Masticate Or Flush: That Is The Question

You will be happy to know that I was able to gather the 92 pages of paperwork required to reinstate my iPhone, bribe my friend G with sushi to help me fill in all the blanks and sign in all the right places, make triplicate copies - one for me, one for Orange and one for God - and then mail 32 of the documents to one place (somewhere in the Alps, I think) and then mail 12.5 documents, plus my bank RIB, canceled check and the last 7 years of my tax returns to another place (somewhere in the catacombs, or under the pyramid at the Louvre or maybe it's Dan Brown's pied-à-terre in Paris, where he writes bestselling books badly), by last Friday. Even though God has not yet received her copy (I'm still trying to find her address - a lifetime pursuit), I had my phone back online on Tuesday. This proves that as long as Orange is happy, God is happy too. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, back at the prison cell...

I told you a while back about my little odyssey of trying to find an apartment after I arrived in Paris in August. And how I was grateful to find an apartment the size of a really cheap hotel room, or in American standards, the size of a bathroom. I was willing to stay here for my one-year lease duration, even though:

• The toilet masticates LOUDLY (It's one of those toilets they use on boats. It goes ERRRRRRR! in the middle of the night for no reason whatsoever. So charming!)
• The shower floods the floor no matter where I put the curtain.
• I can't open the one-and-only window because it's directly on the street. I've opened it before and on good days that just means that all the people on the bus waiting in traffic outside stare down into my life and make decisions about my furniture, my organizational skills and my state of undress. On bad days it means that drunk men can lean in and ask me if I have an open slot. Or something like that. I also have forgotten, several times, that the window is open, and sit down on the toilet, much to the entertainment of the people on the bus.
  
• The lady who cleans the building and takes out the trash in the mornings arrives at 5:45AM shuffling loudly, grumbling to herself, and slams the front door closed, opens and slams the courtyard door, drags the trash cans back down the hall, crashing them into the walls as she goes, grumbling even more because someone didn't put their recyclable garbage in the RIGHT CAN!, and slams the front door again. Then the trash trucks come at 7:00AM and park outside my window while they dump our garbage. Then she comes back and drags the empty cans back through the hallway, slamming doors as she goes. I just gave up on sleeping past 6AM.
  
• The guy across the hall from me starts playing really loud music around 6:30AM, which he ululates to while slapping....something. I just don't want to know what he is slapping.
• There is no closet. A minor detail, unless you're a girl.
  

But then we met Jessica, who lives on the 2nd floor (which is really the 3rd floor in America, because French people call the ground floor zero and Americans call it one). And Jessica happened to be moving out of her 23 square meter apartment (mine is 16), which faces the courtyard, has TWO windows and has a cuisine séparée. This means that the kitchen is its own room, versus what I have now, which is a tiny little corner in my living room (if you can call it that) with two burners, one cabinet and a tiny fridge.

All of this is fine and dandy, but what mattered to me the most is that the toilet in Jessica's apartment is a normal one, that flushes down a drain that's outside of the building, which me and my neighbor G have listened to, fondly, many a balmy summer evening, as we dined on her patio in the building's courtyard. Our conversations went like this:

"Oh, it sounds like The Hot Chick just had a flush."
"Mmmm. No. I think it was The Hot German Guy's Angry Father."
"Why's that?"
"Well, he's across the hall and so it first has to go through that horizontal pipe, and then down this vertical pipe. It took longer and had more force to it."

So, we've become connoisseurs of flush sounds. And, as you can see, we also have pet names for our neighbors. The Hot Chick lives upstairs from G, looks like she's in her 20's, is thin and tan and well... hot. We hate her. But she is very, very nice. I even lost G's cat one day and had to retrieve her from The Hot Chick's apartment. She was so sweet. And we hate her. The men who come and visit us from America love her, and fantasize that she spies on them from her window as they do calisthenics in the courtyard.

The Hot German Guy is the tall, blond son of the old man who lives upstairs, across the hall from The Hot Chick. One night, when we were outside on the courtyard having a great meal with friends and we got a bit LOUD, the Hot German Guy's Angry Father yelled from his window for us to shut the hell up. Later that week, The Hot German Guy came to G's door about something else and I answered the door and almost wept at his hotness, but was also glad to know that he wasn't mad at us for waking his Angry Father. This would have been a shame.

There's also a guy who lives upstairs from my current apartment, who G calls Your Future Husband, where Your means Mine. He is cute, balding, and if we stood face to face, the shiny top of his head would come up to my chin. I might consider tossing him around, but he also has a masticating boat toilet and therefore, I know too much about him already. Besides, he has unwittingly proven to be bad luck for G. Every time she has seen him out on the street, she drops something important. The first time, it was a bottle of Champagne. The next time it was our long-awaited Ramadan soup.

So, Jessica moves out tomorrow, and I move in, and up. My current landlord wasn't extremely happy about me leaving, but in the end, he was very nice about it. He didn't make me honor the required three-month notice. That's because he needs to do some repair work in the apartment. One whole wall of the apartment is bubbling under the wall paper because there's a water leak from the office building next door. I'm getting out just in time, because there's a multi-year, multi-insurance-company fight ahead, and if I had stayed, me and my insurance company would have been in the middle of that fight. Because, believe it or not, once the renter moves into an apartment, it is THEM and their insurance company that are responsible for all damage inside and out of the apartment. If My Future Husband's masticating toilet suddenly falls through the ceiling with him on it, me and My Future Husband's insurance companies fight for three years over who's responsible for the damage, while me and My Future Husband would have to pay to get it fixed and then wait for the fight to be settled to get reimbursed. Just think how well we would know each other by then!

I meet with my new landlord tomorrow morning. He's a little Portuguese man who doesn't get along with many of the other owners in the building, but who loves G. Thank the God-whose-address-I-can't-find, because G recommended me and he didn't bother to try and find anybody else. My move will be easy, with the help of friends.

Once I'm settled, if you're wondering where I am, I'm probably sitting on my new toilet.

Fear & Loathing In The Post Office

Some of you might be surprised to know that I'm a chicken shit. You might think I was brave to change my life at 50 and sell everything and move to a foreign country. But I think it's quite possible to be impetuous... and a chicken shit at the very same time.

The proof of my chickenoscity is in the post office. Or, la poste, as it's called in France.

When I first started traveling back and forth to Paris, I found out that you can't get anything - like a cell phone for instance - without having a bank account. But you can't get a bank account in France, no matter how much money you tell them you plan to deposit in said account, without a long-stay visa and your first-born child. At the time, there were Other People's Children that I would have been delighted to give to la poste, but I didn't have a long-stay visa yet. So I did what any tourist would do, I went to The Illegal Alien Bank: la poste. Yes, you can get a bank account at the post office here, even if you have no children. As a matter of fact, from the looks of the people standing in the ever-long lines at la poste, having many, many children seems to be the norm. But, no matter how many children you have, you can't get any checks, nor can you have automatic deposits or debits. You can get a debit card, but it can only be used at la poste ATMs. So, I still couldn't get a cell phone here, because all cell phone plans must be automatically debited from a local bank account.

I found that out after I opened the account (having stood in a line for three days with Other People's Children).

So, I did what any tourist would do, and went to Illegal Alien Land (Chateau Rouge), to a shop called Le Roi de Barbès (The King of Barbès - Barbès is the name of a nearby Metro stop) to fight my way through throngs of people to buy a pay-as-you-go cell phone for 25 Euros (+/- $35) and a SIM card for 20 Euros. I would actually advise anybody to do this who comes to Paris for more than a week and who wants to have a way to communicate inexpensively with the rest of their travel partners and the locals. You can buy recharge coupons at any tobacco shop. (Good luck figuring out what they're saying in French when you call the number to enter your recharge coupon, but that's another story.) There's actually a vending machine at one of the gates at Charles de Gaulle airport where you can buy one of these phones as you get off the plane, but going to Le Roi de Barbès is an adventure you could definitely write home about. But that is also another post entirely.

Meanwhile, after I was able to negotiate enough contracts to be able to support myself here and then get a long-stay visa, I now qualified for a grownup bank account. But I still had to take another grownup with me - who had an account at the same bank - to introduce me. Then, HSBC was just dee-lighted to serve me. It would be an entire post just to tell you how long it took to make even that happen. But, even though I am the queen of digression, I will try to control myself and post about that later... also too. (Just call me Sarah Palin. OK then, don't.)

I never used my la poste bank account. And there were a few thousand Euros in there that I wanted to take out, deposit in the HSBC account, and then close the la poste account, even though I had such great nostalgic affection for la poste. (Snark.) I tried to close the account a few months ago, but they yelled at me, so I went away.

And, I'm a chicken shit. So, I put it off. Until the last minute. Of course.

Meanwhile, I used my new HSBC account to get an iPhone. (Yay!) I bought my phone online from Orange, gave them my RIB (bank account numbers for auto-debit) and an electronic signature agreeing to death by hanging if I defaulted on my payments. (I think that's what it said, but I'm not sure. It was all in French.) They were so happy to have me as a new client, that they sent me reams of paperwork, all in different envelopes, every other day or so. I ignored them. After all, it's in French. And I'm afraid of the mail.

I used my iPhone for a month, and then it was unceremoniously cut off. Finit. Pas du service.

I panicked. I was sure that the auto debit must have failed at HSBC. But I didn't go online to my HSBC account to see if I had money in there or not. And I didn't go to HSBC to ask them. I didn't do anything. I just became paralyzed. Because, I'm a... chicken shit.

What am I afraid of? God knows. Banks, money, debt, debtor's prison, authority, breaking the rules, getting in trouble, policemen, soldiers, French bank employees, French postal employees, French waiters, French people in general, my poor French language skills, getting yelled at in French, my own shadow, and also too, yours. But not swine flu. Not scared of that.

But suddenly, I had to pay rent. I HAD to get that money out of la poste and then go to HSBC and deposit it to cover my rent, and my electricity bill and my iPhone bill.

All of this had me coughing, and then, um, barfing. Yes, I was so scared to go to the post office and then to HSBC that I vomited. I finally called my ex boyfriend. We all have our weaknesses. He has his and I have mine. But at least he knows about my fears and paralysis, and doesn't judge me (too) harshly. I'm not good at reaching out. I usually just hide in my apartment and hope that nobody decides to kill me that day. But at least I knew I could call him. He dropped everything he was doing, rode his bike to meet me and walked me to la poste, talking me down from the 6th floor ledge of my mind, to the safety and predictable shit-smeared reality of a Paris sidewalk. He had me laughing very soon. May the God-I-don't-believe-in bless him.

We entered la poste and got in line. My ex entertained me some more. I had stopped breathing at this point, but at least I wasn't vomiting. Finally, it was my turn at the counter. I handed the teller my latest account statement, and I told him I wanted to close the account and get all the money out. He understood me (amazing) and took my statement and went to the back wall to a huge bank of filing cabinets and dug through there for an hour. Then he returned with whatever he had been looking for. He got on the computer. He started clicking and typing away, then started talking to himself. My ex reminded me to breathe. Then the teller called another guy over to the computer.

Uh-oh. I glanced over my shoulder to see if the police were behind me. Not yet. Only a lot of illegal aliens. And their children.

Then the new guy, obviously a manager, started to speak to me. I had no idea what he was trying to say. He asked me if I spoke English, and then told me in English that I had already closed the account. It must have been done that time I went there and they yelled at me. Oh.

Then I started to worry that there's some rule in France that if you close your account and there's still money in it, that you're not allowed to get your money, that the police will be called, and that your money will be given to President Sarkozy, as a fee for having to put up with us Americans for so long. I started to cough.

He said, "You can't get your money."

I squeaked, "Quoi?"

He said, "Well, at least not all of it."

Then I started to worry that they would give me 42 cents and keep the rest for all the times Americans came to France and demanded weak coffee. I coughed. And gagged.

Through pursed lips I whispered, "And how much can I have today?"

He literally stood there, staring at the computer, stroking his beardless chin, deciding. Deciding. Deciding....

He wrote down the amount, which was almost all the money in the account, except for 6 Euros and 95 cents. He said, "You can get this much today, and then you can come back in two weeks and close the account and get the rest."

Mine was not to reason why; mine was but to nod and sigh.

He told the teller what to do. The teller typed and talked to himself for another hour. Then he gave me a piece of paper and told me to go to the locked door next to the window. We went. We stood there. Nothing happened. I looked around the door. There was a little button. I pressed it. No alarms went off. No police dogs began to snarl. I heard a click and opened the door. There was a bullet-proof window with bars and a teller behind who was counting out my thousands. She made me sign something. She handed me the money. We turned to leave. The door was closed. No button. We stared at the door, willing it to open. It did. She must have had the magic button.

After we reached the safety of the urine-soaked sidewalk outside la poste, I said to my ex, "I wonder what my interest rate is on this account?" He said, "Why?" I said, "Because it would be interesting to calculate how much interest 6.95 Euros will accrue 40 years from now, since I'm never coming back to close this freaking account."

The next day, having been fortified by my success at la poste, I went to HSBC alone, to deposit the money. I didn't vomit, but I was terrified. I saw forms on the counter and figured they must be the deposit forms. Except, I was totally confused because the place where I had to write the deposit amount had a thick line separating the Euros columns from the cents columns. But there were three slots in the cents column. With Eurocents, are there actually three integers after the decimal point? Is there a 1/2 cent? Did I need to deposit 1450.089? I was so confused. Finally, the impatient clerk asked me what the hell I was doing and I told her in my bad French that I didn't understand the 3rd integer slot. She looked at me like I was crazy. My stomach turned. Then the man who opened my account for me walked over, smiled, listened to me and her, and then said, "Oh, just put the amount anywhere. Ignore those slots. It doesn't matter."

In France, the land of rules, I continue to be surprised when the rules that they so fervently demand you follow, actually don't matter.

And the iPhone? It was shut off because I never opened my mail from Orange and filled out the triplicate contract form and mailed it back with a voided check and a copy of my RIB. Oh. So all that stuff I did online didn't matter either. Et voila! Perhaps, when Orange receives my contract, voided check and RIB next week, I'll have my iPhone back.

And my 6.95 Euros at la poste will surely generate 450 pieces of mail, very formally and politely threatening me with death, or at least a very long wait in line, until I come to close the account. I won't open those letters, either.