I’ll tell y’all right now, Friday kicked my ass. Let’s talk about it.
Picture this: a disgruntled Marxist preservation student has just finished walking through the obscenely extravagant and terribly maze-like Louvre. She makes her inescapable contribution to the capitalist overlords at the gift shop, and then she works her way to the bathrooms before beginning her trip home. The bathrooms are outrageously fancy and the lines are long. Its two euro to use them, but she only has one in her purse. She pulls out her debit card at the front of the line, and waits ten minutes for the attendants to handle other business. She finally gets to the toilet, does her thing, and leaves to go to the metro while apologizing profusely to her roommate for taking literally 5ever to do anything. The time is 5:50. Drenched in sweat but happy to be heading home, they ride the metro in silence and just rest and recuperate for a few hours back at the dorm. They have plans with others to go out later that evening, and as they are preparing to leave at 7:55, our fearless heroine realizes that her wallet is nowhere to be found. As kids these days would say, “B I G. O O F.”
—Switch to first person–
I descend into a strange state of anxious calm. I am capable, I can handle this. Rachael helps me search the room, and it becomes obvious that the wallet isn’t there. I check my accounts, freeze my cards, and look at my recent purchases. No money has gone missing, and the last purchase was at that god-forsaken fancy bathroom. My heart rate slows a little; I probably left it in the stall in my haste and confusion. I call the business. There is no answer. Rachael generously offers to go with me back to the Louvre to ask in person, but before we get on the train we see that the entire complex closed at 8:00. It is now 8:20. We go back to the room to do one last sweep and pass the group we were supposed to go out with on the way there. Excuses are made, condolences are offered, and we decide to meet up at the restaurant after one last room search. Rachael and I tear the room apart, and the wallet is still not there. Panic is setting in, so we both down some wine and resolve to get smashed. I have 51,55 euros accessible to me. We meet our group at a lovely Italian restaurant by the Luxembourg, and proceed with our plans. My meal was 18 euro, and entrance to the club is 15, 10 for students. I resolve to drink my pain (and my last bit of money) away like some tragic feminist Hemingway. If I’m going to be poor in Paris, I will do it authentically and while drunk. I was already buzzed and feeling super dramatic, so cut me a break on the thought process here.
We get to the club and the ticket guy takes pity on my I.D.-less state and gives me the student price anyway. I get a tequila sunrise and eventually we all dance. It’s great, I’m smashed, and we decide to go to karaoke. The cold night air is sobering, and the phone conversation with my boyfriend outside is even more so. The ‘fun drunk’ stage has passed me by, and I am now ‘sad drunk.’ The karaoke bar is closed, adding insult to injury. After the drink, the dinner, and the club, I now have 10 euro to my name. We settle on an Irish pub, and I am officially a sad bitch. I am poor, sober, and kind of panicking. “No crying in the club,” so I focus on reading a Nietzsche piece I have downloaded on my phone for some reason. German Idealism is the birthplace of the fedora-ed Sad Boy (TM) anyway, so we jump right in. It is possibly the least helpful thing ever. Don’t read the idealists when you’re depressed or anxious; being convinced that nothing is real and everything culminates in finality or the banality of life is otherwise doomed to repeat itself sucks when you’re sad. The night ends, and I feel a little dead inside. “12 more hours to be sad,” I tell myself,” and then no matter if the wallet is at the Louvre in the morning or not, we’re going to get the fuck over it.”
My wallet was at the Louvre, and the only loss I suffered was 50 in cash, which isn’t bad, all things considered. I gained a feeling of camaraderie with some fellow students and some dead guys, so that’s a win too I guess. To be young, drunk, and broke in Paris; how romantically tragic. I was briefly a burgeoning European intellectual. I felt like a member of the lost generation and I gotta say, no wonder everybody was moody and dramatic.
To conclude, Mercury in retrograde really has this virgo in her Dumb Bitch feelings. Also, always know where your wallet is.