Skip to main content

Over and Under


Back in the Paris Métro, I don't remember which station. I was with a couple of friends, G. and (I think) N., one male and one female, both of them participants in my study-abroad program. We were on a cultural excursion that day, waiting to the side of the ticket booth for the entire group to assemble before continuing on toward the platform. I remember it was a very cold day. All the more reason for us to take notice of the two men (Scots, we assumed) in their kilts on the other side of the entry/exit barriers. None of us, not even the most feminine girls, could imagine wearing a skirt on a day that cold—at least not without tights, which the Scots certainly did not have on. They were trying to exit, but were having some difficulty. We watched them attempt repeatedly to get past the barrier without success. Was it N. who asked whether the rumors were true? It was said that men in kilts wore nothing underneath. In a flash, it was decided: the men shrugged and vaulted over the barriers. Over they went, and up flew the kilts; underneath, we witnessed, not a stitch. Flying kilts, flapping genitals—not exactly how you might imagine being flashed in the Paris Métro, but certainly memorable. The sudden skin show resulted ever after in a private greeting between the three of us: never again could G., N., or I see each other without waving our hands in a flourish from the waist, mimicking the pleated plaid material traveling on its revealing updraft.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tap Root Manuscript

Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
7 comments
Read more

Keith Jarrett, Carnegie Hall

It was only last night, but already it rates among my most powerful memories—one I know will reverberate down time's lonely corridors, enduring where the daily slush of logistical life (thankfully) does not. Yesterday contained plenty of logistical craziness, but by 8:00 PM I was seated in the last row of the dress circle at Carnegie Hall next to my father, looking down on a stage empty but for a single piano, a bench, and a collection of microphones wired for the live recording of Keith Jarrett's solo improvisational performance. I have always loved these charged moments of anticipation before a performance, and I expected this concert to be something special—that much more so because the tickets came through a friend of a very dear friend in California, a last-minute opportunity to be seized, and because a love of Keith Jarrett was transmitted to me by my father, and this was a great way to thank him for bringing awareness of this man's music into my life. But this is all...
12 comments
Read more

S.A.R.T.

It's late at night, and you're alone in your apartment, tired but on high alert, unable to sleep. In the dark, you pray. Despite the fact that at this time in your life you would never describe yourself as a "religious" person, it is definitely a true prayer, not the bargaining offer of an exchange ( I'll reform, if only . . . ); you are not the one in need. You are the one whose job it is to help those in crisis, and although you signed up for this gig, you wish desperately that your job didn't exist, wasn't needed—not tonight, not anytime. Not while you are the volunteer on call, committed to driving at whatever hour of the night to whatever hospital emergency room phones in a case of sexual assault. Given that a possible career in criminal law was what brought me to St. Louis, it's easy to see how I found my way to S.A.R.T., the city's Sexual Assault Response Team. The program was (still is) based out of the Metro St. Louis Y.W.C.A. For voluntee...
6 comments
Read more