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I watched a documentary once about something called Paris Syndrome. It’s a terrible malady that afflicts thirty-something Japanese women visiting the City of Lights for the first time. They step off the plane, high on the dream, the Hollywood version of Paris us non-French have been sold since birth. Before long, they discover that Parisians are about as hospitable as that ‘hell’ planet astronomers discovered a few years ago (the one with the raining rocks and sixty-mile-deep lava seas), and that the streets are scented with dog shit, not Chanel No. 5. This disconnect between the promise of Paris and reality is so jarring, it can induce serious physical and psychological symptoms, such as sweating, nausea, vomiting, even hallucinations. One woman’s symptoms were so severe, she had to be airlifted back to Tokyo. The Japanese government advises those of a sensitive disposition to avoid all unnecessary travel to the French capital. There is no known cure for Paris Syndrome.
I visited Paris, just the one time, on a college trip to Tours, birthplace of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. I took the train up to the capital at the end of the week to meet Cillian. We’d been friends for eight months, a sufficient amount of time, I thought, for there to be something real between us, for meaningful sexy times to take place, for me to know that I could say things like ‘sexy times’ in his company and not feel judged.
The night before he was due to arrive, I stayed in a hostel in Saint-Germain, waking up the next morning to find my backpack and bumbag missing. (This was 2003, long before the fanny pack revival, when bumbags were the sole preserve of tourists and those who appreciated maximum efficiency in their daily lives.) I checked my phone. There was a text from Cillian apologising – he wasn’t going to make it. He’d met a Spanish girl at a festival, and on a whim they’d driven down to Kerry. He wanted to show her Fungie, the famous dolphin that had been circling the waters around Dingle for years. Cillian knew I’d understand. It was Fungie, and this girl, well, she was special. And sure, didn’t I prefer my own company? I was a free spirit. He loved that about me. I didn’t need people like he did.
I spent the next two days filling in emergency passport forms at various McDonald’s. I’ve never been a huge fast-food fan, but you know what you’re getting from a Filet-O-Fish. It’s not like going to some much-hyped restaurant, expecting a gastronomic revelation only to wind up with indigestion. You can rest assured that wherever you go in the world, the combination of pollock and breadcrumbs and tartare sauce will taste exactly the same. Few things in life are as dependable.
As I sat under the fluorescent strip lights of the Golden Arches in Place Pigalle I realised how stupid I’d been. To assume my relationship status with Cillian would change because we were due to spend a couple of nights in the Most Romantic City in the World. Paris was just a city. With pollution and homelessness, like any other city. And I thought about what Balzac said about contentment. How every moment of joy requires a certain amount of ignorance. Sometimes, I wonder which is better – to see the world as it is and be miserable? Or to stay in the dark and be happy?