As I knelt along Rue Saint-Denis in Paris, a woman short, round and worn, yelled at me in French. She was waving me away. Angrily. I did not understand why.
My attention was focused through the lens of a vintage Canon A-1 35-millimeter film camera I’d brought along on my summer of backpacking in Europe. I was 28 years old and all but finished with graduate school. Photojournalism. I was walking the streets of Paris on this morning, alone, poor, unencumbered and at ease in it.
As I knelt along Rue Saint-Denis, one of the oldest streets in Paris, first laid out by the Romans during the 1st century, I was unaware of its long history as a place of prostitution.
When a stone archway captured my creative interest, and the softened light that held the scene of a courtyard beyond, I took a knee and raised my camera.
When I noticed I was being watched and protested against, I held my ground. I was bothering no one, I thought. Why was she yelling at me?
And then I slowly came to the answer.
I wrote this poem in the years following to distill the exchange:
There was a mis-
understanding. She
took exception to my
camera, it’s gaze
pointed in her
direction, ish
but beyond. She
warbled in French,
and I not.
I was slow
to recognize her work,
her high heels, high
skirt, her availability
along Rue
Saint-Denis. In a
blink of aha! the gap
filled with innocence
and adieu. And at
that she swatted
my backside with
a closed, black
umbrella and
laughed.
Though our languages did not intersect, we found our way to an understanding. I had been unaware of her work there, and indifferent. My 35-millimeter frame did not include her. As we gestured and talked at each other in our own languages, she eased into acceptance that I was not, in fact, trying to diddle her dignity with my camera.
At peace with one another, I walked up the street from the direction I’d come. No charge for the spanking, only her light laughter in the air. As I went, I saw with fresh eyes what I had not before. A subtle enough dispersal of women leaning against the ancient walls, and in this doorway and that.
I remembered the archway on the other side of them where I’d seen a breathtaking brunette in a small black dress. I hadn’t known why she was there when I passed. She just was. It had caught me off-guard the way she was leaning against the wall of the arch out of immediate view from the street. The diffused daylight. Her cocktail dress in the morning. Her form.
The thought of photographing her had crossed my mind. She, the light and the Parisian scene were heart-stopping to a photographer. But that desire was confronted by my lack of courage to approach her for the purpose.
She’d offered a coquettish smile when I saw her. Me, an underfed vagabond in shabby T-shirt, zip-off shorts and worn sneakers, and with a roughly whiskered face. I walked back by that arch, with fresh clarity, hoping to see her again. Maybe to summon the courage to ask if I could make her portrait.
She was gone.
The Sex Worker is #Twenty in the weekly memoir series, Among Other Things. What’s it about? Read Introducing ‘Among Other Things,’ A Weekly Memoir Series.
