Trip Fantasy #3--Steve's story

This time, the genre is musical farce.

Sadly,according to Google Earth there is no Rue Bodet.

And it appears that great band, Les Jazz Cats de Paris, also exists only in my mind. Too bad.

The Venus of this story is quite real, however. I spotted her once on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Really.

So, who wants to be next?

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Being a reasonable man, Steve was willing to compromise on a number of issues when packing for the big trip to France. For instance, his wife Melanie begged him to leave the pup tent and sleeping bag at home on the grounds that they would be staying in very nice hotels and on a beautiful luxury barge and not in the wilderness at any point on their journey. After due consideration and more than a little hesitation, he set them aside in favor of an extra pair of socks and a Toledo Mud Hens baseball cap.

When Melanie pleaded with him not to take the entire 16 volume set of the Encyclopedia of the French Philosophers, he compromised by taking only the odd numbered volumes excepting Volume 3, which was mostly about René Descartes. Steve disagreed violently with the 17th century Frenchman on both his philosophy and his ideas on geometry, so he left that one aside as well and threw a tie into his second suitcase after also adding Volume 4 “for balance.”

He also hesitantly agreed to put back the squirrel cage, the set of barbecue tools, most of the rolls of toilet paper, the four cans of SPAM and the clown makeup kit.

He ignored Melanie’s pleadings to pack a second shirt and another pair of pants, however. “Are you kidding—we’re traveling light,” he said sternly.

But when it came to Melvis, his magic trumpet, Steve stood his ground, no matter how much Melanie urged him to leave it behind. He wasn’t going to leave the horn at home—oh no, not on this trip. He had big plans for that trumpet.

First of all, if he didn’t bring Melvis, how could he serenade his friends aboard the barge late into the night? He didn’t want to deprive everyone of his expressions of joy (mixed with a touch of wistful melancholy) as they emanated from his instrument. To do so would just be selfish.

Then there was the movie he planned to make. As the official trip cinematographer (by virtue of being the only one in the group who owned a modern and compact video camera), Steve had big plans for the official trip DVD he was planning to make for himself and the 10 others on the trip. To properly realize his directorial and artistic vision, Steve needed certain props—hence the clown makeup and cans of SPAM (the squirrel cage and toilet paper had entirely different intended uses). How could you possibly recreate the whole Monty Python SPAM skit without actual cans of SPAM?

The trumpet, both visually and aurally was to be the symbolic center point to the big “storming the Bastille” scene he had mentally mapped out and in which he planned to heroically play the music of Dizzy Gillespie from his Afro-Cuban phase to represent a new era of French freedom and culture.

And so it was around 10 o’clock on their second night in Paris with Melanie comatose on the bed after a long day of sightseeing and one too many glasses of wine with dinner, when Steve found himself too energized to sleep. Quietly he slipped out of their hotel room, trumpet case in hand.

At first his plan was to walk to Luxembourg Gardens and play Melvis there for the pleasure of the lovers and hobos he was sure must inhabit the park late at night. He knew the park was somewhere fairly close to his hotel, but he wasn’t sure where and he just struck out in a direction that felt right.

And it was just as well his instincts were completely off and that he never came close to the Jardin du Luxembourg as he would have learned the gates there are locked at 9:45 p.m. in the summer to keep out the amorous, the homeless and especially wandering musicians.

As Steve drifted further and further from both the Luxembourg Gardens and his hotel, he came to a lively Left Bank street, Rue Bodet, filled with little nightclubs, bars and populated by a cross-section of Parisian night owls.

As he walked down Rue Bodet, Steve noticed several buskers on the street performing for the passersby. There was the cellist whose repertoire seemed limited to the music of Antonio Vivaldi and Hank Williams. The sketch artist on the corner was a hit as he drew face caricatures paired with the bodies of mythical animals. There was the one-man band causing quite a stir performing La Marseillaise—repeatedly. There was the woman painted gold from head to toe and posing as the Statue of Liberty. Her cardboard donations box didn’t have nearly as much money as the Venus de Milo who posed just a few meters away. Perhaps it was that Venus was painted in silver rather than gold, perhaps it was that she was topless to more authentically recreate the statue in the Louvre, or perhaps it was the added attraction of the very large Burmese python draped across her shiny silver shoulders.

Well, thought Steve, inspired by the variety and quality of the artistry before him, I think now would be a great time to turn pro.

Steve found a likely spot on the sidewalk outside a little café; he opened his case, removed Melvis and set the open case down before him. He reached into his wallet and pockets and tossed a couple of bills and some coins into the case to grease the skids and paused a moment to consider his playlist.

After a little thought Steve decided that Miles Davis was the only way to go for his professional debut, starting with “Kind of Blue” and then working through the entire Davis discography. “Okay Melvis, here goes nothing,” he said to his horn. Then he took a deep breath, put the mouthpiece to his lips and blew.

Something about Steve and Melvis’ style of play was a perfect karmic match for the ambience of the Rue Bodet street life. The two rapidly began to gather an appreciative audience and the revenue began to flow into the trumpet case. Even Venus de Milo took a break and came over to watch for a few minutes, although Steve found the 12-foot snake mildly distracting. The next day, he added up his take and it included 13 Euros, 2 Canadian Loonies, 1 British Pound, 1,000 Vietnamese Dong, a half full bottle of red wine and a slip of paper containing the address and phone number of someone named Marguerite along with an invitation to drop by for a visit. Steve was intrigued with the thought that Marguerite and Venus might be one in the same.

Steve had just finished “Freddie Freeloader” and was about to launch into “Blue in Green” when an agitated man waving a saxophone and wearing a beret and toupee that were both askew approached speaking French at machine gun speed and volume. This was a useless exercise on his part as French is one of many languages Steve does not speak. Steve assumed that he had stolen the man’s spot and he was attempting to reclaim his busking turf, but this was far from the case.

When the man realized Steve was a Texan-American, he changed over to heavily accented English which was not rendered more comprehensible by his already flustered state.

“You see monsieur, our trumpetman Pierre she has sickness of the eyes tonight and cannot possibly trumpet for us band players to the hour, so you must come with me—the club is pres d’ici, I mean quite close, but we are much late. I comprehend that your style of the jazz is harmonious with us and tonight is the day when we must do our famous Miles Davis concert.”

“Will there be beer?” asked Steve.

“Mais non, Monsieur, we have so much better than that. For you there will be absinthe—much absinthe.”

And indeed there was much absinthe. And that’s how Steve fulfilled the dream of a lifetime and ended up performing until dawn before a packed and wildly appreciative house at Club Tout Tout along with the seven other members of Les Jazz Cats de Paris who refer to Steve as “our member in exile” to this very day.

Or at least that’s how he remembers it.