C'est Chaud

Somewhere behind La Louvre, there's a bar, a quiet place, so inconspicuous that very few people know about it and there's not a long line of people trying to get in. Well, under this bar there is a cave, and in this cave there was a DJ playing ragga vinyls and a handful of people dancing in what is probably the last hot day of summer. And depending on how the unexpected events of the evening were put to an end (because we left at half past 1 am), they would either be back dancing in the basement, or throwing fisticuffs above ground.

The handful of people who were invited to the underground bash mostly knew each other, except for me. I only met this group of people tonight; while H met F, the guy who organized the party, a few years ago at a charity event. It was a night of good vibes and songs of freedom. I tried to speak a little bit of French, but most of them were too drunk to understand my accent. I talked mostly with the Chinese guy who's into heavy metal and moved to Paris solely because he followed the French heavy metal band he loved from youth, sans contacts, speaking 6 months worth of French lessons. Well, now he's their official photographer and he's been living in Paris for 8 years. Respect, mon pote (my friend).

But MAN, was it hot! "Il fait chaud!" (Literally, "it makes hot," because "c'est chaud" means "that's tough.") It was so hot that we went back up a couple of times for fresh air or a glass of beer. Sometimes H and I would be left downstairs with the DJ and it would feel like a private party for two.

My aging knees gave out at around 1am, and I told H I was having a bit of a tummy ache because of, oh I don't know, maybe the falafel from the Latin Quarter? So even though he wanted to dance some more he said he would go and get our stuff and we'll say goodbye to everyone. I waited outside, watching an unintentional parade of fashion-forward 1st Arrondissement types. But when time came to say au revoir, we noticed our peeps had retreated to the far end of the street. And the partygoers were acting weird, talking in clusters and avoiding H's questions about where we could find F. (Except for the Chinese guy, he was still in the mood to talk about heavy metal.)

Eventually we found out F allegedly did something that made him a pariah all of a sudden. And no one was in the mood to go back to the basement, in fact one of the party-goers wanted to beat F's head in. So, H said we were actually leaving at the right time... except, as we were about to go on the scooter, H finally spotted F at the fountain, staring at the horizon. I asked H if he wanted to talk to F, he said, "Yeah, but what about your tummy? It's hurting, diba?" And I told him if his friend needed him, he better spend a few minutes at least to see if he is ok.

So we went to console F at the fountain, and, you know the word "crestfallen"? I'd only realized what it looked like then. He said his friendship with the others was over now, and it was too bad because he organized the party for the birthday of his accuser.

When we left him, F was making his way back into the bar. The others were just outside, huddled together in front of a perfume shop. Meanwhile underground, still spinning records, was the DJ -- playing music for a nonexistent crowd, unaware of what had transpired, and clueless about what to do with the surprise birthday cake that was brought in at the most inopportune moment.

We rode into the night, the sweat making our shirts stick to our backs. It was a hot evening, but that's not why c'est chaud.