Not quite fitting in, in Paris

Paris came out to greet the sun with soft flapping of silky fabric, straps of sandals wound round subtle calves, and spaghetti straps barely loitering over aphrodite shoulders. Linen garments drift where swells of humanity’s nature sway and bounce, and everyone seems ready for the special event that is today’s everyday. Men are dressed too.

And me? How am I fitting in? My trousers are a form-fit swamp of hateful humidity, warm and damp, oppressive and squeezing, like being immersed in a hippo’s unwashed armpit.

With the help of friends, one girl- and one childhood-, I bought a new pair of flat from dockers, a serviceable pair of pants, professional and pristine. I even washed them the morning I left, so they would be nice and free of pesticide and store residues. Thus, I had no time to re-wash them when they came out of the damnable machine with a dingy gray patina of mystery stains.

The hope: it’s just a little soap that didn’t rinse out.

The treatment: a hearty cold water rinse this morning.

The consequence: it turns out dockers take a long time to dry, and since I had to change hotels, I either had to drape them on the bag in the reception area all day, or…wear them. So out I went into the streets of Paris in drawers of dampness, pants of perdition.

Paris is looking good, in haute couture. And Paris is looking hard, at my hot trouseurs, wondering “Why are his pants wet in odd places? Does he really sweat so much, and so oddly?”

I can only hope the crotch doesn’t dry last, sentencing me to a march of material mortification down chic streets and up steamy pantlegs. I’m not fitting in quite yet but I’m trying. Or rather, I’m drying.