La Tour Philippe #2


In 1975 I was hanging out in San Francisco and visited the Museum of Erotica. It was there that I met a delightful French woman from Paris called Paule. We kept in touch so when I moved to Paris in 1977, she and I would meet up however our friendship didn't last too long.

In the hot August that year, she invited me to join her in the house she had rented with her Dutch friend. Guess where? On the road that branched to the left off the Avenue of the Ceders, where I had had the hospitality in La Tour Philippe a couple of years earlier!  Of course I only found that out when I got there, driving through La belle France with Paule.

The house had about 6 bedrooms but unfortunately her Dutch friend had invited a bunch of young men who were boring beer swirling louts who littered the pool with crushed cans of lager. Not my kind of company, nor Paule's which made her moody.

I suggested we drove to a borri where  had met a hippie French man in Mexico learning the craft of tooled leather. We drove to his village unannounced as of course Borris do not have landlines and the mobile phone had not been invented! It was good to see this striped to the waist natural barefoot Being but Paule obviously didn't approve and was dismissive of him. I was not pleased with her behaviour but, as I was still her guest and wanted to go back to La Tour Philippe, did not show my feelings.

The next day dawned and we drove over to the tower. But how the welcome had changed. No more was it a free place to kip. No more notices on the cupboards. The living room was full of sewing machines with Marie sewing garments presumably for resale. She was polite but reserved and obviously did not remember me. Well, why should she? We were, however, invited that night to a balle du musette nearby. There I danced with Philippe and heard wonderful accordion music. He too did not remember me. The magic and freedom had flown.

Back at the rented house Paule became ferocious and aggressive. She had fallen out with her Dutch now ex-friend and went for long walks on her own as the pool gave her no privacy with people speaking a Dutch not French. Time to leave. No fond goodbyes this time. I hitched back to Paris and never saw her again.

Written at Malaga airport waiting for my flight back to London, 27/5/17.

References

Ball du musette
Erotic museum - San Francisco