A Dyke, A Broad

Ok, so you are basically cooking pasta in broth, (which by itself is a comfort food for Italian kids). Then you throw in some beans, a bit of something tomatoey, and a ton of parmesan. It’s a complete meal if you add greens like spinach or something. I never actually measure anything, but this should be close.

Hello from Paris, In a just-before Christmas miracle, an elegant grey heron visited the Aretha Franklin park, one of my neighborhood hangouts. I saw her two days in a row and she seemed to be taking up residence, but then disappeared after eating most of the goldfish in the goldfish pond. Still, a heron. Here. On the outskirts of East Paris. A stone’s throw from the encircling highway. Before her the most exciting things in the park were the little moorhens that make a sound like a dog’s squeaky toy.

Well, it’s 2025. I spent the last afternoon of the old year eating bacon-flavored bugles and listening to Bluegrass while I peddled away on an antique stationary bike which roared like a lion with every rotation of the crank. In the evening was a glass of champagne and a plate of puff pastry appetizer things from Picard which we ate while watching a concert broadcast from Berlin.

Well, at least we don’t have to worry about a coup at the beginning of January. Trump won fair and square. When I saw the results I felt like puking, flashed back to the Javits Center in 2016 when an excited chattering crowd in Pussy Grabs Back tee-shirts or white pantsuits gradually fell silent.

Hello from Paris! I’m doing my best to ignore the U.S. election but unfortunately have a terrified creature clawing away at my stomach which sometimes escapes at 4 a.m. and insists I stare wide-eyed at the latest polls which I don’t even believe in given that the things were quite insistent that Hillary Clinton was gonna hand his hat to Trump back in — 2016, was it? Still, last week a friend came over and we peeked at CNN.

Hello from Paris, Everybody has things they don’t want to think about, or not too closely. I asked my grandmother once about the Civil War and where our family stood. I’d expected an earnest discussion about how brother fought brother in the Mason-Dixon line state of Kentucky. Instead I got a funny story about how, when her uncles saw the recruiters from either side coming, they took to their heels and fled. The punchline? That the slowest ended up with a round of buckshot in his butt.

Hello from Paris, Today the bang and flash of afternoon thunderstorms are supposed to end the September heatwave which arrived unexpectedly after a summer so chilly and wet we had to put a duvet back on the bed. I love weather, marvel at how buckets of water sometimes fall out of the sky with no faucet in sight. Or how air, which is usually so invisible, so tranquil, can transform itself into wind then bluster down our concrete canyons forcing us to bend and tremble and submit to its force.

Hello from Paris! Today’s the first day of August, and I’m exhausted from the year, so I thought I’d make like a Parisian and close up shop until September, turning off subscriptions so Substack doesn’t charge you, even if I’ll probably still send along the occasional new chapter of B-Ville so you can keep the thread. Today’s also my naturalization interview. I hope it works out. It reminds me of getting married.

Welcome to B-Ville, a dyke noir novel in progress set in a slightly dystopian, post-plague France where a serial killer forces the flatfoot, Dik, to navigate between the power-sharing neo-Katar functionaries and far left Green Bloc. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4. Durand was certain it wasn’t a mugger or rapist, but not me. Not yet. I wondered why he was so sure. I texted Inés, asked her to run a background check on a David Durand, mid-forties, adding his address and phone number.

Hello from Paris! So… a while ago I signed up with the unemployment office. It was partly in the vain hope of finding a job. (There are plenty of jobs in digital media in English, but most demand a “digital native” “early” in their career, which translates to a 24 year old willing to work for minimum wage.) Mostly though, I wanted to move to some other field and pôle emploi offers free courses. When I’m being realistic I look at the classes that are purely tech.