floor and rang the buzzer to enter into what was a large room, filled with guests decked out in various attire, of a wide range of races and nationalities. Bowleroni’s boyfriend (another Georgetown classmate whom she had followed to Paris) was a drummer in a Eurotrash band, and his friends were definitely of that ilk. KJ was a romantic, with the ideal of this trip being that he would find and marry a French girl and become an ex-pat. Well, she appeared – a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who was dressed as a snake, as in the Garden of Eden. Her name was Laurence and once I saw those two connect, I knew it was over for him – he was a goner. To this day, they are happily married and living in Paris.
There were other costumes of note; one guy who showed up naked wrapped in bubble wrap and balloons is still a vision that I can’t rid myself of.
We drew not a little attention as the Blues Brothers but absent a wingman who was absorbed in achieving a dream, I wandered through the party, getting a little bored. Ultimately, I was urged to go into one of the bedrooms where a gal was doing Tarot; my new-found friends urged me to get my “reading.” Lacking a little bit of fortitude at this point and being my usual skeptical self, I re-fortified myself with a fresh drink, cleared my mind, and went in, not sure of what I would find.
Upon entering the room and gazing upon my soon to be muse, I immediately had the Eagles song Witchy Woman ignite in my mind:
“Raven hair and ruby lips
Sparks fly from her finger tips
Echoed voices in the night
She’s a restless spirit on an endless flight
Wooo hooo witchy woman see how
High she flies
Woo hoo witchy woman she got
The moon in her eye”
She was a slinky American ex-pat, obviously dressed as a witch (to include the pointy hat), and Katy was her name. I was struck, and damned sure that I wanted to have sex with her, now. She was doing a reading and there were a lot of onlookers. I waited my turn. The more I watched, the hotter she got. Finally, it was my turn. I sat down on the floor opposite of her, as she shuffled the deck, asked my name, gave me a very appraising look that thrilled my gonads, and started to lay out the cards.
We made a lot of eye contact and I was doing my best to impress her with my innate manliness and stroke her desire for being a worthy mate to end her night. I thought I was doing good as she ran through the cards and then, it came down to the denouement.
As the crowd looked on, breathlessly, and the tension and emotion soared, Katy turned over the final card and delivered the verdict. I was hoping for a Bond moment such as in “Live in Let Die” and bedding my Jane Seymour look-alike but that was not to be. With much drama, she turned over the final card:
The Nine of Cups, aka “The Glutton.”
I was hoping for “The Lovers” to make my dreams come true but, alas, I was rewarded with the Nine of Cups – “The Glutton.”
It was more than humiliating, and my.ego.was.deflated.
I knew then that the party was over at least for me at this point, and any carnal dreams of Katy the Witch were just that. So, I had to wait the rest of it out and KJ to collect an address and phone number before we headed back to Bowleroni’s. At this point, you would think that the story was over, but wait, there’s more!
The next morning was All Saint’s Day, and on a Sunday to boot. Whatever front that had given us drizzle the night before had passed, and that Fall day dawned clear and cool. After another French coffee, pastry, and cigarette breakfast, we took the Metro north to la cimetiѐre du pѐre lachaise, where we were going to make a pilgrimage to Jim Morrison’s grave – fitting, ne c’est pas? Pere Lachaise is truly a city of the dead, with the crypts and mausoleums looking like mini condos there, and gorgeous in the backwash of the burnt red, yellow and orange autumn leaves still hanging on the waning greenery of the trees. As we entered, we saw small signs on metal stakes stationed periodically with arrows pointing the way to “Jim.” We made our way to see “Jim” and were greeted by the sickly sweet smell of marijuana, shared amidst a small group of Doors fans and onlookers. The mausoleums surrounding “Jim” were covered with graffiti, the most memorable of the inscriptions being “Jim, you are in deep shit now.”
Jim Morrison, December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971, Requiescat in pace
Reportedly, the French authorities have to routinely steam-clean the gravesite and nearby tombs of the accumulated graffiti every few years.
After paying our respects for a few moments, we toured a few of the more memorable gravesites on the way back. KJ and I returned to Bowleroni’s, mounted up his trusty MX-7 steed, and took the long, melancholy and reflective drive back to Stuttgart.
Copyright 2016 Point Loma
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