I live in a chambre de bonne next to Sorbonne University, in Paris. A chambre de bonne is a make shift room, at the top of buildings and it’s where the help used to sleep back when people kept servants. My room is about half the size of the smallest image I have seen on the internet. There is a dorm room fridge, a sink and a toilet. My toilet is electronic, so when I flush, it stalls for about 7 seconds before loudly announcing it’s function to anyone within earshot, which is everyone because my walls are as thin as the servants who lived here used to be. As if a frightening noise weren’t enough, it’s process is different from a traditional toilet that flushes into a sewer. I am not entirely sure about the exact logistics, but when you flush, it grinds whatever you did into everything else that’s ever been done. It doesn’t matter if you pee, poop or vomit, you will smell a lifetime's evidence of all these things. It’s like a little movie I would call “Shaw-Stank” Redemption, without the ass rape (although, the movie's not over yet). It’s basically a movie that goes on for 11 months and is set in the sewer Tim Robbin's character had to crawl out of, in the original movie, to know freedom (myself).
My toilet is right under my window, which is helpful to flush out the flush smell, depending on the temperature outside. My window faces into a bunch of other windows, of wealthier homes, which I have only recently discovered, has made me quite a spectacle to some old man’s grandsons. I got a formally written complaint asking me to get some curtains. I thought I was being discreet, but assumptions really do make an ass out of... and visible to obtrusive teenage boys. I avoided hanging blinds because my window is slanted with the roof, that tops my tiny little space. A hung curtain cuts off half of my room, unless I pin it and then the air flow is obstructed making bathroom time noxious, but hey, I’m in Paris and in my own, imaginary movie!
Like I said, the walls are thin (or athletic by today’s standards) and my other neighbors, who share my walls/ are poor, are also Asian- Vietnamese- I think... I’ve never been good with that sort of thing, but wanted to convey that I know a specific country over there. My neighbor is up late and when his girlfriend comes over at the end of her restaurant shift (I assume at a Chinese place),they catch up on their day- Of course- they haven’t seen each other all day! It is ridiculously loud and bounces out their open window, and off of the glass of the horny French kids and every other spectator’s window who can’t smell my toilet, but know it’s there. I wonder why their talking hasn’t gotten a complaint and my sloppily discreet wardrobe changes have. I thought about what complaining about them would sound like and I'm pretty sure it would sound racist. The thing about their native tongue, is that it’s a tonal language, so me making a noise complaint is like a hate crime. I hate that I have to wake up at 6 in the morning and they want to communicate. However, if I did voice a complaint, it would be a lot like being in America and complaining about my Mexican neighbors not speaking English to their 7 kids. “It’s really awful because I hear them and then I think it’s early May (Cinco de Mayo).” So I have ear plugs and one of those plants that dances when it hears noise, super hypnotic.
Poor Asians, so easy to pick on linguistically. My French friend and I were at a grocery store here and it was after the cut off time the store would sell alcohol. We got to the counter after some disgruntled party people, frustrated they couldn’t get some more beer into their expanding guts. I decided it would be fun to fuck with an already disgruntled clerk. We put our stuff on the counter and I leaned on the counter with the kind of swagger a handsome oil tycoon has in the movies when he approaches a cheap blonde at a bar. In French I say to the clerk “good evening, this [signaling the food] and [pausing for affect] one bottle of Smirnoff.” He humorlessly explains that they aren’t selling alcohol at this time, to which I throw my hands up in mock defensiveness, then respond in French “okay, okay [pausing again, for the same reasons] TWO bottles of Smirnoff.” He hears me and thinks that I am just a stupid person who can’t understand what he’s saying, but I clearly need booze, so he let’s me in on a little racist secret. In a French/ English combo he explains that there is a shop on the corner that sells alcohol late, then he clarifies (in French) “a Chinese man," as he says this, he takes his fingers and pulls his eyes apart. I know that he was just frustrated with my inability to understand, so instinctively did what he could to survive the communication jungle we were now hacking through. To let him know I clearly understood, I said “CHINESE!” and put my hands together over my head, making a triangle of my arms, mimicking a Chinese rice hat and started saying “ah ah ah ah thank you very much,” in the most offensively racist Chinese accent I could muster. My friend and I had a good laugh and were off with our food. We weren’t going to buy alcohol anyway, which is fine, because I wasn’t home and that’s the only place I would NEED to drink anyway.
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