Back in the early 1980s the construction of IM Pei’s pyramid blocked access to the Louvre Museum, leaving the ancient palace of the Bourbon kings mostly to art historians and a few wandering tourists, however I regularly wandered the museum’s desolate corridors to admire its vast collection.
At that time I was employed as the Bains-Douches’ psychionomiste or doorman and my friend Alabama Tony tended bar at Paris’ only Mexican restaurant. We threw a football in the courtyard. The chestnut tree on the courtyard restricted our range and the cobblestones were murder on our feet. Still the French clientele were charmed by our re-enactment of Joe Namath and Don Maynard in Super Bowl III, especially after a menage a trois of margaritas. Young American models flocked to le Studio on Rue du Temple. The restaurant was a grand success and at night’s Alabama Tony played Lynard Skynard and Blue Cheer on his guitar to homesick Southern models, who loved the long-haired redneck for being Alabama Tony in a city of Yves and Jacques.
“You came all the way from Birmingham to hang out with girls from below the Mason-Dixon line?”
“Hold your horns, a pretty girl is a pretty girl, but even prettier with a drawl.”
“Can’t argue with you about that.” I was having an affair with his sister, a blonde army sergeant stationed in Germany. I had a thing for women in a uniform. After hearing about the Louvre’s desolation Tony said, “I’d like to go with y’all.”
“You like Art?”
“Not even as a name for a boy, but I’d love to chunk a football in the Louvre, if it’s empty as you says.” Tony had a good arm and I was fast on my feet. The Studio’s touch football team had beaten every expat squad this side of the Seine. Tony strummed the opening chords of FREEBIRD.
“Maybe three people in each gallery.”
“Guards.”
“Few.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Next day the two of us entered the Louvre with a pigskin in Alabama Tony’s backpack. We climbed to the second-floor galleries overlooking the Seine the river. The afternoon sun glowed through unwashed windows the height of a three-story building. Epic paintings scaled the walls to the vaulted ceilings.
“The king used to live here? Pretty darned big palace.” Tony was impressed by the regal surroundings.
“Until 1682 when the Sun King moved to Versailles.”
“Louis Fourteen, right?” The City of Light had worked its magic on the redneck. He loved its history, as would anyone from Mobile.
“One and the same and the palace stored their art collection until the Revolution.”
“Damn, the rich were rich back then and the poor were poor. Same as now.” “Except none of them had indoor plumbing and the upper-classes had to shit in a bucket same as the hoi polloi.”
“A bas le Roi.” Tony tugged out the football. No one else was in the long hall and he waved his left hand “Go long for the lower classes.”
I sprinted down the wooden floor and caught the long spiral around a secondary Delacroix. We were a little careful with our passes. These paintings were worth millions. A group of Japanese tourists appeared in the distance and Tony stashed the football.
“What y’all know about this ‘art’?”
“A little.” I had taken Art Appreciation 101 at university.
“Then give me a tour.”
“Okay.”
I introduced the Davids, Vermeers, George de la Tours, artifacts from ancient civilizations and royal jewelry learned from listening to the group guides and said, “Actually there is only one piece here I love.”
“The Mona Lisa?”
“Over-rated. But not far from it. When we get there, I’ll tell you.”
I guided him to the Mona Lisa. Foreign visitors stood before Leonardo’s masterpiece, which was considered the most famous painting in the world. The great artist’s muse Salai had sold the painting to Francis I for 4000 ecrus of gold, but we had not come here to see La Joconda and I told him, “Turn your head to the right.”
Tony swung his gaze to a reclining marble naked figure on a buttoned mattress.
“The Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”
“Hermaphrodite? I heard of them, but thought they were mythical like mermaids.”
“They exist. Both as man and a woman.”
“You ever meet one?”
“At a carnival in Maine a barker wanted a dollar for a look. My mother considered the sideshow a blasphemy and dragged me from temptation.”
Tony stepped forward to examine the sleeping enigma of sexuality, its marble unblemished by war, riots, or neglect and he asked, “How old is it?”
“Dates back 2500 years.”
“Old as dirt.”
“Yes, but the mattress was carved in the 17th Century. It’s known as the Borghese Hermaphroditus. The Borghese family was one of the richest in Europe. Old name. Old money. Old blood.”
“Lot of them uppity types in Paris. ‘Bama too.” Tony looked at the small crowd before Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting. Visitors passed without any eyes for the naked statue.
“They’re here for the Mona Lisa. Some people say that the sitter was Beatrice d'Este, the wife of Milanese duke, but the Leonardo supposedly said, “The Mona Lisa is androgynous—half man and half woman,” and the other model for the painting could da Vinci's rumored lover. No one of them knows for sure ”
“L’Hermaphrodite is more beautiful and you consider this the most important piece in the Louvre?”
“Yes.” “If you had a choice who would you take?”
“As A lover? L’hermaphrodite, bien sur. Leonard’s model was his boyfriend. Bearded youth. I don’t play that way.”
Tony caressed the ancient stone.
“Cool and smooth.” “Yes, but be careful touching it with someone else. You might fall in love.”
He withdrew his hand and laughed, “You’ll got some funny stories.”
That night I dined at the Studio with Tony’s sister, Eliie. Her brother was with a runaway beauty from Louisiana. During dessert he suggested that they visit the Louvre.
“What for?” the blonde asked with a bayou accent.
“Because I want you to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“Herma. Don’t look so disappointed. Herma is very old. Italian. She sees nothing and everything. The French talk about a curse. How if you touch the statue with someone else, you’ll fall in love.”
“Sounds scary,” Tony’s sister was kidding. Ellie wasn’t scared of anything. Her barracks in Germany were on the front line of the Iron Curtain.
“I like scary.” The blonde signed up for the tour and we agreed to meet in the afternoon.
After dinner Tony departed with the blonde, Ellie and I walked back to my Marais hotel and the army sergeant lay in bed, smelling of the Cold War, and asked, “So who is Herma? I hate secrets, so tell me the truth or you’re sleeping on the floor.”
“Herma is a statue. A beautiful statue of a Hermaphrodite. The best piece in the Louvre and neglected by everyone since she is next to the Mona Lisa.”
“No accounting forbad taste. Like you and me.”
“Taste has nothing to do with us.”
Later that afternoon the four of us met in the courtyard of the Louvre. Pigeons swirled in the air and a few tourists wandered in the courtyard. Tony and I paid thirty-five francs for the girls and guided them to the riverside galleries, where the southern light off the Seine cloaked the Louvre’s forgotten passages in gold. We refrained from throwing the football and Tony ordered our guests, “Don’t look at the paintings.”
“Why not?” asked Ellie, expecting a good answer and the Lower Alabama native said, “Hundreds of thousand of people have seen them. Usually for only seventeen seconds according to art dealers and no painting are satisfied with an attention span of seventeen seconds.”
He fixed his gaze on the blonde. It lasted almost a minute.
“Forget Michelangelo, David, or Delacroix. You’re more beautiful than any of theses paintings and you’ll be more beautiful, if y’all don’t let them steal your beauty.”
“Like a camera stealing your soul,” asked the rookie model.
“Everything gets older faster when someone is watching.” Alabama Tony led us through the Louvre and the blonde believed everything he said with that mush-mouthed drawl, since he sounded like two hundred miles east of ‘home’.
“Where Tony learn that shit?” Ellie held my hand.
“I gave him a lesson or two.”
“I thought that bullshit sounded familiar.” She had been on two of my expeditions of Paris.
“Merde peut-etre, mais regardez pas les tableaux.”
“Let me guess. They want to steal our souls.”
Our eyes-down tour passed Bellini’s sculptures, Raphael’s cherubs, and the treasures of France, and at the Mona Lisa where Tony announced, “Don’t lift your head, but y’all standing in front of the most famous painting in the world. Everyone knows its name. Maybe it’s a woman. Maybe it’s a man. She has a smile. No one knows why.”
“The Mona Lisa.” Even the blonde knew that and she was only eighteen. The girls wanted to see the Mona Lisa, but Tony and I blocked their field of vision.
“The Mona Lisa is better known than the Crimson Tide football team and everyone wants fame, but to your left is the most exquisite statue in existence this side of the Boll Weevil Monument in downtown Enterprise, Alabama.”
“I hate that creepy thing.” Ellie shuddered with disgust.
“Well, this ain’t that.” Tony played his grits card with vingt-et-un cool and his French was impeccable for someone brought up north of Mobile. “Fermay tes ewes and donnez moi y’all hands.”
Our ‘dates’ obeyed his instruction and we led them to the Hermaphrodite.
“This is the Borghese Hermaphroditus. It’s not famous like the Mona Lisa, but the Hermaphrodite survived the fall of Rome. The Louvre is filled with Greek and Roman statues without noses, arms, or legs, but this statue escaped all harm for over two thousand years. It is eternal.”
Tony had the timing of a Delta tide and paused for a span of time not needing a count.
“Y’all can open your eyes.”
The statue’s whiteness was startling in the evening dusk.
“Maybe a boy, maybe a girl, but certainly not the Mona Lisa.” Alabama Tony pointed back to Da Vinci’s immortal painting.
“No one can touch the Mona Lisa, but anyone who touches the Borghese Hermaphroditus will fall in love.”
That line was my cue to finish up the tour. We had created the curse, but both of us were in awe of the statue’s power to have existed for centuries without any damage.
“You girls care to drink some wine in the Palais Royal?” Ellie said yes and we retreated to a renowned cafe at the northern end of the garden. The barman knew our names. We toasted the magic of the Borghese Hermaphroditus. Everyone was happy.
We perfected our non-seeing tours of Le Louvre with other models, Sorbonne painters, dancers from the Crazy Horse, and wandering heiresses. Our best time from the entrance to le Hermaphrodite was twelve minutes, but our luck couldn’t last as long as the existence of a naked transvestite’s statue.
That winter Tony spent time with one girl. Tracy was a brunette from Vermont, a teenager dripping with North Country innocence. Her smile was too lovely for a cover girl, but Tony had been blinded by her maple syrup brown eyes and I met him at the Studio to see how he was. “I think she wants to get serious.”
“How serious?”
“I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Those words explained the sad faces on the Dixie girls at the Studio. Tony wasn’t playing FREEBIRD after last call anymore.
“She wants to go to the Louvre.”
“You going to give her the tour?”
“What you’ll think?”
“You like her?” I thought she was a good girl.
“More than like.”
“Then do what you think is best as long as you remember the danger of the Hermaphrodite.”
“You mean I’ll fall in love?”
“It happened to me.” A young artist from La Ruche had dared me to touch Herma. I hadn’t looked at any woman since. We were in love.
“That falling love story’s a bunch of phooey.” Tony smirked at my caution. “Besides Traci’s from Vermont.”
“What’s that have to do with it?” I was a New Englander.
“She’s just another Yankee girl.”
“And you’re Johnny Reb. Every town squares in Vermont had a statue of a Union soldier defiantly facing the South. The South will not rise again.”
“We will, you damn Yankee.”
The next day Tony followed our route through the museum. Tracy was smart for a teenager. She had been to a real school. She pouted at his warning to not regard the other paintings.
“I didn’t come to Paris to be told what to do. I could have stayed in Vermont for that.” Tracy pointed to the wall. “That paintings’ English. That’s French and that’s Delacroix’s LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE.”
“How you know that?” Tony had been coming to the Louvre on his own. He looked at the paintings. The color of the light showed him the truth about Art. Paris had him in its power.
“I’ve been here before.” Tracy stepped closer.
“I’ve never seen you here.” Tony held her hand for the first time and felt the softness of a stalled breeze.
“And I’ve never seen you here.”
"Nor me you."
A vagrant ray of sunset struck the wall mirror. The only camera was their memory. Time slowed to the pace of their breathing and she hushed, “What now?”
“I’ll show you my favorite piece in the Louvre.”
“The Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”
She laughed like she had been waiting for this punchline.
“How you know?”
“Every model in Paris talks about how you two bring them here and have them touch the Sleeping Hermaphroditus’ ass to fall in love. Funny, but they all did for a few days. Maybe that’s the power of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus. You willing to try?”
“I am if you are.”
Tracy led him toward the Mona Lisa. They passed the gaggle of admirers before Leonardo’s painting and stopped before the blemishless statue.
“It’s so perfect.”
“Saved from a grave of dirt.”
“To sleep on stone.”
They touched the marble together.
That autumn the two got married at the Studio. Leaves from the old Chestnut tree covered cobblestones. We drank tequila and danced to the owner playing OLD ROCKY TOP on the fiddle. At the end of the night Tony and I threw a football in the medieval Marais courtyard. Two high stakes Ivy League lawyers challenged us to a game. We beat them like rented mules. Cobblestones were our home advantage and we toasted our victory, yelling “Joe Namath.”
Tony stopped.
“What?”
“Look.”
I did.
Tracy beamed at her football hero. Neither of us had broken a window in the courtyard. At dawn the newlyweds went home. The Louvre was never the same for me after that. As IM Pei’s Pyramid took form, people rediscovered the museum.
French first. English. Dutch. German. Japanese.
The foreign crowds flocked to see the masterpieces. All of them stopped at the Mona Lisa.
Few looked at le Borghese Hermaphroditus, because the fame of Mona Lisa was a tough act to follow even for the cool stone of a sleeping beauty.
A few dared to touch her.
I always did, because nothing else felt more of eternity when you wanted to fall in love during football season.
Even in Paris.
Go long.
Frank the owner of Le Studio, Tracy, and Tony 1983.
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